current pulsation

Legendary dub techno artist Paul St. Hilaire (AKA Tikiman) announces new collaborative album, marking 10 years of Kynant Records. 

Building on the success of Paul St. Hilaire’s landmark solo album for Kynant in 2023, w/ The Producers switches up the formula to pair St. Hilaire with a different producer on each track. Referencing fellow dub techno pioneers Mark Ernestus & Moritz von Oswald’s acclaimed album w/ The Artists as Rhythm & Sound, St. Hilaire flips the concept to feature as the lone vocalist.

Over the album’s nine tracks, St. Hilaire offers a range of conscious song-writing and headtop musings, such as the spoken-word dread of “What’s This” or the sparse call-to-action of “Send Them On”. w/ The Producers is yet another essential record in St. Hilaire’s unmatched discography.

The album marks 10 years of Kynant Records, with label owner Richard Akingbehin curating an eclectic but sonically connected group of producers. These include luminaries such as Digital Mystikz boss and dubstep trailblazer Mala, or the elusive Chain Reaction artist Shinichi Atobe. They sit alongside some of the most exciting names in recent electronic music - Batu, Gavsborg, Azu Tiwaline, Priori, Cousin, Russell E.L. Butler, Aurora Halal and DJ G - all of whom bring different elements of dub techno into their productions.

w/ The Producers finds Kynant Records bridging the original voice of dub techno with the genre’s new wave. It’s a statement of intent from the label, which began 10 years ago with deep, hypnotic techno and has veered gradually towards more dubwise sounds.

Mastered by Stefan Betke
Artwork by Grant Gibson
Distributed by N.E.W.S 

A1 Paul St. Hilaire & Mala - Like It's Always Been

B1 Paul St. Hilaire & Priori - Send Them On

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xenharmonic bass music

Sevish (aka Sean Archibald) is an electronic musician from London, UK. His music is fast and atmospheric. The style mainly gravitates around drum & bass and other electronic dance music varieties, although even ambient and chilled works have been released under this moniker. Sevish sidesteps pop structures and familiar "EDM" tropes, instead trying to capture the essence of something flowing and meandering. It's the perfect music for blocking mind-altering radiation.

Since his album Golden Hour, Sevish's technique has included a dark art known as microtonality/xenharmonics. For short, we can call this xen. Simply put, the xen aesthetic tries to achieve new musical ideas by making things more or less in-tune than normal music. For something that is so easy to describe, you would think that every musician was doing it. Sadly, the technicalities of (ab)using musical tunings to create xen music are too much for most musicians to muster at this point in time. Perhaps 3D printing will change that in the future, allowing new instruments with crazy tunings to be developed quickly and cheaply. Until then, it's the domain of a few tinkerers and madmen scattered across the globe. One of those being Sevish, who blends xen with his own brand of experimental dance music.

The xen movement is still small but growing rapidly. It has a lively facebook group, its own wiki (deeply incomprehensible to all but the initiated), and about as many dedicated record labels as you could count on one hand.

In 2010, Sevish launched his own netlabel to get together the scattered artists composing xen music. Called split-notes, this label is known for its focus on xen-with-a-beat, and most of its releases are free to download with Creative Commons licensing. While the output of the label has slowed down due to other commitments, it's still alive with new releases showing up from time to time.

Sevish's music has been put out by the Dutch label Dubbhism Deluxe. In 2011, Sevish, Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon released an album called Subversio to online music shops and popular streaming services. This project lies somewhere between being a band album and being a compilation, as each of the 3 artists provided 3 solo tracks each. So it's more of a musical triptych than either of those things. Certainly a form of collaborative album that can (and will) be explored further. Each of the musicians on Subversio combine xen with beats and bass, but their individual styles contrast and compliment. Tony Dubshot excels at trippy electro dub with lots of analog processing. Jacky Ligon's style is often described as oceanic or panoramic, with fluid and rotating beats and deeply moving atmospheres and melodies. And Sevish's style... well, you already know by now.

In 2014 Sevish, Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon followed with 23, something of a mini-album in the same stylistic ballpark as 2011's Subversio. Numerology, conspiracy and ancient knowledge is something that the trio is attracted to, and 23 is inspired from that.