The cracks were beginning to show; it was nigh on impossible to keep her face from telling the whole story. She'd had a good run, but she knew that it wouldn't be long before she'd give it away, and all the lies and deceipt that had kept this at bay would soon unravel for the entire world to see. Would it have been worth it? A question she couldn't quite answer, but she'd soon find out...

Munich-based platform Alternative Fakten are dedicated to putting the city's underground music and arts scene on the map, be that through club nights, live shows, panel talks, art exhibitions, or releases — like the one we've got for you right here. Like their first label outing, the second is another compilation celebrating artists within the city, though this time, they highlight a wealth of contemporary electronic producers who are operating in the spaces between the city's artworld, activist groups and club culture, including Fuel Moon, WLAN and label bosses Tom Zwotausend & Bartoszek.

PREMIERE: Fuel Moon - Love Like Spaceship [Alternative Fakten]

The Lithuanian electronic scene is somehow very close to ours and sounds so familiar that we feel almost obligated to offer you the best of it. Simas Boo is a Lithuanian based DJ with three years on the scene doing nothing less than developing an ever more mature sound. And with this effort, throughout the time, an iconic image is being built with the passion for what he does and passion for what he listens to.

Perhaps that's why it is not easy to place Simas at the centre of one single genre. Under the pseudonym of Simas Boo, a lot of musical diversity is revealed. By connecting synthetic sounds, he travels through light acid, indie low-techno, and house sounds. Fast or slow tempo, Simas easily adapts to everything, and the palette of sounds is only more playful.

Sounds with interesting sounds have always been my priority while maintaining rhythm and percussion instruments in the track is the engine, says Simas, and he's damn right.

@simasboo

ÉTER Podcast #31 Simas Boo

This place was a maze; corridors veered off in every direction, doorways led to new rooms, stairways to unknown locations. Getting out of here would be an impossible task, everything had a mind of its own — things that were once there disappeared only moments later, escape routes morphed and shifted into new forms. This place played tricks on you, you had everywhere to run and everywhere to hide, but freedom was not yours — it was slipping away quicker than ever.

Cosmic Pint Glass have been working hard to put Norwich on the electronic music map with their parties and label. Since launching back in 2015 they've shared music from Ruf Dug, Marc Du Mosch, Toby Tobias and many more, and now they're welcoming back the group who helped launch the imprint nearly four years ago: Jack Pattern. Their follow up EP, 'Kosmische Kueche', is made up of three original cuts that range from industrial slow burners to mutant trip hop, backed up by remixes from Wax Stag and Dane Close.

CPG009

PREMIERE: Jack Pattern - Paolo Santoz (Dane Close Remix) [Cosmic Pint Glass]

In the middle of the summer Yeho, an Israeli musician coming from Tel Aviv, was wandering around Italy and randomly he found himself in the “Quintino Basement”, lair of Ninja Exotic Machine.
This casual encounter gave birth to three new tracks where the
duo’s downtempo and tribal style merges with Yeho’s crisp and raw vocal together with intriguing percussions samples extracted from live recordings of the percussionist Andrea Greco.
The result is an Ep called “36 questions” out on Pho Bho Records on the 14th of October.

PREMIERE : Ninja Exotic Machine Feat Yeho - Disolve

Infuso Giallo - Ocular Soda 12"
BUY LINK: https://infusogiallo.bandcamp.com/album/ocular-soda
Release date: 30 september 2021
Label: Kame House (https://soundcloud.com/kame-house-852734962)
https://soundcloud.com/infusogiallo

Infuso Giallo aka Philipp Carbotta originally hails from rural Western Germany, first cut his teeth in the music scene of nearby Cologne and conducts a host of activities in Berlin for a couple of years now – co-running the label Kame House, designing graphics and producing and playing leftfield electronic music. His debut LP Ocular Soda presents an intersection of these activities – self-released, self-designed, and of course self-produced. Even before the first synth chords and reverse atmospheres of the two-part opener 'Every Waking Hour' tickle the ear, it is the eye that is drawn to the bright, cut-out style cover art – itself made up of two eyes on the front and what seem to be their rough shapes or discarded counterparts on the back.
To stay within that metaphor, Infuso Giallo's music is indeed of a reflective and calm nature, taking cues from Berlin School, library, and New Age musics from roughly the 1970s to the 1990s – steadily repeating and slowly evolving ostinatos, lush digital pads, quirky filtered toplines and electronic percussion that mostly eschews four-four monotony in favor of much more subtle syncopations. Balearic bomb 'The Big Rip' with its big drums and acid bass turns the energy level up a notch while retaining the somnambulistic, lingering quality that makes Ocular Soda such a coherent listening experience – music on the sheath of waking and dreaming, both worlds and their inherent logics freely bleeding into each other. There are moments of great expanse, such as in 'Mole Gaze' – I couldn't help but see myself hovering somewhere in mid-air while the music unfolds as if on a great deserted plane below me. Maybe this is what it sounds like once the mole leaves his tunnels and takes in the sound of the world overground. 'Hello World', indeed, in its multitude of information to eye and ear, in its gently overwhelming quality. The title track 'Ocular Soda' closes the proceedings with a whimsical nod to 1970s botany-centered library music, its brooding chord sequence and sweet lead lines gradually fading in the distance. A fitting ending to an impressive LP of highly evocative, at times somber and at times blissfully naive pieces that leave me yearning for more.

Ocular Soda

PREMIERE : Infuso Giallo - The Big Rip

NAVA (RIO06)
https://riolabel.bandcamp.com/album/benedikt-frey-tim-toh-nava
29.10.2021 - Bandcamp Release 
12.11.2021 - Official Release

I dream of you so quietly. Your likeness is not visible, the wind obscures your silhouette. You create spirals and don't know why. A burning star whirling in an orbit of its own. Each today is yesterday's tomorrow, which is now. And now is all I have, in my dream, so quietly… Four new tracks on RIO, catalogue number 006. Conducted, dreamed, in- and exhaled by @freybenedikt and @tohinc , featuring cosmic whisper and aerospace vocoder poetry by Lisa Toh, Tyler Pope, Lukas Diller and Niklas Wandt. Tripping music, dancing with organic Reprazent-break-infinity, saxophone melodies, Neu-Kraut-transcendence, nervous drones, gloomy bass figures, minimal pop and manic computer malfunctioning tones. All wrapped in a warm void of Melancholie, touching the eternal with murky gloves. Pointillist tunes, thoughtfully peculiar, seriously serious. Now is all they need. Now is all they want. Now I dream of you so quietly.

NAVA

Benedikt Frey & Tim Toh - NAVA

Artist: https://soundcloud.com/ninjaexoticmachine, yeho
Track: Explore My Crack
Label: https://soundcloud.com/phobhorecords
Format: Digital, EP
Release date: 14/10/21
Purchase: https://phobhorecords.bandcamp.com/album/36-questions

In the middle of the summer Yeho, an Israeli musician coming from Tel Aviv, was wandering around Italy and randomly he found himself in the “Quintino Basement”, lair of Ninja Exotic Machine.
This casual encounter gave birth to three new tracks where the
duo’s downtempo and tribal style merges with Yeho’s crisp and raw vocal together with intriguing percussions samples extracted from live recordings of the percussionist Andrea Greco.
The result is an Ep called “36 questions” out on Pho Bho Records on the 14th of October.

YouTube

PREMIERE | Ninja Exotic Machine ft. Yeho - Explore My Crack [Pho Bho] 2021

A1)Cold Feet
A2)Agent Kink

B1)Fragments of a Marching Stone
B2)Lazy Soldier
B3)All Diving Lucid Blue

Rudolf Abramov hit all Optimo Music’s buttons at once. Drums, energy, songs, instrumentals, super production, Post Punk echoing, dance floor destroying, home listening friendly, and completely unique.

Who are they and what are they about? Read on…

Rudolf Abramov is a duo based in Berlin. They seem to open a door to unexpected musical encounters. It’s an almost impossible task to sum up their sound in a comprehensible way, but in their own words their music is ‘a response to a seemingly endless conflict about disgust, acceptance and love.’ Since the duo likes to invite other musicians and fellow humans to add to their pieces, this often creates another layer to their unexpected musical encounters.

“Losing Perspective” is the result of a journey that began with a week-long recording session outside the city. Back in Berlin the skeletons of the track gradually grew in flesh, experience and emotion, describing this time in a vibrant and ever-changing city; a city where the faded colours sometimes seem more appealing than the unifying glow of the new.

In order to preserve for ourselves the conflicting colours in their fantastic disharmony, we have therefore watched the pieces change rather than moving them in a particular direction. The result is a number of tracks with different facets that derive from different moods and voices, indulging in diversity.

At the end of this process, we look back at this colourful collage and connect our own very personal history with it and both resolve in harmony. When asking the cat from our studio’s courtyard for example, she said that “Losing Perspective” was about stray tomcats who have lost their old home port to a newfangled establishment wandering randomly through the days in search of songbirds, distraction and rest. And we feel like she kinda has a point there.

Vinyl and digital released April 4th 2022. Distro by Kompakt

OM 48 Rudolf Abramov - Losing Perspective 12" Vinyl (sampler)

Renaissance (2025/Heftraplex Network)

my new track

neptoons

Ransom Note is an online music, arts and culture magazine. We provide a home for readers and writers with boundless enthusiasm, esoteric knowledge, fierce opinions and impeccable taste.

With our core team immersed in all aspects of dance music, we publish news, articles, and interviews covering the greatest in innovative, underground culture from across the globe. We offer regular, exclusive music and mixtapes from our favourite artists, and publish features shining a light on everything from the freshest new artists to the untold tales from rave history.

Alongside this we offer musings on film, books, life, and art, generating some context and controversy as an antidote to the reheated PR that clogs up the internet. Our office is fuelled by Tunnock’s Bars, cat memes, hangovers and a ridiculous, never ending love for our culture.

We're always interested in getting new writers on board – feel free to get in touch if you’ve got a story to tell.

With love until the grave.

PREMIERE: Jack Pattern - Paolo Santoz (Dane Close Remix) [Cosmic Pint Glass]

Ransom Note

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to slow to dance

Mark Yavorsky

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