Balearic blend

Pleasure Voyage -  In Vacanza

Ahead of the release of his hotly anticipated ninth album as the Emperor Machine, Island Boogie, Andrew Meecham releases a club-focused 12” featuring some dancefloor dubs and reworks of key LP cuts.

Island Boogie arrives four years after Meecham’s previous full-length, Music Not Safari, and sees the veteran producer deliver his most ‘personal’ set yet – a collection of kaleidoscopic, cosmic-leaning, dub disco-influenced neo-boogie excursions inspired by his love of the custom-built soundsystem at Rotation Garden Party, an annual micro-festival founded by a group of friends including his former Chicken Lips production partner Dean Meredith.

It's fitting, then, that the EP begins with a superb interpretation of ‘'Dévoilez-Vous’ by T-Kutt, AKA Meredith and long-term studio partner Ben Shenton. The pair’s ‘AM FM Club Mix’ sits somewhere between classic Prelude-style electrofunk, NYC proto-house and early British interpretations of American house music. Séverine Mouletin’s chopped-up improvised vocals weave in and out of sun-bright keyboard riffs, colourful synthesiser motifs, heady synth-strings, D-Train style synth-bass and delay-laden machine drums. It’s a superb re-imagination of one of the album’s most stellar moments.

The EP’s other headline-grabbing remix comes courtesy of Leng co-founder Paul Murphy AKA Mudd. He reworks title track ‘Island Boogie’, teasing out the spacey synths and languid jazz-funk grooves of Meecham’s original mix and dialling them up to the max. The resultant revision sparkles with crunchy clavinet licks, mazy synth and electric piano solos, and spacey chords rising above a mid-tempo dancefloor groove.

To complete a strong package, Meecham adds two dubs in his distinctively stripped-back, tape echo-heavy style. He first takes on EP title track ‘Dévoilez-Vous’, wrapping vintage drum machine hits in oodles of space echo and dub delay while devoting more time and space to the killer bassline, Rupert Brown’s infectious hand percussion, and Mouletin’s vocalisations. 

To round off the EP, he dubs out album epic ‘La Cassette’, another collaboration with Mouletin that also features additional percussion by Brown. Like the original synth-powered dancefloor dubs of the early-to-mid-80s that have long been an inspiration, Meecham’s ‘La Cassette’ dub features key musical elements – many drenched in trippy effects – popping in and out of the mix, while his sturdy drums and memorable bassline spar with Brown’s percussion below.

LENG SHOP

Emperor Machine - Dévoilez-Vous (T Kutt’s AM-FM Club Mix)

Whisper it quietly, but Andrew Meecham’s ninth album as The Emperor Machine, Island Boogie, may well be the long-serving producer’s strongest set to date. Of course, all his albums ripple with vintage synth sounds, colourful lead lines, dub-flecked electronic disco and lashings of cosmic intent, but this one just feels a little more special.

Island Boogie is certainly special. Meecham’s “most personal” full-length to date was inspired by his experiences at the Rotation Garden Party – a beloved micro-festival promoted by a group of friends (including sometime Bizarre Inc and Chicken Lips partner Dean Meredith), renowned for the quality of its custom-built Klipschorn soundsystem. “The album’s title sums up the vibe that you get from Rotation,” he explains. “It may be held in a landlocked venue but it gives a wonderful sense of isolation – it is an audiophile paradise.”

Meecham road-tested rough versions of the album’s eight tracks at Rotation 2023, with the feedback and dancefloor reaction guiding the sound and arrangement of the final mixes. Fittingly, Meecham will return to the event to showcase the album at Rotation 2024 this July. Given the inspiration he’s drawn from previous editions of the festival, that will be a very special occasion.

Musically, Island Boogie offers the most fully functioning and expertly constructed expression of The Emperor Machine sound yet, a style Meecham describes as “electronic cosmic disco-boogie”. It’s a sound that takes cues from early ‘80s NYC punk-funk and dub disco, vintage electro, proto-house and left-of-centre synth-boogie, but one that’s instantly recognisable to those who have followed Meecham’s career over the last three decades.

Island Boogie also sees Meecham continue his blossoming working relationship with Séverine Mouletin, whose stylish and distinctive vocals previously graced his popular ‘Dance Par Amour’ and ‘Your Own Style’ singles. Here Mouletin features on four tracks: the acid-flecked retro-futurist wave-boogie of ‘La Cassette’ (featuring additional percussion by Rupert Brown); the infectious, bleep-sporting headiness of recent single ‘Dévoilez-Vous’; and the squelchy analogue synth-funk of ‘Wanna Pop With You’ and ‘Vas-y-Le Chat’.

Meecham also finds space for a cover of Fox’s 1976 pop-rock classic ‘S-s-s-single Bed’, one of the Stafford-based artist’s all-time favourites. His version, featuring lead vocals by Michelle Bee and guitar from Dave Atherton, re-imagines the track as a subtly Chic-influenced slab of infectious electro-pop rich in kaleidoscopic synth sounds, sing-along choruses and shuffling drums.

The instrumental foundations of the classic Emperor Machine sound come to the fore on the album’s three other cuts. There’s the jazz-funk-flecked warmth of the LP-opening title track; the sparse squelches, bleeps, TB-303 style bass and brightly coloured electronics of ‘Walk The Dog’; and the exotic, slow-motion cosmic electronica of ‘Cha Murrah Etem’, a warm but poignant affair dedicated to his late father. Heady and intoxicating, with hints of Balearica and digital reggae, it offers a fittingly beautiful and tactile conclusion to Meecham’s most expressive and accessible album yet.

Island Boogie

Emperor Machine - Island Boogie

Disappear_ - homesick
Track 2 from "flowers"
WFWM #0024
https://freshwatermedia.bandcamp.com/album/flowers

Disappear_ - homesick

And Then Came The Evening
by Evigt

All copies are sold out, digital here:

https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/and-then-came-the-evening

Evigt - ATL

Undveld - Where Dreams Collapse II

Felt Sleep

cherry blossom

Fluid Audio announces 'Series Of Room', the quietly moving new release from Italian composer Grotta Veterano. Mastered by Ian Hawgood and featuring cover artwork by Danish artist Øjerum, the album offers a deeply introspective journey through sound, memory, and emotional architecture.

Initially recorded as a series of private piano sketches - “written improvisations, controlled sketches” - the tracks were never intended as a cohesive album. Yet when brought together, they began to resemble something whole: a constellation of internal spaces, unresolved and beautifully unrefined.

“They ended up becoming a series of rooms,” writes Grotta Veterano, “each one made of memory, of recurring fragments from the past, reconstructed over time. When I say ‘a series of rooms,’ I mean the ones we carry inside us, not physical spaces.”

Each piece unfolds like an overheard thought, a door left ajar. There’s no grand statement here-only presence, absence, and the trace of something lived. With its unadorned fragility and its refusal to over-explain, Series Of Room speaks in the language of quiet honesty.

The album is presented in a meticulously handcrafted edition of 50 copies, drawing from the same tradition of tactile collage and analogue storytelling that has defined recent Fluid Audio editions. Each set features original Ordnance Survey map segments, cloth-backed and carefully bound, forming a unique shell for each copy. Also included are custom-designed A6 prints on heavyweight uncoated stock, vintage photographic slides, black & white travel photographs, photo negatives, and salvaged book pages from. Fragments of reel-to-reel field recording tape, antique travel stubs, and ephemera gathered from forgotten drawers complete the assembly.

All elements are housed in a hand-waxed, stamped, scented archival bag, individually numbered. No two packages are alike. No repress.

Audio: Grotta Veterano
Mastering: Ian Hawgood
Cover artwork: Øjerum
Design: Daniel Crossley

Grotta Veterano - For The Birds

winedark by rosewither and Natalie Hogue is a collaborative effort which explores the dualities between harmony and disorder. A resonant chorus of tornado sirens, lawnmowers, and car horns, winedark explores nature in both its violent and serene states; nature as something revered and beyond control; nature of the world and of the human.

Check out Natalie's work here: https://nataliehogue.com/

Bandcamp

rosewither, Natalie Hogue - Ruminations on Traffic Noise

000099 Sunday

Love Will Return In Another Way

Video @ http://vimeo.com/34697353
Vinyl @ http://www.juno.co.uk/artists/Tommy+Awards/, http://www.piccadillyrecords.com/products/TommyAwards-EP-MagicFeet-83479.html

Blind Andy

Gray Acres are brothers Michael and Andrew Tasselmyer, whose debut album was released last year on Sound In Silence. The project began in 2017 as another creative avenue for these two artists, who are already established as Hotel Neon as well as working on other collaborations and solo ventures. Andrew records under his own name as well as working with Tobias Hellkvist as Mordançage whereas Mike records under the alias Transient Sounds.
The brothers are originally from Baltimore in USA and whilst Mike still lives there, Andrew moved a hundred miles or so away to neighbouring city Philadelphia. Their work is initially created independently by building ideas, loops and recordings and these are realised into full tracks once they get together in person.

Material Forces became the name of the follow-up to last year’s eponymous unveiling, a dense but physical drift session which is as tactile as it is lulling. They did not initially have a clear vision on what this record would eventually become and much of it was performed live, with limited post-production. A key element is some field recordings taken in Asia, which provided the influence for the concept as they were all selected specifically for their powerful, intense characteristics. Rushing water, thunder claps, rock, earth and other heavy materials helped inspire the title ‘Material Forces’ as these field recordings become a focal point in which the power of the natural world collide with softer, processed guitar and synth drones to mimic the undeniable beauty that is left behind by nature as it shifts and evolves.

Material Forces

wlr064 Gray Acres - Material Forces

'The Rong classic, Mudd - 54B gets the Ray Mang treatment with the whopping 9 minute mix on the A side joined by the 'Acid Reflux' mix and the 'Bonus Beats' on the B side. 

Mang takes all the original parts and toughens it up for the dancefloor adding a twisted acid mix on the B side.

Leng Shop

Mudd - 54b (Ray Mang Version)

UK based record collector and DJ/Producer 😊

Vinyl release on Music for Swimming Pools. 

https://www.juno.co.uk/products/below-the-horizon-volume-1-vinyl/1063069-01/

You can find us here https://tommyawards.bandcamp.com

Blind Andy

Tommy Awards

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