Recommended tracks of February from Insert.

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Insert Recommends: February

BSUN001
Prod & Mix by Big Hands
Master & Cut @ D&M 
Distro by Honest Jon's

https://baroquesunburst.bandcamp.com/releases

BSUN001 B2 - Big Hands - Baroque Sunbursts

Racine - Quelque Chose Tombe 
Cat. Nr: DN016
Format: LP / DL 
Release Date: 21 February 2020

Hidden in plain sight, grinning through worry, living in insecurity – modern society has returned to a day-by-day race for survival. To be vulnerable is the new normal; afraid, a bare minimum. Something was bound to emerge from the quiet throngs of the new precariat, and Racine is such a voice, setting to music those modern lives defined by uncertainty.

Quelque Chose Tombe (‘Something Falls’) is a set of compositions that confronts demons both inner and outer head-on. Created during a period of necessary unemployment somewhere in Montreal – caring for one’s health can take precedence over work – the music is both a grotesque dance of the goblins and the gentle opiatic breath of the protectors. It’s a harrowing reflection of the prevalent vampiric hypochondria forcing a generation into fatigue. 

The sounds crawling out of Racine speak with their own internal logic. Snippets of fractured tunes creak through perturbed post-digital soundscapes, blurred and fragmented along the way into haunting amorphous instrumentals. The two-part title track is multi-part sonic maze where raven-like pitch bent notes gather, a broken rave theme punctures its way through bass fog, and silence clefts the music in two, ushering in a coda of heartbroken ambience. As the album’s suite progresses, Racine shepherds mutant melodic themes in and out of earshot, like clear thoughts bringing temporary order to a state of emotional panic and withdrawal. A host of other sounds too – voices and birdsong, cybernetically deformed – populate Racine’s scarred productions. 

Emerging from Quelque Chose Tombe’s constant darkness however, is a latent sense of hope. Racine is turning modern vulnerability into a strength, creating a singular aesthetic to reflect and confront an uncomfortable present.

Mastered by Beau Thomas 
Design by Niels Wehrspann 

@julienracine

Quelque Chose Tombe

Racine - Quelque Chose Tombe II

From the debut album Salvador, out 14/2
Preorder/stream: segabodega.ffm.to/salvador

Follow:
instagram.com/segabodega_
twitter.com/segabodega
facebook.com/segabodega
youtube.com/segabodega

Salvador

Salv Goes To Hollywood

Peter Zinovieff & Lucy Railton - RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer 
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No: PAN 90
Release Date: 21 February 2020
Purchase: https://bit.ly/2RUVeF0

'RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer’ is a steeply adventurous, highly structured and rewarding electro-acoustic collaboration between pioneering British/Russian inventor and engineer Peter Zinovieff and preeminent cellist Lucy Railton.' 

The collaboration is notably issued as Peter Zinovieff’s first album and also becomes the follow-up to Lucy Railton’s acclaimed solo debut ‘Paradise 94’. It finds Zinovieff, co-founder of London’s influential EMS Synthesizer company and owner of the world’s first home computer, using custom computer software to create and orchestrate a “soft” version of Railton’s vast instrumental vocabulary, modelled from a large series of cello improvisations inspired by objects such as an Egyptian figure, pots, and old computer boards, as well as tales of pre-revolution Russia from his Grandfather. Railton added solo cello to the manipulated results, before these quasi-improvisations were recombined into the work’s filigree matrix during final co-production with members of ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. 

Initially conceived as a live project and performed at festivals including Norberg, Atonal, Rewire and FAQ between 2016-2017, the final 33 minute recording thrillingly sustains the duelling, visceral tension and unpredictability of their live shows in its brute scrapes across 17 variated sections. But, with the ability to unstitch/embroider sounds outside the strictures of real-time live performance, the resulting structure is confoundingly labyrinthine, assiduously swerving the prosaic and sentimental in pursuit of explorative, emotively in/human expressions of complexity and unpredictability in a manner that has always been key to the ideals of experimental music.

In effect, the pair speak as one through an electro acoustic prism in a symbiotic, syncretic process of transformation. Railton is here the catalyst for some of Zinovieff’s definitive work in a career spanning 60 years. Her performances provide a radical variable - a sort of spirit in the machine - which is diffused, inverted and scattered by Zinovieff using various software applications, so that Railton plays around herself like a fractal mise-en-abyme, cutting her warped image to ribbons in a double refraction of the “real”, the instrumental, and its virtual allegory. In this (un)common, metaphoric language and poly-temporal syntax, they incisively speak to ideas of an uncanny valley of perception between the haptic and the intangible, conducting an absorbing dialogue that transcends and bends the story of avant-garde and electronic music in beguiling, free fashion.

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Johannes Schnatmann & Bill Kouligas.

RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer

Peter Zinovieff & Lucy Railton - RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer (PAN 90)

https://ynys.bandcamp.com/album/sand - buy here 

art work by Djj

(7) stabzzz [dJJ Edit]

For the full track listing click here: https://bleep.com/features/bleep-mix-95--anunaku

Anunaku is the alias of @tsvisions that first appeared last year via ‘Whities 024’, now re-emerging in 2020 with the new ‘Stargate’ EP. The @nervoushorizon co-owner has turned in a phenomenal mix here featuring lots of unreleased gems, we're told, scheduled for release later this year. Drum heavy, rhythmic workouts mixed with flair and precision.

Bleep Mix #95 - Anunaku

This upcoming mix tape perfectly encapsulates gqom’s frenetic power.

See the tracklist here → crackm.ag/2H8vTCG

From Avoca Hills to the world – Mixed by Citizen Boy

Homemade EP

Tears

Beatrice Dillon - Workaround
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No: PAN 106
Release Date: 07 February 2020
Purchase: bit.ly/33ISoYr

‘Workaround’ is the lucidly playful and ambitious solo debut album by rhythmobsessive musician and DJ, Beatrice Dillon for PAN. It combines her love of UK club music’s syncopated suss and Afro- Caribbean influences with a gamely experimental approach to modern composition and stylistic fusion, using inventive sampling and luminous mixing techniques adapted from modern pop to express fresh ideas about groove-driven music and perpetuate its form with timeless, future-proofed clarity.

Recorded over 2017-2019 between studios in London, Berlin and New York, ‘Workaround’ renders a hypnotic series of polymetric permutations at a fixed 150bpm tempo. Mixing meticulous FM synthesis and harmonics with crisply edited acoustic samples from a wide range of guests including UK Bhangra pioneer Kuljit Bhamra (tabla); Pharoah Sanders Band’s Jonny Lam (pedal steel guitar); techno innovators Laurel Halo (synth/vocal) and Batu (samples); Senegalese Griot Kadialy Kouyaté (Kora), Hemlock’s Untold and new music specialist Lucy Railton (cello); amongst others, Dillon deftly absorbs their distinct instrumental colours and melody into 14 bright and spacious computerised frameworks that suggest immersive, nuanced options for dancers, DJs and domestic play.

‘Workaround’ evolves Dillon’s notions in a coolly unfolding manner that speaks directly to the album’s literary and visual inspirations, ranging from James P. Carse’s book ‘Finite And Infinite Games’ to the abstract drawings of Tomma Abts or Jorinde Voigt as well as painter Bridget Riley’s essays on grids and colour. Operating inside this rooted but mutable theoretical wireframe, Dillon’s ideas come to life as interrelated, efficient patterns in a self-sufficient system.

With a naturally fractal-not-fractional logic, Dillon’s rhythms unfold between unresolved 5/4 tresillo patterns, complex tabla strokes and spark-jumping tics in a fluid, tactile dance of dynamic contrasts between strong/light, sudden/restrained, and bound/free made in reference to the notational instructions of choreographer Rudolf Laban. Working in and around the beat and philosophy, the album’s freehand physics contract and expand between the lissom rolls of Bhamra’s tabla in the first, to a harmonious balance of hard drum angles and swooping FM synth cadence featuring additional synth and vocal from Laurel Halo in ‘Workaround Two’, while the extruded strings of Lucy Railton create a sublime tension at the album’s palatecleansing denouement, triggering a scintillating run of technoid pieces that riff on the kind of swung physics found in Artwork’s seminal ‘Basic G’, or Rian Treanor’s disruptive flux with a singularly tight yet loose motion and infectious joy.

Crucially, the album sees Dillon focus on dub music’s pliable emptiness, rather than the moody dematerialisation of reverb and echo. The substance of her music is rematerialised in supple, concise emotional curves and soberly freed to enact its ideas in balletic plies, rugged parries and sweeping, capoeira-like floor action. Applying deeply canny insight drawn from her years of practice as sound designer, musician and hugely knowledgable/intuitive DJ, ‘Workaround’ can be heard as Dillon’s ingenious solution or key to unlocking to perceptions of stiffness, darkness or grid-locked rigidity in electronic music. And as such it speaks to an ideal of rhythm-based and experimental music ranging from the hypnotic senegalese mbalax of Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force, through SND and, more currently, the hard drum torque of DJ Plead; to adroitly exert the sensation of weightlessness and freedom in the dance and personal headspace.

The album is mixed by James Rand and mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering. Artwork by Thomas Ruff, layout by Johannes Schnatmann & Bill Kouligas.

Workaround

Beatrice Dillon - Workaround Eight (PAN 106)

- @ruffkaval

This EP is like a walk on an unknown wild & hostile land. The tribal side is omnipresent on it with UK Funky, Hard Drums or Gqom influences.

The first track called "Jumbo" plunges us into a primitive era mixing drum riffs with weird creatures cries. "Nenuphar" and "Drum Hiss" the second & third titles are anthems to hard drums which take the usual ingredients of this ruff genre. "Quiet Corner" is a gqom hybrid track here to take us a recovery time. Then we have the club track of this EP called "Gyal inna Jungle" and  to finish "Tapion Riddim" a special drummy edit of the DBZ character melody Tapion.

Artwork by Miguel Mesquita
https://www.instagram.com/miguelmesquitaa/

Master by Transition Mastering

Kaval - Quiet Corner

Inflicter

Narcissus Wept

Karina's Song

6 Figure Gang’s @jossymitsu makes her production debut on Astral Black’s latest ‘Frass FM’ compilation

More info: https://djmag.com/music/premiere-jossy-mitsu-whirl

Premiere: Jossy Mitsu ‘Whirl’

INTERVIEW + TRACKLIST > inverted-audio.com/mix/perko

@perkopair delivers an agile mix of atmospheric electronics and opens up about how his adopted home of Copenhagen has weaved itself into his sophomore release on @nmbrs - 'The City Rings' EP.

IA MIX SERIES

Read

IA MIX 325 Perko

Ayln - Thieves

Introducing the Insert label. The first signing, a sequence of four precisely-calibrated works from one of Brussel’s most critical new producers, Hypna (pronounced ‘hip-nah’). Each sonic offering within the ‘Data Recovery’ EP is reserved for a particular time and space inside the club.

https://ins-rt.net/label/hypna-data-recovery-insert/

@weareinsert
@hypna_52

More exclusive music

Premiere: Hypna 'Motion Sensor'

DJ Polo edit of ‘J Hus - Play Play ft. Burna Boy’

FREE DL - https://djpolouk.bandcamp.com/

'Play Play' - DJ Polo (Love) Flip

Full stream of Peder Mannerfelt's "Blockchain Carpaccio," taken from his upcoming VA, out February 28.

@the-subliminal-kid

PM V/A Vol. 2

Premiere: Peder Mannerfelt - Blockchain Carpaccio

COY027
Marks
Endgame

1. Advisor
2. Danse
3. DM
4. Double G-Rim
5. Endgame
6. Machine Ghost
7. New Ting
8. Sortie
9. Ninja Moves
10. Wire

Bandcamp: wildmarks.bandcamp.com/album/endgame
DSPs: smarturl.it/MarksEndgame
A4 Art Print: http://bit.ly/coy027print