Boomkat – new ZOLA JESUS, AYSHAY, COUM TRANSMISSIONS, etc

*Upfront Exclusive – available to buy from here a week upfront* Without a doubt, Ayshay’s ‘WARN-U’ is one of the most original and spellbinding singles of 2011, and an artistic step-up for the already formidable Tri Angle imprint. Ayshay, meaning “whatever” in Arabic, is a handle for Fatima Al Qadiri, a New York City-based sonic sorceress born in Senegal and raised in Kuwait, who also writes a fantastic column on contemporary world music for the bizarro DIS magazine, sometimes accompanied by her kaleidoscopic, ‘net-foraging mixtapes. These breathtaking tracks comprise her first release, and although we’ve become deeply familiar with their youtube videos for over a year now, it’s a blessing to finally have them in the physical realm for tactile gratification. Each song is built entirely from her own pitched and layered vocals in a manner distinctly reminiscent of Grouper’s ethereal harmonising, but more intriguingly inspired by the Islamic religious songs she’s absorbed since childhood. Their impact distinctly recalls the emotion-enhancing autotune effect favoured by so many North African and Middle Eastern pop artists for its emphatic effect, but is still seen as distasteful in certain swathes of supposedly “forward thinking” western ears. Yet in our opinion it refracts a transcendent emotive clarity which frightens us to be quite honest, and keeps us returning to this trio of songs more times than a sane person possibly should. Furthermore, the accompanying Nguzunguzu megamix gives the tracks a crafty junglist context in a lineage of Arabic pop/hardcore dating back to the likes of Lennie De Ice sampling Factory Records’ obscure Algerian Rai release ‘N’Sel Fik’ by Cheba Fadela. Ultimately, for seekers of mystical sublime frequencies from the near future, this record is just beyond essential.

Pure magic on wax – a pristine, remastered reissue of Arthur Russell’s futurist disco classic ‘Let’s Go Swimming’ with incredible bonus material – much of it previously unreleased. An unmissable gem in his catalogue, the title track has been officially reissued twice, in sorts; once as the Walter Gibbons mix included on the ‘World Of Arthur Russell’ compilation, and once in alternate form on the ‘Springfield’ 2LP, but the three original mixes haven’t seen the light of day since 1986, and the 11-minute keyboard funk version of ‘Make 1,2 (Gem Spa Dub)’ is previously unreleased in any form. What you get is one of the most adventurous New York dance tracks of the era, so ahead of their time it prompted Arthur to comment to David Toop “Some DJs said that nobody would ever, ever play that. I think eventually that kind of thing will be commonplace”, and at no stretch of the imagination, its layers of hydraulic percussion clearly foreshadow the fluid complexities of jungle from Source Direct or Rufige Kru and a mechanised rhythm schematic which producers are still chasing to this day. But of course, it’s not hardcore, it’s the lushest, loveliest avant-disco pop with an unmistakable downtown flavour, with vocals dubbed into blissful delirium for purest dancefloor psychedelia. The bonus track ‘Make 1,2 (Gem Spa Dub)’ is icing on the cake, a languid mid-tempo bubbler setting sail on a raft of Afro-beat inspirations and dubbed-out disco delight. Ah, it’s just so essential, isn’t it!?!?

*The first vinyl excursion from The Endless House project – available here as an upfront exclusive* Dramatic Records’ beautifully packaged Endless House CD compilation from early this year won us over us with its dapper synth-pop, wave and proto-techno sounds, not to mention a wry and winning backstory about a doomed super-club opened by Czech millionaire Jiri Kantor amid the treetops of the Bialowieska Forest. We’ve waited the best part of nine months for a new transmission from the label, but it was worth it, ‘cos The Folk/Schnaffs EP also represents Dramatic’s first vinyl outing, one which elaborates and extends the Endless House’s retro-futuristic mythology while serving up new tunes of the highest calibre. ‘Sylvia Kristel’ is Rasmus Folk’s tribute to his troubled love affair with the star of Emmanuelle, a spooky minimal wave killer shot through with new romantic pomp, while ‘Coupe’ is a wonderfully airy, stepping dream-pop number, like Deux meets Ford & Lopatin, and ‘Dinner In Trieste’ a sleazy, sleeping pill-smashed lounge-funk work-out. Brilliant. Schnaff’s side is less poppier, more paranoid-sounding, but also more dancefloor-oriented – taking in the ice-cold synthesizer soul-searching of ‘I Am Germany’, disorienting dub-disco cut ‘Spaceship Earth’ and ‘Phillips Pavillion’, a widescreen analogue epic in the style of Tangerine Dream. All superb stuff. The Endless House lives on!

*Gatefold 180 Gram vinyl edition – limited copies on a white marbled pressing. Includes download code redeemable from the label* Nika Roza Danilova returns with the long-awaited follow-up to Stridulum II, and finds her in especially accessible but uncompromising form. Certainly she’s not jettisoned the weirdness that makes her so striking: tracks like ‘Swords’ and ‘Ixode’ fall somewhere captivating between haunted Grouper-esque drone-folk and minimal techno, while ‘Avalanches”s 90s MTV power-balladeering becomes something altogether more eldritch with the deployment of chilly reverb and impertinently pattering industrial percussion. With their tension between uplifting, almost trancey chords and spikier, gothier chamber strings, ‘Hikikomori’ and ‘Lick The Palm Of The Burning Handshake’ both have a claim to being called this album’s answer to ‘Sea Talk’. As ever, Zola’s constant hunt for emotional climax doesn’t always bear fruit (and leads to the odd overblown moment that sounds a bit like The Cranberries), but in our godless, unromantic age her unabashed bids for transcendence are to be applauded – we defy you not to shed a little tear when experiencing album closer ‘Collapse’, which is gospel by way of minimal wave. Some of the most affecting moments are the most breezy, as on unreconstructed synth-pop ‘Seekir, and you really get a sense of how insouciantly brilliant Danilova can be on ‘Shivers’, a crazily powerful combo of imploring vocal, hanging pads and epic 4AD dynamics balanced on a crudely effective stepping rhythm bashed out on the nearest available drum machine. If what made Zola Jesus exciting in the past was her not quite knowing what she wanted to be, Conatus is the sound of her establishing her own coherent identity, one that reconciles her experimental tendencies with her pop ambitions. An unarguably big, big album.

Superb new album of industrial-strength drone, art-techno, noise and moody synth experimentation from Roly Porter, formerly of Vex’d, returning to his Bristol home of Subtext. Operating in a similar sphere to the last Subtext drop from Emptyset, Porter mines a rich seam of eerie, corrosive greyscale and moreover heavy, righteously dub-wise electronics, with a warped but careful sense of modern classical composition: in short, the perfect soundtrack to wandering the creaking corridors of the Event Horizon. This really is one of the most suffocatingly atmospheric records we’ve heard all year, with an ice-cold and uncompromising aesthetic, but beautifully paced and compellingly borne out: from the opening ‘Atar’ on in, with its noir synths, punishing low-end and drones hovering like enemy attack helicopters. At first ‘Tleilax’ sounds like it could’ve come off one of Leyland Kirby’s Intrigue & Stuff 12″s, before the arrival of machine-gun drum machines and shouted vocal snips – this wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the latest Prurient album, but there’s also something in its texture and attitude that clearly identifies it as a product of the British post-rave tradition. Navigating beauty and brutality like it ain’t no thing, the album takes in reverbed chamber instrumentals like ‘Kaitain’, bone-crunching, Earth and KTL-indebted doom-fests like ‘Rossak’ and sub-bass pressure poems likie ‘Giedi Prime’, with some elegiac, almost Vangelis-like interludes thrown in fod good measure. It’s perfectly balanced, and it moves quickly – every blast of scouring power electronics is followed by a melodic, reassuring swell of strings, and it’s in these contrasts, expertly handled, that Aftertime’s magic lies. Highly recommended for fans of Earth, Raime, Sandwell District, Fennesz, Emptyset, Ben Frost, Tim Hecker, Kangding Ray, The Haxan Cloak and the like.

**Amazing pre-Throbbing Gristle recordings – limited pressing!!!** Dug out from the archives, ‘Sugarmorphoses’ documents Genesis P-Orridge in her earliest artistic guise, COUM Transmissions, recorded at their HQ, the Ho Ho Funhouse in Hull circa 1974. Pre-dating their most infamous ‘Prostitution’ swansong show of 1976, by all rights it’s something of an important and prescient historical artefact showcasing the devious early imagination of one of modern music’s most singular characters. The pull-out insert gives some context to their situation, surrounded by Hells Angels, drugs and breadline living conditions in a derelict house, all written in typically entertaining fashion by Genesis. And the music? Well, it’s ragged and compelling, featuring Gen at the piano playing hypnotically warped improvisations overlaid with scratchy, cut-up field recordings off old dictaphone tape, finding an uncanny balance of chaotic arrangement and something more steady, and weirdly cohesive which engages the imagination. There’s no way you would call it academic, but it is defiantly, intuitively experimental and playfully tactile with a warped sense of space and time, texture and tone which can be traced through his later work. For fidelity assurance, the tape transfer was handled by Aaron Dilloway, audio restoration and editing by Hospital Productions associate Kris Lapke, and mastering by Josh Bonati. Highly Recommended!

**Hugely anticipated collection of extraordinary Pakistani film music. Bursting with excitable indigenous percussion, crazy synth fills, exotic vocals and dazzling arrangements made to own the dancefloor!** “Once again, Finders Keepers Record is given unparalleled access to the EMI Pakistan vaults to bring you Life Is Dance – the follow-up to 2010’s critically acclaimed groundbreaking Lollywood cinematic pop compendium The Sound Of Wonder! Here you’ll find fuzzy, scuzzy, twang-happy, spaced-out and funked up Urdu-grooves complete with harmonium melodies and driven by some of the most random factor, freakish, finger numbing, percussion hat the South east Asian mainstream has ever had to offer. Above all, Lollywood soundtracks sound RAW! Re-imagine some of the most action packed Bollywood productions (which Lollywooders actively did) then fire the make-up department, take away the special effects budget and then improvise. The lack of gloss on a dusty Pakistani mini-LP makes for truly experimental Eastern pop music. So, it’s time to meet the culprits. The names on the back of the records that’ll keep you gambling on Ghazals and taking punts on Pakistani pulp-ballardy. As an introduction, in place of R.D. Burman and Asha Bosle, we have Mr. M Ashraf and his long-term female collaborator, Nahid Akhtar. This duo would provide Pakistan with it’s Gainsbourg/Birkin or it’s Morricone/Dell’Orso for over 20 years, recording squillions of cut-and-paste sonic collages and moog-fuelled desperate love/hate/chase/chill/kill songs mixing onomatopoeic Urdu lyrics with unexpected bursts of user friendly English language (which often elongates the running time passed the 5 minutes mark) and throwing in the odd motif froma Barry White or Donna Summer hit. We also have legends like Noor Jehan, a national treasure and household name in Pakistan whose discography of film songs have deprived the vaults of EMI Pakistan of floor space for half a century.” Highly recommended!

An unexpected and hugely welcome return for Angel, the dream pairing of Ilpo Väisänen (Pan sonic) and Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM), with a new full-length set on eMego. The album is book-ended by two extended pieces, ‘Before The Rush’ and ‘Paradign Shift’, austere epics of all-consuming acoustic drones and digital oscillations, with a physical force and blackness of heart that conjures the avant-metal ambiences of KTL, Sunn O)), The Haxan Cloak et al. ‘Dark Matter Leak”s ascetic blend of whining high-end synth tones and heavily processed, technoid drums alludes to the outer reaches of the Pan Sonic catalogue, while the more playful rhythmic interludes ‘In’ and ‘Out’ are stitched together from recordings of earthy percussion sources – DIY gongs, glassbowls, sticks, stones and other stuff to break your bones. The presence of the three star guests – Hildur Gudnadottir on cello, Oren Ambarchi on guitar, BJ Nilsen supplying field recordings and processing – is strongly but almost subliminally felt, their contributions substantial but subordinated to the density and coherence of the whole. Mastered by Rashad Becker in Berlin, this is really strong, vivid work indeed, an absolute must for the darklings, drone-freaks and electro-acoustic connoisseurs among you.

Two discs spanning 29 tracks produced, engineered or performed by “the man who set the template for the Manchester Sound.” A revered electronic innovator and sonic instigator, Hannett is best known for defining the sound of Factory Records and seminal early releases by Joy Division with his experimental approaches – their distinctive drum sound was achieved using the AMS1560 delay built by former aerospace engineers in Burnley – just one of many unconventional techniques he would deploy (there’s also a photo of his cigarette-between-two-mics method in the liner notes, ha!). His work combined a love of sci-fi with a deeply inquisitive nature carried over from his Chemistry studies at uni and obviously a insatiable thirst for sound, all of which would give birth to a very particular sound, often perceived as cold, industrial and futuristic, which defined the early Factory Records aesthetic. The first disc focuses on Martin as musician and producer engineer, including some brilliant, unreleased studio takes of experiments on Syndrums, assorted Synths and piano, plus some of his work with groups and artists such as Pete Farrow and Belts and Braces – the first band he recorded – besides some excerpts of conversation with Joy Division/New Order’s Bernard Sumner. The second disc is purely Martin Hannett’s productions between 1975-78 (and a quip from Peter Hook), showing his nascent yet instantly recognisable style.

Something wonderful happened in early 80s Manhattan, and while it didn’t mean a lot to most folk at the time, the art-pop of bands like Suicide, DNA, Glenn Branca and later Sonic Youth would capture the imagination of generations to come, they just didn’t know it yet. Social Climbers brought something a little different to the table, not least because they hailed from the Midwestern wasteland of Indiana, but also because they actually had some instrumental prowess. You see most of the bands affiliated with the movement (especially the lesser known ones) seemed to forget that it helped to be able to play keyboard/guitar before pressing the record button. All that was needed was a bag of blow and the right friends with the right jacket and shades. Thankfully Social Climbers had the good sense to learn their craft first, and the result is this single, lone album, originally released on three 7″s in 1980. Oddly listening to it now it seems to make perfect sense in the wake of releases from Not Not Fun and Hippos In Tanks. There’s no way Amanda Brown’s crucial LA Vampires project didn’t take at least a couple of scoops of NYC no-wave dementia when pioneering her sickly, funk damaged records – and hearing an album made without any of that reference is a real privilege. Social Climbers self titled LP might not have the status of Suicide’s debut, but fans of grimy disintegrated trash pop should look no further.

*Heavyweight double vinyl edition* ‘The Decline Effect’ is Jim Haynes’ latest investigation into the entropic properties of “rusted” noise and drone. The San Fran artist is also known for his work as Coelcanth with Thuja’s Loren Chasse, but solo his sound is closer to that of BJ Nilsen, Francisco Lopez or Hafler Trio. Influenced by matters of parapsychology, psychokinesis and extra-sensory perception, these four pieces of decayed electroacoustics are “evidence left behind from ephemeral aktions, shipwrecked electronics, re-engineered field recordings, and transmissions from the ether”; tangibly vapourous and acutely chilling tracts of glooming drone and charged atmospheric particles which seem to swirl with radioactive convection and condense on the finer facial hairs. Most like BJ Nilsen, there’s a flow to his composition which feels unforced and constantly engaging, as with the patient, calculated introduction of monolithic, blackened drone from the eerily empty beginnings of ‘Ashes’, or the reverse crystallisation of microscopic sounds in ‘Half-Life’. But most impressive is the harmonic layering of ‘Cold’, genuinely warranting that title with what sounds like contracting metals shivering beneath a symphony of gaseous blue tonalities. Sublime.

Britt Brown, and Alex Brown unleash their latest Robedoor communications. ‘Parallel Wanderer’ is an epic drifter serving up ten minutes of raga-like drones before blowing the roof off it with crashing drums and upwards spirals of guitar. ‘(In The) Cybershade/Universal Migration’ starts out down corridors of dubbed-out sci-fi drone, before turning the corner to a dread outlash like a wounded Sun Araw. Best of all is the sloth-like 4/4 push of ‘Afterburners’, laced with heaving kicks and all the distortion wiped from the vocals to dramatic effect.

*Limited stock back in – on black vinyl* Earlier on in 2011 Clams Casino created a genuine hypestorm with his self released free download ‘Instrumental Mixtape’ and more recently the breathtaking ‘Rainforest’ EP for the Tri Angle label. Like us and reams of other fiends, the heads at Type craved those instrumentals on wax, and here they are, all 13 of them. Mike Volpe makes classic, crushing ghetto beats, with a uniquely textured twist, siphoning ideas from the major studio productions he’s absorbed as a die-hard Hip Hop fan (check his Fact mix for a dose of his reality) through a crash-prone PC in his mother’s attic. He might possibly have a better set-up right now, but these tracks were certainly all produced with meagre, honest, modern means. But that’s all by the by, because ultimately his music is stunning, and that’s all we need to know. There’s no need to describe each track, all you need to know is that this is one of the weightiest, most heart-bruisingly emotional sets we’ve encountered in the ’10s, and surely sets the bar high for bedroom producers the world over. It’s no wonder the likes of Soulja Boy, Lil B and Mobb Deep are all clamming (sorry!) for his productions. Limited blue vinyl for those of you with nimble fingers…

The last in the ‘King Of Limbs’ remix series – featuring contributions from Jamie xx, Anstam and SBTRKT!. A-side Jamie xx offers a beautifully subtle remix of ‘Bloom’, keeping the drums distanced against a plangent metallic melody, while Thom’s vocals are bleached into eerie glossolalia shades away from Tom Krell, tingling falsettos included. The Annstam remix of ‘Separator’ is predictably ace, retaining a healthy amount of the song structure but breaking the drums with trademarked ‘ardcore torque, leaving SBTRKT to satisfy the groovers with a slick swinging, warm-but-brittle revision of ‘Lotus Flower’. Solid.

Mosse returns to Instra:mental’s Nonplus with four raw and highly devious machine rhythms. A-side features the cobra-coital rhythmic slither of ‘Enoha’, sounding like some deadly inversion of Villalobos’ Latino-Tech patterns, next to the killer ‘GS02’, which bears a striking resemblance to the experiments of Container or KPLR. Flipside, he loads up the instinctually minimalist and rogue machine patterns of ‘Inswanna’ and the Drexciyan drum machine dexterities of ‘Sleepworking’ for the Technoid steppers. A massive ace, this.

With a year passed since the release of King Midas Sound’s Waiting For You LP, it might seem a bit late for remixes of its tracks, but to be honest these brutal versions from Mala and Kuedo instantly justify themselves. Mala goes for a rootical halfstep sound on his rub of ‘Earth A Kill Ya’, keeping Roger Robinson’s dread pronouncements centre-stage but arming them with Terminator synths and scuttling woodblock polyrhythms that invoke classic DMZ. Kuedo (Jamie Vex’d) excels himself with his mix of ‘Goodbye Girl’, delivering an epic, gritty R&B smackdown, all bone-crunching subs, squealing synths and ghosted vocal snippets – like the evil older brother of Joker’s purple funk. Unmissable 12″ for the serious bass heads.

After excellent instalments from Shake, Oni Ayhun and Mark Ernestus, it’s the turn of the Villalobos / Loderbauer duo, and Bristolian bass maverick, Peverelist to re-imagine the Shangaan sound in divergent fashion. With source material a million miles (well, maybe 6000) removed from their ECM collaboration, Max Loderbauer and Ricardo Villalobos give a fluidly controlled and trippily dynamic 9 minute bubbler, full of springy drums and oozing bass under a dub-smudged patina. Peverelist meanwhile continues a trajectory into slower tempos with a magical, swinging House revision of Tsetsha Boys, picking out tiny fragments of the original in a lushly afro-cosmic dreamspace. Recommended!