Boomkat – new Chris & Cosey reissues, Blank Dogs, etc.

*Another highly sought-after pressing from the Olde English Spelling Bee, this time from Christelle Gualdi aka Stellar Om Source, featuring Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point never* Intrepid sci-fi soundtrack-y synth excursions from the mind of electronic visionary, Christelle Gualdi aka Stellar Om Source, collated by the good folk at Olde English Spelling Bee. ‘Trilogy Select’ is essentially a directors cut of tracks taken from Stellar Om Source’s trio of self-released CDr albums made between 2005-2009 – ‘Ocean Woman’, ‘Alliance’ and ‘Crusader’, including one track made with fellow cosmonaut, Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never). Her sonic concepts were hatched at international bases in The Hague, Lisbon, New York and Paris, instinctively capturing the naively romantic futurism of low grade ’80s sci-fi and privately pressed synth music with a sensitivity to sustained, shadowy moods and suspension tank atmospherics. Her music revels in the saturated colours, tones and shapes her synths make, creating vividly kinaesthetic relationships between her lo-fi holographic harmonics so they seem to glow like console radiation from the cockpit of a one woman shuttle. There’s a beautiful balance of honest, earnest and adventurous intent, mixed with a feel for fun and engrossing narrative romance, never going too academic or up her own arse and tempering the temptation to totally cut the anchor line with her blunted cosmic hooks. If OPN’s ‘Zones Without People’ or Dylan Ettinger’s ‘New Age Outlaws’ really took you there, this is a must. Comes with free download coupon redeemable directly from the label and 12″ insert housed in glossy, full colour sleeve.

*First release on this new archival label loosely associated with Demdike Stare and the Finders Keepers crew* Pre-Cert Home Entertainment is a new imprint releasing limited vinyl artifacts of contemporary musical and non-musical material dredged from the collections of a number of hugely respected culture vultures in the north of England. Their obsessive tendencies are channeled into this debut release, a 22 minute collage of acousmatic oddities reclaimed from the ditches of VHS video culture, the dustiest corners of the record racks and places most folk won’t allow themselves or their children to go. It’s a tribute to the immersive and escapist effect of obscure and exotic film soundtracks and banks of library records, European fumetti and obscure sources which feed into their fabric and enhance their psychedelic potential. We can hear precedents for this aesthetic in the cutups of Position Normal and People Like Us or the surreal melodrama of V/Vm’s Twin Peaks tribute ‘There Was A Fish In the Percolator’, but this particular side is more concerned with the noirish ambient hues, moods and textures which reflect the industrial landscape of its local history. The semi-fictitious protagonist Anworth Kirk melds influence from Letterist poetry to tape loops, found-sound and European folklore in a wonderfully uncertain and unpredictable manner, creating an esoteric narrative between the 12 segued tracks presented in two chapters. The vinyl plays at 45rpm – a nod to late period Indian horror soundtracks – and the artwork depicts a cryptic theme set to unravel and complicate in further episodes, including the forthcoming Samhain Slant Azimuth seasonal sound-collage mix. Limited to 500 copies – highly recommended.

**1st pressing limited to 500 copies, pressed at RTI. Includes mp3 download coupon redeemable directly from the label** An utterly absorbing and time-dilating double LP of masterful synth music from one of the scene’s most prolific and respected sons, Expo 70 aka Justin Wright, together with Matt Hill – who recently dropped that brilliant Umberto album on Not Not Fun. Aiming a few notches above the reams of DIY tape spools, ‘Where Does Your Mind Go?’ was recorded professionally at the studio of Jason Meagher (No Neck Blues Band) in upstate New York over the course of one evening and features production values worthy of the D&M vinyl cut and full-colour, tip-on gatefold sleeve. The four tracks total 74 minutes of the most delicious drone and intangibly hazy harmonics, occasionally punctuated with burbling machine rhythms and steered with a deeply assured set of cosmic instincts. The scale of ‘Where does your mind go?’ is just epic, each track as majestic and cinematic as the last. The opener ‘Close Your Eyes And Effortlessly Drift Away’ sails out on gently bobbing drum machine and cirrus strands of Göttsching-esque guitar, like the soundtrack to Martian Balearic beach holiday where the atmosphere is as dusty red-brown as the hues of his arcing synths. ‘Night Dusting The Atmosphere’ is more sci-fi cinematic, full of sustained string-filled trepidation and encroaching arpeggiations arranged with the overarching vision of a Klaus Schulze classic. ‘Transgressing Outward Which Is Inward’ is probably the most stirring, passionate piece largely due to the darkly romantic keys which fall somewhere between the wanderings of Roedelius and Terry Riley and in harmony with towering forcefields of vintage analogue synthesizer tones. ‘Ancient Hawk Soul Takes Flight’ is the transgressive and psychedelic closer, lost deep in a black hole of tonal blurs and still-but-moving drones. We couldn’t really recommend this any higher to fans of Imaginary Softwoods, Arp, Oneohtrix Point Never’s most untethered moments, or taking lots of drugs by yourself and lying down between two massive speakers.

**Remastered grey vinyl editon w/ glosy A4 b&w insert!** Chris & Cosey’s 2nd album for Rough Trade, ‘Trance’ was originally released a year after their seminal ‘Heartbeat’ LP, in 1982. This is the first time it’s been reissued on vinyl in two decades, landing with impeccable timing in the midst of a cold wave revival. The genius electronic auteur, Chris Carter, and the agent provocateur, Cosey Fanni Tutti moved into even darker territory with these eight tracks, using Chris’s dynamic studio innovations and Cosey’s notorious imagination to articulate unspoken feelings of darkest misanthropy. The atmosphere of ‘Trance’ is unremittingly overcast and reassuringly darkside, from the cyber-tribal ritual sequences of ‘The Giants Feet’ and the immaculate electro sting of ‘Impulse’ to the opiated Arabesque ‘The Gates Of Ancient Cities’ maintaining a visceral tang and taste for the “other”. Even when they go more poppy, like with Cosey’s naif vocals and woozy cornet on ‘Secret’ or the jaunty gallop of ‘Until’, they’re still ten shades shy of uplifting and pretty much define that feeling of dystopian futurism that so many look for in classic early ’80s electro. This really is one of the most future-thinking, incredibly produced and timeless artefacts from the early 80’s cold-synth scene, and comes to you with our highest possible recommendation.

**Remastered blue vinyl edition w/ glossy A4 b&w insert!** C & C’s ‘Heartbeat’ is one of the holy grails of electronic music. Nearly 30 years after initial release on Rough Trade, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti’s masterpiece is reissued on their CTI imprint, putting a mountain of recent dark/cold/new wave revisionism into much needed context. The album was the first of C&C’s post-Throbbing Gristle missives which would define the electro and synthpop underbelly of the 1980s and cast a towering shadow of influence over so much machine made music to come, from Juan Atkins and Drexciya to successive waves of synth music ever since. ‘Heartbeat’ established the duo outside of TG, further developing the careening sequencer settings which Carter had welded into the band, and feeding into a new wave of post-punk pop with uncompromising minimalist aesthetics and a darkly crooked intent. Between the sinister baroque paean ‘This Is Me’ and the foundational electro of the title track, these eleven tracks form a shadowy cornerstone of unterwelt electronic pop and dance music, and should be considered as creatively important as Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer World’ or Human League’s ‘The Dignity Of Labour’. We really can’t overstate this – you NEED this album in your life.

Modeselektor proudly present volume 1 of their Modeselektion series, featuring 18 exclusive, previously unreleased and cherry-picked bombs from Mala, Marcel Dettmann, Ramadanman, Shed, Ikonika, Bok Bok, Cylob, eLan, and more. With this series the notorious party boys draw an axis between shared techno-disco-BASS sounds of London and Berlin, reflecting the technicolour scope and diversity of their eponymous parties. In among the mass of kinetic fusions certain cuts just stand out from an already impressive crowd. Bok Bok’s ‘Say Stupid Things’ is one of the best he’s ever released, a crunked-off killer firing mad triplets and grimy-as-f*ck bass, next to the aquatic throb and parry of Dettmann’s brillaint ‘Lyrate’, and a smoked out bass job from Tadd Mullinx & Daniel Meteo in ‘The Good Star’. Basically, this is an all killer, no filler selection comprehensively squaring the round sound of 2010.

The first half of a two-part live album from Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke and Peter Rehberg, documenting the trio’s 2009 tour of Japan. This LP captures the Kyoto and Tokyo legs of the tour, with side-length tracks ‘Kyoto 1’ and ‘Tokyo 1’). There had been an eight year gap between the last two Fenn O’Berg studio albums (2002’s The Return Of Fenn O’Berg and this year’s In Stereo), so to be on the receiving end of these two live albums so soon after the studio-based full-length is quite a treat. In reality, Fenn O’Berg’s earliest albums, The Magic Of… and The Return Of… had owed much to this trio’s live work – both being composites of various concert recordings, later edited together in post-production. It comes as little surprise then, that this return to the live arena sounds so surefooted. It’s hard to say how much – if any – of this has been processed or manipulated after the initial concert performances, but the resultant outpouring of glitches, molten laptop drones and babbling synthesis sounds simultaneously chaotic yet fluid, recapturing the same sort of wildly experimental and slightly unmanageable feel of the In Stereo studio sessions. As with that album, these documents are incredibly hard to get a handle on; just when you think the trio are settling into some sort of inscrutably steady whirlpool of noise and tonality, something erupts from the surface taking you by surprise and redirecting your attention. It’s hard to say why the Editions Mego camp chose to release this as two separate LPs rather than a double-album – if you want one, you’ll undoubtedly want the other as well – but regardless, Live In Japan serves up a fine pair of releases, rendering the revered electronic super-group’s on-stage sound in pristine, hi-fi clarity. Highly recommended.

The second half of a two-part live album from Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke and Peter Rehberg, documenting the trio’s 2009 tour of Japan. This LP captures the Kyoto and Nagoya legs of the tour (with side-length tracks ‘Kyoto 2’ and ‘Nagoya 2’). There had been an eight year gap between the last two Fenn O’Berg studio albums (2002’s The Return Of Fenn O’Berg and this year’s In Stereo), so to be on the receiving end of these two live albums so soon after the studio-based full-length is quite a treat. In reality, Fenn O’Berg’s earliest albums, The Magic Of… and The Return Of… had owed much to this trio’s live work – both being composites of various concert recordings, later edited together in post-production. It comes as little surprise then, that this return to the live arena sounds so surefooted. It’s hard to say how much – if any – of this has been processed or manipulated after the initial concert performances, but the resultant outpouring of glitches, molten laptop drones and babbling synthesis sounds simultaneously chaotic yet fluid, recapturing the same sort of wildly experimental and slightly unmanageable feel of the In Stereo studio sessions. As with that album, these documents are incredibly hard to get a handle on; just when you think the trio are settling into some sort of inscrutably steady whirlpool of noise and tonality, something erupts from the surface taking you by surprise and redirecting your attention. It’s hard to say why the Editions Mego camp chose to release this as two separate LPs rather than a double-album – if you want one, you’ll undoubtedly want the other as well – but regardless, Live In Japan serves up a fine pair of releases, rendering the revered electronic super-group’s on-stage sound in pristine, hi-fi clarity. Highly recommended.

*Includes a digital download coupon, redeemable directly from the label* This deluxe double-vinyl edition reissues a pair of releases by Pakistan-born Portlander Ilyas Ahmed, who originally released the albums Between Two Skies and Towards The Night in runs of just 50 copies each, only for Digitalis to reissue them on CD and digital formats. This edition comes pressed on heavyweight virgin vinyl, housed in a tip-on gatefold jacket featuring brand new collage art from Ahmed himself, made especially for this release. These primitive recordings house some remarkably beautiful sounds, largely focussed on Ahmed’s solo guitar playing and mournfully howling voice. Between Two Skies opener ‘Black Midas’ recalls moments of Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66 soundtrack, combining lonesome piano chords and sporadic bell chimes with that distinctive guitar and voice combination. There’s a drifting, improvisational bent to Ahmed’s music, meaning a looseness and shambolic quality interacts with the hypnotic, somnolent flow of fingerpicking and quiet falsetto. Towards The Night follows an even less direct path, dabbling in extended durations and bluesy guitar improvs lasting up to quarter of an hour each. There’s less in the way of additional instrumentation and vocals, which only lends a heightened sense of solitude and meditation to the pieces. Limited to just 987 copies.

Brilliant synthwave transmission from Mike Sniper’s Blank Dogs. Besides running the prolific, wave-riding Captured Tracks label in Brooklyn, Mike has carefully curated an impressive arc of artistic development with his pet project, growing out of lo-fi beginnings to the brighter and relatively clean sound of ‘Land And Fixed’. The album’s twelve tracks are still shrouded in tape textures but the sounds behind the gauze are more pop-confident, laden with super tight synthpop hooks and arranged as efficiently as ever. Dipping in, we find that ‘Blurred Tonight’ has the charm and jangle of prime New Order, and in ‘Collide’ the coldwave pop melancholy of Cold Cave, while ‘Insides’ has an influx of EBM-inspired synths and cold, brittle drum machine rhythms. The jangly Manc guitars which permeate much of the LP are deployed achingly well in the spiky post-punk of ‘Languages’ and on the album’s most electronic track, the discordant synth harmonics and pulsing sequences of ‘Elevens’ owe a debt of gratitude to Chris Carter. Again, New Order are clearly referenced on ‘All Around’ in a curious NYC<>MCR return influence hile ‘Through The Wall’ opens out into a more widescreen shoegaze sound, remarkably similar to what Altar Eagle are doing with a fusion of magically reverbed guitars and celestial synth melody infused with narcotically fugged vocals. Highly Recommended.

Darkest drone and blackened post-industrial ambience from Martin Kränzel aka Wicked Messenger. ‘Officium Nocturnum’ is released by the same Belgian label who presented us with the awesome Pump album earlier in the year, and have been recently blowing our minds with their archival vortex. The album is split into three glacially epic half hour movements over two CDs, covering the bleakest strains of post-apocalyptic sonic ennui with remorseless intent. In the first movement brittle, glassy shards of electronics skitter with dungeon shaped reverbs, piercing the film of disbelief in order to allow your mind to fully enter a macabre unterwelt of harrowing ambient symphonics and ethereal, claggy atmospheres. The second movement opens with groaning strings and more devilish, prickly textures biting at the edges of vast gong resonances, sounding something like Thomas Köner soundtracking an arcane, ancient ritual of mittel European druids. The resonances almost imperceptibly bleed outwards into denser clouds of majestic Gas-like drone, but made for a far darker corner of the forest than Wolfgang Voigt ever dared to venture. Movement III approaches more distinct black metal territory, in atmosphere and mood at least. We’re placed in the milieu of an indistinct crowd, possibly his local shopping mall, maybe in the middle of an theatre audience at the interval, when a voice speaks from the ether, like Beelzebub himself whispering indecipherable sweet nothings before timpani drums and choral incantations re swollen with surging bass drones and we’re left shivering, petrified and entranced. Incredible material.

**Totally sublime new EP from CFCF for Brooklyn’s RVNG INTL, with access to remixes from Games, Jacques Renault and Coyote on a download coupon redeemable directly from the label!** CFCF’s incredibly diverse presence has been unavoidable over the last 12 months, what with his avalanche of remixes for Junior Boys, Sally Shapiro, Owen pallett, Helath, Crystal Castles and so many more, plus lauded releases for the über-kool Acéphale and Paper Bag Records. His Werner Herzog-inspired ‘The River-EP’ collects six recent productions, beaming the headlamps on a path for emotive electronic futures while nodding to the likes of Peter Gabriel and Johan Agebjorn in the back seat of his Delorian (actually, do Delorians have back seats?). The remixes refract his beam in three directions; Jacques Renault goes solid emo-disco with a mix of ‘Frozen Forest’, the Oneohtrix helmed Games turn ‘It Was Never Meant To Be This Way’ into a grade A Rimini power ballad and Coyote remakes ‘Frozen Forest’ as a cruising Balearic charmer. Well recommended!

Solid gold anthem business from Girl Unit on the follow-up to the killer ‘I.R.L’ 12″ for Night Slugs. It would appear from his form this year that Girl Unit specialises only in BIG tunes, which is no bad thing when you’ve got a rave to rub up the right way. At the pinnacle of this particular monolith is ‘Wut’, his scorching fusion of Araab Muzik-style martial 808’s and purest R&B synthline saturation that’s become a staple in the sets of Jackmaster, Ikonika and Oneman since the summer. There’s no avoiding it’s lazered brilliance, beaming rapturous organ and that earworming vocal snippet like the light of the second coming. OK, maybe that’s a bit strong, but we’ve definitely seen nerds prostrating at the speakers when this is dropped. Still following the crunk money trail, ‘Every Time’ jams out spindly triplets and boom-quaking bass hits with properly epic synth arrangements, leaving ‘Showstoppa’ to go out in a blaze of glory driven by huge black Bentley bass wamps and future lurching synth moves. Right here, right now, they don’t come any bigger than this 12″.

Another top class transmission from the more avant end of Berlin House and Techno from Even Tuell, Madteo and Midnightopera. Even Tuell spans the A-side with a deep droning raw House track, the sort of sumptuously bass soaked, majestic and mesmeric groove that could only emerge from the Hardwax axis. On the flip Madteo follows a unique 10″ for Meakusma with a claustrophobic smack-house production peppered with cinematic samples and gloomy, grumbling subbass. Midnightopera share this mood on the final cut, another 100bpm submersible powered by dragging bass hits and cloaked with noirish synth pads, ideal for the deepest hours of the comedown/post club session. Very good indeed.