Boomkat new releases list

*Limited to 420 copies only for the world – on coloured vinyl, including an 11×11 double sided insert packed in high UV gloss coated jackets* John Elliot ov Emeralds brings his blissful Coloured Mushroom and the Medicine Rocks project to coloured vinyl in a limited run of 420 copies on Wagon. The tracks have been hand flicked and picked by Elliott from various tapes made this year with his buddies Charles Szerzen on Synthesizer and Sandra Serio on Drum Machine and Effects, harvesting seven of the best to soundtrack your next mission to Mars. We’re almost sold on the sleeve art alone; a full-colour close up photo of a Fly Agaric mushroom in all its potent glory, but the sounds inside are equally enchanting. Like Elliott’s Imaginary Softwoods and Outer Space missives, this music is entirely electronic, untethered from Mark McGuire’s more grounded guitars in Emeralds and able to freely traverse more abstract Kosmische topographies. They make a serene entrance with ‘Follow The Path’, trekking towards expanding polychromatic vistas guided by burbling drum machines, while ‘Blood Poodles/Sore Subject’ insinuates something more sinister, with curling arpeggios revealing foreboding drones and bleached, wispy sci-fi tones. However, perhaps best of all are the two tiny 2 minute integers on the A-side, the remarkably Pole-alike crackledub of ‘Out Of Luck’ and the spooling portal of ‘Blotter Accident’, possibly coming to terms with a generous dose of lysergic revelation. This LP has to one of the most immediately engrossing of all the recent Emeralds excursions and comes with highest recommendations for autumnal psychonauts heading off on their yearly trips. Transfer it to your walkman and go roaming the meadows…

*Initial copies come with a bonus CD album of material reworked by Type label head John Twells, aka Xela* Best known as a founding member of Tarentel and The Alps, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma returns with a brand new album for Type having previously released solo material through Spekk, Arbor and his own label, Root Strata. “Love Is A Stream” marks a radical rethink of the classic dream-pop template, taking an impressionist’s brush to the established genre traits. Full of noise and expertly sculpted feedback, tracks such as ‘Loving Love’ feel like an all-analogue take on Fennesz’s noisier moments, complete with hazy exchanges between skyscraping major 7th chords; you might equally suggest that Love Is A Stream goes some way towards joining the dots between My Bloody Valentine and more recent drone-pop scene leaders such as Tim Hecker and Grouper. Although the dominant component parts of this sound seem to spring from the fiery embers of molten synthesizers and tape saturated guitar tones, the album derives some of its luxurious textural presence from vocals supplied by the likes of Type boss John ‘Xela’ Twells, Lisa McGee and Maxwell August Croy. You can just about make out lost voices roaming around the pulverised mix of ‘Stained Glass Body’ and the billowing ‘River Like Spine’ (though it’s fairly hard to make any single element out, given how melted and fluid the mixing is), bringing a frail human element to an album that otherwise sounds entirely not of this Earth. The bonus CD that comes with this vinyl edition features a 50 minute assembly of reworked outtakes handled by Type label head John Twells, better known as Xela. He feeds Cantu-Ledesma’s sound sources into his analogue pressure cooker, imbuing the material with a warm fuzz and hum that only serves to accentuate the layered shoegaze ambience lurking in the belly of this beautiful music.

Leading up to the release of their feverishly anticipated debut album for Hyperdub, Darkstar underwent some major evolutionary changes. Perhaps most signifiicantly they expanded from a production/writing duo of James Young and Aiden Whalley into a trio, now including vocalist James Buttery. This personnel change has been reflected in the music too. While previously Darkstar’s sound leaned towards the fringes of dubstep, the musical profile of North is considerably more difficult to define. The genre connections remain at least partially in-check on former single ‘Aidy’s Girl Is A Computer’ – perhaps the most immediately addictive and outwardly dancefloor-friendly cut here, thanks to a fine garagey swing – but elsewhere the band morph into a kind mutant, introspective synth-pop project, turning out sublime robotic soul on the likes of ‘Deadness’ and ‘Dear Heartbeat’. Upcoming single ‘Gold’ probably tells you something about where Darkstar are setting their sights, remaking the Human League classic ‘You Remind Me Of Gold’ with a mulched electronic moroseness. Despite its origins, the song sounds a million miles away from any notions of rose-tinted ’80s nostalgia, and as North begins to reveal itself you’ll hear Darkstar encroaching upon a very fresh and modern electronic pop idiom. The stunning ‘Under One Roof’ is pinned together by dystopian lyrics and a production that sways woozily through soundscapes that could have been lifted from Fever Ray’s debut album. Rather than resting on top of the mix, Buttery’s singing is cleverly knitted into the fabric of the music: the vocals on the almost OPN-like ‘Two Chords’ and the beatless ‘In The Way’ are full of dropouts and glitches, as if they’ve been recklessly timestretched out of shape – the latter track makes for a particularly striking album opener, wrongfooting your expectations from the outset with an aching ballad assembled from a hybrid of cracked electronics and pseudo-classical instrumentation. Releasing an album like ‘North’ marks a bold move from Hyperdub, but the label has been duly rewarded with what must surely rank as one of the year’s most stylistically inventive and talked about debuts.

*Expanded CD Edition – includes over 35 minutes of material not featured on the vinyl edition of this album* Another highly anticipated release from the excellent Digitalis imprint – this time from Boxhead Ensemble’s Scott Tuma who manages to weave a sound that incorporates dense and unsettling field recordings with Takoma-esque porchside strums, wiry violin, rhythmic metal scrapes, music-box interludes, Location recordings, Shortwave signals, spectral banjo plucks and distant piano sequences. The first thing we hear is the exaggerated whirr of phased tape treatments opening up to expose beautiful, disjointed music box chimes that carve out a mysterious, nocturnal path through ‘San Luis Free 2E’. This short piece gives way to the similarly fleeting ‘Old Woman’, another miniature populated by wiry violin and rhythmic metal scrapes. It’s only by the time ‘Red Roses For Me’ comes around that we’re really permitted enough breathing space to fully cast ourselves into Tuma’s universe. Here, layered field recordings underscore spectral banjo plucks, distant piano sequences, and eventually, a folksy accordion melody. It’s this kind of fragmented, displaced approach to acoustic music that best represents Tuma’s craft, whisking him far away from comparisons to the legions of Fahey-ites out there and other such contemporary exponents of Americana. ‘Again And Again’ marks another highlight, sculpting a nebula of airy guitar twangs and manipulated drone vapours. By this point the album seems to be converging on more fully-formed, song-like arrangements, all of which leads us up to ‘Hope Jones (Jason’s Song)’, where we hear a voice rising from the ghost-country stillness. All this invites a moment of outright spine-tingling beauty before ‘Free Dirt’ limbers up to shred your nerves in the most exhilarating fashion, offering considerably more visceral pleasures with its bowed metal percussion, howling feedback and dissolved room sounds. The closing couplet of ‘True History’ and ‘The Roses Are Red’ deliver some sort of catharsis – the former dispensing glorious reverberant blues while the latter finds Tuma’s guitar achieving a kind of weightlessness, floating off into the atmosphere in a fashion that’s halfway between Loren Connors and The Durutti Column. The bonus material kicks off with a 21 minute “intermission” that seems to really transport you somewhere completely different, creating a collage of shortwave recordings and seemingly ancient transmissions to act as a kind of cathartic break before three lovely pieces end the album with the porchside strums only Tuma seems to produce with such emotional clarity and finesse. An important, beautiful album from a true master of modern Americana and experimental music that should not be missed.

Fresh in from Rene Hell’s Agents Of Chaos tape label, a continuation of the incredible ‘Generator’ session released on Root Strata earlier this year, featuring Keith Fullerton Whitman manning his Doepfer hybrid Analogue/Digital synthesizer. Again Fullerton Whitman investigates “the unpredictable entropies & slight signal degradation inherent to Analog instrument design”, and the findings are truly riveting. With only the slightest input, he sets off sequences of unpredictably morphing shapes and sounds, eliciting the very chaos of a synthesizer’s internal life with almost limitless configurations of electro-acoustic patterning. This is so far removed from anything conventional in the truest sense, pissing from a great height on so much banal and predictable “psychedelic” music. For a tape, the clarity is brilliant while still keeping that natural cassette noise, and the sleeves are professionally printed. Incredible.

It’s a double whammy for the Agents Of Chaos label, following KFW’s second ‘Generator’ installment with his ‘Take Me To Your Dealer’ tape, made with his close ally, Geoff Mullen, under the Any Given Sunday alias. This is still freeform and noisy territory, but there’s a richness to the tone of their sounds and an over-riding sense of instinctive arrangement which keeps it from falling into outright noise. On the A-side their creation spits cautiously sluggish and fractured rhythms amidst mentally warped and often horrific sounds, deftly maintaining the illusion of traveling through nightmarish and outlandish territory without actually moving at all, touching the cavernous depths of frigid bass tones and out to the perimeters of cold hard electric surfaces while skeletal synth figures rattle and howl in the darkness. On the other side they seem to congeal their sound into a more fluid body before spurting breathtaking alien melodies and harmonics with a distinct Radiophonic feel, only Delia, Daphne and John have all licked some of Hoffman’s special sauce and gone 3D. This cassette has just swallowed me whole, and if I wasn’t in the office right now, i’d be lying down, eyes tightly shut and exploring the nether zones behind my eyelids with this tape playing as loud as possible. Highly recommended for lovers of properly alien psychedelic sounds!

Werk Discs’ core member, Lukid, drops his third album for the label, a triple disc vinyl affair including three previously released tracks and two handfuls of brand new cuts. Usefully enough, the hovering drone of ‘Chord’, the smudged slowhouse of ‘Saddlebags’ and the Dilla-esque ‘Veto’ from his ‘Foma’ album make their debut appearance on wax, congruously slotting amongst a largely downtempo and heavy-headed set of home listening material. Lukid’s music has never really been intended for the club, and the best way to digest the eight new tracks is from the most comfortable chair you can find, preferably with a brew and a biscuit. Highlights have to be the fluffy shimmer of ‘Spiller’ or the droning harmonics and Trish Keenan-like vocals pushed deep into the framework of ‘Makes’, while ‘Through Gritted Teeth’ maymake you want to do a sly armchair shuffle to it’s Theo Parrish-on-valium squirm. These tracks almost seem to be defined by their hazy of definition, as any discernible edges are smudged further and further out of focus until we have a heaving, amorphous mass of tonal hues and blurred rhythms oozing from the speakers in front us. Lush.

DJ Roc is one of Chicago’s baddest DJs and Footwork producers. Born and raised in the city’s Southside Juke stronghold, his three ‘Juke City’ mixtapes are among the most widely distributed examples of this niche scene, dominating the playlists of rhythmically aware freaks and dancers across the world. ‘The Crack Capone’ is his debut collection of 20 individual solo productions, an arsenal of highly flammable, hi-speed dance manipulators, running from the Junior Reid-sampling ‘One Blood’, to the Gregorian chants and churning Toms of ‘Phantom Call’, the contortionist syncopations of ‘Crack Like This’, and the heart-stoppingly tender balance of tension in moments like ‘Take His Ass Out’ and ‘Lost Without You’. In many ways, it’s a more muscular adjunct to Nate’s equally brilliant ‘Da Trak Genius’ album, and just as much fun. Planet Mu have seemingly exposed a Pandora’s box of Juke/Footwork goodness with their current label agenda and we can’t praise them enough for it. Hugely recommended!

Released in their complete form for the very first time, this disc collects in their entirety the 1990 Smegma Studios sessions which constituted the recorded debut of legendary drone-metal pioneers Earth. Combining material that was previously scattered between the Extra Capsular Extractions EP and Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitar, this release has been given the care and attention it deserves with liner notes penned by the band’s own Dylan Carson with exclusive Simon Fowler artwork housed in a Stephen O’Malley-designed package. You can hear this massively influential band drawing up its stylistic template on these tracks, grinding through spectacularly slow-moving minimalist riffs, as heard on the sludgy Sabbath-isms of ‘Geometry Of Murder’ and the crushing, epic sustains of ‘Ouroboros Is Broken’, while industrial-style drums rear up during ‘German Dental Work’, the like of which could have been lifted from one of Swans’ grizzlier moments. A definitive account of Earth’s doomy beginnings, this new Southern Lord edition is essential listening for anyone disposed toward the alternative side of heavy music.

A lovely slab of hazy, impressionistic audio landscaping from the mysterious Western Standards, limited to 110 copies of hand-stamped vinyl housed in hand-assembled sleeves. With practically no background info to go on, we’re not sure if this is his/her/their debut, or 20th release, but there’s a curious blend of dissonant desert guitars, synth electronics and tailored drones occuring here which we think will really pique the interest of folks with their head in kosmische and ambient electronic clouds. The seven untitled tracks rove from widescreen synth washes, kinda like a lo-fi Tim Hecker, into more esoteric space music akin to BJ Nilsen, via harmonised drones with sparse but heavy thrummed guitar reminding of Evan Caminiti on the first side. Turn it over and you’ll find more defined rhythmic structures, from the music-box psyche melody and slow, skulky drumming of the first track, into more cinematic, Badalamenti-esque shades of silvery drone and spindly keys to a majestic closing statement nodding to Roedelius at his most synthetic and pastoral. The album also comes with a bonus CDR copy, handy for transferring to iPods and suchlike so you can enjoy this album on your travels. ‘Energy Centre’ is one of those albums that almost manages to pass under the radar undetected, but really deserves some wider attention. Highly Recommended.

A hugely tantalising taster for the forthcoming remixes of Crammed Discs’ Congotronics series, featuring Shackleton and Burnt Friedman remixing Kasai Allstars and Konono No.1, respectively. This is nowt short of a dream come true for geeks the world over, setting up a transcontinental dialogue between four distinctive groups of rhythm auteurs. On the A-side Shackleton chops up Kasai Allstars’ ‘Mukuba’ from their ‘In The 7th Moon, The Chief Turned Into A Swimming Fish And Ate The Head Of His Enemy By Magic’ (sounds like a Skull Disco track already!), trapping the drums in elliptical, evolving loops, and adding sullen dread bass drones to flip the group into a mechanized Conoglese future. On the other side Burnt Friedman errs closer to Konono’s insistent shuffle on ‘Rubaczech’, secreting syncopated 2-step bass bumps and rearranging their likembes into mesmerizing loops of tangy metallic resonance. The tracks easily speak for themselves, though – check the samples and get loose Highly recommended!

Lone drops the anthemic ‘Once In A While’ (the opener from Kode 9’s DJ-Kicks mix), backed with a new cut and remixes from Midland and Sinden! With ‘Once In A While’ and his recent ‘Pineapple Crush’ 10″ Lone aka Matt Cutler has really found his niche, melding the exuberant flush of late 80’s Chicago House and early ’90s UK Rave in a saffron-infused fever dream for a fully lushed-up dancefloor vibe. ‘Rapture’ follows in the same anachronistic style, imagining flared boogie synths and gauzy machine drums like a 3rd gen tape copy of something Grooverider might have played on Kiss back in 1991. On the remix tip Sinden brings ‘Once In A While’ up to date with a mesh of Funky syncopation and pitching Bassline synths with a lairy swinging junglist flava, followed by a proggier tech-house mix from Midland, suitable for the bigger rooms. No doubt, the original is one of the most definitive anthems of 2010, have a dab!

Truly mesmerizing outernational rhythm trips from Mark Ernestus (Rhythm & Sound) and Burnt Friedman, reinterpreting secret rhythms from Freidman and Jaki Liebezeit. The Ernestus mix of ‘5’ is a stealthily paced and loose groove, tucking Liebezeit’s drumming into ornate swirls with a tumbling cadence, gradually adding of kilter stabs low in the mix until a final flourish of arabesque washes seals the cut with a sombre mood. Burnt Friedman’s own mix of ‘7’ has a more defined Afro-lilt with evolving rhythms finding a stumbling groove together with Daniel Schroter’s Bass guitar and the distant sounds of Marimba (maybe?) placed deep in the lush scenery. Fans of Shackleton, Chronomad, Muslimgauze and, of course, Rhythm & Sound make sure to check this!

Bristol just keeps on bringing it! Punch Drunk drops two very special fusions from Peverelist and Hyetal, mixing fluid future junglism with heat-warped synthlines at 134bpm. ‘The Hum’ shakes out tribal-synced percussive demons under cover of wickedly dischordant, midnight blue synths and rambunctious subs, while ‘rrrr’ operates with more sparing, spiky drums and quaking low end carrying an emotive payload of spiraling melodic arpeggios. The two producers have consolidated their aesthetic differences achingly well, hence a big recommendation to all DJ and dancers!

“Big tings/Big tings/Big tings!” Hyperdub’s latest heater was borne in South Africa when LV visited Jo’burg on a tour/Kwaito recon mission. Linking up with local MC Okmalumkoolkat via Spoek Mathambo, LV laid a Kwaito-styled riddim for his incesantly infectious repetition of “Boomslang”, and one of the years most immediate cuts hit the ground running. The tune is purely indicative of the outernational fusions occurring within the walls of London town and we’re helpless against its charms. On the flip you’ll find the dinkier ‘Zharp’, a sticky sweet but brief confection of Skweee-style 8-Bit synths and tidily tucked syncopations for able dancers.

Bulky House insulators from Deep Teknologi’s T. Williams. With ‘Chop & Screw’ he resorts to the filtered Latin disco trick, something we’ve not really heard in the majority of UK Funky, while strapped up with swinging snare bites and an infectious bassline surge. On the rude tribalist killer ‘Hard Cash’ any niceness is stripped from the bones for a skeletal percussive workout harbouring an evil-staring riff and severely ominous subs, while ‘In The Deep’ tips one for the dancers with right-footing kick/bass syncopations and looming darkside stabs. Certified heavyweight. Don’t ignore this!

One of the years most flawlessly curated imprints drops a crucial installment from Pinch. ‘Croydon House’ is Pinch’s concession towards the stream of sub-130bpm tracks from the UK Bass quadrant. Loefah deployed it recently on Benji B’s 1Xtra show to much adulation, and now it’s here for mass destruction, knotting a junglist palette of percussion with sludgy subbass strafes to unsettle the foundations of Funky/House in lethal style. ‘Elements’ occupies the flipside, stepping back to 140bpm with an up-jacking flex coming from metronomic hi-hats and relentless bassbin punishment in his clearly defined dread mode. Test these anywhere for practically guaranteed results. BIG tip!

The second of three limited edition 7″ singles to be released by Panda Bear in the build-up to his new album Tomboy, this outing gives two more excellent reasons for get excited about what’s in-store on the much-anticipated Person Pitch follow-up. ‘You Can Count On Me’ is a shimmeringly optimistic pop gem featuring the customary reverb-dappled wall-of-voices we’ve come to expect from Panda Bear’s records. Unusually, guitars feature heavily, providing an effects-heavy musical backdrop along with sparse, tropically-inclined beats and drifting excerpts of sampled dialogue. ‘Alsatian Darn’ proves to be very special in its own right, taking on a more urgent, minor-key tone during the first half before really opening up for a towering final passage overrun with handclaps, yet more layered vocal hooks and Reich-ian synth repetitions.