Category Archives: UPDATE

Death Boutique

NEONDEMON -‘Six Songs’
Five years before Nicolas Winding Refn’s film of the same name there was the protean electronic music of NEONDEMON. ‘Pickman’s’, their debut track, featured the frantic, delirious bass lines and gritty, propulsive percussion that would form the heart of their sound. It is this style which features strongly on the three tracks that make up Side A. Complementary to this sound was a free-wheeling exploration into a range of styles hinted at in their core work. Side B features three of their more intrepid sonic adventures. From the cinematic, modular feel of ‘Bass Point’, to the robotic pulsations of ‘Orchids’, their fearless approach opens up vast atmospheres only briefly explored on Side A. The set finishes with the seething raga noir of ‘The Pink City’, a lurching homage to travels in the Indian city of Jaipur. Dirty sitar flourishes and backmasked rhythms conspire to create one of the highlights of this collection. Pro-dubbed cassette tape on pink shells. Limited edition pressing of 49.

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Monorail Trespassing

[mt118cs] Nick Klein – ‘White Cliffs of Dover’ C30
Recorded partially while in transit during his European tour earlier this year, and following a string of firmly techno-rooted EP’s for techno-rooted labels, this is a first in that it highlights and links — seamlessly — the many versatilities of this New York by way of Florida producer; from miminal and cyclical modular tracks to experiments with software processing and acoustic guitar, while also retaining his specific hybrid of industrial and lurid, aphotic club music language. 100 copies.

[mt119cs] Tinnitustimulus – ‘Punct/Contrapunct’ C20
Four punctual tracks of frenetic, yet assured energy highly informed by mid-2000’s Southern California moves — from jarring and massed stereo profusion to moments of shrill, anxious feedback stasis, not a moment is wasted in these twenty minutes. As a well-established live force, if you’ve attended any noise fest on the East Coast within the past few years, chances are Tomas Bennett’s set arrived at the peak of the night and threw the show into overdrive, rendering all that came after obsolete. It’s time for his recorded work to do the same. 100 copies.

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Yerevan Tapes

RAZGRAAD – ‘The Ideology of Pessimism’
The Ideology Of Pessimism is Razgraad’s new album. It’s the suspension between two possibile lives, the unescapable and paradoxical standstill within transformation. After the pagan rituals/myths of The Water Towers, this second effort is a new magical, isolationistic and situational ritual, about the extreme condition of individual Self. Here Razgraad steps away from pure ambient structures, his music moves on rough drone-metal territories and industrial dub influences, obstinate rhythms and an intense work on the idea of Riff. The Ideology Of Pessimism is pure black doomtronica.

KӣR – ‘Mramorje’
Kӣr is the solo production epithet of Bane Jovančević, resident live artist and program manager of Belgrade’s hallowed halls of techno, Drug§tore. Over the past few years he performed at festivals such as Exit, Flow, Outernational Days, 4GB, Artmospheric, Mad in Belgrade, Zdravo Mladi and was guest at numerous clubs throughout Europe. His debut release has been put out a few months ago by DJ TLR’s Creme Organization label and his second effort Mramorje is due on 23 November on Yerevan Tapes. Bane draws influences from techno to new wave, incorporating power electronics, obscure ambient, folk music, twisted echoes found lost deep in wormholes. It’s visceral music, embracing drone, repetition, rippling soundscapes and obscure sonic horizons. Shaman music, drum led hypnosis, a deep tribal mix from the other world coming to take you home.

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Rebellion Electronics

RE001 – ‘Post’ CS £6
The cassette is black with doubled sided sticker with project title, side indicator and label release number. It comes in transparent plastic cassette box and has a single flapped inlay, one side being the main cover artwork and the inside being a separate image. The music was recorded in Logic 9 using both hardware and software, sourcing sounds from instruments, samples and field recordings. All the tracks are relatively short pieces exploring things such as the future, hindsight and the present moment.

RE 002 – ‘So came the light and it balanced us’ CS £6
The cassette is black with doubled sided sticker with project title, side indicator and label release number. It comes in transparent plastic cassette box and has a 7 sided inlay (not including front cover) which features various images relevant to the music for this project. This project was recorded in Logic 9 using predominantly software, again sourcing sounds from instruments, samples and field recordings. This project is about growth/development and working through hardships due to a realization that we can move onto better pastures. Albeit somewhat ambiguous there is a narrative and the tracks tell a ‘story’ of the emancipation from illusion, social/mental trappings/anxiety, falsehoods and the weight of all that has come before us essentially, and bringing about rebirth/reinvention, change and peace for lack of a better word.

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Palm Tapes

Mellow Fellow – ‘Jazzie Robinson’ C23 $6
22-year-old Polo Reyes, of the Philippines, is (a) Mellow Fellow. Jazzie Robinson, an album soaked in style, collects Reyes’ bedroom-recorded, daydream, pop serenades. His vocals are intimate with lyrics universal, tender and romantic. Buried Muse writes, “His creamy, jazzie, tracks are hard not to love. Within a year his music has reached hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s been met with great reactions.” Opener “Best Friend” is dazzlingly beautiful; the song sits under a thin layer of LoFi mist. Bossa nova nods in “Bossa Yeshua” evoke a breezy, beach-shore, sunset – lyrics of love float over sultry guitar interplay, and Reyes keeps a nice groove on the drum set and bass guitar. Celestial strings enter “Even When I Still Breath” with a minute left – A perfect finish to the otherworldly ballad, and a fitting end to an album marked by contemplative beauty.

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Goaty Tapes

Polonius – ‘Antique Marvel’
Polonius -—icon of holistic nether-music, mysterious one-man anti-band– assembles a far-reaching sonic universe on Antique Marvel. His songs are dense, immersive habitats: rhythms and pitches flutter and repeat like animal calls; ambience shifts like primordial mist. The album evolves as a series of phonic environments that feel at once ancient and techno-futuristic. Pre-lingual chants cradle the glint of space-age electronics, occult intonations are lit with the cheap light of a karaoke machine. Polonius commands a menagerie of tape loops and audio-bites that congeal as melodic ecosystems and disperse into tonal miasma. Antique Marvel assembles selections from the elusive Antique Fantasia suite, some of which already circulates quietly through freakier channels of the global subterranean; other parts remain as-yet unreleased. Consider this tape a speculative survey -— a future anthology that recollects the not-yet-heard. These are the conjurer’s most spellbinding articulations, sequenced across space-time.

Die Welttraumforscher – ‘Die Lieder: 1981, 1983, 1986’
Die Lieder compiles early recordings by Die Welttraumforscher, the audio-visual avatar of Swiss native Christian Pfluger. Pfluger has spent the last thirty years refining a curious brand of hypnotic, experimental pop. His discography plots the story of the “world dream researchers”—benevolent aliens who visit Earth and deposit clues to an enlightened intergalactic culture. Each album cultivates this core mythology with new lyrical episodes, sonic excursions, and Pfluger’s pen and ink illustrations. Side A of Die Lieder presents selections from Vanidras Kult (1981) and Reise Nach Bretzelberg (1983). These are Pfluger’s earliest albums, made up of dreamy vignettes that fuse toy keyboards and lo-fi atmospherics. They are the cream of first-wave bedroom messthetics, with an eerie acoustic ambience equally at home among the more cosmic folk revivalists. Side B presents selections from the legendary Binika (1986) and ends with the pop masterpiece This Could be the Greatest Love in Town. Here, Die Welttraumforscher shifts toward bona-fide synth-pop, equal parts casio minimalism and lush, stumbling balladry. The tape includes an accordion booklet with liner notes by Pfluger -— reminiscences delivered with an endearing, casual sincerity. As much for die-hard Welttraum-heads as for the uninitiated, Die Lieder is a singular journey through Pfluger’s emergent musical cosmos and the early years of the Swiss bedroom underground.

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Natural Transgressions

Chance Gibbs – ‘Music from a Concrete Box’ C30
Chance Gibbs keeps it varied in his first release, using modular sensibilities to bounce between downtempo beats, minimalistic ambient tracks, and haunting drones. Edition of 50.

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Phase!

Sam Gas Can – ‘Send Help! 1-sided LP
The second Bedroom Solitary release comes from a ceaseless US artist, Sam Gaskin, who under his Sam Gas Can moniker has offered several diverse gems in the past. With a wide spectrum of releases indulging in meta-pop-art concepts to pure noise and a unique vision of DIY self expression (spanning in other forms of art as well, besides music), he focuses on his song-writing side in “Send Help!”. Saluting the original cassette culture generation with an insightful, precise use of pop song structures and with a sparkling sense of humour, he delivers 9 songs of avant freedom for large target groups that bring to mind the early releases of Beck, the undiscovered genius of the likes of Vyto B or a non-edm-style John Maus. Edition of 99 numbered copies in yellow opaque vinyl housed in white disco-bags, offset wrap-around jackets and stamped labels. A few words on ‘Bedroom Solitary’:Phase! is proud to present a series of one-sided LPs, called “Bedroom Solitary”. After 15 years of releasing recordings on a pretty wide range of musical styles, Phase! focuses on the style that intrigues it the most: Bedroom experimentation. The plot is simple. Home-made recordings (lo-fi is not mandatory here) by a single person at his bedroom on a 12” side-length representation. Each volume will be strictly limited and hand-numbered to 99 copies in an offset printed custom hand-cut jacket.

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Field Hymns

FH075 Megabreth – ‘Ultra High Noise’ C40 $7
Thus concludes the principle data needed to place within context the band MEGABRETH. The intangibles include but are not limited to: stints in punk as well as Americana bands, lives lived in both red and blue states, a strong aversion towards the wealthy and a deep appreciation of knowledge and pursuit thereof, crippling doubt of the possibility of a just society, a well reasoned and finely honed sense of fuckall, many hours talking music and many fewer hours practicing music, a sound-proof yet not mold-proof garage, senses of humor befitting male teenagers, and too many disappointments to count.

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Lighten Up Sounds

LA TREDICESIMA LUNA – ‘Il Sentiero Degli Dei’ C34
Stunning shadow sound from Italian solo artist Matteo Brusa, known for his powerful Dungeon Synth work as Medhelan. This dark debut from the project (translated as The 13th Moon) offers a flawless form of foreboding night-sky synthesis and ominous drone, a cryptic key to the eternal lunar mysteries. Moonlight as filtered through branch and fog, a pristine transmission of somber atmospherics for seasonal shift. “Only those who are not afraid to dive into the night can follow the path traced by the stars.” Professionally duplicated Chrome Type II grey shell cassette with white imprint comes packaged with double-sided fold out J-card on heavy gloss cardstock, housed in clear & black Norelco case. Each copy includes bonus 1″ metallic silver pinback badge featuring LXIIIL sigil. Limited edition of 50

EISLANDSCHAFT – ‘Tales of the Frost’ C49
Hypnotic minimalism manifests in monochrome, transversing the barren winter wastelands. “Tales of the Frost” delivers a pure vision of frigid polar ambience and melancholic synthesis from F. Curwenius (Goblintropp) of Argentina. Body temperatures plummet as the blood runs cold, wind chill cuts like sharpened blade. Initially self-released digitally by the artist in August ’17, this edition features an exclusive all new track, as of yet unheard. Over 48 minutes of arctic isolationism for navigation through deep sub-zero trance. Behold, frostbitten serenity. Professionally duplicated Chrome Type II white shell cassette with silver metallic imprint comes packaged with full color double sided J-card on heavy gloss cardstock in clear / white Norelco case. Limited edition of 50.

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