Amusingly energetic two volumes of “White Keys” were something to remember from 2020, with sweeping cuts like “Trouble In Tahiti” or “The Flying Dutchman”. These two EPs came from Alpha Tracks, a project of the Austrian artist Felix Benedikt, who now teams up with the Norwegian trance producer Filip Storsveen under the Kineta moniker. The first part of the triptych offers plenty of guilty pleasure for techno folks, the opener “Aquila” being blatant proto-Goa with Blümchen-style pitched vocals. The BPM-meter is in unrestricted mode and piercing arps are doing the damage. Actually, the track nam ..read more

“Waves Of Silent Whispers” is Lauri-Dag Tüür’s second ambient and IDM album, after “Polar Night Jet” in 2020. The new one landed in my inbox already in June 2022. Though not forgotten, it spent most of the year underneath the ever-increasing pile of unfinished business. Instead of white nights in the summer, the release became a companion for the shortest days of the year. Nevertheless, compelling three tracks, in total clocking at over 43 minutes, by the academically trained musician from Estonia have the substance to age well. Tüür’s sonic imagery can be called as ‘volatile ambient’ where th ..read more

Schuttle, co-founder of Manchester’s Bakk Heia Records, reappears with a four-tracker on the label that carries an amusing name. The catalogue number BH006 (don’t mix up with Berceuse Heroique) offers an interesting mix from acidic breaks to minimal house, which plays the main role on the A-side. Grooving opener “Shadout” takes a walk under blossoming cherry trees, free from any sorrows. Recalling Trapez and artists like Nôze or UND, “Souvlaki” is dished up in a theatrical milieu, for watching a play of marionettes, guided by stripped dub house and tender voice samples. “Swords Dance (Parts 1 ..read more

D. Tiffany “Feel U” by Planet Euphorique Buy vinyl from Boomkat (UK) Buy vinyl from Decks (DE) Buy vinyl from Clone (NL)   A breeze of change from Vancouver When thinking about electronic music from the Vancouver area, firstly the ambient outpost Silent Season comes to my mind, even when it operates from Vancouver Island off the Canadian west coast. The next association is 1080p, a now defunct label that issued all sorts of electronics and where local artist D. Tiffany made her debut with a tape album in 2o14. After a few EPs on different labels, in 2018 she started her own little worksho ..read more

Harmonious Thelonious is a tour guide to the amazing world of native polyrhythms, steering a perpetual percussion machine to exciting locations around the globe. In a new expedition for London’s The Trilogy Tapes, Middle East serves as a source of inspiration for Stefan Schwander’s project that is able to impress after many active years. With lulling Oriental strings and swaying percussion, “Women’s Chorus From The Region Of …” is for admiring the vastness of dunes from a stretched out caravan carrying nuts and honey to the next oasis, while saxed-up “Halb Ding” welcomes a casual jazz invasion ..read more

Humans (EP – TM01) by Philipp Otterbach Buy vinyl from Juno (UK) Buy vinyl from HHV (DE)     Signals from the sector ‘8dÖdodfPw4s’ Syncom Data guys have started simultaneously two labels that already during the first audition don’t sound even remotely related to each other. While Westcoast Cruisers are dropping some heavy electrobotics on Den Haag, Tour Messier is inaugurated with the experimental solo EP from Philipp Otterbach, a long-term resident at Düsseldorf’s Salon des Amateurs and a Grokenberger Records artist. In “Humans” we encounter linguistic maze, when track names look l ..read more

BFDM 017 // ONLY PROMOS MA POULE EP by BFDM Buy vinyl from Juno (UK) Buy vinyl from Decks (DE) Buy vinyl from anywhere     Vivid jungle revamps After having repeatedly enjoyed the company of The Pilotwings’ EP “Pour Faire Pleurer Les Chômeurs”, there is another urgent reason to do my dishes later and have a closer look at the French label Brothers From Different Mother (BFDM). The recording company’s newest release comes from a bunch of young guns and even when some of them have previously appeared on BFDM and other labels, they can be called new artists. Though they are total ..read more

 Buy vinyl / DL from Bandcamp Buy vinyl from Juno (UK) Buy vinyl from Hard Wax (DE)   A techno flagship breaking the silence It was a mid-nineties trip to London when I picked up both parts of Air Liquide’s “Abuse Your Illusions” and since then these two slabs of vinyl have belonged to the ‘gems section’ of my collection. In my eyes, the group immediately obtained a quality seal because of its members, Cem Oral aka Jammin’ Unit and Ingmar Koch aka Dr Walker. In the last decade of the 20th century, both of them were core members of the acid techno brotherhood operating on th ..read more

Saint Abdullah, a project by two US-Iranian brothers, was introduced to the world with the track “Mossadegh’s Revenge For 52” on Boomarm Nation’s spectacular “Family Album 2017”, a digital compilation from the experimental side of dub and world music. Prior to that, the duo had promised intense cross-cultural experience with some Soundcloud uploads and now Mohammad and Mehdi have completed their first album in digital and cassette format, accompanied by a seven-inch vinyl sampler on Boomarm, a label from Portland, Oregon. History and religion are important sources of inspiration for Saint ..read more