Boomkat new releases list

*THE SECOND OF THREE INCREDIBLE VINYL REISSUES FROM THOMAS KONER – STRICTLY LIMITED COPIES* Type Records invite us to marvel at the gloomscapes of Thomas Köner again with the first ever vinyl pressing of his ’92 album, ‘Teimo’. It’s the second in a triptych of Köner’s earliest work, following the glacial resonance of ‘Nunatak’ and preceding the static drones of ‘Permafrost’. For many, this album is the most tuneful of the three, written with a harrowing harmonic narrative evoking near pitch black imagery of submerged sound as heard by an arctic diver encapsulated in a diving bell fathoms below the surface in extreme northerly latitudes. Most remarkably, Köner sourced the cavernous sounds here from recordings of gongs, precisely captured with contact microphones underwater in order to manipulate the illusory physicality of their ultra-subtle yet dense waveforms for sublimely hallucinatory effect. Crucially, this is not a trick of synthesis, each sound was borne from an organic source and layered, tempered and manipulated into droning clouds of intangible darkness, tones which stimulate the ear to elicit nervous responses to their near-ultrasonic presence, perpetually leaving the listener in state of rapt stasis, fighting the bodies own uncomfortable confusion between fright and flight. It’s almost like waking up with sleep paralysis on the sea floor while an ancient congregation of sea creatures meditate in infrasonic tones just beyond full audition. These frequencies and textures are elemental to their subharmonic core, rendered in vivid slow-motion to create a life-affirming yet alien experience you simply cannot forget. Do not miss.

*LIMITED WHITE VINYL WITH HAND-GLUED PHOTO SLEEVE ART, INCLUDES DIGITAL DOWNLOAD COUPON REDEEMABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE LABEL* It’s been nine years since Markus Popp released his last album as Oval (2001′s Ovalcommers), a length of time that’s seen the electronic music world change dramatically. Famed for pioneering all things “glitch”, the Oval project began as a trio (originally comprising Frank Metzger and Sebastian Oschatz) specialising in the defacement and sabotage of CDs as a means for creating ruptured digital narratives, full of intentional faults and fissures. The outcome of these early experiments led to key releases in the mid-nineties, in particular ‘Systemisch’ and ’94 Diskont’, both of which transpired to be hugely influential throughout the electronic music world, setting a template for all the dissected, stammering aesthetics that flooded the rosters of labels like Mille Plateaux, Raster Noton and Mego. Of course, the musical climate has undergone massive changes since those days, and correspondingly, Markus Popp has reinvented Oval as a radically organic project that seems to be going out of its way to take the opposite approach to that of prior works. As Popp himself says: “after years of dissection and denial I wanted to try making ‘real’ music for a change”. While that might set alarm bells ringing in certain corners of his fanbase, it should be noted that Oval still sounds like Oval, it’s just that on Oh it all seems to be happening in real-time, and on conventional instruments. ‘Hey’ makes for a fitting introduction to the new sound, cycling through guitar-generated flurries of notes and harmonics while clusters of percussive pops fire out a rhythmic agenda. Before long organ chords and acoustic drums join in and a very naturalistic, seemingly live instrumental piece reveals itself. It’s the clever use of stringed instrumentation that’s at the heart of the ‘Oval-ness’ of this record – there’s surely still some sort of signal-manipulating skullduggery afoot, but who knows what it is and how it’s done; the involvement of computers remains a likelihood, but you’d be hard-pressed to work out precisely what processes you’re listening to. Perhaps the clue is in the Céleste Boursier-Mougenot sleeve art: for much of the time (particularly during the shorter tracks on the B-side) it does actually sound like you might be listening to a number of small birds pecking at a Les Paul. Oh is a fittingly beautiful and enigmatic comeback record for Oval, and happily, it won’t be too long before we get to hear more from the newly revamped project. Next month sees the release of a double-CD volume, also on Thrill Jockey – let’s hope it maintains the standard set here. Recommended.

The peculiar lo-fi trash aesthetics and cassette-sampling songcraft of Ariel Pink have positioned him as the forefather of the chillwave scene and the direct antecedent of key 2010 artists like Washed Out, Small Black and Toro Y Moi. Somehow the Paw Tracks alumnus has become one of the most influential figures in today’s underground music scene. However, as tends to be the way with pioneers, Mr Pink and his Haunted Graffiti pals stay one step ahead of the game on 4AD debut Before Today, switching to a live band sound that brilliantly channels soft rock sounds from a bygone era. From the relatively earnest Lindsey Buckingham-isms of ‘Bright Lit Blue Skies’ to the neon synth-core of ‘Fright Night Nevermore’ each song sounds like the work of a different band from the last, with only the odd, time-warped studio haze of the production to unite them. Take a listen to the leap between the FM-friendly falsetto funk of ‘Beverly Kills’ and the surreal, English accent-wielding heavy metal of ‘Butt-House Blondies’. As triumphs of album sequencing go, Before Today is brilliantly perverse. The greatest triumph of all however, has to be ‘Round And Round’ – without doubt one of this year’s finest pop songs. It’s strangely engineered, structurally unsound and features one of the least convincing synth sax sounds of all time, and yet it’s all somehow so perfect. The joyous looping chorus is one of the best things that’s happened to this set of ears in a very long time, although however majestic it may be, there’s really no getting around the fact that its essentially Deacon Blue’s ‘Fergus Sings The Blues’. I mean, it’s virtually identical. There’s a similar story to the almost as good ‘Can’t Hear My Eyes’, which has a close run in (some might say head-on collision) with Journey’s ‘Who’s Crying Now’. It’s almost as if Ariel Pink has substituted his former production technique – of patching together frazzled ’80s samples – for real-time, live-band imitation of his sources. It’s a great trick to pull off, and the tone of both the songs and the production is judged to perfection, sounding far too alien to be dismissed as mere pastiche or homage. One of the year’s weirdest and best pop long-players, Before Today comes with a mighty recommendation.

Mark McGuire has been a member of triadic mega-unit Emeralds since their inception. Besides contributing to their ever growing catalogue, he’s also worked with Daniel “Oneohtrix Point Never” Lopatin as Skyramp and a prolific number of other solo projects. His most recent album for Weird Forest (originally released on Cassette by the Wagon label) has been hailed as his most definitive to date, crossing astral lines and psychedelic boundaries between noise squalls, lush-out synth washes and pastoral guitar passages with an all-encompassing vision beyond his years. The pristine mastering job from James Plotkin certainly enhances his vision, but this is still a comfortingly raw and free-roaming affair, dissolving tranced-out Kosmische patterns with an effortless organic ease. The album is broken between four long tracks. An opening collage of TV samples and blustery synth noise naturally morphs into Göttsching-esque guitar spirals, while the second blends fractal digital outbursts with tropical woodblock percussion while meshing layers of humid guitar and synth harmonics reminding of Popol Vuh. Making nods to the endless vistas of Klaus Schulze and the phasing techniques of Steve Reich, the breathtaking third section builds a graceful rise to sublime stratospheres unknown, leaving the final part of the journey for detached, reserved and peaceful meditation. ‘Tidings/Amethyst’ is as essential as anything in the Emeralds catalogue and should be experienced without delay by any of their followers. Highly Recommended.

*Amazing deluxe vinyl reissue of one of our favourite ever albums – Antena’s bossa-pop masterpiece ‘Camino Del Sol’. It really is the perfect summer album – all swooning changes, percolated Bontempi melodies and the kind of bittersweet, understated euphoria that defined Belgium’s seminal ‘Le Disques du Crepsecule’ imprint in the early 1980′s. If you don’t know this record – boy you’re in for a treat.* Cult French band Antena were made up of Isabelle Powaga, Pascale Moiroud and Sylvain Fasy and were signed to the legendary Crépuscule label in Belgium. Those of you that know these kinda things will no doubt be aware of Crépuscule’s notorious connection with Factory records, and indeed there’s a similarly Factory-style sound and aesthetic beneath the breezy pop on this record. At times reminiscent of Kraftwerk and John Foxx (who incidentally produced their ‘Boy from Ipanema’ single) while at the same time drawing influence from Jobim and Gilberto, the sound on this album is a deeply evocative mix that is really hard to place into any kind of contemporary context. Alas, Antena hardly sold any records, and were allegedly a factor in the demise of Crépuscule, but listening now it’s just obvious that they were just a victim of timing. Since then, this album has been hailed by more people than we could possibly mention as an absolute classic, blending a loungy Gallic charm with the most involving of synthesized production and the kind of perfect pop writing that just grabs you in the stomach on first listen. Think of it as a lo-fi, Casio pop amalgamation of Stereolab, Sade, Krafwerk, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Bjork and you might get some sense of what to expect – but regardless of whether or not that description appeals to you – you owe it to yourself to at the very least give this gorgeous album a minute of your time. Absolutely perfect summertime listening – a huge recommendation.

One of the UK’s leading ‘lectronic boogie fiends launches his Astro:dynamics label with a prime 16-track compilation. Charting the twin helixes of skweee and Beat Dimensions-style hiphop, he aligns Lukid with Slow Hand Motëm, Tapes with Slugabed and Subeena with Coco Bryce, opening a new bracket of lo-fi funk, or flunk for short (maybe?). All operators are united by a slower temperance and a taste for melodically tangible funk. Lukid’s ‘Pleurisy’ plays around with slightly nudged nodder’s beats and repetition inna devotional Dilla style, while Tapes mutates a static-punctuated array of dubbed sounds from ‘Oberheimer’. The Skweee joints are typically enjoyable, from the bobbly pop of Slow Hand Motem’s ‘Love Is The New Evil’, to Coco Bryce’s psilocybic arcade noise on ‘The Cliche’ or the dubstep grumble of Metske’s ‘Isotropic’. Mike Slott keeps it short and sweet with the prog-jazz propulsion of ‘Music’s Fun’ and SLugabed just keeps on hitting ‘em with the demented gangsta lean of ‘Clunk Clunk’. If you enjoyed Rush Hour’s ‘Beat Dimensions’ series or Ramp’s ‘Sweet Tooth’ comp this is well recommended!

Previously available as a limited edition Japan-only release, Domino augment their retrospective of Robert Wyatt’s illustrious back-catalogue by reissuing this ‘Best Of’-style collection, spanning material from his early solo recordings of 1974 right up to 2003′s Cuckooland album. The track selection seems to have been designed as an ideal introduction to the former Soft Machine drummer’s solo work, collecting key album recordings and even one or two bonafide hits (regardless of what the album title says). Wyatt’s debut single, a cover of the Neil Diamond/Monkees song ‘I’m A Believer’ is included in its extended form (although, as ever it sounds jarringly out of place when set among his own compositions), as is the 1998 remaster of ‘Shipbuilding’, Wyatt’s memorable 1982 recording of the Elvis Costello song. Even though it isn’t one of Wyatt’s self-penned works, this spine-tingling performance is always going to be a highlight of any album it appears on, and it remains a key work in his discography. The seventeen-song selection avoids chronological ordering, instead favouring a more discerning, album-like sequence that begins with Old Rottenhat’s ‘P.L.A.’, which makes for an especially apt introduction to Wyatt’s uniquely sad vocal. Here he laments over his his wife Alfreda Benge in a manner that’s typical of Wyatt’s unflinching, often childlike directness: “Poor little Alfie, trying to draw/Poor little Alfie, trying to sleep” are the only words sung, yet it feels like an utterly heartfelt and empathetic tribute. Another early highlight here is ‘Heaps Of Sheeps’, A Brian Eno-assisted cut lifted from the 1997 Shleep album. This is a more rhythmic, uptempo outing than most, leading into the wholly contrasting ‘Free Will And Testament’ from the same long-player. This is another fantastic slice of Wyatt melancholia, on which he intones with a tangible sense of ennui: “Demented forces push me madly round a treadmill/Let me off please, I am so tired/Let me off please, I am so very tired.” Soon after there are two tracks from Rock Bottom (the 1974 album Wyatt regards as his debut album proper): the outstanding ‘Sea Song’ and ‘Little Red Robin Hood Hit The Road’, which might be the proggiest, most sonically convoluted entry here. Listening through this collection conveys the sense not only of how singular this man’s canon is, but how much his oeuvre is informed by disconnections – whether that be from composition to composition or even within the same song. Cuckooland’s ‘Mister E’ finds a beautifully downbeat trumpet melody exchanging lines with Karen Mantler’s harmonica, all whilst clashing digitised synthesizer chords resound in the background. It’s an odd little piece, and one that couldn’t be attributed to anyone other than Wyatt. For those who’ve been harbouring an interest in Robert Wyatt’s catalogue but haven’t thus far known where to take the plunge, this album could hardly be more accommodating, offering as good a point of entry as any single disc could hope to offer. Beautiful.

Hitting us between the eyes from a blind spot on the distribution schedule, Editions Mego drop a thrilling three tracker from Florian Hecker. The label calls this “…some of Hecker’s most accessible work to date, and a fine addition to any serious electronic music collection” and who are we to disagree?! From the press release we can assume that the tracks on the A-side were produced for the Comme des Garçons HOMME PLUS fashion show held in Paris, January 2009. We say this because they’re both rhythm driven pieces, and we’d imagine emaciated models to be dropping like flies if they were subjected to the alien psychoacoustics on the other side. Those rhythmic pieces, titled only by their track lengths, are about the f*nkiest we’ve heard from Florian since his ‘Hecker, Höller, Tracks’ Lp on Semishigure, sticking to a steady 120bpm tempo in one instance with dynamic electro-acoustic figures evolving from the stodgy groove. Another slightly pacier track introduces super-low sub tones to balance out the scrunched elastic highs, keeping to a linear motion with odd concatenations threatening to diffuse the groove in four different directions at once. This is f*nky, to an extent, but I wouldn’t bank on Marcus Nasty pulling it up on Rinse tonight. The flipside ’23′ 23″‘ is just incredible: a beatless, hallucinatory polychromatic soundscape, like being stuck in the centre of an industrial centrifuge spinning so fast that the noise seems to remain static in the same way as a zoetrope functions with light, while sounds bleed in from acutely peripheral angles to intensely affect your perceptions of space and time. With a beautifully minimal sleeve by Florian Pumhösl and a limited run of only 500 copies, this is what you call an essential purchase.

Massively anticipated soul futurism from James Blake! On his longest solo EP to date, Blake delivers the anthemic title track backed with three uncategorisable steppers functions. ‘CYMK’ is also the most upbeat cut we’ve heard from him, swinging around a 140bpm axis with pandrogynously pitched R’n'B vocals, skunk-hazed depth perceptions and a sense of barely tethered spatial chaos owing to his advanced programming skills. ‘Footnotes’ meanwhile can’t decide whether it’s electro-jazz fusion, cybertronik dubstep or slowfast bounce, ‘I’ll Stay’ imagines Vladislav Delay and Farben dissecting The Dream in a digital echo chamber and ‘Postpone’ sculpts warm rushes of rhodes around slow and dusty digital bass while his own vocals are morphed into faux-gospel harmonics. Honestly! As far as we’re concerned, this is as fresh as it gets for imaginative, innovative and head-inverting post-dubstep. Killer EP, no messin.

*INCLUDES A KILLER REMIX FROM ALVA NOTO, AND TWO FROM WOLFGANG VOIGT* Antye Greie Fuchs aka AGF and Gudrun Gut have formed something of a Deutsche-Dub-Industrial unit with their Greie Gut Fraktion alliance for Monika Enterprise. Preceding their ‘Baustelle’ album is ‘Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt’, roughly translated as “We Build a New Town”, a cover of an early 80s Palais Schaumberg track (a band that included Moritz Von Oswald & Thomas Fehlmann in its lineup) also backed with remixes from Alva Noto and Wolfgang Voigt! So it’s a high calibre gang of contributors for sure, but is it any good? Ja, es ist sehr gut. Their original track, created using field recordings from building sites around Berlin, is drawn out as an electro-acoustic tech-stepper by Alva Noto, probably closest to the rhythmic advancements of his ‘Unitxt’ album. Their original mix is a grey, concrete techno-pop treasure, matching the sweetly curt cadence of the German lyrics with acousmatic samples in a solidly positive union. Better yet are the two mixes from Wolfgang Voigt in his fonky ‘Freiland Klaviermix’ mode, jarring his keys and samples of Bavarian symphonics against the original lyrics in a deeply rooted Teutonic style. We can’t wait for the album! Awesome.

Bloom 05 pitches another killer set of pig-outs from Aardvarck against three heavyweight screwballs from Dutch hiphop producer Kubus. The Pig gives a massive highlight on the turbulent flow of ‘Glitch’ and the tribalist ‘Afrik Slang’ with what sounds like Chewbacca samples over a sneering dubcrunk riddim. Kubus ov Opgezwolle and Top Notch records handles the flipside, dropping grumbling sci-fi hiphop on ‘Pruik’, raved-out hotstep with ‘In Je Graff’ and a febrile dose of skweee-nuss with ‘Hillwood’. White label copies only, blink and miss kids!

Since dropping one of 2009s biggest dubstep anthems in ‘Grimelight’ Joe has been busy hammering out some of the tidiest syncopations we’ve heard on a dubstep tune. ‘Claptrap’ makes a heavy nod to Spanish flamenco on an intensely clipped and arranged rhythm track, using not much more than claps, sub hits and field recorded atmospherics to get us itching like a good ‘un. Crafty DJs will be able to do some serious sh*t with this baby. Meanwhile ‘Level Crossing’ slices up rattling hi-hats and swinging kicks with kooky railroad sounds for an experimental but no-less enjoyable jaunt sounding like James Blake gone a lickle bit loopy. Aces!

Mikrowave releases are a precious resource and the latest from Cassegrain is a peach. The metamorphic beast on the A-side came about when Turkish opera composer and production partner in Cassegrain worked with Alex Tsiridis at the Barcelona Red Bull session in 2008, pitting their ideas for an extraordinary techno fusion. When the track starts it feels like it’s playing at the wrong speed, but as the percussion subliminally infiltrates we realise the drag effect is part of the game, creating a druggy tension that’s toyed with odd vocal samples from Benga Adejumo (yup, one and the same), until an unexpected halfstep resolution in the closing quarters. Everyone from Sigha to Matt O’Brien is raving about this track and you should be too! On the flip Drumcode and Ovum contributor Perc evens out the oddness with a straighter kicking mix primed for the DJs and Caseegrain’s own ‘Olbia’ churns out viscous bass riffs with a mediterranean flourish that’s getting DJs like Norman Nodge and Par Grindvik excited. Killer.

Cheeky organ and subs driven Funky from DJ Naughty backed with a Roska remix! ‘Firepower’ rolls with lustrous bass offset by hard snares and synched to dubby organ stabs to help hone your Marcus Nasty look. ‘Gear Shift’ is largely missable but the ‘Quicktime’ refix from Roska reworks a Funky anthem with proper dread subs and a tougher riddimic syncopation.