Boomkat new releases list

*Second of three limited edition Demdike Stare albums to be released in 2010, 45-minutes long, mastered at Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering* The second of three Demdike Stare albums for 2010 is upon us. Its title ‘Liberation Through Hearing’ is a direct reference to the ‘Tibetan Book Of The Dead’, an ancient text intended to guide the reader through the experience of the consciousness occurring during the interval between death and the next rebirth, a subject also hinted at in Western culture by the Skull Disco label and explored by psychonauts such as Timothy Leary. If ‘Forest Of Evil’ was the push-off, we’re deep into the session now, rendering those intermediary hours of the trip when we’re untethered from reality and deposited in the moment, an interzone of harrowing drones, acousmatic sampledelics and arcane intentions designed to create a state of psychedelic submission. The dark currents run deep, seeping from the billowing sub tones and heavenly choirs of ‘Caged In Stammheim’ , through the Köner-like spherical bell hum and grazed shellac textures of ‘Eurydice’ before craftily phasing your sense of spatial perception as ‘Regolith’ expands to the five corners of audition. Further in, ‘The Stars Are Moving’ flickers with electro-static pulses and petrified key changes before ‘Bardo Thodol’ circles the senses with hypnotic chants and percussion. Finally the pellucid meditative drift of ‘Matilda’s Dream’ brings us closer to the light, describing harmonised ambient chords and a bleak yet centred sense of self. Featuring artwork from Andy Votel and masetered & cut at D&M, the pressing is limited to just 700 copies so act fast if you know what’s what.

*CD AND 60 PAGE BOOK LIMITED TO AN EDITION OF 500 COPIES FOR THE WORLD – THE FIRST TIME THESE INCREDIBLE RECORDINGS FROM 1976 HAVE BEEN AVAILABLE* This latest addition to Die Schachtel’s sublime Art Series is a largely neglected masterpiece from Swedish-born composer Catherine Christer Hennix, a disciple of LaMonte Young and Pandit Pran Nath during the 1970s.  Although her music is largely unknown – even among the experimental music community – those who’ve been exposed to Hennix’s work tend to rank her among the elite of American minimalist composers of the twentieth century.  The Electric Harpsichord (recorded in 1976) is talked about with the highest reverence by the avant-garde’s cognoscenti, with Glenn Branca describing it as “a pure perfect piece of music” and “a work of transcendent power”.  Having embarked on her compositional career in the 1960s studying the techniques of Xenakis and Stockhausen, Hennix’s musical bearing was jolted somewhat by the Nuits du Fondation Maeght festival in 1970, where she first encountered LaMonte Young and Hindustani raga master Sri Faquir Pandit Pran Nath.  Over the course of the ensuing decade, Hennix would study with both these men, and to many the piece reproduced on this disc is her magnum opus.  Made using keyboards tuned to just intonation and a tape delay feedback network based on Terry Riley’s notion of the “time lag accumulator”, the piece is a thing of sparkling psychedelic chaos, achieving that magical dichotomy between apparent narrative-shirking motionlessness and eternal flux.  For all its droning stability on a ‘macro’ level, The Electric Harpsichord’s continually recombining layers ensure it remains ceaselessly shifting in ‘micro’ terms.  Significantly, none of this gets out of hand and you can still make out the individual pitches ebbing and flowing within the sound mass.  Paying close attention reveals some incredible oceanic movements within the sound waves, and repeat listens reap considerable rewards.  This recording lasts twenty-five minutes, though in the strictest terms it should be considered as only a fragment of what the composition represents; in conceptual terms The Electric Harpsichord would be an endless, perpetual entity.  In support of the music itself, this release comes in unique, silver and gloss-varnished packaging, folding out to reveal a 60-page book containing two LaMonte Young pieces written especially for this edition, plus an extensive essay by Henry Flynt (a close friend of Hennix) as well as some illuminating, if highly technical and abstract background text from Hennix herself, who reproduces excerpts from her “notes on the composite sine-wave drone over which The Electric Harpsichord is performed”.  This utterly absorbing and highly involved passage is just the thing to show drone music naysayers who think it’s all just somebody holding a note for a really long time.  An essential release, presented with all due reverence and care by Die Schachtel.

*This is a strictly limited heavyweight vinyl (180gm) edition housed in a gatefold sleeve in rigid heavy card and features a bonus track not included on the CD version. Each LP comes in an individually printed card inner* When David Sylvian makes a solo album, he really throws everything into it.  It’s been six years since the former Japan frontman released his masterful Blemish LP, and Manafon is its much anticipated follow-up.  As with Scott Walker’s latter-day work, Sylvian’s music is far-removed from the chart-dwelling hits of his youth, instead taking on a ruthlessly cerebral and experimental agenda; alongside Walker, recent years have seen Sylvian as one of the very few artists who could be said to have challenged what it means to write and produce a song.  Assisting him to this end is a roster of great improvisatory talents, supplying Manafon with a beautifully rendered, supremely detailed backdrop of timbres, textures and vibrations.  Guitarists have been of particular importance to David Sylvian albums over the past ten years or so; Marc Ribot and Bill Frisell were among the key musicians contributing to 1999′s Dead Bees On A Cake, and for Blemish Sylvian struck up highly fruitful collaborations with Christian Fennesz and – perhaps most significantly – the late Derek Bailey.  The latter’s striking improvisational style seems to have impacted greatly on Sylvian’s approach to songsmithery, and traces of the jazz veteran’s spidering, chitinous playing are detectable in the dissonant twangs of Tetuzi Akiyama and Otomo Yoshihide.  Fennesz returns for Manafon, bringing his Polwechsel associates Burkhard Stangl and Werner Dafeldecker with him, while additionally, prepared guitar experimenter Keith Rowe appears, ranking alongside those other elder statesmen of British improvised music, John Tilbury and Evan Parker.  This distinguished ensemble weave magic under Sylvian’s supervision, fabricating the finest and most ornate of sonic environments for the band leader’s rich, stately croak.  Indeed, Sylvian’s vocal inevitably takes the central role, offering a melodic route through an album of ostensible disorder, reaching its finest hour during Manafon’s centrepiece: ‘The Greatest Living Englishman’.  Here the singer is joined by discordant string quartet recordings – scratched and warped on Yoshihide’s turntable, while the most carefully poised of guitar and piano performances match-up against the imperious subtlety of Toshimaru Nakamura’s no-input mixing board static and Sachiko M’s intricate formation of cobweb-like sine waves.  It’s amazing that all these infinitesimal articulations are heard so clearly, but this is a recording on which all the minutiae resound with great lucidity, and truly, the more listens you give Manafon, the more it reveals its complexity and brilliance.  This is far from an easy or instant record, and most likely it’ll take a couple of play-throughs to get anywhere with its daringly unascertainable idiom, but once engaged, you might not hear a more enriching body of work all year.

Synthpop albums don’t come any better than Alexander Robotnick’s 1984 classic ‘Ce N’est Q’un Début’. Reissued for the class of 2010 on blue vinyl in a hand numbered edition of 500 copies for the world, it contains seminal, hugely influential disco hits like ‘Problemes d’Amour’ and the sublime ‘Dance Boy Dance’, plus the killer electro of Hola Macci Kola’, tracks which have influenced practically anyone involved with electronic dance music over the last 25 years. Aside from a couple of cheeky bootlegs it’s not been available in this sort of quality pressing  for a very long time and truly deserves the status – ESSENTIAL!

Pete Swanson of Yellow Swans delivers a fiercely controlled slab of synth and tape genius on the super limited ‘Challenger’ cassette, released by the man himself in a strictly limited edition. . With a patina of gloriously degraded tape saturation the first section slowly pummels us into submission while a towering wall of wail envelopes the thing in boiling ectoplasmic textures to disguise the fact that there’s actually a lush synth tone half buried in there somewhere. It’s kinda like being swallowed by magma while peering at a starlit sky through clouds of volcanic ash, slowly hearing your heartbeat fade to nothing but a faint pulse. On the second side we’re sent swimming through swampy spools of mucky noise with depth charged bass implosions bubbling up from below and a howling analog harshness which becomes sublimely meditative once accustomed to its infinite textural permutations. Incredible.

From the annals of ’80s tape culture Plague Records have uncovered raw gold in the form of Pump’s semi-mythical ‘Sombrero Fallout’ album. Previously known as MFH on their own YHR label, Pump were Andrew Cox and David Elliott, a pair of like-minded electronic music fiends who met at Brighton uni in ’79. After spilling five cassette albums of underground industrial strains inspired by Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Faust and Heldon, they spent the middle of the ’80s largely estranged, with David writing for the notorious Sounds magazine alongside David Tibet, and Andrew working in Cornwall. In ’87 they finally recorded new material, heard on ‘The Decoration of The Duma Continues’, before colluding for this, their final album which was supposed to emerge on Trident Music International, but sadly didn’t due to unknown reasons. The untimely death of Andrew in 2009 prompted a resurgence of interest, and with the utmost respect, we’re f*cking blessed that it did as it’s just the find of the year. Quite interestingly the album was mixed by Colin Potter of Nurse With Wound, which goes some way to describing the close, dark ambient nature of their sound, but there’s many more factors at play which make ‘Sombrero Effect’ so riveting. ‘A Knife, possibly’ sets a sour atmosphere with chugging slow drum machines and a guitar drone industrially dubbed for arcing, widescreen effect, while ‘Yukiko’ features spiraling marimbas diffused into stereo patterns with mournful, ghostly synths sounding like Zoviet*France gone strangely new age. At the mid way point we enter ‘The ‘Wife’ Container’, an incredibly claustrophobic and sickly doomscape with over-saturated bass hum and the distant sound of groaning guitars tortured in some sadistic dungeon ritual for over nine minutes. No sh*t, this is intensely dark stuff! Next, ‘Apolinaire Enammelled’ combines a reverb laden motorik backbeat somewhere between Stephen Morris and Klaus Dinger, with twirling raga-esque psychedelia, again benefitting from the Colin Potter treatment to sound drugged to the nails, followed with the stoically centred ‘Etoile de mer’, a blissfully darkside arrangement of beatless ambience. Their swan song ‘Falling From Grace’ approaches the end with a chilling display of unholy, crawling synth tones and spectral axe work shielding a lone vocal, delivered with reserve and an arcane sense of timing. Fuuuck. This album has really touched a nerve in our office, reminding us of our favourite Industrial, darkwave and New Beat, or all those other ’80s genres whose unholy allure we’ve always been susceptible to, and best of all, it does it without the slightest hint of fromage or pastiche. Honestly, this is beyond essential for anyone with a darker soul.

Digitalis really outdo themselves with a ltd edition (125 copies for THE world), twin tape pack of exceptional synth excursions from Matt Carlson, Cliffsides, Analog Concept, and one Mr. J. Xela, who provides nothing short of a career highlight. We should really start with his ‘In The Blinding Light They Came’, a piece which, in effect, lays to rest the gothic vibe of recent releases in favour of an extended 20+ minute kosmiche trip articulated through layers of living, breathing analog synths. By turns he guides us from hushed pastoral scenery into thickets of cacophonous discord and finally into bass rich terrain that we really don’t experience much from the swathes of modern synth meddlers. The overarching narrative and dialogue between his machines is just so subtly tempered and richly varied that we’re left in a beautifully reflective moment 20 minutes later, wondering what just happened and wanting to visit that place again at the nearest opportunity. In a far more visceral mode Analog Concept’s ‘Ambient Conception’ is the other major highlight. It’s nineteen minutes of segmented synth orchestrations, concisely moving between intangible electric textures and vast wave shapes with the structured narrative of a vivid sci-fi short story. Meanwhile, Carlson’s ‘Digitalis’ chews up psilocybic baroque arrangements and extended drone noise, leaving Cliffsides to twirl doomy ’80s lazer synths like the rarified, extended version of Robocop’s birthing theme. Klaus Schulze fans, Oneohtrix fiends and lovers of synth sorcery everywhere should tap this at the soonest opportunity. Fantastic double tape edition – quite honestly that Xela track is one of the best things we’ve heard this year.

Following his inaugural All City 10″ split with Dibiase, Ramp haul up a raw and psychedelic beat tape from NYC/LA’s P.U.D.G.E. Our LA/Jamaican protagonist first cut his teeth as a producer from the age of 9 before discovering turntablism and honing some healthy mic skills in NYC. in the mid 00′s he heard about the LA scene and soon assimilated himself within its ranks. His twelve tracks on ‘Idiot Box’ are shot through with a languid and fuggy-headed vibe that comes from the best Ras G or Flying Lotus constructs, shredding Paisley Rock, field recordings and stray radio signals in a potently smoky environment for a swirling, psychotropic effect. His beats unfold with unpredictable swerves and rugged MPC chops that owe as much to Dilla as Sun Ra and come completely recommended for reclined consumption with a zoot or two. Hot and heavy.

Ill Blu’s ‘Bellion/Dragon Pop’ 12″ is easily one of the most anticipated Hyperdubs in a while. In the last few years they’ve remixed everyone from Shystie to Cheryl Cole and their productions have figured prominently in the sets of Marcus Nasty, Kode 9 and Supa D, so they’re undoubtedly one of the hottest production units around. ‘Bellion’ is a proper DJ special built with bouncing Funky drums and snaky shakers to hold in a superbly sparse and glassy lead marimba line. ‘Dragon Pop’ is the busier, and for our money – better – of the two, placing controlled congas and deep driven subs in the echo chamber, siphoning off any explicit melody to leave dancers enthralled to the melodic cadence of clipped Afro-Latin drums and subtle sub harmonics. Lovers of stripped and deadly UK dance music need these tracks, badly!

Falty DL massively impresses with three ‘floor dedicated garage cuts, confidently sidestepping the cluttered complexities of his two previous albums for Planet Mu. There’s a feeling of spacious freedom and sensuality written all over these, from the kinky hardcore tropes of the title track and its quicksilver scuff ‘n skip, right through the dubbed shuffle and empty warehouse reverbs of ‘Because You’ on the A-side. ‘My Friends Will Always Say…’ on the flip consolidates the best of both his worlds, designed with an advanced sense of jazzy electronic arrangement, yet keeping everything sparse and still poppy enough to really capture the crowd’s affections. A massive tip for all future garage nuts!

Exquisite electro-pop jewels from Villa Nah and Au Revoir Simone, limited to 500 copies for the world. The Villa Nah remix of ‘Tell Me’ rightly takes precedence here, providing further proof, if their stunning ‘Origin’ wasn’t enough, that they have some serious pop skills. It’s hard to place a finger on it, but they’ve made the girls sound like 60′s bubblegum pop heroes only with an electro backbeat nodding to Suicide style Rockabilly, and yet with traces of European synth baroque a la Cluster. I can guarantee, we’ll be coming back to this for time. Au Revoir Simone’s original on the flip is equally charming, setting their dainty vocals to a backing track which starts out slow and craftily ratchets up the tempo by the tracks end. Highly Recommended.

Third Ear throw down a splendid set of deepst house trax from The Defenders Of The Deep House World aka Detroit’s Mike Huckaby, Rick Wilhite, Rick Wade and Norm Talley. Our man with the waves Mike Huckaby is largely in control here, providing one original and two remixes. His scene setting ‘The Deep House World’ keeps it true with shimmering chords and raw but elegant rhythm built from thick bass and dancing hi-hats. His reconstruction of Wilhite’s ‘Playcism’ cuts a more rugged figure with grumbling bass and hypnotic conga rolls setting a gritty groove and his 2010 remix of Talley’s ‘Change’ shakes up tight tribal rolls with soul warming keys. Rick Wade’s own ‘Bleach’ strut up with a heavily percussive mover flecked with tense disco strings and swooning bassline for luxurious effect.