One year after his good digital release "Trauma EP", which included some interesting dnb tunes such as the title track and the sinister cuts of "Vertebrae", a collaboration with Bristol-based dj Jekyll, the young dnb producer and dj Peter "Arkaik" Goebel cranks another consirable release out in order to cut the edge. On the initial title-track, the "ticking" sound of an operating pendulum clock (or possibly a metronome), a deep heartbeat-like pulsation and melancholic pads before a mumbling distorted bass tone sneaks into the lines almost suggest a possible matching between escapism and escapement and a similar dynamics typifies the following tracks "Lost", a true candy on this EP, whose sinister underlying grumble get mitigated by lovely female vocals and an uplifting rhythmical pattern, "Game Changer", which features the vocal contribution by MCXL and a gristlier bass hit, which also marks the final track "Serrated", whose hitting pulsations sound more like a series of knocks against the mind box in the event that you could have been packed by Arkaik's tricky entwining of sonic and rhythmical tenses. Really mindblowing tunes.

Another musical treat from techno and dubstep focusing Texas-based label Pushing Red by Heath Looney sees the sign of Toronto-born Cameron McLaren, better known as Consequence, who vouches his reputation as a producer with a passion for experiments and sound engineering he gained after many notorious hits and a couple of slightly unconventional albums ("Live For Never" and "Test Dream") on dBridge's appreciated Exit Records, where he managed to melt impressively different styles such as dubstep, drum'n'bass, ambient and pure electronic music. On A side, the initial tuning by metallic pitapat which sounds like the adjustment of a clockwork, claps and other percussive elements evolves into a mellow tune by means of slightly distorted synths and high-pitched billowing harmonics on "Atrium"; the flipside-placed "Box Rituals" features a similar progression as it starts with a terse 4/4 kick and a sort of march before the appearance of melodic effluviums, which evoke an estranging sense of tragic beauty. Some listeners cannot but hope it's a sort of "teaser" which is ready to come.

This corpulent collection of softened breakcore tunes and oodles of electromechanical organized belches, which are going to be spread on three releases, comes from the archives of recordings of Edmund Davie also known as Dj Negative Skills and operting here under the guise of oMMM, who prefers to name his bizarre declension of those sonorities as "bedcore" and I could surmise such a denomination together with that dadaist masterpiece by Michael Forrest on the cover artwork couldn't be explained just by the presence of some short tunes which remind broken musical mobiles for baby cradles ("Molly") or out of power electronic toys, plaything cheap keyboards, electronic pop-guns and crippled robots ("Observation", "the doctor", "pleonastia", "drunk on doom and industrial noise"). Many tracks sound like amalgamation of distorted noises or overcrammed frequencies from scratched cds, broken squawk boxes, keyboards after fatal short circuits, whose abrasive potential got cushioned by the typical hiss of old tapes, gaunt sonic poltergeists and rudimentary cadenced prosodies with many interesting stuff oscillating between very dry patterns ("Lazarus", "reeks"), rickety gaits ("lemme wake up", "Emily", "midnight = 2am") and noise interferences on hip-hop or breakbeat typical stepping ("Cardinal ability to escape", "Into outer space with Professor Rhythm", "proxy notice"). You could imagine it as an imaginary freak projected in a laboratory of genetical engineering led by Synapscape, Celluloid Mata or Black Lung after a devastating binge, which cannot easily sober up. This amazing re-animator is available on tape or digital.

Ernesto Rodrigues on the harp, which sound played more like an object by sudden and unexpected strokes, whose strings are just occasionally played in the conventional way, as they sound more whacked (so that they sometimes give the impression of breaking springs) than plucked, Carlos Santos' sonic creatures from computer and piezos which sometimes goe up to the surface like imaginary sea serpents with their threatening eclat and subtle crimping, Katsura Yamauchi, whose technique on saxophone hit the headlines of more demanding lovers of the so-called reductionist movement by his album Salmo Sax and integrates into the ensemble with muffled breathing, which sometimes look like puffs in the bottleneck, and temporary stews of melodic glimmers, improvised this amazing and somewhat estranging three rushes on the borders between noise and silence. Some moments could let you imagine a narcotized emotional tension which explodes by means of abrupt rashes, while they gradually interlace thin torn mantles. I found particularly catching the central and second of three tracks (they call them scenes), "Cookie's Role", for the cliff-hanger they managed to set, even if the third one, "Cookie's Departure", is quite rich of funny flaky disfigurations of respective instruments without turning the "thespian" aspect down.

Named after a poem by Slovenian poet Srecko Kosovel - leading figure of Slovenian avant-garde literature -, Rdeca Raketa (Slovenian for "red rocket"), interesting project by Austrian composer and performer Matija Schellander, who already fulfilled his academic studies of double bass, computer music and modular synths by means of many important collaborations (Okkyung Lee, Jorge Sanchez-Chiong/JSX, Wolfgang Schiftner, Anja Utler, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Matalycee, Isabelle Dutholt, Marco Eneidi, Franz Hautzinger, Michael Bruckner and many more...), Slovenian singer, composer and flautist Maja Osojnik, co-founder of Low Frequency Orchestra, sign their second release "Wir werden" (meaning "we will") after the 40-minutes electroacoustic improvisation album "Old Girl, Old Boy", released on tape by Mosz Records three years ago. Their new smoulder seems to ignite from the longing of transformation, which includes subtle arguentation against contemporary cultural codes, that sometimes entails silent mutilations of individuality inside their intimate and controversial glorification (for instance the disaffected and somewhat weird voice-over by Anat Stainberg says: "We will stand there: ecstatic, in a state of dullness, frozen. [...] suffocating on our own transparent words [...] We will sleep, we will dissolve there-being and the being gone, will leave the premonition waiting and we'll be hushed by the falling snow."). The following sonic clues could portray an ego whose ascending billows find their chagrin on dying tones, consumed by noisy bussing wasps, drowned by suffocating white noises and corrosive bleeps, stunned by hiccuping engines and other pestering signals coming between the ego and its inner rhythms like a fog of toxic gas, whose heart rendering prostrated resolution collpases on sombrely heavy and slow piano strokes which still spill purulent liquid from open wounds. On the second part of the album, "Andere Menschen", the limping amble on deafening electric shock, splitted phrases whose humanity could be confused with insectile noises, thundering saturations, gurgling automatism, malformed sinister clockworks, this sort of bionic transmogrification is complete and emerge from the shabby "dialectic" hushed words by Lisa Kortschak and Max Gaier, where that mutation contaminates a relationship and the reciprocal hideaway seems to be preferred to the acknowledgement of transformed inner lineaments. A fascinating and tragically extant sample of sonic poetry.