Boomkat new WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, BYETONE, HAPTIC, etc

“For the first time in 30 years Throbbing Gristle are now back on their own original Industrial Records label. To mark the occasion we are pleased to announce the rerelease of TG’s first five albums on vinyl & CD. Each album has been restored and remastered specifically for each format by Chris Carter from 24bit ‘baked tape’ digital transfers of the original first generation analogue master tapes. Vinyl – The newly cut 180-gram vinyl editions include painstakingly restored cover artworks, using original source material from the Industrial Records visual archive. In addition each of the vinyl releases include an exclusive large format 8-page colour booklet featuring an abundance of Throbbing Gristle archival material, including some previously unpublished photos of the band. Each vinyl release is limited to 2000 copies. COMPACT DISC Each of the CD special-editions are presented in a gatefold sleeve featuring restored and remastered cover artworks and an integrated 8-page booklet (* the booklets feature different artworks and content to the vinyl editions). While the CD releases feature the same track count and running order as the vinyl editions each CD special-edition also includes an exclusive bonus CD containing content from the year of the albums original release. This additional content includes TG live tracks and remastered singles. The Greatest Hits CD special-edition also includes two previously unreleased Throbbing Gristle mixes from the 1980s’. CD Tracklist Disc 1 1/Industrial Introduction 2/Slug Bait, Live at the I.C.A. London 3/Live at Southampton 4/Live at Brighton 5/Maggot Death, Studio Recording 6/Live at Rat Club London 7/Live at Southampton 8/Live at Brighton 9/After Cease To Exist Soundtrack Disc 2 1/No Two Ways-Hat Fair Winchester 1976 2/Last Exit-Brighton Poly 1977 3/Forced Entry-Nuffield 1977 4/Tesco Disco-Rat Club, London 1977 5/Feeling Critical-ArtCollege Winchester 1977 6/National Affront-Nuffield 1977 7/Urge To Kill-Rat Club, London 1977 8/Zyklon B Zombie – 7″ Single 9/United – 7” Single

*Limited to just 500 copies for the world, initial copies come on blood-red vinyl in time for Halloween* The silhouetted, impressionistic black metal ambience of William Fowler Collins has cast a long shadow over all who’ve crossed his path. Returning to Type Records for his 2nd LP, two years since ‘Perdition Hill Radio’ and not long since recording with Gog and Isis’ Aaron Turner, William still exists in a permanent nighttime state, as though the sun has completely abandoned the New Mexico desert and left him, and his music, to slowly decay in the darkness, suffering the attrition of sandstorms and the slow waste of vitamin C deficiency. This is tangibly experienced through titles like ‘Embracing Your Own Annihilation’ and ‘The Light In The Barn’ or ‘Abattoir’ but no more so than the music, a sound of micro entropic processes surveyed with a narrow-eyed panoramic gaze. But there’s no theatrical drama to ‘The Resurrections Unseen’, rather this is a sound mutedly resigned to its fate, stoically watching white noise flesh and guitar textured fabric disintegrate with time, watching the dust accumulate at the stumps where heavy leather boots once stood. The amount of space and detached sense of control in this music is only comparable with the most skilled ambient manipulators – we’re talking Deathprod, Thomas Köner, Lustmord, Kevin Drumm – and could well turn out to be a serious seasonal favourite round these parts. Highly Recommended.

Triumphant return to Raster Noton for Byetone, with his first EP/album since his brilliant, name-making Death Of A Typographer. Seven tracks to get your teeth into here, available on both CD and 12″ vinyl, and the most impressive expression yet of this artist’s sleek, dark-hearted techno-not-techno sound. You know you’re in good hands from the opening: ‘Topas’ builds out of caustic glitch into a funked-out 4/4 mantra, and ‘T-E-L-E-G-R-A-M’ restores electro’s unheimlich power – imagine DJ Stingray dosed up on smack, German porn and obscure architecture journals. ‘Neuschnee’ takes a slower, dubbier tack, reminding us a little of Byetone’s labelmate Senking, but with a more stripped-down, machine-tooled aesthetic. ‘Opal’ feels like a fleshy riposte to the bleep-bloop of vintage Pan Sonic and Sahko Records, not to mention Byetone’s own classic ‘Plastic Star’, while ‘Black Peace’ and particularly ‘Helix’ are unbelievably heavy-duty, industrial techno-metal smash-ups, sounding like some unholy hook-up between Suicide, T++, Cloaks, Godflesh and Sunn O))) (in other words: unmissable). The album concludes with the louche drum machine patterns and malevolent drones of ‘Golden Elegy’. Absolute quality.

*Limited Yellow Vinyl* The alarmingly prolific Spectrum Spools delivers another killer, this time from Hive Mind aka Greh Holger. Building on the idiosyncratic sounds of the private press cassettes he’s been banging since 2002, Holger here completely rejects the post-kosmische driftscapes that you probably associate with SS in favour of something substantially more demanding, and rewarding: it’s a noise record, basically, but one of a rare richness and depth, focussed on exploring grainy textures and shifting frequency registers. Make no mistake, this is for the real heads, designed for deep listening, and for those equipped to deal with the proper stuff it’s a ravishing experience.. Highly Recommended.

To our delight, Jeff Mills once again indulges his passion for classic sci-fi with this 2CD re-imagining of the score to Harry Kleiner’s titular ’66 flick. It follows his ‘Cyborg 2087’ recreation and imaginary soundtracks for ‘The Power’ and ‘The Occurence’ with a deep voyage of discovery. But unlike the aforementioned, the original film plot – about a team of scientists who’re miniaturized and dispatched inside a human body to fix a blood clot – thematic scales are inversed and we’re drawn to Mills’ inner, as opposed to outer, space-scapes. The action unfolds across 22 tracks and 2 CDs, from bleepin’, womb-like viscera and hazardous noise bursts through archetypal rhythm arrangements and fluid programming reflecting the man/machine, organic/synthesized themes of the film and his own alien/human aesthetic. It’s wonderful to witness Mills maturing as a composer and refining his art to something beyond a soundtrack for dancefloor rituals, but without ever losing his original blueprint, and showing that the line between cinematic imagination and dancefloor functions can be a very fine one.

After clocking up huge plaudits from Fact Magazine, The Wire, SImon Reynolds and Altered Zones for their ‘Suburban Tours’ release, Rangers arrives on Not Not Fun with his 2nd album proper, ‘Pan Am Stories’. The mind-child of one Joe Knight, Rangers deal in especially evocative soft-psych charms which share a clear love of ’80s MOR culture with James Ferraro and Ducktails. It’s reflective of the music most Americans (we’d imagine) have absorbed by some kind of as-yet-unidentified radiopathic osmosis; the soul-absorption of thousands of criss-crossing radio transmissions beaming 24 hour soft rock and cable stations emitting unending re-runs of mood-manipulating TV theme music and vibes. But most crucially Joe’s music has filtered only those most warbly, hooky parts and sifted out the cloying earnestness of so much coffee table Americana, yet retained its sun-smacked and soulful intentions. And it’s the sly, wry glaze of electronics and occasional overblown noise which gets warped in transmission that does it for us, an empathic hypnagogic affect which translates to European tastes very well. If there’s anything to distinguish this album from the last, there’s perhaps a more blown-out grunginess, not in terms of fidelity, which is actually higher here, but just a burnt twilight tone which feels moodier and more autumnal than say the last Ducktails, and like a pop refined version of Ferraro’s immense ‘Last American Hero’.

**Hand-numbered edition on 180g vinyl with 3D lenticular sleeve & deluxe, 12×12″, 12-page insert. Comes with mp3 code redeemable from the label** One of the most talked about collaborations of the last few years finally lands in deluxe fashion. Back in May 2009, following a conversation with Björk about the small Italian theatres where opera was born in the 1500s, Dirty Projector David Longstreth set about writing ‘Mount Wittenburg Orca’, his follow-up to the widely cherished ‘Bitte Orca’. A month later it was performed a capella in a Manhattan bookstore – recordings of which can be viewed on youtoob – but it was another year before they laid it down proper in Brooklyn’s esteemed Rare Book Room studios. The results are truly beguiling, mixing deceptively natural three-part vocal harmonies by Amber Coffman, Haley Dekle and Angel Deradoorian with lead shared by Longstreth and Björk, all largely unadorned by instrumentation and allowed to float somewhere between naif chorales and multi-layered contrapuntal sophistication. The balance of high-brow and pop modes is intricately measured, with no one voice dominating proceedings and managing to effortlessly sound forward-thinking yet beautifully timeless. Oh and that 3d sleeve has to be seen to be believed!

*Cassette only – limited edition of 200 copies* Intensely visceral electro-acoustic sound designs on The Tapeworm. If you’ve only become familiar with Stephan Mathieu’s opulent soundscapes like ‘Radioland’ or his Dekorder 10″s in recent years, then it’s probably about time you checked his more challenging digital compositions, and this is a great place to start. We best let Stephan sum this one up: “Flags is a homage to the beauty of data. The pieces are created from photos of my studio equipment which were transferred to audio via header changes”. OK, so that doesn’t give away much about what it sounds like. Well, essentially it’s not “nice”. There are sounds in here which will make your eyeballs quiver and possibly make you feel like your brain juices are about to run free (esepcially when consumed on headphones), but for some (us included) that’s a very favourable experience. Very highly recommended to fans (who own a tape deck!) of Florian Hecker, Marcus Schmickler, or Keith Fullerton Whitman.

*Housed in silver letter-pressed heavy card inlay with download code redeemable from the label* Nick Edwards aka Ekoplekz cements a solid year, here in collaboration with Ralph Cumbers aka Bassclef. Under the aegis of Ekoclef ‘Tapeswap’ consolidates their differing approaches via the classic means of mailing tapes back and forth, upholding a tradition which has been used since the days of tape networks in the early ’80s and whose DIY sonic culture has very much influenced the slew of killer Ekoplekz releases for Mordant Music, Punch Drunk and Further Records this year. It’s also a fairly radical departure from anything we’ve previously heard by Bassclef, smudging his typical digitized sonics into a deliciously noxious, boggy 4-track sound absorbing trace elements of radiophonic experimentation and viscous dub. This should be considered a real treat for fans of everything from the Ghost Box crew to Conrad Schnitzler to Daphne Oram, Matthewdavid or Sun Araw. Limited copies only.

24 years and 16 albums into an estimable career, The Necks present two engrossing longform tracks, comprising their first major release since 2009s ‘Silverwater’. On ‘Mindset’ Jazz, drone and electronic soundscaping coalesce into something far, far greater than the sum of their elements, creating a multi-tiered, organically shifting mass of piano, bass and drums knitted with subtle but crucial synthesis and FX to hypnotise and leave us frankly dazzled. The first of these two 20+ minute pieces ‘Rum Jungle’ is densely realised yet rendered with a minimalist vision, allowing each independent layer to swirl and swoon without friction in its own frequency space while still somehow managing to communicate freely with the other kinetic sections operating at idiosyncratic tempos. The effect is utterly magical, at once feeling fluidly improvised and highly organised in a manner achieved only by the most skilled, attuned musicians. In stark contrast, ‘Daylights’ is more richly textured, deploying filigree electronics around sparse, plangent keys and stalking bass recalling Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, but also following a steady evolutionary vector which could only come from three master musicians in synchrony. Warmly encouraged to fans of Carsten Nicolai, Oren Ambarchi, Christian Marclay.

*Edition of 200 housed in vacuum sealed package* Chicagoan electro-acoustic trio present their 10th release and third full length album. The equipment list for ‘Scilens’ should give some indication of the breadth of sonorities they’re working with: A-Bitrman, Acousticon hearing aid, A-52, air conditioner, bass drum, baoding balls, bows (cello and violin), cassette recorders, contact microphones, crotales, cymbals, DS-1, EHX-2880, e-bow, electric fan, electric bass, fabric, floor tom, found home rcordings, FX42-B, GE-7, guitars, harmonica, hurdy gurdy, laptop computer, lapsteel, leaf, location recordings, marbles, metronome, ME-50, MF-105M, MX802A, open circuits, oscillator, paper (various weights), parade drum (bass), pianos (baby grand, concert grand, Rhodes), portable CD players, PS-5, radio, record player, recorder telephone pickups, RV-3, sand, sewing machine, snare drum, sparklers, strobe light, tone chimes, tuning forks, wineglass, wire brush, wooden clothespin. Of course, the magic is in the way they navigate these sounds and the attention and space they afford to each creak, each scuttling acousmatic rattle and gaseous background drone, forcing the ear to constantly re-evaluate its depth perception and spatial awareness with micro-to-macro-scopic detailing. Highly Recommended.

*Hand-stamped sleeve – Strictly limited copies only* Perfectly poised for autumnal gratification, The Boats present their first new material in a while with new album ‘The Ballad Of The Eagle’. They’re still a trio – Andrew Hargreaves, Craig Tattersall and Danny Norbury – and ever refining their craft to a sort of ritual somnambulant magic. For this outing they’re also augmented by two special contributions, Yasuhiko Fukuzono’s vocals and Joseph Borreson’s Banjo, expanding their palette of electronic and acoustic instrumentation to a (very) small orchestra’s worth of rich and supernaturally spatialised tones. Travelling through the album, that comforting sense of deepest blue melancholia is omnipresent, but quite often slips beyond their usual boundaries into out-and-out darkness. This mood sets the tone of opener ‘Invisible Orchestras’ until a swooning cello resolution and the spirit-raising machine-tooled miniature ‘Dusty Rooms’. Here on in we oscillate gently between tape-hiss enigmas ‘If I May Trespass On Your Patience’, to quietly breathtaking, noirish drone-pop ‘Omissions For You To Fill In’ with sterling vocal input from Yasuhiko and Danny Norbury’s Cello to the album centrepiece ‘I Can’t Read Your Morse Code Heartbeat’, a seductively dark piece of keys and sanguine strings swaddled by electro-acoustic pulse patterns. The second half is signalled by the matter-of-fact bleakness of ‘I’m Not A Pessimist, I’m Sad’, and one of their most beautiful radiophonic techno pieces ‘Chance Meeting At Train Stations’, concluding with the warbling, edge-of-disintegration keys, drawn strings and tape hiss in ‘The Days We Didn’t Spend’.

A new album from Belfast’s cosmic techno prince SDC, supposedly a mere taster for his upcoming LP proper. One way or the other, the material on here is of the very highest quality. It showcases the producer’s enormous gift for star-dusted melodies and the warmest analogue synthesis imaginable, and though there’s a knowing camp that would be anathema to Mad Mike, we’re reminded again and again of Underground Resistance. Many thousands have bitten UR’s style over the last 20 years, not to mention that of SDC’s beloved Juan Atkins, but few have done it with such as grasp of the all-important funk. SDC definitely didn’t grow up listening to Electrifyin’ Mojo’s radio shows, but on this album it sure as hell sounds like he did. Recommended.

**Now available on vinyl for the 1st time in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, with 3 bonus tracks not on the CD** Hildur Gudnadottir is a gifted cellist with an impressive history of collaborations that includes work with Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, Johann Johannsson, Skúli Sverrisson and Ben Frost among many others, as well as being a member of Iceland’s notable Kitchen Motors collective. She first came to our attention on Pan Sonic’s epic ‘Katodivaihe’ album from a couple of years back, her intense, blackened cello adding another dimension to Vainio and Väisänen’s icy tundras. “Without Sinking” (her second solo album and first for the Touch label) is, however, by far the most cohesive and engrossing release of her career to date. It’s not often that sales notes offer much by way of an insight into the real thought process or inspiration behind an album, but Gudnadottir’s description of many hours spent on flights around the world looking at clouds really does encapsulate the atmosphere and semi-opaque wonder of these recordings. “I wanted to have open space for single notes and let them breath, like single clouds in a clear sky. As a contrast I also wanted create denser and heavier compositions which were more thundercloud like. I like the way clouds form, how many tiny droplets can form such dense forms and then slowly evaporate into thin string-like forms.” The sound Gudnadottir’s cello makes paints these mysterious landscapes with an almost mystical purity, opening track “Elevation”, for example, manages to outline an increasingly intense, almost mournful picture with seemingly simple layering techniques and barely perceptible processes submerged by the pregnant sound of Gudnadottir’s hugely evocative instrument. But the album also includes contributions from a number of guests – most notably Johann Johannsson, Skúli Sverrisson and even Hildur’s father Guðni Franzson, with tracks like “Aether” introducing Harp and wind instruments with a gentle economy that’s so fragile and simple it’s just nothing short of heart-stopping. The album closes with the dense “Unveiled”, an ominous drone undulation steered by those cautious, towering strings and barely perceptible found sounds. It’s the space between the notes, the restraint and expectation, that packs the biggest emotional punch on this incredibly moving recording, never allowing those ‘cinematic’ qualities to get in the way of the genuine dread and catharsis resting at the core of this utterly magnificent album. Amazing music.

*Deluxe Digipak with gold/foil embossed letterpress artwork* A dub head through and through, Kevin Martin takes the art of versioning seriously, hence this whole album of King Midas Sound remixes by the great and good of underground music. Seriously, the contributor list reads like a who’s-who, and shows you just how much Martin is respected by his peers. The biggest surprise is probably the appearance of Scritti Politti ringleader Green Gartside, who re-vocals ‘Come And Behold’ in his oft-copied, never-bettered whiteboy soul croon. Other favourites? Kuedo’s chrome-plating of ‘Goodbye Girl’ in shiny, celebratory, Severant-style form is a winner, while Mala threatens to mash down Babylon with his beautifully poised ‘Earth A Kill Ya’ version. Flying Lotus impresses with his trippy, minimal but dirt-encrusted take on ‘Lost’, and Nite Jewel reimagines the same track as a poppy, sultry synth-funk jam, before Hype Williams steer ‘Sumtime’ into a kind of righteous, dub-wise VHS psychedelia. Kode9 and Spaceape reduce ‘Meltdown’ to a lean garage chassis, and Deepchord/Echospace give ‘Goodbye Girl’ their expansive dub-techno treatment. Gang Gang Dance, Cooly G, Ras G, Joel Ford, D-Bridge and others feature on what must be the most star-studded versions album of recent times.

*Modern Love debut from G.H. sounding somewhere between Mika Vainio, Raime and Andy Stott. Limited to 500 copies only for the world* As a member of Pendle Coven and HATE Soundsystem, Gaz Howell has been a mainstay of Modern Love since the label was still in single figures. He’s appeared on some of its deadliest output over the years but the ‘Ground E.P’ is his first solo endeavour to land on vinyl, arriving at an oblique, alabaster-cut style of electronics, cold-fusing viscous boogie and musique concrete in a sheer hewn style of slow, forceful funk. The barren A-side is ‘Ground’, scanning a wasted scene of distant bass detonations dislodging abrasive surface scree and geyser-like pressure valves in a pyroclastic flow of ideas nodding to Daphne Oram and Mika Vainio. Equally, on the flipside ‘Albedo’ feels as though it was hand-carved in some electro-acoustic steam-punk workshop, rolling boulder-heavy kicks with clanking iron & steel mechanics, before ‘Earth’ emerges from the furnace, glaze cracking and fissures splitting to reveal a hard-working boogie sample beneath the slag and calloused exterior. It’s taken him nearly half a decade to get to this point, but even we’re blown away by how heavy he’s come with it. Fans of Andy Stott, Raime, Mika Vainio, DJ Yo Yo Dieting – do not sleep on this!!!

Heavy 12” transmission on Raster Noton from Jens Messel following his mighty Pong LP of last year – and that album’s ascetic, decidedly North European response to dubstep’s low end theories. Though Tweek is a homage to the perennially anxious, hyperactive South Park character Tweek Tweak (honestly), the music is anything but jittery – rather it’s a cool, controlled bass offensive, admittedly shot through with the requisite paranoia. The icily delayed drums, pinched chords and oscillating subs suggest Digital Mystikz re-tooled to soundtrack Tarkovsky’s Stalker, while the eerie synths and spurts of noise bring to mind late 80s industrial and Senking’s own noirish masterpiece List. Serious sh*t for those who know, cut nice and loud with DJs and skankers in mind.

*Swit swoo – flash new foil-embossed disco bag from the mighty 100% silk!* 100% take it down town with four tracks of flaunting, French-style filter House from Jason Letkiewicz (Steve Summers/Innergaze). The mid-90s spirit of Thomas Bangaltar, Dimitri From Paris or DJ Sneak is crossed with the raw EQ’ing of Jamal Moss’ Members Only series for a proper knob-tweaking session bound to have mascara dripping and chest hairs glistening. A-side ‘Broken Anthem’ and ‘Run For Cover’ are boundless energy boosters, looping and bucking with a near-psychedelic delirium, whereas the the flipside ‘Sunsets’ and ‘Fatal Games’ are slightly more iced and groovesome, with that ineffable sense of silky elan.

*Limited edition, heavyweight vinyl* Right, this is a bit good – Autre Ne Veut singing for Seahawks – yes please! ‘Don’s Rainbow’ is the first salted Boogie smack to be air-lifted from the new Seahawks album ‘Invisible Sunrise’ and pairs captain Jon Tye with a full band backing for the first time. The result sounds something like a long lost Arthur Russell dub, had he aimed for the billboard top 100 circa 1986, in an alternate underwater universe. I’ll be honest, the older Seahawks stuff didn’t do much for us, but the scuffed Linn drums, rusted synths and coruscating dub FX here are really pushing our buttons this time. And then there’s the vocal, a controlled but catty show of blue-eyed R&B histrionics equal parts outsider avant-ism and sheer pop finesse whose effect hasn’t waned one bit to us despite the billions of times we’ve played it. Well recommended!

Deep and dutty white label 3-tracker from the reckless London House fusioneer. Like his recently released ‘Tenement Yard Vol.2’ session, vibes are poised towards the deeper end but still with the requisite amount a ruffige to make your ma go “woi!!!”. A-side is a rude, Bass-riding House roller with tribal woodblocks and narsty stabs, while the flipside comes much darker, like some classic Techstep D&B flipped for the 2011 House crew, and finishes up on a tuffer brukken beat flex. Apparently they’re never going to be released digitally, so if you know what’s good you’ll get 2 copies. TIPPED!!!

Mighty authentic-sounding R&Boogie flair from B. Bravo and guests including Zackey Force Funk, Lady Alema and The Gents. The title tracks is fresh-to-go, coming off like some junior Ryan Leslie studio production – a fat, contemporary R&B swinger – while ‘Rite On Time’ features The Gents drizzling silken croons and raps on a criss-like-Dâm Funk downstroke. Flipside opens with the juicy-bootied ‘Substance’, wrapping Lady Alema’s breathy R&B sighs around booming 808 drums and starburst chords next to the wormy funk of ‘Swang’ and the diamond glisten of ‘Right On Time’. Dangerously slick stuff.