Boomkat new releases list

*STRICTLY LIMITED DOUBLE-DISC EDITION FEATURING 12 BONUS TRACKS IN HANDMADE PACKAGING – 125 COPIES ONLY* Best known as one half of The Boats, Andrew Hargreaves has also been spotted plying his trade under pseudonyms such as Beppu and Tape Loop Orchestra, though here he steps out from behind his alternate guises and releases a new solo album under his own name.  Back in July, Hargreaves released Fragments, a ludicrously limited (50 copies) collection of out-takes and off-cuts from a (then) forthcoming long-player.  Defragment is that long-player, and quite wonderful it is too.  Recorded between such venerable and exotic locations as Barcelona, Tokyo and Burnley, Defragment finds Hargreaves taking piano and electronic programming as the starting point for his compositions, whilst intermittently calling upon the cello (and on one occasion, musical saw) of regular cohort Danny Norbury.  At the piano Hargreaves plots his way through understatedly lyrical passages that tug at the heartstrings without resorting to sentimentality; there seems to be a minimalist style at work here that recalls Ryuichi Sakamoto’s collaborations with Alva Noto, yet true to the form of his prior work, Hargreaves instils a tangible sense of warmth in his recordings.  Amidst a prickly, glitch-riddled electronic backdrop, standouts like ‘Mystical And Secret Sayings’ and ‘Variation Is Repetition’ find Hargreaves keying his way through a typically inviting production that neatly contrasts the subtle erosion of those instrumental recordings with a distinct digital cleanliness.  Meanwhile, Norbury’s contributions to pieces ‘Just Us Together’, ‘Handwritten Notes’ and ‘Confusion In Consequence’ give the album that extra lift when necessary – the latter in particular proving to be especially powerful, its muted piano colours and drowsy strings conspiring to create a very autumnal sound palette.  If you’ve ever fallen for Hargreaves’ music previously, whether alone or with The Boats, Defragment is sure to enrich and beguile. Supplementary is a substantial companion disc compiling additional tracks and alternate mixes.  Once again, Danny Norbury is on board for a few tracks, including the anthemic, click-beat backed post-rock of ‘Song For Nowhere’ and the tape hiss-laden ‘A Veteran At Twenty-Nine’.  Lovely.

DJ Nate, the aptly donned “Trak Genious” is a 20 year old producer from the south side of Chicago. His music is a fiercely unique blend of techniques derived from Hiphop and Juke (aka Ghetto House or Booty) made to soundtrack intense Footwork battles, best seen on youtube for those outside of Chi-town. For us, it’s one of the most exciting sonic anomalies of the last decade, combining the raw, febrile functions of Jungle with unquantifiable elements drawing comparisons to the repetitious phasing of Steve Reich and the complex, esoteric B-Boy programming of Autechre, next to the more obvious work of DJ’s Funk and Deeon. We can distinctly remember stumbling across this stuff on youtube at 1am some 18 months ago and spending the next 5 hours watching videos before turning up to work bleary eyed and buzzing the next morning barely able to believe our ears. It was as if Autechre had implanted their hieroglyphic futuRhythm codes in the DNA of Booty 17 years ago and now it had come of age, blooming insanely mutated patterns to incite the dance, wild styles. But of course, that’s not the case, this sh*t evolved of its own accord, and that’s one of the best things about it. Whether he takes to Evanescence or Marvin Gaye, Nate juices the best bits from his favourite records and flips them into intense staccato arrangements the likes of which we’ve quite simply never heard before, which is a unique attribute in its own right, but when it’s this good, its worth screaming about. His unpredictable, morphing moiré of syncopations have developed their own controlled system of signifiers primarily designed for the dance. If you’re one of those people who always complains that Jungle is too fast, you simply may not get it, but if you can read/dance between the lines you’ll find stunning contradictions between centripetal subbass gravity and percolating drums on the brink of evaporation, broken into blocks and tied together with rapid fire samples seemingly pitched at will to sound like our most psychedelic dancefloor dreams have come to life. Put in context next to the majority of dance music, Nate’s concatenated arrangements and freeform style offer a new route out of rhythmic torpor and a glaringly vivid grassroots idea for the future of the dance. Digesting these 25 tracks in one go is an intense experience, and strangely enough we kinda craved that strange effect youtube compression has on the bass, but don’t get it twisted, we’re completely over the moon that Planet Mu have gone to the effort of persuading Nate to release his music, and think that fans of everything from Timbaland to Venetian Snares should listen to it at least once. Utterly Essential.

**Now available on strictly limited vinyl – 300 copies for the world in a silkscreened sleeve** A Colour For Autumn follows on from English’s previous seasonally themed album, 2007’s For Varying Degrees Of Winter, interpreting the ‘feel’ of the natural cycle into a series of abstract microsound compositions. ‘Droplet’ instantly takes on a choral feel, and we can hear a falsetto male voice instantly dissolving into a swirling sea of sound. In addition to the ambiguous conglomeration of vocal sustain, unplaceable field recordings add texture to the mix, eventually taking on harsher, noisier shapes by the piece’s close. There’s a brassy quality to ‘Watching It Unfold’, taking on a warm, gradual, almost anthemic quality as chords change at a stately, glacial pace, but ‘The Surface Of Everything’ ushers in a more pronounced use of instrumentation – not to mention a contribution from Christian Fennesz, who brings a fresh electronic angle to the track’s guitar exchanges and droning strums. This textured approach adds an extra layer of depth to the album, and ‘The Surface Of Everything’ arguably occupies the broadest, most satisfying range of sonorities of anything on the album. ‘Galaxie Of Dust’ has more of a smudged feel, squishing together greyed sounds and quivering high frequency tones, only to lead into ‘Stillness In Motion’ and its Oren Ambarchi-like bass tones. While the low-end marks out a melody slippery, steely drones move back and forth leading into a beautiful final phase full of static noise and gentle feedback. Lovely.

Three years after it was initially due for release, Berlin’s Galerie Neu deliver four tracks from revered sound artist, Florian Hecker. The planned original release was designed by Peter Saville and housed on a laser cut block of open porous foam in a transparent, smoke grey acrylic cover, but unfortunately they scrapped that idea and presented it in a jewel case with a teasing 6-page leporello instead. Ah well. We’re more concerned with the sounds within and they undoubtedly offer some genuine revelations for any Hecker fans, most prominently the 17-minute, microscopic investigation of ‘Yin Pitch Detection Synthesis Kissing 17’26”, detailing kinetic insectoid textures with vivid recalling imagery of sitting in an amphitheatre surrounded by the chirrup of a thousand invisible crickets, broken only by the distorted peal of a distant bell. Meanwhile, as the title tells us ‘Wq Acid VII’ is akin to his squiggly formations on the ‘Acid In The Style Of David Tudor’ album, ten minutes of dynamically morphing electro-acoustic arrangements. Two more concise tracks finish the set, the calculated ultra-minimalist rhythms of ‘Neu Ext’, and the fractal barrage of computer generated textures in ‘≤ ∑’, produced on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Off The Record/ Sound Arc’ for the Musée d’Art Moderne De a Ville De Paris in 2004. Head twisting, hugely interesting material from a maverick producer – highly recommended.

The latest outpouring of near insufferable hipness from the Merok stable comes from Ohio electronic duo Teengirl Fantasy, who line themselves up alongside the likes of Delorean and Tanlines amongst the current wave of artists to intelligently rethink dancefloor pop music for the post-Merriweather Post Pavilion generation. If there can be said to be such a thing. 7am really hits the spot with dream-vision ’80s synth routines like the scrambled midtempo ‘In An Arena’ and the chillwaving majesty of ‘Make The Move’, whilst more cerebellum-tampering sounds crop up during the psych-ish ‘In The Rain’. The album really accumulates momentum towards the end of its sequence with the raved-up brilliance of ‘Cheaters’ and the sample-melting schizoid bliss of ‘Forever The Feeling’. Tremendous.

With a title that translates as “Shadowplayer”, this new album from the excellent Marcus Fjellstrom is quick to set the scene. Combining wonderfully crackly ambient textures with ancient sounding classical instrumentation, Fjellstrom’s music is perhaps like a sonic equivalent to the cinema of the Brothers Quay or Guy Maddin in its stylised and revised recreation of something old, monochromatic and somehow already familiar. It’s fairly commonplace to find ambient or dark-ambient works that channel this sort of run-down aesthetic , but Fjellstrom goes somewhat further by using real orchestration and then aging it. Consequently, there’s so much more invested in Fjellstrom’s music and his soundscapes are far richer than the kind of loop-driven, predominantly electronic material of his contemporaries. Particular highlights arise during the creaky, percussion-driven ‘Liquid Fire’ and the incredible woodwinds of ‘Untitled 090616’, but this marvellous album is best digested as a whole.

Produced over the course of two years, A Path Less Travelled unites Japanese improvising microsound quartet Minamo with Room40 boss, Lawrence English. Field recordings, processed sounds and, of course, Minamo’s initial instrumental sketches all come together in a gentle harmonic fusion that’s at once layered and detailed yet eminently peaceful. You’d assume that countless hours of post-production have gone into the making of this record, yet early standout ‘Headlights’ still retains a very live feel as it spools through minimal guitar musings and electric piano tones. All this is set to a backdrop of chirping cicadas, adding not only an extra sonic dimension but also a high frequency sub-current that compliments the wandering melody. Next up, ‘Glimmer’ proves to be especially successful, merging what sounds like wind instrument passages with waves of crackle and hum. The physicality of the piece serves in stark contrast to the more gossamer tones of ‘Headlights’ or ‘Springhead’, a far more feathery affair that opens with some tingling bell noises only to unfurl with stretches of harmonium drone. Far and away the longest track on the album, ‘Springhead’ goes through various evolutionary stages, peaking with a tuneful, brassy finale that feels like quite a departure from those tentative beginnings. The album closes with the most song-like of all the selections: ‘Fireworks’, whose strummed guitar backdrop provides both a rhythmic cue and a chord sequence for the otherwise droning instrumentation to follow. A fine set from these two institutions of modern-day micro-ambience, A Path Less Travelled comes with a hearty recommendation to fans of either party’s work.

The album that preceded last year’s outstanding Without Sinking album, Mount A was originally billed under the Lost In Hildurness moniker and now gets a remastered reissue under Hildur Gudnadottir’s real name. Despite the often expansive sound, all instruments are played by Hildur herself, including cello, viola, piano, vibraphone, zither and gamelan. Acting as a one-woman orchestra, this talented Icelandic musician and composer manages to craft something that’s at once big and intimate. At the time of Mount A’s initial release it would have been likely for Gudnadottir to be predominantly thought of as a serial collaborator and guest musician rather than a solo artist in her own right. Her list of credits is impressive to say the least, and includes a touring post with Animal Collective, plus recordings by Pan Sonic, Valgeir Sigurdsson, BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa, Nico Muhly, Múm and more recently The Knife and Wildbirds & Peacedrums. On Mount A, perhaps due to the solo setting, repetition and loop-like structures dominate many of the tracks. This gives rise to some beautiful melodic hooks, especially during the jagged cellos of ‘Floods’ and the weary viola glissandos of ‘Casting’. While bowed strings play the largest part on the album, around halfway plucked sounds take centre-stage: ‘Self’ is an absorbing piece based around a zither, building up through spindling layers into a panoramic arrangement bolstered by wave-like, lapping drone tones and slightly creepy micro-tuned intervals. Putting vibraphone to good use, ‘In Gray’ and the tense, febrile ‘Earbraces’ sound spacious and filmic while ten-minute closing piece ‘You’ lets in a more optimistic mood, once again calling upon plucked sounds for a starting point. There’s a freedom and lightness to this final entry that counteracts some of the intensity that characterised much of what came before.

The most anticipated and collectable of all the Study Series 7″s comes from Broadcast and Julian House’s The Focus Group. ‘Familiar Shapes and Noises’ expands on the magick explored in their acclaimed Warp release ‘Witch Cults of The Radio Age’, blending collage techniques and arcane studio processes to invoke the oddest feelings of nostalgia. The longest effort, ‘Inside Out’ weaves Trish Keenan’s ethereal murmurings into rocky drum breaks, flute and harpsichord with a brilliantly unpredictable arrangement while ‘The Song Before’ sounds like a 60s psych band rehearsing in a haunted scout hut . Our favourite, ‘Tuesday’s Offerings’ is really about the Familiar Shapes of the title, setting acoustic guitar, folksy fiddle and spidery piano keys to a truly unnerving nursery rhyme melody whose title continues to evade us (if it is a real nursery rhyme at all!). You really shouldn’t need persuading…

Massively tipped debut from this new artist and label; Raime, and Blackest Ever Black Recordings. The UK based duo have forged one of the finest contributions to the darkened post-dubstep canon we’ve yet heard, distilling the essence of Shackleton’s most maudlin moments with labyrinthine reverbs and salt-cured percussion over three tracks allegedly built from arcane industrial and post-punk samples. This 12″ is already causing much consternation in the blogosphere; with Altered Zones, Simon Reynolds’ Blissblog and Fact Magazine all singing its praises. ‘Retread’ initiates the session with an unnerving arrangement of suspended, ceremonial drums and an immensely affective choral drone, deployed with enough subtlety and atmosphere to really send shivers down the spine. ‘This Foundry’ follows, uncannily recalling the parallel dimensions of Balam Acab in its dragging Quasimodo flow and and vastly spacious sound design. ‘We Must Hunt Under The Wreckage Of Many Systems’ puts the final, frozen finish to the EP with a still, centred rhythm seemingly hung from flesh hooks in the ceiling while bowel shuddering subs disturb the flagstones below, shadowy reverbs skittering off cold, concrete surfaces. We’ve heard about a very special remix package forthcoming, but for now you’ll have to flay yourself to this every evening. Outstanding.

Arms folded, legs crossed, we sit down to the third in Ghost Box’s highly collectable Study series. This chapter invites an amazing guest contribution from Mordant Music to accompany Mr Jupp in two assignments looking at the small Surrey town of Godalming. The location obviously holds some nostaligic weight for the pair, resulting in two deeply personal compositions. Belbury Poly’s ‘Swingalong’ strangely combines an ever-so-slightly sleazy funk lick with sitar and acousmatic voices to sound like something from Irmin Schmidt’s ‘Kamasutra’ soundtrack, as heard by an eight year old behind the sofa of his parent’s holiday cottage. The sound of innocence being tainted? Mordant Music’s ‘Inn Ohm the Lake’ is decribed by the label as “…an ecstatic piece of pastoral electronica.” and we’d wholeheartedly agree as his lapping analogue textures languidly flutter in the breeze. Very Highly Recommended.

Superb, limited edition 7″ featuring Regis/Scorn and Rose Kallal documenting a collaborative music/art project that was part of an international group show involving big art folk such as Turner Prize Nominee Mark Titchner and the New York painter Wade Guyton, as well as a number of emerging artists. For the project Karl O’Connor and Mick Harris worked to create a display of dynamic digital synthesis akin to the work of Peter Rehberg or Florian Hecker, with a sliver of cinematic impact nodding to classic John Carpenter. On the flip, former Sunn 0))) sleeve designer and acclaimed sound artist/filmmaker Rose Kallal offers ‘Mobius Coil’, a sludgy, down-pitched side order of infused drums that are as dark and atmospheric as you’d rightly expect on a release of this nature. Highly limited and well recommended!

Acclaimed visual artist Konx-Om-Pax presents an absolutely amazing first release from his Display Copy label, including a No Fun Acid remix by Carlos Giffoni. Konx-Om-Pax is one of those enviably hyper-active characters, equally adept at creating dazzling artwork for sleeves like Oneohtrix Point Never’s ‘Rifts’ comp and a number of Rustie releases, as well as art direction for videos from Jamie Lidell and Hudson Mohawke, collaborations with Mogwai and even a series of seriously heavyweight mixtapes. For this release we’re dealing with his sonic persona, presenting three extended tracks roving between Swans-strength bludgeoning on ‘I’, onto close, clammy, digital drone shapes on ‘II’ with shades of Coil or Autechre at their most sullen. The longest, and most impressive, is ‘III’, displaying a hyper-aware aesthetic blending Hecker-esque digital spasms with lysergic noise squalls and cavernous electro-acoustic dynamics crossing the disciplines of Bernard Parmegiani and Keiichiro Shibuya in a head-frazzling fashion. With such visceral material to work with Caros Giffoni ends the set with a compelling remix, feeding the source material through his mazy No Fun Acid matrix to splay him into an anxious blur of squirming sinewaves and organically evolving noisescapes. In other words, this is really really REALLY good, and completely f**ked sideways. Comes in limited, hand numbered (200 copies) and printed artwork, a free sticker, and our noisiest recommendation to fans of the Mego or No Fun Productions camps. Don’t miss.

**Translucent Red Vinyl** Finders Keepers introduce their new Cache Cache sister label with a mindblowing Hungarian Electro version of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rockit’ from 1984 pressed up on transparent red vinyl. Honestly, this one takes the biscuit, adding bizarre Transilvanian vocals and oodles of atmosphere to the scratches and machine rhythms of the original, proving that the pervasive futurist influence of this pivotal cut really had some impact behind the iron curtain. It also features a deadly edit version from one Tandy Love, giving the vocal an even weirder Dalek spin and extending the vibes for longer sessions on the lino. If that isn’t enough, there’s a killer hiphop/disco cut in ‘Csillagszemü Ég’, again with the screwed vocals and truly lethal machine rhythms. Miss this at your peril.

Warp’s most promising synthpop duo present the Richard X-produced ‘Pigeons’, backed with a killer remix from the mysterious Blawan and Kompakt’s new darlings, Walls. It’s a teaser single for their forthcoming and much anticipated debut album, marrying melancholy vocals almost worthy of Trish Keenan with a ‘floor-ready nu-wave pop pulse. Blawan follows, making his first appearance since that outstanding Hessle 12″ to lay a broken post-dubstep roller with hints of Martyn or Ramadanman’s crafty flow. The flipside is given to Walls, aka Allez-Allez’s Sam Willis and Alessio Natalizia, who give it the sophisticated Kompakt techno touch with gossamer bassline and streamlined re-arrangement.

Remarkable archival release from notorious New Romantic lynchpin, Rusty Egan! Back in the late ’70s/early ’80s, Rusty almost single-handedly defined the New Romantic/Synthpop movement with his DJ sets at The Blitz Club, where he would play Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Ultravox to a cabal of “Blitz Kids” including Boy George and club owner Steve Strange, irrevocably altering the course of British pop music forever. He was also producer for the likes of Visage and Spear of Destiny and an infamous figure on the London club scene. ‘ R.E.R.B.’ was produced during this period, assisted by session drummer Richard James Burgess to create a icy cold slab of instrumental electro which sounds somewhere in between Cabaret Voltaire and Kraftwerk with dull neon, coke-numb synths and a typically sleazy rhythm. We could easily imagine him playing this in the early hours of a Blitz night, to a floor full of preening Neo-narcissist peacocks. On the flip we get an extended 2010 edit, upping the pace a little but remaining fairly faithful to the original. In the current climate of darkwave and synthpop revival this is a true treasure and really shoudn’t be overlooked.

Hobby Industries follow the excellent Aslope Ep with three tracks of screwed and squashed low-end variants from Nabo, including a lovely remix from Clouds. ‘Neigh’ introduces his style with a slumped James Blake/Dilla-esque structure and wickedly warped, off-key melodies somewhere between the Beat Dimensions and Skweee aesthetics. ‘Parkinlot Pimp’ takes the off-kilter melodies one step further with slow and crooked synth calculations in a Zomby or Rustie fashion for the smokers, while ‘Rock Solid’ dices guitar and theremin-like sounds on an ultra slow flow akin to Kaman Leung. Clouds complete the set with a mist of bleeps and woozy electronics anchored with weighty sub drones, weirder and darker than we’ve heard from them before. Recommended!

In the wake of that brilliant Mike Cooper reissue, the Ethbo label pluck another gem from seemingly out of nowhere, courtesy of The Tree People’s Stephen Cohen. Both tracks feature Cohen’s mellow acoustic guitar accompanied with his gently burred vocals. The deceptively tentative ‘This Is Just A Test’ features multi-tracked acoustic strings layered into spidery rhythms, joined by xylophone and assorted twinkly percussion growing into a confident mix of East and West, like KFW’s ‘Variations For Oud’ gone bluesy improv. ‘Let’s All Root For The Home Team’ is more melancholy, Cohen delivering more in the way of a song structure, narrating a high school basketball game (we assume) with a distanced, brooding stance. Quite lovely.