Artist:
Alva Noto feat. Martin L. Gore & Willian Basinski
Title:
Subterraneans
Label:
Noton
Cat#:
N-057
Release Date:
16th December 2022
Format:
vinyl, download & streaming
Tracklist: 01. Subterraneans
02. Subterraneans (Instrumental)
Press Info:
NOTON is pleased to announce the release of Subterraneans, a collaborative EP featuring Alva Noto, Depeche Mode’s Martin L. Gore and Willian Basinski’s cover of David Bowie’s homonymous song.
Recorded in 1975, Subterraneans is the closing song of David Bowie’s 1977 album Low. The composition was initially intended for the soundtrack to the 1976 science fiction drama film The Man Who Fell to Earth.
This song has a personal meaning to me. It was partly recorded in West Berlin at the Hansa Studio. According to Bowie, “Subterraneans” refers to the people who remained in East Berlin and lived in East Germany after the wall was built. In 1977 I was twelve years old and among the “Subterraneans” the song evoked. It still resonates within me, forty-five years after its original release.” – Carsten Nicolai
A tribute of the three artists to Bowie’s work, the EP features an instrumental version and an edit by Alva Noto on electronics with Depeche Mode’s Martin L. Gore on the vocal and William Basinski on the saxophone.
Press Info:
Sunroof [Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones] have announced details of a new album, Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2 – out on limited edition white vinyl and digitally, via the Parallel Series of Mute on 17 February 2023.
The new album is a set of eight improvised modular electronic music instrument pieces recorded at the duo’s respective home studios following the release of their debut, Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1 (2021) and where Vol. 1 was the result of four decades of friendship and collaboration, this new album came together in a relatively short space of time. Recorded in the same spirit as their previous sessions – with no pre-planning and no rehearsal – they met up with “unpatched” modular systems, and began improvising. Without any of the parameters they followed in the first sessions, the duo allowed the pieces to expand naturally, keeping editing to a minimum.
“I suppose this is the difficult second album,” jokes Gareth, “it took 40 years to make the first album and just nine months to create this one!” Daniel expands, “We got on a roll and didn’t really stop recording once we had that momentum.”
During the sessions they found themselves aiming for more clarity and space within their improvisation, allowing the listener to be drawn into the pieces in a different kind of way. Textures glide, while random sequences knock against one another – forming then disintegrating before re-forming, and while they do so, uncovering minimal glitching rhythms.
The video imagery of “January #2” (see below), created by Sunroof, depicts manipulated sequences triggered by software connected to the audio – a technique that they introduced into their live performance during a short run of live shows Vol. 1’s release. The album artwork, a watercolour painting by Gareth, draws an extra line between the visuals and the music, as Gareth explains, “the watercolour paintings take on their own life when the water interacts with the colour, bringing a creative connection to how the electronics react to our interaction.”
Daniel Miller (founder of Mute, the “accidental label” that began with the release of his own 7” single The Normal’s T.V.O.D / Warm Leatherette) met Gareth Jones, (the innovative and influential producer, engineer and artist) back when Miller asked Jones to work with him in late 1982 on what became Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again. After Depeche Mode had gone home for the day, they would stay on to work on their own sessions, a practise that continues to this day. By the mid-nineties Sunroof had emerged as remix project going on to rework the likes of Can, MGMT, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Goldfrapp, their first recordings appeared on a compilation paying tribute to Neu!
The eight pieces that make up Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2 are imbued with the experimental playfulness of early electronic pioneers but retain their modernity thanks to their creator’s constant explorations in electronic music.
Press Info:
Berlin based modular synthesist JakoJako, aka Sibel Koçer, has announced details of an EP for Mute, scheduled for release on limited edition violet vinyl and digitally on 27 January 2023.
Listen to the hypnotic techno of ‘Auris’, the first track to be shared from the EP, below.
The first three tracks, recorded with an eye on the dancefloor and overflowing with joy and exploration “… came naturally and felt fluid…” explains Koçer. “I allowed myself to create these dance tracks without too many restrictions” and the final track, ‘Nexus’, originated from a recording of her live set. “This one is wholly unique, I will never be able to reproduce it, the recording was a simple stereo track that was very difficult to mix.”
Koçer’s passion for electronics began with an urge to play with sound, and a desire to learn more about this world of modular systems and patch cables. Before long she had progressed into performing regular live sets, had a Berghain Residency and a position at Berlin electronic music institution, SchneidersLaden. Despite a busy schedule – forthcoming events including Berghain’s New Year celebrations, Ratherlost’s New Year’s Day party in Amsterdam and a non-stop 32-hour ETMAAL party in Utrecht in Feb – she still goes works in the showroom once a week, “It’s still important for me to go there, the exchange of knowledge and ideas is invaluable and I feel like I want to give something of what I got over the years, back.”
The four-track Verve EP follows JakoJako’s debut album, Metamorphos (2022, Bigamo) and her collaboration with Rødhåd, In Vere (2022, WSNWG), both of which came hot on the heels of two blistering remixes for Mute – New Order’s Be A Rebel and Martin Gore’s Vervet.
Press Info:
Revered producer and composer Daniel Avery today announces his most ambitious and accomplished studio album to date, Ultra Truth, due for release on 4th November 2022 via Phantasy Sound. To celebrate the announcement, Daniel has shared a brand new track from the record called ‘Chaos Energy’, which lands alongside a neo-futuristic video created using AI technology by close-collaborator Claudia Rafael.
Alongside the record, Avery launches his new live show this month debuting at Nuits Sonores in Lyon on 27th May, the biggest outing for the project since touring America with Nine Inch Nails in 2018.
Ultra Truth offers a very different listening experience to any of Avery’s previous records. It inhabits its own world of sound, a construct built in Avery’s Thames side studio with collaborative help from a host of friends: the production touch of Ghost Culture and Manni Dee, the vocals of HAAi, Jonnine Standish (HTRK), AK Paul and the voices of Marie Davidson, Kelly Lee Owens, Sherelle and James Massiah.
“Ultra Truth finds me in a different place to where I’ve been before. My previous albums have all focused on the idea of music being an escape or a distraction from the world but that’s not the case this time. For me this album is about looking directly into the darkness, not running away from it. There’s a way through these times but it involves keeping the important people in your life close to you and navigating the noise together. This is an intentionally heavy and dense album, the hooks often hidden in dusty corners. I’m no longer dealing in a misty-eyed euphoria. Ultra Truth is a distorted fever dream of a record: riled, determined and alive.”
In creating Ultra Truth, Avery went back to many of the things that had inspired him to first make music as a teenager – pensive, emotive records by Deftones, Portishead, Nick Cave or Mogwai, the exquisite darkness of David Lynch’s movies and – on tracks like Devotion and Higher – the thunderous energy of leftfield rave music.
“I’m working with an entirely new world of sound on this record. Every single influence from the last decade spent on the road plays a part. Things that have been in the back of my mind forever, warped, distorted and pushed to a new place.”
Elsewhere, a counterpoint to Ultra Truth’s juggernaut breakbeats comes in the form of Avery’s elegiac tribute to the late Andrew Weatherall. Lone Swordsman feels like it’s been created from the same DNA as some of Weatherall’s most sublime moments.
“Andrew was an enormously important figure in my life. It’s been said about him so many times, but Andrew was someone who did things entirely on his own terms, an outsider through and through. He was a punk rocker as much as he was a techno DJ. I’ve always held on to what he taught me which was to offer a true expression of who you are at all times. That’s the ultimate goal. If this record sounds like it comes from a more shadowy place, that’s what it is and that’s who I am.”
Ultra Truth is just that. It’s the ultimate musical truth of one of the country’s most innovative, boundary-pushing electronic producers. And the truth is, this is a record to give you a burning sense of hope.
Release Date:
March 2000 (original date of the physical release)
11th November 2022 (re-issue)
Format:
CD, vinyl, download & streaming
Tracklist CD/Vinyl: A1. Black Box (Part One)
A2. Want
B1. Jezebel
B2. Breath Control
C1. Last Call For Liquid Courage
C2. Strange Hours
D3. Vertigen
D1. Supreme
D2. Chrome
D3. Black Box (Part Two)
Tracklist Digital Bonus Version: 01. Black Box (Part One)
02. Want
03. Jezebel
04. Breath Control
05. Last Call For Liquid Courage
06. Strange Hours
07. Vertigen
08. Supreme
09. Chrome
10. Black Box (Part Two)
11. Strange Hours (Edit)
12. Jezebel (Filthy Dog Mix)
13. New York Nights
14. Don’t Look Back
15. Jezebel (Edit)
16. Jezebel (The Slick Sixty V Rj Remix)
17. Electro Blues For Bukka White (2000 Mix)
18. Black Box (Complete)
Press Info:
Recoil is the musical project of former Depeche Mode member, Alan Wilder, and Mute will release the project’s last three albums Liquid, Unsound Methods and subHuman. Originally a solo venture for Alan’s more experimental work outside of Depeche, Recoil became his primary music project after he announced his departure from the band in 1995.
The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet, Rosa Torras, Diamanda Galás, Nicole Blackman, Samantha Coerbell, and others power Alan Wilder’s passionate yet unsettling Recoil album, Liquid. Released in 2000, Liquid possesses a hypnotic and deeply charged allure drawn from its intense tapestry of desire, fury and violence. An exceptional piece of work for self-reflection in the company of darker side yourself, the record is intended drill holes into your psyche in a genuinely unhinged way.
