Info:
The first of a two part series from Shifted – his first outing on Avian since the brilliantly received AVN001 ! Following the recent success of ‘Sickness By Means Of Clairvoyance’ on Sigha’s own ‘Our Circula Sound’ label (OCS005), these two tracks tread a formidable if slightly deeper path…
Info:
Electro quartet Ghost Capsules can trace their beginnings back to a Bomb The Bass gig in Vienna. Here it was that Tim Simenon, touring the ‘Back To Light’ album, met his support band that featured drummer Roman Lugmayr and keyboard player Georg Lichtenauer. The three hit it off, so much so that Tim relocated from Amsterdam to the Austrian capital. Here the missing piece for the Ghost Capsules jigsaw was found in singer Laura Gomez, who Tim had booked to play at one of his club nights. Proof positive that there’s no business as sociable as music.
Ghost Capsules make music for the night. Dark chocolate electro, if you like, shot through with a dash of espresso, a twist of chilli even. Their beats and loops are cool and calculated, but emotion courses through each of Gomez’s lyrical statements, wreathed as they are in tales of pure fantasy. Singing of blood red shoes with killer heels, her verses are revealed under the sharply focused points of light conjured up by Ghost Capsules’ music.
Press Info:
The debut full-length album from Berliner act kool thing is united by a feel of escapism, the need to ditch our urban addictions and regain a lost sense of wonderment, even if just for a few hours. With fourteen songs, including two instrumental interludes, kool thing sounds like youth remembered through a kaleidoscopic lens in which each mirrored fact points to limitless futures.
Just like the Hipgnosis-echoing cover artwork (courtesy of photographer John Duncan), this record is full of beautiful juxtapositions, artifice and nature yinning and yanging their way through a dramatic love affair. Rusty guitar licks are found curling up against fractalling synth arpeggiations, with Julie Chance and Jon Dark’s vocal harmonies dancing on the horizon above the thunderous drumming by Valentin Plessy.
“TV Tower”, the lead single (named after the retro-futuristic landmark in Berlin’s city centre), follows the rendezvous of tumultuous lovers, set to a majestic melange somewhere between new wave, new romantic and new age. Elsewhere, “Stories by the Bay” combines a tweaky bassline with smooth, lulling voices to convey both the nerves and bliss that accompany a first love, while “The Sky, The Sea” offers a truly otherworldly moment in which mutated musical elements seem to swim in the atmosphere.
Following the acclaimed Light Games EP and the “Plan.Life.Go” twelve-inch single, as well as their remixes for Austra, Trust and Light Asylum, kool thing is a pastiche of memories that forge a path ahead, not simply a musical journey but a mental one too.
Info:
Our absolute favourite label is Mute Records that was founded in 1978 by Daniel Miller. The roster include(d) influential and important musical acts such as NON, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, Grinderman, Nitzer Ebb, Renegade Soundwave and Yazoo.
It was formed initially to release the Daniel Miller’s single “T.V.O.D.”/”Warm Leatherette” which became a underground hit. As he was also interested in German music, Daniel Miller signed Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft for the first Mute album, “Die Kleinen Und Die Bösen”.
One of Mute’s most famous act were Depeche Mode, which Daniel signed for a single after seeing them as support of Fad Gadget. The connection between Mute and Depeche Mode was very strong and last for over 30 years.
Mute had a several sublabels with different genres and styles like novamute, Future Groove, Blast First, The Fine Line, The Grey Area. Most of them are now defunct but they also have a new baby, Liberation Technologies.
More recent acts are so different artists like Josh T. Pearson, Beth Jeans Houghton, Laibach, Erasure, VCMG, Big Deal ….
To show our love for the label we created a sampler of over 60 tracks and 5h hours of old songs and new stuff (from Mute, Mute US, sublabels). So enjoy!
Info (English):
On the fourth Unterton release The Black Dog present a new sound somewhere between House and Techno that The Black Dog call Darkhaus. The original version of „Council Flat Emptiness“ is an infectious, futuristic, disco-tinged version of a progressive dancefloor workout bathed in strings, mellow melancholia and heavy bass. This is preceeded by a straight to the point stripped down version that multiplies the hypnotic elements of the original.
On the B-side a 9-minute-30-something Remix from Luke Slater’s L.B.Dub Corp project drives the original into classic Slater territory where Techno and Groove marry and electrify each other.#
Info (German):
Das vierte Release auf Unterton stammt von The Black Dog, mit dem sie sich von einer neuen Seite präsentieren. Angesiedelt zwischen Techno und House, nennen sie es selbst Darkhaus. Das Original ihres Tracks “Council Flat Emptiness” ist ansteckend und futuristisch, flirtet leicht mit Disco und suhlt sich in sanfter Melancholie, Streichern und schwerem Bass. Vorher bringt ihre nur auf das nötigste beschränkte „stripped“ Version des Originals die hypnotischen Qualitäten auf den Punkt und verstärkt sie somit noch.
Auf der B-Seite entführt Luke Slater unter seinem L.B. Dub Corp Pseudonym das Original in klassische Slater-Gefilde, wo Techno und die reine Lehre des Groove für fast zehn Minuten lang eine elektrifizierte, magische Verbindung eingehen.
