Press Info:
Polish powerhouse Sept returns to Voxnox with his ‘Direction’ EP.
Direction
He kicks off the EP with ‘Direction’, an eerie, hypnotic tool. He combines a driving groove with delicate synth work and cavernous soundscapes to create a mesmerising mood.
Direction (Michal Jablonski Remix)
Friend and frequent collaborator Michal Jablonski is up first on remix duties. Drawing upon the mood of the original he offers a tasteful and considered remix that further deepens the original’s hypnosis.
Script
He follows up the title track with ‘Script’, a deep excursion. Continuing in a similar vein and showcasing his signature style he delivers a stomping big-room trip that is perfect for any time of the night.
Script (I/Y Remix)
Taking the reigns for the final track of the EP are Berlin techno aficionados, I/Y. With a complex, icy groove the pair showcase their unique talents in creating another signature dance floor weapon.
Press Info:
Pioneering music producer SI BEGG is set to release his sixth studio album, BLUEPRINTS, on Berlin’s legendary label SHITKATAPULT this June. His first LP in four years, BLUEPRINTS is a celebration of raw electronics welded to the ‘romance of engineering’. The project was inspired by the discovery of an old diagrammatic notebook that belonged to Begg’s grandfather, George, in his lifetime a cutting-edge engineer.
Dubbed ‘visionary’ by The Who’s Pete Townsend and widely considered a producer’s producer, BEGG has been making genre-defying electronic music for more than two decades. Backed over the course of his career by the likes of John Peel, Thom Yorke, Leftfield, The Glitch Mob, Bassnectar and Mouse On Mars, he has carved a reputation as a recording artist, DJ and sound designer, and in more recent years as an award-winning composer for television and film.
BLUEPRINTS sees BEGG’s passion for contemporary score collide with his love of electronic music. Since the release of his last LP, 2013’s Permission To Explode, BEGG has written scores for four feature films as well as for Netflix Original series, Lovesick, and Battle Rap documentary, War of Words.
The concept for the album sprang fully formed when BEGG came across the notebook, a beautifully preserved leather-bound volume, annotated in his grandfather’s precise hand. The book was filled with meticulous diagrams of compressors and parallel air ducts, graphs recording comparative noise levels at different factories, statistical information detailing the thermal efficiency of power stations, alongside blueprints for futuristic machines yet to be built.
At the same time, BEGG was reconnecting with his own back-to-basics studio machinery, the voltage-powered hardware instead of the slick high-end software used to create most electronic music today. The parallel discoveries felt like synchronicity and BEGG began producing tracks using analogue synthesizers recorded live in one take, augmented by circuit bend effects units and the electro magnetic field noise created by mobile phones and hard drives. In his characteristically uncompromising way, rather than try to hide the cogs and gears and remove the excess distortion, BEGG decided to champion these idiosyncratic machines. In putting them centre stage, he aimed to demonstrate that not only were these unique tools to create art, they were simultaneously works of art in their own right. Like his grandfather’s designs, they had an aesthetic beauty all of their own, form following function.
The pieces on the album evoke the beauty and romance of great engineering, often overlooked in a landscape of post-industrial gloom – the breathtaking geometry of vast gasometers, the sweeping grandeur of a suspension bridge, the finesse of circuit diagrams, a precisely laid-out city viewed from the air at night. From the hums and sparking pops of Heat Resistant Alloys to the relentless subsonic sine waves underpinning Resistance Is Expensive, raw electrical signals pulse through the heart of the music.
This is a work of complex, evolving mathematical patterns, circuitry bent out of shape. It is a hymn to the voltage-controlled oscillator.
Press Info:
The full dose of “Mesh” shows two producers clearly at their most focused and precise. Like their best work to date, it will get fans’ active imaginations churning – and leave them wondering what thiscollaboration has in store for the near future.
Roog Unit is the new production duo fusing together the talents of Luke Slater and Ø [Phase] a.k.a. Ashley Burchett, the music being the result of many months of discourse and growing connection. They have already joined forces in the recent past: Ø [Phase] contributed a striking remix of the Planetary Assault Systems classic “Dungeon” for the radical reassessment program “Planetary Funk: 22 Light Years,” and the two shared DJ duties during last year’s “22 Light Years” tour.
The apt title of the debut EP for Mote Evolver, “Mesh,” suggests a locked grid or set of axes on top of which all sorts of creative possibilities can be sketched out, and it provides a perfect descriptive metaphor for the interaction between these two skillful heads: like carefully interwoven strands, neither half of the duo dominates the proceedings and each individual’s contribution strengthens the effect of the other’s.
The self-titled leadoff track on “Mesh” is a bracing bombardment of the senses, pulling out all the stops in order to get ever closer to a white-hot core of intensity. This journey to the heart of the sun moves along at a rapid pace, but also with a sense of patience, as new sound elements fade in slowly and surely. Chugging bass sequences, metallic flutters and sparkling high-register arpeggiation all make this into a piece of contained chaos that will engage veteran listeners and certainly teach novices a thing or two.
Before the listener has fully caught his or her breath, “Bugeye” follows suit and proves that the winning formula of the previous track is no one-off affair. A characteristically high-impact percussive track forms the base from which Burchett and Slater implement their plans for layering sonic architecture. Here their experience and determination truly differentiate them from the pack – where others might pile on sounds into an indistinct and fatiguing audio mush, this pair overlaps numerous different tone colors without causing any of them to lose their individual character.
The flipside, “The Chains,” is a quintessential late night / early dawn number that leads listeners down subterranean corridors lined with beams of luminescent light and populated by smoke-shrouded men of mystery. On this cut, eerie shivering sonorities float in with all the classic drama of sustained Hammond organ chords; a bed of sound on top of which a cool vocal recitation encourages listeners that everything will be “all right” – although the tension between this laidback narration and the demanding straight-ahead trajectory of the music will allow listeners to make up their own minds on that score.
The full dose of “Mesh” shows two producers clearly at their most focused and precise. Like their best work to date, it will get fans’ active imaginations churning – and leave them wondering what this collaboration has in store for the near future.
Listen:
Full Track Streaming:
“The Chains”
Specials:
Luke Slater – “Electronic Explorations 405”
