Techno/House/Trance | NovaFuture Blog

out now: Umwelt – Days of Dissent [Boidae]

Artist:
Umwelt

Title:
Days of Dissent

Label:
Boidae

Cat#:
BOIDAE001

Release Date:
17th October 2016 (exclusive sale at label shop)
31st October 2016 (all shops & Digital)

Format:
2×12″, download & streaming

Tracklist:
A1.
Days Of Dissent

A2.
Factory Of Death

B1.
Revolt

B2.
Non-Conformity

C1.
Company Of Lies

C2.
Citadel Of The Chaos

D1.
World Shatters

D2.
End Of Light

Press Info:
„Umwelt’s 12inch “… City” from 1999 was one of the most impressive 12inches I had at that time and I played the shit out of it. It was dark and very emotional, it was abstract but also driving at the same time. This was 1999 though, before Discogs and before Facebook and all the other platforms people have now to do research on artists they like and follow their work. At that time it was the record shop – and that was it. Nobody knew this guy though, and I didn’t get my hands on any of the following releases, so in my world there was no follow-up to this record ever and I thought it would remain a one-off gem in my record box.

Until by some coincident I recently discovered he was still around and had actually released numerous releases in the meantime. I was very excited and contacted him straight away and ended up booking him for Krake Festival in the same year. Undoubtedly his set was one of the best of the whole festival! He took the roof off the place with his mix of raw electro, industrial and rave and everybody was talking about it afterwards, saying it was the highlight of the festival!

Talking to him I learnt, that most of the tracks he played were his own, mostly unreleased. He produces without computers, all his tracks are single takes, there is no editing, no mixing afterwards, he only has a stereo track recording which is what it is. He owns a cutting machine which he uses to cut dubplates from his tracks, which he then plays out during his sets. This whole information about this very unique artistic approach just killed it for me, and since working with him was so nice as well, I asked him for a demo for Killekill and its labels and was hoping for tracks I could make a great 12″ of. I got 14 tracks and after weeks of trying to pick the best, I finally realized I held one of the best electro albums ever in my hand – banging beats and the balls to go big and epic, subtle melodies, drama, funk – this album has got it all, and what’s most important, the music on it is the exact opposite of so much other music nowadays: It is emotional, it tells a story, it is easily recognizable and it is not interchangeable. It’s just Umwelt.“

Nico Deuster

Snippets:

Full Track Streaming:
“Day Of Dissent”

“Citadel Of The Chaos”

Trailer:

Videos:
“Non Conformity”

“Revolt”

“Company Of Lies”

“Factory Of Death”

Videos created by the29nov films.

Special:
“Boiler Room Berlin”

Recommendations:
EP “State of Matter” on ShipWrec
compilation “Megahits II” w/ Umwelt track on Killekill

Buy Vinyl:
Killekill @ Bandcamp
Juno
Deejay
Decks
Topic Drift
OYE Records
Clone
more soon

Buy Download:
Killekill @ Bandcamp
JunoDownload
Beatport
iTunes
TraxSource
Clone Digital
7Digital
soon

Commercial Streaming Services:
Tidal
Spotify
Apple Music
Deezer
Youtube Music

Booking:
Source Artists

Websites:
Umwelt
Boidae

out now: Sev Dah | Jeff Rushin – Parallel Series 5 [Mote-Evolver]

Artist:
Sev Dah | Jeff Rushin

Title:
Parallel Series 5

Label:
Mote-Evolver

Cat#:
MOTE048

Release Date:
28th October 2016

Format:
vinyl, download & streaming

Tracklist:
A1.
Sev Dah
Svarog

A2.
Sev Dah
Morana

AA1
Jeff Rushin
Solex

AA2.
Jeff Rushin
Obsolete

Press Info:
Three long years after it last graced our ears, the Parallel Series is back with a new pair of well-established producers. This fifth edition sees Sev Dah and Jeff Rushin take on a side each; the result being four expertly crafted pieces of techno aimed straight for early mornings on darker dance floors.

Sev Dah doesn’t mess about, opening the A side with Svarog, a fierce workout with rough rolling percussion and a pleasingly off kilter melodic line. We’re then taken deeper with Morana, a winding adventure with the mood of those early Detroit tracks but with the production values of today, and an evolving, transcendental melody sure to take dancers to another place.

Jeff Rushin begins the AA with what has to be the most disorienting track on the release. A distant kick drum disassociates you from the rising intensity of a ringing synth line, before the two gradually fall together with added percussion to bring your head back into the right space. The release ends with Obsolete, a track that quickly disregards its name by filling the audio spectrum with layers of dissonant panning and shuffling hats. This one was clearly produced to bring clubbers to attention and throw a curveball at sets of otherwise traditional techno.

Snippets:

Specials:
Sev Dah – “Curated by DSH #032”

Jeff Rushin – “Electric Deluxe Podcast 185”

Recommendations:
Parallel Series 1
Parallel Series 2
Parallel Series 3
Parallel Series 4

Buy Vinyl:
Deejay
Decks
Hardwax
Red Eye Records
Juno
OYE Records
Clone
more soon

Buy Download:
Qobuz
Beatport
JunoDownload
Boomkat
Hardwax
Bleep
iTunes
7Digital
more soon

Commercial Streaming Services:
Tidal
Qobuz
Deezer
Anghami
Apple Music
Spotify
Youtube Music

Websites:
Sev Dah
Jeff Rushin
Mote-Evolver
Mote-Evolver (German Fanpage)

out now: Below Surface – Escaping The Void [Be Sure]

Artist:
Below Surface

Title:
Escaping The Void

Label:
Be Sure

Cat#:
BESURE010

Release Date:
10th October 2016

Format:
digital

Tracklist:
01.
Life and Death

02.
Suspension

03.
Enthusiastic

04.
Expanding Metropolis

05.
Digital Vagabonds

Press Info:
Be Sure’s tenth release comes from its founder Below Surface himself. The first techno EP after his album from 2015 is compiled with original tracks made in the past three years including many sounds and inspirations from his time spent in Asia and Germany. Revealed by a profound ambient track, this release comes with four more dance-floor tracks from the deep to the peak.

Listen:

Full Track Streaming:
“Expanding Metropolis ”
click here

Special:
“NWR Podcast 085”

Recommendations:
sampler “Selected Vol. 2” on Be Sure
ablum “Tension” by Tension on Be Sure
Hu Yang’s EP “Xu Huai Ruo Gu” on Be Sure
Tekseven’s “Time Lord EP” on Be Sure

Buy Digital:
Be Sure @ Bandcamp
WhatPeoplePlay
Beatport Classic
Google Play
iTunes
JunoDownload
DJTunes
more soon

Websites:
Below Surface
Be Sure

out for a while: In Aeternam Vale – Pink Flamingos [Dement3d Records]

Artist:
In Aeternam Vale

Title:
Pink Flamingos

Label:
Dement3d Records

Cat#:
DM3D013

Release Date:
6th June 2016

Format:
CD, vinyl & digital

Tracklist:
A1.
Clobenzorex

A2.
Soundscape 5

A3.
Feed Me

B1.
B

B2.
Alone

B3.
Soundscape 2

C1.
181

C2.
Congestion Cosh

D1.
Soundscape 1

D2.
Hole

E1.
Autour Du Signal

E2.
176

F1.
Soundscape 4

F2.
Drones

F3.
Soundscape 3

F4.
La Pluie

Press Info:
In Æternam Vale, long the best-kept secret of the french synth punk scene, has been revealed many times now. This is about writing a new chapter of that 33+ years story, that begun in Lyon in 1983 as a band, whose leader Laurent Prot – an electronics pioneer and maniac – took over as a solo act since 1985. This new album (3xLP gatefold actually) explores another side of ‘IAV’, that echoes how Laurent sounds now – a ferocious take on techno, post-punk rhythmic elements and drone soundscapes, planted with unrestrained improvisation, and getting closure with a song time after time.

Ever building upon the everlasting influences of his first years : PIL’s punk sarcastic freedom, Suicide’s sexual rumble, Yello’s eerie dance moves, Kraftwerk’s accuracy, and Coil’s or Throbbing Gristle’s sense of transcendence and transgression, In Æternam Vale was never on hold for all those years. He has been relentlessly exploring all the spaces of freedom that electronic music has offered. To emphasize on how far he’s been going, we’ve put this album narration together, with intimacy, length, and space ; whenever the music had been made and how.

How this album was put together has a lot to say about how music is made in the In Æternam Vale universe… It all begins in Lyon, early 2015. Imagine you are being invited to the studio of a visionary, and get to discover some brand new futuristic experiments along with tracks made 25 years ago that sound as if they’ve been made yesterday. Well that’s what the careful listener who plunges himself in the album from start to finish should feel like.

I’ve had the chance to come over a few times, but this time was a bit more serious. Why serious ? Well , it is particularly challenging to keep your cool in that place : not only is it stuffed with all those vintage drum machines and synths – and some of them had actually joined his studio 30 years ago ; but in addition to the excitement, you’re also facing his custom-made modular systems, which Laurent’s mind of an engineer is particularly good at designing. It is almost impossible not to get carried away in a discussion about those, that might quickly turn into a friendly lesson and even jam session… Which again, is maybe what you might feel like, being carried away in those extended, unedited jams on the album : as if being shown how it’s done, by the maestro himself, playing it live, for your eyes (ears) only.

Did I really use the word “serious”? If you have seen In Æternam Vale performing live lately, you would see why this is also a quite an unfortunate pick. Quite notorious for hoisting his modular cases above his head in fiery resonant solos, as if an electric guitar. Rumor has it, a few live performances have gone absolutely wild lately. Laurent has lost nothing of the raw punk energy of his youth.

His music ; although very carefully crafted and ever so often introspective, is almost never deprived of his caustic sense of humour. You can always feel something similar to the prank of a playful gifted kid using intense frequencies to trick his audience in getting locked in. You can actually hear, in each one of those 16 tracks, how much fun he’s having, playing with your mind.

Speaking of youthful energy, it wouldn’t be fair not to tell you the whole truth about the selection. Some of the music here is the work of a 21-year-old, and some was recorded just last year around Laurent’s 50th birthday. It is only disturbing to admit how well it all fits together.

It is not very common to display a tracklisting that ranges through three decades, and call it an album. However, all of the music here is unpublished, exclusive, unreleased… It is also extremely rare to encounter artists that have never taken a break from studio creation, and this unbroken continuum is probably the reason why there is no relevance to any chronological classification of his work. The intent in the beginning, was to focus on the more recent, experimental side of In Æternam Vale’s work, and to look at his work through an angle that would be complementary to some recent techno releases on Jealous God or 80’s gems on Minimal Wave. Only, these visits to his studio in Lyon were decisive.

Imagine seeing the history of 30 years of electronic music flash through your ears, just in a few hours. ‘IAV’ has been exploring new grounds and sometimes even pioneering new styles and subgenres several times, with literally hundreds of tracks to listen to. Words are not enough to describe this record’s digger absolute dream : the discovery of a secret parallel universe where so much music has been created and kept under the radar.

But this record is not a compilation of tracks that would stick to a particular time period or subgenre. On the contrary ; there is a definite common thread, that had been found while losing oneself in the intensity of his spectacular live performances lately. Being carried away by his drone improvisations and smothering bass bins, and hearing him play his music, both old and new, there is a singular feeling of both freedom and transcendence that emanates from his music. Some of his lives have lead audiences to become completely silent, and taken away by hypnosis, some other have caused a riot, leading the audience to ultimate excitement. IAV stands for a whole-hearted involvement in the making of his music, and despite the cold and electronic textures, there is a sense of intimacy that we’ve tried to reflect through the choice of the closing song “La Pluie”.

Enjoy the ride !

Listen:
@ Dement3d @ Bandcamp

Full Track Streaming:
“Clobenzorex”

Videos:
“181”

“Feed Me” (Live @ Ubu, Rennes)

Video “181” created by the29nov films.

Special:

Buy Vinyl:
Dement3d @ Bandcamp
Deejay
HHV
Juno
Decks
more soon

Buy Digital:
Dement3d @ Bandcamp
more soon

Websites:
In Aeternam Vale
Dement3d Records

out now: Cristian Vogel – The Assistenz [Shitkatapult]

Artist:
Cristian Vogel

Title:
The Assistenz

Label:
Shitkatapult

Cat#:
STRIKE160

Release Date:
16th September 2016

Format:
CD, vinyl & digital

Tracklist:
01.
Hold

02.
Snowcrunch

03.
Vessels

04.
Telemorphosis

05.
Barefoot Agnete

06.
Cubic Haze

07.
Signal Symbol

08.
The Merman’s Dream

Track 7 & 8 are not on vinyl / track order is also a bit differnt.

Press Info:
THE ASSISTENZ is the culmination of a four year creative hot streak as vivid as any part of CRISTAN VOGEL’s long career. The trio of dancefloor-oriented records formed by 2012’s The Inertials, 2014’s Polyphonic Beings and now THE ASSISTENZ are sensual pleasures first and foremost: a lifetime of study of frequencies and rhythms on the frontline of the world’s clubs has been put into the creation of sounds that interface with the nervous system and emotional responses with extraordinary immediacy. But there’s much more too: together with the more abstracted album Eselsbrücke, these form an enticing sonic narrative, encoded themes running through them, each part revealing more about the whole. THE ASSISTENZ, then, is many things: a personal document, a tribute to Copenhagen where it was recorded and after whose famous cemetery it is named – but also the final piece in this bigger puzzle, which unlocks untold secrets from the previous three records.

There’s a deeper history, of course. CRISTIAN’s productions going back to the start of the 1990s have woven their way into the fabric of underground culture. His own recent remasters of his early albums, and the Sub Rosa Classics 1993-1998 collections have shown just how potent his early work remains. But his new work exists in a very different world to those past works, and is far removed from the recent electronic generations who he has influenced too. In fact, as you listen to THE ASSISTENZ, you realise that there’s no point making comparisons with other electronic producers at all. While you will certainly hear some of the most fundamental and enduring vectors of underground music – dub, electro, acid, funk – flowing through the tracks, even those things are rebuilt from the molecular level, created completely afresh with new, precise, but somewhat skewed vision.

CRISTIAN’s understanding of music now is spectral. That is to say, with every step through his exploration of sound over the years, he has made more and more detailed analyses of the specific frequencies that make up specific sounds and produce specific effects on the human mind and body. And as a result, his own sound synthesis – increasingly done via the Kyma programming platform – is more and more able to reach beyond the “synthetic” and impact in uncanny and wonderful ways. The most obvious sense of this is the way his sounds touch on the human voice: not just in the chattering, shimmering, singing tones of THE ASSISTENZ’s ghostly centrepiece “Barefoot Agnete”, in the alien radio signals of “The Merman’s Dream” or even in the subliminal “aaah”s hiding in the background of the noisy “Vessels”, but in the way any sound, anywhere in any track can sound peculiarly vocal, heard from the right angle.

And it’s not just the boundary between human and non-human, or that between acoustic and

synthetic, that get blurred to the point of non-existence. CRISTAN’s creative methodology now is all about leaving you so uncertain about where anything came from, or what scale the sounds are operating on, that you have no choice but to let go of preconceptions and standardised critical faculties and go with it. Sometimes that can take you to places where darkness and physicality close in on you as on “Vessels” or “Telemorphosis”, or into haunted spaces on the edge of the void like those of “Snowcrunch” and “Barefoot Agnete”, but even in those, there is euphoria. And in the voluptuousness of “Hold” or the body-rocking funk of “Cubic Haze”, all the abstraction is grounded in the sheer pleasure of your own bodily responses to the sound.

So many of the science fiction dreams of the 1990s are now (virtual) reality. We live in a time when social networks consciously manipulate our emotions, where data is money, where machines learn, where images can’t be trusted, and where the synthetic can feel more real than real. Over some 25 years, CRISTIAN’s experiments have traced much of this weirdness and evolved with it, and his understanding of synthesis and algorithmic processes to create structure makes him one of the most important composers working today. But THE ASSISTENZ doesn’t just experiment with the interfaces between mind, body and machine: it expresses those relationships in ways that are beautiful, troubling, moving and scary, and which even make you want to dance. Together with the preceding three albums it enacts a glorious, endlessly-explorable mapping of just what electronic music can do.

Text by Joe Muggs, June 2016.

Listen:
@ Shopkatapult

Trailer: