Tracklist: 01)
Bell Blocker (Silent Servant Remix)
02)
Beauty In The Fear (The Black Dog’s Destroyed On Purpose Mix Pt. 2)
03)
Beauty In The Fear (The Black Dog’s Destroyed On Purpose Mix Pt. 1)
Track 03 is digital-only.
Info:
Luke Slater’s Planetary Assault Systems follows the release of the album ‘The Messenger’ (OSTGUTCD20/LP10) with a 12″ of remixes by Silent Servant and The Black Dog.
With his recent releases on Sandwell District and Semantica Records, LA producer John Mendez aka Silent Servant has shown that his reduced atmospheric techno has firmly taken its place on the world’s main peak time dance floors. Taking one of the most banging tracks from ‘The Messenger’ album, he transforms ‘Bell Blocker’ to a slow burning hypnotic ride by removing both the super heavy bass drum and the bells of the original and instead layering heavy atmospherics over a rolling beat and finally introducing a new synth line that injects some intense emotion.
The Black Dog and Luke Slater have been travelling alongside in the electronic music scene since both released some of their earliest productions on the legendary General Production Recordings in 1991 and 1993 respectively. Since Black Dog’s founding member Ken Downie has been joined by Martin and Richard Dust they have pursued a new sound in ambient and recently down to the floor techno that has earned them new support and respect from many of their younger contemporaries. Planetary Assault Systems’ original ‘Beauty In The Fear’ is a tense mix of dark strings and jittering snares, for the remix The Black Dog combine their brooding melodics and dance floor oriented production skills to create the perfect counterpart to the flipside of this 12", somewhere between plain scary and profoundly deep.
The release is backed by a second ambient version of the Black Dog mix that is only available on the digital format.
Press Info:
After releasing the first single “MAN MADE MACHINE” featuring Martin L. Gore by MOTOR we are very happy to announce the full MOTOR album release “MAN MADE MACHINE”, TODAY, April 18th on the brand new sub division of Chris Liebing’s Create Learn Realize label: CLR X! MOTOR have recorded a song based album with some of the most intriguing voices of the world of electronic music, such as Martin L. Gore, Gary Numan, Douglas McCarthy, Billie Ray Martin and Reni Lane and deliver the perfect soundtrack for all those who are in love with electronic music. MOTOR´s influences reach from Synth Pop, Dance, EBM to Electro Clash, without ever watering down the powerful essence of this pioneering act. MAN MADE MACHINE is a unique and haunting album full of dark and melodic songs that you should definitely pay attention to.
There are several ways to try to sum up the history of MOTOR. Chronologically listing all of the releases, significant events, enthusiastic critics and superlative comments, awards won and goals achieved in a comparatively short period of time would be one of them. It would certainly be a quite impressive list, but it would not fully pay justice to the phenomenon of MOTOR, as this phenomenon is clearly more than just the sum of its parts. Sometimes less is more, and that is why this brief history more than anything focuses on some of the milestones in the rise of MOTOR, as well as some seemingly random anecdotes, which at the end of the day impressively stand for the very essence of this extraordinary act. But first of all, the good news: MOTOR is about to release another album, which opens a new chapter in the history of the band. After completing three massively successful and critically acclaimed techno albums, Bryan Black and Oly Grasset, who together form the duo MOTOR, have shifted gears and recorded a song-based vocal album by the name of Man Made Machine. The album was conceived during their World tour with Depeche Mode in 2009 when Dave Gahan fell ill and the band found themselves in a hotel in Berlin with time on their hands. It features the vocalists Martin L. Gore (Depeche Mode), Gary Numan, Billie Ray Martin (S’ Express, Electribe 101) and Motown’s rising new star Reni Lane. Just recently, when MOTOR secretly played the first single from the upcoming album (also titled Man Made Machine) on a BBC radio broadcast, it got over 10.000 views within hours of being ripped and broadcasted on youtube. The reactions from Depeche Mode and MOTOR fans are absolutely ecstatic. One online comment, which has often been quoted and agreed to, is that Man Made Machine sounds like the modern version of the Depeche Mode track Personal Jesus – a royal honour for the guys from MOTOR. Sometimes music critics are still having difficult times grasping or quantifying just exactly how significant MOTOR´s contribution to modern music actually was and is, but there is hope that the upcoming album Man Made Machine will add to a deeper understanding of the importance of this unique act. It is no coincidence that the album features some of the key figures in the evolution of electronic music. MOTOR have played as the main support act on sold out tours for Gary Numan, Nitzer Ebb and Depeche Mode and have been considered one of their best received support acts. They have performed on the main stages of all the top festivals with acts like Daft Punk, Kraftwerk, Soulwax, Justice, etc. They are known for having one of the most explosive and entertaining live shows in dance music. As an almost logical consequence of their uncompromising attitude and trend-setting style, the fashion world has also taken notice of this powerful act. Raf Simons uses MOTOR music on his website and in his catwalk shows and Rick Owens used the MOTOR track “Ice” for the presentation of his 2012 Menswear collection. It is interesting that a fashion designer who´s look has been described as “glamour-meets-grunge” and who says about his own work that “It’s about an elegance tinged with a bit of the barbaric, ” chose the music of MOTOR as soundtrack for his latest fashion show. Other than that, MOTORs music has been featured on various HBO and Showtime TV programs, in films and in several Playstation and Nintendo video games. Their impressive list of remixes includes Precious by Depeche Mode. In Mixmag 2006, Depeche Mode actually listed this one as their favourite DM remix of all time. This should in itself be enough to create some pleasant anticipation of the upcoming album and tour from these unconventional techno pioneers. Just one more remarkable aspect regarding the long-player Man Made Machine is the fact that it is going to be released on a new sub-division of Chris Liebing´s CLR (Create Learn Realize) label, one of the leading German techno imprints. The branch is called CLRX and is out to explore new sonic universes of a musically more complex, song-structured nature. The founding of CLRX shall help people to distinguish easily between the classic CLR sound and the slightly different one of this new venture. Bryan Black just released his first, tremendously successful and critically acclaimed solo EP (Black Asteroid – Engine 1) on CLR. After working together so successfully on this project, the label and artist started talking about also working together on the release of the new MOTOR album and finally came to the conclusion to go for it. Chris Liebing had always been inspired by the out of the ordinary techno approach of MOTOR and shares many of the same influences. He and the label team are highly thrilled about this collaboration. So please watch out for Man Made Machine, the fourth album of MOTOR, to be released on CLR X of March the 30th of 2012. The accompanying video for the first single Man Made Machine is a spectacle in itself and is the perfect introduction to the dark and mysterious world featured on the breath-taking new LP, Man Made Machine.
Snippets:
Album Mega-Mix:
Official Video:
“Man Made Machine” [feat. Martin L. Gore]
Unofficial Video:
“The Knife” [feat. Douglas McCarthy]
Info:
Shifted’s ‘Crossed Paths’ is a record which pushes the formal possibilities of techno. ‘Crossed Paths’ is the first full length work to be released on Mote-Evolver and the scope of the album format takes Shifted’s vision to the next level. Shifted furthers his exploration into ominous resonances which he began in 2011 on Mote-Evolver by the ‘Control EP’, a vinyl that seamlessly housed the unabashed peak-time ‘Control’ and the spatial ‘Structure’. On ‘Crossed Paths’ the breadth of Shifted’s ideas is both subtle and devastating. As a producer Shifted’s methodology is like that of a sculptor, he works principally with textures knowing precisely when to leave edges raw and fault lines exposed. ‘Crossed Paths’ is constructed of 11 ominous cuts carved with precision and poise.
The identity of the man behind the Shifted moniker is shrouded in question marks and his album opens just as mysteriously with the fearlessly oblique ‘Yearning’. Setting out an ambitious internal architecture, ‘Yearning’ expands and contracts creating a sense of euphoric menace. This atmosphere pervades, crystallising in the strange swelling loops on ‘Coax’ and the stunning pads of ‘Colour Of The Fall’. Shifted creates hypnotic and persistent music that’s perfect for the confusion of the afterhours. He refuses to stick to polarised ideas of tracks falling neatly into the categories ‘dance floor’ or ‘ambient’. Shifted toys with the norm. ‘Bleeding Through’ is a case in point: it imperceptibly veers from one territory to another with far-off ringing and torn wooden fragments invading an almost industrial landscape.
Equally ‘Lexis’ is flooded with urgency as sharp, angular corners are created by bleeps which cut into the track’s icy exterior. However, ‘Crossed Paths’ has no shortage of ideas to devastate big club rigs. ‘Leather’ is fully loaded techno with a disorienting top line spurting and sparking over grinding bass. On ‘Suffocate’ the deviant tones persists constructed out of the friction between a swung undercarriage and rock hard beats. ‘More Static’ pushes deep only to be fractured by clanging metal and inister wisps of conversation. The record closes with the glacial ‘Disconnected’, a track that is perfectly in harmony with the album’s haunting, greyscale artwork. Having travelled the length and breadth of techno’s possibilities the final track brings unity to the release, suspending the listener once again in the abstract dimension where ‘Crossed Paths’ began.Shifted envelops the listener in a subtle world of form and variation.
‘Crossed Paths’ sets out to further techno’s remit and situates itself precisely where electronic music deviates from expectations. Shifted skilfully creates an album in which no sound is over-produced, it’s a record where textures interact with each other on their own terms and the result is deep, atmospheric and ultimately, something new.
