Leftfield / Experimental / Electronic Recommendations October 2017

Review: Considering the wild, untamed nature of releases on Contort Yourself to date, the premise of this compilation is a tantalizing prospect. Digging deep into the underbelly of 1980s minimal wave, industrial and much more fringe activity besides, this extensive collection is not for the faint hearted. There are moments of beauty, moments of horror and plenty of just plain weird transmissions that evoke the era they came from so powerfully. Doxa Sinistra, Human Flesh and an early outing by Merzbow are all standouts in what is a truly wonderful document of a fearless time in genuinely underground music.

Review: If you were judging Kieran Hebden's 11th Four Tet studio album merely on the way it's presented, you'd immediately think he'd spent the last two years immersed in early '90s ambient house albums. While it's unlikely he's done that, it's fair to say that New Energy does owe a debt to classic electronica sets from that period. For all the exotic instrumentation and subtle nods to post-dubstep "aquacrunk" experimentalism and chiming, head-in-the-clouds sunrise house, the album feels like a relic of a lost era. That's not meant as a criticism - New Energy is superb - but it is true that his choice of neo-classical strings, gentle new age melodies, sweeping synthesizer chords and disconnected vocal samples would not sound out of place on a Global Communication album.

Review: Toresch set a few tongues wagging with their 2016 debut album, Essen Fur Alle, so hopes are naturally high for this untitled follow-up. Once again, Detlef Weinrich (ALA Tolouse Low Trax) provides the moody, end-of-days music - think coldwave fused with early industrial and wayward electronica, and you're close - with Viktoria Wehrmeister penning the lyrics and adding half-spoken, half-sung vocals in typically stylish fashion. We're particularly enjoying the almost beat-less, weirdo ambience of "El Fuego" and the attractively angular fuzziness of "Guayabame", a track rich in lolloping tribal percussion and bleak electronics. That said, many may gravitate towards the moody minimal wave hypnotism of "Las Locas" and the rising, end-of-days synth-pop of "Tocar".

Review: The final part of Dark Entries' long-running series of archival Patrick Cowley releases showcases tracks originally recorded for Afternooners, a late '70s gay porn film by director John Coletti. As with previous Cowley releases on Dark Entries, the double album also contains previously unheard material rediscovered from the Fox Studio archives. It's another essential collection of atmospheric synthesizer music in the producer's distinctive style, all told, with tracks ranging from the whistling cheeriness of "Hot Beach" and the sparkling, cowbell-laden throb of "One Hot Afternoon" to the dubbed-out, semi-ambient dreaminess of "Bore & Stroke" and the humid, upbeat "Jungle Orchid".

Review: The genius of Music From Memory has always been the label's ability to shine a light of sublime music that most will have missed. Certainly, very few will be familiar with the work of Geoffrey Landers, a Denver, Colarado-based multi-instrumentalist who recorded three albums and one single between 1982 and 1987. This superb retrospective contains material from all of these releases, deftly showcasing Landers' intriguing musical palette - a trippy mixture of vintage electronics, experimental new wave influences, strange spoken word snippets, occasional dub influences, effects-laden guitar passages, post-punk attitude, minimalist synth-funk and what would now be considered discordant art-rock. It's a stylistic melting pot that makes for wonderful listening.

Review: Belgian imprint Stroom return with more odd yet fascinating obscurities. This time it is Latvian project NSRD. The late Juris Boiko and Hardijs Ledins were the core members of the band, which is were best known as one of the country's most avant-garde, postmodern, experimental and underground music groups most active in the '80s. Their activities were widely multidisciplinary and they cannot be considered as purely musicians, since none of them had a professional musical education. Their creativity was manifested through a variety of media - music, performance and action art, visual arts, poetry, samizdat and the introduction video art in Latvia etc. NSRD also made a significant contribution to the explanation of the theoretical aspects of art in the interpretation of the postmodernist movement. They also developed the independent concept of 'Approximate Art'. At the end of the '80s, NSRD connected and performed with several artists and musicians living in West Germany, including Indulis Bilzens, Micky Remann and Maximilian Lenz aka Westbam amongst others.

Review: Bernard Parmegiani was a French composer best known for his electronic or acousmatic music that passed away in 2013. Here Transversales Disques present a previously unreleased soundtrack of the 1982 film 'Rock' directed by Michel Treguer. Born in 1940, Treuger is a television producer, radio producer, journalist and writer also known for the popular early '90s television series 'Les compagnons de l'aventure'. Enjoy this limited edition remaster from the original tapes. Exclusive liner notes plus artwork by Jean-Philippe Talaga. Licensed from Claude Anne Parmegiani. Parmegiani has been cited as a major influence by the likes of Aphex Twin, Autechre and Sonic Youth.

Review: Alessio Natalizia uncovers his new album under the Not Waving guise for Powell's Diagonal Records: a label he has become a stalwart of since the inception of his project a few years ago. The former Walls member and Ecstatic label boss follows up last year's Animals LP with another collection of contorted EBM derivatives - with a quirked-out/tongue-in-cheek approach that is evident throughout the label's entire catalogue. Fresh from a collaboration (which appears here in the form of "Where Are We") and tour with Canadian songstress Marie Davidson, the Good Luck LP features a whole heap of jagged and angular dancefloor experiments. Including the lead single "Me Me Me" of course, as well as many other highlights such as the gnarly acid-punk of "Children Are Our Phuture" or the strobe-lit ketted sing-along that is "Watch Yourself".

Review: A collaboration between Suzanne Kraft aka Los Angeleno Diego Herrera and the Antinote/LIES affiliated D.K. aka Dang Khoa Chau for Jonny Nash's Melody As Truth imprint. The label has thus far acted as an outlet mainly for Herrera and Nash's work, both individually and in collaboration: such as on the label's last release: the Passive Aggressive LP. Lush ambient journeys incorporating pristine digital textures and the metallic glimmer of classic FM synthesis are what is on offer here, for the most part: lo-fidelity dreams that flicker with neon-lit aesthetics all captured in VHS/Betamax resolution. Think of the perfect blend between Herrera's What You Get For Being Young LP in 2016 and the downbeat moments on Chau's Island Of Dreams LP for Antinote of the same year and you have a pretty good idea of how it sounds.

Review: The sixth release of Amsterdam record label Safe Trip brings together a few dozen ambient tracks from Japanese twin brothers Satoshi & Makoto from Kawasaki. The whole album's beats, melodies and musical phrases come from the Casio CZ-5000: which gives the record its name. Label chief Young Marco discovered their music via YouTube videos, which the two musicians had recorded in order to illustrate the possibilities of the aforementioned instrument and most of the material was said to be influenced by acts like The Orb and Yellow Magic Orchestra. According to the label, it is largely of an ambient nature, positive mood and possibly alien origin.

Review: The most famous whistler in cinema (so arguably the most famous whistler in the world), Alessandro Alessandroni has contributed to cinema, TV and music with as much influence as his old friend and collaborator Ennio Morricone. He was also making some incredibly innovative electronic compositions on the side, it would seem... These four variations were found in an old archive in his African home and have never, before now, been heard before. From the densely-layered spaghetti-flavoured "Afro Voodoo" to the soft sultry swoons of "Afro Sentiment" by way of the sheer dancefloor pump of "Afro Discoteca", this is a truly remarkable find for Four Flies. Made all the more poignant due to his recent passing, too. You know what to do.

Review: Brain Machine's Peaks LP was a highlight of the Emotional Response catalogue last year, and it's only right that the album gets a high-class set of remixes to accompany it. The label have pulled out the stops here with an all-star cast, leading in with Salon Des Amateurs dreamweaver Toulouse Low Trax who drops a pinging, plucking version of "Light Space". Then Gigi Masin steps up with an illustrious revision of "Crystal Clouds", while Harmonious Thelonious brings a heavy yet measured, techno-minded presence to "Traces". Ronny & Renzo round the package out with playful synth splashes on their version of "Eclipse Predictions".

Review: Much to the surprise of many house enthusiasts, Joe Claussel's Sacred Rhythm imprint delves into plenty of different genres and styles, all of them bound together by a recurring thread of percussive delight. Paul David Gillman debuts here, coming through with three gloriously loose slices of kinetic ambient fuzz, with the terms 'new age' and 'balearic' coming through vividly. The opening "Red Earth" is a supremely jazzy whirlpool of sonics and harmonic delight, which evaporates neatly into the much vaster planes of "Installation III". "Winter's Moon (excerpt)" washes away all the fury and energy of the previous two tracks to end up somewhere desolate and calming, offering a beautiful piece of soundscaping for the ambient fans. Recommended.

Review: Largely found bashing out bastardised machine jams on Dark Entries, Bill Converse makes a logical move to Tabernacle for this new double pack of devilishly decent burners for the adventurous end of the night. The nagging hisses and end-of-days bleeps on "Tinnitus" will get right under your skin, while "Permission" stomps out a broken down jack to get the waifs and strays shaking. "Borealis" takes star-gazing techno into a particularly noisy dimension, "Operation" channels the spirit of Jamal Moss-minded acid freakery and "Mutiny" depicts the unkempt groove left after the breakdown of the hardware. "Awakening" ends things on a brighter note, twisting out grubby acid lines through some beautiful but distant chords and a snaking set of blown out drums.

Review: Tangerine Dream's new studio album coincides with the 50th anniversary of the band. In 2014, Original member Edgar Froese with newcomers Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss and Hoshiko Yamane began to work on what was planned to be the first album of Tangerine Dream's Quantum Years. This would be a new phase and promised an updated, contemporary take on the band's trademark sound of the '70s and '80s. From sequencer driven electronica to ambient soundscapes and energetic/upbeat moments. Quantum physics and philosophy had inspired Froese to attempt a translation of these concepts into music, however he passed away in early 2015. Froese requested that his wife - Bianca (visual artist and TD's manager for the last 15 years) would ensure his vision for the project be realized. Throughout the last two years, Quaeschning, Schnauss and Yamane worked hard on achieving a result that would match Edgar's expectations - as well as the ones of TD's loyal fan base. It's worth noting that the compositions appearing on the album are not only based on theoretical concepts and ideas Edgar had outlined, but also on a large number of actual musical sketches that he luckily had already prepared during the initial phase of the band's reformation process.

Review: Originally released in 1981, Dream Theory in Malaya: Fourth World Volume Two was recorded at Grant Avenue Studio in Hamilton, Ontario with the engineering and production help of Bob and Daniel Lanois. Hassell would experiment in the basement studio of Michael Brook's house in Toronto, who was helping him to coordinate the recording. From there he would commute to Grant Avenue and record down on multitrack, along with Brian Eno who was also there. The ambient legend played drums and bells on the tracks "Courage," "Dream Theory," and "These Times". This edition has been remastered and reissued for the first time in 36 years. Hassell coined the term 'Fourth World' to describe his musical style, as expressed both in his trumpet playing and in his approach to composition. The distinct style combines the philosophy and techniques of minimalism with Asian and African influences and relies heavily on the use of electronic recording techniques.

Review: LCN is the alias for Le Chocolat Noir, an artist whose thirst for roughneck electro seems absolutely devoid of any sort of replenishment. The man's been active for near ten years now, skipping and hopping from label to label, and he lands on Gooiland Elektro, a subsidiary of Enfant Terrible, with these four stomping bangers. The A-side twists and turns its industrial gears with a fluid motion, bubbling up all sorts of dark energies from the depths of the inferno; the flip is no less magnetic in its look-and-feel, offering up two dicey cuts - "Solitude" and "En Retirant" - the former being a deep excursion into cold-waves and the latter a nasty, vibrating acid hybrid for the warehouse.