Leland Jackson (a.k.a Ahnnu) has released a new EP on Leaving Records, titled Parallax.
The LA-based producer Leland Jackson and head of Dogtropic label last appeared on Leaving in 2015; his latest work has landed on NNA Tapes and Rap Vacation.
We're told to expect six tracks of "160-bpm minimalist collage beats" that blur the line between "hyper-speed footwork and drum & bass with slowed down, chopped 'n' screwed beats."
Released July 31, 2018 via Leaving Records
Stumbled upon this ep just recently --- Hindustani classical music w Dilla cover. There's a full in-depth write up about this band & ep HERE
Jaubi (جو بھی) is an urdu word roughly translating to "whatever".
Creating whatever sounds good and whatever feels good is the goal.
Elements of Hindustani (North Indian) classical music used.
Released July 14, 2016 via Astigmatic Records
WEN (aka Owen Darby) will release his new album 'EPHEM:ERA' via Big Dada. This follows his ‘CARVE + GAZE’ EP for the label in 2017, and is his first full length since his 2014 debut ‘Signals’ on Keysound.
In 2018, consumption can be fleeting and momentary with only fragments retained. WEN’S new album is a response to this transient state of affairs: 'EPHEM:ERA' is presented as a collection of “temporal pauses” from an internet-driven, restless cycle of distractions. It’s an album of precise tracks, drawn from his spectrum-spanning, bass-driven style; it’s for an era of endless, short-lived discoveries. Influenced in part by architect Carlo Scarpa’s designs whilst drawing inspiration from late night drives and weather patterns, those cyclical, passing movements – from rain, to fog, to mist – struck a chord with Darby’s fixation on transience. Here Darby steps further outward, rendering the changing currents of UK-born, ‘weightless' iterations of grime across 12 tracks which he describes as “electronic studies - a sequence mapped out across the fringes of experimental club music”.
Revolving compositions map out the core of ‘EPHEM:ERA’ while subsequent texturing and honing puts disparity at the heart of Darby’s process, balancing impulsive creativity and acute attention-to-detail. Warm, worldly sounds meet with cold, digital constructions. In ‘RAIN’, melodic bleeps are enveloped inside airy atmospherics. Elsewhere, ‘VOID’ sees vivid, smashed glass punctuated by tense, steely arpeggios. The album shifts between different rhythmic approaches. In ‘CURVE_RELAY’, the drums are swung, heavy with groove, and percussion recedes in and out of focus of a shifting atmosphere. In ‘TIME II THINK’, icy, raw melodies are propelled by a 4/4 kick drum, muffled and subdued. The changing structures of his tracks reflect a wide-open perspective, delineating between different genre markers and club contexts.
As an album, it’s as much a reaction to our relationship with music as it is a continued exploration. Collecting together different, distinct moods in a deluge of tracks, it’s a comment on prevailing, fickle attitudes; music is quickly discovered, momentarily explored, before attention is swiftly re-directed elsewhere. But, at the same time, it’s a vehicle for connecting new ideas: bringing together lawless, overlapping lineages into something that’s forward-facing and whole.
Released July 6, 2018 via https://wen-music.bandcamp.com/music
Paxico Records is proud to bring you Retrospective, a survey of the silky, home-spun productions signature of Richmond legend Ohbliv. These are his greatest hits, pressed on vinyl for the first time. Presented on double LP with mesmerizing labels, the album is 28 tracks hand-picked by the artist and label head Chris Hund, marking his most expansive career anthology to date.
Ohbliv is a lone prospector in the realm of beats - a producer’s-producer, an innovating force in an ever multi-hyphenating sound. After 30+ beat tapes, various side projects and an exceedingly lovely radio show delivered over the course of a decade, Ohbliv heads may know the calling cards: a telepathic ear for samples, devastating harmonics, spiritshaking drums and the raw, tactile energy he manages to wrangle from a 404.
With assiduous technique and ferocity of heart, he crafts experiences that speak to whispers of the soul and messages from the cosmos.
Here his works are lovingly collected in an effort to bring forth the glowing soul and versatile spirit of the artist, inviting you to bask in the vision.
Released August 3, 2018 via Paxico Records
Following the release of “Joined Ends” in 2014 - a deeply intimate and textured project he describes as his “chamber music” record - Dorian Concept performed everywhere from Glastonbury to Sonar to MoMA PS1’s Warm Up and then deliberately took himself off the radar. The time since has been spent meticulously un-learning his prodigious production process and developing a brand new sound that even the most clued-up won’t be expecting - showcased on ‘Promises’, in the most prominent use of his voice to date. The recording and processing of his vocals represent not only a more human expression of his highly technical sound, but also an inclination toward recursion - the challenge, ephemerality, and demand for attention of “unequal repetition” which shapes the build and deconstruction of energy throughout the record.
Taking inspiration from multi-generational eclecticism (‘60s jazz, ‘70s fusion, ‘80s neo prog-rock, ‘90s electronica), Dorian Concept sought to replicate “modern” music elements with old-fashioned methods, live-playing and hand-recording deceptively digital sounds in service of a tongue-in-cheek “parody of nostalgia”. Having produced the record largely in the years 2016 and 2017 - widely characterized as periods of a cultural reckoning throughout the democratic world - he ambitiously took timely themes of cumulative error, shortening attention spans and subjective experience and transposed them into his making. As is to be expected from him by now, for all the considered, high-concept musing, the result is refreshingly unpretentious: dizzying swells, cacophonous breakdowns and formidable rhythms are both expert and childlike, hyperactive and hyper-focused.
Left to freely associate, Dorian Concept describes the record as follows:
Using a different vocabulary.
“Lively, Chaotic and Loud”
Sloppy Virtuosity.
Deconstructed with Love.
Audible Uncertainty.
Visceral.
Crowded.
Somewhat of a Study.
Fast-paced.
Pointless ... Meaning there’s no dot at the end.
Born Oliver Thomas Johnson, the self-taught keyboardist and producer should be no stranger to those in the Brainfeeder orbit. He first caught the attention of the crew in its infancy, when head honcho Flying Lotus discovered Dorian Concept’s MySpace profile and swiftly included a remix in his lauded debut Essential Mix (2008). Dorian Concept went on to tour with FlyLo’s live band, appeared at some of Brainfeeder’s earliest international label nights in 2009 (Off-Sonar in Barcelona and the infamous Hearn Street Car Park session in London), and released a string of celebrated EPs and albums for Kindred Spirits imprint Nod Navigators, Affine and Ninja Tune - as well as remixing Taylor McFerrin, contributing production to Thundercat’s “The Golden Age of Apocalypse” and playing keys on Flying Lotus’ seminal “Cosmogramma”. The announcement of his signing comes alongside the reveal of a brand new live show, which he is set to debut at Brainfeeder’s takeover of Sonicmania in Tokyo on 17 August.
Released August 3, 2018 via Brainfeeder
Having recently made his inaugural outing on Brainfeeder with “Aphelion EP”, British producer Ross From Friends aka Felix Clary Weatherall returns with his debut album on Flying Lotus’ label. "Family Portrait" is characterised by a perpetual desire to experiment and Felix's obsessive attention to detail, somehow marrying an intricately layered production style with warm, heavily saturated sonics that elevate, rather than stifle, his melodious funk. With a handful of revered 12”s under his belt via Breaker Breaker, Lobster Theremin, Distant Hawaii, Magicwire and a 10” on Molten Jets. “Family Portrait” showcases his ability to shift and evolve, moving from the world of lo-fi to the world of FlyLo, he demonstrates a versatility exemplified by the ease in which he can switch between playing shows with Little Dragon, holding down a peak-time slot in Berghain’s Panorama Bar and performing live at Maida Vale for BBC Radio 1.
The culmination of almost two years of intense studio time, working 20 hour days, and often spending months perfecting just one aspect of a track. "I tried to be careful with every single sound” he explains, “Trying new things, making a bit more of an explosive sound”. The album also finds Felix recording his own voice for the first time, with the resulting tracks acting as snapshots of his personal life while recording. “Every time I went to make music the things which would really grab me are the emotional things, and while I’m in that place I felt I could really focus on the track. That was a massive part of this album, tapping into my emotions… into my emotional instability”.
The album title - “Family Portrait” - also nods to a very specific personal aspect of the record: the influence of his parents. Dance music has always been a feature in Felix's life, with early memories of his dad producing music on his analogue set-up, or pumping out hi-NRG tracks on the turntable, he grew up discussing, sharing and learning about music from his dad. “My dad has been hugely influential to the whole thing,” he explains. However it was with the emergence of some old family VHS tapes, and the story of how Felix’s parents came to meet, that the true significance became clear.
Having built up a sound system in the 1980’s while playing at various squat parties around London (including the then derelict Roundhouse) Felix’s dad decided he wanted to get out of the capital and see some of Europe. He got his hands on a bus and started putting word out through a network of like-minded friends and acquaintances. At the time just a friend of a friend, the trip caught the attention of Felix’s mum-to-be, who offered to document the whole thing in return for a seat, and in 1990 they loaded up the sound system and hit the road. Travelling through France, Belgium, West and East Germany (though returning through a unified one) and beyond, setting up in towns to share their passion for the sounds of hi-NRG dance, Italo disco and proto-Techno through spontaneous parties in whatever venue they could find.
Releases July 27, 2018 via Brainfeeder
Following a self-titled EP last year, Dario Rojo Guerra aka Natureboy Flako released his second album ‘Theme For A Dream’ on Five Easy Pieces on 20th July 2018. Exploring the boundaries of music, science and spirituality through a prism of colourfully synthesised-sound, heart-pounding rhythm and cinematic soundtracks; the core essence of ‘Theme For A Dream’ is the exploration of the human inner space, the balance of musical energies and music’s healing capabilities.
‘Theme For A Dream’ is accompanied by an experimental and interactive website that allows users to preview music while being an immersive, unique multi-sensual 4D experience of its own. Snippets of the music from 'Theme For A Dream' become audio visual poetry and an immersive exploration of state of the art technology and oneself.
Released July 20, 2018 via https://natureboyflako.bandcamp.com/music
Explore more at Theme For a Dream
GT.2 is one of Knx newest. ---name your price.
Released July 24, 2018 via https://knxwledge.bandcamp.com/music