Fennesz - (2014) Bécs LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– Editions Mego 165

 The last time Fennesz released an album on Austrian label Mego it was 2001 and the name of that release was 'Endless Summer'. Now, in 2014 Editions Mego is extremely proud to release the conceptual follow up that landmark of abstract pop. Bécs (pronounced 'baeetch') is Hungarian for Vienna and is the first full length Fennesz solo release since 2008's 'Black Sea'.

Eschewing the more drone orientated works of 'Black Sea', 'Bécs' returns to the more florid pop mechanisms as deployed on Endless Summer. 'Static Kings' features the extra leverage of Werner Dafeldecker and Martin Brandlmayer who deploy a range of atmospheric abstract effects to shape a bewitching sound world. The 10 minute centrepiece 'Liminality' (featuring Tony Buck on drums) is classic Fennesz: epic, evocative, beautiful, impossible. 'Pallas Athene' creates a sanctuary of hovering beauty which leads into the title track. Emotional and assured, the track 'Bécs' is an astonishing contribution to contemporary pop. 'Sav' co-written by Cédric Stevens (aka Acid Kirk) inhabits a less structural terrain as one enters a forest of small sounds and oblique atmospheres, where the closing 'Paroles', a gentle melody unravels amongst swirls of electronics and fried disruption. Bécs is not just an album or a series of songs, it's a world to inhabit, a landscape ripe with sounds, songs and that esteemed Fennesz signature.

François Bonnet & Stephen O’Malley - (2019) Cylene 2xLP

Editions Mego ‎– Editions Mego 262

 First time outing from two ardent explorers of peripheral sound tactics. Cylene is the first collaboration by François J. Bonnet ( Kassel Jaeger) and Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O))) ). Laid bare we have a subtle and nuanced study of their individual practices forming a titanic whole. O’Malley’s guitar inscribes a void that patiently opens up a spacious universe for Bonnet to discreetly alter with perception re-orientating studio maneuvers.

Cylene is infinitely rewarding for those that succumb to its delicate detours. A vast glacial plain unfurls slowly upon the listener invoking a mood similar to the stillness found following despair. As Joseph Ghosn succinctly outlines in his liner notes, “Stephen and François deal in those moments and instants that happen after the violence, and the ugliness and the mess. Their music is about chaos being summoned and ordered. It is about the noise that nurtures your ears after a long heartbreaking pain. I have heard the sounds of wars being fought and the noises of hearts being broken, and I have never found a shelter as soothing as this music which makes me think of sunken ships and beauty found in the depths of oceans long forgotten”.

Giuseppe Ielasi / Kassel Jaeger - (2013) Parallel / Grayscale LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– Editions Mego 161

Editions Mego present the first collaborative work by sound artists Kassel Jaeger and Giuseppe Ielasi. 'Parallel/Grayscale' melds recordings of two improvised performances, one with entirely analog devices, and another, laptop-based performance, for an inter-dimensional exchange and subtraction of their unique spatial and textural properties, both clocking in at over 18 minutes in length.The first piece, 'Parallel' is slow moving and droney, initially focussed on looming bass shapes and reactive surface textures but altering dynamics as the mass moves through space with alternating density to a section that sounds like a raptor dissolved in a sink of acids and settling to a gloomy, chamber-like close. The B-side 'Grayscale' is more concerned with a constantly shifting patina of texturhythms and changeable weather system harmonics, as moody drones arch overhead of crumbling, dissolving, liquifying patterns and pulses with an engrossingly seasick quality.

Jan St. Werner - (2020) Molocular Meditation LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– Editions Mego 265

 Molocular Meditation is a bespoke light and sound environment featuring the voice of the Fall’s Mark E Smith. Smith is heard making observations on mundane objects, events and a range of meditation techniques basically associating his discontent with an apolitical british upper class. His voice forms the narrative component of an electroacoustic composition by Jan St. Werner placed in a hyper-real scenario evoking a state of transformation and deceleration. Molecular Meditation premiered at Cornerhouse, Manchester in 2014. This album presents a re-edited stereo version of the original multi-channel installation. Voice and guitar feedbacks were recorded by Werner and Smith at Blueprint Studios Manchester, electronics in Werner’s Studio in Berlin.

The B-side consists of unreleased new work partly written around the same time as Molocular Meditation in context of Werner's Fiepblatter Catalogue on Thrill Jockey. Back to Animals is a non-metric rhythm exercise frantically hybridizing percussive accents with synthesized pulse. On the Infinite of Universe and Worlds is the layout for an electronic opera on Giordano Bruno’s Renaissance writings which Werner was asked to conceptionalize for Finish festival Musica Nova. VS Canceled finds Mark E. Smith reading an email from Domino Records explaining their discontinuation of Von Sudenfed, a band Mark E. Smith had founded with Mouse on Mars' Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma in 2006. Their debut album Tromatic Reflexxions came out on Domino in 2007.

Jasmine Guffond - (2020) Microphone Permission LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– Editions Mego 273

 Editions Mego is proud to release the new album by Australian producer Jasmine Guffond. Developed over a two year period, Microphone Permission is an unsettling musical journey utilising contemporary tools of communication to display Guffond’s ongoing research into online surveillance and sound as a method of investigation.

Source material on Microphone Permission are from various projects Guffond has been working on; a commission to sonify the data of the city of Melbourne, a dance performance about the future sounds of an extinct forest, an installation that sonifies Twitter meta data in real time, a job as a composer for a theatre work about music and feminism by five young female identifying performers in Western Sydney and a site specific installation at the Linachtalsperre dam that employed the harmonic frequencies of electric currents.

The results are a stark, brooding, disorientating journey into a paranoid musical field that sits somewhere between ambient club music and a dystopian soundtrack. Elements of techno, classical music and sound art form a dark intriguing masterwork that questions the nature of invasive, algorithmic and computational listening practices.

For example Microphone Permission refers to the consent we routinely give when installing various apps. onto our smart devices. Inspired by a 2018 scandal in which fans of Spain’s most popular soccer team were effectively turned into unwitting spies by granting the La Liga application microphone permission. No matter which make or model, all smart devices are built with a microphone that is by default, forever listening. Listening in these situations often takes on an algorithmic form that enables tech developers to bypass public response to what is intuitively considered invasive practice, that is, traditional modes of eavesdropping such as using the microphone to listen and record audio.

Guffond’s investigative measures invites the public to experience her new album whilst considering the implications of computational listening.

Kevin Drumm - (2012) Relief

 Editions Mego ‎– Editions Mego 137

 Chicago noise outsider Kevin Drumm has been tirelessly pursuing a lonely, blackened strain of experimental music for many years, and while we're obsessed with pretty much everything he puts his name to, 'Relief' is maybe the perfect culmination of his fractured sounds to date. Fusing the wavering synth-led dread of Hospital Productions albums 'Imperial Distortion' and 'Imperial Horizon' with the teeth-grinding extreme noise of breakout 'Sheer Hellish Miasma' Drumm has found a rare middle ground that pulls together the best of both. There can be no denying that 'Relief' is a punishingly intense record, but underneath the barrage of radio static, distortion and feedback you can just about make out slow moving harmonies; the kind of eking lone gunman intensity we last heard on, well, 'Imperial Horizon'. A single near forty-minute slab of noise, 'Relief' isn't an easy undertaking, but the length and repetition reveals all of Drumm's hidden subtleties and restraint. Sure those aren't words you would usually hear attached to a noise record, but 'Relief' is not your average noise record. It should be easy to compare the record to Tim Hecker (especially 'Mirages'-era), Skullflower, or Yellow Swans but there's something exceptionally different about his sound - Drumm's music is careful, singular and thoughtful and the rarity of his skill is starkly evident in repeated listens. Without a doubt one of the finest experimental records we've had cross our path this year, and one nobody in their right mind should pass up - don't say we didn't warn you.

Klara Lewis & Simon Fisher Turner - (2018) Care LP

 

 Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 253

 Editions Mego is proud to present the first outing from the legendary
English musician, songwriter, composer and producer Simon Fisher
Turner alongside the highly acclaimed emerging Swedish sound artist Klara Lewis.

Care is a unique outing rife with delicious dichotomy. The opening
track positions the aggressive directly against more fragile moments.
On the subsequent track medieval melodies sprout from a dense rhythmic hiss. Witness a Middle Eastern song appearing amongst a haunted rattling reverb in the epic ‘Tank’ whilst a beautiful force of hope can be found within the sound world of the the closing track ‘Mend’.

The wide scope of references and constant pull of forces make thisdebut offering a timeless patchwork of sonic spaces. Care is an album which sways in such a salubrious manner one can’t help but delight in its unique form of location/disorientation.

Mark Fell - (2011) Periodic Orbits Of A Dynamic System Related To A Knot

 

 Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 133

Precision is the key with Mark Fell’s work, and things couldn’t be any more precise than his latest album, Periodic Orbit Of Dynamic System Related To A Knot, which comprises two tracks, entitled This and That, each lasting precisely twenty-three minutes and sixteen seconds. Equally, the music presented here, whilst sourced from various projects, is, as ever, extremely dynamic and clean cut, and the result of extensive digital processing. In fact apart for the sound of a Mac Mini failing to load a DVD and a Pi Saw flute, the entire album was recorded, mixed and edited via MIDI.

Mark Fell first came to attention in the late nineties as one half of SND, a project he set up with Mat Steel, with three albums released in four years on Mille Plateaux, with a fourth album published two years ago on Raster-Noton. With his solo project, Fell has continued to explore the possibilities of digital processing, most prominently in the last couple of years on a series of releases for Editions Mego and Raster-Noton.

Although only comprising two side-long tracks, the music on this album is sourced from a wide variety of projects, from previously unreleased material, live versions or outtakes. Fell also used parts of a quadriphonic piece originally composed for Barcelona’s Supersimetria and presented earlier this year. The two tracks are arranged into sequences of various lengths and appearance, some extremely syncopated and hectic, others much more sequential and regulated. The transitions between these segments are for the most part extremely obvious as Fell juxtaposes them somewhat abruptly, yet as they are often collated from similar sound sources, it is actually surprisingly easy to loose one’s bearings and succumb to the strange hypnotic aspect of this work. At times however, Fell opts for more subtle alterations, as he progressively erodes one set of patterns and builds up another until the conversion is complete.

Both tracks follow similar patterns, alternating between moments of intense digital assaults, some fairly succinct, others, like the one opening This, expanding over longer periods, and calmer sections, where digital stuttering makes way for more subtle sequences. This is often in these quieter moment that Fell’s intricate work becomes much easier to appreciate as he reveals how sounds actually interact with each other and at times alter the course of a track drastically by way of repeat sonic mutations.

Like previous records, Periodic Orbit… can at times feel extremely cold and devoid of human touch, yet the music actually appears to react to changes in very organic fashion, continuously evolving from one sequence to the next, at times smoothly, at others more suddenly. Perhaps due to its seamless set up, this album may well be Mark Fell’s most hypnotic release to date.

Mark McGuire - (2010) Living With Yourself

 

 Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 107

 Mark McGuire operates chiefly as guitarist in the legendary Emeralds. However, he also has racked up an impressive set of solo releases over the last few years (albeit mainly in small to micro print runs).

Living With Yourself is his new album and we at Editions Mego hope to meet any demand which may arise from this fine selection of modern crafted guitar tunes. Focusing on his family, early friendships and the problems that inevitably develop through years of knowing someone, it takes McGuire's sound even further out, and contains some his most accomplished songs to date.

The opening track is fine example of McGuire's magic technique of taking a lone acoustic guitar then transforming the track into bliss-out electro wash looping off into the distance. And tracks like ‘Clouds Rolling In’ and ‘Brain Storm’ take off where such McGuire classics as ‘The Marfa Lights’ (which incidentally is planned for a future reissue) left off. While connoisseurs of his sound will find all they desire in here, many superb surprises await around every corner. These are songs that cruise, bubble and rise to the top.

Merzbow Marhaug - (2012) Mer Mar LP

 

  Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 025

 

Living, livid legends Masami 'Merzbow' Akita and Lasse Marhaug have been trading blows since the mid-90s: significant releases have included the split single 'First Rock' in 2001, and a number of live collaborations, usually featuring other artists - such as Jim O'Rourke and Hair Stylistics. Mer Mar is their first recording together as a duo, made at GOK Sound Studios in Tokyo in 2010. An action painting of pedal-manipulated scrap metal screeching and analogue synthesis, referencing classic 80s Merzbow works like Material Action, Mer Mar is no easy listen but then, who wants that when you could be having your brain crushed in a vice and all the air sucked out of your lungs? An essential purchase for all serious noise masochists.

NPVR - (2018) 33 33 LP

 Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 251 

NPVR is moniker taken on board by PITA AKA Peter Rehberg and Factory Floor’s Nik Void. 33 33 is their debut recording. Peter and Nik both share formidable reputations in the post industrial shape-shifting world of sound and form with a vast range of releases and collaborative endeavours over a number of years. Together they tie together their collective experience into a vast array of sonic devices unleashing an album of pragmatic imbalance and psychedelic orientation. Blurring the lines of techno, ambient, avant garde, noise etc

33 33 positions itself in the nebulous realm of contemporary (dis)comfort presenting itself on the border of music and sound, the social and the private.

 

Heather Leigh - (2018) Throne LP

 Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 257

 

Editions Mego (Shit & Shine, Oren Ambarchi) drop the latest LP from Heather Leigh (once known as Heather Leigh Murray). Throne is a record of singer-songwriter noir full of dark energy. Leigh commands her tracks with a smouldering intensity that is reminiscent of Wild Beasts’ Hayden Thorpe. The instrumentals also have something of that group about them, though it’s less ‘Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants’ and more the Grouper-ish murk of Present Tense’s ‘New Life’ or Two Dancers’ ‘Underbelly’.

Oren Ambarchi - (2019) Simian Ange

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 264

 Eminent avant-garde/experimental explorer Oren Ambarchi opens a new avenue to embrace the warmth and mystic psychedelia of Brazilian music with assistance from celebrated percussionist Cyro Baptista.

Arriving just after Ambarchi’s 50th birthday, and Black Truffle's 10th, ‘Simian Angel’ sees him yoke back from the forward tilt of his rhythm-driven outings over the past decade in order to focus on his electric guitar playing, and with utterly sublime results. Keening sideways to the unyielding percussion of ‘Hubris’ [2016], he divines a floating space that recalls the beautifully pensile cats cradle of his early classic ‘Grapes From The Estate’ [2004], only this time his tone and arrangements are fleshlier, almost even maximalist in relief of what came before.

The first half’s ’Palm Sugar Candy’ is pure star-gazing material, with Baptista’s hand-played, self-built percussion drawing us horizontal while Ambarchi’s glowing notes gently colour the sky, gradually opening a glorious space between their dissonant, murmuring glisten and an awning, harmonic meridian, where Ambarchi (or some uncredited voice) whispers and scats into the space, gently recalibrating our depth perception and emphasising a sublime tension between sanguine stasis and a rhythmic cool breeze which sends leaves rustling, seeming to turn his guitar into a MIDI-triggering aeolian harp in the piece’s spellbinding, levitating 2nd half.

’Simian Angel’ follows with a more gripping rhythmic pull from the twanging Berimbau, just one of myriad percussion mastered by Baptista (who has previously played with everyone from John Zorn to Derek Bailey and Robert Palmer), before Ambarchi glydes into view like a chorus of the titular, sighing Simian Angels, drawing the piece upwards into thinner air, where guitar melts into piano and columns of warm air carry distant vocals from below. The drums rejoin to mark the work’s final avian swoops in strokes and dashes of Ambarchi’s guitar, triggering MIDI keys in a beautifully colourful sort of jazz fusion call and response, apparently located amid and above a subtropical canopy.

Oren Ambarchi - (2016) Hubris CD

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 227

Featuring Oren Ambarchi, Crys Cole, Mark Fell, Will Guthrie, Arto Lindsay, Jim O'Rourke, Konrad Sprenger, Joe Talia, Ricardo Villalobos, Keith Fullerton Whitman. Mastered & cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin, April 2016. Photography by Estelle Hanania, Sculptures by Daniel Druet, Design by Stephen O'Malley.

With shark-eyed vision and momentum, Oren Ambarchi pursues the technoid krautrock themes of his last few studio albums into the elliptical, tumultuous structures of Hubris, along with that notable list of collaborators. It sounds something like Silver Apples of the Moon played by Can.

“Hubris continues the exploration of relentless, driving rhythms heard on Ambarchi’s Sagittarian Domain (2012) and Quixotism (2014). Where those records looked to Krautrock and techno for their starting points, the sidelong opening track here begins from the perhaps unlikely inspirations of disco and new wave, drawing particularly from Ambarchi’s love of Wang Chung’s soundtrack to William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. Leaving behind the song-forms of these reference points, Ambarchi weaves a sustained and pulsating web of layered palm-muted guitars from which individual voices rise up and recede, eventually setting the stage for some lush guitar synth from Jim O’Rourke. Arnold Dreyblatt collaborator Konrad Sprenger contributes overtone-rich motorized guitar, pushing the piece into a satisfying intersection of shimmering minimalism and rhythmic drive that smoothly builds up until the entrance of Mark Fell’s electronic percussion in its final section.

After a short second part, in which Ambarchi, O’Rourke and Crys Cole pay tribute to the skewed harmonic sense of Albert Marcoeur with a track built from layered bass guitar figures and abstracted speech, the long final piece pushes the concept of the first side into darker and denser areas. Joined by electronic rhythms from Ricardo Villalobos and the twin drums of Joe Talia and Will Guthrie, the layered guitars of the first piece are transformed into a raw and tumbling fusion-funk groove that calls to mind early Weather Report or even the first Golden Palominos LP. As this stellar rhythm section rides a single repeated chord change into oblivion, a series of spectacular events emerge in the foreground: first, aleatoric synthesizer burbles from Keith Fullerton Whitman, then slashing skronk guitar from Arto Lindsay, until finally Ambarchi’s own fuzzed-out guitar harmonics take center stage as the piece builds to an ecstatic frenzy. Few artists could hope to include such an incredible variety of collaborators on one record and still hope for it to have a unique identity, but Ambarchi manages to do just that, crafting three pieces that emerge directly out of his previous work while also pushing ahead into new dimensions.”

Peterlicker - (2011) Nicht LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 019

The moment you have all been waiting for.... the arrival of the debut album release by Peterlicker. Despite following on in that terrible tradition of Butthole Surfers and Throbbing Gristle of stupid band names, Peterlicker (newly reformed after 20 years of inactivity) have, against all odds, come up with a serious slab of modern electronic rock.
NICHT comprises of five well crafted selections recorded over the summer of 2010. Having got their previous noise free fall style out of their system on the limited cassette ‘Last Slave’ (DeMEGO 013), the forgotten sons of the Viennese underground have stepped, dare we say it, into almost accessible song like structures.
However, this is no lightweights wet dream, and still pulls some heavy punches. With the sequenced pulse of ‘Always Right’ sitting tight with the near poetic ‘Tunnel 47053’, the real-rock stomper of ‘C-Slide’, and not forgetting the manic psychedelia of ‘Schleim’.
Its a classic, basically.

Photos: Ingo Pertramer.
Layout: Stephen O’Malley

Pinkcourtesyphone - (2016) Taking Into Account Only A Portion Of Your Emotions CD

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 236

 Formed from places, plastics, and particulars 2014-2016
Mastered at D&M, Berlin, September 2016
Design by Richard Chartier

The ongoing project by Los Angeles-based sound artist Richard Chartier (b.1971) sends you a new coded message of sumptuous distant drones and glacial orchestral heartrendings. Poised and polished slow motion pulsations tug at your emotions (but only a portion of them).

For those listeners desirous of the output of The Caretaker, Angelo Badalamenti, William Basinski, and other such dark wistful wonderment.

Pinkcourtesyphone is dark but not arch, with a slight hint of humor. Amorphous, changing, and slipping in and out of consciousness, operating like a syrup-y dream and strives to be both elegant and detached.

Please don’t hang up. This call is important. You’re coming with Pinkcourtesyphone… leave everything… it’s getting late.

Pita - (2019) Get On LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 269

 With over 2 decades of formal exploration and exhilarating abstraction Get On is, somewhat surprisingly, only the fourth solo Pita full length. Peter Rehberg has always been vouched for pushing the very limits of the technology du jour, be it software or in recent years a complex modular set. Rehberg’s motives are one of unbridled exploration often resulting in extreme and exhilarating audio works.

Having spearheaded the contemporary electronic sound with his uncompromising explorations of noise, rhythm and extreme computer music, he has also worked with numerous experimental musicians in collaboration. Rehberg stands in the wake of a sonic revolution, once fringe, which transformed over time into the sound of a generation of experimental geeks and club freaks worldwide.

Get On follows on from the 2016 release Get In. As with other titles in his ‘Get’ series we have an unwieldy blend of noise, abstraction, gnarled rhythm and blurred melody. Both analogue and digital tools are deployed as a means of expressing something outside of everyday electronics. ‘AMFM’ launches proceedings with some delightfully disorientating ricocheting electronics setting off a subversive sonic spectrum. ‘Frozen Jumper’ presents some ugly skittering electronics which rotate into exquisitely mangled forms before launching into an unsettling euphoria. The last piece ‘Motivation’ is a towering sensitive work, simultaneously haunted and emotionally moving. Get On marks another monumental work in the ongoing evolution from one of the ground zero pioneers of contemporary radical electronic music. As uncompromising as ever this is Pita in his prime. Emotion rung from the most twisted of frames.
credits
released October 25, 2019

Recorded and mixed by Peter Rehberg at Twisted, Wien, 2018/2019
Mastered by Russell Haswell, July 2019
Cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin, August 2019

Artwork by Tina Frank

Reinhold Friedl, Eryck Abecassis - (2020) Animal Électrique LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 274

 In retrospection it seems significant that Reinhold Friedl and Eryck Abecassis met for the first time in Marseille, a brute and operatic melting pot of cultures and sounds and noises. They idea of a common project came up, but it took almost ten years to be realized. Finally, François Bonnet (GRM artistic director) supported enthusiastically the collaboration and invited the two composer-performer to the Akousma Festival 2019 at Radio France in Paris. Intense rehearsal periods in Vienna and at la muse en circuit in Paris defined the compositional directions: precise transitions between accurately defined musical states: the raw furious energy textures of animal électrique 1 and 5, the contrasted calm with shaking fog horns “à la Lucier“ of animal électrique 3 and 6, noise & notes in the astonishing fusion of animal électrique 2 (which could also be titled “Tsunami and minor thirds“), and finally the delicate non-tempered vocality of both piano and synthesizer in animal électrique 4, a detuned operatic aria.

Animal électrique is a melting point of piano and synthesizer, both put into musical travesty: the piano becomes a sound & noise machine, with strong electronic influence; The analogue synthesizer starts to sing and to hoot, producing raw and brutal instrument-like sounds, in line with brute electronic synthesis. This allows Eryck Abecassis and Reinhold Friedl to combine the exigence of composing with the instant pleasures of the game.

released October 2, 2020

Reinhold Friedl – piano
Eryck Abecassis – analog synthesizer

Recorded by Grégory Joubert at Studio Luc Ferrari, La Muse en Circuit, CNCM, Paris, France, June 2019
Mixed by Eryck Abecassis
Mastered by Russell Haswell
Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnitstelle, Berlin

Special thanks: Wilfried Wendling, François Bonnet, Gilles Sivilotto

Russell Haswell & Florian Hecker - (2011) Kanal GENDYN LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 129

Florian Hecker and Russell Haswell present their first major collaborative release since 2007's 'Blackest Ever Black' LP for Warner Classics. 'Kanal GENDYN' is their soundtrack to an unscored film, 'Kanal Video' by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss, which documents an hour long 'ride' through Zurich's sewer system as seen from the perspective of a remotely controlled maintenance vehicle. Their accompanying soundtrack was created using an abstract sound synthesis procedure called Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis - written by Xenakis in the 1990s and here using the version implemented by computer music pioneer Alberto De Campo - which essentially 'creates sound from nothing' by methods of Pure data analysis. They realised and performed the soundtrack in 2004, intending their combination of sound and film to reflect the 'tunnel vision' feeling of much Techno club and rave projections from the '90s - and also nodding to Heinrich Kluver's accounts of Mescaline trips experienced in the 1920s - in effect taking wormholing visuals to the next dimension. Aesthetically the meandering, morphing waveforms bear a strong resemblance to their previous works together - GENDYN is based on the UPIC sequencer employed on their 2007 and 2008 releases - but synced with the visual corollary the experience of their sound is intensified, pot-holing a mind-bending, subterranean labyrinth of discordant, intrepid sonics. It's not for the casual listener, but those searching for an intense, visceral thrill will discover much to get excited about.

Stephen O'Malley - (2020) Auflösung der Zeit LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 278

Produced within the context of ‘The Guidebook of Church Burners’ publication release, this performance was recorded at �visual arts institution LE BAL in Paris, May 4th 2018. Published by Païen in a limited edition, the book explores and transforms �into an abstract narration the multiple facets of black metal iconography and history. Emerging from a dialogue between sound �and image, the otherworldly piece created for that evening by Stephen O’Malley is a result of this collaboration.

 

Thighpaulsandra - (2015) The Golden Communion 2xCD

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 207

It has been roughly 10 years since Thighpaulsandra’s last solo album, which is notable because it definitely feels like an entire decade-long backlog of ideas has been poured into this sprawling and overstuffed release. Fits of great inspiration, masterful songcraft, baroque orchestration, meandering filler, and plenty of very ill-conceived motifs all tirelessly vie for their moment in the sun over the course of an exhausting 2-hour tour de force of intermittently wonderful and oft-grueling excess. The Golden Communion is simultaneously a celebration of the joys of unfettered imagination and the perils of complete creative freedom. There is probably an absolutely perfect LP buried in here somewhere, but Thighpaulsandra certainly does not make it easy to find.

The Golden Communion might be single most bizarre and uncategorizable album that I have yet heard in my entire career of music criticism, as it is simultaneously hugely ambitious and absolutely impossible to figure out what exactly Thighpaulsandra was trying to achieve. This album is all over the place and nearly impossible to categorize. That said, The Quietus amusingly compared it to an Andrew Lloyd Webber rock musical, which certainly seems apt, if unintentionally cruel. To me, it feels more like an intended career-defining opus by an artist intent on making a huge statement, yet constantly derailed by multiple-personality disorder, resulting in endless jarring shifts in tone and vision. I have no idea if that kaleidoscopic aesthetic was by design or not, but Communion nevertheless does feel like the work of several different artists with very different visions. The personality that I like best (The Sophisticated '80s Pop Visionary) sadly surfaces in earnest just once (in the sinuous and burbling "The Foot Garden"). He does not even manage to turn up for the entire song either, as the piece opens with over 4 minutes of hallucinatory and discordant electronic meandering (the Mad Scientist personality?) before the actual song kicks in. Once it actually comes together, however, it is absolutely wonderful, resembling the best song that David Sylvian never wrote...

Thomas Brinkmann - (2019) Raupenbahn LP

 

Editions Mego ‎– EMEGO 252 

Editions Mego is proud to present the latest addition to the compelling discography of Thomas Brinkmann. Throughout his career Brinkmann has focussed on the human operating amongst industry alongside rhythms that manifest as a result of technological advancement. With this new release Brinkmann makes a u-turn, looking back to the early industrial age. Comprised of recordings of various looms, Raupenbahn investigates the sonic properties and consequences of the first automatic loom as constructed by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1745. Thomas Brinkmann once again adheres to his tendency for clarity and simplicity whilst further investigating not only the sound and rhythms of the machines (looms) but also what role they serve in society and what consequences they have on the environment. Raupenbahn presents 21 tracks in total, 11 feature on the vinyl, the remaining 10 as digital bonus tracks. The majority of recordings were undertaken by Brinkmann in 2017 with a Neumann KM 184 stereo set. Additional recordings were sourced with permission from Monika W. recs. from 2014 Central Museum of Textiles Łódź, Poland. Each piece presents a diversity of material which borders on the breathtaking and beautiful in richness and complexity. The various looms unravel rhythms and patterns unexpected from machines of the early industrial age.

The loom holds a significant role in shaping our world being the catalyst for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine which, alongside the subsequent work of Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace, paved the way for modern computing. There is a linage of the loom that fits succinctly in Brinkmann’s overall argument. Here we encounter a parallel between machine driven economies and the music that rose from such places, consider the Sheffield steel industries, the Manchester weaving industry or the Rhineland / Düsseldorf loom and machine industry. Is it a coincidence that the practice of such machines in the environment gave rise to today’s predilection for electronic dance music, in pop, soundtracks, etc

Raupenbahn features no treatment or processing and explicitly displays varying tempo and timbres which ascertain a wide range of acoustic structures. The artwork features Ingrid Wiener, Rosemarie Trockel and Alexandra Bircken, three different generations who would with ideas of fabric weaving, loming and the like. This exceptional release works on a number of levels alongside it’s striking sonic palette.

Anne Imhof - (2019) Faust

 

Pan ‎– PAN 98.

 Deriving from the acclaimed performance and exhibition—staged by Anne Imhof at the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation— the album Faust is part documentation and part elaboration, the sonic capture and extrapolation of the gestures, intensities, and durations of the live event.

Serving as the dramatic backbone of a several-hour long performance seen by thousands over the course of the Biennial, the soundtrack was a product of the collective and its individuals, animating and organising the performers while immersing the audience in the potent images of power and paradise. The music for Faust was written in a band-like process by Imhof and her close collaborators Billy Bultheel, Eliza Douglas, and Franziska Aigner during the months leading up to its premiere at the opening of the German Pavilion in Venice. From the chaos of the performative, the album is constructed out of live recordings and original arrangements, teasing out the most potent strands and weaving them into a new composition of brutal feeling and baroque intricacy, each track a testament to the energy that brought it into being.

Faust is anchored around three pieces—Medusa’s Song, O.W.E.N., and Queen Song—written and sung by performers Eliza Douglas and Franziska Aigner, whose sonorous and elegiac voices imbue the work as a whole with their crushing depths and dolorous moods. Between these urgent vocal interventions march and twist the winding fugues and electronic abstractions of Billy Bultheel, who has dismantled and reassembled the sonic landscapes of the pavilion, crafting new arrangements that couple the forcefulness of the physical encounter with the artifice of the studio. Throughout the album and culminating in its closing act—the brutal chorus of Douglas’ Faust’s Last Song, a pulsing canon of looped and layered voice pierced by black metal screams—the record admits the listener into the inner space of Imhof’s dramatic vision of power, complicity, and vulnerability.

Shifting hypnotically between times and spaces, between cries and calls, between polyphonic antiquity and polyrhythmic complexity, Faust is the record of a lost event and the promise of a new creation. The release of Faust illustrates the centrality of music to Imhof’s artistic practice. Her musical collaborations with Bultheel began in 2013, and this generative constellation expanded to include the contributions of Douglas and Aigner, together scoring Imhof’s Angst (2016) and recently her performance trilogy Sex (2019).

The album comes with an expansive booklet of photography by Nadine Fraczkowski, another long-standing collaborator of Imhof and a prolific photographer, whose images of the performance and portraits of its cast offer intimate views of the work far beyond documentation.

It was mixed by Nanni Johansson at Hansa Studios and Ville Haimala, mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, and designed by Zak Group featuring artwork conceived by Imhof together with Douglas and Fraczkowski. Co-published with German Pavilion 2017 and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin / Cologne / New York.

Bass Clef - (2014) Raven Yr Own Worl 12''

 

Pan ‎– PAN 41.

Ralph Cumbers' Bass Clef debuts on PAN with four pieces of fluent modular acid. The most substantial dancefloor drop on a tour of duty which has seen him release on Public Information, Punch Drunk, Alter, and Mordant Music (as Some Truths) in the past 6 months or so, his 'Raven Yr Own Worl' EP carves a dead English dance sound from his favoured Bug Brand modular system, made by Tom Bug of Bristol. For want of a more concise phrase, it's a Radiophonic Dub Rave style, coming off like the eager offspring of Luke Vibert and Graham Massey after a night on Cornish acid. A-side fires up the glyding square bass and swaggered 2-step of 'Self-Perpetuating Fun Loop' beside the dusty dub rave bleeps of 'Fluorescent City Shining City', whilst flipside deals in soggy, baggy 'Uphoric Nihilism', and 'Adventures Unventured, Tenderness Untendered' tips out with a blue bleep techno missive. RIYL Rephlex, vintage AI, BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Ben Vida - (2012) Esstends-Esstends-Esstends LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 23.

"Five pieces for Computer Controlled Modular Synthesizer and Digital Signal Processing. Composed and recorded from February 2010 – April 2011 in Brooklyn, New York. 'esstends-esstends-esstends' is a collection of spatial compositions in which audio focal points shift between external and internal emanation sources. The intent with this work is to escape the stereo image and create an activated listening space of expanded spatialization. Using just intoned pitch combinations to produce difference tones and harmonic distortions, sound materials are created that emanate from both the playback speakers and inner ear of the listener. By engaging the listener’s sense of aural perception and sound localization in relationship to compositional structure, these pieces act to reframe the listening experience and encourage an engagement with, not only the form and aesthetic of the music, but the sonic space a recorded piece of music projects. Higher amplitude will help to reveal."

Concrete Fence - (2013) New Release (1) 12''

 

Pan ‎– PAN 39.

 Regis and Haswell finally debut their Concrete Fence project - 12" mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g white vinyl which itself is housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by Bill Kouligas & Russell Haswell* Regis & Russell Haswell's Concrete Fence is a tantalising proposition for noise and techno freaks. As a duo they first rallied under the aegis at the 2012 Blackest Ever Black party in London's Corsica Studios with an improvised live set that veered between shambolic and inspired (often the former) but opened a whole can of worms for future baiting. On 'New Release' they've distilled its chaotic thrust with a more measured and ultimately rewarding approach, finding dynamic tension between Regis' gothic techno steppers' structures and Haswell's patented style of sonic malevolence. The effect is virulent, visceral and lip-bitingly strong, especially in the first two parts, while the third is a little more prosaic. 'Industrial Disease' synchs uranium-enriched synths and noise to a hulking halfstep chassis, whilst 'Caulk' relegates the rhythms to a flickering pulse and chain-rattling percussion against wretched drones and skrunched noise contortions. 'The Unabridged Truth' pares down to a simpler 4/4 chug with jetting streaks of computer noise to a narked finale - bringing an inspired debut EP to a close.

Heatsick - (2012) Déviation 12''

 

Pan ‎– PAN 29.

 "If “Dream Tennis” was any indication, Heatsick has struck a nerve with his singles that stretch preset washes of polyphony through sunset-hued landscapes of disco and house. Equipped with only a Casio keyboard, he has played alongside everyone from Omar Souleyman to DJ Harvey, Daniel Wang and Legowelt, and has demonstrated his ability not only to extend his keyboard to its limits, but to transcend its musical territory, opening up a diverse range of styles, genres and gestures to his dance-addled mimicries and musings.

“Déviation” marks Heatsick's most expansive dance release to date, featuring four tracks of kaleidoscopic house that combine a lo-fi aesthetic with clear, textured structures akin to wandering through a densely gridded, sultry urban environment. With influences ranging from Fela Kuti to Todd Terry, the EP revolves around as much of a disco aesthetic as it does a leisurely soundtrack to a casual day of hanging out.

The dub-influenced title track begins with a rhythmic, Latin-oriented introduction that delicately deviates towards its shimmering second half as the pitch spirals in a locked progression. The climax refuses to come quickly, however, and a flow of excitement frames the track until it finishes in step. The EP's subdued second track, “C'était un rendez-vous”, presents a sort of chill-out vibe with a cinematic consciousness. This track features backing by the prodigious saxophonist André Vida, whose snippets of smooth to free jazz are seamlessly interlaced within the last two tracks as well.

On the B-side, the B1 track “The Stars Down to Earth” is overlaid with a vocal sample and brims with a frenetic energy that calls to mind an ebulliently bassy, Bristol mentality. The concluding track, “No Fixed Address”, takes the territory of the B1 and introduces it to a 90s Todd Terry treatment, providing a jacking conclusion to this varied, densely-packed release worthy of multiple listenings."

Helm - (2014) The Hollow Organ 12''

 

Pan ‎– PAN 50.

Luke Younger's Helm returns to PAN with four vital incursions marking his first new material since the sessions that birthed his acclaimed 'Impossible Symmetry' and 'Silencer' releases these last couple of years. Since those releases Younger has been hard at work building his Alter label into one of the most interesting imprints around whilst also honing a petrifying, improvised live set that's turned our bones to stone every time we've heard it. 'The Hollow Organ' delivers four tracks of spirit-grinding constructs gleaned from a visceral palette of tormented machine voices, sub-zero drones and rhythmic clangour. The EP's opening gambit, however, is the real standout here - sounding quite unlike anything we've heard from him before; it's practically his concession to ambient pop in the first stages, revolving around padded chords, vocal and Gas-like thrum before devolving into manic tape spool and dank electro-acoustic treatments. 'Analogues' follows with glinting rhythmic tape loops churning forth to a pitch black climax, while 'Spiteful Jester' sounds like malfunctioning machinery, a blood-letting of iron drones and clanking percussion, before the title track finishes the EP off with a 10-minute drone piece that acts as a catharsis of sorts. What's so good about this material is that it holds so much back - there are moments that feel made for an obvious drop or a percussive blowout, but Younger keeps it taut to the end, the tension never quite abating.

Joseph Hammer - (2010) I Love You, Please Love Me Too LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 08.

With “I love you please love me too”, Joseph Hammer continues his journey into playful yet heavily focused idiot-savant infinite psychedelic inertia. Utilising consumer audio technology and 20th century detritus, Hammer lovingly decodes his passion for mid century sci fi and AM radio station beyond all point of recognition like a snakecharmer. Multi-dimensional audio collage techniques to a free form and completely unorthodox plunderphonic hypnosis. Baked devotionals for tape loop minds.

Joseph Hammer, a sound artist from Los Angeles, has actively created experimental works since 1980 as a member of the LAFMS collective. His practice draws on the complexities of the process of listening and playing, reflecting on the role of the audience versus the performer, and uses music as it influences our notion of time, memory and intimacy as the basis for improvisation and abstraction. In various collaborations, solo, and as a founding member of the trio Solid Eye along with several other projects (Joe & Joe, Dinosaurs With Horns, Dimmer, Points of Friction), Hammer has performed widely and is an influential contributor to the Los Angeles underground scene.

The Lp is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, in a limited edition of 330 hand-numbered copies, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. It is packaged in a pro-press jacket which itself is housed in a two-tone silk screened pvc sleeve with interweaving geometric designs. All artwork by Kathryn Politis and Bill Kouligas.

Kamixlo - (2020) Cicatriz LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 114.

Kamixlo has experienced a lot of loss in the last two-and-a-half years. His long-awaited debut LP, Cicatriz, is named after the Spanish word for “scar”, taking its intense and energetic tone from the tough times in the Brixton-based producer’s life. An extremely personal album that follows 11 songs with titles like “Sick”, “Poison” and “Destruction”, it pitches soft and hard sonics against each other to create an urgent and exciting tension as the track listing hurtles through its own emotional rollercoaster. It runs from the lurching drone and monstrously distorted vocal samples of opener “The Coldest Hello (Live From The Russian Spiral)” to the bright and melodic kosmiche-reggaeton closer of “Azucar” (‘sugar’), produced with Swedish cloud rap producer woesum.

Only just past his mid-20s, Kamixlo has been making a name for himself with his dembow and bass-influenced dance deconstructions, releasing three EPs since 2015, as well as running the recently defunct Bala Club party and label, named after Japanese pro wrestling group Bullet Club. The night was an inclusive operation that established its own unique style of cross-genre post club music for the margins, while allowing Kamixlo the space to develop his sound—one that was imbued with its own pop immediacy, as well as smatterings of emo, electro and hardcore.

British-Chilean Kamixlo’s Cicatriz is rife with surprising references. These include the thumping industrial of “The Burning Hammer Bop”—taking its title from one of the most dangerous professional wrestling moves ever invented—and the growling sub bass of “DKD Lethal”—named after DJ Lethal of famous nu metal band Limp Bizkit. Meanwhile, long-time collaborator, producer and Endless party founder Felix Lee appears on the scrambled rhythm and cut-up sampling of “Demonic Y”. As the saying goes, there’s no pleasure without pain, no resurrection without destruction, and Cicatriz is all these things at once.

The album is mastered by Beau Thomas, featuring artwork & graphic design by Daniel Swan.

Tujiko Noriko - (2019) Kuro OST LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 89.

Written and directed by Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko, Kuro tells the tale of Romi, a Japanese woman living in the suburbs of Paris with her paraplegic lover Milou. Tending to Milou by day and working in a karaoke bar by night, Romi reminisces about a time she and Milou once lived together in Japan with a mysterious ailing man named Mr. Ono. Weaving together personal history, anecdotes, and myths, her stories soon turn ominous. Composed and recorded during the editing of the film in Berlin, the Kuro OST by Tujiko Noriko (with contributions from Joji Koyama, Sam Britton, and Will Worsley), is a crucial and integral part of the film, acting not only as a glue to bind the layers of the film together, but along with the sonic palette of the film's sound design, evokes it's claustrophobic atmospheres and moments of haunting beauty. The music, which in the film is largely heard in tandem to the narrating voice of Tujiko Noriko (who also stars as Romi), is presented and arranged here as a separate piece in its own right. Written and produced by Tujiko Noriko. Photography by Joji Koyama. Mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

"When we first decided to 'split' the film into what might be described as two parallel layers -- the narrated story and the visual story -- we found that it opened up an 'in-between' space, a space where what is heard and seen continually wrestle with one another. We envisaged that the true setting of the film would emerge from this friction, as something imagined and projected by the audience. After a few screenings we were struck by how some audience members would refer to scenes or events in the film that, for us, did not take place... We both thought of the music of Kuro as a score to this space in-between." --Joji Koyama

"I tried to think of the pieces in abstract terms, like moods and atmospheres. In a way, the process was quite similar to how I usually make music, in the sense that I have images in my head. Of course, in this case there were actual images and a lot of them very close to me, but I didn't want to get overly conscious about them either -- I didn't want to get stuck by trying to be too specific."

Mika Vainio / Kevin Drumm / Axel Dörner / Lucio Capece - (2012) Venexia LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 28.

"The original idea of this project was to allow musicians from different scenes (but who shared common ideas) to work together. In this case, a development of two pre existent duos.

Quite often musicians from different sonic languages can be seen being put together, trying to push the artists to develop unexpected works. Vainio, Drumm, Dörner and Capece have mainly strong points in common, that have been executed in different contexts. The music map is generally divided into categories that are determined by it's most evident and often banal elements; if it has beats or not, if it is quiet or loud, if it has raw material or a carefully worked aesthetic. These four musicians have been working using all the previous elements, but these elements did not determine the music, they were used at the service of deeper ideas related to time and perception. How the sound of our environment can become music, how can music be attractive without telling a story, the work of sound in it's extreme: noise, granular and delicate, digital, electronic, instrumental extended techniques, preparations. Kevin Drumm and Axel Dörner started working together in the late 90's as part of a trio with Paul Lovens, As a duo they released an influential album on Erstwhile Records. Vainio and Drumm met in 2005 in Australia, both as part of the touring festival What is Music?. Even if both musicians declared to have a great time touring in Australia, they did never played together. Drumm's and Vainio's music is often compared by critics. Capece has released a duo CD on L'Innomable label with Axel Dörner and a trio one with Dörner and tubist Robin Hayward on Azul Discográfica label from New York. Dörner and Capece worked in several projects together, including a residence with Keith Rowe working on " Treatise" by Cornelius Cardew. Mika Vainio and Lucio Capece have released together the album "Trahnie". An album they worked for three years on, and also did several concerts as a duo.

In May 2008 the quartet made a 6 days residency and concert at Vooruit, in Gent, followed by a 5 concert European tour, that took them to Venice. In 2011 the group played at Konfrontationen Festival in Austria. In the meanwhile Capece and Vainio have been part of the Vladislav delay Quartet. Capece has played, and toured with Kevin Drumm in a trio with Radu Malfatti and Dörner has played with Drumm in a trio with Paul Lovens, at the Meteo festival, in France. The recording in Venice is a multitrack one. It was mixed by Capece with minimal edits, basically panning and volume adjustments. "

NHK'Koyxeи - (2012) Dance Classics Vol.I LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 24.

"Prolific producer Kouhei Matsunaga's 'Dance Classics Vol.I' LP documents his more dance oriented material, as seen from his sets with Sensational and also his other minimal techno project NHK. Not feeling tied down to one genre, Matsunaga nestles in the PAN roster, and however that isn't to say that he is dance per se as witnessed from his recent collaborations with Conrad Schnitzler. The album focuses more on bass/base electronics, music for the dancefloor and/or altered state reflection. Having composed pieces for WDR based on Henry Chopin, Kouhei is equally at ease jamming with Sensational, whilst simultaneously executing a obsessively numerical sequence of dance pieces that borders on Hanne Darboven-like compulsivity."

Objekt - (2014) Flatland

 

Pan ‎– PAN 60.

Like many impressive artists, TJ Hertz seems to rarely be impressed with himself. Take, for instance, his first records. "All nine minutes and twenty-five seconds of Objekt's 'CLK Recovery' are thrilling," we wrote in our blurb for the A-side of Hertz's second EP, one of RA's top tracks of 2011. "Objekt's sound design is awesome to behold," Philip Sherburne said in his review of "Cactus," a track he called "as malevolently hungry as the carnivorous house plant in Little Shop Of Horrors." Hertz, meanwhile, was less enthused. "I just felt like I was clutching at straws," he recently told Angus Finlayson. "I guess in retrospect I was trying to do it too much by the numbers, which has never really suited me that well."

This is a little hard to accept—Hertz has never sounded unsure as an artist. But listening to Flatland, you start to see where he's coming from. Hertz's debut album is stylistically unleashed in a way that makes his early records sound conservative. Like the curls of synthetic material on its cover, it's tangled and glossy, abstract but also weirdly tactile. On one hand it's so rich with detail that it can be hard to wrap your head around, but it's also generous to the listener, delivering at every turn.

Sound design plays the role of a lead instrument on Flatland. Though incredibly vivid, the sonic palette is thoroughly artificial—aside from a single drum roll on "Dogma," nothing here recalls any instrument in the material world (even most of the drums seem barely suited to that term). As you listen, the mind's eye might conjure up a white laboratory, devoid of human life but whirring with activity—motors spinning, machines pivoting, screens flickering. Hearing that metronomic bleep on "One Fell Swoop," it's hard not to picture a red light blinking on a console.

The album's other masterstroke is its structure, which is totally unconventional but follows an intuitive logic that keeps you locked in. It starts with a bang ("Agnes Revenge") ends with a sigh ("Cataracts") and zig-zags wildly in the middle. Some tempos soar well above 140 BPM; "Dogma" chugs monolithically at 91. Individual tracks follow strange, seemingly improvised paths, but the album as a whole occasionally circles back on itself: that metronomic bleep from "One Fell Swoop" returns in "First Witness," "Agnes Revenge" and "Agnes Apparatus" share the sonic boom that opens the record (which also appears on last year's "Agnes Demise"), and various other bits of flotsam reappear throughout, always a little different from before.

As heady as all that may sound, Flatland is not a cerebral attempt to subvert the norm. It's bold, maybe even avant-garde, but from beginning to end it's raucous, barnstorming, chair-dancing fun. Hertz is not exactly a techno producer, but neither is he an experimental artist—it seems his ultimate goal is always, if not club utility, then a thrilling visceral reaction, often one that will make you want to move. He's not rejecting convention to be clever, he's doing it because the alternative feels unnatural to him. Hertz says he had trouble making straight techno. What he made instead is absolutely killer.

Rashad Becker - (2013) Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. I LP

 

Pan ‎– PAN 34.

Pressed on 140g vinyl, packaged in a pro-press color jacket and a silkscreened pvc sleeve* At long last PAN present the radical, revelatory debut album of sonic fictions by peerless mastering engineer, sound artist and composer, Rashad Becker. Via his day job as a cutting engineer at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering and his post-production studio, Clunk, the Syrian-born German-raised autodidact has in some respects contributed more to the shape and timbre of contemporary electronic and avant-garde music than anyone else. He's blessed with a heightened sensitivity to frequency and a love of bass and subbass which has no doubt enhanced hundreds of recordings and provided him an invaluable, hawk-like view of modern sonic aesthetics. With this in mind, the inspired architecture, dynamics and feel of 'Traditional Music Of Notional Species' can be heard as a deliberate and hyper-conscious bypassing of staid conventions in melody, harmony and meter, searching out and inhabiting the microtonal spaces between sounds with an in-depth understanding of their complex relationships and structures. Yet, far from being an avant-garde academic exercise, it provides a breathtaking richness of ambiguous human expression and emotional triggers, albeit from the periphery of human experience. His multi-tiered layers of oily quacks, slyding tones, convulsive spurts and spatial displacements present an embarrassment of fictional sonic capital, setting out a new and idiosyncratic grammar of computer music language with an inimitably exotic ancient-futuristic accent. For us it's something close to a waking dream rendered in sound, it's sincerely one of the most phantastical, far out records we've heard in a while, at once lending a gridless, human/alien aspect to the harsher sounds of say, Florian Hecker or Andre Vida, with the guile and unswerving, syncretic avant-folk vision of Ghedalia Tazartes and even the soured sensation of Korean classical music. It's one of the boldest musical statements on PAN yet, and, if like us you crave genuinely new sonic thrills, this album is an absolute must.