cooltunes

Feel the Sunshine from their Relax: Edition 2 album.

• A bootleg recording of Vladislav Delay’s set from DEMF last month, which can be downloaded here (also contains part of Jeff Mills’ and A Guy Called Gerald’s sets)
• A live performance of Monolake’s from Frigid in Sydney
• Rhythm & Sound’s DJ set from Paxahau’s 8th anniversary
• Pole - Steingarten
• Jan Jelinek Avec The Exposures - La Nouvelle Pauvrete
• Jan Jelinek - Loop Finding Jazz Records
• Andrew Pekler - Station to Station
• Kate Simko’s set from DEMF last month, which can be downloaded from her site here.

I’m a little behind in finally listening to the back catalogue of the ~scape label, there are quite a few gems there. Lots of forays into glitch meets jazz. They’ve also put out an interesting series of compilations where IDM/glitch-heads produce hip-hop. Staedtizism 3 is worth checking out for the tracks by luminaries Thomas Fehlmann and Daniel Bell aka DBX.

Davie Bowie and Beastie Boys, among others.

Surprisingly, things are looking great for the dub techno/detroit/basic channel fan these days. Allow me to list:

Scion is releasing records again, along with Chain Reaction artist Substance, on the new label Scion Versions.

A surge of activity from Convextion, with a re-release of his earlier track Miranda, his long-awaited full-length album, and an upcoming release on Arne Weinberg’s label, AW-Recordings.

I spoke to Rod Modell a few months ago and he assured me that he’d be in the studio trying to get some releases out by the end of summer; it looks like the fruits of those labors are starting to surface now. A 10″ on a new label, Hierophant Records, some production work as Spectral Network on the limited and obscure Octal Records, and a remix on the aforementioned re-release of Convextion’s Miranda. Also, for those who missed the extremely limited run of Mike Huckaby’s remixes of Deep Chord on the Synth label last summer, those records have now found distribution through word and sound and are available for purchase in Europe. I believe the now-defunct Watts Music was signed up to distribute those records in the US, no idea what’s going to happen there.

As a parting note, a promising polish(?) netlabel released an intriguing compilation, Mousiken Poiei Kai Ergazou. It’s worth noting that Sustainer makes his first appearance since his 2002 album on Italic in this release. An newcomer by the name of Furthr contributes the standout track on this album.

The new Convextion album, initially limited to 500 copies, is going to be repressed as long as there’s demand.

I’m glad they’re taking that approach, and that their reasons for limiting the first pressing were just financial. I get aggravated when labels limit releases for seemingly no reason (and then trumpet the rareness and scarcity of a record that’s not even out yet).

An old article from The Wire. 10 years old, actually.

I’m tempted to declare the author not fit for writing about electronic music after describing Main Street Records as “uninspired House-y vocal tracks”, since only one of the best house tracks of all time was released on it. But I’ll let it slide, if you’re a fan of techno and not of house that’s a completely valid opinion.

Microhouse, techno, and experimental minimal electronica fans rejoiced at the end of 2004 when it was announced that the Force Inc. Music Works family of labels would begin releasing again, having resolved issues arising from bankruptcy of German distribution giant EFA.

For those of us who like to wear our musical tastes on our sleeve so to speak, they are now selling T-shirts through their website.

Other techno-related shirts can be found at Hardwax’s website, and at Kompakt’s online store, in the back catalogue section.

Pan American - East Coast Bugs
Dub Taylor - Newmen
Round Four - Find a Way
Dean Decosta - Clack
Mark Thibideau - Install
Sanasol vs. Ozzy - Seveneleven
Rechenzentrum - Vertikal
Monolake - Remoteable
Kazooo - Multiplied Together
Maurizio - M6 (Edit)
Monolake - Reminiscence
Rhythm & Sound - Smile