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viewing 1 To 21 of 21 items
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12"
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ATN 050EP
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River Yarra very logically turns his back to rotting humanity and pays tribute to our next of kin, frogs. "Toad Charmer" is a seductive sarabande to bewitch frogs. "AMFYBYONZZ" is all about trance-y synths, orchestral hits, and amphibian gimmicks. "Frogz Ov Gondwana" channels the particles of MDMA you may have absorbed into the right corner of your brain with its wild arpeggiators and synthetic howling. Finally, it's time for Frogmania's anthem, "Prog Frog", an up-tempo ballad through time and space.
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ATN 048LP
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Is another EP from D.K. landing on Antinote. Well, this looks very much like a series and -- spoiler alert -- Riding For A Fall is the second installment in a trilogy. With a BPM crossing the 120 line on two out of three tracks, there's little doubt that this second 12" is also meant to be played in a club environment. The nine-and-a-half minute-long "Voices" sprawls over the whole A side. Like many productions stamped "D.K.", the structure is linear only in appearance: it winds up and down between fantasized exotic landscapes, digital plug-ins mimicking "far east" instruments that are barely recognizable. It gets even snakier with the Samurai Showdown-inspired "Shoubuari (Battle)": pixel swords brushing past our ears, martial drumming and menacing synths (D.K., were you the kind of kid who owned a Neo Geo?) -- it's pretty obvious that we're in the world of SNK's legendary fighting game. Things calm down with "Riding For A Fall": less button-mashing, more concentration as you witness the sacred martial art known as Street Fighter's quarter circles... But enough with these video game metaphors! No need to be a pro-gamer to enjoy this piece of music. It's sad and slow house music with a cinematographic quality -- and, perhaps, the most moving moment in this series of 12". To be continued...
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ATN 044LP
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Miniatures De Auto Rhythm is the brilliant Domenique Dumont's second long player for Antinote. It's already been three years since Domenique Dumont made its entrance in the music world with his debut, Comme Ca (ATN 020LP, 2015). Despite a seemingly very quiet musical activity (the opening song to Antinote's compilation Five Years Of Loving Notes (ATN 5YEARS, 2017) was the only song released by the band in three years) a few things have changed in-between these two summers: Domenique Dumont is no more the mysterious lone French producer Antinote introduced last time but a Latvian duo, Arturs Liepins and Anete Stuce, which has been collaborating with "an enigmatic French artist whose existence cannot be confirmed nor denied" (sorry, but it sounds like there's still some mystery in the air, and, again, Antinote is just as clueless as you might be), the duo have been touring live and, most importantly, they kept on broadening their musical palette experimenting in a definitely pop field. Eight of these experiments are now tied together in Miniatures De Auto Rhythm. The record probably begins where Comme Ca ended: frantic but light drum programing backbones a solar and slightly melancholic melody on "Le Début De La Fin" ("the beginning of the end"). However, the scope gets enlarged as soon as one reaches the second tune, "Quasi Quasi", or "Quand", on the flip side, perhaps the most overtly pop-rock oriented song on the record with its Mediterranean guitar and emotional bridge. The road towards the apex of the record, "Le Soleil Dans Le Monde", is a narrow and windy one, punctuated by toy instrumentals like "Ono Mambo Haiku" or the Donkey Kong Country-friendly "Message Of The Diving Bird"; however it never departs from its original tongue-in-cheek attitude. It's quite pleasant to imagine these eight "miniatures" as field recordings from an enchanted world of pop music designed by some Pierre & Gilles disciples or being musical interpretations of half-mechanical, half-organic creations from a certain Otto Rhiesem (who might have inhabited the Locus Solus villa). There may be no definitive answers to this second set of riddles by Domenique Dumont.
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12"
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ATN 043EP
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Oz's River Yarra gives a take on Music for Social Medias, a potential fifth volume in Brian Eno's ambient series, and the result doesn't sound at all like ambient music). With "Aorsom Wislhs", one might feel disoriented by the extremely weird and wonky lead melody. The melody of the slow jam "Sli Ggogg" is equally uneven; add to this the unsettling (slightly) human-sounding voice. But there's a sense of non-human randomness infusing all of these four songs. Take the intensely mesmerizing "Respiration Alternée" with Elen Huynh, for example.
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12"
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ATN 039EP
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Released as Sign Libra, Closer To The Equator is the work of Latvian artist and composer Agata Melnikova. Composed for a contemporary ballet at Latvian National Opera in Riga, the music on this record strongly relies on Melnikova's appreciation of BBC-produced nature documentaries. Projecting the life of each creature that inhabits the British TV-program into her very personal and highly synthetized world, Sign Libra lends these microscopic beings her own voice. Each song works like a musical "tableau" in which the main protagonists -- plants and animals -- come on stage to play their part in a carefully choreographed ballet.
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12"
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ATN 040EP
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With Menti Singole Vol.2, Leonardo Martelli establishes a picture of his music, an update of his aspirations in the feminine. Sparse, clear-cut and slightly nerve-racking, "Micaella" opens with ethereal string machines balancing a nagging acid leitmotiv. "Alice" sees a sad synth melody comes in as if it was trying to fill an emotional void, but with missing notes. On "Laura" Martelli keeps on playing with the potential of abstraction but with rap samples. "Sofia" gives a particularly striking example of this weird game he likes to play as Biggie Smalls's words get progressively eviscerated from their meaning.
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12"
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ATN 038EP
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Distant Images is D.K.'s fourth release on Antinote. Distant Images confirms that the Paris-based musician has been, in fact, digging deeper in the same direction. D.K.'s sound takes a step further into reality -- the most attentive ears will hear seagulls on "Distant Images" while rain is softly falling on "Leaving" -- and slightly departed from the digital universes that his previous records seemed to set in motion. From the most abstract songs -- like the Steve Reich-ian "Shaker Loops" -- to the most evocative ones, the five compositions on Distant Images are like stained glass, gently filtering natural light.
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12"
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ATN 036EP
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18 Rays is the moniker behind which some of Antinote's most steady fixtures -- Nico Motte, Zaltan, and Raphaël Top-Secret -- finally give life to the band they dreamed of in their teenage years. Produced by Nico Motte, the trio spent five weeks between Synth City (Motte's studio) and Red Bull Studio in Paris working on these four songs, each sitting somewhere between some sort of timeless and somehow aquatic dream pop and blurred visions of an eerie grunge sound. An ethereal trip in which the sounds of Cocteau Twins, Durutti Column, or A.C. Marias endlessly resonate.
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2LP
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ATN 5YEARS
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Made of 14 sketches -- each reflecting one of the many shades of Antinote's catalog -- Five Years Of Loving Notes features new names as well as those artists who have been involved with the label since it's very beginning, like Geena or Iueke. The music on this compilation covers a wide spectrum of moods and atmospheres, from the dark and raw excursions from Tolouse Low Trax or Iueke, to the lush instrumental crafted by Nico Motte and Syracuse's Antoine Kogut; however as the listener gets deeper into the compilation, the whole of the tunes, sitting side-by-side on the record, start to make sense as they all seem to point towards the same direction. If one should try isolating a common trait from all these songs, they come to the conclusion that it lies in the way they all speak directly to the listener's emotional receptors, unvarnished and without abusing of producer's "tricks". This is a 63-minute long testimony of exclusive music by the artists who have been shaping Antinote's sound for five years; from the opening Latvian arabesques from Domenique Dumont to the Pink Floyd-ian ending from the latest addition to the label, Alek Lee, via Leonardo Martelli's smoggy electro and Raphael Top Secret's ominous talk-over. Also features: Stéphane Laporte, DK, Inoue Shirabe, Geena, Natsukashii, The Simplists, Or Edry, and Yovav. Comes in a gatefold sleeve.
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LP
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ATN 030-2LP
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The second installment of archive material from Tolouse Low Trax, selected by Antinote. You can trail away with it; it is easy to enter, but hard to drop out. Tolouse Low Trax just needs an MPC, a small synthesizer set up, and some effects to create subliminal hypnotic music trips, driven by dark synth lines and drunken shuffled patterns. Tolouse Low Trax explains: "The primitiveness in my music is linked to something simple, and that don't have to be obligatory minimal. For me it is enough to dance rough around the core. Music you don't shape till the end contains of a moment of beauty. A veil of secrecy. I work very simply. I rather reduce my possibilities. Limitations offer lots of liberties." He reveals about his work ethic. Even if his music sounds darker than any experienced night, he mostly produces it in the morning, in his highly inspirational studio home. During the dark times of the day Tolouse Low Trax mostly performs live around the globe. Or hangs out in his second home: the Salon Des Amateurs club bar in Dusseldorf, which he once founded and where he held until today two weekly DJ residencies. The moments and atmospheres he inhales during these lightless moments are mirrored in his shadowy music, about which he also confesses: "My art is more a cinematic, literally idea of a large to explore 'Megacity'. This is one of the pictures I would link to my music." On Decades Vol.II, he offers four sounding visions about that "Megacity". They listen to mysterious names like "Hidden Flat" or "Studies In Drama". They are nervous. They are ephemeral pieces of dub, industrial, wave, or Italian library music. And at times strange and alienated voice samples dance within his highly addictive arrangements. Words can't express their magic. But one thing is absolute: his hypnotic dance-not-dance tracks do not only illuminate so-called freaks!
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ATN 030-3LP
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The third and final installment of archive material from Tolouse Low Trax, selected by Antinote. You can trail away with it; it is easy to enter, but hard to drop out. Tolouse Low Trax just needs an MPC, a small synthesizer set up, and some effects to create subliminal hypnotic music trips, driven by dark synth lines and drunken shuffled patterns. Tolouse Low Trax explains: "The primitiveness in my music is linked to something simple, and that don't have to be obligatory minimal. For me it is enough to dance rough around the core. Music you don't shape till the end contains of a moment of beauty. A veil of secrecy. I work very simply. I rather reduce my possibilities. Limitations offer lots of liberties." He reveals about his work ethic. Even if his music sounds darker than any experienced night, he mostly produces it in the morning, in his highly inspirational studio home. During the dark times of the day Tolouse Low Trax mostly performs live around the globe. Or hangs out in his second home: the Salon Des Amateurs club bar in Dusseldorf, which he once founded and where he held until today two weekly DJ residencies. The moments and atmospheres he inhales during these lightless moments are mirrored in his shadowy music, about which he also confesses: "My art is more a cinematic, literally idea of a large to explore 'Megacity'. This is one of the pictures I would link to my music." On Decades Vol.III, he offers five sounding visions about that "Megacity". They listen to mysterious names like "Hidden Flat" or "Studies In Drama." They are nervous. They are ephemeral pieces of dub, industrial, wave, or Italian library music. And at times strange and alienated voice samples dance within his highly addictive arrangements. Words can't express their magic. But one thing is absolute: his hypnotic dance-not-dance tracks do not only illuminate so-called freaks!
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12"
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ATN 032EP
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Geena is back on Antinote, inviting you to take a dip in a swimming pool filled with molly! Peace Love Earth: Mental DJ's Land Vol. 2 is a perfect mix of tribal anthems for happy ravers and reassuring, Balearically named new age tunes. "Keep" draws away from the dryness of some of its Detroit-born predecessors by integrating liquid elements to its raw structure, while synthetic choir-filled "KG Voice" and tribal house "Blue Transfer" give the impression that they both have been dipped into a big glass of sloppy drugs. "La Isla" and "Natural High" lay some quality ambient interludes.
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LP
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ATN 031LP
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Antinote squeeze out the Mind Lotion: eight sun-drenched excursions. Mind Lotion crafts a very modern guide to sun-drenched soundscapes in the form of Altitude Attitudes; a musical travel-log, consisting of eight pieces, written over two years, which are recollections of experiences, moments in time from trips - either real or romanticized - to exotic destinations. Exploring the softness of 1980s digital presets, Mind Lotion creates mental landscapes in a way reminiscent to D.K.'s escapade to his Island of Dreams (2016). Mineral samples meet crystalline synths on "Dreamscape", evocating half-submerged coral reefs, while the redolent flute on "Atmospherica" perfectly makes up for a great piece of "Lagoon House". Some tunes from Altitude Attitudes, such as "Hotel Breakfast", even recall the naivety of "Exotica" masters, while the percussions and eerie sounds "My Language" somehow take the listener back to Umiliani's vision of Polynesia or Africa. The flip provides the most "housy" moments of the record with "Astro Girl": beginning with a heady DX-7 bassline and layers of digital vibes, the song soon turns itself into a thumping typhoon of club fun. Next to this one is the closing track, "Algo Rydim", which illustrates the equilibrium reached by Mind Lotion on Altitude Attitudes: it always stays sophisticated, though it never takes itself too seriously.
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LP
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ATN 027LP
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Stéphane Laporte presents Fourrure Sounds Vol.2. "Don't judge a book by its cover" they say, well, this saying applies to Stéphane Laporte's Fourrure Sounds Vol.2, for nothing solar lies behind the glorious sunset on the cover of his second album for Parisian imprint, Antinote. While Fourrure Sound Vol.1 recalled an era of naïve electronic experimentations recorded to soundtrack TV documentariesm, Vol.2 resurrects 1990s 12-hour-long rave parties. For the occasion, Stéphane Laporte changed the name of his godfathers from François De Roubaix and Jean-Jacques Perrey to Conrad Schnitzler and I-F. For the first twenty minutes of the album, Laporte unleashes the monster he dreamt about, a golem made out of rusty bike chains and broken glass, providing some tracks for nightmarish dance floors with the dirty electro tunes. "Dispositions" and "Sound 23" and the degenerate footworkish track, "Ossature". You have to wait for the last two tracks of the record to finally find some semblance of serenity: "Vitre", a synthetic ballad, and "Tunnel", Stéphane Laporte's stirring hymn for a generation of desperate ex-ravers.
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ATN 024LP
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After releasing a beautiful debut 12" in 2014 on Antinote, the man behind the visual identity of the Parisian imprint makes an impressive return to the label with Life Goes On If You Are Lucky. One can imagine the long nightly conversations held between Nico Motte and the machines that gave birth to this album, the man trying to learn the most secret sounds from his machines. The album opens with "Tema d'Amore," a song numbed with synthetic winds and celestial choirs that set a foggy atmosphere that encapsulates the whole album. The music on Life Goes On If You Are Lucky is all about building up toward extreme density and accumulating a tension that is only to be released during punctual epiphanies such as the eponymous track's beautiful break. In order to reach the essence of Nico Motte's music, one needs to go through the album many times, each time carefully peeling off layers of synths, under which is hidden the heart of each song. One can definitively feel that Life Goes On If You Are Lucky is an album composed by a man who has spent years loving and collecting obscure German electronic records, ambient, library, and Italian soundtracks. Nico Motte now blends elements from these different musical genres into his own music, while some more housey influences seem to loom over "I.C.A." and "La Figure de Rey" (which somehow recalls Larry Heard's Alien-era). Each song seems to be the result of a long session of orchestration by Nico Motte, composer, arranger, and conductor, who attributes to each electronic component a specific role to play in these seven little instrumental suites, disturbed from time to time by human elements -- a saxophone on "Tema d'Amore," the voice of Syracuse's Isabelle on "Tacotac" -- only to remind us that Life Goes On If You Are Lucky is above all about human fragility.
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ATN 023LP
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Full-length debut from this quirky French pair after a couple of very impressive singles. Antinote continues to delve into the world of experimental "pop" electronics. After a few years of intensive touring, Syracuse's Antoine and Isabelle finally spent some time in a studio to record new songs as well as ones that were born on the road. Liquid Silver Dream is the result of these studio sessions. From the opening track, "Vapeurs d'Équateur," to the last one, "Le Coeur en Naufrage," it seems that the whole album has been recorded in some secret cave under the sea. Maybe the hot, dry weather in Paris at the time of the recording and the fact that the studio lacked air conditioning can somehow explain the urge to liquidize every musical element -- Isabelle's voice, the instruments -- before pouring them into the album, turning each tune into a phial of intriguing essences. Syracuse's work serves as a reminder that sophistication doesn't necessarily mean complexity. "LOVE," for example, is a beautiful demonstration of this statement; the song has the genuine simplicity that any love song should have, with its only ornament an elegant opiate dub treatment given by a master of the genre, Iueke. The first track on the B-side, "Floating," allows you the listener one last deep breath -- somewhere over a still ocean where time has momentarily stopped -- before the ten-minute "Liquid Silver Dream," a big acid wave that gets at the listener before the wipeout in a roar of synths and crushed claps. Finally, "Le Coeur en Naufrage" resonates in the listener's ears; you are lying on the shore while the sea gently laps over your feet.
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LP
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ATN 020LP
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The guys at Antinote don't know much about Domenique Dumont, but they don't seem to care; they just came across the artist's music and decided to release it. It's perfectly inspired dubby pop brightness. "Comme Ça" sets the tone for a pastel-colored album with its dreamy French (is it French?) lyrics, steel drums, and light reverbed claps. The following track, "L'Esprit de l'Escalier," takes the listener even deeper into Dumont's lost paradise of never-ending soft rock shows. "La Basse et les Shakers" is the club-friendliest track of the record, yet it doesn't lack the genuine sincerity that makes these tunes almost familiar. "La Bataille de Neige" and "Un Jour avec Yussef" might be the most melancholic tracks on the album, sounding like revived childhood memories, while the last tune, "Le Château de Corail," is both a summary and a conclusion to the LP, a goodbye song that encapsulates all of the emotional shades sprinkled on the five previous tracks. There's a pinch of nostalgia throughout Domenique Dumont's record, for a time when a curious idea could turn into a soon-to-be-forgotten (yet-to-be-discovered) pop song. Consider it an introduction to the warm summer nights.
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CD
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ATN 018CD
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Previously unreleased guitar-and-synth musical jewel from Italy circa 1984, available on CD with one bonus track following a 2015 LP release (ATN 018LP). An until-now-unknown collaboration between a guitar maestro who composed contemporary dance scores and a gifted electronic music composer. Melodic complexity and rhythmic sonic beauty create a unique and timeless classic that has already achieved cult status among the few who have heard it. Obvious comparisons can be made between Imaginary Choreography and the softer ambient side of vintage German electronic music -- Göttsching, Schnitzler, Cluster, etc., but that would be too easy, as this recording stands alone with its uniquely Italian atmosphere of sophisticated and complex simplicity. This session was recorded by two Venetians: Paki Zennaro (then working with composer René Aubry for choreographer Carolyn Carlson) and Gianni Visnadi (an experimental composer), who met one evening over a glass of wine and decided to work together for the first time with the intention of recording contemporary music to be used by dance schools for study and exercise. The duo recorded on reel-to-reel tape using electronic equipment (Sequential Circuits Pro One and Prophet 5; Roland TR-808 and guitar synth) with an acoustic 12-string guitar. When finished and mixed, a few BASF LH extra cassette copies (maybe as few as six or eight) were sent out to a few friends with a homemade photocopy insert, complete with handwritten track names and production details. This now-famous BASF tape was found one lucky morning by Johanna Heather Anselmo (filmmaker, photographer, musician), while she was searching for musical surprises in a box of tapes that had probably been at that same flea market for 20 years or more. Anselmo is used to rummaging in boxes of dusty tapes, being the girlfriend of Antinote artist Iueke, who has the unusual habit of hiding tapes all over their flat. Iueke found contact information for Zennaro and Visnadi, who were happy to oblige with the release of this almost-forgotten 1984 session. Master tapes were sent to Paris for immediate transfer and mastering, while the Check Morris graphic design team worked with its usual class on adapting and reworking the cassette tape artwork.
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12"
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ATN 019EP
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The mighty Geena presents an EP filled with the deepest psychedelic goodness and spaced surprises, housed in a glorious printed sleeve. "Tone Loc" is a heavy Geenafied future classic, with signature celestial pan pipes and a deeper-than-deep bassline. "Minus Jam" is on a similar path of ecstatic disorientation, with spinning, delayed glass toms supervised by the darkest dictatorial bassline. "Box of Exotica" evokes a dreamy post-Blade Runner musical world of traditional and futuristic collision augmented with beautiful and equally dark Japanese stick music vocals. "Green Resident" also walks the cosmic path, softer at first, before the silky darkness seeps in.
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12"
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ATN 017EP
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This is the fourth episode of the Iueke saga, and as with his previous releases on Antinote these new/old cuts are sourced directly from the personal Iueke tape archive. Recorded one lost night between 1991 and 1992. Richard D. James: "ACE!!"
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ATN 018LP
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Previously unreleased guitar-and-synth musical jewel from Italy circa 1984. An until-now unknown collaboration between a guitar maestro who composed contemporary dance scores and a gifted electronic music composer. Melodic complexity and rhythmic sonic beauty create a unique and timeless classic that has already achieved cult status among the few who have heard it. Obvious comparisons can be made between Imaginary Choreography and the softer ambient side of vintage German electronic music -- Göttsching, Schnitzler, Cluster, etc., but that would be too easy, as this recording stands alone with its uniquely Italian atmosphere of sophisticated and complex simplicity. This session was recorded by two Venetians: Paki Zennaro (then working with composer René Aubry for choreographer Carolyn Carlson) and Gianni Visnadi (an experimental composer), who met one evening over a glass of wine and decided to work together for the first time with the intention of recording contemporary music to be used by dance schools for study and exercise. The duo recorded on reel-to-reel tape using electronic equipment (Sequential Circuits Pro One and Prophet 5; Roland TR-808 and guitar synth) with an acoustic 12-string guitar. When finished and mixed, a few BASF LH extra cassette copies (maybe as few as six or eight) were sent out to a few friends with a homemade photocopy insert, complete with handwritten track names and production details. A chance find in a Paris market of one of these original demo cassettes led to this wonderful LP finally seeing its first release. This now famous BASF tape was found one lucky morning by Johanna Heather Anselmo (filmmaker, photographer, musician) while searching for musical surprises in a box of tapes that had probably been at that same flea market for 20 years or more. Mademoiselle Johanna is used to rummaging in boxes of dusty tapes, being the girlfriend of Antinote artist Iueke, who has the unusual habit of hiding tapes all over their flat. A bit of searching by Iueke lead him to finding contact information for Zennaro and Visnadi, who were happy to oblige with releasing this almost forgotten 1984 session. Master tapes were sent to Paris for immediate transfer and mastering, while the Check Morris graphic design team worked with its usual class on adapting and reworking the cassette tape artwork for a vinyl issue. Open a bottle of wine and sit back. Includes download code.
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