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viewing 1 To 16 of 16 items
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LP
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AVE66 019LP
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mindSET is the ninth album from enigmatic producer SW., directly following 2024's excursion into his trademark techno, IDM and bleep soundscapes, on the myDEFINITIONS Vol II album. But with his mindSET album, SW. takes a left turn, as pioneers often do, and listeners find themselves on the lesser traveled side roads of electronic music history. Or in SW.'s own words: "the more abstract leftfield elements." It's in these less-defined areas that SW. finds his sweet spot, building dancefloor soundtracks that defied definition. And with mindSET, the sounds and the machines might have changed, the methodology remains the same. "It draws from what was more generally seen in leftfield as a term for the slightly off-kilter house and broken beats that didn't fit neatly into classic genres, whether that was Chicago house, French garage, drum and bass, or broken beat. It's more about those in-between sounds that never really took off, only appearing briefly in the early to mid-'90s and then quickly disappearing. There was a certain magic in that moment, which I wanted to capture. Also, the entire album was produced using classic analog equipment, with old machines that were used during that era. That's the approach I've taken." The eight tracks on mindSET are shaped out of de-tuned techno pop synths and heavy, syncopated drums, grooving along chopped-up polymeters to create an eerie mood, as if orbiting an undiscovered planet for the first time. The harmonic movements are often bent out of shape, sometimes veering towards Gherkin Jerks or Cristian Vogel territory. But in the end, the sounds are less important than the atmosphere, and the tracks represent an attitude or an approach -- to creating the music as well as experiencing it. mindSET is a nod to those dancers sharing an oddball moment, and for those of us on the same wavelength, it's a vibe listeners can all get inside.
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2LP
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AVE66 015LP
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Limited repress. "After a year and a half writing and recording rock music, I needed to clear my head. I listened to and made music where things generally happen gradually rather than suddenly. I would set up patches on a Monomachine or Analog Four and listen to them, hearing one sound morph into others, making changes to a patch only after having listened for quite a while, gradually adding elements, and finally manipulating the sounds on the fly. All tracks were recorded live to CD burner, with no overdubs, and executed on one or two machines. While I was almost exclusively listening to artists such as Chris Watson, Peter Rehberg, Bernard Parmegiani, CM Von Hausswolff, Jana Winderen, Oren Ambarchi, Hazard, Bruce Gilbert, Klara Lewis, Ryoji Ikeda, and so on, I was also inspired by my mental image of John Lennon's tape and mellotron experiments he made at home during his time in the Beatles, as well as events like the first minute of Bowie's Station To Station, '...And The Gods Made Love' by Jimi Hendrix, the synths in the song 'Mass Production' by Iggy Pop, and the general idea of Eno's initial concept of ambient music. Music being a solitary sculpture in sonic space was the main motivating thought. I was looking at pictures of sculptures and trying to make music that simultaneously conveyed both movement and stillness. I refrained from sudden musical changes, especially avoiding sequences of notes and rhythms. In fact, this music was made from sequences which never exceed a single note, many of these pieces being made on a single pattern. The movement which a good sculptor conveys when the shape of his medium meets the eyes of the viewer who walks around the piece, or the sun changes its position, are the kinds of movement which it was the role of the synth patches to communicate . . . I also cannot overstate the role that being in my band played. I had previously spent 12 years programming and engineering my own music, and then spent a year and a half making music where my role was basically to write songs and play guitar. When the band's recording phase was completed, I needed to go back to my adopted language. I had done enough with chords, rhythms, notes, defined sections, sharp transitions, etc. What I needed was to create music from the ground up with nothing but sound, and have that music reflect 'being' rather than 'doing'. It was a therapeutic way of re-balancing myself, before and during my band's mixing process..." --John Frusciante
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2CD
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AVE66 016CD
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"After a year and a half writing and recording rock music, I needed to clear my head. I listened to and made music where things generally happen gradually rather than suddenly. I would set up patches on a Monomachine or Analog Four and listen to them, hearing one sound morph into others, making changes to a patch only after having listened for quite a while, gradually adding elements, and finally manipulating the sounds on the fly. All tracks were recorded live to CD burner, with no overdubs, and executed on one or two machines. While I was almost exclusively listening to artists such as Chris Watson, Peter Rehberg, Bernard Parmegiani, CM Von Hausswolff, Jana Winderen, Oren Ambarchi, Hazard, Bruce Gilbert, Klara Lewis, Ryoji Ikeda, and so on, I was also inspired by my mental image of John Lennon's tape and mellotron experiments he made at home during his time in the Beatles, as well as events like the first minute of Bowie's Station To Station, '...And The Gods Made Love' by Jimi Hendrix, the synths in the song 'Mass Production' by Iggy Pop, and the general idea of Eno's initial concept of ambient music. Music being a solitary sculpture in sonic space was the main motivating thought. I was looking at pictures of sculptures and trying to make music that simultaneously conveyed both movement and stillness. I refrained from sudden musical changes, especially avoiding sequences of notes and rhythms. In fact, this music was made from sequences which never exceed a single note, many of these pieces being made on a single pattern. The movement which a good sculptor conveys when the shape of his medium meets the eyes of the viewer who walks around the piece, or the sun changes its position, are the kinds of movement which it was the role of the synth patches to communicate . . . I also cannot overstate the role that being in my band played. I had previously spent 12 years programming and engineering my own music, and then spent a year and a half making music where my role was basically to write songs and play guitar. When the band's recording phase was completed, I needed to go back to my adopted language. I had done enough with chords, rhythms, notes, defined sections, sharp transitions, etc. What I needed was to create music from the ground up with nothing but sound, and have that music reflect 'being' rather than 'doing'. It was a therapeutic way of re-balancing myself, before and during my band's mixing process..." --John Frusciante
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2LP
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AVE66 018LP
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The elusive SW. returns to Avenue 66 with okALGORYTHM. His third LP for the label is a semi-opaque wandering through the shadowy byways of memory, driven by tough-yet-supple production, and his unmistakable, unerringly original voice. Inspired by all night electronic radio shows of the '90s, okALGORYTHM pulses with rich imagination and a sense of purposeful meandering. Speaking in cryptic fragments, the artist hints at elusive reminiscences "back then on the Autobahn, to Berlin, with friends" while also noting that some recollections are "of things that didn't happen that way." To this end, the album drifts from the knotty synth spirals of opener "WHAtADAY" through the tense, technoid tropics of "stepCLASSixMOtor," the brightly melancholic Larry Heard-isms of "TROPyCALLhytsrIA" to the stately skronk of closer "What endingENDs." The rhythmic undergirding never lets up, suggesting a limitless night drive tinted in deep greens and refracted reds. Each of the album's ten tracks comes alive with warm, analog finesse and a palpable atmosphere, though they play out by turns urgent or unhurried, coaxing or inscrutable. Yet throughout, there's a consistently hypnotic quality which draws the listener deeper into the album's unique balancing act. If listeners are trained to expect throwback anthems every time the '90s are referenced, here they might find a more apt touchstone in the wilder, left-of-center corners of Chicago's foundational epoch. Throughout the album, the spirit of jacking house is absorbed, metabolized and transmuted. Drawing on lineages of taut, nervy synth-and-drum machine workouts, SW. manipulates his hardware with the delicate, considered touch of a painter. Perhaps the memory that lingers longest from that bygone era is the sense of profound possibility that dawns before forms become rigidly calcificed and commodified. Either way, adventurous listeners will find that okALGORYTHM blooms with a uniquely affecting grace and SW.'s inimitably obscure loveliness, infused with a somber glow and marked by shimmering, untraceable contours.
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12"
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AVE66 017EP
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Moiré's rain-streaked and masterful Circuits (AVE66 013LP) album dropped in September 2022. RA's Andrew Ryce stated the eight-track album cast the shadowy producer into "a rarefied air occupied by the only the finest and most influential of ambient techno artists." Now, in short order, the label returns with a remix EP charting out multiple hubs of oblique dancefloor innovation. If there's a sonic motif on the A-side, it's vastly reactive interpretations of the "factory floor" element that inspired techno's pioneers. Matthew Herbert, a pioneering force in his own right, mixes steam engine percussion with the dreamy atmospherics of "Circuit 15" and comes up with eight minutes of cerebral machine funk. Tolouse Low Trax, meanwhile, continues his masterclass in modern motorik on his remix of "Circuit 7," integrating a chiming piano into a fascinating, perfectly-timed 110 BPM rhythm. The B-side, meanwhile, doubles down on the oneiric nature of the original material. Workshop head and Avenue 66 alumnus Lowtec builds allows the synths of "Circuit 04" to billow into Gas-like immersive layering, sheets of melody are anchored by a restrained beat for an ambient techno track that doesn't tip the scales too far in one direction or the other. Rather, it achieves a perfect balance. Hamburg/Dial mainstay Lawrence closes things out with his version of "Circuit 18," which also concludes the original album. While the original has a wistful, Deckard's dream quality, Lawrence's version is deeply-rooted in the late-night German style; a low-slung bassline will keep dancers deeply rooted while those wistful chords sweep in like the violet before dawn.
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LP
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AVE66 013LP
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Over the past decade, the mysterious, London-based artist Moiré has perfected a syrupy, addictive brand of dance music via labels like Actress's Werk Discs and illustrious imprints like Ghostly and Rush Hour. For most of this period, Moiré seemed primarily concerned in creating alternative universe club tracks. The beats were hypnotic, if wonky. The pads were deep before they were refracted through an oblique filter. In a discography bearing a surfeit of leftfield high points, Circuits, Moiré's latest album for the Berlin-based Avenue 66 (Lowtec, John Frusciante, Joey Anderson) is a massive creative leap that fully breaks with the strictures of a "conventional" dance music. While there are still nods to the low-slung, slow house style Moiré's perfected in the past ("Circuit 1"), as well as the looming shadow of hardcore ("Circuit 8"), Moiré's style now billows into a liminal, cinematic zone that recalls the canonical SAW albums, BOC, or even Seefeel's enduring, genre-free experiments. Rhythms come and go at all tempos, from Hauntological four-on-the-floor to flickering downtempo and ambient house approximations. But the emphasis lies with the melodies. From the queasy orchestral style of "Circuits 1" to the glacial, "end credits"-style synths that close out the album, these motifs bear an uncanny familiarity, as though they always existed. You recognize them, not from a previous listen, but rather, some half-remembered dream, or, perhaps, a previous lifetime.
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LP
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AVE66 011LP
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Rare and unreleased cuts from the Lowtec vaults.
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LP
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AVE66 012LP
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Following up from his TRUElipS album (AVE66 010LP) from 2020, SW. returns to Avenue 66 with a seven-track LP titled blewLIPs. Edition of 300.
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2LP
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AVE66 010LP
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Over the past decade, SUED co-founder SW. has arranged the building blocks of dreamy rave and techno music -- billowing pads, undulating sub-bass, and adroit, nuanced drum programming -- into and novel dance floor structures. TRUElipS, SW.'s first full album since 2016 and his first for Avenue 66, is a beguiling, fully-realized statement. The 12-track LP is rooted in the storied '90s era when the spirit of orbital raves and free parties was channeled into massive leaps forward in the studio. A combination of house and drum n' bass looms large, as does the much-referenced intelligent techno era, but if you've listened to an SW. record, you already know TRUElipS is the work of a singular auteur. Breakbeats, rave stabs and major chords permeate the album, motoring along on a chassis of sine-wave bass lines and SW.'s widescreen percussive vision. Forays into downtempo and sweeping ambience keep the listener's head in the clouds, while the superb melodic techno constructions that comprise the album's core are at once contemplative and liable to bring on a giddy head rush. TRUElipS brims with the optimistic, escapist spirit that fueled dance music's original triumph, a throwback to bright, imagined futures.
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CD
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AVE66 009CD
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On his third album as Trickfinger, John Frusciante makes the jump from Acid Test to its leftfield sub-label, Avenue 66, to unleash the full scope of his vision. On She Smiles Because She Presses The Button, the legendary, LA-based cult figure, presents his most diverse yet cohesive album to date. Frusciante has the melodic and programming chops to jump from style to style while sounding only like himself. "Amb" is the welcome middle-ground between Balearic and IDM while "Brise" with its quick syncopations and rhythmic groove provide a contrasting fabric. Elsewhere, JF caroms through electro and pastoral, "intelligent" ambient. The common thread through this quixotic journey are his trademark, timeless melodies. For years now, Frusciante has immersed himself in machines, learning tracker programs, synths and drum machines inside and out, applying the same, tireless approach he's exhibited throughout his career. On She Smiles Because She Presses The Button, this period of intense study leads intense creative liberation.
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LP
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AVE66 009LP
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LP version. On his third album as Trickfinger, John Frusciante makes the jump from Acid Test to its leftfield sub-label, Avenue 66, to unleash the full scope of his vision. On She Smiles Because She Presses The Button, the legendary, LA-based cult figure, presents his most diverse yet cohesive album to date. Frusciante has the melodic and programming chops to jump from style to style while sounding only like himself. "Amb" is the welcome middle-ground between Balearic and IDM while "Brise" with its quick syncopations and rhythmic groove provide a contrasting fabric. Elsewhere, JF caroms through electro and pastoral, "intelligent" ambient. The common thread through this quixotic journey are his trademark, timeless melodies. For years now, Frusciante has immersed himself in machines, learning tracker programs, synths and drum machines inside and out, applying the same, tireless approach he's exhibited throughout his career. On She Smiles Because She Presses The Button, this period of intense study leads intense creative liberation.
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2LP
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AVE66 008LP
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On his third album, Rainbow Doll, the New Jersey house mystic Joey Anderson speaks to us. Of course, like everything Anderson does, the message is encoded. On tracks like "Beside Me" and "Cindy", his voice rings out in dream incantations -- on the latter, he repeats a Mark Hollis-like mantra over a perfect, minimalist house loop while the former sounds like the late, great Ron Hardy taking the razor-and-tape to Ike Yard. It's his third record for the Berlin-based label Avenue 66, and graciously illuminates the dream logic introduced on his debut for the imprint, the 2013 leftfield classic Above The Cherry Moon. While Rainbow Doll satisfies those outer impulses, the album's core comprises what are perhaps Anderson's most indelible dance tracks to date, like "Bounce With It", a jacking anthem which sees him at mission control, sending widescreen synth lines soaring through the atmosphere. With the aforementioned vocals punctuating five of the eight tracks, Rainbow Doll is Anderson's most personal work to date. It's his first album since 2015, but also his shortest, most concise full-length. Even with a more direct approach, the elusive, dreamlike quality which has made his work so intriguing remains intact. He speaks of dreams throughout the record, even as his uncanny methodology comes into focus. More than ever before, you will understand the materials Anderson uses to construct his Escher-like tracks. You hear his fingers on the keys, the sturdy east coast house beats he learned to dance to. The dreams have become lucid. As he puts it deep in the album, they "seem so real".
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2LP
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AVE66 007LP
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"Coconut Grove started as a secret. I wrote and recorded it in deliberate solitude over the course of a year, in long sessions when I was alone at home or after everyone else had gone to sleep. I had the uncanny sense of discovering something quite old rather than of making something new. Every album I've made revealed itself over time -- Coconut Grove snaked its way through my psyche, going back to my beginnings. While working on it, I found some notes I had jotted down back in 2006, when I was 22 and first inching away from punk towards electronic music. I wrote that I had been dreaming of something humid and menacing, melting but also alluring. I heard some of that in the haunting, dubby minimal techno of the time, and imagined it crossed with the slashing urgency of my favorite no wave and post-punk bands. I imagined the catharsis I experienced as a performer rerouted through techno's mercurial endlessness. Those visions never left me, and I've been dreaming of them in one way or another ever since. Coconut Grove folded that time back onto the present, letting me start again from the beginning. A lot can happen in a year, and, at the risk of sounding coy, a lot happened to me in 2018. Coconut Grove was an exorcism, or maybe a rebirth, but whatever it was it moved with a little extra fluidity. You can hear it for yourself, but I will say the album's softer touch is no accident. Living in that secret space, it felt good to let some air in." --Daniel Martin-McCormick aka Relaxer
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2LP
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AVE66 006LP
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Lowtec, the man behind Workshop and Out To Lunch, famously takes his time to make electronic productions that are, in turn, out of time. Over the course of his career he's released tracks that could have been made yesterday, years ago, or a decade into the future. With Avenue 66 he's found a leftfield home that celebrates pure creativity, that embraces the liminal, the weird, and the sublime. Light Surfing fits all of these descriptors. The double-LP rewards deep, repeated listening. There's plenty to unpack, but those who cherish the murky bangers that have been Lowtec's stock and trade will find plenty to love. "Boy With The Broken Glasses" weaves a subtle, dancehall-inflected riddim into hazy ambient house, while the closer, "Burnt Toast", is the latest example of Jens Kuhn's uncanny ability to perfectly fit a soulful vocal sample into an alien dance floor soundscape. Unexpected moments of sideways beauty also unfurl across the four sides. The two-part Light Surfing is one of Lowtec's most evocative suites to a date -- its mournful string soundtrack is the album's recurring, longing motif. Elsewhere, as on "Mynthenquai", Kuhn applies avant-garde strategies to his synth leads, taking you on head-spinning melodic journeys. Light Surfing is a masterful balancing act between dream states and machine-like efficiency, the experimental and functional, precision and spontaneity. Lowtec could have only gotten here by taking his time.
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LP
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AVE66 004LP
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There's been an air of hypnagogic mystery surrounding Acid Test's sublabel Avenue 66 from the start. Joey Anderson's oblique, Prince-inspired incantation "Above The Cherry Moon" (2013) set the tone for a label that's sound that has found beauty in the furthest recesses of the dancefloor, in the murkiest decay of kick drums and rave stabs. Fitting then, that the first album on the imprint comes from Trux, an artist who has chosen to reveal nearly nothing about themselves. Following a cult classic mini-LP for Office Recordings (2016), Orbiter bears out the anonymous producer as a master of liminal, conceptual dance music. Orbiter's ten tracks have a vaporous, shape-shifting quality, threatening to topple over into full-on kick drum bliss or vanish into ambience. Opener, "With It", moves from heady ambient rush to skeletal piano, while "Blinko" and "Roy's Garage" spell out a hazy memoriam for the UK continuum. Forlorn pianos ring out amongst the field recordings, excitable toms, and jungle bass all softened in the enveloping gauze. Orbiter positions Trux as an unknown auteur who puts evocative world of tone and echo into dizzying motion, content to watch from the wings.
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12"
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AVE66 003EP
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New Jersey house mystic Joey Anderson returns to Avenue 66 after inaugurating the Acid Test imprint in 2013 with the modern psych-dance masterpiece Above The Cherry Moon. Here, Anderson's "If One Cares, They Act Different" works with a lead that could score an unsettling '80s horror flick before eventually introducing Anderson's signature quicksilver synths and abstract, jacking drum patterns. "Peace There" takes the listener far out with square-wave basslines and raspy hats. On "The Vase," Anderson reins things in, but even his bittersweet, relatively straight-head deep house tracks present an odd paradox.
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