KEPLAR - Forced Exposure

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Released in 1999 on Taylor Deupree's 12k label, optimal.lp was the debut album by Dan Abrams under his Shuttle358 moniker. For its 25th anniversary, Keplar presents it on vinyl for the first time with three previously unreleased tracks, as well as a new artwork recreated by Daniel Castrejón and a remaster by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich based on the original pre-masters that were been restored and cleaned up for the reissue project by Abrams. optimal.lp was inspired by the rich tradition of ambient music and the rhythmic complexity of 1990s electronica while also sharing many traits with the then-emerging clicks'n'cuts movement, making it a true sui generis piece of work -- both informed by tradition and visionary, idiosyncratic and seminal for many artists after him. During the 1990s, Abrams increasingly immersed himself in the electronica scene and the output of labels such as Instinct, where Deupree worked as an art director and released his first records as Human Mesh Dance. Abrams found a home on 12k after sending Deupree a demo tape that would later evolve into optimal.lp, released as the label's fifth catalogue number. This sense of timelessness remains tangible after a quarter of a century after the album's original CD release and is even being expanded upon by the vinyl reissue, which is complemented by three pieces that were made while Abrams was working on the album. The digital release even features an entirely new take on the original album's final piece, "Tank." While Abrams let one of the masters go through his customized reverb unit when preparing the reissue, he started recording the results of this accidental dialogue between past and present. It's a fitting tribute to an album whose delicate circular rhythms, rich textures, and ethereal melodies are precisely so exhilarating because their interplay seems to suspend the passing of time altogether.

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2003 album by Tujiko Noriko on vinyl for the first time, featuring new artwork. Edition of 500 copies with black poly-lined inners, and download featuring eight tracks. Keplar presents the first-ever vinyl edition of the 2003 album From Tokyo to Naiagara by Tujiko Noriko. This reissue with new artwork by Joji Koyama is an abridged version of the album as Tomlab label owner Tom Steinle and producer Aki Onda had originally intended to publish it alongside the original CD version. Written by the France-based Tujiko while she still lived in Japan, From Tokyo to Naiagara followed up on her two seminal Mego albums and marked a turning point in both the artist's career and personal life. Tujiko worked primarily with a Yamaha synthesizer and an MPC sampler while also incorporating contributions by other musicians such as Onda, Riow Arai, and Sakana Hosomi into the pieces. Sometimes approaching an IDM and clicks'n'cuts-style production or working with trip-hop and hip-hop beats while using conventional song structures in the most unconventional of ways, the album showcases her multifaceted influences and skills as a singer and musician to full effect. Tujiko describes producing it in close collaboration with Onda, who would relocate to New York City shortly after, as "quite Tokyo and very local." This music is looking back while moving forward. It is probably no surprise that its reissue too evokes tender memories of Onda and Steinle in Tujiko, while also reminding her of what lies ahead. Influenced in equal parts by the experience of strolling through previously unknown Tokyoite back alleys and thinking about the paths not (yet) taken, From Tokyo to Naiagara is precisely that: the perfect travel companion for a journey that leads its listeners from past to future.

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Last copies, reduced price. Keplar releases a vinyl reissue of 2001's Curve, the second album released by Frank Bretschneider on Mille Plateaux under his real name. Curve saw him pick up on the underlying concept of 1999's Rand, but gave his explorations of the sonic and stylistic range of electronic music notably more space and time to unfold. Merging compositional minimalism with sonic complexity, the eight tracks display an affinity for the production techniques of dub music, which had already been a major reference point for Bretschneider's work before. Its subtle grooves, especially in the rhythmically charged pieces towards the end of the album, also nod at the dance music-inspired work of contemporaries such as SND or Vladislav Delay. Produced during a prolific time for Bretschneider, who had previously co-run the Rastermusic label and was at that time still active under his Komet moniker, he considers Curve to be a crucial album in his discography. Bretschneider was an important figure in the 1980s Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz) scene and released his first solo experiments with electronic music through his own klangFarBe tape label as early as 1985. Throughout the 1990s, he was part of projects such as Produkt and Tol and also released solo albums as Komet on Rastermusic, which he had co-founded in 1995 together with Olaf Bender a.k.a. Byetone. At the turn of the millennium, he gradually started releasing more solo records under his real name. After 1999's Rand, followed Rausch on 12k -- with whose owner Taylor Deupree he would collaborate for 2002's Balance, reissued in 2020 by Keplar -- in the following year and, finally, Curve. Produced after he had moved to Berlin, Bretschneider used a Clavia Nord Modular as his primary sound source and the Logic DAW to modulate and synchronize the sounds, adding only drum loops to some tracks in the second half of the album. Curve is a record that is hard to pigeonhole and thus an archetypical Bretschneider album: marked by a meticulous attention to detail, infinitely playful, and fully dedicated to pushing the envelope of electronic music. It is no wonder that it left a lasting mark on the international scene for adventurous electronic music.

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The Keplar label presents the next instalment in a series of reissues from the catalogue of Sasu Ripatti's seminal Vladislav Delay project. Originally released on Mille Plateaux, the vinyl edition of Entain from 2000 omitted two shorter tracks and included all others in an abridged form. With this reissue, the full album as it was pressed on CD is finally made available on vinyl. Besides a new remaster by Kassian Troyer, it was also given new cover artwork by Marc Hohmann that picks up on that of the Whistleblower reissue, released in early 2023 by Keplar. This serial visual approach highlights the conceptual continuity between those masterful explorations of the interplay between dub techniques, noise, and repetition. Ripatti himself had reworked material from 1999's Ele album for the release of Entain, which means that it can be considered the debut album proper of his Vladislav Delay project. It saw the Finnish artist aim more vigorously for abstraction than in his earlier releases as Vladislav Delay for labels such as Chain Reaction, which were collected on the iconic Multila compilation in 2000. To mark this special occasion, Multila will be repressed by Keplar with a new artwork that matches the new design of Whisteblower and Entain. Multila and Entain correspond with each other conceptually as much as they seem to differ on a musical level. From the very first moments of the 22-minute-long opener "Kohde," it becomes clear that Entain takes things further away from the dancefloor, aiming less for physical impact than for intellectual stimulation. A sort of electronic minimal music, it was primarily interested in letting discrete elements freely come into play with one another. Much like Multila, however, Entain highlighted the subtle differences embedded in what only feels like repetitive music. Entain took the dub techno formula further than any other record before it -- onwards into the realms of pure abstraction.

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Multila was the third album by Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti under the moniker Vladislav Delay. It compiles the Huone and Ranta 12" EPs Ripatti released on Basic Channel's Chain Reaction label in 1999 and 2000. The album features six hauntingly murky dub ambient tracks and the impressive 22-minute techno odyssey "Huone." More than 20 years after its original release as a full-length CD album (Chain Reaction), these iconic recordings of modern electronic music are now available again as a double vinyl edition, featuring a revised artwork by Marc Hohmann that matches the new design of the Whisteblower and Entain reissues.

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Last copies, reduced price. Arovane's Icol Diston compilation on vinyl for the first time. Icol Diston, released in 2002 on DIN, comprised the three first EPs released by Uwe Zahn under his Arovane moniker. This expansive reissue sheds a new light on Zahn's first two outings as a producer on the I.O. and Icol Diston EPs on Torsten "T++" Pröfrock's legendary label as well as highlighting his radical inventiveness as a remixer with the two renditions of Pröfrock-produced material offered on AMX. Taken together, these musically complex and emotionally rich electronic compositions form the prologue to an artistic story like none other while also documenting a very specific era in cultural history. The energy running through Berlin and its boundaryless electronic music scene at the end of the 1990s is reflected by and refined through these eleven tracks. The Yamaha QY700 would become his sketchbook that allowed him to experiment with different patterns, creating polymetric figures out of discrete musical elements. Zahn's sessions, recorded live in stereo and straight to DAT, resulted in two very different EPs of original material. His debut I.O. showcases a playful and gentle, albeit dubby and at times moody aesthetic. The four tracks are exercises in sonic worldbuilding, creating vast spaces and filling them with a plethora of intertwining melodies and rhythms. Its successor Icol Diston drew on similar parameters, but painted a very different picture in terms of atmosphere and mood. The AMX EP features two remixes of tracks originally produced by Pröfrock under two different guises. "Außen vor" had been released under his Dynamo moniker and was reworked by Zahn after having been introduced to his label owner's Studio 440 sampler, sequencer and drum machine. With his remix of "No. 8," released under Pröfrock's tongue-in-cheek pseudonym Various Artists, Zahn followed a more radical approach which led him even deeper into dub territory. Widely different from the original version, it perfectly translated the spirit of this singular masterpiece into another stylistic idiom. The Icol Diston compilation is imbued with a forward-thinking spirit that remains exhilarating until today. It captures the sound of one unique artist, but also electronic music during that time more broadly. This is the sound of opening a new chapter, the willingness to venture into the unknown. Remaster and cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Cover art by Jim Kühnel based on a photograph by Uwe Zahn. Die-cut sleeve; poly-lined inners; includes download code.

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Arovane's third album on vinyl for the first time in almost two decades. Arovane's acclaimed 2004 album Lilies has been out-of-print on vinyl for nearly two decades. Lilies was a follow-up to Tides (KEPLARREV 010LP) in every sense, exploring a trip to Japan and drawing on shimmering textures and the sort of melodies that you might need some time to recover from. There's a hugely evocative sense to these tracks, emotionally driven, free of complexity or conceit, piano melodies providing the central focus for a twilight cascade of light that seems perfect for the Tokyo skyline -- just as the sun sets. It's an album that radiates warmth and vulnerability, fusing the technological might at the heart of each track (and at the heart of the city) with an age-old understanding that certain echoes of sound, small melodic changes and cushioned lullabies can imprint sounds on your mind like childhood memories -- remembered forever. Like a dreamlike score, or maybe even an alternate soundtrack to Lost in Translation (2003) -- the sort of music that intertwines with images and stays in your mind indefinitely. After coming back from Tokyo and completing the production of Lilies, Uwe Zahn disassembled his studio in the big flat in an old building in Berlin's Prenzlauerberg district and stored it away in boxes. He needed a break from making music. Lilies was the last album prior to a nine-year hiatus for Arovane, ending in 2013 with the release of Ve Palor. All tracks composed and recorded by Uwe Zahn. Vocals on "Pink Lilies" by kazumi. Originally released on City Centre Offices in 2004. Remaster and cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Cover art by Jim Kühnel based on a photograph by Uwe Zahn. Die-cut sleeve; poly-lined inners; includes download code; edition of 500.

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Debut album by Kiln (Ghostly International) on vinyl for the first time. Holo by the US-American three-piece Kiln, first released in 1998, is one of those rare records that managed to carve out a niche of its own while also building bridges to variety of genres like Chicago-style post-rock, the ambient mysticism of projects like Rapoon or the music made at the intersection of shoegaze, and electronic music in the late 1990s. Lush textures, subtle rhythms, jazzy inflections, and electronic experimentation seamlessly blend into each other over the course of the eleven tracks. This reissue through the German label Keplar makes the fully revised version, self-released by the group in 2007 under the name Holo [re/lux], available on vinyl for the very first time. Clark Rehberg III had embarked on this mission together with Kevin Hayes and Kirk Marrison in 1993. They had first worked together under the name Fibreforms as a live trio that used treated guitars, kit drums, and tapes of found sound to explore the balance between band composition and recording experiments, while Marrison made heavy use of the Akai S612 sampler as a fabricating strategy with the project Waterwheel. Holo followed up on the trio's debut self-titled EP that had been recorded in the summer of 1996. "That same year, during a lull in our collabs, Kirk began building pieces on a low-memory Mac using an early 8-channel DAW," explains Rehberg. Enchanted by the unprecedented fidelity and energy of those recordings, the three reconvened to build upon them and make more music in that manner. The group worked individually and in pairs for about 18 months while being spread across the United States. Rehberg says that he still hears "a time-stamp of those efforts and the belief that we were creating a special audio experience" when listening back to Holo, a record the band itself chose to revise almost a decade after its initial release. "Ultimately we just felt those pieces needed more impact and we had the tools and ability to make that happen," he explains. 16 years after that and a quarter of a century after it first introduced Kiln as a force to be reckoned with, the remastered version feels indeed timeless. It is both a snapshot of the first extensive album project by a group whose bond is still "diamond strong," as Rehberg puts it, and a record that continues to sound fresh, if not visionary also today. Remaster by Stephan Mathieu. Vinyl cut by LUPO. Cover art by Kirk Marrison and Clark Rehberg III. Poly-lined inners; includes download code; edition of 500.

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Vladislav Delay's 2007 album Whistleblower on vinyl for the first time. Reworked/remastered and featuring new artwork. Following up on reissues of the 2000 compilation Multila (KEPLARREV 001LP) and 2001's Anima (KEPLARREV 009LP), Sasu Ripatti has thoroughly revisited the classic Whistleblower for its first ever vinyl issue on the German Keplar label. Ripatti created entirely new mixes of previously unheard-of alternative versions of the tracks that first appeared on CD through his own Huume imprint in early 2007. He thus shines a new, different light on a record that was as much an expression of reaching a turning point in his life as it also showcased a new, more direct and perhaps more abrasive side of his Vladislav Delay project. Whistleblower was marked by the insertion of more noise and disruptive elements into Ripatti's slowly moving take on intricate electronic music that heavily leaned on dub techniques. Fittingly for an album written at the threshold between one life and the other, Whisteblower seems at once melancholic and forward-looking in both tone and style. Whisteblower was the follow-up record to 2005's The Four Quarters and produced in the German capital. Changes in his personal life had a profound impact on him when making the record. The fifth track, "Lumi," was dedicated to his daughter who was born shortly after the album was finished. Having already previously embraced a sober lifestyle -- hinted at with the last piece's title, "Recovery Idea", Ripatti started questioning his life choices more thoroughly. This is also expressed in "He Lived Deeply", a track inspired by Miles Davis's love for Duke Ellington whose title can be read as an implicit question that Ripatti nowadays paraphrases thusly. The seven tracks also marked a musical turning point in Ripatti's work as a producer, not only because it was the last one for which he primarily used analogue and vintage equipment. They are also more straightforward on a music level, more demanding and at times more concerned with subtle rhythms than with the thick textures that were so integral to his earlier work. Whisteblower represented the first step in a process of focusing less on sonic abstraction and more on direct (self-)expression. While Ripatti admits that he found working on the album difficult back then, he also points out that he was surprised to hear how "gentle and peaceful" it sounded when he started revisiting the original files he used as a basis for these newly mixed versions. Remastered and cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Includes poly-lined inners; includes download code.

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Last copies, reduced price. Ekkehard Ehlers's seminal plays series was originally released on three 12"s (Staubgold) and two 7"s (Bottrop-Boy) in very limited runs. The entire series was previously only available as a CD compilation. Keplar finally presents it on double vinyl for the first time, featuring a new artwork. Domestic ethnology: Ekkehard Ehlers plays. "Play" is a word in English with many meanings attached. Each one sends you down a different cognitive pathway. When Ekkehard Ehlers plays, he is very much on his own. Or, at least, alone but at the same time keeping intimate company with the artistic innovators named in his titles. Robert Johnson. John Cassavetes. Albert Ayler. Cornelius Cardew. Hubert Fichte. Is he playing with them, against them, about them, for them, to them? This can never be known. It is certainly a mistake to try to hear the "work" of these originals in the sounds played by Ekkehard. They're not cover versions. They're hardly tributes in the conventional sense. Cassavetes and Fichte are not even musicians, although music played an important part in both their careers. Sure, there are little nods and flashes of recognition -- tiny guitar licks among the minimal beats of "Robert Johnson 2"; rich bowed instruments in "Albert Ayler", recalling the violin, cello and double bass arrangements on Ayler's 1967 Live in Greenwich Village LP; the elongated organ lines of "Cornelius Cardew 1" gesturing towards passages in Paragraph 1 of the British composer's 1971 Marxist monolith, The Great Learning. Ekkehard is not so much playing these figures as allowing himself to be played by them. Playing as an activity also suggests freedom. Maybe the only thing all five named persons have in common is that they were all quiet radicals. In music, literature and cinema, they all stepped, without self-promotion or fanfare, into unmapped territories. Once there they found it necessary to invent new languages in order to survive. Necessity was the mother of their inventiveness. They were also uncomfortable avant-gardists. Lonely types, fighting their corners out on the margins, with little reward, often misunderstood, ridiculed or ignored. All died unfairly young. The deaths of Johnson, Ayler and Cardew have never been satisfactorily explained, and remain shrouded in myths and conspiracy theories. The pioneering expeditions of all five began in that spirit of playful freedom, but inexorably drew them towards the heart of darkness. Ekkehard Ehlers's intuitive electronic portraits are a form of domestic ethnology in themselves. Invoking another of Ekkehard's musical aliases, they are portraits of cultural "autopoiesis" -- creators whose works were strong enough to have their own self-regenerating life force. Featuring Stephan Mathieu, Joseph Suchy, Anka Hirsch. Mastered by Rashad Becker. Cut to vinyl by Lupo, Berlin, 2022. Redesigned by Sandra Kastl, 2022. Photos by Ludger Blanke. Gatefold sleeve; includes download code; edition of 500.

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Reduced price, last copies. Herbstlaub, the third album by Marsen Jules, was both introspective and visionary, modest and ground-breaking. Blending elements of classical music with electronic textures, the German artist created six pieces that draw on the power of repetition, yet are full of internal tensions and sweeping dynamics. Now, Keplar makes it available again on vinyl for the first time since its original release in 2005. This version, remastered by Stephan Mathieu and with a new artwork by Umor Rex's Daniel Castrejón, shines a new light on a record that paved the way not only for the artist's later work, but also further developments in electronic and ambient music more broadly. "The noughties were a special time," says Marsen Jules today. "It felt like there was a new tool made available practically every day that allowed you to create new musical worlds on your computer." Hence, this prolific phase saw the emergence of a plentitude of genres and styles that can be traced back to individual records -- "precious gems that opened up new possibilities and anticipated a lot of what later would be picked up on," as he describes them. Herbstlaub surely falls into this category, having paved the way for a distinct approach to combining elements from classical and electronic music. While Wolfgang Voigt was focusing on the marriage of romanticism and techno with his Gas project at the same time, the six pieces on Herbstlaub follow a very different concept. Through repetition and reduction, Marsen Jules threw any sense of time out of joint while also inserting an emotional component into the music. "What would remain if you abstract musical contents to this degree, how much of your personality would still resonate in it," he sums up the questions that shaped his approach. "When will reduction result in monotony, and how could unique, magical moments created through repetition?" More than one and a half decades later, Herbstlaub seems both melancholic and brimming with excitement. This is the sound of an artist experimenting freely with the sounds and structures of two supposedly irreconcilable musical traditions with new and exciting tools, creating something previously unheard of in the process. All tracks composed and recorded by Martin Juhls. Originally released on CCO in 2005. Vinyl cut by LUPO. Cover art by Daniel Castrejón based on the original by Alphazebra.

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Tides marked a radical change in direction for Arovane. After Uwe Zahn had made a name for himself with cutting-edge IDM rhythms and slick ambient textures on a slew of releases, his sophomore album saw the prolific producer opt for a sample-based approach that resulted in a more organic sound and laid-back downbeat grooves. Having reissued Arovane's seminal Atol-Scrap as a double-LP in 2021, the Berlin-based Keplar label now makes Tides available on vinyl for the first time since its original release in 2000 through the legendary City Centre Offices. It shines a new light on a release for which Zahn quite literally ventured into previously unknown territory -- Tides is an album that emits a timeless, quiet calm and nonetheless stays constantly in motion. Inspired by the landscape of France, especially the coastline and the sea, he made field recordings throughout his trip that were also used on the record, giving it its sensual feel. The foundation of the album however, the loose yet gripping grooves at the heart of every track, result from Zahn working extensively with samples. "I wanted to make use of drum sounds and small excerpts from old jazz vinyl records", he explains. He maintained the unique sound signatures and rhythmic flutter of the source material while building intricate beats with them. Most of the material was culled from the record collection of Christian Kleine, whose spontaneous guitar improvisations over the first musical sketches were recorded and edited by Zahn and can be heard on four tracks. Also employing the occasional cembalo or spinet sound, he worked with a hardware sequencer and a delay to integrate the different, discrete elements into nine tracks that feel both dense and light at once. Silence was also an important stylistic element on Tides and adds greatly to the overall atmosphere of an album that with the appropriately named "Theme" immediately sets the mood with intricate spinet melodies. As a whole, the album mirrors Zahn's trip that took him along the steep cliffs on a foggy day ("Seaside"), to an abandoned house in which he found old maps ("A Secret"), along the coastline during a long car ride ("Deauville"), to a sleepy village and the slowly moving sea ("Tides") and finally back home to his native Germany where he started reflecting upon his experiences, ultimately deciding to translate them into music ("Epilogue"). Originally released on CCO in 2000. Remaster and cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Cover art by Jim Kühnel based on a photograph by Uwe Zahn. Die-cut sleeve; poly-lined inners; includes download code.

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For its 20th anniversary, Keplar presents an absolute milestone in the history of IDM and ambient music for the first time in its definite form: Together Is The New Alone by Donnacha Costello was originally released on Mille Plateaux in 2001 as the second LP under the Irish producer's given name and firmly established him as one of the leading artists in the field of forward-thinking electronic music after he had primarily made a name for himself with house and techno releases under the Jayrod moniker. This vinyl reissue with an entirely new artwork comprises all ten tracks originally only included on the CD version in their edited and final form in which they were last presented on the digital re-release under the name Together, remastered by Stephan Mathieu and self-published by Costello, in 2015. Truly prescient artists rarely opt for introspective sounds, however that was the case when Costello set out to produce Together Is The New Alone during nightly session in his hometown Dublin between April and July in 2001, and it also explains the album's enduring appeal and unwavering radiance twenty years on. While many of his contemporaries dedicated themselves to explore the musical zeitgeist and notions of the future in conceptual terms, Costello made them emotionally tangible, allowing his audience to feel their underlying ambiguity rather than just reflect on it. Together Is The New Alone is an album that wordlessly speaks of the paradoxical sense of social alienation and isolation expressed by its title and thus seems even more topical today than it did at the time of its release. Working with elements from techno culture, glitch aesthetics, intricate IDM rhythms and lush ambient textures, Costello never once throughout the album adheres to tried and tested formulas and conventions, but holistically molds complex compositions out of distinct and discrete parts. The result is a record that is at once easily accessible and deeply affecting, but also infinitely rich and stunningly sophisticated in musical terms. A personal record expressing a universal sentiment -- a truly timeless statement that will reverberate for decades to come. Full tone artwork; includes download code; edition of 500.

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2001's Anima was the third album released by Sasu Ripatti under his Vladislav Delay moniker and marked a turning point in the stylistic development of the prolific producer. Clocking in at roughly 62 minutes, the single piece draws on dub aesthetics while working with musique concrète-like methods through the liberal use of samples to create a dreamlike logic. Muffled voices, lush chords, subtle rhythms, and indefinable sound events are not so much integrated into a composition with a predetermined outcome but rather engage with each other freely in a constant sonic flow, forming constellations in one moment before moving on to connect with other elements in the next one. Anima marked the first time Ripatti was using a DAW in his working process, creating a piece constantly in motion that subtly evolves over time. This vinyl reissue on the German Keplar label follows up on the 20th anniversary edition of 2000's Multila and will be complemented by a ten-minute long version of the original piece, previously only available on the CD version released by the artist on his own Huume label in 2008. After the release of his Ele and Entain albums in 1999 and 2000, respectively, Ripatti took the 1998 independent movie Hurlyburly as a conceptual starting point to experiment with different gear and production methods. "Until then I had worked with an old MSQ-700 MIDI sequencer and an Ensonic EPS16 sampler/sequencer that had one or two MB of sampling memory and mixed the music live on a Mackie, which was very limiting arrangement-wise," says Ripatti. Loading a slightly shortened version of the film into his DAW however allowed him to play along to it with the DrumKAT MIDI controller, triggering and playing all the sounds that can be heard on Anima while also contributing synths, bass and other sounds during repeated playthroughs before mixing a total of six stereo tracks together. While Anima sounded like an unusual Vladislav Delay record at the time of its release, it also prefigured many of the developments Ripatti would go through in the course of his long career. Combining visceral immediacy with a sense of abstraction, it is far more than a mere missing link in his discography but rather a conceptually and musically outstanding piece of work that remains as engaging as it was 21 years ago. First time on vinyl since its original release on Mille Plateaux in 2001. Remaster and cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Text by Kristoffer Cornils. Includes download code.

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Keplar reissues the fourth album Chessa by Dan Abrams' project Shuttle358 on vinyl for the first time. The double LP edition includes three previously unreleased tracks from the same recording sessions back in 2004, as well as an extended artwork with unseen photographs by Dan Abrams. While undoubtedly associated with the microsound and "clicks & cuts" movement around the turn of the millennium, on Chessa, Shuttle358 left behind the classical rhythmic patterns of the genre and shifted further towards warmer territories, meandering between modern digital minimalism and the soft tones of ambient music. Counter to his microsound synthesis approach on Frame (2000), Abrams created Chessa by writing software that manipulated samples from his unreleased songs, guitar pieces, and vintage Japanese films sampled from video tape. In particular, a special granulating technique was written and performed at intentionally low sample rates that gave the uniquely fragile, yet dense sound to the album. Over fourteen tracks, Abrams arranges slowly evolving sonic entities of unfading elegance. Strayed and hazy melodies pulse and cascade, elongated but brittle harmonies shimmer and disappear, echoing far-off in the rounded corners of the mind. The patient and detailed way Abrams combines the broken with the beautiful in creating organic collages of sound that retain the euphonic essence of a song, makes this piece of work so powerful and timeless, sounding just as relevant today, as it did upon release. Under modern scrutiny in Abrams latest studio, he refocused the original recordings to emphasize the elements most important to the original vision. The final mastering and vinyl preparation was done in collaboration with Stephan Mathieu, vinyl was cut by LUPO. From the original press release in 2004 by Taylor Deupree: "... Chessa is the third release from Abrams' Shuttle358 moniker on 12k and he continues to do what he does best: attempt to move microsound away from the world of theory and towards absolute real life. Like his photographs, Chessa is music about, and to be listened to in, unexpected places. It is a narrative, a simple slice of life that plays out through the incidental photography of the cover artwork. To achieve this Abrams fuses irregular granular sound particles, like the movements of everyday life, with a deliberate melodic base that captures emotion and simplicity." Edition of 500; includes printed inner sleeves and download code.

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Restocked. Arovane's debut album, Atol Scrap, on vinyl for the first time. Originally released in 1999. The story of each re-release begins with the original. In the late '90s, Uwe Zahn (Arovane), along with Robert Henke (Monolake) and Stefan Betke (Pole), began releasing music on Torsten Pröfrock's (Dynamo) newly launched DIN label. This was a very inconspicuous undertaking, but fans of the flourishing IDM, glitch, and constantly evolving abstract techno genres quickly picked up on the quality of sound coming out of Germany. After a few successful EPs, Zahn began working on his debut full-length, Atol Scrap. The release was a success, at least in the underground circles, where followers of the melodic harmonies, stuttering off-beat rhythms, and, most importantly, advanced sound design feverishly consumed the imprint's output. There was only one thing missing -- the album was never pressed on vinyl, and for decades remained in the digital domain. The fans, of course, inquired. "I thought of taking everything into my own hands and releasing the record myself," says Zahn, "but at the end of last year, Matthias from Keplar asked me to re-release Atol Scrap on vinyl." The label and its owner revolve in the Morr Music universe, and so it made sense for Zahn to trust the platform to treat the record right. Listening to Atol Scrap over twenty years later it is inane not to admit how well it has held up. Where other genres clearly aged, becoming stale, bland, and dull, the music on eleven tasty tracks still keeps the neurons tickled with each note. Many of the newly evolving techniques are recognizable on the album. "I created the digital artifacts with a digital multi-track recorder, the Fostex D80," recalls Zahn. "The thing had a scrub wheel with which I could achieve wonderful glitch effects by winding through the audio data. I have sampled and further processed these artifacts." And this approach is still embedded in Zahn's sound design. "I still use my 24-track analog desk from Tascam to mix my audio. I love to use hardware synths and samplers. I've definitely built upon my studio experience in the '90s." From this debut to the most recent output, Arovane's sound has evolved to become more intricate, detailed, and pronounced. Remastered and cut to vinyl by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Cover art by Jim Kühnel based on a photograph by Uwe Zahn. Die-cut sleeve with full-tone artwork, poly-lined inners; includes download code.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Reduced price, last copies. The album Balance by Frank Bretschneider and Taylor Deupree was originally released in 2002 by Mille Plateaux on CD only. The nine tracks on Balance are a perfect example for the aesthetics to arise within the click & cuts scene and (ambient-)glitch music movement of the late '90s and early 2000s. The two masters of microscopic sounds and sine wave/white noise-based music constructed these seamlessly mixed pieces around rhythms and melodies, which grants the album plenty of dynamics. The wide variety of carefully chosen ambient sounds throughout the whole work endows Balance warmth and intimacy. The recordings are now available for the first time on vinyl within the KeplarRev series, presented in a new updated artwork based on the original layout with photographs by Taylor Deupree. Includes download code; edition of 500.

From the original press release in 2002: "Balance is the first [and so far only] collaborative release from Frank Bretschneider (Berlin) and Taylor Deupree (Brooklyn). Both of these artists are no strangers to the ears of many; Taylor Deupree is one of New York's most vibrant electronic producers. From his early techno days as a member of Prototype 909 to his current status as one of N. America's key 'microscopic" electronic composers and to add runs the prestigious 12K and LINE labels. Frank Bretschneider is a key member and founder of the prestigious Raster Music label, he has critically acclaimed releases under the names Komet and Produkt. It's easy to say that Frank Bretschneider has created some of the most influential spatial electronics of the late '90s. Utilizing both artists keen ears for carefully crafted sounds, Balance blends the clean sine wave/white noise of Bretschneider with the defined grit of Deupree's granular synthesis. Realized entirely on Nord Modular synthesizers, Bretschneider and Deupree exchanged patch files through email and began constructing foundation loops. Bretschneider then created initial mixes of 9 songs and then sent them to Deupree who remixed and re-processed them. This digital exchange allowed for them to work using their own methods and aesthetic while combining the similarities of each other's interests. The result is a looping and churning rhythmic work that is both synthetic, warm, dubby, and tonally challenging. Thus Balance creates an engaging balance between the two artists aesthetics."

$22.50 IN STOCK

Between Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001, producers Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu recorded an album of warm, soft, delicately crackling electronic music in the space of that week. It was christened with the ambivalent title Heroin and was released on CD via the label Brombron in 2001 and later in 2003 re-issued on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork on double-LP with remixes the pair had commissioned as expansions. 17 years later Heroin sees its first vinyl release to include all 13 tracks from the original CD track list on this LP plus 12" set. The centerpiece "Herz" finally receives its long deserved vinyl treatment (side C, at 45rpm) and on the flip side Thomas Brinkmann contributes a mirror in a magnificent remix of that very piece on side D. Ehlers and Mathieu were both highly prolific solo artists during the period 2000-2004, and in just two years after the initial release of Heroin each had produced over half a dozen new solo recordings: among them the serial masterpiece Ehlers' Plays released as five stunning LPs in a series on Staubgold, while Mathieu's Full Swing Edits spread over five 10" records plus his album FrequencyLib on Mille Plateaux, Die Entdeckung des Wetters on Lucky Kitchen, and The Sad Mac on Atsushi Sasaki's Headz label. Heroin is an album that embraces the happy accident being made up of reduced, often very catchy and very direct micro hooks which seem laser-guided into a space accepting obvious melodic beauty in what feels like an observation of musics unfolding and revealing it's DNA, embed with for a kind of yearning for innocence and naiveté -- as if Satie were on the jukebox in The Crying of Lot 49. The album not only sounds like that of two producers who are both dreamers and scientists, but that Ehlers and Mathieu chose to work with these means in a dialogue together to reduce pop music to its musical/tonal core, it is not pop music anymore, rather a ghostly pointilistic itteration of song. Heroin is located at this transition, around that point at which tracks, that were or could have become pop compositions, irrevocably slip into a static harmonic nirvana. Includes printed inner sleeves and download code; Edition of 500.

$20.00 IN STOCK

Aix is an outstanding piece of work by Italian electro-acoustic savant Giuseppe Ielasi, originally released in 2009 on Taylor Deupree's 12k label. The follow-up to 2007's August (12k) and Ielasi's first collaboration with Nicola Ratti as Bellows, also out in 2007 (Kning Disk). Originally only released on CD (12k), the album got a very limited vinyl issue on Czech label Minority Records in 2010. Keplar presents this extraordinary and timeless collection of nine evocative minimalist soundscapes on vinyl again after ten years. For more than 20 years, Giuseppe Ielasi has been releasing his recordings on labels like Erstwhile Records, Häpna, Kning Disk, Dekorder, 12k, Entr'acte. or Editions Mego, as well as on his own label Senufo Editions. The label Keplar has been on a long hiatus and is now back with its KeplarRev series presenting vinyl re-issues of essential electronic albums from the '90s and '00s, as well as new recordings by momentous electronic and ambient artists. Includes download code; Edition of 500.

From the original press release in 2009: "With Aix we see Ielasi building his layered, atmospheric music around rhythmic grids. Most of the time these are quite irregular and the pulses are not necessarily stable or clear. Where his previous work approached sound in a linear fashion Aix imposes a strong vertical development with the aforementioned grid and a production consisting of ons and offs, employing as much improvisation as Ielasi's previous work, but in a different way. Despite the self-imposed grid structure, Aix relies heavily on randomization. Not in the traditional sense of sound placement but instead of the spatialization of sounds, echoes, reverbs, and the stereo image. As a result, Aix has an amazing sense and clarity of space as the small fragments of sound breathe and find their own place in the mix, thanks to Ielasi's sublime skills as a mixer and engineer. Ielasi relied heavily on numerous short samples and combining them in ways that fell into his groove; some found from others' recordings and many more recorded during the past year. We hear fragments of percussive (acoustic) objects, drums, piano, trumpet, guitar, and, of course, synthetic textures. Although there is a distinct rhythmic pulse to Aix, Ielasi manages to mold it into something wonderfully languid and warm... and strangely inviting." Composed and recorded by Giuseppe Ielasi in Aix-en-Provence, Autumn 2008. Remaster by Giuseppe Ielasi. Cover photograph "Construction, Barcelona" by Taylor Deupree. Layout by Dan Dudarec/Marco Ciceri.

$23.50 NOT IN STOCK

Repressed. Multila was the third album by Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti under the moniker Vladislav Delay. It compiles the Huone and Ranta 12" EPs Ripatti released on Basic Channel's Chain Reaction label in 1999 and 2000. The album features six hauntingly murky dub ambient tracks and the impressive 22-minute techno odyssey "Huone". 20 years after its original release as a full-length CD album (Chain Reaction), these timeless recordings of modern electronic music are now finally available for the first time as a double-vinyl edition. The label Keplar has been on a long hiatus and is now back with its KeplarRev series presenting vinyl re-issues of essential electronic albums from the '90s and '00s, as well as new recordings by momentous electronic and ambient artists. Drawings by Kaisa Kemikoski; Layout by Marco Ciceri. Remaster by Rashad Becker and vinyl cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Includes download code.

"Life films us exactly. Our experience of it, though, lies beyond images and descriptions. Emotions, coming in irrational flashes, are non-figurable. We lose our little connection to them very quickly. We look for forms which promise to take us to our own experience. We construct forms with this in mind: that they can take us to meet the subconscious. Multila's construction is principled this way. Fragments of experience, moments without definition or localization are captured within tiny fragments of time and then within one's mind space. We can look into it and see that experience has left some of its data to us. As we receive it, again and again, we are connected and reconnected to certain indefinable moments. Both during and after its recording, Multila is a tool to learn about the unintentional states of us. It is a way to see our own emotional loops. Multila is a soundtrack for vision." --Vladislav Delay (2000)

$16.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"Pantasz presents contemporary diary writing, no music concrete. He´s inspired by chance and creates a masterpiece of taken back pop largeness: On this record you come towards pop, great pop. And then you get a feeling of techno and immediately thereafter you hear electro. Once it is flowing and beautiful, then hypermotorically restless. You even can dare an excursion to the disco to dance for a while. But that certain melancholy, which attends to the most pieces, takes you back to reality. And again this moment of chanson appears and becomes to a central thread of the whole work. The technical revolution with computers and the related possibility of home recording surely plays a not too insignificant role on the record. But despite all that the huge composing talent of Fabian Fenk is inescapably audible. How he connects guitars, electronics and various other instruments and how he uses his famous vocals, sometimes sporadically, sometimes song-determining, will be hard to match around here."