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12"
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OM 059EP
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Optimo Music unleashes Japan's GǼG and their Anarcho Disco into the world. Optimo thought audiences were done with 12" single release, at least for now, but then these tracks showed up and it was instantly obviously essential that they get pressed up on big fat 12" singles. Every single track here has been tried and tested and caused delirious delight on the dancefloor over the last year. Now it is time to share them. Truly anarchic, psychedelic dance music for the open-minded and genre-free crews. GǼG say: "Using a variety of sampling and unique FX, our music has created a unique GǼG sound that is psychedelic and anarchic." This subversive sound is sure to be the key to shaking the dancefloor.
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12"
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OM 060EP
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Optimo Music unleashes Japan's GǼG and their Anarcho Disco Volumes 1 & 2 into the world. Optimo thought it was done with 12" single release, at least for now, but then these tracks showed up and it was instantly obviously essential that they get pressed up on big fat twelve-inch singles. Every single track here has been tried and tested and caused delirious delight on the dancefloor over the last year. Now it is time to share them. Truly anarchic, psychedelic dance music for the open-minded and genre-free crews. GǼG say "Disko Klubb boss Monkey Timers, who leads Tokyo's underground disco scene, and Keita Sano, who has been gaining attention for his releases on labels around the world, have started the project 'GǼG'. Using a variety of sampling and unique FX, our music has created a unique GǼG sound that is psychedelic and anarchic. This subversive sound is sure to be the key to shaking the dancefloor."
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OM 028LP
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In 1994, UK ambient pioneers O Yuki Conjugate recorded their landmark Equator album. To mark the 30th anniversary of this musical milestone, many of the same personnel -- Roger Horberry (co-founder of O Yuki Conjugate), Dan Mudford (ex-Sons of Silence and co-creator of the Shaun of the Dead soundtrack), Joe Lamb (ex-Sons of Silence) and Malcolm McGeorge -- came together to make New Meridian, reflecting the range of influences they've picked up over the intervening years. Generously described as "almost like normal music," the eight tracks of New Meridian feature instrumentation ranging from classic analogue to actual wooden logs. The result takes the listener on a rain-drenched, open-top ride from electronica avenue to the drone caverns of Uranus, with various fourth world ambi-dub diversions along the way.
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OM 027LP
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Back in 2018, two mysterious twelve-inch singles appeared in underground record shops. Credited to Blotter Trax, a previously unknown outfit who cherished "faceless" anonymity, the pleasingly twisted and mind-altering music on show was a mutant form of electronic psychedelia. The included tracks were variously informed by analogue techno, acid, electro and minimal, but inhabited their own clandestine sonic space. These tracks were, Optimo Music later discovered, lightly edited "straight to tape" jams, crafted on the fly by their creators in one of Berlin's most admired studios. By the time Blotter Trax delivered their follow-up on Clone offshoot Frustrated Funk a year later, the secret was out: the project was in fact a collaboration between two storied artists, techno titan Magda -- a DJ/producer who should need little introduction -- and serial underground aggravator (and man of many aliases) Jay Ahern, sometime Hauntologists member and acid techno royalty thanks to years spent releasing similarly shadowy EPs as T.B Arthur. In the years that followed, and before the COVID-19 pandemic grounded them in Berlin, the pair took their incendiary, modular-driven live show to esteemed clubland institutions (fabric included), on an acclaimed tour of Japan, and onto the stages of festivals across Europe. Four years on from that appearance on Frustrated Funk, Blotter Trax are back in updated and expanded form. Now a trio thanks to the addition of bassist Hannes Strobl, the band is set to release their far-sighted, funk-fueled debut album, Super Conductor, a pulsating, thrill-in-minute ride includes contributions from a swathe of notable guests (Nina Hynes, Ilhem Khodja, and David Moss provided vocals; Shigeru Tanabu played guitar; Matthew Styles mixed the set; and old friend John Tejada mastered it). While rooted in electro and acid, the album is impressively low-slung, stylish and funky, with nods towards Blotter Trax's mutual love of Arthur Russell, early '80s NYC downtown disco, leftfield new-wave pop and flash-fried punk-funk. Released by JD Twitch's Optimo Music imprint, it charts the ongoing dancefloor evolution of a band whose days of mystery and mischief are now a distant memory.
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OM 026LP
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Timo Kaukolampi, frontman for Finnish electronic rock group K-X-P and tireless sonic wanderer, is releasing his second solo album, this time on Optimo Music. Exquisitely rendered, shadowy, curiously claustrophobic and even occasionally paranoid, Inside The Sphere is an album wholly deserving of its name. A sense of paranoia is one of the threads through this glittering, winking electronic maze. Kaukolampi says "I came up with this metaphysical concept of the 'sphere'. When you are manipulated, you are 'Inside The Sphere'. It's like this dome of 'undue influence' that you don't know exists around you. It's a bit like the inside of a cult." Indeed, it's amazing the effects achieved with a few sparse electronic textures, the odd smattering of studio trickery, and two or three well-placed synthesizer parts. Though the result might sound ostensibly simplistic, Inside The Sphere is an album of reduction rather than addition. The rhythmic and textural scaffolding is based around what's not there, rather than what is. Take "VCS3". At first listen, it seems forged from a few synth lines and a simple percussion part -- so far, so simple. But listen closer, enter the sphere, look behind the mask -- notice the slightly detuned drones, the chattering percussive textures, that distant swell of bass, the way the central fugue shifts and mutates somehow statically, like a barber's pole. Might you be listening to an album within an album, a more complex song cycle hiding within the folds of an ambient electronic album? This ties in with another of Kaukolampi's thematic frameworks -- that of the mask. He references Oscar Wilde's quotation that "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." Inside The Sphere is not a one-note album. For every moment where a clammy ambient space enters, a buttery analog bassline is there to fill it. This clash seems to be the album's engine room, its power supply. Timo references devotional and choir music as an influence on this album. The paranoia and foreboding are tempered by these headier aspects. Kaukolampi mentions "empty and hollow spaces" in relation to several of the songs. Perhaps this is the very space behind the mask, where outward disguise merges with inner reality. Perhaps inside the sphere is not always such a bad place to be.
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OM 025LP
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De Ambassade's 2019 Duistre Kamers album was a huge favorite at Optimo Music so the label jumped at the chance to release the follow up: The Fool. Following hot in the heels of the acclaimed Young Birds/Palette 12" on Optimo Music (OM 052EP), The Fool is destined to be another cold wave, synth, new industrial, experimental -- whatever you want to call it --classic. Ambassade on the album: "Born from several years of research and contemplation on the human mind The Fool can be understood as a reflection to the dark energies -- natural, political, human and otherwise -- that are released when it comes to religion, greed and power. Historically, some rulers have used religion to legitimize their power. We were also inspired by wanting to examine what negative impact religion can have from the fact that it's always dominated by men. This was pursued by exploring a wide range of diverse and unusual types of instruments that took on a new approach of tonal expression, with the use of detuned choral and voice samples, droned tape loops, and DIY metal and found percussion. It's from these diverse sources that the process of creativity keeps persistently mutating. This process was focused through the enigmatic electronic and percussion composition from the band which alternates between foreground and background for the haunting vocal performances. "Later Met Je Beste Zelf" features Eelco Couvreur.
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2LP
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OMANARCHO 001LP
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Limited 2024 restock. Anarcho punk was the one sub-genre of punk that emerged in isolation from the rock n' roll establishment. During its pioneering days of the early 1980s it thrived in opposition to the music industry, existing as a fiercely underground alternative to the bands, labels and venues of the commercialized mainstream punk scene. It continues to do so. Anarcho punk represented one of the last truly underground and autonomous music movements ever witnessed and remains a movement that has never sold out and has never gone away. The major differentiation between the anarcho punk acts and the more traditional punk outfits was that for the former, albeit often more due to musical limitation than intent, the message was more important than the music. Standard song structures were often dispersed with in favor of a relentless lyrical polemic accompanied by a similarly uncompromising aural assault. As the scene grew, so did the diversity of records that emerged under the anarcho punk umbrella: from D&V (drums & vocals) to the proto-EBM synth-pop of Belfast's one-man Hit Parade and the Dadaist Beefheart hybrid of The Cravats. In later days the two biggest acts of the scene, Flux of Pink Indians and Crass themselves, both released LPs which had more in common with improv Jazz than hardcore punk. The resounding victory of anarcho punk is that it is now the unifying soundtrack to a culture of resistance that spans Scotland to Indonesia and remains without compromise. It is still as removed from mainstream music and oppositional to conventional culture as it was over forty years ago and shows no sign of changing. Quite the opposite: the more popular anarcho punk becomes the less it has to engage with the music establishment and the more control it can enjoy. In 2023, that message remains as uncompromising as ever. This is a double vinyl retrospective compilation of some of the most radical music ever made, a musical force that changed lives. Covering the years 1979-86 and including classic tracks from Crass, Poison Girls, Flux Of Pink Indians, The Mob, Zounds, Annie Anxiety, The Ex, Alternative TV, plus ten more, all newly remastered by iconic punk mastering engineer Daniel Husayn. It has been lovingly compiled by JD Twitch and anarcho legend Chris Low and was ten years in the making. There are also a couple of previously unreleased mixes included. It comes as a high-quality double vinyl pressing, and has a full color sleeve with back and front images designed by the legendary Gee Vaucher. Also features Honey Band, Andy T, Alternative, The Apostles, Lack of Knowledge, Hagar the Womb, and Chumbawamba. Includes six-page fold out poster on one side with detailed sleeve notes, recollections and essays on the other side.
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OM 024LP
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Pleasure Pool are Finn O'Hare, Andrew Robertson, and a rolling cast of Glasgow-based musicians, performers and artists. They sound like nothing else to have come out of Glasgow recently, exploring the territory between live performance and club culture through their collaborative ethos and party-starting attitude. Their debut EP, Night Scars, arrived in early March 2020 and now comes Love Without Illusion, Pleasure Pool's debut album, released on Optimo Music. Love Without Illusion adds layers of complexity and introspection to Night Scars' squarely dance floor-focused brew, though the record still oozes danceable energy. "Open Hours" is like opening a door and finding a party already in full swing, an assortment of recurring Pleasure Pool motifs -- echoing, dubbed-out vocals, gorgeous, impossibly airy synth melodies, louche percussion, cowbells, rising and falling flecks of trumpet -- all introduced in short order. "Lick The Bag", which prominently features vocalists Chloe Charlton and Raissa Pardini, has a controlled chaos befitting its morning-after-the-night-before name. The rest of the album rides this glimmering, night-magic mood at varying frequencies, with the title track a gentle storm of grandiose walls of synth and pulsing vocal fragments. The slow and low flickering funk of album closer "Zero Hours" pulls all that has come before it together to end things in the woozy bliss of a walk back home in warm, gentle sunlight. Love Without Illusion is a dazzlingly complete expression of Pleasure Pool's intoxicating sound and vision. Dive on in and explore.
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12"
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OM 052EP
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The Netherland's De Ambassade have dropped the "De" and are now known as Ambassade. Optimo Music will be releasing their second album in 2023. Ahead of that is this glorious two track 12". Both tracks are exclusive to this release. Ambassade on the tracks: "These two songs were born after a collaboration with Naama Freedman. She's an artist from Amsterdam and former member of Ambassade. She brought a couple sketches to the studio and we came out with these two songs. The lyrics on 'Young Birds' come from an old traditional English folk song from around 1903. It has been re-arranged a couple times throughout the years by multiple artists. The song reflects our development in sound and arrangement with extended synthesizer parts, less conventional song-writing. Also, singing in English is a new path. The pulsing song 'Palette' is a perfect combination of sequence and extended legato vocal parts. It creates a tense atmosphere which builds up to the very end."
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OM 023LP
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JD Twitch of Optimo Music: "When Isa Gordon sent the demo of this album to me, I knew I wanted to release it before I had got half way through it. I had previously released her super good Resili collaborative project but I wasn't quite prepared for how good this was going to be. Isa is patently a once in a blue moon talent and I feel honored to help get her unique, visionary sounds out into the world. This is next level programming and sound design but always with soul, and musicality. Sui generis."
Isa says: "For you only came about in the lockdown winter in 2020. I started seeing a lot of beats and motifs that I'd been working on working together as a collection and spent a few months compiling, completing, mixing, and weaving together the tracks into a coherent album. It was many nights tucked away entering the wormholes of making music and trying to honor the emotion contained in each song by expanding the sentiments within them into complete pieces, chasing down the journey in each one. It was a very personal, solitary exploration of how I interpret and compose instrumentals, with the rare global situation inhibiting outsider contact and influence. I include a mix of tempos, styles, and freely combine digital and live instruments in order to serve whatever intention or feeling needs to be heard."
Isa is an Ayrshire bred, Glasgow based producer and singer. Impressed upon by myriad styles; Singing folk music since a youngster, playing guitar since a teen, producing electronic music thereafter. Now freely cherry-picking whatever sounds, instruments, words and methods serve the feeling. Exploring solitary beat making as Isa Gordon and singing and writing heartfelt lyrical ditties with her band Fantasy Land.
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OM 022LP
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INIT is Benedikt Frey and Nadia D'Alo. Optimo Music present their long-delayed vinyl release, NRGY. Born out of various art performances and installations, INIT states a logical outcome of Berlin based duo Nadia D'Alo and Benedikt Frey. With heavy use of analog synthesis and drum-machines, INIT rethinks its genre's sonic approach, unfolding a unique and organic, yet alienating sound, somewhere in the mysterious midst of acid, techno, ambient, and krautrock. This is INIT's third album, following two releases on Hivern Discs, and performances at clubs such as Berghain, Robert Johnson, and Pudel Club. INIT say: "'Module', 'NRGY', and 'Time' were reverse extracted out of our live set and re-recorded and re-arranged after we realized how well they work in clubs. It is the first time we worked this way as we tend not to play our compositions live, like we produced them. Mostly we just extract loops out of our production to mess around with in a loose live project, 'Snowglobe', 'Holes In My CV' and 'N.O.D.' were more built up from a studio jam plus a bulletproof-ish arrangement afterwards. Tried and tested on dance floors this is a surefire hit album on the dancefloor, and at home. NRGY!"
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12"
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OM 048EP
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Drums, energy, songs, instrumentals, super production, post punk echoing, dancefloor destroying, home listening friendly, and completely unique. Rudolf Abramov hit all Optimo Music's buttons at once. Rudolf Abramov is a duo based in Berlin. They seem to open a door to unexpected musical encounters. It's an almost impossible task to sum up their sound in a comprehensible way, but in their own words their music is "a response to a seemingly endless conflict about disgust, acceptance and love." Since the duo likes to invite other musicians and fellow humans to add to their pieces, this often creates another layer to their unexpected musical encounters. "Losing Perspective" is the result of a journey that began with a week-long recording session outside the city. Back in Berlin the skeletons of the track gradually grew in flesh, experience and emotion, describing this time in a vibrant and ever-changing city; a city where the faded colors sometimes seem more appealing than the unifying glow of the new. "In order to preserve for ourselves the conflicting colors in their fantastic disharmony, we have therefore watched the pieces change rather than moving them in a particular direction. The result is a number of tracks with different facets that derive from different moods and voices, indulging in diversity. At the end of this process, we look back at this colorful collage and connect our own very personal history with it and both resolve in harmony. When asking the cat from our studio's courtyard for example, she said that 'Losing Perspective' was about stray tomcats who have lost their old home port to a newfangled establishment wandering randomly through the days in search of songbirds, distraction and rest. And we feel like she kinda has a point there."
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2LP
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OM 021LP
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Sold out. International music group Sex Judas feat. Ricky returns to Optimo Music with Night Songs. The eight track LP draws inspiration from the night and features Malian percussionist Sidiki Camara, jazz clarinetist Andreas Røysum, and noise rocker Linn Nystadnes. The group make their own blend of disco, post punk, and African music. "Black Cat In A Black Room" begins proceedings, taking the form of a psychedelic six-minute offering packed full of tribal drums and desert-like percussion. "A Man Without Purpose" comes next with its African-inspired vocal, before "Hab Mich Lieb" soon arrives. The six-minute cut is hypnotic, trippy, and relaxing all in one, as is "Slow Down" (featuring Linn Nystadnes). Taking on more of a funk-rock feel, there's plenty of groove in the guitar-laced bassline, whilst in "Cold Clementine", Sex Judas tells the sad tale of rave casualty over a dark and funky groove. You're taken down a spiritual path on "The Light You Saw Was Not For Real", as Andreas Røysum's clarinet solos sit underneath shamanic vocal offerings that open neatly into "The Night Within The Night". A slow-burning cut, riffs and hats serenade us before "When You Wake Up Everything Will Be Fine" brings proceedings to a close. Dream-like chords wrap us in a warm and glowing hue, with the harp-like sounds from Sidiki's ngoni, leaving you in a starry-eyed state to finish. The calming nature of the album is a nod to the band's influences: they were inspired by the great meditative records of the past, setting off on a musical trip that saw them record the whole release at legendary Norwegian studio Athletic Sound. This happened during lockdown and whilst the LP was never meant to be comment on the pandemic, there remains a brooding intensity to each track because of it.
Sex Judas feat. Ricky originally began life as the solo project of Tore Gjedrem (Ost & Kjex) but has since grown into a steady six piece involving the talents of Sidiki Camara (djembe, ngoni, balafon), Ivar Winther (guitar, keys), Tracee Meyn (vocals), Tore Brevik (drums, percussion), and Kristian Edvardsen (bass). Center stage is also illustrator and comic artist Sindre Goksøyr, this time portraying each character as they paddle their way into the sunset and uncharted territories. Malian-born, Norwegian-based percussionist Sidiki Camara has played a pivotal role in promoting Night Songs to world music circles. He has helped bring West African rhythms into Norway's jazz scene since 2006.
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OM 020LP
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Optimo Music presents Janara the new album from Italy's José Manuel. The label always has our ears open for music that is unique, powerful and that can conjure up a ritualistic atmosphere, and this meistrerwerk did all that, and then some. Here is José on the album: "This album is a result of the necessity of exploring and opening my mind to new musical horizons, by testing the main traditional instrument of the Italian region Campania, whose name is 'Tammorra'. It is a big drum, which must not be confused with the typical tambourine, made from a wrap of wood shaped in a circle and covered with dried skin (almost always goatskin or sheepskin). This instrument was used during playful events, especially during rituals and ceremonies, such as the frequent devotional pilgrimages in honor of the Virgin Mary. By using this instrument, the sound, the rite and the magic could take possession of the mind and the body creating a perfect union. Also, the dancers, as if they were bitten by a tarantula and possessed by a strange evil, launched themselves to an uncontrolled dance by moving every part of their body. In addition to the Tammorra, I also inserted some texts, which have been written by some Neapolitan friends and interpreted with Neapolitans voices, in honor of the 'JANARA'. The Janara represents a popular belief of the Southern Italian regions, particularly of the Benevento area. The Janara is one of the many types of witches represented by folktales belonging to the rural tradition. The Janara was expert in medical herbs, which were also be used for her magical practices, such as the manufacturing of ointment. The ointment gave her the power to become incorporeal with the same nature as the wind. According to the tradition, in order to snatch the Janara it was necessary to grab her by the hair. It was also said that if anyone was able to capture the Janara during her incorporeal moment then Janara herself would offer protection to them and their family for seven generations, in exchange for her freedom. With this work I hope that the listener might get carried away by the spirit of this pagan and popular legend that can be still be considered as current. As a matter of fact, the folk tales speak of a probable comeback of the Janara, who after being burned at the stake seems to be thirsting for revenge for the evil suffered." Comes with insert.
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OM 018LP
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Optimo Music presents Vanessa 77 the debut album from New Zealander Vanessa Worm. After entrusting Optimo Music to release three much loved singles, it seemed right to let Vanessa stretch out across an album and show the world what she is about and how talented she is. Vanessa is exactly the kind of artist Optimo Music dreams of finding; her music fits in with no genre and no scene -- it is its own genre and its own scene. Musically free and anarchic, Vanessa conforms to nobody's dogma. Before lockdown Vanessa played a series of Southern Hemisphere live shows that entranced all who saw them. Vanessa's thoughts on the album: "Vanessa 77, like most creative endeavors, is a journey of self-discovery. Mentally, emotionally, and creatively. I spent most of my time alone in winter 2019 -- focused solely on personal development and self-realization via the creation of this album. It was a way for me to put my mental state onto a plate -- the joys, the fears, the epiphanies, and so on. I so desperately wanted to share what I was learning with the world too -- I intended for Vanessa 77 to help others to heal, self-realize and alchemize. It was a nine-month process of death and a re-birth from the old into the new. Much like the world is experiencing now entering 2020, I hope this album can provide some form of healing, soothing, celebration, and act as a sub-conscious guide for us as we enter into this New Earth. Thank you to all who listens, enjoy!"
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OM 017LP
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Repressed. Optimo Music release Midnight Mania, a five-track mini album from Australia's Tornado Wallace. Now based in Berlin Tornado Wallace has crafted an organic, psychedelic, percussive master work. The title track will be released as a digital single in advance of the album on Optimo Music Digital Danceforce. Tornado Wallace would like to add a few words about the record: "The music is inspired by earth, both the planet itself as the small insignificant celestial being in the great cosmic story, and earth -- the dirt itself -- the womb and the tomb of life's mysteries and wild manifestations."
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OMWEAPON 002LP
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Venus Volcanism is the musician and electronic artist Rena Rasouli. She presents her first solo mini-album Rizitiko on Optimo's sub-label, Weaponise Your Sound, using traditional folk songs of her native island Crete as a basis for this work. Rizitiko evolved from Rasouli's thesis titled "the music performances based in traditional dialect focuses on the healing ability of sound." The songs were created and sung by folk troubadours. Expanding on these oeuvres, Rasouli seized on the idea that the melodic use of voice is the oldest form of therapy in human culture. This primary and ritualistic material was intertwined with electronic and natural ambient soundscapes. The resulting compositions express the omnipresent sensations and emotions that play a key role in the healing process whilst communicating an intense connection to the collective unconscious. Traditionally sung by men there are numerous reasons to believe that many of the songs were initially created by women. To sing them in a female voice projects a different approach to the traditional rendition -- one closer to that of a lullaby.
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OM 016LP
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After a digital single on Optimo Music Digital Danceforce, Optimo Music welcomes Bergsonist to the main label with a full album. Ridiculously talented and prolific, Bergsonist is one of the most interesting, thoughtful, and important artists of modern times. Selwa Abd, aka Bergsonist, is a New York-based artist and musician originally from Morocco. She is the founder of Bizaarbazaar, a music platform and publication that publishes podcasts and interviews by DJs and producers from around the world. Under the guise Bergsonist, derived from Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonism (1988), she uses a variety of media to investigate social resonance through divergent conceptual aesthetics (minimalism, techno, and music concrete, to name a few). Through her work, she explores notions of identity, memory, and social politics. In 2017, she started Pick Up The Flow, a resource to promote congregation and exchange between peers. Currently, co-run with Stephen Decker. In 2019, she co-founded 3afak with DJ Sanna, a collective that aims to empower Arab women's creative vision in New York.
Words about the album: "Middle Ouest is an ode to my history, present and future self. Like a sonic autobiography, It's the first body of work that realistically depicts my identity. It's a statement towards all the people who tried to put me into a box. I'm not a box but a genre-less ocean. I don't make genres, I just make music I feel making in the moment. It's all about capturing the moment in a given time. If the aesthetic happens to be house or techno then it is. But I'm not a techno artist... I'm just a free sonic 'voyageur'. I make music as I feel the world; it can be dark, jovial, weird... I mirror the feelings into sonic compositions. However, the only variables that never change in this equation are the message and intention."
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OM 043EP
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Free Love, the artists formerly known as Happy Meals return to Optimo Music with Extreme Dance Anthems, a phantasmic mini-album from their hearts to yours. They say: "We recorded Extreme Dance Anthems in our recently moved studio, 'Full Ashram Celestial Garden' which is now situated in a building that holds both a church below us and a sex club next door. Most of the tracks were formed from late-night sessions that we started to kind of ritualistically hold, inspired from a particular thought or idea that we later cut down and did a live mixdown of. The music is about physicality and the metaphysical -- it is about a recontextualization of the ineffable as a center point of existence which in turn influences how we engage with everything around us. A celebration of the unquantifiable, unspeakable, indivisible experience as the throne from which all ideas are derived. Even though the world is fucked -- we are here. On the face of it -- I realize that this description might just seem like apolitical hippy bullshit but fuck that -- as a deliberate result of the modern political landscape, our societies' individual and collective disengagement with the metaphysical has led us to treat other humans, animals and our environment like resourceful statistics rather than something that actually holds any inherent value. An Inner Revolution of the foundations of our reality in a way that reintroduces the essence of existence, and not merely its describable derivatives, into the conversation of how we should live our lives informs our perception of the world in a way that demands us to act. The record is about a kind of gradual awakening between the two of us -- a reconnection with the magic around us. The ineffable is not without moments of illumination -- mostly in the form of immediate absurdity: One day we will all be dead but here we are alive instead. The record is called Extreme Dance Anthems because it made us both laugh."
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12"
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OMDD 002EP
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Optimo Music Digital Danceforce is the digital label of Optimo Music, an internationalist musical outlet designed to get dancefloor focused music out there without the long delays that vinyl manufacturing often entails. There will be a series of best of OMDD 12"s taking a track from each release and compiling it on a various artists four-track 12", cut loud for maximum club impact. Here is Vol. 2 featuring tried and tested club hits from New Zealand's Vanessa Worm, Scotland's Brain Dancing, Portugal's Internal N.Y. Rhythms, and Mexico's Theus Mago.
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OMWEAPON 001LP
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Optimo Music present the compilation Weaponise Your Sound, which has been curated, conceived, and designed by Kristina McCormick (Diet Clinic). Diet Clinic is an NTS radio show showcasing female DJs/artists. It is the first vinyl release on Diet Clinic's newly-formed sub-label of Optimo Music marking International Women's Day 2019 and featuring brand new tracks from artists C.A.R., Cucina Povera, Fantastic Twins, Hanna Jones, Maral, Marika Underspreche, Odete, Penelope Trappes, Slime, Sue Zuki, and Zoe McPherson. They may be scattered across the globe but their love, strength, and support for their art and counterparts continue to inspire on a daily basis. All proceeds go London based charity, Focus E15 which demands social housing, not social cleansing.
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LP
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OM 015LP
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Optimo Music releases The Sampler As Time Machine, the new album from Lia Mice, Australian-born but UK-residing DJ, producer and instrument designer. Mice on the album: "When I moved to London in 2015, many things changed at once (I started going to more techno and electro nights, I changed my live-set setup, and I had access to a fully-equipped recording studio through my music masters program. At the same time I was reading a lot of books on time travel, not just science fiction but also psychology and neuroscience (like how the human brain perceives time from moment to moment, how we can experience overlapping time, and how we interact with our past and future through memory and imagination. The Sampler As A Time Machine is the result of all these new influences coming together. The tracks were developed out of ongoing studio experiments interpreting these different ideas of time travel by using samplers and tape to re-sample and manipulate original music performed by me on various instruments including my voice."
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12"
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OM 042EP
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Optimo Music presents a five-track EP, the debut release from Nashville's Stranded, including a remix of title track "Celine's Dilemma" by RSD, aka (Rob Smith of Smith & Mighty). Despite hailing from Nashville, Stranded has a longing appreciation for the dance centric cities throughout the world, hence the moniker. Sweeping and droning synths, jagged guitars, rolling bass, yearning and weary vocals, and disco beats propel the music and ideas showcased in the project. While using the backdrop of post punk, disco, and synth pop the music is a sonar call to places where people are gathering, working, and dancing.
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LP
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OMRENTAL 001LP
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Optimo Music present a collection of works from Robert Rental Different Voices For You. Different Colours For Me. Demos 1980.
"On an unassuming cassette, just labelled Robert Rental in green Dymo tape, these demos have lain unheard for years amongst his family's treasured possessions, cared-for artefacts of a life cut short far too soon. These songs, which Robert recorded in his council flat in Battersea in 1980, provide an enticing glimpse into his all-too-infrequent solo work. On most occasions, Robert worked with Thomas Leer, Daniel Miller, or other collaborators. These are rough recordings, tape hiss still in evidence, but his creativity shines through the murk, like uncut diamonds. With these recordings Robert appears to be moving towards more recognizable song structures than most of his earlier work, which could be wildly experimental and would often involve found recordings taped directly off television. We know two of these tracks from their later re-recording for the Mute Records single 'Double Heart' late in 1980. Robert spoke to friends of his frustration at being unable to replicate his sound in a commercial studio -- it was these demos' sound that he wanted to recreate. Sometimes having only access to the most rudimentary of equipment can hone the creative talent into something sharper and more focused -- necessity is the mother of invention, indeed." --Simon Dell, 2018
"I am humbled and ecstatic to be entrusted with this music and able to aid getting these songs out into the world. I have now listened to them countless times and feel they are so, so much more than just an interesting archival release, but rather a small, fully formed body of wondrous songs that deserve to be heard and enjoyed by as many people as possible. In this current era where so much music is so completely focused on the production, with the result that often the soul is sucked out of it, it's a pleasant shock to discover that a forgotten tape from nearly 40 years ago can be the freshest and most refreshing sounding thing ever." --JD Twitch, 2018
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12"
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OM 041EP
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Another fierce and unique act from the depths of the Glasgow underground appear on Optimo Music with their debut four track EP. Keyboard player Jim McKinven was previously in Altered Images, worked for many years in Martin Rushent's Genetic Studios, was in One Dove, and previously appeared on Optimo Music as one half of Organs Of Love. He is however but one component of this transgenerational band. They describe their music as "seedy electronica, consisting of two basses, electronic drums, synths, and dark vocals. Inspired by the avant-garde that influenced the electronic music scene of the late '70s and early '80s."
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