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LP
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OSTGUT 035LP
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LP version. Giving form to a broad personal project of continuous inquiry and existential expression, A World Of Service marks the Ostgut Ton debut of Spanish producer, DJ, and artist JASSS, aka Silvia Jiménez Alvarez. The evolution of A World Of Service has curved around genre collapsing and unexpected metamorphoses. Formerly the name of the monthly radio show JASSS hosted in Berlin, and soon to be the title of her expansive multi-sensory touring concept in collaboration with Ben Kreukniet, here A World Of Service is powerfully concentrated in sonic form. Throughout the album, JASSS muses on the especially current human and technological barriers to interconnectivity; both lyrically and musically she deconstructs the self, unmasks anxieties and interrogates the insufficiencies of language as applied to gender, identity, and interpersonal relationships. Forming her own fluid, nuanced lexicon in response, JASSS seeks a deeper understanding of her multiple selves, emerging through unbridled adolescent rage and the wisdom of maturation, traversing liminality with abstract electronics, and baroque industrial pop. Visually this is underscored by Matt Lambert's uncanny floral cover portraiture, as well as the record's distinct scent of wet earth, flower and woods developed for the album by Meri Bonastre and applied to the vinyl inner sleeve. Following the imaginative nostalgia of Weightless, her 2017 debut album for iDEAL Recordings (IDEAL 160LP), as well as her series of blistering dancefloor 12"s for Whities/AD 93, A World Of Service folds personal and societal concepts in on themselves, not seeking answers but rather luxuriating in the unique friction that questions create. JASSS is intensely focused yet musically unbridled; this is reflected in tonal shifts of A World Of Service. Through the computerized yearning and bruising of a heartbreak on "Luis", to the jagged and wordless tundra of "Vapor Dentro"; the intriguing juxtaposition of warm, alluring Spanish vocals against rigid pillars of industrial heft and bass grind ("Camelo"), and the soaring maximalist industrial pop of the album's closer, "Wish". As intensity rises through the pandemic-era trip hop of the album's title track "A World Of Service", JASSS sings: "Pleasure/ Is nowhere to be found inside this world of service/ I call to be my life". Pleasure may remain elusive to her, but in the determination to make peace with her various identities in this technological age, JASSS offers a compelling glimpse into an essential type of artistic voice.
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5LP BOX
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OSTGUT 036LP
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Five-LP box version. Fünfzehn + 1 is a commemorative compilation celebrating 16 years of Ostgut Ton -- and the first glimpses of light at the end of a long dark tunnel for parent club Berghain. Originally planned for release in 2020, the music focuses on the interwoven nature of the label and the club in its multitude of different spaces and musical facets. Ostgut Ton artists and close affiliates worked together in pairs to make music dedicated to five different floors. The result is a diverse selection of sometimes functional, other times more abstract sonic tributes; musical homages to spaces they have both influenced and been influenced by. With the pandemic having forced the club to close temporarily, the collaborative nature of the set represents an attempt to transcend varying degrees of isolation and to wrestle with memories of music and space that had been inaccessible. But certainly not forgotten.
Features MMM, Avalon Emerson / Roi Perez, Tama Sumo / Lakuti, Substance / Soundstream, Len Faki / Honey Dijon, JASSS / Silent Servant, Luke Slater / Barker, Ben Klock / Etapp Kyle, Marcel Dettmann / Norman Nodge, Pom Pom, Oren Ambarchi / Konrad Sprenger / Phillip Sollmann, Martyn / Duval Timothy, Jessica Ekomane / Zoë McPherson, Atom TM / Tobias., Answer Code Request / Gerd Janson, Ryan Elliott / André Galluzzi, Paramida / Massimiliano Pagliara, nd_baumecker / Nick Höppner, Terence Fixmer / Phase Fatale, and Comets.
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CD
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OSTGUT 049CD
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Giving form to a broad personal project of continuous inquiry and existential expression, A World Of Service marks the Ostgut Ton debut of Spanish producer, DJ, and artist JASSS, aka Silvia Jiménez Alvarez. The evolution of A World Of Service has curved around genre collapsing and unexpected metamorphoses. Formerly the name of the monthly radio show JASSS hosted in Berlin, and soon to be the title of her expansive multi-sensory touring concept in collaboration with Ben Kreukniet, here A World Of Service is powerfully concentrated in sonic form. Throughout the album, JASSS muses on the especially current human and technological barriers to interconnectivity; both lyrically and musically she deconstructs the self, unmasks anxieties and interrogates the insufficiencies of language as applied to gender, identity, and interpersonal relationships. Forming her own fluid, nuanced lexicon in response, JASSS seeks a deeper understanding of her multiple selves, emerging through unbridled adolescent rage and the wisdom of maturation, traversing liminality with abstract electronics, and baroque industrial pop. Visually this is underscored by Matt Lambert's uncanny floral cover portraiture, as well as the record's distinct scent of wet earth, flower and woods developed for the album by Meri Bonastre and applied to the vinyl inner sleeve. Following the imaginative nostalgia of Weightless, her 2017 debut album for iDEAL Recordings (IDEAL 160LP), as well as her series of blistering dancefloor 12"s for Whities/AD 93, A World Of Service folds personal and societal concepts in on themselves, not seeking answers but rather luxuriating in the unique friction that questions create. JASSS is intensely focused yet musically unbridled; this is reflected in tonal shifts of A World Of Service. Through the computerized yearning and bruising of a heartbreak on "Luis", to the jagged and wordless tundra of "Vapor Dentro"; the intriguing juxtaposition of warm, alluring Spanish vocals against rigid pillars of industrial heft and bass grind ("Camelo"), and the soaring maximalist industrial pop of the album's closer, "Wish". As intensity rises through the pandemic-era trip hop of the album's title track "A World Of Service", JASSS sings: "Pleasure/ Is nowhere to be found inside this world of service/ I call to be my life". Pleasure may remain elusive to her, but in the determination to make peace with her various identities in this technological age, JASSS offers a compelling glimpse into an essential type of artistic voice.
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2CD
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OSTGUT 050CD
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Fünfzehn + 1 is a commemorative compilation celebrating 16 years of Ostgut Ton -- and the first glimpses of light at the end of a long dark tunnel for parent club Berghain. Originally planned for release in 2020, the music focuses on the interwoven nature of the label and the club in its multitude of different spaces and musical facets. Ostgut Ton artists and close affiliates worked together in pairs to make music dedicated to five different floors. The result is a diverse selection of sometimes functional, other times more abstract sonic tributes; musical homages to spaces they have both influenced and been influenced by. With the pandemic having forced the club to close temporarily, the collaborative nature of the set represents an attempt to transcend varying degrees of isolation and to wrestle with memories of music and space that had been inaccessible. But certainly not forgotten.
Features MMM, Avalon Emerson / Roi Perez, Tama Sumo / Lakuti, Substance / Soundstream, Len Faki / Honey Dijon, JASSS / Silent Servant, Luke Slater / Barker, Ben Klock / Etapp Kyle, Marcel Dettmann / Norman Nodge, Pom Pom, Oren Ambarchi / Konrad Sprenger / Phillip Sollmann, Martyn / Duval Timothy, Jessica Ekomane / Zoë McPherson, Atom TM / Tobias., Answer Code Request / Gerd Janson, Ryan Elliott / André Galluzzi, Paramida / Massimiliano Pagliara, nd_baumecker / Nick Höppner, Terence Fixmer / Phase Fatale, and Comets.
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2x12"
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OSTGUT 127EP
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Berghain Fünfzehn sees Luke Slater creating new compositions from the Ostgut Ton back catalog, chopping, looping, tweaking, and deploying sounds into a mix that is both a playful retrospective of the label and future-facing vision for mixing and dance music. Seven exclusive tracks from the Berghain Fünfzehn DJ mix will be released as a double 12". De- and reconstructing the Ostgut Ton discography, Slater's vision encompasses not only sampling but live electronics and improvisation, resulting in a broad spectrum of heady and liminal dance music: from ultra stripped-back mindfuck techno, vocals and blasts of distortion to breakbeat excursions, minimalistic acid, and rave polyrhythms. In other words: the arc of the label through Slater's singular hallucinatory prism.
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12"
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OSTGUT 126EP
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Etapp Kyle returns to Ostgut Ton with Nolove, a project encompassing a four-track EP, short film and forthcoming web exhibition focusing on Western Ukraine. Specifically, the music and artwork home in on the cities of Kamianets-Podilskyi and Chernivtsi in Bukovina, where Etapp Kyle grew up and developed his interest in electronic music. Although now part of Ukraine, Bukovina had previously been part of Moldova, the Habsburg Empire, the Russian Empire, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Its turbulent history and position on the border of Romania and Moldova have resulted in an extremely varied tapestry of cultural influence, as featured in the video for title track "Nolove". There, youth, fashion, music culture sit side-by-side next to religion, violence, and war -- and larger political struggles. The EP gives shape to the musical developments Etapp Kyle has made in both the studio and DJ booth since the release of 2017's Alpha, his latest 12" for Ostgut Ton. In contrast, Nolove's four tracks are minimalistic, detailed electronic ventures inspired by personal reflections on Chernivtsi and Ukrainian cultural identity. Forward-facing in rhythm and melody, the EP offers meticulously-produced leftfield dancefloor impressions of the region's past, present and future.
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12"
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OSTGUT 125EP
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On 1972, veteran producer and live musician Tobias Freund offers up four tracks of layered and meticulously-crafted techno using his extensive archives of tape recordings collected since childhood. Referencing a mix of profound political events in German history and esoteric meditation guides, the Berghain resident's warm, detailed sound edges beyond the floor toward brain-tingling home listening and wanderlust autobahn escapism. The EP begins with the titles track's buzzing synths panning rhythmically across the stereo field like a hypnotist's pocket watch, while a somber, sampled string melody pushes further into cosmic territory before concluding with a bi-lingual eulogy. "Schism" soars with a never-ending snare roll and sparse kicks -- an entire track floating on a break that never lands. On "The Wisdom Of No Escape", Freund combines soft, polyrhythmic bleeps with esoteric vocal samples on an inward path of hallucinogenic internal discovery. EP closer "Electric Storm" makes a turn for the ultra-stoned, with hats and writhing vocals disintegrating and reforming over a soft, round steady pulse. Overall, 1972 features a sound that Tobias. has honed for over 30 years, having initially made a name for himself mixing various pop hits in the '80s and '90s while simultaneously producing experimental electronics under various pseudonyms including Metazone, Phobia, Pink Elln, and Zoon. On his own Non Standard Productions imprint he has regularly collaborated with the likes of Max Loderbauer and Ricardo Villalobos and most recently with visual artist Valentina Berthelon as Recent Arts. His releases and lengthy live techno sets with AtomTM continue to set the bar high for improvised electronics.
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2LP
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OSTGUT 034LP
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Double LP version. Scanning Backwards, Phase Fatale's second full-length album following his 2017 debut album for Hospital Productions, is music about control. Using the connection between weaponized sound and psychological manipulation as a conceptual foundation, Hayden Payne explores the ways in which music -- and sub frequencies in particular -- are used to influence thinking and to synchronize emotions and behavior: from military technology to sound systems and the physicality and sexuality of queer techno culture. Known for his innovative post-punk takes of dance music as featured on EPs for unterton and Ostgut Ton, the Berghain resident draws on his background as both a guitarist and sound engineer to create a heady mix of broken rhythms, noise-, and shoegaze-inflected techno, often at slower tempos. The result is music with space and pace to expand, highlighting the intense rushes of frequencies found in both sonic warfare and functional dance music. Over eight tracks named after a combination of historical and fictional narratives from literature and science fiction, Payne's rhythmic excursions explore different manifestations of sound as power -- specifically within the context of seeing Berghain as an instrument itself. This is also reflected in the album artwork, taken from an early flyer for the SNAX party series and an obvious ode to the fetishization of power dynamics. In his own words: "All tracks on the album, no matter the style, were tailored to sound a certain way in Berghain -- something I figured out through years of dancing in the middle of the floor, DJing as a resident and investigating what frequencies really penetrate the body. This includes speech and high-frequency, brain-penetrating instrumentation and drilling textures that I had not utilized so often before, but which I think also have an effect on thought and memory. It's especially true in a space where gay and fetish roots combine with music in unexpected ways, almost in a cultish manner. A musical and physical deprogramming and reprogramming, psychic driving and de-patterning, the erasing and replacing of memories." Ultimately, Scanning Backwards surveys not only the manipulative properties of electronic music (mantras, loops, subliminal messages) but also how rhythm facilitates both moving and thinking in synchrony; a pulse of coordinated sound -- and brainwaves.
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CD
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OSTGUT 048CD
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Scanning Backwards, Phase Fatale's second full-length album following his 2017 debut album for Hospital Productions, is music about control. Using the connection between weaponized sound and psychological manipulation as a conceptual foundation, Hayden Payne explores the ways in which music -- and sub frequencies in particular -- are used to influence thinking and to synchronize emotions and behavior: from military technology to sound systems and the physicality and sexuality of queer techno culture. Known for his innovative post-punk takes of dance music as featured on EPs for unterton and Ostgut Ton, the Berghain resident draws on his background as both a guitarist and sound engineer to create a heady mix of broken rhythms, noise-, and shoegaze-inflected techno, often at slower tempos. The result is music with space and pace to expand, highlighting the intense rushes of frequencies found in both sonic warfare and functional dance music. Over eight tracks named after a combination of historical and fictional narratives from literature and science fiction, Payne's rhythmic excursions explore different manifestations of sound as power -- specifically within the context of seeing Berghain as an instrument itself. This is also reflected in the album artwork, taken from an early flyer for the SNAX party series and an obvious ode to the fetishization of power dynamics. In his own words: "All tracks on the album, no matter the style, were tailored to sound a certain way in Berghain -- something I figured out through years of dancing in the middle of the floor, DJing as a resident and investigating what frequencies really penetrate the body. This includes speech and high-frequency, brain-penetrating instrumentation and drilling textures that I had not utilized so often before, but which I think also have an effect on thought and memory. It's especially true in a space where gay and fetish roots combine with music in unexpected ways, almost in a cultish manner. A musical and physical deprogramming and reprogramming, psychic driving and de-patterning, the erasing and replacing of memories." Ultimately, Scanning Backwards surveys not only the manipulative properties of electronic music (mantras, loops, subliminal messages) but also how rhythm facilitates both moving and thinking in synchrony; a pulse of coordinated sound -- and brainwaves.
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CD
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OSTGUT 047CD
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"What binds you to places? To remembering them. Places you can feel, when you feel at home. Places that affirm your very existence. This place for me is the Oderbruch. This album is dedicated to it." --Rene Pawlowitz
The fifth studio album by Shed, aka Rene Pawlowitz, centers thematically on the Oderbruch region in former East Germany where the producer and DJ grew up and continues to split his time (when not in Berlin.) Both the album and track titles as well as the artwork by Arnim Tölke reflect Pawlowitz's deeply personal associations with the borderland's marshy landscape, as well as enormous political and historical changes the region underwent as the last Eastern front during World War II -- and, later, following the dissolution of the GDR. Nevertheless, Oderbruch is not a concept album. Instead, it's an ambivalent ode to the area in which Pawlowitz's family has lived for generations. It's a musical reflection on place and personal history: meeting up at the local gas station, a view to the water, techno rattling the closed windows of cars peeling out toward Berlin or the next local party, cruising along rural parkways flanked by trees with fruit ripe for picking, past weeping willows and abandoned factories where industry once thrived. Outside buzzes with the sounds of nature inextricably linked with childhood memories, but also a landscape defined by the bloody defeat of the Nazis at the Battle of Seelow, ushering in the fall of Berlin and with it, the entire fascist regime. The album's nine tracks are inspired by the intertwined nature of the subjective and historical, which ring through Shed's idiosyncratic take on breaks, bass, techno, symphonic ventures, ambient, and hardcore. But unlike Shed's previous records, Oderbruch incorporates broad pastoral landscapes -- left behind and returned to. Both fit Shed, who under various aliases (Head High, Hoover, Wax, The Higher, WK7, Equalized, The Traveller) has long influenced a number of dance music scenes in Berlin and beyond.
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2LP
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OSTGUT 033LP
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Double LP version. "What binds you to places? To remembering them. Places you can feel, when you feel at home. Places that affirm your very existence. This place for me is the Oderbruch. This album is dedicated to it." --Rene Pawlowitz
The fifth studio album by Shed, aka Rene Pawlowitz, centers thematically on the Oderbruch region in former East Germany where the producer and DJ grew up and continues to split his time (when not in Berlin.) Both the album and track titles as well as the artwork by Arnim Tölke reflect Pawlowitz's deeply personal associations with the borderland's marshy landscape, as well as enormous political and historical changes the region underwent as the last Eastern front during World War II -- and, later, following the dissolution of the GDR. Nevertheless, Oderbruch is not a concept album. Instead, it's an ambivalent ode to the area in which Pawlowitz's family has lived for generations. It's a musical reflection on place and personal history: meeting up at the local gas station, a view to the water, techno rattling the closed windows of cars peeling out toward Berlin or the next local party, cruising along rural parkways flanked by trees with fruit ripe for picking, past weeping willows and abandoned factories where industry once thrived. Outside buzzes with the sounds of nature inextricably linked with childhood memories, but also a landscape defined by the bloody defeat of the Nazis at the Battle of Seelow, ushering in the fall of Berlin and with it, the entire fascist regime. The album's nine tracks are inspired by the intertwined nature of the subjective and historical, which ring through Shed's idiosyncratic take on breaks, bass, techno, symphonic ventures, ambient, and hardcore. But unlike Shed's previous records, Oderbruch incorporates broad pastoral landscapes -- left behind and returned to. Both fit Shed, who under various aliases (Head High, Hoover, Wax, The Higher, WK7, Equalized, The Traveller) has long influenced a number of dance music scenes in Berlin and beyond.
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2x12"
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OSTGUT 123EP
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As Planetary Assault Systems, Luke Slater is an innovator of psychedelic mindfuck techno. Across a lengthy catalog that stretches back into the '90s, the music's bleepy, polyrhythmic loops are as recognizable as they are genre-defining. Plantae is Slater's first release as PAS on Ostgut Ton since Arc Angel (OSTGUT 037CD/023LP, 2016) and covers the spectrum of PAS's different strains while remaining grounded in Slater's uncanny funk and knack for developing oblique melodies and rhythms over longer stretches. Deepness and hypnosis come as much through duration as sound design. For Slater, Plantae is made for Berghain, where he is a long-standing resident. In his own words: "I'm sure it's no surprise that when it comes to putting together a release on Ostgut Ton, PAS takes on its more mind-altering, otherworldly quality by natural cause, quietly reflecting the dark sweaty nights and days at the club; at the point, the common neural coupling, of us all together. PAS has been part of Berghain and Berghain part of PAS for a long time. All of these tracks needed to pass the Berghain test in my sets first stop."
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12"
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OSTGUT 003LTD
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Limited color vinyl run of Ben Klock's timeless classic "Subzero" cut loud on the A side, with "Coney Island" from the seminal One album (2009) released for the first time on vinyl on the B. Also includes full artwork poster by Marc Brandenburg.
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2x12"
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OSTGUT 122EP
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Steffi and Virginia return with Work A Change, an eight-track double-EP on Ostgut Ton inviting you into new dimensions of the sonic world they have crafted together over a number of years. Since their iconic 2011 collaboration "Yours" -- which became an instant classic -- the duo has experimented with new ways to express their unique strand of dancefloor melancholy. Unlike the grand maximalism often associated with vocals in dance music, Steffi and Virginia's creations use the voice less as a centerpiece and more an integral part of the groove itself, subtle in temperament and equal to its counterparts. Impassioned vocals spiral around melodic leads and warm harmonies, offering a gentle kind of catharsis that deepens with each listen. Work A Change immediately transports you to a parallel aural universe, refusing to settle into one style and merging multiple references into peculiar new formats. Opening track "Be True To Me" is subdued but inviting, working its way into the conscious with harmonic glitches and a deep, grooving bass lead. "Sight From Above" then slows things down for an angular cut of low-slung machine funk. The B-side, "Help Me Understand" lands you on another planet entirely, complete with extraterrestrial synths and animated robotics. Opening up the C-side, "Until You're Begging" is a molecular construction of fragmented motifs, both precise and hazy at the same time. Similarly, "Internal Bleeding" takes segments of percussive grooves and rearranges them into complex polyrhythms whilst retaining a careful sense of balance. Closing off the release is title track "Work A Change"; one last high-speed voyage into spiraling drums and hammer drill bass. Work A Change expands on Steffi and Virginia's aesthetic, merging elements from a number of genres into a cerebral, highly personal release. It also signals a change of direction for the duo's work, voyaging through new terrain while retaining a sound that is undoubtedly their own.
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CD
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OSTGUT 046CD
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"We all dance away our lives to the tune of the sovereign pleasure-pain axis." --David Pearce, The Hedonistic Imperative
Pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance as a rave metaphor fits the music of Sam Barker. The Berghain resident and Leisure System co-founder has spent the last few years exploring the euphoric potential of altering key variables in dance music formulas. This was especially true on his 2018 Ostgut Ton debut EP Debiasing (OSTGUT 112EP), which was flush with unconventional rhythmic chord stabs, melody, and percussion but devoid of kickdrums. What seemed like an experimental exercise on paper was in reality equally geared towards the club: tracks that worked for the floor but resisted the genre categorizations that kick drums often provide. This has come to define Barker's sound. Now, on his debut solo album Utility, Barker turns his focus toward melding experimentation and dancefloor pragmatism with the psychology behind the musical decision-making process. In his own words: "After Debiasing it occurred to me that my musical decisions were often unintentionally utilitarian, following an instinct to maximize pleasure in one way or another. It's sort of unfashionable to admit, but by removing elements that have strong genre associations, this became a natural consequence." Accordingly, Utility is a playful but non-ironic musical approach to a whole spectrum of utilitarian and transhumanist ideas: from models for quantifying pleasure and "gradients of bliss" to abolishing suffering for sentient beings (not just people) through the ethical use of drugs and nanotechnology. Over nine tracks, Barker's vision ebbs-and-flows through waves of deeply psychedelic musical vignettes; free-floating and futuristic melodies and rhythms as targeted brain stimulation. The sound draws heavily on modular synthesis, as well as self-built mechanical instruments and plate reverbs to create atmospheres that are at once alien and emotionally recognizable, functional, and utopian. Utility is by no means a concept album. Instead, it is an honest take on music as both pleasure-maximizer and consciousness-expander.
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2LP
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OSTGUT 032LP
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2023 repress; double LP version. "We all dance away our lives to the tune of the sovereign pleasure-pain axis." --David Pearce, The Hedonistic Imperative
Pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance as a rave metaphor fits the music of Sam Barker. The Berghain resident and Leisure System co-founder has spent the last few years exploring the euphoric potential of altering key variables in dance music formulas. This was especially true on his 2018 Ostgut Ton debut EP Debiasing (OSTGUT 112EP), which was flush with unconventional rhythmic chord stabs, melody, and percussion but devoid of kickdrums. What seemed like an experimental exercise on paper was in reality equally geared towards the club: tracks that worked for the floor but resisted the genre categorizations that kick drums often provide. This has come to define Barker's sound. Now, on his debut solo album Utility, Barker turns his focus toward melding experimentation and dancefloor pragmatism with the psychology behind the musical decision-making process. In his own words: "After Debiasing it occurred to me that my musical decisions were often unintentionally utilitarian, following an instinct to maximize pleasure in one way or another. It's sort of unfashionable to admit, but by removing elements that have strong genre associations, this became a natural consequence." Accordingly, Utility is a playful but non-ironic musical approach to a whole spectrum of utilitarian and transhumanist ideas: from models for quantifying pleasure and "gradients of bliss" to abolishing suffering for sentient beings (not just people) through the ethical use of drugs and nanotechnology. Over nine tracks, Barker's vision ebbs-and-flows through waves of deeply psychedelic musical vignettes; free-floating and futuristic melodies and rhythms as targeted brain stimulation. The sound draws heavily on modular synthesis, as well as self-built mechanical instruments and plate reverbs to create atmospheres that are at once alien and emotionally recognizable, functional, and utopian. Utility is by no means a concept album. Instead, it is an honest take on music as both pleasure-maximizer and consciousness-expander.
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12"
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OSTGUT 121EP
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On Voids (OSTGUT 043CD/029LP, 2018), long-time Berghain/Panorama Bar resident Martyn returned to his deep, percussive roots, nimbly constructing webs of rhythm, space, and inventive basslines. On Odds Against Us, the producer projects the common denominator as a spirit of sampling innovated by drum 'n' bass, but which operates independent of BPM, as shown by the title track's floating, Havoc-like piano riff over minimal, mutant UKG and a snarling, amorphous bassline. "B.C. 2" drives full-on at 170 -- Detroit deepness through a London lens. "Rhythm Ritual" delivers on the title's promise, with layers of interlocking drums, melody, and chopped vocals.
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12"
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OSTGUT 120EP
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Detroit native Ryan Elliott has made a handful of weighty contributions to both Berghain and Ostgut Ton. A DJ's perspective has informed Elliott's own analog productions, with Paul's Horizon turning its focus toward deep and slick percussion. This is apparent from the get-go, with the title track's triangle/clap interplay, funky 5-6 kicks per bar, and bleary-eyed atmosphere. "Martinsville Morning" slows down into an understated sunrise groover, led by bassline, strings, and pads. "Grafton Road" turns up the pace again with gasps for hats, aggressive punctuating snares, and a modulating synth bubbling-up throughout.
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2x12"
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OSTGUT 119LP
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Since becoming a Berghain resident in 2017, Dominick Fernow's risk-taking hybrid live/DJ sets as Vatican Shadow have become conduits for infusing techno with contrasting musical ideas -- from noise, industrial, and ambient to distorted melodies and rhythms that push the club's borders in unexpected ways. It's an idiosyncratic approach to techno rooted not only in Fernow's 25-plus years as an experimental and noise musician under more than a dozen aliases (e.g. Prurient, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement) but also in his role as founder of the vital New York-based Hospital Productions, whose discography exceeds some 500 releases. The label -- which in 2017 celebrated its 20-year anniversary -- is also home to the majority of Vatican Shadow output to date. Under that alias, Fernow's numerous albums and 12"s -- including 2017's Rubbish Of The Floodwaters on Ostgut Ton (OSTGUT 104EP) -- oscillate between ominous, distorted machine-funk, techno, and ambient electronics; equal parts noise, melody, and rhythm. Since 2011, the project's intentionally ambiguous visual identity has been defined by War on Terror-related imagery and track titles -- and the media's role therein. Both the Berghain 09 mix and accompanying exclusive 2x12"s -- featuring exclusive tracks by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Virile Games, Los Angeles Death Cult, Ron Morelli, Volvox, JK Flesh, Alberich, Ugandan Methods | Prurient, and Merzbow -- reflect Vatican Shadow's composite musical influences and relationship to Berghain as a club. Stylistically, the two vinyls are divided between clubbier and experimental electronics, with vocal samples of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge acting as a bridge between the two. All tracks on Side D end in locked grooves. As Fernow describes in his own words: "My interest in DJing developed naturally out of industrial music traditions such as mail art, tape trading, and sound collage. While this mix, of course, does not solely focus on cassettes, they were used as the bridge between the seemingly disparate areas and cross-sections of underground electronic edits you will find sewn together from diverse factions to create a sonic 'cut up'. Accordingly, the artists featured with exclusive tracks span several continents and generations of electronic music subculture, from the birth of industrial in the UK and the rhythmic loops of Japanese noise, to the raw collision of genres found in the NYC underground. Berghain 09 is a tribute to the techno mixtapes that influenced me during my introduction to raves and dance music in the '90s."
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CD
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OSTGUT 045CD
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"Oh, lovely appearance of death, No sight upon earth is so fair; Not all the gay pageants that breathe, Can with a dead body compare." --Charles Wesley, A Funeral Hymn for a Believer, 1780
So begins New Atlantis, the fourth full-length album by longtime Berghain resident Efdemin, aka Phillip Sollmann. The words, sung by '60s California art icon William T. Wiley and embedded in glowing drone swells, set an otherworldly tone for Sollmann's first solo release on Ostgut Ton. Over eight tracks, New Atlantis oscillates between fast, kaleidoscopic techno, multi-layered drones, and acoustic instrumentation, fusing for the first time Sollmann's deep dancefloor productions as Efdemin with his sound art and experimental music projects. The latter include 2017's Harry Partch-inspired Monophonie performance and 2018's Panama / Suez EP with Oren Ambarchi and Konrad Sprenger (ATON 001EP, 2018). Long drawn to utopian musical traditions, Sollmann took inspiration for New Atlantis from Francis Bacon's unfinished 17th century novel of the same name, which describes a fictional island devoted to social progress through the synthesis of art, science, technology, and fashion. In the story, Bacon imagines futuristic "sound houses", which contain musical instruments capable of recreating the entirety of the sounds of the universe; a 400-year-old prophesy of today's digital sonic reality. Through Sollmann's lens, Bacon's vision ebbs and flows over 50 minutes in varying speeds and colors, emerging as a tapestry of different utopian musical traditions -- through billowing synth lines, early Detroit techno, resonant wooden percussion, trance, droning organs, dulcimer, electric guitars, hurdy-gurdy, just intonation, poetry, hymns, and murmuring voices. Sometimes they merge into epic, rhythmic journeys like the 14-minute long title track; other times they appear as a briefly open sound portal ("Temple"), or in the forlorn human voice on "Oh, Lovely Appearance Of Death", calling to be freed from jail of the human body and pass into the afterlife. Like previous Efdemin albums on Dial, New Atlantis veers off the techno path to explore other musical territory. Here however, Sollmann occasionally abandons the club entirely, returning only to push its boundaries with other instruments, mythologies and psychedelic story telling. Mastering by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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2LP
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OSTGUT 031LP
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Repressed; double LP version. "Oh, lovely appearance of death, No sight upon earth is so fair; Not all the gay pageants that breathe, Can with a dead body compare." --Charles Wesley, A Funeral Hymn for a Believer, 1780
So begins New Atlantis, the fourth full-length album by longtime Berghain resident Efdemin, aka Phillip Sollmann. The words, sung by '60s California art icon William T. Wiley and embedded in glowing drone swells, set an otherworldly tone for Sollmann's first solo release on Ostgut Ton. Over eight tracks, New Atlantis oscillates between fast, kaleidoscopic techno, multi-layered drones, and acoustic instrumentation, fusing for the first time Sollmann's deep dancefloor productions as Efdemin with his sound art and experimental music projects. The latter include 2017's Harry Partch-inspired Monophonie performance and 2018's Panama / Suez EP with Oren Ambarchi and Konrad Sprenger (ATON 001EP, 2018). Long drawn to utopian musical traditions, Sollmann took inspiration for New Atlantis from Francis Bacon's unfinished 17th century novel of the same name, which describes a fictional island devoted to social progress through the synthesis of art, science, technology, and fashion. In the story, Bacon imagines futuristic "sound houses", which contain musical instruments capable of recreating the entirety of the sounds of the universe; a 400-year-old prophesy of today's digital sonic reality. Through Sollmann's lens, Bacon's vision ebbs and flows over 50 minutes in varying speeds and colors, emerging as a tapestry of different utopian musical traditions -- through billowing synth lines, early Detroit techno, resonant wooden percussion, trance, droning organs, dulcimer, electric guitars, hurdy-gurdy, just intonation, poetry, hymns, and murmuring voices. Sometimes they merge into epic, rhythmic journeys like the 14-minute long title track; other times they appear as a briefly open sound portal ("Temple"), or in the forlorn human voice on "Oh, Lovely Appearance Of Death", calling to be freed from jail of the human body and pass into the afterlife. Like previous Efdemin albums on Dial, New Atlantis veers off the techno path to explore other musical territory. Here however, Sollmann occasionally abandons the club entirely, returning only to push its boundaries with other instruments, mythologies and psychedelic story telling. Mastering by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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12"
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OSTGUT 115EP
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Peter Kuschnereit, aka Substance or DJ Pete, has long been known to heads as an essential figure in Berlin dance music. "Rise And Shine" sees Kuschnereit fusing his deep, industrial aesthetic as Substance with the resonant bass-heavy leanings of DJ Pete -- the title track's off-kilter metallic riddims and multiple, interlaced SH-101 and Prophet 5 melodies. Potential set-closer "Countdown" blasts off with relentlessly rattling, scraping breaks, hissing German vox, and big chords. The compact explorations of "Bird Cave" and "Distance" offer a more atmospheric take on bass and rhythm. "Cruising" re-explores the uncanny, Berlin deep techno cosmos Kuschnereit has helped define.
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12"
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OSTGUT 118EP
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Panorama Bar 07: Part 2 is the seventh installment of Panorama Bar's mix series with nd_baumecker. A Berlin and Panorama Bar resident since 2004, Baumecker's sets have long been known to heads as a foundational part of the club's identity: deep, unpredictable, funky, bassline-heavy, melodic, and seamless flowing between different rhythms and key-changes. Ross From Friends' "High Energy" delivers via driving saturated drums and heady, lo-fi atmospherics, followed by Dave Aju's lush "Wayahed". The final track belongs to Dutch duo Duplex, who deliver "Isolator", propelled by unpredictable claps, snares, open hats and multiple melody lines in a deceptively complex arrangement.
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12"
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OSTGUT 117EP
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Panorama Bar 07: Part 1 is the seventh installment of Panorama Bar's mix series with nd_baumecker. A Berlin and Panorama Bar resident since 2004, Baumecker's sets have long been known to heads as a foundational part of the club's identity: deep, unpredictable, funky, bassline-heavy, melodic, and seamless flowing between different rhythms and key-changes. FaltyDL kicks off things by blending US garage, breakbeats and chopped vocals. The alternative rhythms continue with Jinjé's (of Vessels fame) slowly building machine-funk anthem "Big Skies", while the B-side is Gen Ludd's dreamy, shutter-opener "Bloods Avalanche".
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12"
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OSTGUT 116EP
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After a seven-year hiatus, the longtime Berghain resident is back with four new tracks of deep, narcotic techno. A lawyer by trade, on Embodiment EP Norman Nodge reflects on decades of observing how dancers develop an intuitive relationship to music and process new sounds. "Tacit Knowing" is a nod to the feedback loop between the instincts of dancer and producer, combining bassline, breakbeats, and Detroit-like strings. In contrast, "Discipline" is aggressive, updated peak-time acid, packed with the sounds of metal and overdriven snares. "Gathering" is a bongo-heavy tribal groover, while "Embodiment" references a more halcyon Ostgut Ton aesthetic
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