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viewing 1 To 15 of 15 items
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2LP
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SFT 016LP
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"Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, Napolian (born Ian Evans) attended Taft High School, whose alums include Ice Cube and Eazy-E. While the stylistic legacy of gangster rap runs deep in Napolian's music, the armature is that of a young producer writing his own tale without historical precedents. Incursio is Napolian's long-awaited debut album for Software Recording Co. A clandestine labor of love, the album was recorded gradually and with great attention over the course of two years. The fifteen songs of Incursio build on Napolian's first EP for Software, Rejoice, released at age nineteen, and his ongoing work and experiences as part of The Renaissance Music Group alongside Dro Carey and labelmates Tariq and Garfield. At its core, Incursio is an instrumental beats record (we here at Software lovingly refer to it as Encursducing...) What the album isn't though is an egg hunt -- no break record samples, no dust, no crates. No jazz rust, no deconstruction. Incursio is far too liquid and stealth for those tired totems. We see it as a high watermark record for a young producer with a love of hip hop, who has set out to make an epic that is bigger than the sum of its influences." Gatefold sleeve; includes a download code.
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LP
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SFT 044LP
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"This self-described opto-musical agglomerate was born in 2008 after a chance encounter between British musician Dan Hayhurst and New Zealand animator Reuben Sutherland. By combining practices, the pair's first test splattered a psychedelic palette that pushed them to explore sensorial intricacies emerging from chance operations. Raw materials for Sculpture's music include a mix of analog and digital practices. In Hayhurst and Sutherland's hands, tape manipulation, samples, found sounds, aleatoric and algorithmic programming and live improvisation become more complementary than you might imagine. Sculpture draws from experimentalism to promote new potentials for pop and electronic music in an age where many of our sci-fi fantasies have become mundane occurrences. 'I'm aiming to make a coherent, adventurous electronic pop record with its own voice and identity,' Hayhurst explains. 'I don't think experimental music has to be dark, difficult or joyless. I try to make something playful, and maybe a little absurd.' First edition on yellow vinyl, limited to 1,000 copies. LP includes download code."
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2LP
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SFT 041LP
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"Death After Life, Thug Entrancer's debut for Software Recording Co. is a deliberately realized collection of dance experimentation and hybridized electronic music with narrow stylistic precedents. It's also a gripping, somber tide formed from the gravitational pull of an artist's amble through unknown turfs. A summation of varied approaches to electronic music, Thug Entrancer's multiverse is similar to other Software artists (Slava and Huerco S., for example). McRyhew draws influence from pioneering electronic and experimental composers who placed an emphasis on extended development and technique, alongside early analog dance producers who went all-out and all-in with little more than a TR-808 in their arsenal. Death After Life is comprised of eight chapters drawn from the album title, each numbered one through eight. These portions underscore a pitch-dark thread running throughout the album's fifty minutes. While Death After Life reframes elements of Chicago juke and house in long-form design, the end result one in which a subtler horizon is discovered, trumping more palatable musical codes and dissuading us from treating electronic music, or any genre-stamped style matter, with rote attention. Includes a download code."
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LP
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SFT 026LP
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"Limited vinyl edition in a deluxe jacket. Includes digital download code. In the videogame Dyad, a mysterious, micro organic particle zips through a Pollock-like tunnel that intensifies in shape, color and feel as players advance through the game. But like Dyad's predecessors, games aiming to be all-out sensory assaults, the synapse-frying player experience is inherently tied to the game's extraordinary soundtrack. Designed and produced by Oakland based composer David Kanaga, the soundtrack to Dyad will be made widely available for the first time by Software Recording Co. David Kanaga's maximalist score for Dyad fuses a breakneck array of sound events to rich, ambient segues of layered harmonies and melodic color. Like the ceaseless forward movement of the game itself, where the protagonist particle encounters cascades of oncoming enemies, the elements of the music also shift in concert with the events of the game. There are drops in octaves according to speed of the particle, and synced musical events signaling an array of hallucinatory actions on screen. Textures morph, pitches drift, events quantize and de-quantize in meditative 'flows' that sustain repose one moment, and sonic assaults the next. Kanaga casts a wide net stylistically; a kaleidoscope of influences ranging from acid-fried happy hardcore, to jungle and drum-n-bass rhythms to re-applied fragments of Top 40 production tropes, not to mention more than several sublime passages of hazy, cosmic coloring. Importantly, even with this stylistic range, the soundtrack never veers from referencing the particular intensities of the events in play. The frenetic music shifts in accordance with the game's own digital psychedelia, becoming on its own a kind of virtual stand-in for the game itself."
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LP
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SFT 027LP
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"Co La is the primary project of musician and producer Matt Papich, whose explorations of sample-based electronic music have culminated in Moody Coup. The emotional palette of Moody Coup, Papich's second album and first for Software Recording Co., is more complex than its exuberant predecessor Daydream Repeater (NNA Tapes 2011). Where that record's relentlessly bucolic tone drew from the saccharine core of reggae, exotica, and '60s girl groups, the bedrock of Moody Coup is elusive and abstract. The various genre coinages that have been tagged to Co La's music before - new exotica, avant-luxury, furniture music, etc. - fail to accommodate the brainier obsessions behind Moody Coup's genesis. A new brand of alchemy occurs in the album, where cryptic sources are enhanced and embellished to a point of transcendence. This departure is the brilliant process of Co La's unpredictable electronic music."
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LP
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SFT 029LP
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"Zones Without People was originally released on LP in two editions of 500 by Arbor, August 2009." Includes digital download code."
"Arpeggios and sequencers play a key role in this amalgamation, as these forms of repetition create an attachment to a certain sentiment neither human nor machine. The record reflects this transformation; the A Side has distinct emotional flourishes, while the majority of the B Side seems to be overtaken in cold, mechanized melodies; attempts at teaching a machine to feel. The final track, 'Hyperdawn,' is a solution to these two disparate modes of interpreting stimuli: a pure union of veins and patch cables." --Arbor
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2LP
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SFT 024LP
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"Raw Solutions is the debut full-length by Slava, exploring the darker, denser corners of Chicago house and footwork in an ever-broadening context. True to his cross-cultural identity, Slava's production doesn't fit neatly into a categorical genre. Rather, it surveys many and, Zelig-like, borrows freely from them. Slava dissects elements of pop, R&B, hip-hop, vogue house, British bass, and ambient and refocuses them in almost sculptural form for the live experience. The development of Raw Solutions was greatly informed by Slava's performance. Often recorded in single takes directly from a Korg Electribe ESX, the album compositions were crafted from bare machine essentials with few audio effects or sound-design. Slava's command of the mix powers Raw Solutions along a more refined and visceral arc than his previous recorded work. The vocal sample has become a signature element in Slava's carefully constructed balance. The thick and sticky sonic material of the samples contrasts the lean tone of mix element. The space surrounding Slava's skeletal programming becomes muscular with foraged sounds. Over the course of Raw Solutions, the samples dissolve into the production, naturalizing the contrasting presence. Raw Solutions rarely drifts though. The mix remains meticulously assembled -- each part perfectly puzzled-pieced. Mercury's penchant for intricate vocal choreography may have left as deep a stamp on Slava's psyche as his charisma." Gatefold sleeve; includes download code; numbered edition of 1000.
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LP
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SFT 033LP
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"Following the devastating one-two punch of Man with Potential and Pro Style for Type Records, Pete Swanson returns to his deformed warehouse techno sound with Punk Authority. After leaving cornerstone US noise duo Yellow Swans, Swanson made it his mission to pull apart the techno genre by the seams. This four track stomper for Software Recording Co. is by far his most damaged solo offering to date. With a sly nod to Police Academy, 'Punk Authority' launches into a barrage of debauched, regressive noise punctuated by the kind of beats you'd more readily expect to find on an Underground Resistance 12" (And that's as effortlessly engaging as it sounds). Using a deceptively simple synthesizer/tape setup, Swanson siphons his club constructions through a hoarse mix of saturation and overdrive, resulting in something aggressive yet effortlessly foot pushing. Punk Authority might have the kind of surface grit you'd expect to come across on a hand-painted cassette tape, but at its heart is a vomited pulse half-heard through a Stuttgart toilet stall. Swanson has successfully re-tooled a genre to fit his needs, and this Punk Authority is his chance to really crack his bare knuckles." Includes download code; hand-numbered edition of 1000 copies.
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12"
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SFT 018EP
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"Software Recording Co. presents Tropa Macaca's fourth release, Ectoplasm. The ambient-noise duo of André Abel and Joana da Conceição have been going strong from their Portugal home base since 2005, while lunging out into the world with releases via Qbico and Ruby Red. The following to 2009's Sensação do Princípio on Stiltbreeze, Ectoplasm finds Tropa Macaca creating a quantic fantasy sound not unlike a cybernetically enhanced Taj Mahal Travellers interpreting a lost chapter of One Hundred Years of Solitude. The chemistry of Tropa Macaca imbues every tendril of Ectoplasm - truly mysterious music made for and by adventurous, vibrating people." Hand-numbered edition of 500; includes download code.
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12"
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SFT 007EP
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"Carlos Giffoni is a Venezuelan electronic musician residing in the New York City area for the past ten plus years. It's here where Giffoni established himself not only as a jammer but as a curator of contemporary out music as label head and festival director for No Fun Productions. Giffoni uses modular synthesizers, custom-built instruments, and various modes of analog and digital synthesis to compose electronic music pieces for physical formats. He is also well-versed and respected in the international improvisational circuit. Giffoni's recent work focuses on live analog synthesizer pieces in line with early cosmic electronic and techno music, while maintaining the harsher edge of his previous noise works. A perpetual believer in 'no rules' jam creation in the face of stringent genrefication, Giffoni's No Fun Acid project puts this belief into practice on Evidence, a two track 12" for Software Recording Company. Evidence stylistically reintegrates lessons learned with a newfound and brazen songcraft that few would expect from the tenured noise artist. The synergy of Giffoni's monotone vocals with acid leads and pulsescapes suggests something strangely erotic that was hinted at on the Adult Life and Severance records. The killer surprise on Evidence is Laurel Halo's manually mechanized piano and synth riffage on the title track. A refreshing look at experimental synth craft that is closer in nature to the explorations of EBM and industrial without relying on typical cold/masculine tropes, and couldn't be farther away from the overly placating and demonstrative kosmische tendencies of late. Times change, disintegration is imminent, and here is the Evidence." Limited edition + high quality virgin vinyl + download code.
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12"
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SFT 006EP
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"Megafortress is New York musician Bill Gillim. The project was conceived as a series of fictional field recordings, and has transformed into a collection of gorgeous vocal meditations. His debut self-titled release for Software Recording Co., Megafortress is a lucid and open effort combining homebrewed and studio recording elements into a dynamic cloud cover, using only sparsely layered and processed voice, sampled bells, and touches of synthesizer. At times, it feels like Gillim is concocting a new strain of (secular) devotional music; a contemplative, nascent music. Bill's obfuscated lyrics hint at a resonant, universal sphere where identity is formed but never hardens. Considering how simple and unadorned Gillim's setup is, the envisage is a testament to how powerful this music is. Megafortress begins with 'My Favorite Girl,' on which Gillim's veiled falsetto is propelled forward through a hall of delays, accented by simple but completely unpredictable moments of synth vamp, while 'Green Child' is the definitive exit music for the vocal segment of the EP, a contemporary dirge that wouldn't feel out of place if installed at the emotional/architectural nodes of Fallingwater, year 2012." Numbered edition of 500 copies; includes download code.
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12"
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SFT 009EP
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"Software Recording Co. is proud to introduce Napolian, 19-year-old producer and chief visionary behind LA-based production crew Renaissance Music Group. His debut release, Rejoice, is stately, direct, and stylistically interwoven. Rejoice runs the gamut of computer funk, ambient, and trance, but always retains a hard, synthetic R&B core. The same way Napoleon III urged porcelain designers to reflect the historic images of the day as opposed to generic landscapes and classical nudes, our Napolian's commanding dionysia of electronic music histories are dream-coated in digital resins and fabricated in the manner of a visionary metal worker. What's immediately evident in Napolian's craft are the anthemic leads that tear across the conductor rod of 21st century hardware-based production. Napolian's cyclonic smack of disparate yet logical influences sets him apart from the contemporary sidechain scene. The Harold Faltermeyer/Dr. Dre continuum on Rejoice's 'False Memories' or the wormhole connecting Marcus Miller to Alice DeeJay on 'Rejoice' represent a couple of the Napolian's unprecedented stargates. The songs of Rejoice aren't fleeting screen grabs, rather riffs hard-ripped by hand on time-tested, Ikutaro Kakehashi-approved gear. It made us cry and it shook our skulls." Numbered limited edition of 500; includes download code.
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CD
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SFT 010CD
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"Replica is an electronic song cycle based around audio procured from TV ad compilations. These sample-based meditations are as lyrical as they are ecological, featuring re-purposed 'ghost vocals' which serve as narration for Lopatin's signature amorphous, ambient passages. Lopatin's Juno-60 is still prominent, but Returnal's placid, synthetic surroundings are accelerated through darker, more unpredictable terrains via Lopatin's use of samplers, analog filtering, tape-op, piano, plate reverb and sub-bass. The result is a heightened sense of music as part and parcel of an overall sonic terrain."
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12"
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SFT 003EP
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"Airbird is the solo project from Joel Ford, bassist of Tigercity and one half of Ford & Lopatin. After a split-cassette release with Megafortress on The Curatorial Club, Ford releases Airbird's first single, City Vs. Mountains on his own label Software. In lead track 'City Vs. Mountains,' cicadas buzz as Airbird exits Babylon on his boogie road trip quest back to nature. Ford notorious for funk, packs a whole arsenal of West Coast style groove for the trip. The track is definitely a road dogger with lots of beats and bass plus a remarkable clarity in the vocals that distinguishes him from the contemporary murk pack. After a night of heavy driving, 'Rotating Cloud' marks the day's return with sparse, delicate high register melodies and pulses which gradually give way to a midi locked safari of wildlife house. And yes the zookeeper is a Al Carlson, Software's engineer & mix guy you thought -- but he also packs a gnarly Alphabet City avant RIPPP when he wants to, and on multiple saxes. Airbird arrives!" Hand-numbered limited edition of 500 copies.
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PIC. DISC
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SFT 002LP
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"A few new developments for electronic production duo Games. The pair comprised of Oneohtrix Point Never's Daniel Lopatin and Tiger City's Joel Ford are no longer calling themselves Games -- instead, they now go by the very Italo disco-sounding Ford & Lopatin. First order of business for F&L: running a new offshoot of Brooklyn label Mexican Summer, appropriately titled Software." -- Cribbing from Pitchfork.
"To precede the release of Channel Pressure, Ford & Lopatin will be releasing an Emergency Room 12", which features the album track 'Emergency Room' along with a remix by Gavin Russom and a dub mix by The Bug. The limited 12" (1200 copies) will have four variations of x-ray artwork. A beautiful, essential and strictly limited piece."
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