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SP 029LP
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2023 repress. 45 rpm; includes download code. In hindsight, the pairing of Chris Madak and Donato Dozzy was inevitable from the moment when the two connected on Mount Naeba, Japan at the storied Labyrinth party last fall. Both artists have worked to craft singular visions unlike anything else happening in electronic music today, yet despite each producer's unmistakable individuality, there is a deeper reservoir of shared sensibility between them which makes Donato Dozzy Plays Bee Mask feel like a logical and necessary event. 2012 saw the release of Madak's monumental When We Were Eating Unripe Pears (SP 023LP) album along with the astounding Vaporware 12" for Room 40, the title-track of which opened Bee Mask's Labyrinth performance to memorable effect. Dozzy had an equally massive year thanks the release of the acclaimed Voices from the Lake (PRG 001CD/003LP) album with Neel, which set the bar for intricate, subtle, and forward-thinking contemporary techno at a new high. Both artists have pushed the respective boundaries of their work to arrive at the point of this crucial and welcome overlap: a double album of material from the Vaporware sessions, re-imagined as only Dozzy could do it. Initially commissioned for a single remix, Dozzy found so much possibility in the source material that he turned in over an hour of material, making a standalone release the only reasonable course of action. The results are absolutely divine, a suite of seven pieces of time-stopping bliss in which the structure and melodies of Vaporware glitter through the prism of Dozzy's singular production style. The meeting of these powerful minds provides evidence of an unparalleled organic chemistry. When listening to these works we hear the worlds of Bee Mask and Donato Dozzy bleed into one another, creating a new sonic entity with a life of its own -- one which with any luck will not end at this release. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, May 2013.
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SP 043LP
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2022 repress. Includes download code with Gábor Lázár remix as a bonus. Future music duo Second Woman's sophomore full-length for Spectrum Spools further hones their distinctive fusion of shape-shifting software sculpture and tessellated footwork. Shivering digital textures oscillate with and against algorithmically mapped percussion samples; smeared synthetic chords levitate in the distance; stabs of digital noise punctuate the mix in twitchy, time-distorting patterns. Their anamorphosis verges on ascetic: stark, splintered waveforms rendered into unique fiber optic hieroglyphs. Multi-instrumentalists Josh Eustis and Turk Dietrich share a deep history going back to their days in the New Orleans ambient electronic community, as part of Telefon Tel Aviv and Belong, respectively. Even so, S/W pushes beyond their combined discographies to date, flexing impossibilities, building rhythms from arrhythmia, teasing veiled emotion from bold iterations of cold code.
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SP 049LP
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Reactions is the debut album from First Tone, the musical partnership of New Orleans-based artists Turk Dietrich (Second Woman, Belong) and composer Duane Pitre (Important Records). While the project has been at work quietly sculpting their sound for years, Reactions is the first available set of recordings. Those familiar with the respective works of the two artists will be happy to find a collection of music that is very much of the duo, and yet totally unlike anything they've produced before. Over six tracks, First Tone unfurl poignant, flickering compositional works that utilize pitch material that is tuned using the system known as Just Intonation (which Pitre has studied for nearly 15 years) in conjunction with various software and a single hardware synth. The result is a collection of music that is both organic and alien. Layers of tone and texture build and dissolve from the ultra-minimal to the enormous, on occasion seamlessly blending the two. A wide array of striking timbres patiently wash over one another, at times sounding like organic instruments, at other times sounding completely otherworldly. Reactions is a masterclass not only in sound design and dynamic range, but also in sonic depth. The album's approach to the usage of time and dynamics work together to create the perception of a three-dimensional spaciousness of sound. The holographic effects produced from the spaces between the album's sounds are mesmerizing, with discreet arrangements that demand repeat listens to fully absorb.
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SP 048LP
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Ren Schofield has returned with a new installment in his notorious LP series for Spectrum Spools. LP has all the earmarks of the classic Container sound with its uber-mangled, saturated tape garble and headlong tempo macabre. However, this new set of tracks feature an attention to composition unlike much of the Container you've previously heard. While the tracks unfurl across two sides of wax the contours and jagged edges of each sonic sculpture display a new refinement while maintaining the full capacity to vaporize any club floor with Container's traditional recklessness. Miraculously, this new LP manages to incorporate some more traditionally "musical" elements thus far untouched upon in the projects output while simultaneously delivering it's most damaged and blown out offering yet. Despite leaving a trail of albums that get more intense with each passing year, this LP is bar none the most loaded. The tracks feature a trajectory with narrative, surrounded by broken acid basslines grating against disintegrating tape loops. This is the infectious and singular hypnosis Container has become well-known for. Overloaded drum patterns, washes of feedback, and dying melodies -- it's all here and somehow it's restructured to be different and better than ever before. With this latest installment, there are no longer shambles but merely dust left behind. As Container continues to evolve in an upward motion, LP presents a refreshing and welcome new chapter. Recorded in Cleveland, Ohio in October 2017 by Andrew Veres. Artwork by Ren Schofield.
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SP 046LP
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2022 repress. October Language is the debut album by New Orleans based duo Belong, comprised of Turk Dietrich and Mike Jones. Since its release in early 2006, Belongs debut masterpiece has accumulated a dedicated cult following, with comparisons to the work of Christian Fennesz and Gas, with some claims that it plays like My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (1991) sans the songs. While these comparisons are useful for filing this album into a particular bin in the record shop, time has proven that October Language is a unique album which remains unmatched by its contemporaries. Despite the warm and welcome accolades of the albums arrival, there was no vinyl pressing until 2009, of which a limited one-time pressing vanished immediately. Spectrum Spools present a pristine vinyl cut to go with reimagined album art for the definitive edition of this legendary classic. Includes download card with three extra tracks from the impossibly rare Tour EP from the same era (2006). These tracks are exclusive to the vinyl purchase and are not available through digital outlets.
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SP 045LP
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Brett Naucke returns to Spectrum Spools with his sophomore LP for Spectrum Spools following the Seed LP (SP 034LP, 2014) as well as a string of exceptional cassette releases on Umor Rex and Hausu Mountain. The Mansion finds Naucke at the peak of his powers with a fresh array of meticulously composed psychotropic tapestries. Themes based on a childhood home, now a distant memory, reveal a mysterious narrative in mind-bending sonic detail. These complex ideas fuse conflicting states of tension and beauty with an organic acumen, each track a piece of the greater whole. The Mansion is a fine mixture of contemporary concrète structure interlaced with tightly crafted melodic arrangement and hi-fidelity electronic exploration. In addition to his stalwart synthesis, Naucke employs additional personnel featuring vocal duties from Natalie Chami (of Goodwill Smith and TALsounds) and viola sounds from Whitney Johnson (of Matchess). Field recording, piano, and other various instrumentations are also carefully implemented adding a new, deeper dimension to the Naucke oeuvre. With his most realized set of compositions yet, The Mansion finds Naucke at the paragon of his conceptual and sonic ethos with a work that's at once deeply meaningful and profound in its auditory breadth. The Mansion was written and recorded in Chicago, IL between January 2015-February 2017. Mastered at Dubplates & Mastering Berlin by CGB, July 2017.
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SP 042LP
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2022 repress. Second Woman is a collaborative project featuring Turk Dietrich of Belong and Joshua Eustis of the renowned Telefon Tel Aviv. As one would imagine, Second Woman is a nonpareil debut of futuristic electronic music fusing the coveted genetics of the duos' respective previous endeavors into an alluring new enigma of ASMR-inducing kaleidoscopic dub. Second Woman is a fully realized entity, a well-crafted sound world, and a refreshing shared effort that is inspiring in its purity and painstaking in its design. The opening "100407jd7" wastes no time exhibiting mastery in both sound and structure, contorting the frequency spectrum into a psychoactive mirage with its mutating tectonics and vaporous tone clouds. Cuts like "200601je6" and "700358bc5" are bar-raising examples of veteran craftsmanship and vision, refining and reengineering the blueprints of their early works to create an original and dynamic album. The deliberation and control over every particle is obsessive, but the end results of each individual track unfold with an organic temperament unparalleled in a grid-locked world of DAW-shaped musics and rat's-nest modular aleatory. Words fail where essential sonics are concerned, and this vital new creation speaks for itself.
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SP 041LP
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After countless singles, LPs, and performances around the world, James Donadio is back with his first full-length effort since 2014's Petit Cochon (SP 035LP). Ghost Detergent is a consummate amalgam of fried gear, chunky bass, and fractured samples. Donadio's extraordinary ability to fuse his wide range of influences into a collection of lucidly executed and concise jams has reached its pinnacle. Ghost Detergent is a rhythm-centric maze of fluctuating patterns adorned with crooked fills and raucous melody. Tracks like "Nerve and Gall" and "Government Wrecker" stomp with a coarse, grinding fuss gliding on swinging, bottomless bassline turbulence. Locked-in, puzzle-like sampling patchwork collides perfectly with an array of rogue electronics, creating a sense of daring nearly extinct in the age of gridlocked, BPM-steady 12"s. Tracks like "Pregnant Toad" and "Cheap Amplifiers" play out like a Def Jam bonus beat with ripping, cough syrup-slathered DMX snare sounds. Ghost Detergent has an unhinged, unrelenting churn that stares squarely into a personal vacuum, remaining uninfluenced by the influencers and unflinching in its originality. Neither bird nor egg are relevant here. Prostitutes has managed to carve out its own tenure in contemporary electronic music by delivering in live performance and by shattering expectations on records. Never does the aesthetic outweigh the content, and Ghost Detergent delivers only the wheat and none of the chaff. Conceived, recorded, and mixed at Elbur House, 2014. Mastered by Giuseppe Tillieci at EnnisLab, Rome.
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SP 039LP
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Antwerp-based synthesist and sound-sculptor Yves de Mey presents Drawn with Shadow Pens, following previous outings on a slew of renowned labels such as Modal Analysis, Semantica, Opal Tapes, his own Archives Intérieures imprint with Sendai partner Peter van Hoesen, and the now-defunct Sandwell District. Drawn with Shadow Pens is a testament to the gifted musician's incredible engineering talents. "Prelament" sets the album off with a dense fog of acrobatic waveform maneuvers slowly shapeshifting through the audio spectrum before arriving at a vibrating, multidimensional sonic black hole. Tracks like "Adamance" and "Xylo" sound like audible holograms, with stray rhythms dissipating into and out of sharp modulations and sinuous drone layers. A pure mastery over the instruments played is evident, though many compelling sound events seem to occur and disappear almost magically. The beautiful, spacious depths of "Ostia" unfold with monastic patience, creating a surreal, hypnotic electronic sound environment. Drawn with Shadow Pens successfully strives toward a new apex in modern electronic synthesis; it's an album that will sound futuristic even in the future. If one were told that this entire album comprises tracks recorded in one take and in mono, it would be difficult to fathom -- but indeed it is true. All tracks produced by Yves de Mey. Mastered by Neel. Artwork by Yann Binet.
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SP 040LP
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Ren Schofield's Container took the world of underground electronic music by storm with the debut LP in 2011 (SP 007LP). Following massive amounts of touring and the powerful follow-up LP, LP, in 2012 (SP 025LP), the project became a must-experience staple everywhere from U.S. basements to Berghain. After two fantastic EP recordings on Morphine (Treatment, DOSER 016EP, 2013) and Liberation Technologies, Container returns with the first full-length album since 2012, simply titled LP. LP is the most explosive offering in the Container oeuvre, capturing the raw and unhinged essence of the live Container experience while exploring new compositional and sonic limits. Opener "Eject" wastes no time with its instant feedback squeal backed by a barrage of pounding, distorted percussion. The concomitant storm of misfiring FX and derailed drum patterns sets the stage for the aural pandemonium to come. "Remover" and "Peripheral" are dense and intricate structural compositions ruthless in their delivery and infectious in rhythm, stretching the known limits of the project's sound into welcome new realms. Tracks like "Appliance" and "Cushion" find Schofield in his most vicious form, with floor-destroying tempos and a miraculously adroit sense of arrangement. Somehow, LP manages to simultaneously be the most palatable and most damaged contribution yet. Patchwork polyrhythm motifs, melodic (albeit fully blasted) hook sensibilities, and ballistic synthesized sounds are melted down together and shaped into some of the most rewarding, enjoyable works yet heard on any of the LP offerings. The closing "Calibrate" pounds with a hypnotic churn, growing into a stasis of red-hot squelches and deranged electronic malfunction that recalls some of the earliest tape works Schofield created. LP gives a sense of "full circle," blurring the end and the beginning into a baffling riddle that can only be admired and never solved. Schofield has enigmatically crafted his most insane Container album to be the most architecturally dexterous and club-minded, never compromising his fundamentals while evolving the project in an utterly satisfying fashion. LP is his most locked-in full-length recording to date, long overdue and absolutely essential.
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SP 038CD
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Sintetizzatrice is the first recorded document of the collaboration between veteran DJ and producer Donato Dozzy and female vocalist Anna Caragnano. Through his solo work, and in his collaboration with Giuseppe Tilleci (Neel) as Voices from the Lake, Dozzy has achieved some of the most remarkable vistas contemporary electronic music has seen since the turn of this century. By removing himself from his areas of mastery to shift his focus on the voice, he has achieved a new peak with Sintetizzatrice. Over nine tracks, Dozzy works exclusively with the voice of Rome-based vocalist Anna Caragnano, with no other instruments. Heavy layering and effects processes are used to display an astoundingly versatile voice-centric vocabulary. Rarely can a record morph from R&B to kosmische, through traditional Italian folk music, to Fluxus styles and traditional chamber choir with no additional instrumentation. Just a singular, beautiful voice. The results are simply phenomenal. With the opening, "Introduzione," an immeasurable cosmic weight arrives and remains through the duration of the album. "Star Cloud" ascends with melancholy extended drones that evaporate concepts like time and being, rendering basic human perceptions void all the way through "Parallelo." "Parola" dances around the stereo field with dazing rhythms and melodies, while "Festa (A Mottola)" is an homage to the traditional music found in the rural region where, coincidentally, both Dozzy's mother and Caragnano were born and raised. The album's closing pieces "Love Without Sound" and "Conclusione" hit hard in a way to which no words can do justice. By fearlessly entering uncharted territories, Dozzy and Caragnano have made a collaboration which is truly experimental. Sintetizzatrice is a grand debut for Anna Caragnano and a fantastic twist for Donato Dozzy. Produced and mixed by Dozzy at Alaska Studio, Rome, in 2014. Mastered by Giuseppe Tilleci at EnissLab Studio, Rome. Transferred to tape by Pietro Micioni, Angelo Compagnoni, and Massimo Zuccaroli at Village Studio, Rome. Cut by Christoph Grote-Beverborg at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Front cover painting by Angela Scaramuzzi. Cover design by Koto Hirai.
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SP 038LP
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LP version. Sintetizzatrice is the first recorded document of the collaboration between veteran DJ and producer Donato Dozzy and female vocalist Anna Caragnano. Through his solo work, and in his collaboration with Giuseppe Tilleci (Neel) as Voices from the Lake, Dozzy has achieved some of the most remarkable vistas contemporary electronic music has seen since the turn of this century. By removing himself from his areas of mastery to shift his focus on the voice, he has achieved a new peak with Sintetizzatrice. Over nine tracks, Dozzy works exclusively with the voice of Rome-based vocalist Anna Caragnano, with no other instruments. Heavy layering and effects processes are used to display an astoundingly versatile voice-centric vocabulary. Rarely can a record morph from R&B to kosmische, through traditional Italian folk music, to Fluxus styles and traditional chamber choir with no additional instrumentation. Just a singular, beautiful voice. The results are simply phenomenal. With the opening, "Introduzione," an immeasurable cosmic weight arrives and remains through the duration of the album. "Star Cloud" ascends with melancholy extended drones that evaporate concepts like time and being, rendering basic human perceptions void all the way through "Parallelo." "Parola" dances around the stereo field with dazing rhythms and melodies, while "Festa (A Mottola)" is an homage to the traditional music found in the rural region where, coincidentally, both Dozzy's mother and Caragnano were born and raised. The album's closing pieces "Love Without Sound" and "Conclusione" hit hard in a way to which no words can do justice. By fearlessly entering uncharted territories, Dozzy and Caragnano have made a collaboration which is truly experimental. Sintetizzatrice is a grand debut for Anna Caragnano and a fantastic twist for Donato Dozzy. Produced and mixed by Dozzy at Alaska Studio, Rome, in 2014. Mastered by Giuseppe Tilleci at EnissLab Studio, Rome. Transferred to tape by Pietro Micioni, Angelo Compagnoni, and Massimo Zuccaroli at Village Studio, Rome. Cut by Christoph Grote-Beverborg at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Front cover painting by Angela Scaramuzzi. Cover design by Koto Hirai.
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SP 036CD
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David Borden, born Christmas Day, 1938, in Boston, Massachusetts, is an American minimalist composer and electronic music pioneer. He was one of the first people to beta test Bob Moog's modular synthesizer systems. His Earthquack Records imprint inspired Mimi Johnson to found the legendary Lovely Music, Ltd. with Robert Ashley. He formed the first all-synthesizer ensemble, Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company, in 1969. If there were ever a missing link in American minimalism, Borden is it. Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments is his masterpiece, released in 1981 to little fanfare on the now-defunct Dutch label Red Records. As its reputation has grown, most listeners have had to settle for compressed YouTube clips and poor vinyl-to-digital transfers, with original copies increasingly rare and expensive. Now, 34 years after its original release, Spectrum Spools presents the first reissue of Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments, after recovering in Borden's private archives the only known safety master. Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments contains four pieces, each utilizing three players and six keyboard instruments. "Etsy Point, Summer 1978" begins with a mournful, ominous mood and slowly blossoms into an immense, humid labyrinth of colorful, buzzing textures and howling melodies. "The Continuing Story of Counterpoint" is a 12-part cycle for synthesizers, acoustic instruments, and voice, upon which Borden labored for over 11 years. Parts nine and six, included here, are miraculous achievements in prodigious playing technique, remarkable mosaic-like structure, and aural magnitude, operating in the relative terrain of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and Terry Riley's Dervishes pieces. The "Counterpoint" pieces here are rigidly arranged with breakneck key changes and intricate time signature maneuvering. The resulting audio conjures kaleidoscopic patterns of beautiful melodies and compositional anatomy unparalleled in much of American minimalism. "Enfield in Winter" displays some of Borden's more ambient leanings, with slow, morphing drones and gentle pad sounds that erupt into shimmering patterns backed by a grandiose chord progression. Music for Amplified Keyboards represents a veritable zenith in Borden's corpus; a radiant achievement in sonic elegance, experimentation, and ambitious composition technique, and a work of the highest archival significance. Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments was remastered with love and transparency by Giuseppe Tillieci at EnissLab, Rome. These newly remastered works are superior to the original vinyl master, giving the world a chance to hear this remarkable work in the highest possible fidelity across multiple formats. Includes extensive liner notes and photos by Borden.
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SP 036LP
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LP version. David Borden, born Christmas Day, 1938, in Boston, Massachusetts, is an American minimalist composer and electronic music pioneer. He was one of the first people to beta test Bob Moog's modular synthesizer systems. His Earthquack Records imprint inspired Mimi Johnson to found the legendary Lovely Music, Ltd. with Robert Ashley. He formed the first all-synthesizer ensemble, Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company, in 1969. If there were ever a missing link in American minimalism, Borden is it. Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments is his masterpiece, released in 1981 to little fanfare on the now-defunct Dutch label Red Records. As its reputation has grown, most listeners have had to settle for compressed YouTube clips and poor vinyl-to-digital transfers, with original copies increasingly rare and expensive. Now, 34 years after its original release, Spectrum Spools presents the first reissue of Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments, after recovering in Borden's private archives the only known safety master. Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments contains four pieces, each utilizing three players and six keyboard instruments. "Etsy Point, Summer 1978" begins with a mournful, ominous mood and slowly blossoms into an immense, humid labyrinth of colorful, buzzing textures and howling melodies. "The Continuing Story of Counterpoint" is a 12-part cycle for synthesizers, acoustic instruments, and voice, upon which Borden labored for over 11 years. Parts nine and six, included here, are miraculous achievements in prodigious playing technique, remarkable mosaic-like structure, and aural magnitude, operating in the relative terrain of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and Terry Riley's Dervishes pieces. The "Counterpoint" pieces here are rigidly arranged with breakneck key changes and intricate time signature maneuvering. The resulting audio conjures kaleidoscopic patterns of beautiful melodies and compositional anatomy unparalleled in much of American minimalism. "Enfield in Winter" displays some of Borden's more ambient leanings, with slow, morphing drones and gentle pad sounds that erupt into shimmering patterns backed by a grandiose chord progression. Music for Amplified Keyboards represents a veritable zenith in Borden's corpus; a radiant achievement in sonic elegance, experimentation, and ambitious composition technique, and a work of the highest archival significance. Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments was remastered with love and transparency by Giuseppe Tillieci at EnissLab, Rome. These newly remastered works are superior to the original vinyl master, giving the world a chance to hear this remarkable work in the highest possible fidelity across multiple formats. Includes extensive liner notes and photos by Borden.
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SP 037LP
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SP 037CD
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There's a large empty space on your record shelf, in between Nurse With Wound's Space Music and Pete Namlook & Tetsu Inoue's Shades of Orion: a gap between the cold, lifeless experimentations of Steven Stapleton -- space heard as a largely silent void punctuated by the sudden and infrequent arrival of massive objects -- and the romantic imaginings of '90s space ambient which filled space with idealistic longings of earth. There aren't many records to put right between those two. But now Neel has given us one, Phobos, and it's both a lustrous and shadowy beauty. After debuting stellar live performances at MUTEK in Montreal as well as Berlin Atonal, the time to release an album documenting the material has arrived. Phobos is the debut LP from Neel, well-known as the sonic mastermind behind the Voices From The Lake project, together with his fellow Italian DJ, friend, and cosmic joker Donato Dozzy. Neel is a young mastering engineer with golden ears, and through Voices From The Lake, he and Dozzy have brought a level of immaculate sound production to techno which, to be honest, simply hasn't existed before. Alone, however, you might feel Neel sounds even better. Phobos is a carefully-cut gem, reflecting layers of patient detail and filling the full frequency range with a perfect balance. Voices From The Lake is an organic project, with a tight focus on water and life, but Phobos has leapt to the opposite end of the spectrum. You cannot take a sampler's magnifying glass to a place that does not transmit sound -- another kind of imagination and technique is required. The sonic results are a real treat. This album more than most, will benefit from whatever outrageous hi-fi you can swing at it. Don't just play it loud -- play it well. Legend has it Neel constructed Phobos out of an elaborate narrative concerning Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons, Fear and its brother Dread, the son of Aries and Aphrodite, the moon which sets twice across the Martian sky each day, and which each century draws closer to its red parent by one earthly meter, in a 50-million year gravitational tease that can only end in destruction. Further investigators will have to tease out the real details of that story from Neel, but for listeners the album slowly traverses through deep space over the course of a single hour-long track, patiently passing slow-turning objects and desolate plains, until the final minutes where it unpacks itself -- presenting all the pent-up emotions from a long trip -- in a blissful moment that marks the end and beginning of this voyage into space alone.
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SP 035LP
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Petit Cochon is the third LP and debut album for Spectrum Spools by James Donadio under his Prostitutes guise. From Psychedelic Black, the self-released debut LP limited to only 100, to the esteemed Crushed Interior on Digitalis, it's safe to say Donadio has crafted a style unmatched in the climate of contemporary electronic music. The top-shelf EPs on Mira and Diagonal were a small glimpse into all that has led up to the new full-length. Petit Cochon is a total burner, no exceptions. From the opening cryptic threat of "Powerful Magnets" into the serrated pummeling of "The Bluffer's Corporation," it becomes clear very quickly that no punches will be pulled and that Petit Cochon is a heavy affair. Donadio's signature sample manipulation in tandem with live electronics and particular mixing processes hit new highs with the manic clatter of "Suck Out the Reason," which shifts and shuffles between huge snare drums and whispers from the void. "Stains Left Unnamed," like its title suggests, is a grim and filthy ordeal with head-spinning delay ringing alongside jagged and fractured rhythm. This album has cuts for the club-heads and for those locked away from the rest of the world, and as a whole serves as the perfect and logical next full-length in the Prostitutes cannon. Cut by CGB at Dubplates + Mastering, Berlin. Mastered by James Plotkin.
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SP 034LP
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If previous releases for Nihilist, Arbor and his own Catholic Tapes established Chicago's Brett Naucke as one of the more accomplished practitioners in the American synth underground, Seed, his debut LP for Spectrum Spools, is a veritable career apex, brimming with sonic ingenuity, detail, and mastery over both instrument and musical form. It is hard to fathom due to the sheer diversity of sound and affectations of the eight individual pieces on the album, but Seed was recorded -- almost impossibly -- with the same synth patch, slightly modified for the unveiling of each track. This testifies to the intensity of Naucke's macroscopic conceptual vision for Seed. Each track's complex arc points towards a mind rooted in academic electronic processes, keenly trying to surprise and disarm by prying open new textures, rhythms and structures. But Naucke has struck a perfect balance that unites this avant-garde intuition with a compositional sophistication -- bringing each unique molecule of sound into cohesive songs and further still into a supremely listenable and closed album that operates entirely on its own logic. Recorded at home, as well as an isolated environment in Miami, Florida, and then mixed tediously over a six-month period, Seed is a record displaying Naucke's instrumental proficiency as much as it points to his painstaking studio dedication. The results are nothing short of startling. Naucke achieves a perfect synchronicity between the intrigue of each shimmering, crystalline sound that seems to exist infinitely within its own micro-habitat, and the larger organic whole to which it contributes. Combining delicate ambient synthscapes, snarled electronic pulses and subtle and beautiful melodic phrasings, Seed hovers in an emotional sphere very much of its own. Each piece stitches together resplendent widescreen atmosphere with an intricate coldness and mournful elegance. Over the course of this album, Naucke has come as close as any to making the machines he has used sprout from the same soil as the organic landscapes he so perfectly renders on this album. Mastered at Dubplates + Mastering, Berlin, by CGB, January 2014.
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SP 033LP
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Gatefold double LP version. When the Aquaplano records were first released in 2008 and 2009, emerging out of Hardwax with little fanfare, they were distinctly out of step with the way techno appeared to be heading. The minimal detour was reaching its logical endpoint, and producers were returning to the 1990s for inspiration, with Berghain and Sandwell District at the vanguard of a new techno movement. What the Aquaplano sessions shared in common were slower BPMs and finding inspiration in the 1990s, but there they parted ways. The influences these Italians were drawing on were rather different, returning to tribal rhythms and ambient textures to sketch out a much more heady, psychedelic form of techno. The results were a perfect balance of hypnotic beats and swirling atmosphere geared for a broken-in dancefloor or the hazy afterhours. Across these two records Donato Dozzy and Nuel would go a long way towards creating the template for a brand of deep, atmospheric techno that has become much more prominent in the years since. And while many have sought to imitate this sound, few -- if any -- have matched what first emerged from the Aquaplano sessions. After only being available in a very limited run, it is fitting that the sonic blueprints provided by Dozzy and Nuel are now available again -- and much more widely -- at a time when their influence is as strong as it has ever been. All music produced and mixed by Donato Scaramuzzi and Manuel Fogliata at Nautical One Studio in San Felice Cireco, Italy, between 2007 and 2008. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, December 2013.
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CD
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SP 033CD
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When the Aquaplano records were first released in 2008 and 2009, emerging out of Hardwax with little fanfare, they were distinctly out of step with the way techno appeared to be heading. The minimal detour was reaching its logical endpoint, and producers were returning to the 1990s for inspiration, with Berghain and Sandwell District at the vanguard of a new techno movement. What the Aquaplano sessions shared in common were slower BPMs and finding inspiration in the 1990s, but there they parted ways. The influences these Italians were drawing on were rather different, returning to tribal rhythms and ambient textures to sketch out a much more heady, psychedelic form of techno. The results were a perfect balance of hypnotic beats and swirling atmosphere geared for a broken-in dancefloor or the hazy afterhours. Across these two records Donato Dozzy and Nuel would go a long way towards creating the template for a brand of deep, atmospheric techno that has become much more prominent in the years since. And while many have sought to imitate this sound, few -- if any -- have matched what first emerged from the Aquaplano sessions. After only being available in a very limited run, it is fitting that the sonic blueprints provided by Dozzy and Nuel are now available again -- and much more widely -- at a time when their influence is as strong as it has ever been. All music produced and mixed by Donato Scaramuzzi and Manuel Fogliata at Nautical One Studio in San Felice Cireco, Italy, between 2007 and 2008. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, December 2013.
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LP
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SP 031LP
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Max Eilbacher's Red Anxiety Tracers is the debut album from the multi-talented Baltimore, Maryland stalwart. Eilbacher has performed with various projects such as Matmos, Horse Lords, and the mind-altering underground Needle Gun aktionist unit. Despite years of busy touring and recording, Red Anxiety Tracers is the first vinyl artifact from this young mastermind. Crafted over the course of a year, Tracers is a labyrinth of shapes and sounds which glide through a complex and arcane environment of found sounds and synthesis. An expertly-crafted maze of deja-vu, audio hallucinations, and dislocating atmospherics forms an audio obstacle course for the listener. Complex editing techniques and sound structures recall the works of J.D. Robb or Owl Records-era Tod Dockstader albeit with a radically fresh perspective and educated hindsight. Red Anxiety Tracers exhumes impeccable flow and careful attention to dynamic range, with its surgical placement of sound events challenging the deep listening abilities of its audience. Raw and manic tension overloads are cut with alien float and abstract aether transmissions with a constantly shifting palette of sounds spun from blasted modular electronics, vocoded terrestrial-speak, and glowing mellotron clouds. Eilbacher communicates a strange and beautiful dialect conceived through disciplined compositional structure and an intuitive improvisational style unparalleled in the current landscape. Red Anxiety Tracers breathes new life into modern electronic composition.
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2LP
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SP 032LP
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Double LP version. Pangaea Ultima, Steve Moore's debut record on Spectrum Spools, is an epic musical achievement, not simply for its sonic sophistication and compositional mastery, but also because Moore has crafted here an album that has come as close to any in transcending the boxed human logic of time and place. The album title refers to the name which geologists have given to the future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years. Over the course of the nine pieces on Pangaea Ultima, Moore meditates upon the realization of this new land mass in an uncharted part of the world's moment. How will this continent come to be formed? What forces and what processes create it? What is this continent's terrain of "Endless Mountains" and "Endless Caverns," and on what kind of planet will it be? These are all speculative questions that alight the listener as they are subsumed into Steve Moore's synthscapes which unfurl with equal amounts of delicacy and meticulous detail. In some respects, the attitude and ambition of Pangaea Ultima places this work in a similar canon as the mythic territory of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra or the cosmic imaginations of Michael Stearns' Planetary Unfolding, and yet it evades both comparisons as easily. There is something mysteriously self-contained, urgent that pervades these assemblages of tracks. "Logotone" exhibits Moore's ability to stretch the sensibilities of melodic and chordal phrasing to limits that Schulze or Alan Hawkshaw wouldn't have gone. The compositions on Pangaea Ultima, like "Planetwalk" and "Nemesis" are more tightly coiled even in their constant straining to explode outwards to the stars beyond. And when Moore plays with rhythms, they resemble the idiosyncratic mould of his releases for Long Island Electrical Systems, Future Times and Kompakt, and yet seem to push even further towards an eerie sparseness yet to be fully tapped. If there are 4/4 kicks on Pangaea Ultima, like on "Deep Time" and the title-track, it's for a world skewed on a bent axis. Musically, this is a record of both microscopic and macroscopic reward, an absorbing listen that betrays the album's 60 minutes of length. Which again returns us to the question of time and how so expertly Moore has managed to avoid it. Or more so, how he has managed to find a fold in time -- an atemporal space -- here this album anomalously nestles by itself. Moore reaches out to the moment of genesis of Pangaea Ultima and slips into its imaginary logic of time and place. He does not intrude or indulge there. Nor are there any "retro" homages or "sci-fi" tropes/ambitions on Pangaea -- we cannot even be sure whether humans have a history they can call a future on this continent. Yet just as easily, as geologists concede, this future super-continent may never end up eventuating, which would mean this imminently possible reality will melt into fantasy. But this too, is not a bad place for Steve Moore's masterpiece to end up, either. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker, August 2013. Artwork and design by Robert Beatty.
myth is the internalising of
natural phenomena through
explicable narratives
fantasy is the stepping outside
of history in order to make
narratives explicable
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CD
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SP 032CD
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Pangaea Ultima, Steve Moore's debut record on Spectrum Spools, is an epic musical achievement, not simply for its sonic sophistication and compositional mastery, but also because Moore has crafted here an album that has come as close to any in transcending the boxed human logic of time and place. The album title refers to the name which geologists have given to the future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years. Over the course of the nine pieces on Pangaea Ultima, Moore meditates upon the realization of this new land mass in an uncharted part of the world's moment. How will this continent come to be formed? What forces and what processes create it? What is this continent's terrain of "Endless Mountains" and "Endless Caverns," and on what kind of planet will it be? These are all speculative questions that alight the listener as they are subsumed into Steve Moore's synthscapes which unfurl with equal amounts of delicacy and meticulous detail. In some respects, the attitude and ambition of Pangaea Ultima places this work in a similar canon as the mythic territory of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra or the cosmic imaginations of Michael Stearns' Planetary Unfolding, and yet it evades both comparisons as easily. There is something mysteriously self-contained, urgent that pervades these assemblages of tracks. "Logotone" exhibits Moore's ability to stretch the sensibilities of melodic and chordal phrasing to limits that Schulze or Alan Hawkshaw wouldn't have gone. The compositions on Pangaea Ultima, like "Planetwalk" and "Nemesis" are more tightly coiled even in their constant straining to explode outwards to the stars beyond. And when Moore plays with rhythms, they resemble the idiosyncratic mould of his releases for Long Island Electrical Systems, Future Times and Kompakt, and yet seem to push even further towards an eerie sparseness yet to be fully tapped. If there are 4/4 kicks on Pangaea Ultima, like on "Deep Time" and the title-track, it's for a world skewed on a bent axis. Musically, this is a record of both microscopic and macroscopic reward, an absorbing listen that betrays the album's 60 minutes of length. Which again returns us to the question of time and how so expertly Moore has managed to avoid it. Or more so, how he has managed to find a fold in time -- an atemporal space -- here this album anomalously nestles by itself. Moore reaches out to the moment of genesis of Pangaea Ultima and slips into its imaginary logic of time and place. He does not intrude or indulge there. Nor are there any "retro" homages or "sci-fi" tropes/ambitions on Pangaea -- we cannot even be sure whether humans have a history they can call a future on this continent. Yet just as easily, as geologists concede, this future super-continent may never end up eventuating, which would mean this imminently possible reality will melt into fantasy. But this too, is not a bad place for Steve Moore's masterpiece to end up, either. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker, August 2013. Artwork and design by Robert Beatty.
myth is the internalising of
natural phenomena through
explicable narratives
fantasy is the stepping outside
of history in order to make
narratives explicable
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LP
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SP 030LP
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Valerie Martino's Unicorn Hard-On project has been a long-running staple in the American underground since its inception in 2003. Through her own Tangled Hares imprint, as well as many others, she's built a strong, constantly evolving catalog of singular works that serves to many as a prototype of the current beat-oriented phenomena currently sweeping the nation. Martino's vision, however, remains unphased and flourishes accordingly to her own unique vision; standing outside of any trends and remaining loyal to the Unicorn Hard-On sound. Despite constant touring, releasing music, booking shows and occupying various cities throughout the U.S. over the last 10 years, there has been no full-length Unicorn Hard-On LP until now. Weird Universe delivers on all fronts, encompassing all styles of the projects past and present to create a cohesive and definitive debut album. The album pounds with Martino's signature drum thud and percussive clatter, filing in the crevices with her signature electronic static and keen melodic phrasing. The album's opening track, "Rock Salt," kicks in the door and unwinds itself into spiraling mania of ramping bass tones with only a steady rhythm keeping it from going off the rails completely. Many of Unicorn Hard-On's classic elements remain intact, with a wide array of bizarre modulations and deeply layered subconscious structures. Versatility and evolution are exhibited in tracks like "Houndstooth" or "Wet Pet," which play out like an extraterrestrial Rachmad cut, or perhaps like a classic Psyche-styled Craig track with hypnotic, time-altering melodic patterns and impeccably calculated rhythm programming. All comparisons aside, this record thrives in its own Weird Universe, making this a thrilling debut album 10 years in the works.
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SP 029CD
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In hindsight, the pairing of Chris Madak and Donato Dozzy was inevitable from the moment when the two connected on Mount Naeba, Japan at the storied Labyrinth party last fall. Both artists have worked to craft singular visions unlike anything else happening in electronic music today, yet despite each producer's unmistakable individuality, there is a deeper reservoir of shared sensibility between them which makes Donato Dozzy Plays Bee Mask feel like a logical and necessary event. 2012 saw the release of Madak's monumental When We Were Eating Unripe Pears (SP 023LP) album along with the astounding Vaporware 12" for Room 40, the title-track of which opened Bee Mask's Labyrinth performance to memorable effect. Dozzy had an equally massive year thanks the release of the acclaimed Voices from the Lake (PRG 001CD/003LP) album with Neel, which set the bar for intricate, subtle, and forward-thinking contemporary techno at a new high. Both artists have pushed the respective boundaries of their work to arrive at the point of this crucial and welcome overlap: a double album of material from the Vaporware sessions, re-imagined as only Dozzy could do it. Initially commissioned for a single remix, Dozzy found so much possibility in the source material that he turned in over an hour of material, making a standalone release the only reasonable course of action. The results are absolutely divine, a suite of seven pieces of time-stopping bliss in which the structure and melodies of Vaporware glitter through the prism of Dozzy's singular production style. The meeting of these powerful minds provides evidence of an unparalleled organic chemistry. When listening to these works we hear the worlds of Bee Mask and Donato Dozzy bleed into one another, creating a new sonic entity with a life of its own -- one which with any luck will not end at this release. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, May 2013.
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