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viewing 1 To 25 of 29 items
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2LP
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RAVE NYZII
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Unreleased bounty of 30-year-old bleep techno, ambient/noyze and breakbeat hardcore from Dave Burraston's cult NYZ project -- rinsing his archived Amiga productions for animated gems comparable to Autechre's Legofeet, AFX's SAW volumes, or the earliest Humanoid recordings. Following his mind-bending SHFTR FRQ LP for The Death of Rave in 2018, the award-winning, UK-born and Aussie-based artist/scientist excavates his HD from a golden era when synf and computer music boffins were building the future in bedroom studios, using then early versions of Cubase and Amiga software to establish the templates for decades of rave and electronic dance music to come. However, like a rare, mutant dinosaur skeleton that doesn't fit historic models, NYZ's unarchiving of OLD TRX [87-93] offers a complex and unusually chaotic range of ideas for this era -- from meditation tape-sampling downbeats to nutty proto-speed garage and animated noise -- that plays out like a comic book or pulpy sci-fi narrative and smartly showcases the breadth of Dave's prized imagination and technical nous. In 11 parts arranged for a properly immersive listen, OLD TRX [87-93] wends from squashed '80s cyberpunk sci-fi in "damage" to the hypnagogic swag of "self_hypnotic_tapez" via a spectrum of mutant dancefloor and avant oddities alongside a bezerker breakbeat razz in "patheticsocialmisfits" and what sounds like proto-speed garage in the warped bass of 'flatline'. But he never uses the same drum pattern twice, and thanks to the inclusion of wildcards such as the scorching noise piece "JP4_PhonosonicsRM_DRN" and the sleazy proto-trance of "CEZbulgan", the sequencing ideally lends itself to jacked-in headphone mooches as much as domestic and raving use. The results are surely comparable to the haunting early rave and ambient sound of AFX's SAW 85-92 as much as the freaky ideas found on Brian Dougans's proto-FSOL project, Humanoid's Sessions 84-88, or the hardcore breakbeat ruggedness of Autechre's Legofeet, yet all done with a trippy sound design and time-out-of-joint feel that's singular to this remarkable record, and speaks to the artist's wealth of experience; from his role as a BT trouble-shooter in the '70s, to his work on landscape-sized sound art installations, and his legendary "SYROBONKERS" interview with Richard D. James. It's an immensely enjoyable and enigmatic album sure to spark ravenous interest with old and yung skool ravers and electronic music fiends. Mastered and cut by Anna at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Pressed on purple vinyl. Screen-printed jacket, edition of 300.
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RAVE 029CD
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Mechanosphere is Cam Deas's staggeringly abstract yet poignant second album exploring ideas of rhythmic dissonance and head-spinning proprioceptions for The Death of Rave. Following directly from Cam's cultishly-acclaimed mini-LP Time Exercises (RAVE 022LP, 2018), which was surprisingly deployed in Richie Hawtin's "CLOSE COMBINED - LIVE" mix and hailed as "Holy F#ck-What is This?!?" by Brainwashed, his new album applies rich polychromatic color to his signature rhythmic constructions with a greatly heightened emotive traction and broader appeal while only going deeper on his radical ideas about the fundamentals of sound and composition. Using a computer-controlled modular synth, Cam takes the simple idea of layering pitches in multiple tempi to Nth degrees, resulting in a sensational and warped sense of temporality and gravity-defying physics. Effectively placing pitch on a scale in a similar way to Conlon Nancarrow's player-piano programming or even Ligeti's famous metronome experiment, Cam explores solutions to the problem of grid-locked linearity, or at least perceptions of it, by effectively ripping the rug from under electronic music convention to make his music appear as though in perpetual freefall, or a process of omnidirectional contraction/expansion that never quite resolves - always the same, ever different. In Mechanosphere listeners effectively navigate through the music by a loose means of pattern recognition, picking out accentuated kicks and hits that pierce thru Cam's incredibly dense swells of endless metallic tone. But where his Time Exercises LP was unreservedly abstract and emotive in an alien sense, his follow-up practically sounds as though aliens have developed a form of 3D midi folk-jazz or court music for bacchanals and spiritual reasons. From the vertiginous scale of "Ascension", thru the jaw-dropping hyper stepper "Slip", to the controlled chaos of "Reflect, Deflect", and ultimately the deeply solemn yet discordantly lush finale of shearing metallic pitches in "Solitude", Cam offers an often shocking and ever fascinating grasp of electronic music's potential to relate hard-to-communicate but intuitively felt ideas to the body and emotions. It's a sober but incredibly wondrous sound, and only confirms that Cam's seismic stylistic transition this decade from preeminent, post-Takoma 12-string guitar player to visionary synthesist was certainly worthwhile. RIYL Autechre, Xenakis, Ligeti, Rashad Becker. Art and layout by Tom Kilburn and Cam Deas; Spot gloss digipak. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
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2LP
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RAVE 027LP
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Captured Entities is the debut album of deeply raw house and psycho-jit-jazz by Detroit producer and DJ, Howard Thomas aka H-Fusion. Spanning the breadth of Howard's hands-on, tracky style -- from beatless cosmic jazz audities to slamming 170bpm missiles and heart-grabbing house -- it's arguably one of the most distinctive, dare-to-be-different albums from the 313 in recent memory. The fruit of more than five years of communication between Howard and The Death of Rave, Captured Entities expands on the ruff-neck, asymmetric slant of his killer 2005-2012 productions for Sound Signature and Fit -- as played by everyone from Kyle Hall to Kassem Mosse -- across 11 unruly numbers united by an intuitive, jazz-wise approach to his synths and MPC2000. While his sound may remind of many Detroit greats such as Omar-S, Damon Peterson/8088, and Urban Tribe/DJ Stingray, Howard can't help but sound like himself, and his debut album is best defined by its classically driven yet singular Detroit soul clinamen. Where too many producers' lip-service to jazz is betrayed by their gridlocked uniformity, Howard cuts the f*ck loose in real-time, improvised jams which have made it to the final track list because of their unquantized cantankerousness and frictional quality. Sawn-off blasts of hardcore warehouse rave give way to sultry, dream-away house jackers and a ruck of diesel-fueled bangers that sound like Nate Young doing Jit with DJ Stingray at a Detroit biker bar. When combined with the curdled gob of beatless, cosmic noise and the cranky swaggering cyberpunk on the album's closing side, Captured Entities really comes into its own as a unique expression of Michigan grit which, by design or chance, effectively splits the difference between Black Noise and Wolf Eyes. This kind of instinctively jazz-taught, stylistic and metric versatility is rare in Detroit-manufactured techno albums beyond, say, the debut Omar-S album Just Ask The Lonely (2005), or the eponymous Urban Tribe LP for KDJ's Mahogani Music (2010), and the track sequencing of Captured Tracks aims to highlight the album's strength in its diversity. Illuminated by an exceptional mastering job from Anne at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering (and cut at 45rpm) which reveals all its dusty details and rewards cranked volume in spades, Captured Entities is a uniquely rude, thrilling and soulfully compelling album from any angle, and a long overdue LP testament to one of Detroit's most peculiar, instinctive, and unsung artists. Mixed by DJ Head.
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12"
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RAVE XYN-EP
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The Death of Rave present Perfect Oracle, a staggering debut EP of hyper-present dancefloor dread and aerobic-mystic torque by Athenian artist Xyn Cabal. His nine-minute blinder "Ǝ" traverses a post-apocalyptic playground of brittle but shatterproof dembow drums, minor key synths, and black hole trance breakdowns, before "Nowei" unfurls a grimy cinematic elegy for the dispossessed. His permutations of Arabic vocals and sub-bass loops synch with upended drums in the title track, while "Veil Ordnance" pushes his rhythm programming to breathtaking, spiraling im/possibilities, and "MSF Venom" sounds the riot with slow motion Molotov drops turned into a noisy reggaeton beast.
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LP
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RAVE NYZ-LP
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The Death of Rave is honored to plate up the vinyl debut by NYZ; the cult, algorithmic/ generative music project of award-winning artist/scientist Dave Burraston (Bryen Telko, Noyzelab). The A-side revolves 14 succinct blatz, ranging from cranky percussive pieces to queered microtonal dissonance and SAW II-like atmospheres -- notably including one track made on a Sequentix Cirklon sequencer and PreenFM2 synth gifted him by Richard D. James. The B-side contains a steeply immersive spectral drone tract that (never) ends in a locked groove, especially cut at D&M, Berlin. The results are wholly unique and speak to the endless, playfully experimental variation of NYZ's art/research. They reveal visceral, alien microcosms of curdled microtonal tunings and proprioceptive chicanery bound to thrill and induce strange, new sensations in even the most hard-to-please fiend of electronic music. It's strongly recommended to followers of Russell Haswell's chaotic gnash, the mind-bending tunings of Aphex Twin, the visionary algorithmic scapes of Roland Kayn, and Eliane Radigue's microtonal meditations. In Dave's own words:
"SHFTR FRQ is a series of experimental studies into simple synth setups controlled by varying levels of generative complex systems [MANIAC cellular automata]. SHFTR FRQ was recorded over the last six years on an ever-changing hybrid of equipment encompassing the domains of modular and MIDI-based microtonal sound synthesis [analog and digital]. Setups were always ultra-minimalist, often with just the MANIAC cellular automata sequencer and one or two modules/synths to provide a consistent sensory focus. The studies range from ultra-short sequences, micro-ditties, investigatory motifs, to a full length high spectral drone meditation."
Burraston has previously collaborated with Alan Lamb on recordings of a mile-long telephone wire in the Australian outback, and more recently he issued nearly a dozen NYZ tapes and CDs with some of the most crucial modern music labels, as well as a number of releases under the Noyzelab and Bryen Telko aliases. In 2014, Dave self-published SYROBONKERS!, the most technical and in-depth interview ever given by Aphex Twin. Screen-printed jacket. RIYL: Russell Haswell, Aphex Twin, Eliane Radigue, EVOL/ALKU, Roland Kayn.
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LP
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RAVE 025LP
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What The Night Is For is Teresa Winter's engrossing second album for The Death of Rave. Unfolding around recollections of a bad dream about being murdered by her boyfriend and hidden under a hotel bed, Teresa's new side expands upon the morbid, psycho-sexual and occult fascinations of her cultishly acclaimed Untitled Death (RAVE 020LP, 2017) in a singular and unpredictable style of composition where avant-classical, acid-house and ambient dream-pop collapse in a confounding and traumatic account of her hauntological reality. Recorded in Northern England amid the socio-political tumult of 2018, What The Night Is For is concerned with notions of liberation and repression, both sexual, psychic and political, which feel ever more impending in the nocturnal, criminal state of mind conjured by capitalism's end times. Teresa's music reflects this sensation of heightened alertness and near-psychedelic intensity with an abstract dramatic narrative implicitly referencing on the one hand, the convention-challenging feminism of Jean Rollin's cinema fantastique and its soundtracks, and the charged atmospheres of Coil, as well as the sexually liberated writings of Amanda Carter and the Marquis De Sade. In its unfairly weighted formation, the album vertiginously drops into freefall with seven minutes of nightmarishly captivating dissonance in "Canticles of Ecstasy", landing in nine minutes of disquietingly lush ambient electronics and Teresa intoning "bestial, brutal" on "Heathen's Gate", marking her descent into night proper. The other side is an entirely different affair. From the wigged-out pipes and cinematic intrigue of "Vulgaire", Teresa plays out stark contrasts between the stellar acid-pop detournement of "For Murder", the palpably eerie electro-acoustic aura of "Apostrophising the Cunt", and a gut-wrenching one-two of Proustian fantasy in "Mother of Death", and the piloerect tristesse of "From so High that I Might Die". Like Cosey Fanni Tutti's seminal early artwork, created in the '70s against a backdrop of Yorkshire-based serial killers and the adult industry, Teresa's music can be taken as a form of psychic self-surgery, as a way of parsing her own ideas from the inherent violence of hetero-normativity and the lingering, insipid pall of Roman Catholicism and all its connotations of sexual repression. And like Cosey, Teresa obliquely acknowledges the female perspective defined in the Tarot card, "Eight of Swords" - she's damned if she does, but also damned if she doesn't. So f*ck it, here it is. Deal with it. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Edition of 300.
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RAVE 024LP
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Nozomu Matsumoto is an artist and curator behind EBM(T), Tokyo -- representing work by Robin Mackay, TCF, Sam Kidel, etc. Climatotherapy is his first physical release following a number of self-published digital works and mixes for online publications. Climatotherapy is Nozomu's soundtrack for a health forecast given by Amazon's Text-to-Speech interface Polly, and is perhaps the most disturbing, as well as the most evocative release on The Death Of Rave label to date; creating a widescreen, hi-definition world where you're never quite sure what's real. Climatotherapy features Polly narrating a non-linear text intersecting issues of morality in Artificial Intelligence with the artist's experience of meteoropathic sickness, and its symptoms related to barometric fluctuations and psychic-atmospheric disturbance. Nozomu imagines that Polly curates our mental and moral energy into health by high-definition MIDI orchestration. Polly's prognostications come framed by a hyperreal tapestry of idyllic ambient, cinematic strings, and R&B folk tropes, conveying Nozomu's ideas with clinically emotive clarity. The effect is uncannily calculated, using additional human vocals and music to limn in HD detail an up-to-the minute and personal perspective on themes of AI and morality which could be called key to Japan's hauntology. A strikingly singular work, the 15-minute Climathotherapy effectively resonates with the novel musical sci-fi of James Ferraro, Elysia Crampton, and TCF, as well as The Death of Rave's own editions such as Mark Leckey's GreenScreenRefrigerator (LECKEY 001LP) and Sam Kidel's Disruptive Muzak (RAVE 014LP, 2016). It's a properly unique record of its times. Master and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy. Includes 12x12" insert transcript designed by Mark Fell. One-sided white label with sticker; Edition of 300.
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2LP
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RAVE 023LP
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Techno mutant Gábor Lázár morphs two-step and warped electropes with futuristic tension and torsion on Unfold, the Hungarian artist's first solo double LP for The Death Of Rave. The eight-track album follows a busy 2017 for Gábor in which he released Crisis Of Representation with Shelter Press (SHELTER 076CD/LP, 2017), heard his music played in numerous Aphex Twin live/DJ shows, and also toured the EU with Josh Eustis and Turk Dietrich's Second Woman -- an experience which fed directly into the sharper defined rhythms and plasmic mentasms of this album; arguably Gábor's definitive solo release. Kerning classic styles with devious ballistics according to a mutant syntax reflected in the LP's bespoke sleeve art, Gábor galvanizes his signature flux of zinging mentasms and hyper rhythms with a cyber-mongrel gnash in Unfold. Drawing from the deeply affective and rude ends of South Yorkshire, Detroit, and South London tech-nous for inspiration, Gábor consolidates their mutual aspects by trimming the excess and stressing the funkiest points of syncopation with razor sharp, inventive edits. Whilst instantly recognizable as Gábor's work, his grooves are more pronounced, and this time unusually riddled with melodic gestures that lead to moments of unexpected emotive relief. In the contemporary field, Unfold firmly lives up to comparison with the retro-futurism of Mark Fell's Sensate Focus, the advanced playfulness of Errorsmith's Superlative Fatigue (PAN 081LP), or the fluidly knotted syncopation of Jlin, but with a singular mesh of style and pattern that Gábor can patently declare his own. Gábor Lázár lives and works in Budapest. He self-released a split tape with Russell Haswell in 2013; then I.L.S. (2013), and Crisis Of Representation (2017), beside his EP16 (RAVE 006LP, 2014), and a collaboration with Mark Fell The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making for The Death of Rave (RAVE 010LP, 2015), and remixes of Second Woman and Jesse Osborne Lintier & Grischa Lichtenberger. Gábor has toured his live show extensively in Europe, held artist residencies at HeK, Basel; EMS, Stockholm; and 4DSound Amsterdam, and was a SHAPE Platform Artist of 2017. Typeface design and layout by Daniel Kozma. Mastering and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy.
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LP
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RAVE 022LP
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Time Exercises is a complex study in amorphous polymetric rhythms by UK artist Cam Deas for The Death of Rave. His first LP composed solely for modular synths and computer, Cam's follow-up to the acclaimed String Studies (ALT 018LP, 2014) marks a headlong tilt from acoustic to electronic spheres with a staggering effect resulting from meticulous research and process. It sounds as advanced as Xenakis or Roland Kayn superstructures, with the rhythmic displacement of Fis or Autechre, and with a grasp of slippery, mind-bending timbral dissonance comparable to Coil and Rashad Becker records. Cam's six Time Exercises form both a bold break with -- and an extension of -- the avant, folk, blues, and outernational traditions that he's worked to deconstruct and fluidly syncretize over the past decade. In the past four years he's stepped away from the guitar as a compositional tool, turning to electronic hardware in a focused effort to consolidate myriad tunings and meters with a precision that had previously eluded him in the acoustic sphere. Severed from the tactility and sentimentality of instrumental inflection, Cam's disembodied music plays out a thrilling dramaturgy and syntax of alien dissonance and disorienting rhythmic resolution. Harmonic shapes as densely widescreen as those in Roland Kayn's Cybernetic Music (1995) roil in unfathomable fever dream space, where massed batteries of synthetic percussion swarm like an orchestra of Cut Hands in viscous formation, and where polychromatic mentasm figures converge like cenobites laying siege to Rashad Becker's utopia. On Time Exercises Cam articulates a synthetic musical language that speaks to the listener in myriad, quantum tongues awaiting to be deciphered by keen ears everywhere. It's an outstanding record for lovers of forward-looking but deeply rooted electronic music. Master and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy.
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12"
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RAVE 021EP
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Mumdance, Logos, and Shapednoise go to sensational new heights on their second EP in The Sprawl trilogy. The A side picks up directly from E.P.1 (RAVE 013EP, 2015) with the synaesthetically-enhanced sensations of "Burning Chrome", with a turbulent roil of bruxist shockwaves unpredictably punctuated by lush pads. The cyberpunk terror of "Black I.C.E." hacks into the nervous system with visceral, arrhythmic dynamic. The story shifts up a gear with "X System", a breathlessly brutal 150bpm techno assault. "Online Séance" sees the trio fulminate a transcendent vision of cinematic synth noise redolent of Leyland Kirby's Intrigue & Stuff series.
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LP
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RAVE 020LP
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Teresa Winter's LP debut Untitled Death is a hallucinogenic wormhole of sensuously ambiguous pop and electronic experiments primed for the after-after party and altered states of reception. Realized through a mesh of strategies from live, lo-fi tape recordings of synths, samplers, and vocals to nascent experiments with algorithmic software, Untitled Death is both a divine revelation of new aspects to Teresa's sound and an expansion of The Death of Rave's as-yet-unidentified aesthetic. Teresa's zoomed photos of magic mushrooms spattered in popping fluorescent oils which adorn the cover of Untitled Death hint at a more personalized insight and psycho-activity, a proper, lush trippiness. Just like the putative psilocybic experience, Untitled Death naturally comes on in waves of synaestically-heightened sensuality, from strangely libidinous stirrings to utter, eat-your-heart-out euphoria with a spectrum of hard-to-explain and unexpected sensations between. It's hard to recall a more seductive album opener than "Oh", which blossoms from plaintive drum machine and chiming pads to a half- or mis-heard beckon "I really like it/ when you let yourself go/ I really want you inside me/ I want to make you my own", before curdling into bittersweet partials and deliquescent hooks as ear-worming as anything from AFX's classic Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992). It's devastating in its simplicity and almost blush-worthy in effect, and is soon enough lopped curtly into the soundtrack-like enchantment of "Untitled Death", which could almost be a cue from some '60 Polish or Czech art-house film, serving to neatly set up the prickling, windswept scene of romantic introspection and dereliction in "Pain Of Outside" -- perhaps Teresa's most accomplished and affective pop turn to date; think Grouper awkwardly blissing out at 9am in the corner of a successful sesh/campsite/free party. From that perfectly damaged side closer, the B side opens to a different sort of spine-freezing beauty and sense of abandonment with plangent, dissonant harmonics describing rugged Yorkshire wolds and coast as much as a radiant lightshow on the back of flickering eyelids. RIYL: Grouper, F Ingers, Leyland Kirby, early AFX, Delia Derbyshire. Master and cut by Matt Colton.
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RAVE 019LP
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The result of a febrile fantasy cooked up after 2015's Moss Side Carnival, Prosthetics is the grim-as-fuck first release nested by Croww, a bold new outlier from the edgelands of south Manchester. Croww's debut for The Death Of Rave features a pack of obscure, pre-Roadrunner Slipknot samples which have been painstakingly gerned beyond recognition, concatenated, and u-chronically folded into a fucked-up session, owing heavily to grind core, '90s D&B, and flashcore as much as modern, vantablack stripes of club music or rap instrumentals. It sounds like nothing out there right now, and, 20 years since Slipknot's emergence, it can be heard as an unimaginably distant echo of what became a proper subcultural phenomena. Harnessing detailed, flash-it blast beats, psychoacoustic shockwaves punctuated by samples from Iowa public access TV, and visceral wretches nodding to Slipknot's dead crow-sniffing rituals, the uniquely brittle but mercurial "Prosthetics (MechaMix)" and its four constituent digital "Prosthetic" parts, form a sort of stubborn study on the stifling nature of nostalgia. Through a stoic process of parsing his sincere, formative obsession with Slipknot along with contemporaneous samples and other extreme forms of music which never entered the band's original equation, and then scrying the whole thing through a hypermodern, street or bedroom level prism, Croww soberly inverts their source codes to extract a mutable expression of individuality from collective delirium in an era saturated by mimetic, populist clones trapped in an ever decreasing feedback noose of influence and reference. It blurs distinctions between mixtape, imagined soundtrack, and demonstrative show-reel with an unflinching guile deliberately blinkered to melodic or percussive convention, owing as much to the weightless inference of Total Freedom as the disciplined, shattering rage of Black Mecha, or the devilish metrics of La Peste's flashcore hyper structures. It's club music if you want it to be, or a portal for total, detached immersion and transcendence, if that's your thing. Either way, it's a brutally uncompromising and compelling expression of cybernetic body horror and private ecstasy, nailing unique ground in the shifting sands of modern culture's temporal flux -- ultimately as a record which could only really emerge in 2017. Housed in silver-stenciled, Japanese-style anti-static sleeves. One-sided; Cut by Dubplates & Mastering. Edition of 300.
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RAVE 018LP
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Necessary first vinyl edition of Hollywood Medieval, the debut album of psycho-geographic dramaturgy by Manchester-born soundtrack composer, Maxwell Sterling. It was initially issued as a digital release on LA-based Memory No.36 Recordings in 2016 to a round of acclaim from Fact Magazine and The Wire and has now been remastered by Matt Colton for this vinyl edition. It sounds as plasticky sensuous as it should, and arguably looks worthy of a wall or pedestal in a Bel Air or Moss Side pad thanks to its striking bespoke cover art collage, titled "She Who Gave Birth To The Three Worlds", by radical feminist and Manchester punk legend, Linder (Sterling), aka Maxwell's mum. Hollywood Medieval is an album about the glaring disparities and elaborate, underlying convolutions the composer observed and felt while working as a nanny for wealthy parents during his film composition studies at UCLA in the early part of the 2010s. Using an augmented palette of classic DX7 and Juno 60 synths along with a severely warped bank of library samples and iPhone recordings, it spells out a queasily evocative simulacra of the city in flux, animating a sort of Ballardian tableaux that's hyper-descriptive in its rendering of the hazy, dosed-up, and often delirious transitions between Hollywood's glamor and grime, using LA's gurning facades and ostentatious wealth as prompts for a richly visual side of sawn-off emotive signposts and jazz-taut turns of phrase that vividly etch on the memory in neon freehand. From the dizzying sugar rush of the opening sequence, "Hollywood Medieval I", to its spiraling counterpoint in "Hollywood Medieval II", the album is an inception-like concerto, with Maxwell smartly subverting the film score composer's role by placing the music center stage and allowing the narration to be carried by virtuosic flourishes owing to the artist's classical and jazz music schooling, In a sense, Hollywood Medieval resonates with the way Sam Kidel subverted the nature of ambient music on Disruptive Muzak (RAVE 014LP, 2016), and offers an alternative, lucid view of the hazy LA offered by Delroy Edwards's Teenage Tapes (2014), and likewise, works like a present diagnosis of the dystopian future worlds dreamed up in The Sprawl's dystopian, widescreen visions on E.P.1 (RAVE 013EP, 2015), effectively broadening and illuminating The Death Of Rave's own sonic hauntology. RIYL: Oneohtrix Point Never, James Ferraro, TCF. Master and lacquer cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy; Edition of 500.
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12"
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RAVE 017EP
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Pattern Damage is the second flash of idiosyncratic footwork and garage hybrids from South Yorkshire's Rian Treanor. Pattern Damage finds Rian both opening out and refining his sound. The grimy noise torque of "Pattern A1", which sounds closest to SND or Errorsmith's most oblique twisters, before the dub chords and skittish rhythms of "Pattern A2" recall Autechre getting off at Niche Club and "Damage B1" comes off like a giddier, footworking answer to "Hyph Mngo" and "Damage B2" unfolds a super cute and tricky sort of syncopated rhythm origami.
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LP
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LECKEY 001LP
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2019 repress; originally released in 2012. The video installation Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) is one of the best-known and -loved works by Turner Prize-winning, London-based artist and Northern English emigre Mark Leckey. It's a hugely influential piece, and the soundtrack itself has been sampled endlessly, most notably by Jamie xx on "All Under One Roof Raving" (2014). A phantasmic and transcendent collage of meticulously sourced and rearranged footage and sound samples spanning three decades of British subculture -- from Northern Soul thru '80s casuals and rave -- it may be considered an uncanny premonition of the hauntological zeitgeist that has manifested itself in virulent sections of UK electronic dance and pop culture since the early '00s. This record severs the sonic aspect from the moving image, offering a new perspective upon what rave culture maven and esteemed author Simon Reynolds calls "a remarkable piece of sound art in its own right." Divorced from its visual indicators, Leckey's amorphous, acephalic cues are reframed as an ethereal, Burroughsian mesh of VHS idents, terrace chants, fragmented field recordings, and atrophied samples cut with his own half-heard mumbles. At once recalling and predating the eldritch esthetics of Burial, The Caretaker, or the Mordant Music clique, it's an elegiac lament for an almost forgotten spirit and an abstracted obituary to the rituals, passions, and utopian ideals of pre-internet, working-class nightlife fantasias. It's backed with another soundtrack to a Mark Leckey video installation, GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction (2010). In stark contrast, the original video features a black Samsung Bottom Freezer Refrigerator stood in front of a green screen infinity cyc, recounting its contents, thoughts, and actions as narrated by the artist in a radically transformed cadence. Meditating on cybernetics and the ambient ecology of household appliances that permeate our lives, it's an unsettling yet compelling piece of sound design with subtly affective dynamics that reflect the underlying dystopic rhetoric with visceral and evocative precision. The piece was later used in a collaboration with Florian Hecker for the Push And Pull exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2011 (the soundtrack of which was released by PAN in 2015 as Hecker Leckey Sound Voice Chimera (PAN 047LP)).
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RAVE 014LP
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Sam Kidel's debut for The Death of Rave is a deft subversion of Muzak's meaning, application and affect, employing government call centers as unwitting agents in a stroke of Cagean and Kafka-esque compositional genius. It's a remarkably innovative, emotive and incisive 20 minute sound piece (with an additional 20 minute version on the other side) that reflects and refracts an aspect of the modern world in a way that arguably few other records have achieved. In aesthetic, Disruptive Muzak highlights a range of ambient, electro-acoustic and aleatoric composition techniques intersecting classical minimalism, dub and vaporwave spheres, all whilst revealing a spectrum of regional British accents commonly heard in call centers, yet seldom heard on record, certainly in this context. Disruptive Muzak also questions our relationship with music and technology, economics and socio-politics. By subtly but straight-facedly inverting the delivery and reception of Muzak, Kidel subverts its meaning, hypnotically suspending the listener in its lush, lingering sub bass swoops and piano motifs but, paradoxically beckoning the call center staff and us listeners to pay attention to the subtext of what is normally considered background sound or noise. Make no mistake, though: the artist is definitely not taking the piss out of call center workers; if anything he's highlighting a dreamy melancholy and detachment in their tedious roles and tortuous systems, one known from first-hand experience. The way in which Kidel executes the idea, both musically and conceptually, is little short of breathtakingly emotive and cathartic. Mastered and cut to vinyl by Matt Colton at Alchemy.
"This piece came about during a research project into Muzak in 2015... Research by the Muzak Corporation found that Muzak must sound familiar, predictable, and non-disruptive to be effective. Drawing from this research, I composed a series of pieces that I call Disruptive Muzak. These pieces share a similar sound palette to Muzak, but their structure is less familiar, less predictable and more disruptive. To test these compositions I called up government offices that use Muzak in their telephone queues and played them down the phone instead of my voice. The music I played and the officials' responses were recorded and assembled into the piece that you hear on Side A. Side B contains the music only, that can be used to DIY." --Sam Kidel, 2016
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LP
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RAVE 016LP
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Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey (b. 1964 in Birkenhead, England) presents the soundtrack to his 2015 autobiographical film installation Dream English Kid 1964-1999AD on The Death of Rave, the label he inaugurated in 2012 with the first vinyl edition of the soundtrack to his 1999 video installation Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (which has since been extensively sampled by a range of contemporary musicians including Jamie xx). Presented in its entirety but cleft to fit two sides of wax, the 30-minute soundtrack draws from an extensive archive to form a personalized mixtape of memories that speak to Leckey's formative experiences in his 35 years before becoming a mainstream-recognized artist. As he explains, "Dream English Kid began when I found on YouTube an audio recording of Joy Division playing at a small club in Liverpool. A gig I'd been present at but could barely remember. As I listened I wondered if, through enhancing the audio, I could actually find my fifteen-year-old self in the recording. That led me to think would it be possible; at this point, with so much imagery available in the digital archives, to reconstruct my memoirs through all the DVD re-releases, eBay ephemera, YouTube uploads and above all the resource of the internet itself; the way it can actualize half-forgotten memories and produce a niche for seemingly every remembrance." The work segues chronologically from Leckey's birth during the epoch of the moon landings and The Beatles through the awakening of a libido, the experience of witnessing Joy Division as a teenager in Liverpool, the dread/ecstasy/surreality of 'ardcore rave with warped samples of Bay B Kane's "Hello Darkness" and an MC chatting license plate numbers, and the pre-millenial, pre-digital tension of '99 with news stories and a lick from Azzido Da Bass's "Dooms Night" -- before it all comes flooding back in reverse before the dead wax. When separated from the visual content and considered in its own right, the soundtrack takes on an oneiric and deeply topographical quality of its own, highlighting the psychedelic, sensual, and hauntological in/tangibility of memory through an evocative web of plasmic references with a mercurial detachment that seems ever more relevant to modernity's sense of flattened time and up-cycled culture. Artwork designed by Mark Leckey from film stills. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy. Vinyl-only edition of 500.
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12"
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RAVE 012EP
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Rian Treanor reimagines the intersection of club culture, experimental art, and computer music with A Rational Tangle, his debut quartet of glass-cut, 150-BPM hyperprisms for The Death of Rave. Galvanizing and accelerating garage and techno with cuttingly crisp tonal diction and a pointillist percussive palette, A Rational Tangle demonstrates Treanor's adroit and finely nurtured rhythmelodic instincts through a quicksilver syntax of kerned, polychromatic 2-step patterns and whip-smart, emotive jit music. Functionally titled "A1" thru "B2," the EP's four tracks vacillate between ping-pong ballistics and recursive melodic motifs constructed in Max/MSP, dancing from pendulous, aerobic minimalism to taut, synthetic tabla grooves with grid-melting nous, while also taking in gamelan-esque hypeR&B through wormholes of smeared and curdled harmonics, plus one dead lush section of Detroit-via-Yorkshire styled hi-tech funk. The production is stainlessly dry and future-proof while his arrangements are considerately efficient, yet it's all blessed with a pop or 'floor-ready turn of phrase that reveals new kinks, fills, and twysts with each return listen. Whichever angle you view it from, A Rational Tangle forms a rewarding introduction to the work of a very promising and distinct voice in electronic music. Rian Treanor (b. 1988) is an artist and producer based in the North of the UK. His practice references the dynamic cut-ups of Fluxus and Dada as much as UK dance music to present an insightful and compelling musical world of interlocking and fractured components. He has formerly studied with Lupo at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering, in addition to years spent running the Enjoy art space in Leeds. RIYL RP Boo, SND, Æ, NHK, Murlo, Gábor Lázár. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Housed in jackets designed and hand-screened by the artist. Limited edition of 300.
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12"
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RAVE 013EP
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The Sprawl (Logos, Mumdance, Shapednoise) present their studio debut, the first release in a series on The Death of Rave. As their moniker suggests, The Sprawl is heavily influenced by novelist William Gibson's prescient sci-fi trilogy of the same name. "Drowning in Binary" plunges into recursive techno-chambers vacillating between white-hot distortion and arcing, weightless pads, before gliding across a tumultuous topography of chrome-burning flares and violent, body-quaking detonations in the morphing scape of "From Wetware to Software." With "Haptic Feedback" they grasp the quicksilver rush of classic Prototype and Reinforced before stranding the listener in the post-human headspace of "Personality Upload."
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LP
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RAVE 011LP
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The Death of Rave is proud to host the initiation of Black Mecha with AA, their sci-fi vision of heavy electronics strongly informed by the outer limits of black metal and a cryptic, esoteric Weltanschauung. Official communiqué from the Grand Lodge of Internal Masonry: "Black Mecha AA provides fragmented metaphoric sci-fi audio conceptualization based around some of the formative ideology developed by the Grand Lodge of Internal Masonry. With centralized focus on the deterrence and defence technique aspects of Internal Masonry, namely, Black Ray and its resulting Architecture Antithesis, or AA, mental effect, the six tracks create a realm conducive to execution of thought rumination, and an embankment for sharp inner pathways." Black Mecha does not exist safely within any pre-defined idiom. It is by nature a noumenal gesture in the void, projecting uncharted escape beyond staid, putative perceptions of genre. Fascinating for its sense of discipline and focus, AA is poised in the balance between meditative hypostasis and raging yet controlled emotion, characterized in the bellicose momentum of "Starship Aspicio" or the strobing, stately majesty of "Altruego," and to cataclysmic impact with the eviscerated electronics of "Black Ray." But make no mistake; it's not showboating industrial noise or melodramatic angst -- the sense of control amid panic and dread is palpable and compelling in a way hardly experienced with such elemental force. For listeners of a steeled disposition and open mind there is a logic and ingenuity at play in this record that begs the rarest private consideration. But overall, enjoy this music in your own way, because that is the only way of Black Mecha!
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2LP
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RAVE 010LP
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Mark Fell (SND/Sensate Focus) and Gábor Lázár's scintillating and innovative debut collaboration marks The Death of Rave's tenth release, following 2015 editions by The Automatics Group (RAVE 008LP) and N.M.O. (RAVE 009EP). The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making explores a radical re-calibration of conventional meter and tone in modern electronic music, probing specific aspects of Max/MSP software with the potential to acutely challenge our perception of time and space. It's a maximalist, future-shocking play of tension-and-resolution created from minimalist elements, featuring Lázár's calligraphic, torso-morphing chromo-notes punctuated by Fell's signature Linn drum cracks at ostensibly obtuse, yet deeply funked-up junctures across ten tracks in 50 minutes. They range from precision-tooled two-minute scrambles to swaggering showpieces, culminating in what has become a meme for Mark Fell albums with the uncannily emotive closing statement -- a 12-minute masterstroke consolidating all the album's ideas in one breathless, beguiling arrangement. If music can be considered a catalyst for social change, what are the implications of this mutant record? Considered in terms of the dancefloor, it mirrors the muscle-memory re-programming impact of OG hardcore and jungle or Chicago footwork -- think of scattered bodies attempting to synch with new, accelerated and "irregular" rhythms -- offering a freedom of expression and interpretation that's typically scarce in most gridlocked musics. Likewise, the inversion of melodic convention in favor of warped, dynamic contours and visceral, psychoacoustic timbre offers a sharpened grammar of emotional expression and sensation that doesn't wilt to ordinary sentiment. Yorkshire-based Mark Fell is among the world's leading sound artists and sonic thinkers. Owner of an illustrious and influential catalog of releases spanning early works in the SND duo thru to solo work under his own name and Sensate Focus, and collaboration with DJ Sprinkles, Errorsmith, and Sandro Mussida. Gábor Lázár hails from Budapest, Hungary. In 2014 he presented his debut album, I.L.S., via Lorenzo Senni's Presto!?, followed by EP16 for The Death Of Rave. He has previously shared a split tape release with Russell Haswell, presented work at Karlsruhe's ZKM, and undertaken a residency at Stockholm's EMS. Recorded in Budapest, May 2014. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton.
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12"
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RAVE 009EP
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The Death of Rave are gassed to present the second vinyl release of roiling, computerized no wave by exciting Berlin-based pan-European duo N.M.O. (Morten J. Olsen and Rubén Patiño). Under the mantra "As Strict As Possible," their Tropicalyptic Excursions combine militant snares and amorphous SuperCollider shapes in disciplined dancefloor arrangements, p'raps best compared with a melted hybrid of Powell's cranky engines and EVOL's mutant rave signals dosed with Low Jack swagger. They're dead strange, semi-organic dance creatures, stripped to the bare essentials of shifty rhythm and biting tone, bristling with a concentrated energy that belies their hypnotic, body-scattering effect on the 'floor. Without resorting to overly masculine tactics or conventional structures, they carve a path from kinky, pendulous percussion and grinding globular bass squelch laced with computer gremlins in the title-track, to the bashy, percolated jag of "Talking About Talking," with its metal-tearing build-up, and over to the whooping industrial bounce of "Zaragoza Variations," cut loud and clattering for the B-side by Matt "The Alchemist" Colton. Like the duo's striking releases on Barcelona's Anòmia label, the Nederlandse Maatschappij Ontwikkeling 12" (2014) and the Dominant Akkord cassette (2013), this 12" is a refreshing inversion and diversion of dancefloor strictures -- getting down with a wickedly raw, awkward, and freaky rave flex. If you ever get the chance, make sure to check their aerobic live shows for a radical take on contemporary live electronic performance. Vinyl housed in poly sleeve.
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2LP
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RAVE 008LP
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The Death of Rave presents a much-needed vinyl version of one of this decade's most uncanny pieces of computer music: Theo Burt's dance-pop deconstruction, Summer Mix. First issued as a limited CD edition by Entr'acte in 2011, it's become a bit of an iconic piece, presenting a non-trivial nostalgia trip that somehow sounds like a digitally diffused take on Gas, Basic Channel or Ross 154. It was created by applying a complex mathematical process known as a discrete Fourier transform upon a number of late '90s and '00s dance anthems, effectively sieving their contents before phase-resetting the data and discarding half of the information, with the surviving sounds subsequently organized in order of similarity. What's left is a haunting spectral impression: smeared traces of cloud-busted melody and motorik rhythm skeletons; rending anthemic metaphysics as a sublime murmuration of intangible memories, perhaps even simulating the effect of an MDMA-induced cultural amnesia. Due to the inherent frequency limitations of vinyl, the timbral thizz of the high-end sounds subtly altered on this version, with pulses pronounced just enough for adventurous DJs. The double LP also features the bonus of a pre-installed 33rpm version if you really want to break it down. While rooted in academic research, it's a transcendent and strangely emotive piece of work, and should serve as a fine introduction to Burt's music, a fascinating cultural arfifact, and a beautifully trippy listen. Created from tracks by Swedish House Mafia, PJ feat. Velvet, Roll Deep, Paul van Dyk, Deepest Blue, Supermode, Deadmau5, Mason Vs. Princess Superstar, Riva Starr, Sash!, Motorcycle, 4 Strings, PPK, DHT, Tiësto, Sonique, Grace, Gouryella, Roger Sanchez, and Eric Prydz.
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LP
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RAVE 006LP
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Prodigious Hungarian minimalist Gábor Lázár twists out six cuts of super-forward avant-techno on his debut vinyl, EP16, for The Death Of Rave. Combining viscerally affective electronic timbre and hyperkinetic patterns, they're real-time recordings of Gábor extracting maximum funk from a single note rendered as sheer gradients pitched and punctuated with unique, algorithmic meters. In a sense the process is drily academic, but the results are seriously funked-up. Gábor seemingly intersects myriad minimal dancefloor patterns -- hardcore, footwork, electro, digital dancehall -- with uncompromising electronic tones to create some kinda new rhythmelodic syntax and grammar of his own. Cannily nudging every scything, whirring, strobing hit off-the-grid, he's practically re-programming and skewing our sense of rhythmic proprioception and temporal awareness in real time, throwing down the gauntlet to body and brain with stoic rigor and reckless effect. EP16 follows Gábor's split tape with Russell Haswell for his Budapest-based Last Foundation, plus his debut album, ILS (2014) for Lorenzo Senni's Presto?! label, and precedes an upcoming 2LP collaboration with Mark Fell, due on The Death Of Rave. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy.
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LP
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RAVE 007LP
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Postsocial is the breathtaking eighth album from Wold, an infamous black metal unit with strong binds to the landlocked plains of Regina, Saskatchewan in central Canada. Stephen O'Malley's reissue of their Freermasonry (SOMA 014LP) LP first introduced us to their work -- subsequently igniting the most gratifying discovery of an exceptional back catalog. Postsocial is a culmination of ideas core to Wold's philosophy, heading deeper into a world of visceral howls and internalized harmonics. Due to the inherent limitations of vinyl, the album now unfolds in a different sequence to the CD, manifesting a crucially-altered beast. The two opening pieces, "Throwing Star" and "Inner Space Infirmary" remain in place, employing the eviscerated howl and cackle of clan leader Fortress Crookedjaw's possessed vocals and electronics in roiling, chokingly affective storm systems that leave us flayed and gasping. At this point the vinyl version inverts the tracklist, placing the aching atmospheric sehnsucht of "Sapphire Sect of Tubal Cain" at the cyclone's epicenter. On the B-side, the sustained intensity of "Five Points" and near 15 minutes of "Spiral Star Inversion" expand on the five-pointed star metaphor with labyrinthine results, culminating in "ritualistic conjuration and copulation of the hag," detailed further in the lyric sheet. To be honest, we'll probably never fully grasp this group: they remain a largely unquantifiable entity -- an enigmatic band with a genuinely original, inimitable, often impenetrable sound -- making them one of the most fascinating units operating in experimental music today, and marking Postsocial as an elementally rare, vital sensation which should resonate with myriad sub-cultures.
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