Electronic / All styles

MONKEY ALERT!! We're marking 50 years of American synthpunk oddballs Devo in this month's Electronic Sound. The band’s co-founders Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale are in superb form for our cover feature, talking about their current tour – they're playing three gigs in the UK next month – and their forthcoming 'Art Devo 1973-1977' triple album. The pair recall their formative years at length, a story which involves the extended sonic assault of audiences, monsters high on nitrous oxide, wardr…

*300 copies limited edition* edition Have you ever looked up into the sky at night, and it seemed that you could see beyond the stars? How many times have you looked up, but how few do you actually remember? I remember two times: The sky seemed to roll, the stars flickering in the humidity of the late-August evening. It makes your throat feel dry and your body strained. Staring up, “We can’t see stars like this at home”, we said to each other. Lying on the concrete slab behind the garage, and at…

*300 copies limited release* Folklore Tapes first foray into overseas finds them in a rural Breton village known as Rochefort-en-Terre. Once inhabited by the renowned witch Naia, who along with her ‘spirit stick’ familiar ‘Gnami’ cured ills, cursed locals, split in two and crushed hot coals into dust! Naia is a collaboration with Brittany arts group Le Bon Acceuil and features two distinct sonic explorations into the infamous witch, largely based around the article and photography of Charles Gén…

Laurie Spiegel’s second full-length album, Unseen Worlds, arrived just over ten years after her debut album. Having realized the pieces found on The Expanding Universe (1980) on an instrument no longer available to her, the GROOVE System at Bell Laboratories, Spiegel moved on to composing and developing for the Alles Machine, alphaSyntauri, McLeyvier and various other instruments before creating an instrument entirely her own. Spiegel created “Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument” on a Macint…

Pale Cocoon’s Mayu (繭) was originally released in 1984 as a cassette box set by Pafe Record in Japan, but sunk into obscurity after its release, only to garner a strong cult following nearly two decades later during the advent of the music blog era.

Specifically written and recorded by Dark Sines to be paired with Reveal the Paradox, a contemplative after dinner wine.

Specifically written and recorded by Tony Rolando to be paired with Absent In the Void, a California grown, direct pressed, native yeast fermented Chardonnay wine.

Specifically written and recorded by Brett Naucke to be paired with Conjured In Shadows, a Mendocino grown, carbonic macerated Nouveau wine from the 2022 harvest.

Specifically written and recorded by Ross Gentry to be paired with Sink into Seclusion, a Mendocino grown, amphora aged, skin contact Sauvignon Blanc wine.

*200 copies limited edition* It dawns slowly here in Appalachia, summer's persistent pulse, that seething solidity of buzzing insects, flowers bursting into wilt, animals waking and returning in preparation to leave and sleep again. It's the peak and the decline, the sun's summit and sinking, the heat blast of day and the cool pall of night. There never seems to be quite enough time. Summer begs us to hold onto it, to be asked to stay, even in its heat and the incessant light, to allow it to con…

*100 copies limited release* Recorded and Performed by Ross Gentry at home, 2021-2023. Mixed and mastered by Adam McDaniel at Drop of Sun Studios, February 2023

Peaking late, rising slowly and crashing gently, in other words dialing in the perfect extra sensorial experience. Giulio Stermieri’s first solo outing ‘Fort Da’ is a nuanced ultra hypnotic work of art, six movements that blend ascetic minimalism, polyrhythmic trance and ecstatic tension with surprising detours into primitive techno and abstract jazz. Based in the smalltown of Saliceto Buzzalino, Giulio Stermieri is a pianist and composer, founder of the collective Impulse Response (with Laura A…

Vast, weightless synthesizer vistas from the German cosmic underground. Von Deyen layers Moog and Mellotron into slow-drifting cloudscapes, poised between Berlin-school sequencing and pure ambience. A private-press reverie, on CD for the first time.

More deep-space synthesis from the reclusive cosmic voyager. Nordborg unfolds in patient, glacial layers of Moog and Mellotron: Berlin-school drift at its most oceanic and serene. A cult private-press artefact returned to CD.

In 1948, Moses Asch founded Folkways Records with a self-proclaimed mandate to record the sounds of the entire world. From the Sounds of North American Frogs to Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Folkways documented the audible nooks and crannies of existence on hundreds of LPs produced by field recordists, scientists, and experimentalists probing the margins of the human soundscape. Seventy-five years later, electronic music duo Matmos have diced, looped, stretched, and recontextualized th…

"If Surround can be listened to as music that’s as close to air itself, allowing us to enter each listener’s sound scenery, or as something that exists within a new perspective, expanding the middle ground between sound and music, and transforming it into a comfortable space, it would be much appreciated."- Hiroshi Yoshimura Originally released as an album in January 1986, Surround was recorded by Yoshimura as a commission from home builder Misawa Homes, intended to function as an “amenity” desi…

Zach Rowden's new album, titled "No Middle Without The Beginning", radiates the current musical concrete. Two pieces, each spanning a single side of the LP. Distinct & comprehensive as a whole. Letting Such Evil Occur samples and resamples acoustic instrumentation with minimal effects, allowing the artifacts of the source to seep into the composition. Grainy and slowly groaning along. A singular loop respirating upon each hit, holding itself to its core, living all its own. It's The Light That M…

Javier Hernando's musical journey began in 1979 with his first band, Xeerox. In 1981, he embarked on his first fully electronic project, Melodinamika Sensor, which continued until 1985. During that year, three tracks by M.S. were featured on a compilation LP titled Grupos de Barcelona, released by Discos Esplendor Geométrico. This compilation showcased four bands from the thriving Barcelona underground scene. From 1985 to the early nineties, Hernando co-directed the cassette label Ortega y Casse…

Recorded in 1978, Grosses Wasser was the fifth album by kosmische musik pioneers Cluster (their seventh if you include the two Eno collaborations). At this stage in the band's lifespan Cluster was a duo, manned by Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, although Tangerine Dream's Peter Baumann acts as co-producer, helping craft some of the group's most experimental material since they swapped their 'K' for a 'C' in the early seventies. Nowhere is this air of sonic exploration more apparent th…

Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal is one of the most outstanding, most sought-after releases in Conrad Schnitzler's extensive catalog. It was the only Schnitzler record to appear on a major label and saw him flirting with the experimental new wave sound that was emerging in 1980, particularly on the title track. Nevertheless, it still managed to sound idiosyncratically unlike any other music around at the time. Recorded with Wolfgang Seidel at Peter Baumann's Paragon Studio in Berlin, the four tracks take…

More from the inexhaustible archive of Berlin's electronic anarchist. Schnitzler stacks pulsing sequences and caustic tone-colours into restless, self-contained machines of sound: uncompromising, hypnotic and utterly his own.

A collection from Conrad Schnitzler's archive, recorded between 1974 and 1975, originally released on LP only in 2009. Contains the complete original material (three more tracks than the 2009 release) on CD for the first time (with original running order). Just when you think you have grasped Conrad Schnitzler's master plan, every time you kid yourself into predicting what you are about to hear, the next record comes along to prove you wrong. Motorik is writ large throughout. Even the less rhyth…

"Conrad Schnitzler is undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of German electronica. And his son, Gregor Schnitzler, matched the father's extraordinary level of creative output. They appear to have settled any musical differences amicably. After all, how else could they have 'shared' an LP released by Conrad Schnitzler himself? One half of Conrad & Sohn features music by Conrad Schnitzler, the other, his son Gregor. Two mini-albums on one disc, so to speak. An ideal opportunity to compare them. …

Previously unreleased tapes from the Kluster co-founder and restless electronic pioneer. Cold, pulsing sequencer patterns and alien tone-colours map an imaginary planet: raw, hypnotic and unmistakably Schnitzler, from his vast archive.

This is the fourth solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1980 on Sky Records. With Selbstportrait, Roedelius gave unequivocal confirmation that he no longer was treading the hitherto common paths of electronic music. Selbstportrait - Vol. II corroborated the findings: for Roedelius, electronics would no longer be a means of creating abstract, noise-like music in the future, nor of generating utopian, mechanical rhythmic structures. His own utopia was …

'Through the desert': Roedelius sets out on solitary electronic wandering. Spare, hypnotic keyboard figures and dry, shimmering textures conjure vast imaginary landscapes, early solo kosmische of quiet, questing beauty.

LP version; includes all the original album tracks. Composer/poet Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Kluster, Cluster, Harmonia) is one of the most prolific musicians of the German avant-garde and a key figure in the birth of Krautrock, synthesizer pop and ambient music. Jardin Au Fou is his second solo album, originally issued in 1979 on France's Egg label, and produced by former Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann. This record was all the more noteworthy as it bore no resemblance whatsoever to what…

180 gram LP version. The third studio album by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released by Sky Records in 1981, fulfilled a dream he had long cherished. A series of chamber music pieces, with grand piano solos taking center stage in some places, archaised percussion patterns in others. Lustwandel represents a logical progression, following on from Jardin Au Fou (re-released on Bureau B in 2009). Both albums were recorded at Paragon Studios in 1979 and produced by Peter Baumann (Tangerine Drea…

A much more ominous creature than they, or you, ever expected, Westholm and Hielm had no option but to let Claim have its way with both of them. Now it’s coming for you.

*2023 limited deluxe edition.*  Oceanheart (ltd. deluxe edition) comes as a 2-LP/2-CD, limited to 500 copies each, with the first record being the original "Oceanheart" album from 1984. The second part "Oceanheart Revisited" is a remix album, created from Harald Grosskopf and Tobias Stock, an electronics engineer and owner of a top-class analogue studio where the new versions of the six "Oceanheart" tracks were created. Harald Grosskopf is best known as drummer in the band Ashra and for Klaus Sc…

LP version. Bureau B present Filmmusik 1, a selection from Conrad Schnitzler's archive. In Conrad Schnitzler's sprawling archive, there are two tapes marked Filmmusik 1975 A and Filmmusik 1980 B. It is hard to say which videos this music belongs to, particularly as the pieces have been left untitled. Perhaps there isn't really any film material at all. The dates are of no great help either, since the tapes feature the same tracks, albeit in varying degrees of quality. Filmmusik 1 presents an ini…

*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* Nyctalllz is a noise, experimental and dark ambient music project formed in 2007 by Morego Dimmer (aka Xerxes The Dark/ Morego) in Tehran, Iran. Agdistiz is a noise and experimental music project from Romania. Both artists exchanged audio files through the internet, Kozmik Noize was born.

*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* Since his first release in 2006, Aluviana made us explore electroacoustic landscapes but this album is a turning point. Aluviana explores electroacoutsic music a bit further but this time with a guitar and electronic processing. This new path blends electroacoustic and improvised music with a tiny touch of dark ambient, less the usual clichés inherent to the latter. Aluviana's music could be regarded as the continuation of dark ambient and post-industrial…

*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* "Since I started to experiment with sound in 1989, I always used acoustic sounds even if my music has always been mostly electronic (apart of some field recordings compositions). This album is the first solo album I do that mostly contains acoustic sounds and few electronic ones. On most tracks, the computer was used for basic editing (reverse, pitch, cut, paste, mix, in rare cases effects). Bethink is the only purely electronic piece, mostly made of reco…

*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* The Pond: voice based music. Collaboration between vocalist Elisabetta Lanfredini and electroacoustic composer/performer Nicolas Wiese. An unfolding narrative, continuous, elusive. A flaring up and fading, a door opening and closing, ears left to listen through the keyhole. Flashbacks of old traditions, the sound of a language that does not exist. Literary figures materialise in sound before disappearing just as quickly – none of them ever becoming the ce…

*2023 stock. 100 copies limited release* Kei Watanabe (Sri Lanka/Japan) performs ghostly mystifying and electrifying improvisations of found instruments, shuffling loops and odd occurrences. A minimal combination of voice, bells, stringed instruments and electric hums. This first album is a collection of tracks composed between 2017 and 2021 in Colombo and Berlin. While recording Kei's sessions in Berlin, we tried to keep her way of working and recording as close as possible from her original st…

*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* After improvising for several years together in Germany, Marie Takahashi and Cedrik Fermont decided to record their first studio album. Free improvised music for viola, gongs and cymbals, mainly. Marie Takahashi, a Modern and Baroque violist, composer and improviser was born in Sapporo, Japan, in 1985. Having a classical and early music background she builds vivid contrasts of minimal/abstract and expressive sounds. She has worked with many international …

The music of this album is one of different elements, which constitutes the walking-through-music- theatre piece Rwandan Records.

*100 copies limited edition* Intense electroacoustic music pieces, whispering voices, screams, heavy electronics, subtle and well crafted melodies, delicate distortions, this could be the soundtrack of your nightmares or your favourite film score.  Whether you enjoy academic electroacoustic music, dark ambient, ambient industrial and so-called experimental music, this album might well please your ears. Ni Zheng is a sound artist and composer of electroacoustic music and musique concrete. She cre…

*100 copies limited edition* This album is named after the ancient port city Thonis-Heracleion, which was only recently found in 1999 sunken beneath the Mediterranean Sea near Alexandria. The album was created through the process of attempting to retrieve something intangible that had been lost, and was inspired by the desire to reconnect with an alternative existence. Special thanks to Sophia Zhang, Mauricio Pauly, Stefan Maier, Sabrina Schroeder, Arne Eigenfeldt, and Meredith Bates for all you…