★Diagonal
Reality Therapy
Russell Haswell's first new work on Diagonal since 37 Minute Workout Vol. 2 in 2019 is a response to the continued absorption of real-time video feeds on YouTube in and around the Covid period. The release is accompanied by a special visual collaboration with MuirMcNeil, the design partnership whose activities focus on systematic and algorithmic methods in type design, graphic design and moving image. Paul and Hamish have previously worked with Factory Records / Hacienda, Juan Atkins, Durutti Co…
26 Lives
Stunning document of a one-off performance by Powell and London Contemporary Orchestra at Barbican Centre, London. Captured from a three-hour multi-channel recording of unheard music. Unique acoustic rendering of a unique moment in time.Performed in January 2022 alongside works by Jon Cage, Alvin Lucier, Micah Levi.First music on Diagonal after a brief pause for growing up and babies.
37 Minute Workout Vol. 2
**300 copies** "A less frenzied sister act to the original, Russell Haswell’s 37 Minute Workout Vol. 2 explores yet new ground for the artist. Opener The Wild Horses of the Revolution Have Arrived Without a Knight bubbles and froths in a wide-open space that’s immediately at odds with the mostly dense and combustible torrents in volume one. The Quietus acutely observed of his 2018 mini-LP, Respondent, that rhythm feels like liberation rather than confinement for Haswell, and here we swim in a se…
Parallel Persia
This Sote album is incredible - a highly complex but beautifully fluid traversal of Iranian folk music and modular synthesis that reminds us of Dariush Dolat-Shahi’s unparalleled ‘Electronic Music, Tar and Sehtar’ with its fantastically creative sense of freedom and abstract expression, pulling us deep into uncanny valleys of hyper modernism bursting with ideas and a sense of disrupted harmony that’s hard to absorb in one sitting. Ata Ebtekar’s restlessly searching sound has been in action for 3…
Side A / Side B
Colour vinyl edition of 500 copies, housed in a screen printed polythene bag. Includes a download dropped to your account. Following last year’s acclaimed 'Sleep Like It's Winter’ album and a steady supply of releases via his own Steamroom, Jim O’Rourke returns with a rare vinyl outing; a reworking of source material provided by Alessio Natalizia a.k.a. Not Waving. Spread across two longform pieces, O'Rourke channels Popol Vuh on the spiralling, synth-heavy 15 minute A-side, while the flip sound…
Respondent
Russell Haswell runs amok for Diagonal on a zinging 5-track “mini-LP” featuring, for the first time on a Haswell record, vocals; by performance artist Sue Tompkins ov Glasgow’s Life Without Buildings. Taking cues from his formative teenage years listening to John Peel and discovering Factory, Mute and 4AD and Chicago house - prior to stints as a Christian missionary and chimney sweep at Sellafield - Haswell mangles those reverential memories as only he can in Respondent, resulting a blatz of bli…
Right Frankfurt
The incessant brain bogglers Evol present the nerve-gnawing acid pointillism of Right Frankfurt. Equivalent to an intravenous dose of acidic synthesis, Right Frankfurt nods to one of techno's most efficient power centers with a PCP-on-Modafinil-strength reduction and concentration of early industrial techno tropes with their skull-cracking beats. If you appreciate the lissome fluidity of a strong acid or synth lead, you will relish the piece's tumultuous, microtonal variations, see-sawing u…
Black Tongue EP
Dogged techno licks from Dom Butler & L/F/D/M in Green Gums guise following two searing sessions as Bronze Teeth, also for Diagonal. Where their previous pair of 12"s tended to effluent, extended jams, these are just as mucky but more concise. Uptown, they launch the jagged EBM affray of 'Zozomono' with coarse acid lines yoked to slamming kicks, while 'Dag' marches out like some mutant, blunted offspring of Ancient Methods and Powell. Downtown, they really come into their own with the coi…
As Sure as Night Follows Day
Double LP version. As Sure as Night Follows Day is Russell Haswell's landmark second album for the London-based Diagonal label. Consolidating a quarter-century at the forefront of extreme computer music, techno, and death metal in 19 tracks and 49 minutes, it's Haswell's most coherent yet varied burst of activity to date, zigzagging from improvised n0!se outbursts and asphyxiated R&B to a brace of thundering acid bullets that positively froth for the 'floor. The album was extracted over a…
Flapper That
Concentrated, Bendy Acid From Computer Rave Hooligans Evol, debuting their first release for Diagonal. RIYL: Belgian Techno, Licking Batteries, Coloured Plastic Discs!* "‘Flapper That’ sees Diagonal invite EVOL — arch propagators of “computer music for hooligans” — to their own, unique establishment for a proper headshrinker of a session. Since Diagonal’s incarnation, EVOL’s hardcore aesthetic and sense of absurdity has been a key influence on the label and Powell’s DJ sets. In effect, 'F…
Repetition Reinforcement
Diagonal pull another coup with 12"s of brute bitterness from Philip Best, Sarah Froelich and Russell Haswell's Consumer Electronics. With the spray of their blinding 'Estuary English' still wet on our cheek, 'Repetition Reinforcement' is a bruising, visceral reminder of CE's position on the periphery of extreme electronic music. Holding steadfast to the transgressive subject matter which Best has explored since the early '80s as part of Whitehouse and Ramleh, in this excursion he trades …
Hallucinogenic Doom Steppy Verbs
Mastered by Matt "The Alchemist" Colton and sleeved in Diagonal disco 'jak-it'** Japanese techno tearaway Kouhei Matsunaga aka NHK gets lively on a killer, 5-track, 26 minute debut for Diagonal. Viewing classic dance tropes askance, 'Hallucinogenic Doom Steppy Verbs' follows his trio of 'Dance Classics' volumes for PAN thanks to a keener, almost aggressive thrust/lust for the 'floor, chucking up buckled variants of tech-step, acid, and garage-techno in the process. Making up for lost time…
Club Music Remixes
Cleveland's Prostitutes (James Donadio) delivers Ecstasy, Crashing Beats and Fantasy, with four gaping cuts that dissipate heavy drug fug in favor of synapse-sparking, blistered hardwave funk. "Crawl in from Broadway" hammers out workshop percussion latticed with searing acid lines and wry, whining drones, while "Dollars to Deutschmarks" walks the walk with leather-bound friction and Linn-style snare crack. "Lovers Run Camp Africa" centers on a militant two-note bass and drum momentum, ove…
Ecstasy, Crashing Beats and Fantasy
Cleveland's Prostitutes (James Donadio) delivers Ecstasy, Crashing Beats and Fantasy, with four gaping cuts that dissipate heavy drug fug in favor of synapse-sparking, blistered hardwave funk. "Crawl in from Broadway" hammers out workshop percussion latticed with searing acid lines and wry, whining drones, while "Dollars to Deutschmarks" walks the walk with leather-bound friction and Linn-style snare crack. "Lovers Run Camp Africa" centers on a militant two-note bass and drum momentum, ove…
Street Metal
Swedish hypno-rok experimentalists, The Skull Defekts, make a perfect addition to the Diagonal roster with the psycho-glam swagger of Street Metal, their follow-up to Dances in Dreams of the Known Unknown for Thrill Jockey. Comprising five tracks, including two extended dancefloor hypnotizers, Street Metal captures the mercurial unit of Joachim Nordwall (vocals, guitar, oscillator), Jean-Louis Huhta (percussion, electronics), Daniel Higgs (ghost catcher), Daniel Fagerström (vocals, guitar, synth…
Double A
Russell Haswell strikes bone on this 2-track, 20-minute 12", marking his return to the catalytic Diagonal imprint. Double A renders Russell at his slyest and most honest, presenting spasmodic, un-edited improvisations belying influence from the pivotal epoch of diamond-cut '80s freestyle, industrial and Detroit techno. Depending on your perspective, they're either splintered, techy DJ tools or skeletal nO!se inversions. Either way, they bristle and spark with a compulsive nervous energy and…
Club Music
The Diagonal dynamo returns to his label on a combustible trio of 'Club Music' trax, including a crackshot collaboration with Russell Haswell. Powell's first 12" for the label since 2012's 'Body Music' arrives a year since his 'Fizz' 12" for Liberation Technologies and a killer for The Death Of Rave - with a couple of scintillating remixes for Ike Yard and Silent Servant in between - to mark his clearest, canniest statement of intent, wrenching ideas twoc'ed from New Beat, Hardcore Jungle, Post-…