★Digitalis Recordings
Tunnels
Digitalis root out yet another dazzling label debut, this one a beautiful second LP of romantic synth-boogie from Kansas City's Brandon Knocke aka Discoverer. Operating within the realm comfortably inhabited by Hype Williams, Laurel Halo, Morgan Geist or Glass Candy, 'Tunnels' is all about the enigma of electronic desire. Whether that's unrequited robot love, utopian yearnings or something more esoteric is for you to ascertain. These eight communiques are just dripping with electronic emotion, f…
I was a teacher
Limited Edition of 100 copies Includes artwork insert by the artist** Swiftly following his appearance on The Slaves' ace 'Spirits Of The Sun', Birch Cooper really cuts loose on his homebuilt electronics across 'I Was A Teacher'. It's his 1st solo album proper, following the vectors of last year's 'Weird Lesson' tape into burned-out, post-apocalyptic terrain, manifesting bleak visions of fried circuitry and chattering synth noise with a cryptic internal logic that's part human, but more machine…
Nightrunners
Edition of 500, initial copies on super limited red vinyl and cut at D&M. Art and design by Radek Drutis - the man behind those ace Madlib sleeves** In 2010 Brad Rose (Digitalis / Charlatan / The North Sea / Ossining) and his wife Eden Hemming Rose (Foxy Digitalis / Mass Ornament) indulged their pop instincts to beautiful effect on Mechanical Gardens. For anyone familiar with the duo's work it was a radical departure from their experimental devotions and duly picked up a healthy amount of accola…
Dandelion
Expanded CD Edition - includes over 35 minutes of material not featured on the vinyl edition of this album* Another highly anticipated release from the excellent Digitalis imprint - this time from Boxhead Ensemble's Scott Tuma who manages to weave a sound that incorporates dense and unsettling field recordings with Takoma-esque porchside strums, wiry violin, rhythmic metal scrapes, music-box interludes, Location recordings, Shortwave signals, spectral banjo plucks and distant piano sequences. Th…
Faint Wild Light
Emptyset's James Ginzburg turns a hand to folk music on a surprising solo debut. "Between 2003 and 2012 James Ginzburg masterminded the release of hundreds of records on the various imprints of his Bristol UK based label house Multiverse Music, including Tectonic, Subtext and Kapsize, overseeing the second renaissance of bass music in Bristol. It’s unsurprising that such a hyperactive spirit would begin to find the strictures of dance music creatively stifling. Focusing on his Subtext label, Mul…
The Call From Below
Something very different from Digitalis, a destroyed dub session somewhere between Rhythm & Sound, Disrupt, Actress, Pole and Vladislav Delay, vinyl edition of 500, initial copies on purple vinyl* This unexpected salvo from Digitalis comes from the hitherto unknown Seekers International crew and dives head-first into a bubbling mass of soundsystem culture and dubwise tropes in fine, destroyed style.The album was written and compiled during the darkest hours - and it shows - reviving a b…
Collapsed view
Utterly enchanting, joyfully whimsical return from Portland, Oregon's acoustic/ambient-pop hypnotist, Sean Byrne aka Bugskull. Returning to Digitalis a half decade on from the much-loved 'Communication' album, his sound on 'Collapsed View' is mostly as charmingly concise and somnambulant as we remember, but also offers three slightly extended views where he really takes flight. The A-side yields five sun-dried ambient pickings, moseying from woozy harmonica, organ and acoustic guitar strums cudd…
Put your hands on me
Dream-pop duo Paco Sala return with a heavy-lidded sophomore album for Digitalis, continuing to impress with an album likely to appeal to those of you who enjoyed recent albums from Inga Copeland and HTRK. Vocalist Birch is a ghostly but central presence amidst producer Antony Harrison's drowsy backdrops, sashaying waif-like thru ten bare-boned pop arrangements and neon-hued ambient scapes. Everything feels tender to the point of collapse, creating a cathartic tension between the near-whispered …
Iron / Verse Remixes
Yves De Mey, John Tejada, Recondite, Paul Jebanasam and TM404 put their best jaw forward in slick remixes of Ricardo Donoso's vintage Goan trance-formations. Belgium's Yves De Mey follows impressive outings for Opal Tapes and Semantica with a midnight black take on 'The Sphinx', coolly transposing its darkly sublime early '90s vibes with up-to-the-minute, free-floating sound design, whereas Berlin's Recondite doses the 'floor with a powerful, droning remix of 'Diagonal Environment' amped by roll…
Ill Fares The Land
**Digitalis debut from Koenraad Ecker, one half of Opal Tapes' Lumisokea, highly recommended if you're into Vainio, Joachim Nordwall, The Haxan Cloak. Initial copies on transparent red wax** Belgium's Koenraad Ecker swiftly follows his 'Apophenia' LP as part of the Lumisokea duo for Opal Tapes with a personalised invitation to his shadowy solo zones for Digitalis. Inhabiting space between slow techno and electro-acoustic dimensions, 'Ill Fares The Land' surveys similar soundscapes to Mika…
Lines Describing Circles
Over the past year as Peder Mannerfelt has shed the skin of The Subliminal Kid, we've only had small samples to taste of his new brand of musical sorcery. Lines Describing Circles changes all of that. Ten tracks deep, this is not so much an album as it is a declaration. From the opening, harrowing crackle of "Collapsion," Mannerfelt's intent is to crush the listener into a perfect metal cube. Lines Describing Circles displays the sound of a man fully in control of his machines. Throughout th…
One Verse Sharpens Another (EP 2)
Ricardo Donoso completes his latest trance mission for Digitalis with 'One Verse Sharpens Another'. Four tracks of serpentine arpeggios, rolling bass pulses and stealthy, soaring synth chords simulate cybersex in anti-G, from the X-Files atmospheres and alien seduction of 'The Redeemer', to the piloerect triggers and tense pizzicato strings of 'Open Drawer, Full Of Masks' on the A-side and over to the sublime, supple bass roll and gentle ambient caress of 'Child Primitive' or the mind-wea…
As Iron Sharpens Iron... (EP 1)
Digitalis trance-master Ricardo Donoso scales heady heights with the first of two EPs (plus a 3rd remix 12") further exploring the potential of electronic hypnotism. The mission first conceived with 'Progress Chance' has now evolved in line with like-minded projects such as Loreno Senni's 'Quantum Jelly', plotting new vectors for a trance music free of fromage and yet still true to the sound's original intentions. On these four tracks his vision is focussed with laser-guided precision, em…
Great Dose Of Monotonous Techno
Calling someone "ahead of his/her time" is straight out of Music Marketing 101 and is a claim that rarely holds much merit. On occasion, though, it's a phrase that is entirely appropriate and accurate. Joel Brindefalk was as integral a part of Sweden's premiere off-kilter dance label, Börft, as anyone outside its founders, Jan Svensson (FRAK, etc), Birre Isgren (FRAK, etc), and, eventually, Joachim Nordwall (Skull Defekts, etc). While Brindefalk's work under monikers such as Contemporary …
Spectramorphic Iridescence
Signifiers can send all the wrong signals just as often as they can send the right ones. There’s a delicate balance between enticement and giving it all a way. Resident Los Angeles android, [PHYSICS], rides that line and then some on his first LP, Spectramorphic Iridescence. Glazed electronics and polymorphic beats run through wetware enhancements left behind by future civilizations. This music is black ice for all the hackers, ready to fry circuits from the inside and hardwire your dreams.Even …
Crushed Interior
Jim Donadio's debut Psychedelic Black album as Prostitutes came out in 2012 and ended up on many year-end lists, fitting in somewhere between the post-noise abrasive techno of Pete Swanson, Container, Nate Young, etc., the roughened post-punk hues of Powell and the more precision-built constructions of the Raster-Noton label. Donadio's follow-up, Crushed Interior, arrives via Digitalis and picks up where he last left us, taking us through to the next, blackened layer of re-formulated techno te…
Hemp Is Here
Leven Signs' Hemp Is Here came and went in 1985, as both a cassette release (Unlikely Records) and vinyl release (Cordelia) in the blink of an eye. The duo of Peter Karkut and Maggie Turner managed to craft one of the strangest, most affecting albums of new wave experimentalism of the era, but due to the album's impossible-to-find status, it's been largely forgotten and continuously overlooked ever since. A chance encounter with the cassette version of Hemp Is Here led Brad Rose of Digitali…
Assimilating The Shadow
In the time since Ricardo Donoso delivered his debut album Progress Chance, he's been pursuing his take on morning music even further. Informed by deep house, slowed-down trance and club influences, this new album unfolds to reveal elaborate sonic labyrinths that emerge out of the burning embers of dance music. Assimilating the Shadow has been designed to be consumed at sunrise, at the party's end. It assembles dark, carefully-considered sequences layered in a way that seems on first list…
Spirits of the Sun
The Slaves may well have gone and made one of the standout debuts of the year - a layered mass of ethereal vocals most reminiscent of Grouper with a brutal, doom-stricken underbelly that at turns sounds like My Bloody Valentine, Sunn O))) and Slowdive, massively recommended if you're into any of the above and available in a limited edition run of 500, with initial copies on pure white vinyl* The Portland, Oregon duo of Barbara Kinzle and Birch Cooper, aka The Slaves, operate in the void …
Decimus 11
Pat Murano’s Decimus project has been all over the map in the past few years, undertaking a massive effort to put out a series of 12 albums in accordance with the zodiac of Decimus Magnus Ausonius. Previous to this Murano was perhaps best known as one of the founding members of No Neck Blues Band, K-Salvatore, & Malkuth, but it is with Decimus that the full story finally unfolds. With 11, Murano is going schizo and taking you down a hellish aural rabbit hole, deep into the abyss.I’m not exaggera…