★Not Not Fun Records
Videotape
Not surprisingly, Noah Anthony's inaugural 12-inch under his Profligate moniker is geared more towards dance floor demands than his stridently exploratory debut album, Come Follow Me (released just a month prior). The release sees the producer jettisoning the noise and drone aspects of his sound, concentrating instead on combining classic EBM and modern dark techno.Of the plate's two tracks it's "Videotape" that most exudes EBM's brooding muscularity. Moreover, its base components (military marc…
The Integration
It seems inevitable that ex-Pocahaunted weirdo and co-founder of the Not Not Fun empire Amanda Brown (aka LA Vampires) would jump into bed with avant starlet Maria Minerva at some point. Their musical paths over the last few years have skated close to each other, and unsurprisingly 'The Integration' finds both artists eccentricities compliment eachother perfectly. The eroded dub that made Brown's electrifying collaboration with Zola Jesus so surprising is still just about there in the bac…
Season Of Risk
Colour photocopied sleeve. Edition of 325** Arresting Americana Doom and etheric grunge from the edge of civilization. Since sacrificing their Mythical Beast, Corinne Sweeney and Jeremiah Cowlin abandoned Philly for the wilds of Coyote, New Mexico, living off the grid and conceiving the low sunken sound of Ether Island. "A Side opener “Season Of Risk” corrals a mud-flood of thick tectonic shred over a buried beat, Sweeney’s vox tearing through in hot red flashes like a prairie flash fire …
Human Fly
Another curveball from the Not Not Fun camp, 'Human Fly' pits Wolf Eyes noisenik Nate Young against veteran garage punk drummer Dave Shettler and while their collaborative moniker might be a little zany, their brand of dancefloor-ready industrial/techno variations is tough to ignore. Veering from hazy EBM-flecked speed garage (we're not kidding, take a listen) on the title track to Chicago bleep on the zonked 'Cyber Rebels' there's a sense that Young and Shettler are not only well studied…
Will Happiness Find Me
If Ariel Pink takes rock music history and trash-compacts it to suit his needs, then Estonian ex-pat Maria Minerva does the same with dance music. Her narcotic-laced brand of electronic music was showcased perfectly on last year's breakthrough 'Cabaret Cixous', an album which not only put a spotlight on Minerva but also the Not Not Fun imprint itself. 'Will Happiness Find Me' is that record's followup and thankfully Minerva avoids and of the usual pitfalls simply by not overthinking the c…
Sleepwalker
Keeping their winning streak going, Not Not Fun hit us with the lo-lite brilliance of Afterhours, an act that emerged from influential LA radio show 'Field Recordings of the Afterhours'. Citing Mo Wax and Anime as influences you can see how Not Not Fun were wowed by Afterhours' sultry electronics - this is music as indebted to Vangelis and Jean Michelle Jarre as it is 80s pop, industrial and Blech-era Warp bleeps. While title track 'Sleepwalker' is firmly in Blade Runner territory, the hi…
Midnight At Mary's House
"Vagabond American legend Carlos Gonzalez drops his first NNF full-length, and it's 10 of his greatest junkyard surf-slime tunes of all time. Edition of 500."
Lifetime Of Romance
LP version. "Heartland synthesist Dylan Ettinger follows up 2010's widely lauded New Age Outlaws imaginary cyber-soundtrack with a stark, dark, and intensely different collection of misshapen new wave weirdnesses, Lifetime Of Romance. Recorded at a proper studio, and written over the course of a year, the seven songs of Romance reflect a heavy influence from the fringier strains of bummed out quasi-industrial synth-pop in the vein of Fad Gadget, certain Cabaret Voltaire, early Human League,…
Mother Rhythm Earth Memory
"NNF debut (after an EP on 100% SILK) by this Iowa City electronic maximalist. M.R.E.M. is the first purely solo Cuticle release, after working with a series of part-time collaborators, and it's freed him to let loose his wildest and weirdest impulses."
True Breath
Stunning five-song debut EP by this young Tokyo producer. Ghost-in-the-drum-machine rhythms layered with her exquisite Cocteau Twins vocal haze, but impeccably crafted into nuanced multi-movement compositions. Will be doing a full-length later in 2012 as well. Our fave new female artist
We're In Heaven
Vinyl debut by this Viennese rave abstractionist boils down pulsing LED beats and deep synth strobe FX into a cavernous laser-streaked fog. In blinding Alex Grey-style acid-body artwork by Mr. Cruise Family himself
Utopia = No Person
Hare Krishna farmers/deep psych practitioners Prince Rama explore the link between music and utopia with music for exercise routines. This is a vinyl issue of "exercise rituals using music to explore the body as a vehicle for the utopian impulse..." originally released as a part of Impose Magazine's cassette series and performed in an unshaved armpit of Brooklyn
Enlightenment / Phrenesia
Holy Strays follows up his scuzzy debut tape for NNF with two surprisingly lush and undeniably ace electronic trips. The meld of sparse, reverberating drums and plangent psych licks on 'Enlightenment' calls to mind Forest Swords jamming with a lo-fi Raime, on some sweet Hoffman's in a cabin in the Alps, after listening to loads of Amon Duul. Flipsude 'Phrenesia' is a moodier counterpoint, sucking us in with wormholing synthline while blunted programmed beats and a lone rave mistress vocal…
Pan Am Stories
Tape-warped phantom band Rangers finally unleash the lush, soaring, expansive prog-pop opus we always knew was floating inside the fretboard (and imagination) of multi-instrumentalist mystery maestro Joe Knight. The north Dallas-raised, San Fran-residing head Ranger grew up taking classical guitar lessons from a dude who claimed to have 'toured with the Dead,' and some of that brain-wonked jam agenda obviously seeped into the young Knight, who began recording his own loose, lo-fi jangle s…
Too Down To Die
Not Not Fun's most form-destroying release from Robedoor. Seismic future-primitive energies on side-long track "Parallel Wanderer." Continues the incarnation of Robedoor featuring MG Gengras (Personable, Pocahaunted) on drums, moog, bass and piano. "Britt Brown, and Alex Brown unleash their latest Robedoor communications. 'Parallel Wanderer' is an epic drifter serving up ten minutes of raga-like drones before blowing the roof off it with crashing drums and upwards spirals of guitar. '(In The) Cy…
Kwjaz
Absolutely killer album of frayed and unstable electronic mutations from the Rangers-related KWJAZ project (boomkat) San Franciscan Peter Berend's mystery mixtape unit, KWJAZ, flashed forth this debut self-titled slab of 'post-plastic sublime decomposed luxury grooves' on cassette via his own rarified Brunch Groupe imprint early in 2011 and the 120 listeners lucky enough to grip a copy know who they are. It only took half a listen before we green-lit this tape-degraded gem for vinyl treatme…
Maria Minerva's Cabaret Cixous
Over the course of a 12", cassette, and a stream of ace youtube vids, Maria Minerva has emerged as one of the most interesting artistes to come into leftfield-pop focus over the last 12 months. 'Cabaret Cixous' is her debut album, a coruscating water-bed of mottled '90s dance-pop memes writhing under blankets of slyly sexy new age synths while her dreamy vocals whisper and croon seductively suggestive lyrics. It's not quite aural soft porn, but there's an inescapably lascivious element to …
Urban Gothic
Not Not Fun label-mate Xander Harris has released “Urban Gothic,” the most overtly Carpenter-influenced modern electronic album to date. While Harris cites a laundry list of influences, new and old, it is Carpenter’s distinctly chilly synth-based sound that is most evident here. Although just as Umberto and Ensemble Economique mixed an array of genres ranging from African tribal music to disco into their reimagining of the horror soundtrack, Harris also draws inspiration from 80s synth pop and d…
Music For The Tactile Dome
Golden times for the krautrock lovers and kosmische musik worshippers. Jonas Reinhardt is a San Francisco unit revolving around Germanic electronic synthesis and forging new beautiful soundscapes from the material pioneered by the Teutonic masters. The hermetic kosmische lexicon (in ashra tempel/Cluster vein I'd say) of San Francisco-based synth synthesist/composer has been simmering and swelling at a steady clip the past few years (2010's Powers Of Audition was a highlight), but the added talen…
Freeze!
After 2 full-lengths mining vintage horror scores and Italo/Goblin-isms for inspiration, Kansas City riddler and composition whiz Umberto slow-pans his focus out of the graveyards and black widow cobwebs into the celluloid-stained artificial streets of Beverly Hills police beats and pop culture ghost-busting. Freeze! is an inscrutable but impressively legit reinvention of Jan Hammer-style 80’s soundtrack cheese: soaring keyboard lines, fast-tappin’ piano, locked-in bass grooves, goofy canned dru…