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New Music

Dummy Premieres Chants’ “Silencer Magpie”

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March 30, 2016
New Music
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Chants has been a longtime favorite of our operation, appearing among the Heterotopia bonus tracks and contributing a remix for Mike G’s “Limestone” on Heterotopia Remixes Vol. 1. Over the years, the Wisconsin-based artist has become one of our most covered artists and when he sent us a nearly-finished bundle of manic, outsized tracks, we knew that it was important to bring him on for an official release. The Zookeeper is out on April 29, but Dummy has the jump on “Silencer Magpie”, a track that has had us in fits since first listening. If you’ve been following our shows on Radar, you’ll surely recognize this one and we’d be surprised if it didn’t infiltrate the more adventurous end of the DJ spectrum over the coming weeks and months. Head to Dummy to catch an insightful interview with Chants about the genesis of The Zookeeper, stepping away from producing for rappers and the influence of David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten.

Radar Radio w/ Abyss X, Nunu – March 28

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March 29, 2016
Mixes, New Music
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For the March edition of our Radar Radio show, we tapped two very special artists for guest mixes. Starting with this show, we’ll be putting more of an emphasis on guests and pushing new talent, hoping to offer up a less rigid platform for bringing on artists than our mix series. The first guest session comes from Abyss X, one of our favorite Los Angeles-based artists who officially debuted on Lao’s Extasis label last year. The Greek-born artist’s mix runs along at a torrid pace, hitting on gqom, southern rap, mahraganat and seemingly everything in between. Check out her Echoes EP here and look out for more heat from Abyss X moving forward. French artist Nunu came through with the second session for the show and this Summer he’ll be joining the Astral Plane Recordings family with his label debut. More news on that to come, but for now you can imbibe in his mix which balances noisy pop tropes and contemporary club jams with aplomb. Our own Astral Plane DJ Team starts off the first hour with new tracks from Ziúr, Chino Amobi, Brood Ma, Waterhouse, Mina & Lorenzo_BITW, Gage, v1984, Amnesia Scanner, Celestial Trax & Roosevelt, Mercury Drums and more. Stream the show below, download here and check out the (partial) track list after the jump.

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Premiere: Boska – Glass Limb

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March 21, 2016
New Music
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boskaBoska‘s Shesick EP comes in as the first official release on Trax Couture of 2016 and while the London-based outfit’s World Series is over for the time being, it’s clear that label boss Rushmore has not slowed down one bit in his mission to bring in a wide array of international talent. Currently residing in Berlin, Boska’s combination of prickly rhythms and earworm quality melodies has had us excited for a good while and Shesick far exceeds even those expectations. A previous collaboration with MA Nguzu and 2015’s Cascades EP (on Balsa Wood)  saw the producer experimenting with sparse club-focused constructions and natural sound palettes, Shesick comes off as a much more full-fledged effort as tracks like “Glass Limb” and “Shesick” escape the bounds of their influences and become something else entirely. “Glass Limb”, which we have on premiere today, is especially impressive, starting off with slithering laser sounds seemingly reverberating out of a well before entering a second phase of brass-y grandiosity and clanging metal noises. Shesick is highly recommended and is out today on TC. Get it here.

Premiere: Ballast – Manic AKA 3133

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March 18, 2016
New Music
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Based in Los Angeles, brand new label Big Sigh Brat Club (BSBG) has emerged with a bang in the form of Ballast’s URL // IRL EP, an impressive debut by any standards with a load of quality remixes from the likes of Antwood, Lemonick, Rambow and more. Run by Ballast, Botaz and Farsight, BSBG is a collective work and URL // IRL shows it, from the remix package to the collection of guests features to the pointed, yet cuddly, visual aesthetic. The release is full of raw dancefloor-focused numbers like the trance synth-led “Dum Machine” and “Youz A Lame”, effectively a ghetto house track with Kieran Loftus on vocals, but we’ve got the one (partially) beat-less pop number on premiere today. “Manic AKA 3133” is a breathy, pristine effort that verges on bubblegum, but eventually swells into an emotionally draining, warbling swell. Ballast’s remix work for the likes of Javascript, Ducky and Supraman & Kieran Loftus has caught our eye in the past, but “Manic AKA 3133” shows a different side to the producer’s repertoire, stepping away from the dancefloor and showing off a deft touch with original vocals. Would not be mad to see more efforts in this style from the Los Angeles resident. Check out previews for URL // IRL, which is out March 22, after the jump.

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Premiere: Mistareez – Leng

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March 17, 2016
New Music
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Known for being on the cutting edge of percussive dance forms, Bristol has a new label looking to extend that prowess. Having already released a compilation featuring artists like Tsvi, Gundam and Mistareez, Super Kitchen has a penchant for dancefloor-friendly tunes with a stark, percussive bent, walking the space between American club forms, grime and techno with a handle generally managed by labels with much more experience. Mistareez’s Stutterwerx EP is the first solo release on the label and comes correct for a debut, four hype tracks with remixes from Bleaker, Akito and Gregor. We’ve got “Leng” on premiere today, a highlight from Stutterwerx that’s been lighting us up since first listening to the release. Check out “Leng” and previews for the full EP below and pre-order the release (out Friday) here.

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Premiere: Kid Smpl – Barrier (SHALT Remix)

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March 14, 2016
New Music, Remixes
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Over the past few years, Kid Smpl has asserted himself at the emotive fringe of contemporary club music with two EP releases on Symbols functioning as individual mission statements. Now, the Precinct and Response/Ascend EPs are getting the remix treatment with Utah?, Eaves, y y y and Astral Plane Recordings releasee SHALT providing revamped versions of Smpl’s originals tracks. We’ve got SHALT’s take on Precinct highlight “Barrier” on premiere today, a larger-than-life effort that shows off the Lausanne-based artist’s penchant for grittily beatific synth work and crunchy, overdriven drums. It’s exactly the sort of hi-tech physicality we’ve come to expect from both SHALT and Kid Smpl, two artists who are leading a trend towards more abstract, non-linear club forms and don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Stream SHALT’s remix below and hit the jump to preview snippets of the full remix volume, which is out March 25.


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Premiere: Evvol – Four Steps From Home (Ziúr Remix)

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March 11, 2016
New Music, Remixes
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Berlin-based duo Evvol entered our consciousness last Summer with their debut Eternalism LP, offering a refreshingly subtle take on dancefloor-focused pop that hardly fits into the “darkwave” label often ascribed to them. A little under a year later and the album has received a collection of remixes including a twisted effort from Ziúr, one of our absolute favorite Berlin producers who has a load of head-turning music that’s slated to come out over the next year or so. An appearance on the Tropical Waste NTS Show and tracks like “Lips” and “Collar Bone” (featured in February’s For Club Use Only) have begun to drawn attention to Ziúr’s outsized cyborg-ian productions, tracks that seem to balance on a knife’s blade between a host of sounds, balancing the tension inherent in dubstep with a more manic resemblance to hardcore. As far as the Evvol remix goes, Ziúr took on “Four Steps From Home”, potentially the most dance-ready track of the album, and transformed it into a growling, heaving monster, the original’s chorus pitched down into a ritualistic yawn and eventually almost entirely abandoned in favor a collection of creaking metallic noise and echoing blips that almost seems to harmonize in the copious amounts of empty space in the production. Ziúr doesn’t have an official release out yet, but the Berliner already has a sound that’s all her own and is only set to expand and mutate into exciting new spaces as her career progresses. Artwork for the remix was done by Stefan Faehler.

Sim Hutchins Mix For The Astral Plane

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February 18, 2016
New Music
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My first memories are just of being

Listening to the Body Count show on Radar Radio can often be a frantic experience, full of the sort of quick tempo and genre breaks that result in Migos edits flaring into drone and on into jungle. Helmed by Sim Hutchins, Sully and Klaar, Body Count functions as both a singular entity and a reflection of its members’ individual sensibilities, blending Hutchins’ innate sense of texture and analogue thrust with Sully’s taste for fast, rough bangers and Klaar’s deep catalogue of unorthodox tracks from the deepest, darkest corners of the experimental world. Better than almost any other radio show, Body Count mirrors and expounds upon the daily experience, both real and imaginary, overflowing with quick right turns, jagged edges and non-linear story telling. Sim Hutchins’ solo work represents the darkest end of that spectrum, epitomized on his excellent debut I Enjoy To Sweep A Room LP on No Pain In Pop and furthered in the Essex-based audio-visual artist’s screwed up edits and oft-frightening video work.

I Enjoy To Sweep A Room quietly came in as one of 2015’s most heartfelt (and best) records, an emotionally mangled journey built on fucked up analogue gear that comes across as much like a secret whispered in the listener’s ear as a frigid, unapproachable web. Disaffection, paranoia and apathy all come to mind when listening to the album, but through the long periods of dread and song titles like “Nihilism Was Not Sustainable” and “I Felt Like A Fox Being Hunted” are impeccably dance-able grooves, exhilaratingly disintegrating soundscapes and an overarching sense of forgotten memories. Considering he’s spent years working with grime MCs and playing out on Essex pirate radio, it’s now surprise that Hutchins’ work has the sort of rawness and immediacy found in those formats and the aesthetic is only bolstered in his video work where lo-fi VHS footage meets Orwellian commands and amnesia-driven narratives.

Which brings us to Hutchins’ Astral Plane mix, a composition made up entirely of his own edits that manages to converge late era Dance Mania with Cali Swag District in a world of tape delay that is as much a paean to Houston’s screw tape legacy as it is a fresh, albeit mucked up, take on a host of Chicago and Detroit classics. In Hutchins’ own words:

I grew up home-taping, Limewireing and CDR-burning. Though the ID tags were all wrong, the bit-rates sucked and the tracklists were incomplete, the act of seeking out pirated music lead me to a discovery of styles and scenes a world away from what was available to buy in the shops. This mix of home-made edits is a nod to screw tapes, lo-fi ish and cassette hiss (parental advisory sticker pending).

Like I Enjoy To Sweep A Room and the more abstracted collaborative tape Hutchins made with Klaar for Ecology Tapes, this mix features a heap of audial randomness, a sort of read-between-the-lines sensibility that comes across as both guilefully directed and 100% random. Indulge in the interstices and check out a full track list after the jump. I Enjoy To Sweep A Room is available in both digital and physical formats here.

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SHALT’s ‘Acheron’ EP Out Now!

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January 29, 2016
New Music
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If you’ve listened to SHALT’s Astral Plane mix or his recent, more dancefloor-oriented mix for Ninja Tune’s Solid Steel show on NTS Radio, you’ll have caught on to just how acute SHALT’s ear is. Whether he’s bringing in dancefloor smashers from contemporaries or isolating the sheer physicality of more abstract works, every bit of the process is deeply considered from a thorough spatial perspective. Today marks the release of the Acheron EP, a work that functions as both a fully formed narrative and a vessel for a discussion surrounding artificial life extension and its potential consequences. Interviews with FACT and THUMP offer insight into the project, but the best way to experience Acheron is to listen in an isolated setting and while it’s too much to demand uninhibited attention in the contemporary media landscape we can assure you that this extended player is best heard in focus.

FACT Premieres SHALT’s “Unconfined” + Interview

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January 25, 2016
Interviews, New Music
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It’s release week! Since announcing SHALT’s Acheron EP last month, we’ve been aching to get the full project out to you and it’s finally out on digital platforms this Friday (1/29)! Last Thursday, FACT Magazine premiered the second single from the project, “Unconfined”, and spoke with SHALT about artificial life extension, Tim Hecker, and the club-via-noise context of his music. Check out the interview here, “Unconfined” below and keep an eye out on our Bandcamp for the full release on Friday.