Premiere: Kai Whiston – Melville

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May 27, 2016
New Music
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Originally tipped off by Brainfeeder don Iglooghost, we’ve been looking forward to Kai Whiston‘s debut for the past few months and local Los Angeles outlet TAR will be letting it all out on June 17. Teenager producer narratives are overwrought, but the fact that Whiston is only 16 is unavoidable, especially considering how fully formed the Houndstooth EP is. Iglooghost’s manic take on beat scene, rap and grime tropes is certainly a reference point on Houndstooth, but tracks like “Spick & Span” (debuted by Mary Anne Hobbes a few months back) and “Melville” have a sound all their own, submerging oddly familiar vocals under dense miasmas of reckless noise, framed by outsized building block percussion. We’ve got “Melville” on premiere today, the EP closer and the most delicate track on Houndsooth, matching reverb-heavy piano with swirls of what sounds like planes taking offs, dense feedback loops and a distant ragga vocal. Whiston’s songs aren’t easily appraisable on first or second listen, but after running through Houndstooth five or six times the vocals feel familiar even through the dense matrix of reverb and samples layered over the top.

Premiere: Lloyd SB – The Portal (feat. Wallwork)

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May 27, 2016
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First appearing on Wallwork’s Astral Plane mix in October of last year, Lloyd SB and Wallwork‘s “The Portal” has been one of the most desired dubs around for our team so were overjoyed when the Nervous Horizon folks sent over the promo for Lloyd’s forthcoming Boida Flare EP and it included the track. With a track on the most recent Boxed compilation and support from a huge range of radio shows and DJs, the release of Boida Flare feels perfectly timed and it’s hard not to imagine the EP taking over the clubs and airwaves further over the coming weeks and months. With our longtime obsession in mind, we’ve got “The Portal” on premiere today and if this hyper speed trapped out monstrosity didn’t catch your attention back in October it certainly will now. Based on a single, insatiable lead groove, the track is both a full frontal assault and an exercise in restraint, utilizing as few elements as possible for maximum jump up energy, seeming to exist more in the jungle/drum and bass sphere despite its familiar sound palette. Boida Flare is out June 3 and can pre-ordered here.

Premiere: Loom – Hardest In The Year (Le Dom Remix)

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May 26, 2016
New Music, Remixes
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Having performed on the Overdrive Infinity platform and contributed a track to SND.PE VOL.05, Loom’s alliance with the Sound Pellegrino family feels about as natural as an artist-label relationship can and on June 3 he’ll be releasing the Burnt Glass EP through the Parisian outpost. Comprised of three stunning originals and remixes from Le Dom, Lloyd SB and Doline, Burnt Glass is another huge notch in the Suffolk producer’s belt, continuing to blur the lines between experimental weightless forms and breakout club material, all with sonic palette that is quickly becoming his own. Burnt Glass is at times delicate and at times full throttle aggressive, subverting listeners’ expectations with rapid switch-ups and a sort of manic sound design that sounds as fresh as ever.

As far as out and out dancefloor efficacy goes, “Hardest In The Year” might reign supreme and Parisian producer Le Dom has offered up an expertly crafted flip of the track, reinforcing the original’s metallic framework without succumbing to industrial austerity. Having previously released on Liar’s club tool-focused Tessier-Ashpool label, as well as placing “Bayern” on SND.PE VOL.05, Le Dom is perfectly primed to take on the peak time energy of “Hardest In The Year” and by stripping back some of its more consuming elements the sharp edged percussion and bleeping melodies are allowed some refreshing space. Burnt Glass is out June 3 and can be pre-ordered here.

Ornine Mix For The Astral Plane

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May 26, 2016
Mixes
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Entering the world of Quantum Natives is often disorienting, challenging the unassuming listener/viewer/adventurer to disentangle their expectations from their reality almost immediately. Born out through their immersive website and a series of jagged, non-linear releases, Quantum Natives is a record label as much as it is a creative fiction exercise, demanding their subjects to accept them on their terms or not accept them at all. Co-run by Brood Ma and Ornine, Quantum Natives has hosted releases from Goch, Sifaka Kong, Yearning Kru, DJWWW & N. BRENNAN with each release riffing on a dense matrix of noise, rave music and a collection of hi-tech tropes. The releases trend towards the dystopic, but that’s an unfair simplification and the music is often more visceral than it is didactic, especially when paired with the geographies and pick-your-path games of the QN website.

Ornine’s work in particular is startlingly referential, drawing bits and pieces of footwork and hardcore into his glitchy productions. It’s hardly sound system and like much of the label’s output it hardly follows any sort of grid, but songs like “Worker Purr” and his remix of Brood Ma’s “ESTEEM” do more to elucidate the intense spacialities and alternate realities of digital life that are so often referenced in electronic music and so rarely realized. For Astral Plane Mix 110, Ornine runs us through the gamut of forthcoming Quantum Natives material, including forthcoming tracks from recsund, d0us, Renick Bell, swivelized sounds, 0800221363 and crown shyness, as well as a collection of songs from his own forthcoming album on the label (due late this year). There’s often an inclination for shallow escapism in futuristic or technology-focused music, but Ornine’s body of work and Quantum Natives’ presentation in general never seems to fall into those traps and while their world might be hard to define it’s as captivating of a digital art space as you’ll find anywhere.

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Radar Radio w/ Kai Whiston & Hunni’d JAWS – 23rd May 2016

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May 25, 2016
Mixes
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For our latest session on Radar Radio, we grabbed Kai Whiston and Hunni’d JAWS for the guest mix slots, the former a prodigious artist with a mystifying forthcoming release on TAR and the latter one half of Berlin Community Radio’s indomitable Call Dibs show. Despite coming from very different places, both mixes fit together really nicely, drawing from a range of industrial-tinged club music and drawing lines between everything from MC Bin Laden and M.E.S.H. to FIS and GAIKA. In the first hour, the Astral Plane DJ Team laid out some of our favorite recent and forthcoming tracks from the likes of Terribilis, x/o, Air Max ’97 and DJ Tiga, as well as some tracks from Nunu’s forthcoming Astral Plane release. Look out for news on that very soon. If you’re in Los Angeles, you can catch the Astral Plane DJ Team at CyberSonicLA this Saturday (5/28) alongside Kush Jones, Jeremiah Meece b2b Schwarz, Swisha and residents Sha Sha Kimbo and Swelta. Not one to miss. We’ll back on Radar on June 27. Thanks for listening.

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Premiere: NHS Allstars – Nostro Hood Anthem (Strict Face Remix)

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May 23, 2016
New Music, Remixes
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Concept releases are relatively common-place in the world of electronic music, but entire labels based around specific concepts and/or alternate realities are still relatively rare. That’s where Galtier’s Nostro Hood Systems steps in; endeavoring to realize what music would and could sound like in an alternate galaxy of their own creation. Intending to build out the framework (“lore” in their words) over time, the label arrives with the Nostro Hood Anthem EP, produced by Galtier and friends and accompanied by three remixes from Sylvere, Strict Face and She’s Drunk. Full of agile rhythms and dance-forward structures, the single matches disorienting shamanic chants with 808 heavy percussion, the resulting concoction perfectly primed for peak time club play. We’ve got the Strict Face remix on premiere today and the Australian producer has smashed up the NHS Allstar’s original into a hydraulic-loaded grime monster, driven by an forcefully twangy bass line that seems to eat up space even as brief moments of silence provide respite for the listener. To top off the package, the indomitable Rachel Noble has provided fitting cover art for the release, offering up a spectacular visual analogue to the sonic machinations of the crew. Nostro Hood Anthem is out digitally on June 20.

Broshuda Mix For The Astral Plane

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May 19, 2016
Mixes
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German artist Broshuda has flirted with a number of sounds and genres over the past few years, skirting the periphery of everything from Los Angeles’ beat scene to soupy, washed out house and techno and the nebulous regions of post-rock and krautrock. With a flair for working playful narratives into his work and a ceaseless work ethic, the artist otherwise known as Flo has released on labels like Sonic Router, Seagrave, videogamemusic and Phinery over the past several years, plying his trade mostly on cassettes, often accompanied by his own hand drawn cover art. Currently residing in Berlin, Broshuda has coyly referred to his work as glambient, Eno-grime and post-wonk and while all of that nomenclature comes across as slightly silly, it usually comes from a strong conceptual base and more often than not is right on the money as far as descriptors go. With a host of forthcoming releases (see below) and a hotly tipped collaboration with Joane Skyler on the way we grabbed the shapeshifting artist for an Astral Plane mix and a quick interview, going over his preference in labels, work flow and his online persona. Like his sonic and visual output, the mix is an honest take on what he’s been enjoying and challenged by recently, a cornucopia of beautifully analgesic sounds from across the past few decades. Hit the jump to read the full interview and stream/download the mix below.

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Giveaway: Kode9 @ Union

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May 19, 2016
Contest
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While he normally rolls through Los Angeles with a crew of affiliates, whether they be Ikonika and/or Scratcha DVA or a posse of Teklife greats, Hyperdub bossman Kode9 holds more than enough weight to carry a night by himself and this Sunday he’s headlining Union with a local lineup heavy on 160 business. If you’ve caught Kode9 in recent years you’ll surely have received a good deal of footwork and with 6Blocc, The Professionals and the Juke Bounce Werk team providing support for the night the crowd better be ready for a barrage of hyper-speed alien rhythms. 2015’s Nothing LP, Kode9’s first solo effort and a paean to the late great Spaceape, was also somewhat slept on so it’s time for the London legend to take his proper crown on this tour. We’ve got two pair of tickets to give away for Sunday’s show so if you want to experience a seminal UK artist tear down Union’s Funktion One system then write in your favorite Hyperdub album below and we’ll contact you day of show if you win. Otherwise, grab tickets and RSVP for the night here and we hope to see you out on the floor come Sunday.

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Betty Mix For The Astral Plane

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May 12, 2016
Mixes
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Photo de Hélène Feuillebois

If you’ve flipped on Boiler Room, Overdrive Infinity, Rinse France or Radar Radio over the past few months and heard the tinny call outs of 1990 pseudo-hit “Do The Bartman” airing through, you can be pretty damn sure that Betty is behind the decks. A recent calling card of the Parisian DJ, the Michael Jackson-assisted track is hard to take seriously, but when matched with serious tracks by the likes of DJ Marfox, Loom and Nkisi, it’s caricaturish dimensions take on a lighter hue and tend to make the mix experience far less predictable. Betty is the driving force behind Paris’ Bonus Stage parties and a member of the House of Mizrahi, as well as a regular on the aforementioned Rinse France, engagements that have led to an international audience and an integral roll in several overlapping Paris scenes, smashing together the classic, the excitingly new and the hilariously out-of-sync across a number of venues.

With “Do The Bartman” representing one of the end of the spectrum of Betty’s mixing sensibility, she has championed everything from French rapper MHD to Tobago Tracks’ UK funky provocateur Zini and on to Crazylegs’ increasingly hard to pin down Gage. These artists can be found throughout Betty’s mixes, as well as at her, by all accounts incredible, Bonus Stage parties, positioned in a manner you’d never expect to work, but succeeding consistently with flying colors. Betty has a flair for mixing percussive and melodic sounds in extended blends that almost supersede the original intent of the songs and on her Astral Plane mix, the opening minutes see and almost reckless smashing together of MHD’s “Afro Trap Part.4 (Fais le mouv)”, Roska’s “Blame The Speakers” and SHALT’s “Acheron”, three wildly different efforts that undeniably cohere under Betty’s touch. When rounding up Betty’s work over the past few years, it’s easy to point to left-field inclusions like “Do The Bartman”, but it’s her legwork as a genuine advocate of radical Parisian artists nightlife that has led to her current position as one of the most influential club music DJs in Europe.

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Premiere: Farsight – Faded Memory

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May 9, 2016
New Music
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A regular at Los Angeles’ Cybersonic night, Farsight has been busy as of late, co-founding the Big Sigh Brat Club label with Botaz and Ballast, receiving play from the likes of Mumdance and Blackdown and preparing his debut EP for the Bristol/Birmingham-based Prjkts label. Widsom will arrive on May 23 and sees the LA-based producer step into exciting new sonic territory, matching springy melodic portions with his predilection for prickly, hi-tech club output. We’ve got “Faded Memory” on premiere today, the EP’s opener and one of Farsight’s more delicately composed efforts to date, a track built around a slippery synth melody that almost hypnotizes as the song progresses and skittering pots and pans percussion. Remixes from Luru of Nervous Horizon and Prjkts’ own +/- round out Wisdom, which functions as an excellent introduction to Farsight and a promising start for the label.