Morphing Territories
Paper Brain

The long awaited follow up to the sought-after first Be Told Lies VA, featuring the heavy atmospherics, luscious pads, haunting melodies that makes the label's sound unique.

Wonky minimal and house from Lucretio & Omar Akhrif and Darren Allen marking label's 20th vinyl release.

Generative music seems to imply a systems approach to music, or a system that once created can utilise randomness in a creative way. The benevolence of nature’s creativity belies this musical term, and can flip the word ‘generative’ to mean to involve constantly flowing creativity with purpose. In Europe there was a time in the Pagan Renaissance when architecture would mirror nature’s generative quality. Sculptures and columns were to imply animation or movement.That’s where Milan W.’s album comes through in 2021. His music involves the night shadows of Europe’s architecture and its growth. In Bloom personifies itself by showing Antwerp’s influential ‘Night Play’: a term that can relate to many European cities such as Bologna, Vienna, and so on and so on. The leftovers of Renaissance and gothic architecture are everywhere in Europe still; layers of ruins that can generate the impression of simultaneous time periods. Tracks like Spa and Helium Queen reveal and revel in the power of shadow movement that is generated by the night. In Milan W.’s past works, the poignant and simple creative play of dark wave and synth beat music was his vehicle for expression, but now on In Bloom he departs to a touching sidereal impressionism allied with Coil’s instrumental pieces on Horse Rotorvator — an album whose cover portrays the potential powers of the pavilion just as Milan W. is portraying the generative soul and alienation of Europe’s ‘Night Play’. Because of In Bloom we can come to believe that there is a secretive energy in alienation, a playfulness that is alight at Night.

"Way back in the 1990s, Mark Hand, Neil Iceton & Jez Nicholl channelled their love of sci-fi-fired Motor City techno into a string of inspired releases under the alias Cubic Space Collective.After reuniting for a memorable machine jam at Freerotation festival in 2016, Hand & Iceton headed back into the studio for a one-off session and recorded 'Holiday in Beta Centauri', a musical love letter to Mad Mike and the rest of Detroit's most militant futurist techno crew.Sending us surging skywards via 'Binary System', where lilting lead lines, fizzing electronics and enveloping chords dance atop a snappy, cymbal-heavy drum machine rhythm, before 'Arps in Hyperspace' sees them step things up a notch via layered waves of synths, sparkling melodies and a driving, hyper-speed groove.The North-East-based twosome then attempt to warm us to the core in the shape of 'Rigil': restless organ stabs, undulating Michigan bass, alien electronics, psychedelic acid lines and Galaxy 2 Galaxy style chords catching the ear. Bringing us gently back down to earth, they complete their deep space mission with 'Beyond The Nebula (Holiday in Beta Centauri)', a bustling electro number full of stabbing analogue bass, star-burst electronics, meditative ambient chords that shimmer full of night-sky melodies.A fine return to action for this Teesside UR-loving techno twosome... 3,167 miles away in Detroit, their achievement will be noted."

Swedish vinyl only label Kvalia Records breaks a 9-month silence by introducing a meticulously executed 3 track ep by DJ Nobu and Artefakt. Hiiro consists of two original, psychedelic techno trips produced by DJ Nobu, and one re-interpretive sonic journey by Artefakt.

Strange Echoes 95 - 99 is music that woke up yesterday bearing a message for tomorrow. Excavated from the late-90s and largely rematerialising for the first time on vinyl, the album carries a selection of sonic diamonds by bona fide sound experimenter Xingu Hill (John Sellekaers). The fully remastered tracks pull the curtain back two decades to offer a snapshot of a prolific five-year period in Sellekaers' expansive soundverse, which runs the gamut from brain-bending, emotive ambient outings to driving, acerbic industrial experiments. Timeless music for keeps in the age of disposables; a reference to early rave and trip-hop aesthetics that could just as very well be one music clairvoyant's nostalgia-inspired preview of things to come.