Various Artists
The No Gimmicks EP

Piezo’s Ansia imprint returns for its 8th outing ‘Imago’, inviting Berlin’s Unity Vega for a split EP of uptempo dancefloor explorations that mine that fertile space between footwork, drum’n’bass, dancehall and experimental contemporary club sonics. Unity Vega leads the charge with ‘No Body No Mind’ - a waterlogged darkside skanker that sits somewhere between the half-stepping jungle of the UVB-76 crew and the kind of oddball dancehall deconstructions often peddled by Ansia's extended circles. 
Appearing again on the flip, Vega ups his pace on ‘Set Em’ - a nervy footwork roller that pits gully hip-hop vocal chops against rising bell chords and washes of delayed noise. Think Rashad dubbed out by Kevin Martin and you’re in the right ballpark. Label head Piezo’s contributions continue along similar lines, albeit in his own unmistakable style. ‘Toughts, Heavy’ also finds the midpoint between d’n’b and dembow, this time marrying a gurgling acid bassline with a euphoric-turned-paranoiac trance lead. 
Up next, ‘Nel Frigo Ah’ strips things back to the raw, banging basics: a looping vocal call pinned down by a frenetic crescendoing drum workout. To close, Japanese legend Foodman delivers a pots-and-pans rework of ‘Thoughts, Heavy’ - a true curveball tool for the adventurous DJs amongst us.

New 333 Frequency

After a flourishing first few years of existence Jacopo Latini and Giammarco Orsini guide their Data Memory Access moniker to uncharted territory in 2024. The Italian duo will inaugurate their eponymous label with the Dataverse EP. Futuristic moods and spaced out textures conversing with the emotive melodies the DMA alias has become synonymous with in recent times. Music for your mind, and the dance floor, teasing the lines between slick underground sounds of the past with a distinct modern twist.

space•lab presents the Negen EP from Human Space Machine, a journey into Mike Jungerius’ unique take on the deeper shades of techno. Featuring four meticulously crafted tracks, this release showcases his signature sound—as rolling basslines and hypnotic acid lines weave seamlessly through intricate percussion, beautifully balanced with the perfect dose of melody and harmonics.Each track offers a unique glimpse into Human Space Machine’s refined approach to techno: atmospheric yet grounded, minimal but rich in texture. With tracks ranging from 100BPM to 144BPM, this is the record you can reach for at any time of the night.

Excelsior Ruth is a composer, DJ and producer born in the North-East of England but who currently resides in South London. On her eponymously titled debut, she combines a life-long love of euphoric trance with echoes of her live performances as exlRuth, which incorporate sound recordings, drone, traditional choral music and the makina backdrop of her youth. Embedded in community heritage, it’s a record that probes connections between the classical and contemporary. Gossamer harp drifts across time on ‘Haunt’, leading to the affecting arpeggios, strings and high BPMs of ‘Dream Of Night’, programmed, as much of the EP was, on classic 90s synthesisers, including the Roland JP8080 and Quasimidi Rave-0-Lution 309. Drinkwater’s ‘Dawn Return mix’ reduces ‘Dream Of Night’ down to a moment of 6am E-motion, limbs weaving through dry ice like mist on long-forgotten moors.A cathedral of angelic voices swells in ‘Dream Of You’, their hymn to oceanic feeling rooted to earth by a raining cascade of kicks. And ‘Sleepy Hollow’ journeys further into deep, unspeakable bodily knowing, pushed and pulled between propulsion and stasis as fizzy high hats and restless melodies weave through shrouds of ambient pads.Words by Joe Roberts.

When a story sees its own ending. ATOMS shows the Hamburg grown friends and instrumentalists taking a steep descent into the unmarked. Crushed arpeggios, hand layered drums and the afterthought of a nightly piano allude to an early dawn still at midnight. All six tracks are ultimately cast towards loss, since Charly Schöppner, the trio's rhythmic enigma, passed before the record was finished in 2023. But they do this unwillingly, each alone, and they materialise the persistence of beauty in different shapes and thoughts left behind. All happened through an uplift of time in a simple space, as the record was made in Schöppner's garrage, being the trio's artistic refuge at that time. A friend taking you close. – Konstantin BessonovOccasionally miscellaneous worlds collide gently. Instead of intimidating each other, they choose tactful ways to locate their consent. When they know each other for a long time, they might even harmonize their heartbeat, assuming the blood pressure stays discrete. ATOMS, a 2017 produced, unreleased album of the Hamburg based trio Giraffe, is such a clash of different worlds, ideas, emotions, who get charmingly synchronized in an insightful conversation between new music, improvisation, electro, minimal, Krautrock robotics, and the avant-garde spheres of pop. It marks a posthumous longplayer, finished by Sascha Demand (guitar), and Jürgen Hall (keys) after Charly Schöppner’s (percussion) passing in 2020. Nine five to nine minutes long gut-driven improvised compositions. Dark, diverse, haunting, and yet so private talks between three well known to each other individuals. Together they provide a ghostly, somber, dodgy passage, in which virtual analog Nord Drum beats rattle spectral with the acoustic percussion of the frame drum, one of the most ancient musical instruments. They dance with an icy 1980ees touch around minimal shifts and transformations of synth-lines, prepared guitar tones, and drunken keyboard sounds. Harmonically changing shades and slowly transforming rhythm patterns, that explicitly refer to Charly Schöppner’s electro-pop past in bands like Boytronic, just to place the reference into a new setting. A distinctive mélange of improvisation and serialism, in which center the conceptual goes in circles with a free sound searching mode, just to convert the receiver into an active immersive entity drowning in their haunting reverberations. If nothing exists except atoms and empty space; the Giraffe ATOMS séance offers a walk into a room of molecules, that enchants the space with subtle sound variations, creating seemingly endless immortal energy channels. – Michel LeuffenATOMS unterscheidet sich von allen übrigen Giraffe Releases. Bei ATOMS zeigt sich, dass in unserem Trio drei diverse Kontexte aufeinander treffen und zusammen kommen: Improvisation und neue Musik, Elektro und Minimal, Krautrock und Avantgarde Pop. Charly spielte hier ausnahmsweise mehr norddrum und Sampler als Framedrum und akustische Percussion. Das gibt den Aufnahmen eine andere Handschrift, einen gewissen 80er-Touch. Insgesamt haben die Stücke etwas Geisterhaftes und Düsteres, Zwielichtiges. Alle anderen Releases sind heller und lichter. Bei den Stücken geht es in den Einzelstimmen wie im Ganzen um minimale Verschiebungen und Transformationen von Sound zu Sound, um harmonisch wechselnde Schattierungen und um sich langsam wandelnde rhythmische Patterns. Ganz explizit wollte Charly hier auf seine Elektro-Pop Vergangenheit rekurrieren, aber sie vor allem in einen neuen Zusammenhang stellen. Wir alle drei haben immer das Übergreifende in der Musik gesucht und begrüßt. Charly mochte sowohl das Grobe wie das Feine. Dabei war es unser Wunsch, gewisse Muster zu überschreiten oder wenigstens zu konfrontieren. – Sascha DemandListening to these recordings, two years after our last concert with Charly, opens up many memories and emotions inside of me. We conceived ATOMS as a template or blueprint for our live shows. We needed something reduced to build on, yet rich and inspiring, to provide space for live improvisation. It's exciting to listen to it today. We "rehearsed" this set of pieces many times together with Charly. It was always a different musical experience. I noted down only a couple of tones and filter movements for each track. Sometimes it's just a single key i hold on one of the synths, sinking into the textures. Playing with the atoms felt like taking a deep breath and going on a diving trip, immersing into an underwater world and coming back to the surface again after an hour or so. It was the garage, a unique place with its own messy logic, where we composed, played, rehearsed, and hung out on a regular basis. It was a world of its own and it meant a lot to me to commit to Giraffe. My daughter was born when our first release came out. I see ourselves in the garage at night, playing ATOMS, discovering musical worlds together, being aware that we are creating something unique. Three old men, three daddys, each one of us being on the music scene for decades, creating something that has never been created before. Three men that could possibly allow themselves to dedicate to their family or gardening, but still hungry for recognition, still on a mission, still feeling safe and self-conscious in the creation process, still wanting to share something that comes out naturally. Maybe for me, it is the most honest and deepest musical statement I've produced so far, as there were no limits, no expectations, no judgments at all. – Jürgen Hall