Sound Synthesis
Schematics

The music of Jack Bags comes from multiple contaminations and a deep love for vintage analog sounds. Panorama Groove is a journey through those sounds and a personal vision of those genres that are constantly inspiring.

Presence Unknown is a vinyl and digital label curated by longtime producer and DJ, Neil Keating aka Controlled Weirdness. Neil has been behind the decks and deeply involved in all aspects of club and underground sound system culture since the early Eighties. He has released his music on numerous underground labels and performed all over the world, from plush clubs to dirty warehouses. Worth a read are a couple of published articles by Neil regarding his experiences on the dance floor of underground clubs in London and New York in the Eighties. See links at the bottom of this page for these as well as a detailed biography and discography. There is also a link to a recent 40-minute interview with Distant Planet TV that explores his cultured rave history.The third release on Presence Unknown contains four slamming tunes, crafted with precision by Controlled Weirdness using a variety of analogue and digital machines in his South London studio. The A-side features some deep and bass heavy electro acid for the dance floor. "Ghosts of the Heygate" and "Running on Empty" feature rolling 808 boom with 303 groove. The flip side starts off with "Are you angry or are you boring?" a future-retro rave anthem with lately bass and killer mentasm stabs and has been destroying dance floors on dub during Controlled Weirdness’ DJ sets the past six months. The EP closes with, "Strange Desires", a slow, sleazy, slinky and salacious groove. Music from the margins. Presence Unknown.

Oak Corridor is the second full-length album from Newcastle, Australian duo Troth (Amelia Besseny & Cooper Bowman). It follows 2020’s warmly received album, Flaws In The Glass (Altered States Tapes) and 2021’s Small Movements In Radiance mini-album (Not Not Fun). While the same themes and intentions remain, this time Troth channel their ambient experiments into an environ located somewhere closer to minimal-wave and synth-pop.While Oak Corridor is their most ‘song-based’ album to date, it continues the respectful treatment of natural themes found in their previous releases, further tying in elements of balance, truth, justice, humility, strains of mysticism from varied origins and an opposition to the encroachment of ill-advised development surrounding them in Newcastle (and Australia more broadly). The album is a truly collaborative affair and offers something of a sound-diary of the two’s relationship.

This record is a momentous occasion for me as it is the first release that I have signed from a member of my production tutorial website. This is something I was quietly hoping would come to pass when I started the project but I never knew if it would actually happen. Liebus was sending me tracks to critique as part of a feature on the site and after a batch of them came in that I not only didn’t have any critique for but actually I wanted to ask him how he made them instead, I knew I was onto a winner.I can’t quite believe this is his first release as the tracks sound so mature and incredibly produced but I was never going to think twice about putting them out.All five tracks are subby, drummy, mind bending workouts from start to finish. Proper cavernous vibes with a dose of potentially too strong an LSD trip mixed in for good measure.Not for the faint hearted...OK enough of my blather. Go and listen to the damn things yourself and decide if you like them, rather than trying to work it out from reading a bloody press release you weirdos.All four tracks are produced and sculpted for the club. They want big sound systems and dark rooms.Close your eyes, hold hands and experience transcendental space flight...

The release feels more like a mini album when listening to all the tracks consecutively as the sounds blend in & out of different arrangements giving you the feeling of a transition between the tracks while allowing them to tell their own unique story.

Evocative and spooky contemporary prog. Mekine U Teksi has absolutely nailed it to fetishist levels. It sounds like the synths were the only thing keeping the castle warm the night this was recorded.The whole record it's made even more unnerving by the fact that the 4th track doesn't exist.