Elías Sternin
Terror Nocturno

Constructed from a library of sounds collected by the artist in the rainforests of Borneo, Llyr’s debut album is an expansive documentation of natural beauty and human interference. Out July 29th on Max Cooper’s Mesh imprint, it is the first full-length album from the Berlin resident.The result of painstakingly manipulating these recordings via a multitude of cutting edge production techniques, Biome is an expression of precarity and beauty. It invites the listener to be enveloped by Llyr’s augmented reality rendering of the tropical rainforest, one of the Earth’s most biodiverse and iconic biomes, and encourages them to consider our impact on the natural world.Split into two sections - Pre-Anthropocene and Anthropocene - Biome tells its story with vast sonic ecosystems of molecular detail. Opening to the sounds of bird call, faint monkey hollers and the gentle crackling of mist-enshrouded trees, the album sets its tone with an archetypal impression of the jungle; one of instant familiarity. This is then expanded on across eight tracks, with the first four offering an abstract meditation on the marvels of nature, and the remainder of the album presenting a sonic vision of human interference - more chaotic and complicated than before.Llyr’s recordings include signifiers of human presence left untouched as an integral part of the story, with natural phenomena manifesting in different ways on each track. The resulting creations are a testament to the inherent musicality of the natural world. ‘Courtship Signal’ uses a recording of frogs singing in Kubah National Park to map out the rhythms and pitches of its composition, reconstructing an exact structural replica of these mating calls before manipulating and recomposing. Elsewhere, ‘The Hawthorne Effect’ captures a swarm of insects engaging in a rare mating ritual, sampling both a collective hum and individual percussive moments to build an entire library of sound. Similarly, ‘Winged Chamber Music’ carves out a majestic sonic cave using recordings of water dripping and the chattering of bats pitched down to human hearing range. Having engaged wholeheartedly with these moments as they occurred, Llyr extracts themes and motifs with a sincere respect for their origins.The first section is made in its entirety from Llyr’s own rainforest recordings with no use of drum machines, synths or samples. The recordings feature at every possible scale from macro to micro: unmodified binaural field recordings set the scene; granulated layers add pseudo-synthetic textural atmosphere; iteratively processed one-shots provide punctuation; and carefully designed custom instruments, forged from short fragments and cycles, express harmony and rhythm. The second half, heralding the arrival of humans, relaxes the rule book and a smattering of synthetic elements enter the fray to maximise visceral impact.The resulting work is a debut album that considers extensive themes by weaving these rare recordings into a remarkably coherent sonic blueprint. Biome resonates as both an affecting listening experience and a thematic exploration of the changing world we inhabit.

Random Numbers is proud to present its newest V.A. release, the most ambitious to date, which sees the contributions of 16 producers close to the label and kindred to the sonic quest Random Numbers has been pursuing since 2015.“Second Wave” is the organic continuation of the journey initiated with the V.A. Parallel Routes, released at the beginning of the 2020 lockdown.This collection of 12 tracks - like the 12 months that have just passed, delivers a multi-faceted testimony of our experience with the pandemic, translating feelings of absence, desire and necessity into a mind-bending sound exploration.Despite crossing a wide range of tempos and genres, a common thread is found in the mystic, trippy and ritualistic atmospheres that populate this release. The metamorphic nature of each track continuously surprises the ears, blurring the boundaries between heady listening experience and dance floor bliss.

Fastforward 2023, back on the highway with four twisted tracks from Rupert Marnie. The Hamburg based producer with a weakness for spicy japanese food and science fiction novels is part of The Press Group label and Remoto Recordshop, which both has been close to the LV musical mind and hearts – delivers the stuff we want to play with. Fail we may, sail we must.

Nonetheless come forward with another sound lecture in Intelligent Downtempo Music, this time with an EP consisting of four cuts well balanced in between the dancefloor and a high fidelity sound installation.

Having explored rather obscure and downtempo territory with Mr. G's album Pearls Don't Lay On the Shore earlier this year, CHILDHOOD returns with another discernig 12" dedicated to the dancefloor. Welcome to PLACE OF CONNECT PT.01! Ed Davenport, who has mainly focussed on his INLAND moniker in recent years, brings back another distinctive side of his personality delivering three unique, raw and pumping house cutz under his real name. The A-side starts off with Suntazia, an acid break beat anthem that sheds light and euphoria onto any dance floor, and is followed by the true jacking groove that is Inertia. The B-side is made up of Electricity, a wonderful testimonial to those magic moments on the dance floor, when everybody in the room just moves and moves... beyond the need of unnecessary gimmicks and sonic spectacles.