Author: dave

“Skinny Puppy founder Cevin Key’s first proper new solo record in nearly 20 years comes packaged in a gorgeous triple digipak gatefold CD with gorgeous art specially commissioned for this project! The album features collaborations from IAMX, Edward KaSpel, Traz Damji, Otto von Schirach and more. As one of the most influential electronic musicians of the last 40 years, Key’s Xwayxway sets a new bar.”

The sixth volume in Thomas Heckmann’s long-running series finds him raiding more lost arks of genre girth, revealing how well he mints extraordinary variations on many well-established electronic architectures. This particular volume is a moog-tastic parade across patch-chord theories first proposed by Mssrs. Schulze and Froese (with the academe playfulness of Subotnick lurking in the background), as Heckmann revels in glorious bits of symphonic extraterrestrialism wrought by the swirling sturm und drang of “The Heritage of Evolution” as well as the yesteryear tangerine dreams that make such electronic explorations so beautifully poignant and ravishing (the sprightly and engaging moonpop of “The Fishbowl Adventures”). And lest one think that Heckmann isn’t capable of showing us his dark side, the vantablack tone of his sequencers and pulsating mellotrons helps to invest “Veil of Secrecy” with coiling, poised menace. This is an artist who reminds us why we fell in love with synthesized sound in the first place: kaleidoscopic auras and arias that feel like the very heavens bursting open, atmospheric tundra that are at once organic and alien, conjuring the stuff of dreams, half-glimpsed and hallucinatory. That Heckmann is now a master of the wilder synth arts can hardly be contested—what is for certain is his remarkable breadth of ideas, punctuated by an obvious love for and remarkable facility with the hoary old synthesizers from which he spins his illustrious sonic yarns.

Petter Friberg, aka the imagistically vivid Motionfield, is no novice by any means (having released music for well over 15 years now), but it seems that as of late, his profile has been rising meteorically. In addition to this, his second full-length for Carpe Sonum, you can find him scattered across the breadth of IDM/electronica’s finest imprints, from Neotantra to Txt to Databloem. What links his work across the CD medium’s landscape is a gift for emotionalism that runs like blood through the electronic corpus, an ability to imbue even the slightest phrase with an almost overwhelming sense of melancholic heft. Each track on Capsula doesn’t bear the weight of titles: the eleven pieces form a thoroughly magnetic whole rich in a veritable abundance of atmospheric bromides. “Capsula Two” makes the most of only a few soaring chords, but the obtuse rippling effects tracking below the cloudbase suggest environs spanning great distance and space—the timelessness of Friberg’s waffling synths would’ve made ‘ol Pete N. proud. Further along, on “Capsula Six”, the probing tones yield a vista of expanding colorations and blossoming pulses, a thousand points of light arcing in all directions. Friberg seems to have tapped into the awe and mystery of the heavens, and in doing so, made its outer limits that much more beguiling. Simply wondrous stories.

I found myself drifting off to the spacey daydreamy melodies and then wondering, “which Boards album is this?—oh yeah…” It’s literally that dead-on. That said, to appreciate the album for what it is, it doesn’t exactly copy any particular existing BoC songs, it’s almost imagining a post-Campfire Headphase—lost tracks—release that never happened. Each piece will remind you ever so slightly of something you’ve heard before, but will ultimately take you somewhere new and reveal itself to be its own, unique entity. In some ways the beats are a bit more forward and punchier and the overall track selection is more like if you cherry-picked the greatest / catchiest hits versus a typical meandering album—making this a great and singular work in and of itself. –Clint Anderson, Igloo Magazine

Towards the end of 2019 I wrote and recorded Two Days Part 1. At this point it was just titled “Two Days” as I had not intended to compose a second part. My initial idea was to perhaps to do a series of long form works which would be released in the digital format, providing the inspiration continued to flow. In early 2020 I released “Two Days Pt 1” on bandcamp only and the response and support seemed very positive.

A few more long form works happened from week to week and then the Covid Pandemic lock down arrived, I found myself out of work as many others did and my long form works seemed to be a nice antidote for many who now found themselves in a new and very uncertain routine.

Many people asked if I planned to release these works on CD, which I liked the possibility of, however due to the proficient output of my work I doubted that any labels could take it on, so I decided to launch my own label to release these works. The original “Two Days” clocks in at 40 minutes so I decided that I would return to the piece and rework it to include a second part to give my fans/followers something extra if they wish to purchase the CD and also to utilise the space on the format.

Vogue Casio 96 is a collection of unreleased tracks and remixes with the odd one seeing the light of day recorded back in 1996-98.

White vinyl