Today we present you 74 among the records that caught our attention, minds and bellies the most this year, listed in alphabetical order (by artist). Each entry goes along a couple of intuitive tags to help you discover the general musical context for every recommendation, and also a brief comment to it. Of course, about the same amount of albums (or maybe ten times of that) would have deserved to be featured here or in any other ‘final year list’.

1) 333coconutz – Everyday get me closer to today and my true present will be death [Remote Heaven]

Listen / Tags: ambient, collage music, abstract, noise

“A collage of memories, echoes and emotions I’ve been dealing with lately. This album means a lot for me. This is a period of great changes in my life, both physically and mentally and this is the result of all this. This is dedicated to my old friends which helped me during the worst times. My new friends that make my new place a good place. All of my lost loves. Last but not least, Jonatan Misans Håstad Leandoer, his music, life and approach inspired me more than everything”.

2) AAVV – Doomshop Records Vol. 2 [Doomshop Records]

Listen / Tags: hip hop / rap, USA, lo-fi, gangsta, screw

Most hated. Most underrated. Volume two. Out now [via]

3) AAVV – Larum [Intruder Alert]

Listen / Tags: club, noise, abstract, sound collage, bass, techno

“Intruder Alert is a crew based in Warsaw. Navigating in the murky waters of “post-club” music, referencing rave (with projects such as “Sentimental Rave”), acid, techno, “global” ambient and various mutations of DAW-driven bass music. Their latest compilation, entitled Larum, is out now and features 18 tracks from artists virtually or physically attached to the imprint (from Cologne-based Swan Meat to Tokyo’s Kentaro Minoura). All the proceeds from the sales of the compilation will go to the Polish Center for Women’s Rights. Larum features exclusive tracks by artists: Alobhe, Astma, Bgknb, B.yhzz, Constellation Botsu, Grań, Immune, Kentaro Minoura, Kry, La Bodyhorreur, Nunu, Sentinel, Sentimental Rave, Shodan, Swan Meat & Dj Heroin, Terribilis, Ubu Boi, Xin” [via]

4) AAVV – UNITI, Reclaiming The Void [Self-Released]

Listen / Tags: club, electronic, experimental, London, uptempo

“UNITI is a London-based platform for LGBTQ+ womxn / nb DJs & musicians to express themselves in an all-inclusive safer space. UNITI consists of a selector crew with ears tuned to experimental club, drum tracks & LGBTQ+ dance music subcultures. Drop into a UNITI set on their monthly Radar Radio show, at one of their parties, or at any of their DJ sets around Europe & you can expect to hear trance, intense drum, Jersey Club, baile, RnB, vogue, house, queer & femme rap, dark club; sets that celebrate all that is unique & alternative in dance music. We are incredibly proud to present our debut compilation album, focusing on voidness & sadness as felt and presented by womxn / themed around womxn & non-binary artists reclaiming ownership of darkness, sadness & the void (a concept within the arts often centering around & defined by males). Composed entirely of original tracks by artists from around the globe” [via].

5) AAVV – Xquisite Nihil – seize the means of production [Quantum Natives]

Listen / Tags: club, experimental, digital, noise, sound collage

“Butt of Marxist memes the internet over, “seize the means of production” is a phrase borrowed from one of Communism’s central tenets. It prescribes the working class and socialist revolutionaries to take back ownership of infrastructure, of the systems producing goods and capital. It’s an idea borne by Xquisite Nihil’s new compilation, titled after the maxim, out via London/URL-based label Quantum Natives. Berlin-based Oxhy, who shepherds the loose online collective of effervescent artists and producers, spoke to us last year about ‘security through obscurity’ – in essence, taking control of a system by way of ambiguity. seize the means of production comes across similarly, full of enigmatic characters seizing control in their own obscure fashions, each too faint for dominant systems to take hold of. Highlights include Oxhy’s six-minute slow-jam derived from Wayne Wonder’s 2003 single “No Letting Go,” and Yves Tumor’s take on pop rockers Paramore’s “Pressure,” which turns the 2005 emo classic into a cursive piano ballad. Elsewhere, callous, overdriven tracks like i.Ruuu’s “lindseysHAVOCin2armsOFaLessA-” and Blue Stork’s “splitterboo 0.00x late (DIVINE DRAGON LORD TIDAL REEV)” are countered by heartwarming tones on Be-ccareful’s “HEART HEAL SOON” and the elegant orchestration of Final Heal’s “Anna’s Journal” [via]

6) A Sphere Of Simple Green – With An Oblique Glance [Azoth]

Listen / Tags: experimental drone improv industrial noise non-idiomatic improvisation

“A Sphere Of Simple Green is the trio of Adriano Orrù (doublebass), Silvia Corda (piano and toy piano) and Simon Balestrazzi (electronics and sound objects). Six years after “Untitled Soundscapes”, their debut on Magick With Tears, they are finally back with a batch of new tracks. Formed in 2010 and mostly devoted to a personal form of non-idiomatic improv, the small ensemble operates intermittently: “The three of us don’t play much often together as ASoSG but when it happens new material sprouts up in the most immediate and spontaneous way. We never decide before what to play or how, nor we have an agenda. When we meet we don’t talk much about music but about people, books, movies, politics […]”. This new album, coming after a long hiatus, is not the result of a shared research in sound and musical language but it rather represents the confluence of three very different paths, three personalities striving for a common ground. The sound architecture of “With An Oblique Glance” swells and unravels with a dense textural interaction between acoustic and electronic sounds, a constant juxtaposition of extended techniques and real time digital processing as if the ensemble were trying to blur the limits of given language and form. “We’ve chosen to allow ourselves the greatest possible freedom and this makes us play together with an even greater attention. Listening carefully one another, finding a balance through silence and space are the most important elements at play, what we really are focused on” [via]

7) ABADDONN – Love’s Sorrow/Dramatic Relationship [Nether]

Listen / Tags: electronic, abstract, digital, synth

Mixed by Matthias Girardi; master by Antonio Gallucci; design by Alberto Bertelli; also featured in GUESTMIX#25 by Weightausend.

8) Adamennon – Le Nove Ombre Del Caos [Artetetra / Boring Machines / Weird Tapes Rekords]

Listen / Tags: soundtrack, noise, ambient, Italian Occult Psychedelia

“Heavily influenced by the Italian Prog/horror scene that sprang up in the seventies, “Le Nove Ombre Del Caos” is the soundtrack to a movie not yet made, the music a swirling mix of gothic organ, twisted psychedelia and heavy guitar passages, the whole thing pounding the senses into submission, with plenty of twists and turns and a gloriously overblown heart.  Opening with the church organ madness of “Un Sospiro Nel Profondo Nero” you are immediately pulled into the music, a dark atmosphere grabbing you as a pulsing sequence dances over the organ work leading you down a particularly creepy rabbit hole. Opening with a chilling piano waltz, “Il Museo Delle Anime Perse” suddenly exploded into a slice of heavy, Gothic Prog, the lyrics sung by psychotic monks on a day trip to hell, a track that sounds even better at paralysing volume the atmosphere enhanced even further by what follows as “La Giostra Del Folle” leads into a nursery for the unsane, a twinkling waltz, manic laughter and a general air of malevolance pervade the room, a mobile spins aimlessly and far away a door creaks and slams, music to make you look over your shoulder and you are almost grateful as the next track takes you back to the heavy prog sound. For the rest of the album the heaviness shares the stage with atmospheric drones, the sounds of shovels and plenty of noise, all summed up on the final track, a thirteen minute epic that begins with a vocal section that is almost jolly, but perhaps jolly creepy, reminding me of The Flying Pickets, at least until the chanting takes us back to the monastery and the atmosphere leads back down, a droning organ adding to the feel, tension building until the track falls into the pits of hell, deep dark drones, creeping synths and pulses squirming together in a pool of noise” [via].

9) Aghnie – Club Envy [Genot Centre]

Listen / Tags: electronic, abstract, club, dancehall

“One could situate “Club Envy” by Georgian producer Aghnie in an imaginary Tbilisi club. With a barrage of eco-friendly synthetic flutes, quirky but labyrinthine percussion and a kind of hypothetical global-R&B vibe, these tunes might be envisioned as ringtones emanating from an alien greenhouse covered in luminous tribal patterns. Throughout, there are morphing blips, cracks and clicks shrinking, stretching, zooming, like lifeforms ready to metamorphize and fly away with new-fangled wings. But these tracks are more than catchy, intricate contraptions – these crystalline synth tones suggest a new idiom, a fluent musical mother tongue connecting the most unlikely of worlds – a long forgotten utopian civilisation to the immediacy of the club, the mythos and ancestral forms of the folk orchestra to a virtual wonderland of texture maps, mutating grains and realer-than-real instrument renderings” [via].

10) Antwood – Sponsored Content [Planet Mu]

Listen / Tags: abstract, ambient, illbient, industrial, juke, experimental

“Antwood (a.k.a. Canada’s Tristan Douglas) returns to Planet Mu with his second album ‘Sponsored Content’. The album is more reflective than his debut, last year’s ‘Virtuous.scr’. The relentless mood of the first album has given way to a more melodic, stripped out sound. It still shakes with speed and energy, but with more space, more moments of delicate sadness and strange cyborg pop. What comes to the fore in ‘Sponsored Content’ is Tristan’s gift for melody, coupled with the uncanny feeling that somehow his strange music is an entire ecosystem of it’s own. It’s best explained by Tristan himself: “This record was made during a very challenging year. Some of these challenges were for the best, some were not, most were both, others were neither. The music is inextricably tied to these events, whether I like it or not, and I’ve begun peeking out from behind my self-imposed veil of heavy conceptualization; revealing things about myself that my previous album Virtuous.scr didn’t. Sponsored Content explores this idea of subversive advertisement, at least superficially. It’s obviously about the ubiquity of ads and the commodification of online content. The unlikely placement of ads in the music aims to force the listener to become hyper-aware of being advertised to rather than passively internalizing it. But after the record was finished, it became undeniable that really it wasn’t so much a “concept record” about advertisement; it’s as much about intentionally devaluing the things I’ve invested myself into, and over-complicating my work. When I realized this, I considered taking the ads out, and playing the music straight. But I left the record as it is: honest, flawed, with a little humour, and slightly up its own ass” [via].

11) Attilio Novellino, Collin McKelvey ‎- Hypehunt (Random Numbers Split Series Vol​.​5) [Random Numbers]

Listen / Tags: ambient, experimental, noise, drone, electroacoustic

“Started in 2014, the collaboration between Attilio Novellino and Collin McKelvey produced two albums: Hypehunt and Mètaphisiques Cannibales. Sons of the same approach, shared by similar sound sources and similar compositional techniques, the two works find in the different suggestions around which they are made, the specificity that allows them to grasp its essence, autonomous and complementary at the same time. Where in Mètaphisiques Cannibales is staged “the perverse theater where the other is always represented and invented”, or otherwise altered through determined cultural devices that do not allow real knowledge, Hypehunt pays attention to the contrasts existing between the different speeds through which you can travel through the temporal dimension, live the contemporary music space. Using elements that conform to dominant aesthetics, work in accordance with some of the mainstream paradigms, is an artistic choice or a self-defense mechanism used to cope with the hierarchical and competitive dynamics of a more saturated and crowded underground music space? Acoustic instruments, analog synthesizers, modular synthesizers, tape recordings magnetic and found-sounds have been used in composite compositing, mixing and editing typical of concrete music, combined, through different steps with electronic processing and granular synthesis. Hypehunt follows the path that ideally combines the experimental music properly mentioned, the one that dates back to the 1950s, to contemporary electronics, the debut of instances and stylistic figures and cultures matured at the turn of the eighties and nineties, well perceivable in the disc” [via].

12) Bonaventure – Free Lutangu [Purple Tape Pedigree]

Listen / Tags: grime, experimental, abstract, digital

“Bonaventure, real name Soraya Lutangu, follows up her ‘Complexion’ single released on NON Worldwide last year with her EP, ‘FREE LUTANGU,’ out on PTP in May. Described by Lutangu as having been born out of “a violent clash of sorrow and love,” this EP explores themes of institutional racism and oppression – something she’s experienced first hand growing up in Lausanne, Switzerland, of mixed African and European heritage. Listeners are confronted head-on by these issues with the pummeling opener, “Supremacy,” acting as an ominous movie trailer narrated by samples of Sister Souljah’s speech from Bill Moyer’s PBS series ‘Listening To America,’ and in titles such as “Mulatre” and Diaspora.” Closing track “Fearlings” also sees Bonaventure collaborate with artist and writer Hannah Black – who contributes on vocals – offering a first glimpse into their ANXIETINA project, a performance piece realized in music, words and textiles by Lutangu, Black and designer Ebba Fransen-Waldhor” [via].

13) Burqa Boyz – أسلحة ضخ جاف حدب (Arms Pumping / Dry Humping) [Ormolycka]

Listen / Tags: hip hop, rap, sound collage, lo-fi

Lil Ugly Mane, Nickelus F, Mammal, Skull Katalog, Shams, Plack Blague, Cities Aviv, and Chino Amobi figure in Ormolycka’s 2017. Insane records for an insanely good record label. Just check it on Discogs.

14) Cemetery – Excoriation (瘢痕) [Angoisse]

Listen / Tags: electronic, ambient, dreamy

“Producer Cemetery is keeping busy, as much as one constructing uneasy but at times peaceful electronic music can get. The project’s latest EP, Excoriation, comes via Spanish label angoisse, and highlights the lighter side of a project that can get dark. The producer gets downright spiritual on “Unknown Stains In Yr Memory,” a lithe song featuring woodwinds and bright keyboards, giving way to a vocal sample looped over and over again until it becomes a meditative mantra. Following number “Cosmo” plays with space, allowing silence between waves of electronics, disrupted only by some quivering additions. Still, more uncomfortable passages emerge, such as on the soft-to-loud “ADD” and the gurgling “Affordance” [via].

15) Cerimonia Secreta – Da Sempre [Occult Punk Gang]

Listen / Tags: punk, hardcore punk, occult punk, post-punk, noise

“Da Sempre” is the debut record of the obscure multi-headed creature called Cerimonia Secreta, born straight from the depths of the DIY Milan, IT hardcore punk scene. The members have been feeding on noise and urban paranoia for at least one entire year before releasing its first demo tape. Cerimonia Secreta rises from the will, minds (and drugs) of the Milan / Monza based Occult Punk Gang collective, one among the best punk crews in Northern Italy, responsible for amazing gigs and deranged parties – just check it yourself.

16) Coco Bryce – Ayakashi EP [7th Storey Projects]

Listen / Tags: jungle, drum and bass, breakbeat

“7th Storey Projects is pleased to welcome back the Myor Massiv head honcho for his 3rd release on our label. Earlier this year, Coco Bryce travelled to Tokyo and Osaka for a small series of gigs. Thouroughly impressed by his experiences there, upon returning home, he immediately took to crafting a slew of jungle and hip hop tracks, heavily influenced by everything he’d seen, heard, felt and tasted in the Land of the Rising Sun. The ep kicks off with its title track, Ayakashi. Dark, fierce and mysterious like the mythical creatures it was named after, it builds up slowly, utilizing a combination of chopped up Japanese percussion, haunting flutes and Hot Pants breaks, before switching to full on Amen assault mode halfway through the tune. Shinjuku is one of Tokyo’s most well known wards, and also the place where Coco found the records from which the samples were sourced to construct this number: a turntablism beat/scratch album, and a compilation of traditional work songs, this particular one originating from the gold mines of the island of Hokkaido. On the B1 track, Kaguya, he takes a more gentle approach: sweet, yet melancholic, like the Miyazaki movie of the same name. The ep is rounded off with Hotaru, which borrows from an entirely different source of inspiration, namely DJ Krush’s abstract take on boom bap hip hop. Shards of mid-90s Mo Wax are blended with anime samples, making for a solid two and a half minutes of Golden Era-esque head nodding” [via].

17) Dasychira ‎- Immolated EP [Blueberry Records]

Listen / Tags: electronic, NY, club-ish, abstract

Dasychira is a South African electronic artist living in NYC. Working with unusual found sounds and textures, Dasychira offers a personal perspective on the media he works with. Dasychira is South African artist Adrian Martens living in NYC. Futuristic half insect half human beats with stunning vocals by New York native Embaci. / “Immolated is the product of my experience adapting to new environments without having any safety net to hold on to. I wrote this project between New York, Berlin and Johannesburg and it felt like a regenerative process, each place had a different effect on the way the music would come together. Having few points of stability forced me to sacrifice convenience for something new and unknown. Finding identity in a new home is a difficult process to define, and I wanted to explore that through the idea of an insect being analyzed both physically and spiritually as their lives work in continual transient cycles. Insects have always been bizarre creatures to me, they’re like living aliens that can constantly regenerate and morph themselves – and their process of physical reincarnation is parallel to my feeling of inner adaptation to re-stabilize myself when I find myself in a new environment. The most superstitious occurrences I’ve had are with insects are shrouded in coincidental beauty or mystery. This superstition feels like an appendage of me very active when I make music, and I was fortunate enough to bring it alive in the compositional process and to meet wonderful people to guide it in a natural direction. Working with Dviance, Embaci and FaltyDL in different locations to put this record together was a blessing, many wonderful friendships came out of this project for me” [via].

18) David Kanaga – Operaism [Orange Milk Records]

Listen / Tags: playful, manic, quirky, concept album, avant-garde, sampling

“Operaism is a companion piece to David Kanaga’s recently released PC/Mac dog opera game (available at oikospiel.com). The title Operaism is apt, as the two through-composed sidelong movements feel like a massive digital Opera, with donald duck sounding voices joining orchestral flourishes and humorous but also affecting operatic melodies. The piece seems large and impenetrable at first; never boring, rather a labyrinth of musical ideas that continuously unfold with every listen. The following is a description of David’s companion game: “The Oikospielen Opera is developing an epic global-gaming festival called THE GEOSPIEL, scheduled for the year 2100. The opera’s employees, organized by the Union of Animal Workers, are trying to integrate the game dev dogs of Koch Games into their group, but these loyal pups love their jobs and boss Donkey Koch too much! Will there be Unity and community, or will Multiplicity and individuality prevail? Money has awakened– Pluto has captured the spirit of Orpheus, and Eurydice is lead composer in this operatic RE-FORM of the Adventure Game genre” [via].

19) Dinamarca – Himnos [Staycore]

Listen / Download / Tags: staycore, abstract, digital, electronic, club

“Welcome to paradise kiddo. Sit down your old E-gobbling Uncle Roger for a motorway trip down memory lane: Dinamarca has a new EP coming out, and it is, in the parlance of the era, “spiritual.” As a founding member of TMT favorite STAYCORE, Dinamarca has helped cement the Stockholm label and crew’s position as one of the most consistent forward-motions of the European club scene, teasing out global currents in the hardcore continuum with a joyous focus on the dance floor” [via].

20) DJ Orange Julius – The Grove [Mall Music Inc]

Listen / Tags: footwork, juke, Seattle

“DJ Orange Julius, a main player in the internet-based Mall Music collective, is known for freewheeling footwork concoctions that embrace the absurdist aesthetic espoused by label boss DJ Paypal. “Still Geekin,’” the first taste of the artist’s forthcoming debut album The Grove, finds a balance between playful irony and serious music-making. DJ OJ chops up Gucci Mane’s “Breakfast”—originally a languid, hazy rap song—into a frenetic symphony of percussion, looping Gucci’s morning mantra (“Smoke weed for breakfast/I drink lean for breakfast”) over booming kickdrums and skittering snares. This creates a constantly shifting drum pattern that changes before you’ve had the chance to grasp its nuances. DJ OJ said that he first heard “Breakfast” while smoking a morning blunt and he immediately went to work cutting it up. “Still Geekin’” is a scorched-earth footwork track, that brims with the enthusiasm of that particularly inspired smoking session” [via].

21) Eden Piracy – Oasification [Ghost City Collective]

Listen / Tags: abstract, electronic, mutant, sample, noise, digital

“Eden Piracy is the project born from the virtual encounters between Kuthi Jinani and Beta Tyrant, Italian youngsters and explorers of futuristic territories. The union between raw rhythmics and desolate soundscapes brings to life organic and ever-evolving tracks, recorded via massive use of sample and synthesis. Oasification is the perfect soundtrack to score unforeseen footage of the birth of mutant alien life forms. Also featuring a collaboration with the collective project Tacet Tacet Tacet” [via].

22) Enderie – Tape 1 [ROOM 40 / A Guide To Saints]

Listen / Tags: low tech samplers, cut-up, techno, industrial

“Enderie is Andrew McLellan. Forged by a passion for low tech sampler explorations and hard repeated sonic phrasings, Enderle’s debut edition, unassumingly titled Tape 1 is an ambivalent product of ever-accelerating gentrification. Like so many McLellan found himself in a sound field of industrial demolition and recreation, market speculation and erasure. A stolen body hammered under successive waves of (de)construction, something documented in the video which accompanies this edition. “Every angle is literally a view I have from my current window,” He says of the video work, “I’m looking down into a pit filled with mostly de-unionised 6-day per week workers who have travelled much, much further than I would have to if that were my workplace, building their way out of the city. So what’s my role here?“ Enduring successive incursions into his everyday, as various tower blocks gradually grey-out any hint of daylight from his room, McLellan’s Tape 1 documents these intensities of contemporary city living. The music itself bares these marks, calculated blasts of techno infused cut-ups are layered, reduced and reconstructed. The sense of history in each piece, slowly twisted and reconstituted, much like each street with its once-community now pushed along, creates something that falls into the category of ‘strange familiar’” [via].

23) Exo_C – Laboyatta [Kvitnu]

Listen / Tags: electronic, noise, sound collage, industrial

“Exoterrism and C_C join forces on this sonic avalanche of dense and dubby discordance. Described as “noise poetry of distorted sonic perfection,” Kvitnu elaborate once again on the fundamental properties of extreme abstract electronics—Laboyatta being the latest nine-track collage. All manner of broken machinery is transformed into engorged chaos. “Dub1” delivers this message effectively as acid squelching sounds uniformly break apart into pseudo-techno form. “Song1” is seemingly a distant cousin—gravitating gritty bass above a crumpled audiogram template. Elsewhere you’ll be hard-pressed to find any form of calm. “Up” manipulates minimal frequency bursts into a chaotic technoid AFX-like distraction. Laboyatta mines through the art of variation—that is to say it highlights pairs and even triplet tracks that appear to be altered and fractured remnants of each other. A highlight in the world of modular dub-scrapping sound effects and severely disjointed mechanical hypnosis” [via].

24) Faithful – Dignity Proxy, Unity Narc [Self Released]

Listen / Tags: grime, digital, club, electronic, dub, abstract

“Find yourself classically glitched. What if I don’t want what you want? Here are all the possibilities. And your choice determines my complete attention. Oh, this is what you need? Tell me the outcome of love. Where do you find complete comfort? There is an assistance that can be of help. Right on the edge. It’s secular but yet” [via]. Limited edition compact disc; contains 14 individual tracks. Mastered by Michael Riordan, artwork by Alex van Dorp.

25) Fellatia Geisha – Whorer Core [Self-Released]

Listen / Tags: psychoerotic hip Hop, rap, Horrorcore

“This world is not approved / Get my tubes tied / Like it’s my duty not to reproduce / I leave you bruised and abused / Because I know it’s all useless / Life is a delusion. [Verse 1: Fellatia Geisha] This existential crisis I don’t want to exist / And as a nihilist / I can’t find a reason to live or let live / Let alone leave him alone / I want a boy to call my own / So I follow him home / I need lots of attention / I sense your apprehension / I take action without direction / Have passion but not discretion / So I make messes / I’m reckless / And I’ll never learn my lesson / And I’ll never have your blessing / So I guess I’ll keep transgressing / And regressing / Into this desperate state / I must express my hate / In an aggressive way / Babe / I’ve got a blade / And you’ve got intestines / Fillet you, and wear them as a necklace / Spay you / And then I will fellate / Your slayed genitalia / I’m a necrophiliac / And I’m really feeling ya / Take you to the fields / And bury ya / At preordained coordiance / I’m out of accordance / With the restraining order / I’m insane and I can’t afford a lawyer / So I run for the border / Boy I’ll water board ya with the pussy / This is torture! / How unfortunate for you / Get the chloroform / Mount your head on a board / Now you’re my ornament / You’re just wall décor / I like you better post mortem / I have no decorum / Nor a morsel of remorse / Kiss you with this cold sore / Such an abhorrent whore / Should be aborted / Or left at the orphanage / I’m gorgeous” [via].

26) Femminielli Noir – Échec & Mat [Mind Records]

Listen / Tags: electronic, industrial, dark ambient, experimental, abstract, leftfield, romantic, power electronics, disco

“Chess is a socially acceptable way of asserting dominance, the spiritual cousin of psychological manipulation. French is a suitable metaphor for the inability to understand metaphors. Human beings are the expression of a monstrous biology not their own. All stressors can be activated at a remote distance, the legacy of those who may have had every reason to hate pleasure. This is considered an advantage in one particular version of the long game. Mind Records is pleased to announce Échec et Mat, the debut LP from sonic provocateurs Femminielli Noir. They have sought to teach Québec the social skills it needs to refuse its enduring legacy as a narcotized pig of indeterminate sentience. Their music is the sound of an endless conversation about whether the mind can be altered at all, while your instructors await in bathroom stalls and back alleys to coach you on what to say (nothing) and do (unclear). It may be impossible to tell whether you have chosen well or were guided poorly, and you are encouraged to cry about it as much as you like so that others may feel less alone. If you stare hard enough, though, you will see that they have kept their word all along. Who, exactly, would tell you otherwise?” [via].

27) FKOFF1963 – Desapontado [Self-Released]

Listen / Tags: Brazilian, funk, electronic, hardstyle, rave, reggaeton

“Meu primeiro ep tá disponível pra ouvir no soundcloud. Peguei referência no reggaeton, funk e no hardcore. A capa é essa daqui” [via]. @clubtormenta: “Com o impacto de uma catástrofe, todos que necessitam gritar são bem vindos ao começo de uma nova cena eletrônica de ritmos assustadores em São Paulo” [via].

28) Fret – Over Depth [Karlrecords]

Listen / Tags: techno, experimental, greatest living musician, dub, industrial

“After a hiatus of several years, he is back with a new album under the guise of FRET. Working at a faster tempo than his SCORN material, the FRET project first surfaced years ago on the DOWNWARDS label, rooting it firmly in the dark, industrial and technoid world, and appeared more recently on Tresor (Kern mix by OBJEKT), maintaining the characteristic colossal bass-heaviness and textural depth. And now a full album on KARLRECORDS, Berlin. HARRIS fans will be delighted to know that despite the 130 bpm tempo, the newest FRET still resolutely avoids any straight four-on-the-floor kickdrums; every track lurches, stumbles, staggers and charges forth with beats in beautifully broken asymmetry. We get 10 tracks of crushing, percussive destroyers, each itself a storm of precision chaos, with colossal low-end frequencies that’ll cause stampedes in the right circumstances. The classic HARRIS sound is there; searing waves of feedback distortion, intricate, interlocking rhythms and cold, abattoir atmospheres, especially track 6 “Stuck in the track at Salford Priors” which sounds like you’re being continuously suspended in the air from multiple explosions all around, each kickdrum throwing you up in the air, the next one going off before you can fall completely back to the ground. The lazy-minded would probably lump it in with the term “techno”, but the disciplined brutality, blasting landmine bass and interlocking shrapnel rhythms are clearly HARRIS’ own trademark style, sitting somewhere between SCORN and QUOIT. The tracks appear deceptively chaotic on the surface, yet each is meticulously and masterfully composed with great attention to layering and detail. MICK HARRIS fans rejoice, the dark lord still remains at the top of his game” [via].

29) Geodetic – Broken Consonance [Maple Death Records]

Listen / Tags: beats, noise, industrial, dark ambient

“The low thrust of a grainy claustrophobic man-made environment, heavy lights, rising atmosphere and human indecision. This is the world we live in, this is the constriction we go through every day, carelessly wading our lives through a bullshit narrative that still needs to be told. Here at the Maple Death HQ we need an OST that can discern the living from the dead, furthering ourselves from oblivion for just one extra day: Geodetic’s debut ‘Broken Consonance’ is our soundtrack today. Formed in late 2016, Geodetic is the electronic duo of Claudio Rocchetti and Jukka Reverberi. Industrial, techno, cassette culture, avant-garde fascination are all part of their sonic palette. They’ve been trading sounds via the complicated interwebz from their homes in Bolzano and Reggio Emilia, working relentlessly at night, headphones on, baby monitors dialed in at the 1, saturation monitors dialed in at the 10. You always have to cave in somewhere. ‘Broken Consonance’ opens with ‘I’, a pulsating steady cosmic serpentine hi-hat hissing away almost recalling early Boards Of Canada until saturated hand-claps lead us into 4 track Green Velvet era. ‘II’ moves effortlessly, a slow steady leftfield train of celestial paranoia; ‘III’ and ‘IV’ move from industrial frenzy to meditative landscapes, incorporating the Italian tradition and dark eleganza of 80’s synth cassette pioneers Daniele Ciullini, La Maison and power-electronics king Maurizio Bianchi; ‘VI’ is a pure EDM industrial banger, ripping apart on an Ike Yard-ish circular pattern spreading shards of white noise on broken euro beats. Communal dissonance, endearing infinite dreams” [via].

30) Giulio Aldinucci – Borders And Ruins [Karlrecords]

Listen / Tags: ambient, drone, noise, experimental, digital, abstract, electronic

“GIULIO ALDINUCCI is an Italian sound artist working in the fields of experimental electroacoustic music, field recording and ambient soundscape. Born 1981 in Siena, his catalogue comprises four solo albums on labels like DRONARIVM (CHIHEI HATAKEYAMA, AIDAN BAKER),TIME RELEASED SOUND or HOME NORMAL plus EPs and collaborative albums (a.o. with PLEQ). Furthermore , he wrote music for theatre, video art, documentaries and short movies and was awarded with an honourable mention at the 18th International Electroacoustic Composition Competition Música Viva 2017 for his composition “Mute Sirens”. Together with ATTILIO NOVELLINO, ALDINUCCI launched the project “Postcards From Italy” which consists of an album published by OAK EDITIONS, live events (the first one took place at Cafe OTO, London) and an installation by AIPS collective & GIANMARCO DEL RE. “Borders And Ruins”, his first album for KARLRECORDS, is a reflection on the instability of borders – borders as an extreme attempt to discriminate and rationalize that turns into a source of chaos and cultural ruins on both sides – and their impact on the relationship between people and territory. It is also a sonic diary: a constantly mutating soundscape where electronic sounds and field recordings (taken during several travels around the continent) blend into an ambient masterpiece of sublime beauty and sacral majesty” [via].

31) Harmonious Thelonious ‎– Apakapa EP [The Trilogy Tapes]

Listen / Tags: techno, tribal, tribal house

“Harmonious Thelonious is a solo-project focusing on rough and dense beats and textures inspired by american minimalist music and african rhythm patterns. A dervish bewt from Stefan Schwander’s Harmonious Thelonious for TTT, Apakapa catches the Düsseldorf-based explorer meeting the moroccan flute of Ghazi Barakat for one of the project’s jazziest, moodily hypnotic episodes. Apakapa initiates the session with a bright, pointillist geometry of thumb piano and grubbing, pendulous bass where Schwander gets freely harmonious with Barakat’s buzzing, expressive flute jabs in Sufi-esque style. That all cools down to a bluer sound with Low Beat, where Schwander’s swingeing bass pulse underlines and buoys the low key smoke plumes from Barakat’s flute, subtly processed into vaporous tendrils and smeared on the mix. And the DJs are left spoiled for choice with the B-side’s Whirling, which works equally brilliantly at 33 or 45rpm, with the kinda Photek style drum cadence also used by Don’t DJ, this time working beautifully as an opiated hip-charmer, or as an infectious sort of dancehall-techno bubbler” [via].

32) Jacopo Tripodi – Pegasys [HEEL]

Listen / Tags: electronic, techno, acid, dub, minimal

“Produced and recorded by Jacopo Tripodi. Artwork by Jacopo Tripodi and Gianluca Lonigro. Recorded November 2001 in Ferrobeton, Palmi. Produced by HEEL, WWW.HEEL.ZONE“ [via].

33) Jan Schulte – Tropical Drums of Deutschland [Music For Dreams]

Listen / Tags: jazz, folk, world, leftfield

“Copenhagen’s Music For Dreams label comes with yet another amazing concept album – a double vinyl and digital release of personal favourite tracks compiled by Salon Des Amateurs resident Jan Schulte, aka Wolf Müller. Schulte has pulled together a collection of ‘tropical drum’ music made in and around Germany and says the compilation stems from a “general fascination for music that describes places where the artists have never been.” Much of the music on ‘Tropical Drums Of Deutschland’ came out on small imprints in the late ’80s. Music For Dreams says that while the two-disc collection may be based in musical traditions from foreign lands, the album deals much more with introspection than exploitation. Schulte has also made a couple of exclusive edits for ‘Tropical Drums Of Deutschland’. According to all maps and witness accounts, Germany does not officially have any tropical forests. This is of no concern to Schulte however, who has unearthed many stunning examples of tropical drum music recorded there. Perhaps the number of botanical gardens and palm houses in Germany confused musicians into mistaking the climate, or maybe it was just a happy blend of escapism and multi-cultural integration within musical scenes that spawned such a curious output of indefinable tribal folk jazz. The musicians involved were mainly traditionally schooled, born and raised in Germany. At that time to be interested in foreign folk music might have seemed a gimmick to some, what with the emerging “world music boom” already snowballing into the mainstream. Songs about the jungle or the rainforest made by people that know the rainforest only from television and books. Somehow I think you can hear their mythical imagination and fantasy in those tracks,” he explains” [via].

34) JH1.FS3 – Allegiance [Self Released]

Listen / Tags: dark ambient, drone, noise, spoken word, experimental

“JH1.FS3 is the new electronic collaboration between Frederikke Hoffmeier and Jesse Sanes, who have previously worked together in the industrial outfit Fejhed and are known independently for their work as Puce Mary, and Liebestod and Hoax respectively. Though each figures individually in the now-generation of industrial noise—as Puce Mary and Liebestod respectively—JH1.FS3 delineates a more subtle “cinema of the ear.” Here, their words are spoken amidst a savvy re-assembly of 20th century avant-sonics: music concrète, technique extension, and pure electronic sound. Their live sets, and recent album on Sweden’s iDEAL Recordings, utilize material they synthesized while in residence at Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion EMS and hi-res field recordings, which grant listeners entry to the inner zones of the pair’s private and artistic relationships” [via].

35) Jonatan Leandoer127 – Katla [Year0001]

Listen / Tags: cloud rap, lo-fi, leftfield, hip hop

“Yung Lean is experimenting beyond the confines of hip-hop. Choosing to work his side-projects, Yung Lean once again uses his Jonatan Leandoer127 moniker to drop a new project known as Katla. Billed as an EP, Lean’s latest finds him eschewing his usual style for a more free-form, ambient-leaning sound. Today’s drop was apparently pieced together and recorded back in 2015, and presents a change of pace for Yung Lean. Katla is a self-produced effort without a single feature, and delivers six new songs” [via].

36) Kai Whiston – Fissure Price [Big Dada/Ninja Tune]

Listen / Tags: club, electronic, sound collage, beats, grime

“At just 18 years old the Dorset based Kai first got into production at the age of 12, teaching himself how to use digital production tools “with Google Chrome and 50 tabs open”, he started experimenting with remixing computer game soundtracks that he and his friends were playing at the time. His first break came after encouragement from Brainfeeder’s IGLOOGHOST (they actually hail from the same small town) who inspired Kai to start getting his music out into the world, and subsequently put him in touch with LA based label TAR, run by PBDY of Brainfeeder and JP Moregun (with Jeremiah Jae). They went on to release his debut EP “Houndstooth” in 2016, garnering immediate support from Mary-Anne Hobbs and leading to his inclusion as a featured producer, alongside Grimes and Jam City, on Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes mixtape “Humans Become Machines” in 2017. On his new material, Kai explains “This is an unveiling of some of the grim and humorous sounds I’ve been up to. More than anything, I wanted to portray a playful and juvenile sense of humour that I felt was missing in the music I was making and hearing, which ended up being a total blast to make. I was thoroughly intrigued in using aggressive sound as a mark-making tool and explore the malleability of sonics in a painterly & silly way. Actively running away from my direct influences & creating a universe around this sound was a really great process that had me laughing the whole time.” The artwork was created by Dallas-born NY-based artist Sam Rolfes. Sam has created his signature surreal digital work for artists as diverse as Kingdom, DAWN, Rihanna, Danny L Harle and Caroline Polachek. “Sam Rolfes was a heavy inspiration and perfect partner during the whole process. I can vouch that the visual stimuli, conversations and friendship we built were a big factor in making this project possible.” says Kai” [via].

37) Kelman Duran – 1804 Kids [Hundebiss]

Listen / Tags: dancehall, cumbia, abstract, bubbling, dub, reggae

“Upfront reggaeton bumpers from LA-based Dominican Kelman Duran, picked up for his debut album by Simone Trabucchi’s fantastic Hundebiss label – home to Lil Ugly Mane, Francesco Cavaliere and Jaws, among other notable outliers. Revolving themes as diverse as unrequited love and the Haitian revolution, delivered in pitched-up autotuned vocals by NYC’s Mess Kid on Solos (based on Dominican-Puerto Rican singer Ozuna’s No Quiere Enamorarse) for example, the set expresses a sort of patriotism from an outsider perspective – both from the position of a Black guy in the Dominican Republic, and as a Dominican in the “sanctuary” city of LA during the Trump era. That aspect follows thru in the “spiritual” tone of the album, with autotune and acres of reverb used to heighten the effect in a way recalling the use of autotune in North African arabic devotionals and street music and balancing out his rhythms’ putative prurience. In other words it’s a killer set, emotive and heavily rugged where it matters, with fierce club gear such as the blown-out CULO, DEMBOW SUENA, the militant drill of Mobb Deep and the straight-sluggin’ Matarnos jostling shoulders and hips with Kamixlo or Florentino-like sweeties like 1984, PRIMERO, ULTIMO, the hymnal 6 De La Mañana and the tender burn of La Pared” [via].

38) Kuthi Jinani – Discarga Verde [Beat Machine Records]

Listen / Tags: electronic, experimental, breaks, abstract, digital, jungle

“Beat Machine’s 2017 is going to be mental: after releasing “Swinging Flavors” fourth installment (with Itoa & Sully) and Sun Yufka debut EP “Jua” (with a remix by NAAFI member and Salviatek founder Lechuga Zafiro) Italy based label focused on electronic music is going to release a new EP in its main catalogue with the absolute debut of Giancarlo Brambilla aka Kuthi Jinani. After receiving huge support with his collaborative projects SunYufka (with Luca Zod) and Eden Piracy (with Beta Tyrant) working with labels such as Ghost City Collective and Bio Future Laboratory, the 19 years old producer from Bari (but now based in Milan, while studying Electronic Music at “Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatory) Kuthi Jinani drops his debut EP “Discarga Verde”: 5 original tracks, 5 heavy bass anthems moving their vibes from noise to proto-grime passing through raw trap, glitch, IDM, eccojams and hardvapour landscapes, defining a 100% out of mind talent. On the A-Side “Discarga” and “Peshi” reflects Kuthi’s rawness melting drum pattern variations connected to IDM scene and post-UK hardcore attitude (continuing to satisfy it on the B-Side with “Serpent”) while “Fluvial God Decompose Our Bodies” and “Yonder” pursue KJ experimental vein with a special dedication on Bass / Trap tendencies. On the B-Side “Discarga” is remixed by Tempa / Tectonic Recordings / Osiris Music UK producer Ipman” [via].

39) Lanark Artefax – Whities 011 [Whities]

Listen / Tags: industrial, IDM, experimental, sound collage, abstract, noise

“Lanark Artefax scales up a dazzling Braindance sound for Whities, firming up his electro rhythms and dynamic production for the clubs following more abstract, tentative aces on Cong Burn Waves and UIQ over the last couple of years. Flickering Debris acts as an excellent, vertiginous intro, tilting up like a rollercoaster car in the final moments before it goes into freefall, but then cannily deferring the gratification of the drop and leaving us suspended in choral hyperspace. The drop, if you want to call it that, comes proper with the hard, fine-tuned electro of Touch Absence, which arguably matches the clinical edge of Objekt’s white labels with the lushness of mid ‘90s AFX, although it also kinda takes us back to that SCSI/Finlow/Datathief era at the turn of the century. Hyphen To Splice follows into more abstracted, messed up designs somewhere between, say, the emotive nuance of Oneohtrix Point Never or Maxwell Sterling, and Rian Treanor’s bendy metrics, leaving the majestically vaulted chorales and sweeping recursive electronics of Voices Near The Hypocentre to blossom in delirious, mind-bending fractals” [via].

40) Lee Gamble – Mnestic Pressure [Hyperdub]

Listen / Tags: club, breaks, jungle, grime, dubstep, abstract

“On Lee Gamble’s stunning first major work since Koch [2014], the rave dreamer reawakens to decode and interpret his hallucinations for Hyperdub, coming to terms with the idea of Mnestic Pressure – a confluence of individual and collective pressures on contemporary memory – in an astonishly febrile, vivid collision and projection of jungle and ambient structures. With his move to Hyperdub following a string of modern classics for PAN, Lee Gamble has effectively reset his sound to realise a more intricate, restless matrix of ideas that seems to emulate the sound of a mind that’s too wired to sleep, rushing from an overload of inputs which it struggles to make sense of. In this case the struggle is perfectly sur/real, making the listener unsure of whether he’s awake or dreaming, or perhaps experiencing some combination of the two ostensibly opposing states of mind. As with his previous releases, Mnestic Pressure finds Lee acting as a conduit or plugged in psychopomp, absorbing the physical and mental pressures of life in London and online, and then transmuting, firming up those feelings in an elusively abstract style that conveys the daily bombardment of the senses, and by turns the memory, in a way which the written word will never fully capture. But in a marked departure from earlier releases, Mnestic Pressure reveals a subtle but decisive shift away from straighter 4/4 patterns towards a constant, broken flux of meters and velocities which can perhaps be heard to reflect the shift in popular perception of time as a linear sequence, to a more complex, difficult-to-grasp weave of timelines which expand and contract, sometimes folding in on themselves or short circuiting in a sort of Déjà vu or jolting hypnic jerks. It’s really best consumed from front-to-back in order to really allow that tempestuous momentum to take hold, as it plays out like a live or DJ set in some of the more slippery passages, especially the psychoacoustic smudge between East Sedducke, 23 bay Flips and Swerva, and the deft transitions from You Hedonic’s amniotic suspension to the glancing arrhythmic ballistics of UE8, but the DJs will also find very useful parts to extract in the Rian Treanor-meets-Demdike Stare flex of Ignition Lockoff, and his absolutely deadly jungle bullet, Ghost” [via].

41) Lemna – Urge Theory [Horo]

Listen / Tags: grey area, drum and bass, jungle, ambient, experimental, deep

“Maiko Okimoto aka Lemna has had an interesting history. Through 2010-2012 she deployed her skills as a vocalist under the name Key MC, supporting releases by fringe D&B artists looking to push the bracket of what’s possible at a 160 BPM+ tempo, such as ENA and Naibu. With this background and a new found interest in live-performed, bilious techno, it’s little wonder she has found her latest home on Berlin-based label Horo. Along with Hidden Hawaii and a handful of others, Horo are one of the few imprints to bridge the gap between D&B and the German capital’s best-loved export. Titled ‘Urge Theory’, this release makes up Okimoto’s second contribution to the label following on from a collaborative release with Auxiliary’s Sam KDC under the name Ourea. In many ways, this latest release is more of the same, but there’s no denying it’s meticulously crafted. One of the most impressive things about the EP is that Okimoto seems to use nothing more than an assortment of drums and percussive hits. The release is a viciously frenetic collection of phasing polyrhythms. ‘DLPFC’ stutters and tremors constantly, hyperactive snares twitching above churning low-end. This theme is only broken when we reach the closer, ‘Blot’, which centres around a groaning monotone bass note; like the bows of a ship caught in a storm and struggling to retain their structure. Okimoto has found a good match with Horo, and vice-versa. The way in which she forms her tracks differentiates ‘Urge Theory’ from the endless churn of Berlin techno. Okimoto eschews traditional drops, for something for mature and complex in structure. It feels like you are constantly forced one step in front of where the track is headed – giving a feeling not dissimilar to deja-vù” [via].

42) Louis Me – Onda de Choque [Total Trax]

Listen / Tags: club, future dancefloor, deconstructed music, abstract, noise, electronic, bass, hardcore

“Onda de Choque stands as Louis Me’s debut release, a 5-track EP not for the faint-hearted. Inspired by genres like the ’90s-’00s Makina and Hard Techno, Onda de Choque packs a powerful and effective punch. Distorted samples, rough kicks or hypnotic melodies are some of the elements that Louis Me uses to shape up this aggressive club soundtrack” [via].

43) Love Theme – Love Theme [Alter]

Listen / Tags: electronic, ambient, drone, experimental, noise

“If there’s a single guiding motif to this debut recording from Love Theme, it’s the melancholic throb of love learnt and love lost, a descent that tumbles and slips through the overall feeling of looking back. As intimately and carefully as its parts cohesively lament a narrative, it’s the after-image that catches your breath, like a memory morphing as it is observed. Comprised of Alex Zhang Hungtai of the now defunct project Dirty Beaches, along with Austin Milne, and Simon Frank, ‘Love Theme’ is arranged from an improvised session with twin saxophones, synthesizer, percussion, drum machine, and voice. Over the course of a year the material was edited remotely from the members’ home cities of Montreal, London, LA and Taipei. The record’s sullen ambience is never left too long to set in. The aching wane of the saxophone arrangements frisk the propulsive aggro moments of the mixed percussion, forcing a melancholic halo upon the queasy stupor of the synthetic swing that closes each side of the record. It’s a bizarre lust for life that’s being divined from equal parts dislocation and invigoration, a potent remedy which perhaps Love Theme can call their own. Percolating and finding form over time, the record instinctively follows a travel narrative, moving across a series of landscapes, reflecting the innate experiences of the expressions and voices that were first collected in South London back in February 2015” [via].

44) Luigi Monteanni – Om Telolet Om [Canti Magnetici] 

Listen / Tags: non-music, folk, world, field recording

“Om telolet om” is a composition made out of small and medium audio cut-ups and samples taken from various youtube videos compilations regarding a specific theme named after these words. “Om telolet om” refers to a meme, and to a popular internet subculture, originally developed in Indonesia and that successively spread through other countries. The meme consists in showing a sign (usually a simple handwritten piece of paper) on which the aforementioned phrase, that literally means “Uncle honk uncle”, is written. In doing that, the kids try to get the attention of the bus drivers of several famous Indonesian bus companies, trying to make them honk. The joke is based on the fact that those busses all have customized honks which allow them to produce weird sequences of sounds that range from silly and very recognizable westerns melodies to pure 8-bit raving madness. The sequences and the honks, although not unique and similar to the ones that can be found for example in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, remind at a time of traditional reed and string instruments (tarompet, rebab) and percussions of the Indonesian tradition while being only simple successions of synthesized sounds. While the deep reasons of this whole subculture remain partially unknown up til now, it is true that this is a movement that has its own consistence, resulting in unprofessional street parades and both bus and bus drivers meetings (which sounds are also present in the track). “Om telolet om” is therefore a fake series of field recordings in the double sense of the non-autenticity of the recording phases (which anyway takes in account the online birth and life of the phenomenon) and of the choice of the subject, trying at the same time to give a playful sight on sound culture, subculture, field recordings and their contemporary developments. Luigi Monteanni is one of the founders of Artetetra collective and already component of musical projects devoted to the ambiguous mix between exoticism and the exotic and between fake cultural appropriation and authentic cultural invention” [via].

45) Lutto Lento – Dark Secret World [Where To Now?]

Listen / Tags: electronic, experimental, breaks, techno, weird stuff

“Where To Now? cordially invite you into Lutto Lento’s ‘Dark Secret World’. After a string of releases on labels such as FTD, Proto Sites, DUNNO Recordings and ourselves, we now find Polish artist Lubomir Grzelak ready to present a fully realised, full-length distillation of his distinctly exuberant and unique electronic narratives. ‘Dark Secret World’ takes it’s cues from a ridiculously diverse palette of influences… from Dancehall, Jungle, and American Sacred Hymns to more abstract influences such as Goosebumps, Caribbean magic beliefs, Rudolf Steiner, and Disney’s ‘The Goddess of Spring’. Upon initial digestion of these influences your initial reaction is probably that this is an amalgamation of voices which appear too diverse to entwine, but for those who know Lutto’s work will also know that it’s exactly this psychedelic and wild stirring pot of source material partnered with Lubomir’s precise percussive and improvised sample led persuasions that make him stand out as a unique and flourishing figure in electronic music. ‘Dark Secret World’ is certainly a mystical trip, with Lubomir conversing with and pooling from a sampled palette that is ultimately a deep, personal, dark and twisted tale of horror and intrigue, melding this gambit with his signature air of light & wildly percussive beat led playfulness has allowed him to create something wholly other. ‘Dark Secret World’ stands as an expertly and clearly painstakingly crafted 43 minute movement through ethereal & fantastical unfamiliar realms to sudden sweeps of the totally familiar where rewinds, heavy breaks, bass waves, whistles, airhorns, sirens, etc weave together to form an album which is both extremely odd yet totally cohesive and absorbing. Within just a few years, Warsaw-based producer Lubomir Grzelak aka Lutto Lento has established himself as one of the most singular and innovative voices in underground electronic music. Crafting brindled mash-ups that tear apart aesthetic standards in a many-sided bazaar of upside-down rhythms, the Polish producer’s deconstructivist approach shows equal ease with basic shapes and more complex audio structures” [via].

46) Lyzza – Powerplay [Symbols]

Listen / Tags: dancehall, electronic, club, future bass, deconstructed

“Brazilian-born, Amsterdam-based Lyzza has been burning up the European club scene since emerging late last year as a force to be reckoned with. Set to be released on November 10, Lyzza’s longest recorded statement to date arrives via Symbols this Fall, showing off a brash style of contemporary club music that displays a natural verve for performance. Prominently featuring Lyzza’s own voice, the Powerplay EP is a tour de force of huge riffs and vocals that leap out of the mix, provided by Lyzza herself, as well as frequent Sega Bodega and Coucou Chloe collaborator Shygirl. Beginning with the deliberate march of “Talk Ur Talk”, Powerplay unravels slowly over six tracks, a constant build in energy that climaxes with the peak time strut of “LOL, You Wild!” before settling down for the haunting chill and cracking drums of “La Unica”. Hardstyle kicks and splashy trance melodies provide texture and drama throughout the whole release, while the aforementioned Shygirl provides a breathy vocal performance that demands repeat listens. And regardless of context, Lyzza has provided a debut that immediately commands full attention, a true stop and turn moment from one of Europe’s most talented up-and-comers” [via].

47) Machine Girl – Because I’m Young Arrogant And Hate Everything You Stand For [Orange Milk]

Listen / Tags: Orange Milk forever, abstract, noise, metal, digital, electronics, sound collage

“How is anybody supposed to deal with the daily horror that we’re subjected to these days? The level of violence that we’ve become accustomed to is terrifying. Every morning promises to present something even more sickening and death-bringing than the day before. The abusive, prejudiced mechanics of our society have become so tightly woven together that, even now, in a time when our insidious, pervasive behavior is more pronounced than ever, we have never felt more powerless. What can we do to stop this? Will things really get better? Are we just screaming into an empty void? …BECAUSE I’M YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR doesn’t have the answer to our problems, but that doesn’t make it any less ready to confront them. Machine Girl’s music has always flitted between various poles of underground sound, diving into harsh footwork drills on 2014’s WLFGRL and grinding out vapor-lite pop moves on their Orange Milk debut, GEMINI. But BIYAAHEYSF takes the project to an entirely new dimension of styleplay. Fueling itself to capacity with the craven residue of every kind of high-tempo music imaginable (and front-loaded with absolutely ravenous, frothing vocals that even the tag “cyber-punk” doesn’t fully do justice), the album heaps frustration upon frustration atop one another, becoming a pure manifestation of blind rage that, surprisingly, carries an uncommon sense of self-awareness not often heard in protest music” [via].

48) Meme Vivaldi – MIDI Random Hangover after listening to Bach and buyin some new Apps [Self-Released]

Listen / Download

“Tracklist: 1. Intro 0 2. Experiments on Virtual Music 3. Night at the Digitalis Opera 4. MIDI Random Hangover after listening to Bach and buying a new app 5. MIDI Random Hangover after listening to Bach and buying some new Apps (Variatio no.2) 6. MIDI Random Hangover after listening to Bach and buying some new Apps (Variatio no.1) 7. MIDI J.S. Bach Crab Canon“.

49) Mhysa – Fantasii [Halcyon Veil]

Listen / Tags: vocals, R&B, electronic, abstract, club, bass, future bass

“Prolific as one half of the Philadelphia performance and sound art group SCRAAATCH, fantasii finds MHYSA in full flex, exploring the titular notion of fantasy via themes of vulnerability, denial, and Black femme agency. MHYSA’s songs speak a contemporary language of rattling, clattering club drums and synthesizers, underscoring her spoken, sung, and sampled vocals with a throbbing presence. This is club music in the most essential sense of the word: it contains not only a sense of place, but of solace, and most clearly, resolution. MHYSA describes fantasii as being similar to an inverted Dante’s Inferno, where instead of journeying deeper into Hell, the album is the soundtrack of Mhysa traveling in the opposite direction. Of fantasii, MHYSA says: “This debut album is an epic poem, like a reverse Dante’s Inferno, where I take the listener higher, upward through my hopes, dreams, inspirations, and desires. It represents my love for Black women and femmes, as the stories are all told from our perspectives. When writing the album, I kept asking myself: what are the fantasies of Black women and femmes? What do I feel denied because I am a Black woman? Many of the songs I wrote for the album reflect those questions, as they show the protagonist wanting to be vulnerable, to be loved, wanting to fight, to be glorious, to have power, and to own their body and sexuality. “The album’s primary material is the Black woman’s voice (including my own). I thought a lot about the Black women and femmes I admire, and their music and our shared Black history that continuously builds the pop culture landscape. Janet Jackson, Donna Summers, Beyoncé, TLC and Prince are all referenced, and my friend Diamond Stingily, a poet and artist from Chicago, did a freestyle for the album. There’s a skit featuring Harriet Tubman (as performed on the show Underground) as well as a song for Doris Payne, the notorious jewel thief. Being a Black american woman from the american south, I wanted to draw on my roots and my history. My grandfather was a gospel blues musician and “Glory Be Black” is almost a gospel blues song, only it was written for the wayward. “Bb” was styled after 90s r’n’b songs and “STROBE” is a rap song made for the strip club. “Anti-White Supremacy statements are expressed (especially on “Minty’s Interlude”), not in a way that is meant to inform or raise awareness, but to acknowledge that Black people have been terrorized globally since the advent of slavery. I’m not giving up my rage, but I need joy so much more, I need my spirit strong in this battle and so do other Black folks. There has been a war going on our whole lives, a war that started when the first slave was brought to shore — and we have been living, regardless. This album is for Black people (and Black women and femmes especially) that want to live and rejoice because we are still alive, even if the war is far from won.” [via]

50) Nkisi – Kill EP [MW Records Norway]

Listen / Tags: electronic, rhythm, uptempo, club, bass, tribal

“Queen of the NON collective, Nkisi makes her solo debut proper with an urgent showcase melding Congolese dance rhythms with Belgian techno and gabber inspirations. The singular producer, based between Brussels and London, has been throwing down some of the sickest DJ sets online via her NTS show, among others, for the last few years now, alongside her work in curating and managing the NON collective beside Angel Ho and Chino Amobi. Landing after a string of digital releases, Nkisi’s Kill EP explores the breadth of her rooted, forward and deadly sound: kicking off with the militant dancer’s sensuality of Kill’s hopping polyrhythms and transition from smooth to salty trance electronics, pursued by the downstrokes contours of Can U See Me at her slowest and sweepingly atmospheric. The other side is a totally different affair, closer in tone to the insistent pressure of her radio and club sets. MWANA comes on like darkside renegade from a Petchy show, all driving snares and bolshy toms pinned into place with sticky EBM bass hits and sky falling pads, then the acid grobble of Parched Lips goes on like something from a lost sect of Spiral Tribe that ended up in a central African republic. Unmissable” [via].

51) Obsequies – Organn [Knives]

Listen / Tags: experimental, noise, drone, ambient, electronic, sound collage, industrial

“Belgium’s Obsequies file in line with J.G. Biberkopf, d’Eon, v1984 and Jlin to present their captivating futurist visions on Kuedo’s Knives label. Organn is Obsequies’ fully formed but suggestively sparse debut release. Taking cues from Isidore-Lucien Ducasse’s surrealist touchstone, Les Chants de Maldorer, the EP unfolds a sort of lucid dream infiltrated by noirish sci-fi voices and framed within extreme, morphing sound sphere that expands and contracts from vast, echoic space to visceral chromatic pinches in its 30 minute lifespan. Grace lifts off with a freeform elegance, pirouetting between steepled chords, fragments of cafe conversation and glitching Raster-Noton electronics recalling Ryoji Ikeda, before swan-diving into the upended post-techno physics of Languish and something recalling TCF or Obsequies’ fellow belgian artist Hiele in the fast-fwd jungliest rushes of Cell. Asthme is a proprioception-baffling display of dynamic sound design clashing minimalist classical keys and cyber-pop urges, while Consumed fulminates a kind of black metal candescence and noise intensity, leaving us spinning in air with the weightless majesty of But Beautiful, buffeted by emulated elements and glittering with starlight” [via].

52) OMAAR ​- ​Fallen Angel E​​P [Majia]

Listen / Tags: bass, future bass, dancehall, reggaeton, grime

“Houston’s Majia label delivers their second release expanding on the label’s imagined underworld where grime and reggaeton experiments cross paths. Majia is headed up by Santa Muerte, who’ve created a name for themselves with major support from Fader, Fact Magazine, Dummy Mag and Resident Advisor to name a few and who also have a monthly show on the infamous London RINSE FM. With this release they bring you NAAFI cohort OMAAR who is no new name to the game. His tracks have been played by many big grime djs and on big stations as Rinse Fm and NTS to name a few. His forthcoming ep is titled “Fallen Angel.” The title track Fallen Angel is on the weightless side with melancholic synths and hair raising melodies. On the flip “Monkey Slap” and “Mines Evo” are a lot heavier and ready to be MC laced out in the club. On remix duty, Triple S drops a grime time bomb repping the UK on his remix of “Mines Evo.” Seattle’s Korma flips “Fallen Angel” into a half step grime riddim and last but not least Cybersonic LA’s head queen Sha Sha Kimbo gives “Fallen Angel” a 160 bpm workout to round out the release” [via].

53) Overlook – Smoke Signals [UVB-76 Music]

Listen / Tags: drum and bass, jungle, ambient, experimental, industrial, deep

“Jason Luxton, AKA Overlook, is one of drum & bass’s most talked-about artists. The Bournemouth-based producer’s take on the genre is balanced on a razor’s edge between functionality and experimentation. That careful contrast defines his tracks, which can be quiet and subdued or huge and immersive. (That split personality was best illustrated on 2014 12-inch for Narratives.) Luxton has been a favourite of DJs like Doc Scott, Loxy and the Samurai Music crew since he was a teenager, but it wasn’t until he landed on Ruffhouse and Gremlinz’s equally young and promising label UVB-76 that he truly found a home. There are plenty of gems in the album’s first half. On “River’s Edge,” scuffed percussion is teased beneath a filter. The drums come to life in one giant flash, and then they’re gone. It’s a stunning moment that turns the typical bass drop on its head, and one of the many ways in which Luxton subtly plays with drum & bass tradition. There’s also “Out Of The Unknown,” a sparse banger flecked with noirish guitars, and the storming “Who Is This Who Is Coming,” which uses techno aesthetics in the vein of Grey Area. Every track is a world of detail, where even small adjustments feel exciting. After the interlude of “The Dream Unfolds,” the album’s second half establishes a rowdier sound. It peaks on “Traveling Without Moving,” where rolling drums and synth leads compete for your attention, followed by the funky drum workout of “Into The Night,” the RZA-does-drum-&-bass rollercoaster of “Shadowplay” and the breaky blitzkrieg of “Rogue Soul.” It feels a world away from, say, “River’s Edge,” yet the path across Smoke Signals’ 70 minutes is easily traced. The atmospheres on Smoke Signals define Luxton’s music, to the point where even short interludes like the title track or “Unknown Transmission” stand out. The landscapes he paints with transportive sound effects, vocal samples and sonorous synths are just as important as the drums. Like the best drum & bass albums in recent memory—Homemade Weapons’ Negative Space comes to mind—Smoke Signals embodies everything that makes this music great: clever samples, rich synthesizers and, of course, killer drums” [via].

54) Playboi Carti ‎- Playboi Carti [Interscope Records / AWGE]

Listen / Tags: trap, hip hop, mixtape

“For a record that defined the year in rap, Playboi Carti was something of an anomaly. First of all, it was a commercial mixtape — 15 whole tracks with a discernible sequence and signs of having been both mixed and mastered. It was even made available (very belatedly) on physical media. Secondly, Carti managed to keep a relatively low profile as his contemporaries built massive, near-inevitably problematic cults of personality on the backs of their own viral hits. This was the crux of Carti’s appeal; his presence on a track could be understated at times, but it was always essential. The handful of memorable lines that dot Playboi Carti aside, he was just as effective when relegated to an almost entirely percussive role, taking the post-Migos blurring of the line between lyric and ad-lib to a new extreme. Given a mind-bending set of beats from Pi’erre Bourne and others, Carti situated himself perfectly within track after track, deftly scaling up or down as the situation required. Of everything that 2017 promised about rap’s future, Playboi Carti felt the most like a real path forward, a crystallization of the SoundCloud underground’s zeitgeist in a format built to transcend the scene’s messy adolescence” [via].

55) Pure Wool Garden – Saburapi2090.wav [Pure Wool Garden]

Listen / Tags: hyper funk, untitled-wave, ambient, footwork, harsh noise, microrave, non music, vaporwave

“This digital compilation features the first Samurai sonorous dynasty selected by Panacef Mishima that build innovative sound of Pure Wool Garden; a new concept of sound in a mix combining vaporwave, harsh-noise, non-music and underwater house. This combination defined and proposed as Untiled-Wave will be the perimeter in which all the ideas of our Brand will be recorded. SABURAPI is actually the first pronunciation used for the Samurai term. 2090 because Pure Wool Garden projects in an imaginary space and indefinite placed exactly one century after the explosion of the Rave Culture in 1990. The ancient Samurai strategies blend with holographic textures, apparitions in technicolor, nanotechnology and sound design. This is our real idea of indefinite frequency. Rhythmic deconstruction, the maniacal passion for research and the exploration of unknown sound territories. The new grammar of sound is the Untiled-Wave pornography” [via].

56) Razgraad – The Ideology Of Pessimism [Yerevan Tapes]

Listen / Tags: electronic, industrial, abstract, dark ambient, drone, techno

“The Ideology Of Pessimism is Razgraad’s new album. It’s the suspension between two possibile lives, the unescapable and paradoxical standstill within transformation. After the pagan rituals/myths of The Water Towers, this second effort is a new magical, isolationistic and situational ritual, about the extreme condition of individual Self. Here Razgraad steps away from pure ambient structures, his music moves on rough drone-metal territories and industrial dub influences, obstinate rhythms and an intense work on the idea of Riff. The Ideology Of Pessimism is pure black doomtronica” [via].

57) Realicide – Die For Gabber! (2004-2007) [Self-Released]

Listen / Tags: noise, hardcore, sound collage, breakcore,

Robert Imhuman, Realicide Records, July 2017: “I know from an outcide perspective this noize actually has very little to do with “gabber” by any conventional sense. Sometime in later 2002 it must’ve been adopted, in my ignorance, as a slang term for electronic punk that didn’t require understanding the complexities of breakbeats, just a banging sound to bark over. In this way it made a lot of sense to me at the time. This concept of “gabber” was exactly what we needed. Realicide “Die For Gabber” was always a title the band wanted to release in our early years. I think it was meant to follow the outrageous “Killed By Gabber” tape we did in later 2004, as the wrenching anxiety inseparable from this project in its local context of Cincinnati was compounded by violently propelling it into US touring, with nearly no guidance beyond our own juvenile desperation tearing out from the defaults we’d be damned to otherwise, intruding on countless frontiers not ready for, or happy about, this kind of noize, from these kinds of not-punk-enough-but-not-rave-either-and-not-even-the-right-kind-of-noise kids. These were certainly ridiculous times, but personally liberating and irreplaceable nonetheless. Memories are imbedded in every splintered second here, in the sample collages, the shattered lyrix, the distorted speedcore blasts and in every pitch of feedback that I know as intimately as my own address or birthday. This is a relic of genuinely misfit youths doing punk however they want, with absolutely whatever resources and techniques were available, in ways that to us seemed more relevant and non-impotent-retro than being just another rock band, or a breakcore act that’s just a dude chilling with a laptop for an hour at some bar. Spring of 2007 we were invited by Ron of RRRecords to release Realicide’s first vinyl LP. The contents of that “RRReady To Fight” anthology record are all here. Then in 2010 the collection was amended to be a more complete document of its period, and titled “Die For Gabber”. It’s not until the summer of 2017, a decade after we toured with that RRR 12″, that it is unleashed upon the public. The trax are still unmastered, preserving with all honesty the power and faults alike of many thousand destructive wav edits in place of proper mixing” [via].

58) Sabla – Danzaguida [Disk]

Listen / Tags: groove, techno, tribal, rhythm

“After his debut in 2015 on the infamous Gang Of Ducks we are very happy to welcome Sabla from Turin on Disk for an extended play. […] His dark polyrhythms create a uniquely haunted atmosphere, slowly sucking you into an irresistible vortex of trance-inducing intertwinedness, pretty much like a deamon abduction into the out- er space of your inner self! wtf” [via].

59) Sad Cambodia – First Metheorethical Bulletin [Sincope]

Listen / Tags: analogue electronics, guitar, noise, drone, ambient, free form, post-rock

“First Metheoretical Bulletin, as name says, is the first release of Sad Cambodia, a collaboration duo composed by Stefano (My Dear Killer) and Massimo Onza (Wound). The project was born with the aim of finding a common ground for expression, in an attempt of mixing analogue electronics and acoustic instruments, mainly guitars. Along this path, synths, reverb pulses, objects, samples and noises met dispersed variations over acoustic string drawings. The result are these two tracks, which move towards keeping together the free-form tensions with rarefied, at times, almost melodic parts, alienating passages and post-rock flavour spaces. To summarise the blending of discordant mixtures drifting towards melancholic horizons, we coined the neologism Metheoretical, stemming from theoretical and meteorological. In our sad Cambodia, over the constant rain and heat of the monsoon, can you feel some distant bird singing in the forest? You might, in this first bulletin” [via].

60) SEKKO ‎– No Manners EP [White Peach]

Listen / Tags: grime, bass, dubstep

“No please, no thank you, no manners: rising Midland merker Sekko fires off a scorching four-tracker for the ever-juicy White Peach crew. Gully-minded grime beats fully-charged and fizzy, each cut is a physical head-roller: the pulsating kick drum rhythm of “No Manners”, the theatrical strings and necksnap drums of “Militant”, the trapped-out gun-toting iciness of “Boxes”, the spacious introspection, wavey melody and elastic bass of “Tomorrow”, Sekko’s revealing deep layers right here. Crucial” [via].

61) Sergio Albano | Anacleto Vitolo  –  Parallels [Manyfeetunder/Concrete]

Listen / Tags: noise, ambient, drone, experimental, abstract

“Parallels is a speculation about time(S) and its perception. The founding Concept behind the album is the existence of different “timeplanes” (and related sound, of course) at the same time, the perceptions of those planes from several subjects, both individually and jointly, and about the complexity of the whole sheaf of time planes with their own sound apparatus. The Album is born from the collaboration between Sergio Albano (Amklon, Grizzly Imploded…), who is the author of the whole sound sources (guitars, synths, microphones, objects, etc.) and Anacleto Vitolo (AV-K, K.lust, Internos, X(i)NEON, Manyfeetunder), responsible for the processing, re-synthesis and arrangements of the sound sources” [via].

62) Shizune – CHEAT DEATH, LIVE DEAD! [Self-Released]

Listen / Tags: hardcore, skramz, chaotic, emo

“vous nous voiez cy attachez cinq, six: quant de la chair, que trop avons nourrie, elle est pieça devorée et pourrie, et nous, les os, devenons cendre et pouldre” [via].

63) Shygirl – MSRYNVR [Nuxxe]

Listen / Tags: electronic, hip hop, experimental, bass

“Shygirl is the London lyricist and DJ with a tone set clearly in the depths of the club. Co-founder of the NUXXE record label, with Sega Bodega and coucou chloe, her dual single MSRYNVR was the label’s inaugural release in 2017. Both her recordings and her live performance showcase her talent for finding sounds from all your favourite nights and giving them back to you doused in sarcasm and a dark-sided humour. It’s rude but you want more” [via].

64) Simbiosi – Industria EP [Cosmo Rhythmatic]

Listen / Tags: industrial, techno, noise

“After quite a wait, Italian producers Simbiosi finally follow up their debut album on Actress’ Werkdiscs with a new work on Cosmo Rhythmatic. A five-tracker that keeps up with their tradition of condensing slowed-down hardcore techno bits into punishing vignettes, but at the same time has them thoroughly explore all sorts of rave byproducts as sonic raw matter. At the same time, they choose to never abandon their taste for minimalism and noise, layering heavily distorted synth stabs on top of crippled raw beats and warped down basslines. Like an acid percolator grinding neural matter into a new chemical ardor, or a malfunctioning cybernetic body on the verge of self-destructing on the dance floor” [via].

65) Ski Mask The Slump God – YouWillRegret [Republic Records]

Listen / Tags: trap, hip hop, cloud rap

“Ski Mask The Slump God comes through with his long awaited mixtape You Will Regret, and fans will be pleased to know that, yes, it’s fire. The Members Only co-founder dominates the entirety of the ten track run, sliding over beats with his aquatic flow. It’s nice to see him get down over some more polished production, and his eccentric and cartoonish swagger further establishes him as one of the game’s most exciting up and comers. While certain tracks tend to abandon traditional structure, Ski Mask makes up for it with immense energy and hilarious ad-libs. Plus, dude can flow like a beast. Check this one out, even if you’re skeptical about the whole Members Only movement” [via].

66) Ssaliva – We Never Happened EP [Ekster]

Listen / Tags: abstract, ambient, digital, experimental

“Ssaliva offers the tantalisingly ephemeral dynamics of We Never Happened on his follow-up to Be Me, also for Ekster. Operating almost exclusively in the higher registers, Saliva’s newest piece proceeds a string of lush releases for Vlek, Leaving Records and Bepotal to leave us light-headed and floating 3”s above our chair. Bearing no small resemblance to the flawlessly cute motifs of Motion Graphics’ eponymous debut, as much as the sheer dynamics of Arca or 0comeups One Deep – which both share a fascination for hyperlucid Japanese ‘tronics – We Never Happened unfolds like a hyaline hyperprism of virtual chamber pieces for a sophisticated manga space-lord. The atoms of its frozen tones and wide, plasmic basses are seemingly caught in transmutation between states of crystallisation and sublimation, contracting and expanding between the vertiginous pinch of Panel and the Autechreian dimensions of Scope at the front, to the chromatic freefall of Oxy and the alien jazz moods of Protection4 at the record’s core, before matters become detectably frayed, unsettled at the edges in I Appreciate Your Concern and the cold acidic blatz of Gone, whilst a turn toward Rashad Becker-esque tonal curdle in Surge and the sinking mini string symphony of Amo resolve the album at a more ambiguous angle. This one really needs wider attention“ [via].

67) Sully – Escape [Keysound Recordings]

Listen / Tags: grime, jungle, dubstep, UK garage, hardcore continuum

“Sully boomerangs back to the influential Keysound label with Escape, a full spectrum showcase of the sound previously gestated on his Carrier [2011] album and further developed over a unique flux of grime, jungle, footwork inspired mutations during the interim. Driven by a timeless urge to “create moments where problems go out the window for a while”, he’s crafted an immersive album touching on key aspects of the hardcore UK dance paradigm. Thema I opens the album with a sweeping elegiac ambient gesture which he returns to later in the LP, providing the scant moment of respite of an intense session taking in tool-sharpened grime starring Jendor bars on Casablanca and a nod to vintage El-B in Bullseye featuring Roll Deep’s heavily JA-accented Jamakabi. A pair of Assembly pieces find him abstracting instrumental grime in devilish style, with superb, Zomby-esque results in the second one, before completing the LP in the junglist mould of his outstanding Blue EP, screwing across the ‘nuum timeline with grime licks squeezed into the amen rushes of Vanta and again with eski bleeps skidding thru the Remnarc-like ruff ’n tumble of X Plus Y. Deadly” [via].

68) The Newcomer ‎- EARTH MOTIVATION [Beatrice & Annie]

Listen / Tags: abstract, ambient, experimental

“Earth Motivation is a hymn for the fourth world; an algorithm promising crystal visions in the fire; truth uncovered within newsfeed rubble; an archaeology of recollection. True love found in a face swiped right, destiny on daytime TV, divine order in a mundane Monday morning. Picture this: 24-7, 2-4-1, 9-2-5, 6-6-6. Do we design cars to look like animals, or are animals really just machines? As we fast forward into the future, are we becoming more human, or is everything else? Buried under these concrete visions, life finds a way to express the unreal” [via].

69) Tropical Interface – Orchid [Hyperboloid Records]

Listen / Tags: grime, experimental, breakcore, industrial, sound collage

“Tropical Interface is one of the new faces of russian underground electronica, he is a part of the eco-grime scene. Having previously released on Eco Futurism Corporation, Flamebait, Infinite Machine, his debut EP for Hyperboloid comes prepared with his trademark mix between crispy hi-tech grimy beats with digitized sounds of nature. Cold minimalistic club tracks become engulfed in multi-layered noises, this creates a new state of consciousness on the dancefloor, where the tunes are tested in full effect” [via].

70) Uli K – Goodbye + Goodnight [Bala Club]

Listen / Tags:

“There’s a decent lot that separates Uli K from his contemporaries stylistically. Take one of the well-known collaborators that appear on Goodbye + Goodnight in Yung Lean; his music is usually swamped in bass and though he does indulge in some auto-tuned vocal bliss, it’s certainly not the focal point of his music vocally. The vast majority of Uli K’s new tape doesn’t have a lot of low end, with a much bigger emphasis on the beautiful and pained vocals. The production is almost entirely made up of atmospherics; synths and keys are used to set an ambience more often that to play melodies, although the melodies that do appear are quite great. The tape has a very listless and lost feel to it, but that’s entirely by design; you’re listening to someone that feels listless and lost in their own existence and everything on the tape reflects that experience. There’s a dud or two later in the tracklist, but the first ten or so tracks are nothing short of immaculate. “Anyone But You” and “Dead It” are a clinic in how to do this stuff. Quite the arresting listen” [via].

71) v1984 – Pansori EP [Knives]

Listen / Tags: experimental, trap, grime, club

“Moving forward from last year’s well received debut EP ‘Becoming (N)one’ on Glacial Industries, v1984 releases his debut for Knives, the label founded by Jamie Teasdale (Kuedo) and Joe Shakespeare. Jamie says “v1984 was the first artist we approached as a label, in 2014. He’s been a core part of Knives as an idea, since before our first record.” v1984, real name Christopher Ramos, is of Korean/Filipino descent and the title ‘Pansori’ reflects his Korean heritage. It has the dual translation of a ‘gathering place for sound’ and it specifically refers to traditional storytelling, which in turn is a neat description of the EP. The music here is delicate and meticulously laid out. Even when it approaches noise it’s detailed and elegant rather than bludgeoning, like the piano and arpeggio that give way to a cold crystalline spray and shimmering drone in the opener ‘SPfiNAL TAP re-JUVENescence’. The switches in mood from track to track suggest a loose narrative, even with a brief interlude in the shape of ‘False Awakenings’ that feels as if it’s inspired by long forgotten anime soundtracks, constructed from beatless clustered pitch-shifting vocals, bells and airy whooshes. Musically the EP references both the classical music Christopher studied as a child and contemporary electronic music, but it’s shattered and smeared into unusual shapes that are, in the more abstract tracks, his musical interpretation of lucid dreaming. Even the club ready tracks have an element of the sublime, such as ‘Too Much’ which sounds like a synthetic take on the emotional soundtracks of Joe Hisaishi with crafted contemporary hip hop beats woven in, or the damp neon melancholy of ‘Aria of Dawn’ which colours a mood with a simple gentle glassy melody over tip-tapping drums. The final track ‘beauty_IT5INYR-H3D’ draws the whole EP together, into a track that contrasts the frenzied and the elegant with crashing, whirling imp-like voices and glassy noise dragged over a tender solo piano melody underpinned by depth charge bass chords” [via].

73) Vipra – Musica Jao [Presto!?]

Listen / Tags: Presenturo, abstract, lento violento, experimental, club

“Musica Jao is the music of Presenturo. Presenturo is against any time-based deception. In a timeless time, you are not allowed to wait. Beyond magnetosphere there’s no time perspective, there’s only Pre! Pre! Pre! Presenturo! Prompting strong parallels with ghetto music from Lisbon to Caracas as much as the muggy cyber punk styles of Dracula Lewis or Primitive Art, the Musica Jao EP showcases a heavy-lidded, red-eyed style defined by screwed hardstyle tropes, salty noise and generally spare, surreally cartoonish arrangements that never quite resolve themselves, suggesting and leaving much to the ‘floor’s imagination. Muscoli Oro sounds something like an overweight TCF who just railed a line of ket thinking it was MD, and Lotteria feels like passing out in the middle of a fairground. Presenturo comes hardest with slow, recoiling kicks and one drop rave stabs ran over with fast cars, and Uomo Tuono nails a wickedly furtive, atmospheric blend of eerie techno-folk melody and computer game FX to an insistent Italo Slowstyle groove” [via].

74) wac© – Charms EP [GRΔY BOY]

Listen / Tags: abstract, noise, hybridclub, angelwave, turbobeat, biofuture

“GRΔY BOY: Art collective based in Ohio. We have a bad habit of breaking into abandoned buildings and staying up too late”.

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PAYNOMINDTOUS is a non-profit organization registered in December 2018, operating since late 2015 as a webzine and media website. In early 2017, we started our own event series in Turin, IT focused on arts, experimental, and dancefloor-oriented music. We reject every clumsy invocation to “the Future” meant as the signifier for capitalistic “progress” and “innovation”, fully embracing the Present instead; we renounce any reckless and ultimately arbitrary division between “high” and “low”, respectable and not respectable, “mind” and “body”; we support and invite musicians, artists, and performers having diverse backgrounds and expressing themselves via variegated artistic practices.