Edinburgh-based producer George T announces the release of his latest single, “Love Letter,” which is set to drop on Paradise Palms Records. The track, a beautiful mind buffet of left-field and dubby influences, marching hypnotic lead synth, pads, syncopation, and an enchanting, haunting vocal. “Love Letter” marks a new chapter in George T’s rich and ever blossoming career, showcasing his talent for crafting genre-bending tracks that blur the lines between electronic and experimental music. With its intricate production, mesmerizing melodies, and captivating rhythms, the single transports the listener to a warped pleasure planet. In addition to the original version of the track, George T also offers up a hypnotic dub version “Dub Letter.” Doused in acid and featuring an instrumental-only arrangement that emphasizes the song’s rhythmic and atmospheric qualities.
The single and accompanying dub is releasing digitally with Paradise Palms Records and being distributed globally through EPM on the 14th of July.
Keep your mind open.
[A subscription is like a love letter from you to me.]
A master of playful sonic whimsy, electronic pioneer Mort Garson spent a lifetime quietly pushing the boundaries of synthesis. The latest track to his name, “Zoos of The World,” is baroque and unpredictable. Centered on warm keyboard patches that come together to replicate the tonalities of a retro-futuristic orchestra, the springy cut was taken from a 1970 National Geographic special. The track follows “Moon Journey,”the soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. Nearly in tandem with the release date, July 20th will mark Garson’s 99th birthday, and the anniversary of the moon landing. Both taken from the forthcoming archival release Journey to the Moon and Beyond, out July 21 via Sacred Bones.
Journey to the Moon and Beyond advanced listening parties have been announced at the following locations for July 20, 2023:
Amoeba, San Francisco, US
Balades Sonores, Paris, FR
End Of An Ear, Austin, US
Family Store, Brighton, UK
Monorail, Glasgow, UK
Newbury Comics, Boston, US
Rough Trade, New York, US
Seasick Records, Birmingham, US
Stranger Than Paradise, London, UK
It’s hard not to use plant terminology when discussing the long, strange career –and subsequent renaissance– of Mort Garson. Like a seed buried deep and left to germinate for months (or in this instance, decades), his great body of work was scattered in record bins and tape closets and all but forgotten in pop culture. A classically trained musician and electronic researcher with a tireless work ethos that led to nearly over a thousand writing and arranging credits, Mort Garson’s music got buried in the topsoil of time.
When Sacred Bones first began their Mort Garson reissue project in 2019 with a proper reissue of Plantasia, the Garson-naissance began in earnest. Soon after, you could hear Mort Garson and his Moogs bubbling up on TV shows, documentaries, podcasts, hip-hop tracks, or anywhere else, the man a cultural phenomenon once more. (And naturally, just playing the vinyl reissue of Plantasia at home made every single plant in your house thrive.) Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom. Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man’s sound. There’s the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson), some previously unreleased and newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is “Zoos of the World,” where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slumbering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like “Western Dragon,” but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information.
The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson’s soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. But for decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive. So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort’s many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.
Maybe at the time it scanned as crass and opportunistic for Garson to apply his keyboards to subjects like astrological signs, the occult, hippiedom, houseplants, or the moon landing. But more than most other electronic music pioneers of his ilk, Garson foresaw the integration of such electronics into our daily lives, how they would allow us to engage with the world –in small daily things, popular trends, and big historical events– with our tweets, posts, reaction videos, and the like. In that way, Garson lived such history and then added his own little spin on things.
Kat Day and Nicholas Wood, otherwise known as The KVB, released their Unityalbum around Thanksgiving Day in 2021 as the world was undergoing separation from a lot of relatives and friends. People were missing each other, missing connections, conversations, coffee dates, and control over, well, anything in and around their lives.
Unity, with its striking cover image of giant, linked circles at the edge of a cold mountain lake, explores these themes. Even the opening instrumental track, “Sunrise Over Concrete” symbolizes hope in bleak times. “Unité” bounces and bumps with krautrock beats and called for all of us to meet at the club once the pandemic was over. I read that “Unbound” (Becoming free of the shackles of lockdown, one’s ego, or both?) harkened back to classic Slowdive and Ride tracks, and I don’t think I can put it any better than that. The dual vocals are the Slowdive part, and the soaring guitar solo is the Ride part.
Day’s breathy vocals on “Future” are an interesting new touch than I’ve heard from her before as she sings about the uncertain future ahead of her, and I suppose the rest of us. A lot of Unity was written in 2019, so the pandemic wasn’t yet here, but one can’t help thinking that The KVB had a crystal ball and saw it coming when you hear tracks like this.
“Blind” is the longest track on the album (5:35), and I’m happy for it, because Kat Day’s thick synth-bass alone could just play the entire time and I’d be delighted. The whole track is downright sexy and a bit menacing…which makes it sexier. The build-up on “Ideal Living” is outstanding. It takes its time in the first minute to get to the dance beats, which I’m sure fill the floor wherever they play. “World on Fire” was the first single from the album and it was a good choice with its bright synths, anime chase scene beats, and a guitar solo that sounds like it was played in orbit.
The synths on “Structural Index” intertwine like crystal formations and almost seem to be playing in a different song than the guitar chords. Trust me, it works. “Lumens” is, appropriately, bright and sunny. I can’t help but wonder if the closer, “Omni,” is named after the great science magazine published by Kathy Keeton and Bob Guccione. The sound of it fits in with Omni‘s science fiction-meets-paranormal aesthetic, as does all of The KVB’s work.
The album came out at the right time for a lot of people, giving them something to dance to in their living rooms or to spin while sipping tea and looking out their windows at a world that was pretty much losing its mind. It encouraged all of us to hang in there a while longer, as the reunion would be great.
Keep your mind open.
[Unite with the subscription box while you’re here.]
Sydney producer / vocalist Skeleten has unveiled “Territory Day”, the latest preview of his long-awaited debut full-length album, Under Utopia, coming July 28 via 2MR (NA) / Astral People Recordings (ROW).
A sprawling, vibe-heavy track that unfurls with truncated beats, gently insistent congas, hypnotic pleading and twinkling, Four Tet-esque chimes, Russell Fitzgibbon shares the origins of “Territory Day”: “I made the main idea one night back before I was even thinking of Skeleten as a real project. It was Territory Day, a holiday in the Northern Territory where everyone lets off fireworks for one night, and I was distinctly thousands of kms away from there. I always wanted to revisit the idea and after a few years and a pandemic I came back to it and felt it all new. Felt that expression of simple longing travelling through time and space, and thought about the power of all the desire and struggles crossing the globe like radio waves. I wanted to shout out to everyone trying at anything.”
Pieced together using fan-shot footage from a recent studio party, edited and processed through the album’s distinctive cover art, the visuals for ‘Territory Day’ tap into the ideals of connectivity and community at heart of Under Utopia – a homage to Skeleten’s ethos of finding transcendence in the everyday.
On his thrilling and immersive debut album, Skeleten dares to imagine new ways of being that are not characterised by doom or despair – a challenge in an era defined more by feelings of futility, isolation and precarity. Across eleven tracks of free-flowing, transcendent, and often euphoric electronic music, he plays spiritual guide to a musical journey which is wonderfully in touch with realms beyond our own. Praising the power of comradery and community, dreaming of a future that is joyously boundless, Skeleten’s singular debut LP is, to borrow from one of his own lines, music for dancing “any way your body turns.”
Threading together previous singles “Walking On Your Name”, “Mirrored”, “No Drones In The Afterlife” and the recently released “Sharing The Fire”, Under Utopia is a record that prioritises immediate pleasures without forgoing intimacy, reaching outward with inviting choruses and mantra-like melodies. “I think the album came out of the experience of feeling this great desire to reconnect and dreaming of the power of community,” says the musician. Tied together by Fitzgibbon’s spacious, airy production, the record finds an antidote for the ever-pervasive gloom of contemporary life in the transformative power of love, community and an enduring, determined optimism that gestures toward a better and brighter future just over the horizon.
Russell Fitzgibbon cut his teeth in Sydney’s tight-knit electronic community just as the city itself was forging its own identity. Debuting under his solo moniker in late 2020, Skeleten is Fitzgibbon’s most personal project to date, the sound of him unfiltered for the first time as both a vocalist and producer. At once intimate and otherworldly, at the core of the project lies a strong sense of uncomplicated openness and a deeply rhythmic, meditative ambience. Strikingly unplaceable, the result is a curious yet alluring amalgam of far-flung influences and emotive atmospheres that invites you to get repeatedly lost in. In between his debut and the long-awaited release of Under Utopia, Skeleten’s consistent output has seen him accrue rotation and early praise from Double J, XLR8R, NME, Dummy Magazine, BBC Radio 6 Music’s Recommends Spotlight Artist and receive the official remix treatment from the likes of Logic1000, Moktar, Jennifer Loveless and Rings Around Saturn.
Apparently, German DJ / producer Noëtik has a busy schedule, because he doesn’t waste a damn second on his Parhelion EP.
I mean, he claims to have “Bad Intentions” on the opening track, but the intentions are to get you to dance and move wherever you are and with whatever you’re doing. Maybe his bad intention is mischievous glee in knowing that you’re going to be bopping around your kitchen, racing through the grocery store, or getting through your spinning workout in half the normal time. The bubbling bass and slight dub effects, along with the relentless beats, might cause a rave to break out at any second.
The bass on “Sparsity” is slightly subdued, with a bit of a fuzzy edge, but it is no less addictive. Beats seem to reverse back on each other and return like a boomerang whacking you upside the head. The industrial touches (metallic percussion) on “Ariko” are outstanding. It wanders into dark house territory and walks around the monster mash rave like it owns the place.
“Trivium” pumps the brakes on the tempo and turns that monster rave into a vampire after-party. The track drifts in and out of shadowy places and has a sexy danger to it. The EP ends with a remix of “Bad Intentions” by Modēm that is somehow faster than the original.
In short, this is one of the best EDM records I’ve heard so far this year. Any DJ could just play this whole thing and use the time to hydrate and eat a protein bar during a set.
Described as “four club-ready anthems” by his label, DJ Dextro‘s new EP, Spectrum Protocol, is pretty much that.
“Valquirius” wastes no time in dropping fast beats and heart-racing bass thumps. The title track starts off with repetitive electro beats and, for a moment, you think, “Is this going anywhere?” It definitely is. More beats start to pile atop the others and then looping synths jump on the heap and the mass grows and grows like some kind of undulating jellyfish that gets bigger as it gets closer to you. Then it becomes some kind of techno-industrial hybrid that pretty much sets off strobe lights in your brain.
“Inercia” is the sound of a robot having a panic attack at a disco. “Lenga Lenga” gets you pumped up to dance, run, fight, or finally clean out that overflowing closet you’ve been meaning to tackle for months. It’s easily the brightest of the four tracks and ends the EP with an uplifting feel, as if you’re rising to the surface of the ocean on a sunny day in Ibiza.
It’s short, but it packs a lot of beats into just four tracks. You’ll want this on your workout playlist.
Rich Aucoin has one of those hobbies that I might have if I won some massive Powerball jackpot. He collects and plays vintage synthesizers and puts the results onto albums like Synthetic – A Synth Odyssey: Season 2.
You know you’re in for something special as soon as the first notes of “Wav” start playing from a 1939 Hammond Novachord (considered the first analog synthesizer) and the stacking, beautiful beats begin to lift your heart. It sounds like Fatboy Slim could’ve recorded this yesterday, but he didn’t and he’s probably wishing he could raid Aucoin’s storage facility as a result. “Shift” definitely shifts the feel of the record, sounding like the music you’d hear as you race alongside a magnetic track bullet train on your personal hover-bike in the year 3023.
Aucoin’s label describes “Pure” as sounding like 1990s French house music, and I’m not sure I can describe it any better than that. It’s a delightfully fun track. “Space” does indeed send you out of orbit and toward a distant nebula full of stars and growing planets. “Tech Noir” gets a bit symphonic, and, by the way, uses the same EMS VCS3 Prototype (on the cover, fourth column, four down from the top) used on Dark Side of the Moon.
“Roger Luther” is named after (and played on) the Moog synthesizer (on the cover, third column, second one down from the top) that’s named after a Moog employee who eventually became the company’s general manager. It peppy and a bit dangerous, reminding me of some darker Devo tracks.
“Lyra” has kind of a hip-hop sound to its beats and synth bass (and vocal loop). “Prophet” is at first what Pimpbot-3000 plays on his Sony Walkman as he struts down the street, and then it blooms into a video game hero’s anthem. The closing track, “Liminal,” is a subtle one that helps you slowly float back down to Earth and leaves you feeling a bit giddy and warm afterwards…like good sex.
It’s a neat project and a neat record, and Aucoin makes all these vintage synths sound like they’re brand new.
Producer / musician Kedr Livanskiy (neé Yana Kedrina) returns with a dance-floor-ready new EP, K-Notes. It’s an expert fusion of drum and bass, trance, and alt-pop anchored by Kedrina’s signature crystalline vocals. K-Notes feels at once nostalgic and remarkably current: Livanskiy filters today’s UK revivalism through her own unique lens, shaped by her upbringing in Russia’s underground music scene and her personal love of early electronic and alternative music.
Kedrina’s longstanding fascination with the natural world is still apparent in her lyrics, sung in her native Russian. Throughout these tracks, lovers disappear into clouds, seek shelter from the rain, and look back fondly on summers past. As always, Kedrina has a remarkable knack for world-building: her rich compositions envelop the listener in a dream-world so visceral that it transcends the barriers of language. Concise but immersive, K-Notes is a fresh dose of ebullience from an artist at the top of her craft.
Its vivacious lead single “With Love K…” is a melodic drum-and-bass love song and is out today alongside its amorous / nostalgic video which Kedrina directed herself.
Bright and upbeat, K-Notes is more akin sonically to Kedrina’s 2019 album Your Need than her recent work. Where Your Need was a neon-tinged ode to early house, dub, and breakbeat, Liminal Soul saw her infuse her electronic compositions with organic textures and hone in on her vocal technique. More recently, she chased that inspiration further and teamed up with her partner Flaty to form the indie duo Kosaya Gora, experimenting with guitar-based folk and dream pop compositions on their debut record Kosogor. Her artistic focus has once again found the dance floor, and on K-Notes she channels the sounds of her spirited live show into a dynamic new collection.
K-Notes sees its release solely across digital platforms on Thursday, June 22 via 2MR. Pre-save it here.
Last month, London band Girl Ray announced their third LP, Prestige (out August 4th on Moshi Moshi). The three-piece comprising Poppy Hankin, Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss, made an immediate impact with the release of their 2017 debut Earl Grey on the influential indie Moshi Moshi (Anna Meredith, Florence & The Machine, Kate Nash), which channeled the baroque 70s soft pop of Todd Rundgren through the scrappy aesthetics of 80s UK indie and earned high praise from outlets like Pitchfork, The Guardian, Stereogum and FADER among many others. Their second LP, 2019’s Girl, saw the band change direction dramatically, taking on a kind of indie-fied R&B that The Guardian described as “the great sound of a band getting pop wrong,” and in 2021 the band returned in yet another new guise, releasing the one off, house-adjacent single “Give Me Your Love” that was produced with Hot Chip‘s Joe Goddard and Al Doyle.
Their latest album, which they made with the revered producer Ben H Allen (Gnarls Barkley, Animal Collective, MIA, Belle & Sebastian), sees the band adjust the formula once more, incorporating a disco influence that in Girl Ray’s hands led FADER to describe their sound as the music “Dua Lipa would make if she was more used to playing pubs than arenas.” The early response to their new direction has been extremely enthusiastic in the press, with the lead single “Hold Tight” and pre-announce track “Everybody’s Saying That” earning praise from outlets like FADER, Billboard, Paste, Consequence, BrooklynVegan, Line of Best Fit, Clash, The Guardian, Under The Radar and Stereogum who described the lead single as “like if Haim were hopping on Vampire Weekend tracks when Rostam was still in the band.”
Today, the band are sharing a new preview of their new album, the groove-oriented “Up” that recalls Young Americans-era Bowie as filtered through the blended synths and strings aesthetic of early Giorgio Moroder.
“This song was written at the beginning of my current relationship, and it deals with all the emotions of a fledgling romance: adoration, self-doubt, and everything in between! Musically we wanted to pay homage to the sparseness of Queen’s ‘Cool Cat’, and the groove of Bowie’s ‘Fame.'”
In support of the new LP Girl Ray have announced a UK tour that will begin in November. Full details can be found below.
Prestige will be released August 4th on Moshi Moshi. It’s available for preorder/presave here.
Tour Dates 04/08 – London, Rough Trade East 09/08 – Nottingham, Rough Trade Nottingham 10/08 – Bristol, Rough Trade Bristol 17/08 – Brecon Beacons, Green Man Festival 12/11 – Amsterdam, Paradiso 13/11 – Hamburg, Aalhaus 14/11 – Copenhagen, Ideal Bar 16/11 – Berlin, Marie-Antoinette 17/11 – Brussels, Witloof Bar 20/11 – Paris, Boule Noire 21/11 – Brighton, Patterns 22/11 – Bristol, Fleece 24/11 – Manchester, The Soup Kitchen 25/11 – Glasgow, Room 2 26/11 – Dublin, The Workmans Club 28/11 – Leeds, Belgrave Music Hall 29/11 – Nottingham, Rescue Rooms 03/12 – London, Village Underground
Here’s a riddle for you: What’s an album that was made in 2023 by Swedes, but sounds like it was a horror film score made in 1977 by Italians? If you guessed Pericolo Di Morte (“Death Danger”) by Contaminazione (Contamination), you’re right!
Right out the gate with the title track, the trio of keyboardistSofia Rydahl, drummer Mikal Styrke, and bassist Staffan Tengnér change the tone of wherever you are to something creepy and otherworldly. It sounds like something you’d hear while walking down into Lucio Fulci’s basement. I mean, the track is named “Death Danger.” Rydahl’s keys invoke fear and terror, while Styrke and Tengnér invoke dread…yet it’s danceable dread.
Tengnér’s thick bass on “Vivi Vilocemente, Muori Lentamente” (“Live Fast, Die Slowly”) sounds like the relentless footsteps and breath of a horrible monster coming at you from Fulci’s basement as Rydahl’s synths open up strange portals between worlds that you hope you can close before horrible things emerge from them.
“Il Necroforum” is what you hear when you’re trying to figure out a murder’s motivation and scheme in a Dario Argento giallo movie. Styrke’s beats convey the sensation of sweat beading on your forehead and neck as you get closer and closer to learning the identity of the masked butcher who’s been plaguing the city’s fashion models. Rydahl’s synths are the killer’s entrance music as he, unbeknownst to you, ascends the stairs to your apartment.
Not to be outdone, Tengnér puts down a funky, spooky groove on “I’Ultima Setimana Di Vita” (“The Last Week of Life”) that blends so well with Rydahl’s spacey synths that the track would be perfect in a 1970s Euro-disco. Tengnér’s bass on “Tema Principale” (“Main Theme”) is extra-thick, which makes Rydahl’s synths sound more ethereal (bordering on synthwave sounds).
It’s a killer (pun intended) record. Someone needs to hire them to score a modern-day giallo.
