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Gacha: “Remember”.

26 Jan 2012 — Henning Lahmann
All the way from Tbilisi, Georgia (this one, duh), producer Gacha is about to drop his initial release on Apollo Records, the recently revived subdivision of acclaimed London via Ghent, Belgium label R&S Records. The two tracks below, which will both be part of the EP, have been floating around through the interwebs for a couple of months now, a fact that doesn't make them feel less fresh. There's no definite release date yet, but the record will presumably be out sometime in March or April. Listen to the ambient-infused downbeat tune "Remember" and the more trippy, deliberately more post-dubstep track "Bowl" below. Read more → All the way from Tbilisi, Georgia (this one, duh), producer Gacha is about to drop his initial release on Apollo Records, the recently revived subdivision of acclaimed London via Ghent, Belgium label R&S Records. The two tracks below, which will both be part of the EP, have been floating around through the interwebs for a couple of months now, a fact that doesn't make them feel less fresh. There's no definite release date yet, but the record will presumably be out sometime in March or April. Listen to the ambient-infused downbeat tune "Remember" and the more trippy, deliberately more post-dubstep track "Bowl" below.

Mystica Tribe - “Flowers”.

26 Jan 2012 — Henning Lahmann
I recently stumbled across Tokyo-based producer Taka Noda aka Mystica Tribe, whose debut single "Meditation Stick", released last fall via SD Records, was an excellent excursion into grooving dub. Noda recently put "Flowers" up on his Soundcloud, an intriguingly meandering, bright and shiny yet comfortably mysterious house jam, playful and rhythmically complex, a terrific work all along. We don't have too much information on this one, but Mystica Tribe surely is an artist to keep an eye on. Read more → I recently stumbled across Tokyo-based producer Taka Noda aka Mystica Tribe, whose debut single "Meditation Stick", released last fall via SD Records, was an excellent excursion into grooving dub. Noda recently put "Flowers" up on his Soundcloud, an intriguingly meandering, bright and shiny yet comfortably mysterious house jam, playful and rhythmically complex, a terrific work all along. We don't have too much information on this one, but Mystica Tribe surely is an artist to keep an eye on.

Parakeet: “Tomorrow”.

26 Jan 2012 — Henning Lahmann
London via Hiroshima's Mariko Doi, better known as the bassist/vocalist of everyone's favorite noise poppers Yuck, has got a new project named Parakeet, a two-piece together with James Llewellyn Thomas. Their first 7 inch will be released March 5, listen to the a-side below. And you thought Yuck were noisy and 90s-infused. Parakeet - Tomorrow Read more → London via Hiroshima's Mariko Doi, better known as the bassist/vocalist of everyone's favorite noise poppers Yuck, has got a new project named Parakeet, a two-piece together with James Llewellyn Thomas. Their first 7 inch will be released March 5, listen to the a-side below. And you thought Yuck were noisy and 90s-infused. Parakeet - Tomorrow

Terrors: “Lifetime to Regret”.

25 Jan 2012 — Henning Lahmann
After such a long time without new material, and after last year's breathtaking collection of previous works, Lagan Qord, it's amazing to see that Elijah Forrest apparently has managed to finally record new songs for his Terrors project. At least two new tunes popped up on Soundcloud recently, and both stated "from forthcoming George Jones Sings the Great Songs of Leon Payne cassette", an album that of course has been recorded before, but even after countless comparing listens, it's kinda hard to speak of "Lifetime to Regret" as being a cover song of this one, though it technically is. Wood's sparse, restrained instrumentation together with his mourning, insistent voice still are an almost unbearably devastating listen. If the Soundcloud tagging is correct, George Jones Sings the Great Songs of Leon Payne will be released by Ehse Records. Terrors - Lifetime to Regret Read more → After such a long time without new material, and after last year's breathtaking collection of previous works, Lagan Qord, it's amazing to see that Elijah Forrest apparently has managed to finally record new songs for his Terrors project. At least two new tunes popped up on Soundcloud recently, and both stated "from forthcoming George Jones Sings the Great Songs of Leon Payne cassette", an album that of course has been recorded before, but even after countless comparing listens, it's kinda hard to speak of "Lifetime to Regret" as being a cover song of this one, though it technically is. Wood's sparse, restrained instrumentation together with his mourning, insistent voice still are an almost unbearably devastating listen. If the Soundcloud tagging is correct, George Jones Sings the Great Songs of Leon Payne will be released by Ehse Records. Terrors - Lifetime to Regret

in india: “Some Future Spring”.

25 Jan 2012 — Tonje Thilesen
I guess you could say that we're a bit late on this once for once (thanks to Stingby for leading us to them in the first place, however); but considering the fact that NY's collaborative outfit In India and their LP <><><> has gotten so little attention even after a year since the free release at Klånge (curated by Joseph Beers from the band), is to me nothing but mysterious. In India experiments with quirky, psychedelic pop and (children's) bedroom electronica, literally setting no limits to the exploration of their own sound universe. It can be curious, playful or noisy in the one end, however smooth and beautiful (like "Some Future Spring" below) on the other, which makes the impossibly pronounced name of the album an interesting, but weird hour of listening. For the particularly interested, they also unveiled no more than 46 (!) unreleased tracks in two large, and again, free albums named you who cling to the rope of love and you with the golden complexion, so if you feel like there's something missing, go ahead and dig yourself through this massive collection; highly recommended for treasure hunters like ourselves. In India - Some Future Spring In India - Basement Disco Read more → I guess you could say that we're a bit late on this once for once (thanks to Stingby for leading us to them in the first place, however); but considering the fact that NY's collaborative outfit In India and their LP <><><> has gotten so little attention even after a year since the free release at Klånge (curated by Joseph Beers from the band), is to me nothing but mysterious. In India experiments with quirky, psychedelic pop and (children's) bedroom electronica, literally setting no limits to the exploration of their own sound universe. It can be curious, playful or noisy in the one end, however smooth and beautiful (like "Some Future Spring" below) on the other, which makes the impossibly pronounced name of the album an interesting, but weird hour of listening. For the particularly interested, they also unveiled no more than 46 (!) unreleased tracks in two large, and again, free albums named you who cling to the rope of love and you with the golden complexion, so if you feel like there's something missing, go ahead and dig yourself through this massive collection; highly recommended for treasure hunters like ourselves. In India - Some Future Spring In India - Basement Disco

The NFOP Guide to CTM 2012.

24 Jan 2012 — Henning Lahmann
Starting Monday, January 30, Berlin will host the thirteenth edition of Club Transmediale (CTM), the "Festival for Adventurous Music and Related Arts" that arguably is Germany's most relevant event entirely focusing on music (it is paired with the Transmediale festival for media art). Until February 5 and across various venues, the festival will, under this year's theme "Spectral", "devote itself to a musical and medial review of historic aesthetic designs and all unfulfilled utopias and dystopias", to quote the mission statement: "Ever since unspectacularly leaving the last millennium behind, the feeling has been creeping up on us that, in the face of the simultaneity of a permanent state of crisis and an exponentially expanding technological archive, our entire future now lies in the past. There is no renaissance on the horizon. Instead one has an overriding impression of staggering through or colliding with collective and private phantasmagoria." Hardly surprising, then, to see artistic trends such as "drag, witch house, hypnagogic pop, hauntology, analog synthesizer music, neo-industrial, and drone music" being the main focus of the CTM 2012 program, thus indeed providing a very timely response to the recent backward-looking developments in underground music. Below, we've done some cherry picking, for the complete program and schedule you should go here. Zodiak Revisited, HAU, January 30 to February 1 Last summer, I wrote a brief, rather grim essay on Berlin's music scene and the city's heritage in that regard (it will be published in the first edition of Decoder Magazine, so if you're curious you should support their Kickstarter now), among other things lamenting the lack of true appreciation of Kreuzberg's short-lived yet highly influential Zodiak Free Arts Lab, which served as one of the starting points for the development of kosmische and kraut in 70s West Germany. Most likely in part due to last year's reemerged and repeated evaluation in online media, perhaps most prominently through Altered Zones, this has started to change, and it is a delight to see the CTM organizers jumping at the opportunity (after all the HAU 2, one of the festival's principal performance spaces, is situated in the building that once housed the Zodiak) by initiating Zodiak Revisited, a series of two discussions and three concerts featuring some of the founders and successors of this unique experimental venue. Conrad Schnitzler, Cassetten Concert (c) Archiv Conrad Schnitzler Tri Angle Showcase, Berghain, February 2 A festival that aims at evaluating the otherworldly and the aesthetics of the past in the music of 2012 cannot afford to omit Tri Angle Records, the label which like no one else popularized the darker, eerie and haunting realms over the last one and a half years. On February 2, Berghain's main room will set the stage for Balam Acab (who reportedly sucks live, but we'll see), oOoOO, and Holy Other, supported by Kuedo and Puzzle. For more details check the event's Facebook page. ≠ (not equal), Berghain, February 3 Berghain's recently launched ≠ (not equal) series (with a surreal event on 11/11/11 featuring Demdike Stare, Andy Stott, Raime and Tropic of Cancer) stands for similarly black aesthetics, hence fitting perfectly into this year's CTM theme. Their night on Friday, February 2 will host performances by Opium Hum, Ben Frost with Shahzad Ismaily & Borgar Magnason, Mika Vainio, Morphosis, Roly Porter (feat. visuals by MFO), G.H., and Ancient Methods. Check further details here and watch the trailer below. Further Recommendations Other concert highlights include: Mark Fell (Berghain,Tuesday) The Haxan Cloak, Cut Hands (Berghain Kantine, Wednesday) Stellar OM Source, Heatsick, Ital (Berghain Kantine, Thursday) The Joshua Light Show feat. Oneohtrix Point Never (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Friday) Co La, James Ferraro (Berghain Kantine, Friday) Grouper with Jeffre Cantu-Ledesma staging Circular Veil, a seven-hour nonstop "audio hypnosis"/"sound environment" (HAU 2, Saturday) Tim Hecker performing his album Ravedeath 1972 live on a church organ (Passionskirche, Saturday) The Joshua Light Show feat. Manuel Göttsching (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Saturday) Shlohmo, Salva, Hudson Mohawke (Gretchen 1, Saturday) Pole, Hieroglyphic Being, Kassem Mosse (Horst Krzbrg, Saturday) 30 Years of Touch Showcase (Passionskirche, Sunday) CTM.12 Discourse Series Of the accompanying discourse series (further info here), we would like to point to the talk of Geeta Dayal with James Ferraro and Daniel Lopatin "about their approach to the weird psychedelics of increasingly hyper-real realms of consumerism and communication" (HAU 3, Thursday), and to the discussion between Mark Fisher and the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani about "the impact of hauntology and the current capitalist state of siege" and "the effects of xeno-communication" (HAU 3, Saturday). Both events are hosted by The Wire. Read more → Starting Monday, January 30, Berlin will host the thirteenth edition of Club Transmediale (CTM), the "Festival for Adventurous Music and Related Arts" that arguably is Germany's most relevant event entirely focusing on music (it is paired with the Transmediale festival for media art). Until February 5 and across various venues, the festival will, under this year's theme "Spectral", "devote itself to a musical and medial review of historic aesthetic designs and all unfulfilled utopias and dystopias", to quote the mission statement: "Ever since unspectacularly leaving the last millennium behind, the feeling has been creeping up on us that, in the face of the simultaneity of a permanent state of crisis and an exponentially expanding technological archive, our entire future now lies in the past. There is no renaissance on the horizon. Instead one has an overriding impression of staggering through or colliding with collective and private phantasmagoria." Hardly surprising, then, to see artistic trends such as "drag, witch house, hypnagogic pop, hauntology, analog synthesizer music, neo-industrial, and drone music" being the main focus of the CTM 2012 program, thus indeed providing a very timely response to the recent backward-looking developments in underground music. Below, we've done some cherry picking, for the complete program and schedule you should go here. Zodiak Revisited, HAU, January 30 to February 1 Last summer, I wrote a brief, rather grim essay on Berlin's music scene and the city's heritage in that regard (it will be published in the first edition of Decoder Magazine, so if you're curious you should support their Kickstarter now), among other things lamenting the lack of true appreciation of Kreuzberg's short-lived yet highly influential Zodiak Free Arts Lab, which served as one of the starting points for the development of kosmische and kraut in 70s West Germany. Most likely in part due to last year's reemerged and repeated evaluation in online media, perhaps most prominently through Altered Zones, this has started to change, and it is a delight to see the CTM organizers jumping at the opportunity (after all the HAU 2, one of the festival's principal performance spaces, is situated in the building that once housed the Zodiak) by initiating Zodiak Revisited, a series of two discussions and three concerts featuring some of the founders and successors of this unique experimental venue. Conrad Schnitzler, Cassetten Concert (c) Archiv Conrad Schnitzler Tri Angle Showcase, Berghain, February 2 A festival that aims at evaluating the otherworldly and the aesthetics of the past in the music of 2012 cannot afford to omit Tri Angle Records, the label which like no one else popularized the darker, eerie and haunting realms over the last one and a half years. On February 2, Berghain's main room will set the stage for Balam Acab (who reportedly sucks live, but we'll see), oOoOO, and Holy Other, supported by Kuedo and Puzzle. For more details check the event's Facebook page. ≠ (not equal), Berghain, February 3 Berghain's recently launched ≠ (not equal) series (with a surreal event on 11/11/11 featuring Demdike Stare, Andy Stott, Raime and Tropic of Cancer) stands for similarly black aesthetics, hence fitting perfectly into this year's CTM theme. Their night on Friday, February 2 will host performances by Opium Hum, Ben Frost with Shahzad Ismaily & Borgar Magnason, Mika Vainio, Morphosis, Roly Porter (feat. visuals by MFO), G.H., and Ancient Methods. Check further details here and watch the trailer below. Further Recommendations Other concert highlights include: Mark Fell (Berghain,Tuesday) The Haxan Cloak, Cut Hands (Berghain Kantine, Wednesday) Stellar OM Source, Heatsick, Ital (Berghain Kantine, Thursday) The Joshua Light Show feat. Oneohtrix Point Never (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Friday) Co La, James Ferraro (Berghain Kantine, Friday) Grouper with Jeffre Cantu-Ledesma staging Circular Veil, a seven-hour nonstop "audio hypnosis"/"sound environment" (HAU 2, Saturday) Tim Hecker performing his album Ravedeath 1972 live on a church organ (Passionskirche, Saturday) The Joshua Light Show feat. Manuel Göttsching (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Saturday) Shlohmo, Salva, Hudson Mohawke (Gretchen 1, Saturday) Pole, Hieroglyphic Being, Kassem Mosse (Horst Krzbrg, Saturday) 30 Years of Touch Showcase (Passionskirche, Sunday) CTM.12 Discourse Series Of the accompanying discourse series (further info here), we would like to point to the talk of Geeta Dayal with James Ferraro and Daniel Lopatin "about their approach to the weird psychedelics of increasingly hyper-real realms of consumerism and communication" (HAU 3, Thursday), and to the discussion between Mark Fisher and the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani about "the impact of hauntology and the current capitalist state of siege" and "the effects of xeno-communication" (HAU 3, Saturday). Both events are hosted by The Wire.

Carnivals: “Absences”.

24 Jan 2012 — Henning Lahmann
If #seapunk and/or early nineties jungle rip-offs aren't your thing (no worries, I'm sure you're not alone), here's some soothing and pretty sophisticated contemporary British electronica by Sheffield producer Stewart Green aka Carnivals. Just premiered on TLOBF, the wonderfully smooth and surprisingly textured "Absences" is part of Green's brand new and free internet single that you may download over here. Carnivals - Absences Read more → If #seapunk and/or early nineties jungle rip-offs aren't your thing (no worries, I'm sure you're not alone), here's some soothing and pretty sophisticated contemporary British electronica by Sheffield producer Stewart Green aka Carnivals. Just premiered on TLOBF, the wonderfully smooth and surprisingly textured "Absences" is part of Green's brand new and free internet single that you may download over here. Carnivals - Absences

Summer Twins: “I Will Love You”.

24 Jan 2012 — Henning Lahmann
Riverside, California twee outfit Summer Twins, consisting of twin sisters (duh!) Chelsea and Justine Brown plus Danny Delgado and Marcio Rivera, made some blog rounds in the summer of 2010 with their shamelessly cute and pretty summer vibes. It's grim January now, but chances are that won't matter anymore after the release of their self-titled debut LP, out tomorrow via Burger Records. Listen to the cheerful album cut "I Will Love You" below, and also revisit "The More I Think of You" from their initial EP The Good Things from August 2010 (not on the album), a wonderful piece of indie pop in its purest form. Previously: Summer Twins - The More I Think of You Read more → Riverside, California twee outfit Summer Twins, consisting of twin sisters (duh!) Chelsea and Justine Brown plus Danny Delgado and Marcio Rivera, made some blog rounds in the summer of 2010 with their shamelessly cute and pretty summer vibes. It's grim January now, but chances are that won't matter anymore after the release of their self-titled debut LP, out tomorrow via Burger Records. Listen to the cheerful album cut "I Will Love You" below, and also revisit "The More I Think of You" from their initial EP The Good Things from August 2010 (not on the album), a wonderful piece of indie pop in its purest form. Previously: Summer Twins - The More I Think of You
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