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We're marking 40 years of the one and only Chris & Cosey in the new issue of Electronic Sound. Our cover story is an in-depth interview with Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, who look back over the highs and lows of their incredible musical partnership, which they formed straight after Throbbing Gristle imploded. The fact that Chris and Cosey are a couple has always been central to everything the pair have done, including the 20-odd albums they have released under a range of different guises, …

Viva freaktronica! For this edition of Electronic Sound cover stars are the legendary Faust, the wildest and weirdest of the 1970s krautrock outfits. We have a transparent vinyl seven-inch featuring two tracks from 'The Faust Tapes', the group's best-selling 1973 album, to accompany the magazine too.

The third in Klaus Schulze's series of three-disc compilations of live and rare material (all of it previously released in his 50-disc Ultimate Edition box from 2000) is pure bliss for fans of early-'70s analog synthesizer music. The melodies swoop and whoosh like comets passing by a slowly drifting space station manned by dudes and ladies in unisex jumpsuits with long, perfectly coiffed hair, and beards on the men. Close your eyes and you're there. Many of these tracks are grouped into half-hou…

Simona Zambolis first album on Mille Plateaux "Ethernity" is a piece of haunting music - vibrating, pulsing and cutting through the concrete and the chaos at the same time, when you listen close enough. The album is a journey through trans-reality, not only as a melancholic drama, but also as a travel to alien worlds, hence as a necessity of an electronic intervention. "Ethernithy" is radical fictioning in a non-expressive, non-melancholic and ultrablack sense. Profound music demands blackness, …

The new record by Eric Chenaux is his most immaculate and pristine. Say Laura perfectly incarnates the counter-intuitive interplay of instrument and voice that Chenaux has been revealing and revelling in throughout the past decade: his gently unhinged juxtaposition of resplendently smooth, seductively assured singing and puckish, frazzled, thoroughly destabilized guitar could come from no other musician. The five wandering, wondering ballads on Say Laura bring Chenaux’s semi-improvised but keenl…

On “First Flight Redux” Dave Harrington takes a scalpel to the multi-tracks of "First Flight" (LP/DL, Algorithm Free) remixing the raw material into something else entirely.

Mexican born, New York-based vibraphonist, marimbist, improviser and composer Patricia Brennan has confirmed the release of her debut full length album Maquishti, January 15, 2021 on the Valley of Search label. The twelve original instrumentals that make up the album were composed and performed solo by Brennan on vibraphone and marimba. Employing unusual performance techniques and occasional electronics, many of the compositions were borne from improvisations created live in the studio at the ti…

** 2021 Stock ** The first ever reissue of the 1975 free jazz album originally released on India Navigation. What we know of Downtown New York comes from the countercultural and creative flowering that emerged in lower Manhattan in the 1960s, attributable to cheap live-work spaces called lofts. These were often abandoned and disused small manufacturing spaces and they became a nexus for artistic practice and life. From a jazz perspective, lofts were alternatives to the club scene, and they gaine…

*Triple LP.* In June 2016, the great-outdoors music festival Echos asked Ernest Bergez aka Sourdure to produce a series of "Mantras" set to be diffused in between each concert of the twenty-four hours event taking place in the french Alpes. These pieces were played on the festival's gigantic speakers/ horns system in the afternoon, evening, night, morning, noon... and reverberated fully in the rocky valley. This triple vinyl edition gathers the field-recording-like captures of the tracks deliver…

Smells Like Teen Spirit is premised in a haptic interrogation of each of the label's previous editions. Berlin-based and Mexico City-born multi-disciplinary artist Mario de Vega occupied the gallery space of Rumpsti Pumsti (Musik) for three consecutive days in October 2016 with a hitherto complete Tochnit Aleph catalog, sanding machine, hammer, and recording equipment. Conflating acts of "playing" with destruction, de Vega took to the recorded works and assorted media with his Spartan too…

"Vincent Wrenn works with a microtonal system of seven octaves and each octave being divided into 360 notes, with Saturn being the lowest and the sun being the highest octave. That may sound also pretty esoteric, but the six pieces here are excellent studies in what seems to be sine wave like sounds. Each of these pieces appears to have very few variations and when played very loud may burst an eardrum, or destroy your relationship with your neighbour. I would think these pieces are best enjoyed…

Swedish experimental outfit White Stains created five highly influential albums. Band members Carl Abrahamsson and Thomas Tibert later on went on to form the equally influential act Cotton Ferox. Their improvisational approach and dark musical atmospheres created a following which remains to this day, and which even led to a one-off reunion gig in Gothenburg in 2013 together with long time collaborator Genesis P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV). The album Exploratorium is a compilation of…

Cotton Ferox key members Carl Abrahamsson and Thomas Tibert have composed, performed and produced groundbreaking music since the late 1980s. After their time in White Stains and several solo projects, Cotton Ferox have been their main mothership. Always producing cutting edge stuff, they have also always made an issue out of collaborating with other interesting artists. In both White Stains and Cotton Ferox, they’ve worked together with industrial pioneer/legend Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. Some ex…

"We begin with the flickering, fire-like erraticism of the first track. Despite bearing the title of “Snow”, I’m drawn to imagine the very opposite: an intense heat that billows and dwindles across the stereo frame, suddenly erupting from left to right as if devouring an oil slick, promptly receding through oxygen exhaustion. To what extent are these fizzing, crackling chords – presumably electronics, but ultimately too distorted to accurately identify – under Hahn’s control? To what extent does…

Despite having worked together in innumerable settings, including the longstanding Survival Unit III, with drummer Michael Zerang, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee have never released a CD of duets. In an extra intimate studio setting in upstate New York, where both players reside, No Time Left for Sadness demonstrates their incredible musical understanding. Recalling some of McPhee's landmark records with Marseilles musicians in terms of telepathy and trust, it's a…

Since its first iteration in 1979, Vario has appeared in some fifty different versions, with a great variety of musicians, also actors, dancers, and filmmakers. It's the brainchild of Günter Christmann, a powerhouse of improvised music in Germany whose influence is out of scale with his acclaim. Since his emergence on the scene in the early 1970s, including appearances on classic FMP outings such as Rüdiger Carl Inc.'s King Alcohol (CVSD 032CD) and the eponymous Peter Kowald Quintet LP (CF 015LP…

You would never believe this record to be a relic from a past of electronic music that happened before anybody even spoke about rock music. In 1957 this compilation of electronic and orchestral compositions by the three masterminds Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky and William Bergsma saw the light of the stars for the first time and has become a cult piece among lovers of electronic space music since then, despite the fact that only the first side features the so called tape compositions of Lu…

'Questions', a companion in Qluster's quiet dialogue. Roedelius and Onnen Bock spin delicate, unhurried keyboard music, more felt than composed. Intimate, spacious and gently searching ambient kosmische.

LP version. Includes CD. The third incarnation of the legendary krautrock project Kluster/Cluster expands its audience with the contemplative, mature, and intelligent electronic music of Echtzeit. Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Onnen Bock, and Armin Metz are Qluster, founded under the name of Kluster in 1969 by Roedelius, Dieter Moebius, and Conrad Schnitzler. Kluster were responsible for two milestones of electronic music. Schnitzler quit the band two years later, leaving Roedelius and Moebius to c…

Suicide's synth architect goes solo and lyrical. 'Cheyenne' trades menace for melody: bright, looping keyboard motifs and toy-box rhythm, naïve and radiant. Minimal electronics with an unexpectedly tender heart.

LP version. Post-war apartments dominated the views of Düsseldorf in the early 1980s - cement slabs, the "art bunker" known as the Kunsthalle, and the elevated railway called "The Millipede". Yet reconstruction was in full swing - bank buildings on the "Kö" received postmodern interiors, the old town became stylishly retro-rustic, and advertising agencies displaced industrial companies. Music took all of this on. Punk was finished, but its pathos drifted through pubs and shared flats. At the sam…

LP version. Bureau B reissue Rolf Trostel's Der Prophet (1982). Electronic pop was the musical goal of the Berlin School musician Rolf Trostel on Der Prophet, which was released in the same year as its predecessor Two Faces. Der Prophet is the culmination of this phase of Trostel's oeuvre, which was tightly coupled to the PPG Wave Computer. As on his previous releases, the sonic peculiarities and clanking sounds of wavetable synthesis are emphasized. Yet here they are obviously more interlinked …

'Wide country': Roedelius and Alexander Czjzek paint expansive, cinematic soundscapes. Synth, piano and open space combine in music of pastoral grandeur, meditative, melodic and gently widescreen.

LP version. Includes CD. Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011), composer and concept artist, was one of the most important representatives of Germany's electronic music avant-garde. A student of Joseph Beuys, he founded Berlin's legendary Zodiak Free Arts Lab, a subculture club in 1967/68, was a member of Tangerine Dream (with Klaus Schulze and Edgar Froese) and Kluster (with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and also released countless solo albums. Schneider TM (Dirk Dresselhaus) has been invo…

LP version. Bureau B reissues the first collaborative release by Dieter Moebius and Gerd Beerbohm, originally released by Sky Records in 1982. In the latter half of the 1970s, alongside their Cluster collaboration, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius embarked almost simultaneously on individual musical journeys. Roedelius focused primarily on solo projects, while Moebius preferred to engage with other musicians on equal terms. Strange Music -- as unimaginative as the title may first appear…

LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Richard Pinhas's L'Ethique, originally released in 1982. Following the vaguely poppy shapes of 1980's album East West (BB 292CD/LP), his fifth album L'Ethique saw the ex-Heldon guitarist and synth wizard return to bigger and bolder band-like methods. After the release he disappeared from the limelight for nearly a decade and returned in the 1990s. Interviewed by the Electronics & Music Maker magazine in 1982, Pinhas spoke in buoyant terms about the futur…

Der Plan's riotous debut, a founding shot of Neue Deutsche Welle. 'Geri Reig' is anarchic, homemade electronic pop: dime-store keyboards, Dada humour and pure Ata Tak irreverence. NDW at its most inventive and unhinged.

LP version. Inspired by punk and post punk, vibrant scenes dedicated to independent self-actualization by means of self-distributed cassettes - the cheapest and fastest medium - were developing on each side of the Cold War's confrontational line. Albeit, under quite different circumstances. While there was a DIY euphoria in the West, which would also have had ideological motives, subcultures in the East simply had no other means. Even the first act of replication meant moving into illegal territ…

LP version. On their second album Material, originally released on Sky Records in 1981, Moebius & Plank ventured far, far away from the double coordinates of the Harmonia world and pop music cosmos. Amazingly, they did not find themselves floating in space, but made an exemplary landing, avoiding getting caught between a rock and a hard place. Material saw them generate a form of genre-busting electronic music, more radical than anything one might have expected to come out of Germany, not even f…

One take, one hour, no overdubs. Moebius and Roedelius let a single improvisation unfurl in real time, gently evolving electronic tides, meditative and unforced. Late-period Cluster at its most patient and hypnotic.

Cluster's early-'80s farewell to their first era: shorter, gnarlier electronic vignettes, wry and rhythmic. 'Curiosum' finds Moebius and Roedelius at their most impish, sketching miniature worlds with battered analogue gear.

Caught onstage in 1980, Cluster improvise an evening into long, mutating electronic landscapes. The duo's live telepathy in full flow, sequencers churning, textures blooming and dissolving. A vivid document of kosmische in real time.

LP version, pressed on 180 gram vinyl. This is the first solo album by Dieter Moebius, recorded at Conny Plank's studio and originally released in 1983 on Sky Records. By 1969 at the latest, Dieter Moebius was synonymous with the avant-garde electronic music scene in Germany. He and Hans-Joachim Roedelius formed Cluster, a seminal electronic/ambient duo, while Moebius was also a member of the so-called Krautrock supergroup Harmonia (with Michael Rother and Roedelius), as well as collaborating on…

The fact that this album appeared at all in 1983 owes less to Günter Schickert and more to Steven and Alan Freeman, who sought him out for their Krautrock encyclopedia The Crack in the Cosmic Egg. On learning that Schickert had heaps of recordings in his archive, the Freeman brothers proposed compiling an album. Schickert agreed and handed over material which the English YHR label had released in cassette form. Kinder in der Wildnis is a more heterogeneous album than either of its predecessors, …

LP version. Conrad Schnitzler (1937–2011), composer and concept artist, is one of the most important representatives of Germany's electronic music avant-garde. A student of Joseph Beuys, he founded Berlin's legendary Zodiak Free Arts Lab, a subculture club, in 1967/68, was a member of Tangerine Dream (together with Klaus Schulze and Edgar Froese) and Kluster (with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and also released countless solo albums. "Contempora" is a sort of collection of sk…

We’re proud to introduce the new Superfly reissue of the rarest LP at cult Strata East label! Reissued for the first time, John Gordon’s ‘Erotica Suite’ is one of the holy grail for deep and spiritual jazz fans, check the superb ‘Neleh’! A great later label effort under the leadership of trombonist John Gordon, with work by James Spaulding on alto and flute, John Miller on piano and keyboards, Waymond Reed on trumpet, Lyle Atkinson on bass, and Frank Derrick on drums and bells;As usual, beautif…

Staubgold present a reissue of Atarpop 73 & Le Collectif Le Temps Des Cerises's Attention L'Armee, originally released in 1975. 10 December 1974. 200 conscripts exited the casern of Draguignan in order to demonstrate in the streets of the city. They made part of those clandestine soldier committees multiplying themselves all over France with a view to unite the young activists of the extreme left with the anti-militarists. This dispute was a backwash of the student manifestations in spring…

The newest installment in Unrock’s ongoing Saraswati Series is the most rebellious and wildest to date. Again an intercontinental output. A dangerous, electric brew filled with exotic aroma from Cairo’s sound guerilla, Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Maurice Louca (Karkhana) and Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush, Karkhana). The always changing face of Dwarfs of East Agouza, shows them  in a feverish mode and adrenalin rush. Massive eruptions fight genuine flow. Sultans of Unrock. Chris Corsano and Bill Or…

Originally issued by Crammed in 1987, this is one of the most sought-after releases in our legendary Made To Measure series. Known for his numerous albums, soundtracks, and collaborations with an impossibly broad array of artists (from Ryuichi Sakamoto and DJ Towa Tei to Van Dyke Parks, Björk, Manu Dibango and Elvin Jones), composer, saxophonist and producer Yasuaki Shimizu also released several electronic music productions during the '80s, which are currently generating a lot of interest (a.o. …

Baltimore’s PJ Dorsey has traversed a lifelong journey delving into psychoactive music which can alter one’s cognitive and conscious state. He harnesses his experiences to create music as Tarotplane. Using guitar, effects and processing he produces time suspending soundscapes - immersive music for merging the mind and body. 358 Oblique is the follow up to First which was released on Aguirre Records in 2015. Find yourself adrift in the lapping waters of a slow unraveling sea of sound, a sp…