Electronic / Modular Synthesizers

Epic, double-disc edition covering three LPs of formative Electronic Music from Canada; both volumes of the Melbourne-label "Electronic Music By Canadian Composers" series - presenting both cover-variations of each in a metallized variant of the de facto Creel Pone "grid" - then the internal Radio Canada pressing of "Music Canada Vol XIII Electronic Music in Canada." Starting with an amazing, side-length piece by "Sky-Sails" co-author Ann Southam (more about her later in the series) & continuing…

Budapest goes sci-fi. Super obscure composers, but plenty of sine wave hooey for your Balkans buck. Tracklisting: Zoltan Pongracs-Mariphonia, Zoltan Pongracs-The Story of a Chord in C Sharp Major, Peter Eotvos-The Tale, Ivan Patachich-Ta Fonaenta, Ivan Patachich-Funzione Acustica, Mare Victor & Peter Winkler-Viscositas. " It’s Friday, and here’s another Creel Pone - I’m sensing a pattern here - this time a thoroughly fantastic comp running down the cream of the early-mid 70s Budapest crop. One…

For the impeccable MAT label, Denamrk’s Central tends hitherto little known ambient aspects of his sound as Palta with a fine selection of feathered rhythms and gauzy, painterly sounds. Nesting amid good company for this kind of thing, Universel quietly unfolds scuttling, jazz-wise geometries and keening subaquatic chords in the title track, then drifts with scratchy tribal drums and tropical greenhouse sounds in Tabt Optagelse into frayed, frothy new age feels in På Gensyn. It would appear…

**few copies back in stock, sold out at source** Ian Fenton’s Frozen Reeds label finally unveil this epic, years-in-the-making the release of Roland Kayn’s fourteen-hour masterpiece, A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound, as a sixteen-CD boxed set. Mind-bending. Edition of 750. Audio restoration by Jim O'Rourke. Sweet jeezus...Roland Kayn was a composer who rejected composition, a human who gave machines the benefit of the doubt. A German who began making music in the twentieth century with a…

Criminally under-rated set of Early American Moog Modular Synthesizer Music - the sole release by composer William Hoskins, the "Director of Electronic Music and Composer-in-Residence at Jacksonville University in Florida." Issued in 1979 by the Harriman, NY-based Spectrum - a "Division of UNI-PRO Recordings, Inc." the LP consists of a pair of discrete pieces, with each taking up a side of its own. "Galactic Fantasy" lives up to the premise of its title, its far-reaching narratives are concerned…

Two discs covering three self-issued LPs of 8-bit digital grind by Boston-area composer John Holland; as unheralded and unbeknownst as they come. Despite living in the hub for 24 years, and being a rabid fanatic of exactly this sort of thing, I had never seen nor heard head nor hide of either release, proving all too well that there are still gems out there waiting to be mined. On par with such proto-Digital-Synthesis masterworks as Daniel Arfib's "Musique Numerique", Pietro Grossi's "Compute…

Extended hypnotic explorations from Brooklyn’s experimentalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Lichens, OM). Two long-side pieces of futuristic afro-dub, slowly evolving arrangements of voice and modular synthesizer soundscapes. Ethereal and melancholic on the first side with Magnamite, exhibiting 'the relationship of machine and human, showcasing the coupling of the two instruments'. Drifting and wildly pulsating on Heart of Sogguth that 'transforms this relationship into a unified human machin…

Nice ambient/minimal reissue from the good folks at the Italian label Orbeatize. The duo of Martin Kornberger and Volker Kuhn put out two lone cassette tapes back in the 80s that all but vanished from the public eye bar a few hardcore collectors of the era. The music sits somewhere between post-kraut German synth and the electronic fourth world excursions of Per Tjernberg. Drifting piano and basic drum machine patterns also recall the work of Paki & Visnadi, the new age stylings of Paulin…

Double LP version. Includes download code. Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was one of the most popular and forward-thinking composers associated with impressionist music. His innovative and at this time new way to compose music with non-traditional scales and chromaticism inspired countless artists from the likes of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock. Remarkable attributes of his music include the usage of parallel chords, bitonality, and the many compositions using whole…

Filtro was born in 2016 from the meeting of Angelo Bignamini and Luca De Biasi already active in the Italian psychedelic and noise scene (The Great Sanuites, Sukkia, Satantango, etc). In the grammatic of Riflesso magnetic tapes articulate with modular synthesizers and improvisation that the duo manipulates till they get a canvas of twines and multicolour stitches curves and corners sound scraps calibrated and polished get born again and find new context in the shape of patterns repeated sequence…

The fourth album of Driftmachine is not an album in the classical context, it´s a collection of new studio music, remixes of Shackleton and The Sight Below, and material previously available only in digital formats.LP limited edition of 350 copies pressed on purple colored vinyl, includes a post card with original artwork and free download coupon. The album starts off with the surprising Shackleton remix of Radiations, a little gem gleaming with all the spacious percussions you can expect …

Debut CD from one of Chicago's finest modular synth manipulators, Neil Jendon.One of the first things that struck me about Neil's work, when I saw him live, was his pacing. Neil would subtly build levels and layers of various oscillations, frequencies, and tones so deftly that by the time he was sending a hailstorm of electronic chaos out of the PA like buckshot, you almost had no recollection of how he got there without you being aware of it. 'Corporate laughter' reflects many of Jendon's fant…

Thomas Rehnert lives and works in Berlin. He was deeply influenced by the European free jazz of the 1970s, and in West Berlin in the 1980s he played percussion in various punk bands. In the world of punk and experimental music of these years, he began to occupy himself with electro-acoustic music, machine music and automata. He builds sound machines from analogue modular synthesizer systems that are voltage- controlled and steer themselves.His formative principle of organization is variation by …

Minor Planets completes a trilogy of cosmically themed electro-acoustic albums by UK and Berlin based trio Twinkle3, 15 years in the making. This third installment is once again all about the unique synergies the group discover in combining free group improvisation with studio and musique-concrete techniques. The group's combined love of everything from Lee Perry to Noh Theatre via Karlheinz Stockhausen and King Sunny Ade lead them to respond musically to create a single universe where they all …

*300 copies limited edition *Since the late aughts, Helsinki-based multi-instrumentalist, linguist, and skateboarder Olli Aarni has released a steady stream of diverse and remarkably consistent recordings via labels such as Mappa, Longform Editions, Cotton Goods, Laaps and Superpang. “Koko Maailma” constitutes a major new work in his discography, finding a fertile middle ground between what might be understood as his two primary compositional modes: organic/chaotic/aleatoric music and rule-based…

The endlessly engaging Italian imprints, Soave and Orbeatize, deliver what is unquestionably one of the most important and ambitious archival releases of 2024: “Reels 1977-1986”, an astounding 14 CD box set dedicated to the neglected, visionary Swiss electroacousitic composer Ernst Thoma. Presenting a radically singular approach to experimental electronic music - highly rhythmical, ranging from poetically elegant and minimal to frenetic and mind-bending - across its astoundingly expansive durati…

*300 copies limited release* We are happy to share the extended version of Impostor Syndrome by Orbital Patterns. Impostor Syndrome is an ambient electronic album written and produced by Michigan based musician and artist, Orbital Patterns (Abdul Allum).A magnificent sound journey, full of emotions, created by a modular synth workflow that describes Abdul’s signature sound and vision. "A psychological phenomenon where a person doubts their own abilities, internalizing a deep fear of being reveal…

Spoken-word oratorio by Sopa Boba, adapting Nicoleta Esinencu's text That Moment: GW Sok narrates over modular synths by Pavel Tchikov, who composed, recorded and mixed it at La Rouille, and a string quartet.

Studies written for 53 equal divisions of the octave, a tuning the Mexican theorist Augusto Novaro argued came unusually close to the harmonic series. Orozco Mora keeps the timbres to plain sine waves so that nothing distracts from what the intervals are doing.

Genom Grundet is the new release by Swedish analogue explorer Ekolali on new imprint Patience. A pulsing, entrancing study in sustain and release that washes over in ecstatic waves throughout it's 35 minute duration, Genom Grundet is a shimmering summation of Ekolali's approach and an auspicious blueprint for the virgin NYC-based label. .Recorded on a modest setup at his almost-off-grid compound in rural Möljeryd, Sweden, Genom Grundent (Through The Shallows) gently bubbles with a sampled stream…

OK, this one takes a little bit of explaining - on the surface, yes, another set of Moogsploitation joints, but closer in fact to the Holy Grail of said. Released in 1972 & 1975, this pair of obscure, self-released LPs issues some of the first “Pop” music ever made on the Moog Synthesizer by one of the first people to own a system - famously, choreographer Alwin Nikolais got the first off the line, but library music composer Eric Siday & the subject here were among Moog’s initial customers - Jaz…

Berlin-based duo Driftmachine returns with another striking piece of music. "Colliding Contours" is a shape-shifting album made from kosmische, dub, Industrial and Avant-garde elements. It's all held together by tense grooves and a post-club, eerie electronic atmosphere. The latest work of Driftmachine offers a complex dialogue between genres and music styles, transcending the familiar by generating a peculiar mood through its unique take on modular synthesis and its obsessive bass-structures an…