Dark, spooked, early-seventies worries from PU — disguised as M. Zalla, in the throes of his fascination with psychedelia and electronics — with titles like Mondo in Crisi, Problemi Sociali, Azione Sindacale and Mafia Oggi.
Drum-machines, Moog and EMS Synthi.
Still acutely germane; musically and temperamentally.
Demdike Stare has called it the first techno record.
The 1994 return of pioneering electronic guru Richard ‘Heldon’ Pinhas to the forefront of the French underground scene. The fruits of a two-year collaboration with John Livengood from Red Noise and Spacecraft, inspired by Norman Spinrad’s novel Rock Machine. First vinyl issue.
Four portions of lonesome country, by Toody Cole from Dead Moon, and The Rats.
Previously unissued underground rock from 1969, Rockford, Illinois.
His seismic 1956 recordings presented alongside an 88-page book specially authored by Peter Guralnick, featuring numerous beautiful, previously-unpublished photographs.
‘Psychedelic funk, cosmic disco, Balearica… and beyond!’
Absorbing new music from Ecuador, named after a street in the historic centre of Quito.
A poignant, trippy, astute, bass-heavy blend of a range of styles including juke, reggaeton and UK garage, flavoured by their to and fro between Latin America and Europe.
Quixosis’ grandad was a key, controversial player in the explosion of musica nacional in the city in the early sixties, and the mix is studded with evocative samples of Italian chanson and South American folk from his record collection, in a kind of reverie about national and self identity, Beat Konducted at the centre of the world.
Check it out.
‘What does it mean to listen? I mean, really to listen to the infinite possibilities of every moment of our sonic lives? No composer in 20th and 21st century music asked the question more sensitively, or more profoundly than Eliane Radigue, who has died at the age of 94.
‘Radigue was a sonic pioneer. Pre 2001, her music was made exclusively for synthesisers, because the technology allowed her to get inside the world of sound, stretching individual pitches into seeming infinities of slowness and concentration, in a way that traditional composition didn’t. Listen to the epic scales of ever-changing changelessness — a paradox that makes sense when you encounter her music — of her Trilogie de la Mort to experience what I mean. As Pascal Wyse wrote in his interview with her, Radigue’s use of synthesisers meant that ‘the music didn’t contain sound: the sound contained the music’ (The Guardian).