André Bratten will release his latest album, Pax Americana, on June 28 via Smalltown Supersound. Alongside the announcement , the Norwegian producer shared funk-beat driven lead single “HS.” 

All album tracks came after Bratten moved from the center of Oslo to the city’s suburbs. The change of scenery had a positive effect on every aspect of his life, allowing him to focus on his studio work. It took him a year to build his new studio in his garden, and then another year to patch all the hardware together again and relearn his music-making process. 

The first tracks to emerge from his suburban base surfaced last year on Smalltown Supersound as a series of three 12″s. These are lush, driving funk cuts swaddled in curdled synthesis, aiming to conjure the spirit of the acts he loved in his early teens: Boards of Canada, Autechre, and the late Drexciya producer James Stinson’s The Other People Place and Transllusion projects.  

Pax Americana presents three of the series’ softer tracks, alongside three new numbers which add a shade of menace to the record. 

Bratten produced all tracks in an old-fashioned, analog fashion, restricting himself to an 808, an old sequencer, a reel-to-reel tape, and a vintage mixer that once belonged to ABBA in the 1980s. Bratten bought the desk from a rockabilly musician in Norway who’d acquired it from a Swedish TV station. 

The album follows Bratten’s debut LP, Be a Man You Ant, released on Oslo label FullPupp. 

Tracklisting

01. HS

02. Pax Americana

03. 426

04. Commonwealth

05. Ranx

06. Recreation 26B