SHAPE, the European platform for innovative music and audiovisual art, has announced its 2021 artist list.
The platform, supported by Creative Europe, consists of 16 different European festivals, including TodaysArt, Maintenant, Unsound, and Berlin’s CTM, and each of these chooses three artists to make up 48 in total. This year’s artist list places audiovisual projects next to club-based artists and more experimentally inclined acts, including performances and pieces by Kali Malone, Grand River, KMRU, Shapednoise, Thoom, Nazar, Odete, and more.
With the ongoing pandemic in mind, these artists will form a program that combines live events and online activities via streams, new audio publications, and online exhibitions.
Last year, XLR8R partnered with SHAPE on something of an online festival, presenting daily live streams and audio mixes across two weeks, as well as an XLR8R+ edition, featuring tracks and samples from Jay Glass Dubs, Rian Treanor, and Poly Chain.
You can find the full artists list below, with more on SHAPE here.
Renowned French duo Daft Punk have split up after 28 years.
The duo, made up of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, broke the news today with an eight-minute video titled “Epilogue,” which was cut from their 2006 film “Electroma.” In the clip, the pair bid each other farewell in the desert, before one of them is self-destructed.
As reported, Pitchfork reached out to longtime publicist Kathryn Frazier who confirmed the duo had broken up. The reasons remain unknown.
Daft Punk haven’t released an album since 2013’s Random Access Memories, their biggest-selling and most pop-focused LP, although they announced last year that they were working on the score for Dario Argento’s “Occhiali Neri” film. No other news has surfaced, but we will update as it comes in.
According to French media tracking service Visibrain, there were 27 tweets posted every second about Daft Punk on Monday afternoon.
Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter formed Daft Punk in Paris in 1993, having met at school. They released their debut album, Homework, in 1996 on Virgin Records, featuring classic tracks like “Around The World” and “Da Funk” to become a landmark moment in electronic music. By the time of its follow-up, Discovery, in 2001, the publicity-shy pair had taken to making their public appearances in the robot outfits that became their trademark.
Next month, Australia’s Analogue Attic will release the debut album from Alex Albrecht, titled Campfire Stories.
Following his work on Francis Harris‘ Scissor and Thread as Melquíades, and a set of stunning outings as Albrecht La’Brooy with Sean La’Brooy, Campfire Stories presents 10 tracks in Albrecht’s inimitable style, weaving together Australian field recordings, pensive instrumentation, and, at times, club-based percussion.
On the LP, Albrecht also enlists the work of a range of collaborators, including 30/70’s Allysha Joy and Ziggy Zeitgeist (ZFEX), Thomas Gray, Carla Oliver (Badskin), and the aforementioned Sean La’Brooy, who is also co-label head of Analogue Attic alongside Albrecht.
Ahead of the release, Analogue Attic has offered up one of the album’s dancefloor-leaning cuts as today’s XLR8R download. Even with a low-slung groove at its core, “Adam’s Charm with Adam Haliwell” is tender and dreamy, with floating instrumentation dancing atop a side-stepping rhythm that would move any dancefloor.
Tracklisting:
01. Puppeteer 02. Sunshower 03. Yarra Bend with Carla Oliver 04. Forest From The Trees with Sean La’Brooy 05. The Beaten Track with Oliver Paterson 06. Unexpected 07. Adam’s Charm with Adam Haliwell 08. The Summit with Ziggy Zeitgeist 09. Fairground with Thomas Gray & Ziggy Zeitgeist 10. Campfire Stories with Allysha Joy & Thomas Gray
Campfire Stories LP is set to arrive on vinyl and digitally on March 10. You can pre-order the release here.
Full XLR8R+ Members can download the track below.If you’re not an XLR8R+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.
Fantas Variations maps out eight new variations of “Fantas,” the epic opening track on Caterina Barbieri’s 2019 release Ecstatic Computation.
For the project, Barbieri invited friends from a variety of musical backgrounds to create a more inclusive landscape in terms of stylistic, geographical, gender, and generational balance. The results are a diverse array of approaches and instrumentation which blur the boundaries between the acoustic and electronic.
Longtime friend and collaborator Kali Malone rearranged “Fantas” to a slowed-down, austere, and eerie version for two organs. Evelyn Saylor created a piece for a vocal ensemble consisting of her, Lyra Pramuk, Stine Janvin, and Annie Garlid, joining forces to express the choral, psychedelic, and vitalistic nature of the piece. Barbieri’s former guitar professor at the Conservatory in Bologna, Walter Zanetti, composes “Fantas” for electric guitar.
Another standout is Jay Mitta’s singeli reinterpretation of “Fantas,” which transpires with pitched-up percussion and turbo-fast polyrhythmic patterns.
Tracklisting
01. Evelyn Saylor (feat. Lyra Pramuk, Annie Garlid and Stine Janvin) (Fantas Variation for Voices) 02. Bendik Giske “Fantas for Saxophone and Voice” 03. Kali Malone “Fantas for two Organs” 04. Walter Zanetti “Fantas for Electric Guitar” 05. Jay Mitta “Singeli Fantas” 06. Baseck “Fantas Hardcore” 07. Carlo Maria “Fantas resynthesized for 808 and 202” 08. Kara-Lis Coverdale “Fantas Morbida”
Fantas Variations LP is scheduled for April 2 release. Meanwhile, you can stream Bendik Giske’s “Fantas for Saxophone and Voice” in full via the player below, and pre-order here.
Next month, Echocord will release the latest EP from Harvey Bones (a.k.a. El Choop), titled Insane Sends.
The EP is Bones’ first outing on the Danish label and will feature two originals and a remix from Sven Wisemann, who returns to the label for his second appearance. For those familiar with Bones’ work as El Choop or Sven Wiseman’s output, it will come as no surprise that the tracks on the EP deal in deep dubwise grooves. From the propulsive opening track to the more ethereal “Some Fall Harder Than Others” and Sven Wiseman’s loose and swinging rework of “Insane Sends,” the EP is a true masterclass in dub techno from two producers at the top of their game.
In support of the EP, Echocord has offered up “Some Fall Harder Than Others” as today’s XLR8R download, available to XLR8R+ subscribers below. Focusing on ethereal pads, trippy dub chords, and a stipped-back low-slung groove with heavy subs, it’s a cut suited for the early-morning dim-lit hours.
Tracklisting:
1. Insane Sends 2. Some Fall Harder Than Others 3. Insane Sends (Sven’s Angelic Sends Mix)
Insane Sends will be available on March 5 on vinyl and digitally and can be pre-ordered here.
Full XLR8R+ Members can download the track below.If you’re not an XLR8R+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.
Our submissions portal was overflowing in January, making it our busiest month yet, but not at the expense of quality. It’s taken us some time to listen and digest all the submissions, but after some consideration—and some intense debate—we’re ready to share our favorite tracks; the ones we’ve been revisiting over the weeks since we received them. This month’s list is full of cinematic music delivered by the likes of Australian sound designer 16 Faces, Romania’s Ioana Selaru, and Deri Dako, but there’s some peaceful ambient, too. If that’s what you’re into, dial into Ses, from Turkey, or pianist Thomas Valverde in France. Adding some spice to the list is some ghettotech from DJ Godfather, breakbeats from Milan’s Acidgigi, and some instrumental hip-hop from the inimitable Samurai Guru in Los Angeles. Dig in, and thank you to all those who shared their work with us.
Editor’s note: we’ve made a point of linking each artist’s name to their social media page, or a place where you can buy their music, and we encourage our readers to support these independent artists by buying their music. Let’s keep independent culture alive.
For those unfamiliar, XLR8R+ is a member-supported music community and curated music experience. Every month, you will get three exclusive tracks—sometimes more—by a wealth of amazing artists that XLR8R has supported over the years, as well as access to the member’s area where you can submit tracks and DJ mixesto be showcased in this feature series and to the XLR8R+ community, as well as exclusive editorial content, mixes, FREE passes to music festivals and events, playlists, and more.You can find out more here.
To Life is a London-based alternative instrumental group whose sound explores the experimental boundaries of folk, jazz, art-rock, and neoclassical minimalism. It’s made up of Sharon Lynch, Kathryn Joy Monteiro, Romão Goth, and Nicolas Vandenborre. They released their debut album,Being Human, in 2019, and up next is And Find About Kind.
While Being Human was built on melodic loops of pure improvisation, And Find About Kind sees songs go through structural journeys, evolving with “risk-taking uncertainty,” we’re told. The foundations, however, remain, which is to say soaring cello, floating guitar lines, and soothing piano empowered by dynamic, organic percussion. “As Heron” is one of the latest tracks to be shared and is a shimmering example of the swinging grooves and affecting instrumentation To Life employ.
Milan-based label Alzaya is the work of Volantis and Nicodemo, and it has developed quite a reputation for its psychedelic vibes over the past year or so. Luigi Guadagnino, better known as Acidgigi, recently signed to the label with a track that bridges the world of breakbeats with left-field pop music via sharp-edged percussion and introspective melodies. It’s named after the Lars Von Trier movie, and we can’t stop listening.
CITIZEN:KANE is the alias of Lisbon-based Marco Guerra, head of the Fungo label. Ahead of his forthcoming album, he’s set to release Mutation, a new EP to start the Maquiavel label. “Proceed,” the first taste of this new work, is dark and brooding but also quirky and funky. Once again, a strange and danceable piece of strutting analog techno.
Thomas Valverde is a French musician who trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. He’s slowly veered towards more electronic sounds and he released his first EP, Hyperbole, as Kazian in 2014. Earlier this month, he released Vortex, a culmination of his career to date featuring 11 original tracks dedicated to keyboards and electronic music. “Rave,” the track we’ve chosen, is a serene piece of music akin to the works of Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds in that it’ll melt your problems away.
Samurai Guru, real name Jeremy Henry, is another Californian specialist in off-kilter beats and textures. He released his debut album, Recalibrate, on Alpha Pup in 2018, having been selected by Flying Lotus as a finalist for Low End Theory’s Open Beat Invitational in 2015. His new EP is called Better Days, on which he looks forward to a brighter future amidst the chaos of the present. “Above Waters” is exactly what you’d expect: a luscious slice of sun-tinged instrumental hip-hop from one of Los Angeles’ finest.
Constantin Wittgenstein, from Munich, Germany, releases music under his family name. He developed his production skills through his studies in Creative Music Technology at London Metropolitan University, having been experimenting since he was 15. He’s driven by the work of Ron Trent, David Mancuso, and Larry Heard, and he aims to make music for the mind, body, and soul. “A Mind That Sinks,” one of his first works, is a delicious dub techno cut that’ll make you want to move with its silky chords and hip-moving groove. It’s available now on Bandcamp.
Be Me is the fourth release on Infinite Refractions, and it comes from label head The Lone Flanger, better known as Jasen Loveland. He calls it “emotionally intelligent dance music,” which just about sums it up. It’s fun, frantic, and a little bit freaky—dub-wise electronics for the heads.
Emre Surmeli, better known as Ses, is a DJ-producer with Turkish roots residing in Brooklyn, New York. His journey began as a listener looking for goosebump-inducing sounds, and he now finds himself deep in the realms of minimal electronic frequencies. “Astral Forest,” a soothing piece of ambient, is one of his earliest works, released via Bandcamp in January.
The Sun is the second EP that Mitry, a mysterious dub techno producer, has released, and it comes through London label Drift Deeper. “After,” the closing track, caps a gorgeously calm EP with its warm analog vibe and pulsating rhythm.
Each release on Cod3QR features three or four artists, whether known or unknown, and they’ll work under a secret code-name so that their true identities remain out of the public domain to avoid any preconceived ideas or a particular bias. By doing this, the music will always come first, the label says. Each release will be identified by a simple QR code, which, when flashed, will take you to a web page that will give, among other things, the artist’s code name. In the current market, most digital and vinyl sales occur over an average period of two months and once this time period has elapsed, the true identity of each artist will be revealed on the label’s site. QR009included “technique” from Biz, a key player in the spread of techno since the early ’80s, and it’s a beauty. Deep and driving Detroit-influenced house music aimed squarely at the floor.
59 Perlen is the solo music project of Matthias Rosenkranz. He was born in Germany and now lives in Zurich, Switzerland. On Garagen, his new EP, he’s teamed up with Atlas Castle from Copenhagen, Denmark. The release formed out of an intended live collaboration at Sonic Playground; when the event was canceled by the pandemic, the two artists decided to meld their live set into an EP. The opener, “I,” is a smooth and emotive minimal track; it makes you feel a lot by doing little, focusing on an insatiable groove and Jan Jelinek-esque sample chops.
Deri Dako is a Lithuanian producer with a background in art. He believes in art’s potential to address social and environmental issues, and with his music he always tries to go into unexplored territories, which means there’s a lot of trial and error along the way, he says. In January, he released Plantago Major, an album that explores the concept of transformation—from injury to regeneration, from pain to pleasure, and from destruction to growth. It stems from a three-year sonic exploration, and it comes accompanied by a music video for the track “Axon,” which was made in collaboration with Japanese multimedia artist AUJIK. It’s strangely danceable and also addictive.
Propulse is an electronic duo from the small town of Aylmer, Ontario consisting of brothers Kyle and Jon Wall. They operate on the fringes of ambient music, with a balance of dancefloor momentum and experimental electronics, and they’re connected to Canadian label A Person Disguised As People. Digiform, their new EP, is a captivating balance of glitch and IDM, and the title-track encapsulates this sound perfectly with an intriguing balancing act between pure experimentation and accessibility.
J Lym is a Jakarta native who currently resides in Boston, United States to write music and live with his husband. His writing reflects on his experience of time, moving from place to place, bringing stories of his youth, the present, and the future. “But Memories” is a new song, doused in melancholia and nostalgia, that brings to mind the work of artists such as Anohni for its heart-aching emotion and honesty.
16 Faces “Into The Abyss” (Circadian Ambience Mix)
16 Faces, a Berlin-based Australian sound designer and music producer, has unveiled Into the Abyss, an intense yet somber score. The release weaves together distorted staccato synths fluidly with hauntingly dissonant strings, dystopian textures, and eerie melodic motifs. It builds on the artist’s love for melancholic bass music, and contemporary jungle and rave, albeit recontextualized into something more cinematic, vivid, and dramatic. The track features as the soundtrack to the short film “Circadian,” directed by Petter Jensen for the Japanese fashion brand Beaugan. We’re playing the “Circadian Ambience” mix here.
ŽAGAR, real name Balázs Zságer, is a live electronica act from Budapest, Hungary. His live sound is a mixture of techno, dub, electronica, and ambient soundscapes. After composing soundtracks for feature films and television shows, most notably for CSI, Žagar is diving into the world of techno music through his own label, Free Sequence. The label’s first release is a 16-track compilation featuring up-and-coming producers of Budapest’s music community, and it includes ŽAGAR’s “Baikonur 2030,” a new slice of pulsing dub techno with masterful production.
In January, Inerit, a French producer, shared with us a collection of 12 tracks that piece together his emotions and memories since he was 18 and living in Hong Kong. He’s now based in the French countryside, where he’s preparing to release his music for the first time; he’s decided to wait until he feels his work is sufficiently mature, and now the moment has come. “Unfolded Pattern” is a track we kept coming back to, and it’s a snapshot of where Inerit is at musically now, that is to say deeply woven rhythms and floating atmospheric pads. The artwork comes from Clémence Rivalier, a gifted graphical designer based in Paris.
Ioana Selaru is a classically trained violinist born in Bucharest, Romania. Her compositions include original scores composed for short films, documentaries, and animations, but her portfolio stretches out beyond the traditional media, covering music production for art installations and exhibitions. Her works are marked by unusual combinations of instruments and sounds, designed to strike that particular emotional chord in the audience. On A Mind of Your Own, her debut album, she invites you into her world of remarkable sound storytelling, with thrilling violin layers, evanescent sounds, distorted fragments from speeches, and her own vocal improvisation. We’re sharing the delicious opening track here, but we suggest you check out the full release, it’s a stunning collection of cinematic sounds.
DJ Godfather, real name Brian Jeffries, is a founding father of the Detroit ghettotech scene. He started DJing at the age of 15 and within a few months, he was playing in clubs across the Motor City. By 17, he’d started making music and a year later he released his first solo record on Twilight 76, the label he started with DJ Dick and Brian Gillespie. “Sunday Morning Spliff” is the lead single from his debut album, Electro Beats For Freaks, on Databass Records. It’s a stellar collection of 44 tracks across almost two hours, moving through ghettotech, electro, and juke.
A new compilation on Coral Riffs features work from a_ @braila, a one-man project driven by the use of soundscapes to explore ideas of nature, rituals, and consciousness. The man behind it is called Adrian Braila. The track is called “System Echo,” and the idea is that the artist is just a medium between the void, where everything that is or will be created already exists. Built from intriguing rhythms, “System Echo” strikes a wonderful balance between dark atmospheres and beautiful introspection.
DJ Gear is Dan Orbach, a DJ and producer based and operating in Tel-Aviv for the past decade. Orbach recently started Phlex Recs, an outlet for music from fellow Tel-Aviv producers, as well as his own projects Danya and DJ Gear. The latest release to land on Phlex Recs is Ode To M1, a rolling house single that lands with an original and dub mix. We’ve chosen the original mix here for its chunky rolling groove and euphoric synth work, but the dub mix is equally potent with its low-slung bass energy.
UNKNOWN ME, the Japanese ambient quartet of Yakenohara, P-RUFF, H. Takahashi, and Osawa Yuda, will release Bishintai, a new album.
Bishintai is “made for the maintenance of the minds of city dwellers,” we’re told. We can expect “a sublime synthetic suite of cosmic wellness transmissions” that explores “the unknown beauty of your mind and body.” The group crafted it with software, synthesizer, steel drum, rhythm boxes, and robotic voice.
The album unfolds like a “holographic guided meditation,” and it marks the beginning of Tokyo Metropolis, a new label. It features psychedelic footwork riddler foodman and multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke, plus Japanese shape-shifters MC.Sirafu and Lisa Nakagawa.
In 2018, UNKNOWN ME shared Astronauts, which expanded on their signature mode of spatial restraint and hushed harmonics with accents of angelic voice, solar samba, and futurist vocoder. They released subtropics, their debut, in 2017.
Tracklisting
01. Beauty, Mind and Body #1 02. Open The Sense 03. Gaze on Your Palm 04. Breathing Wave (with foodman) 05. Have a Noble Meal (with Jim O’Rourke) 06. Moisture of View (with MC.Sirafu) 07. Beauty, Mind and Body #2 08. Isometrics 09. Can You Hear a New World 10. Treadmill (with Lisa Nakagawa) 11. Aroma Oxygen 12. Beauty, Mind and Body #3
Bishintai LP is scheduled for April 30 release. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “Open The Sense,” “Breathing Wave” with foodman, “Moisture of View” with MC.Sirafu, “Treadmill” with Lisa Nakagawa, and “Aroma Oxygen” in full below.
Alliance is the German musician’s fourth album, following 2019’s Hands Rest, also on Ki Records. It sees him retreating from his recent experimentations with avant-garde pop back into the world of deep, and often dark, electronica.
For his previous album, Aparde, real name Paul Schröder, ventured outside Berlin’s club scene through the use of his voice, which gave his music a softer and more intimate edge. Alliance is no less intimate, we’re told, except this time “the musician’s vulnerability seeps through the cracks rather than taking center stage.”
“This album was about focusing on something that calmed me down and brought me away from reality,” says Aparde. When he says “away from reality,” he doesn’t mean into dreamy, ethereal soundscapes, but rather a deep dive into dystopian atmospheres of drone sounds and chewed-up drum machines.
With Alliance, Aparde “brings listeners deep into his soul, a soul that is at times conflicted and agitated and at times low-key and solemn,” the label says. “And as he does so, the listener’s own mood is muted and lifted in a journey of quest, dance, and healing.”
Aparde signed to Ki Records with 2017’s Glass. You can read more about him in his XLR8R feature here. Meanwhile, check out Christian Löffler’s XLR8R podcast here.
Tracklisting
01. Locked 02. Allies 03. Unfamiliar 04. Lined 05. The Shift 06. Hole 07. Know You 08. End
Alliance LP is scheduled for May 28 release. You can pre-order it here, and stream “Know You” in full below.
Los Angeles events series Dialogue has announced its own label with a new EP from Ada Kaleh.
The four-track EP, titled Solace In Repetition, includes two originals from Ada Kaleh, alongside remixes from fellow Romanians SIT (the duo of Cristi Cons and Vlad Caia) and Visionquest’s Shaun Reeves. The stripped-back house and techno grooves on the release continue the sound Dialogue has been pushing for years via its event series, which has included partnerships with XLR8R and featured the likes of Sonja Moonear, Binh, Barac, Raresh, and a few appearances from SIT and Shaun Reeves.
Ada Kaleh, real name Iulian Cuculea, is a Bucharest-based DJ-producer. He’s best known for his work on R&S Records and his own Ada Kaleh Romania label.
Tracklisting:
01. Ada Kaleh “Solace In Repetition” 02. Ada Kaleh “Affection Over Reason” 03. Ada Kaleh “Affection Over Reason” (SIT Remix) 04. Ada Kaleh “Affection Over Reason” (Shaun Reeves Remix)
Solace In Repetition EP will be available as a vinyl-only release in April, with snippets of all four cuts streaming below. You can pre-order the release here.
On Very Light Means Less Control, Matti Gajek, a Berlin-based experimental artist, explores a more immediate emotional approach than ever before. While still firmly rooted in his fascination with Krautrock aesthetics, it dives headfirst into contemporary synthesizer music.
The record came about as a moody and melodic companion piece to the complex structures of his previous albums, in particular Vitamin D, which was released on Warp artist Chris Clark’s Throttle Records. This time, we’re told, Gajek turns his rhythmic experiments and off-grid production techniques into a “blissful stream of sound that seems to flow without beginning or end, reaching one subtly euphoric climax after the other.”
As its title suggests, Very Light Means Less Control is made up of floating and feathery compositions, but they are still built upon the same unique structures as Gajek’s previous music. It is shaped by the technical knowledge he gained while crafting Vitamin D and at the same time hints at the organic style that characterized ‘17, his previous album for Monkeytown Records released in 2017.
The cover art is a painting by Vienna-based artist Ernst Yohji Jäger. It served as a major inspiration for the making of the record because it radiates the same emotiveness and vibe that entered Very Light Means Less Control, which is to say lighthearted late-night solitude, the joy of discomfort, and romanticism.
Gajek debuted on Monkeytown with 2014’s Restless Shapes. You can read more about him in his XLR8R studio feature here.
Tracklisting
01. Minor Tragedies 02. One Can Only Speculate 03. You Didn’t Call 04. A Few Voices Are Singing Together 05. Memory Effect 06. About The Future
Very Light Means Less Control LP is scheduled for March 12 release. We’ll add public streams and pre-order links as they become available.
