ZULI Returns to Lee Gamble’s UIQ with ‘All Caps’

ZULI will release a new EP on Lee Gamble‘s UIQ label.

All Caps is UIQ’s 12th release and ZULI’s fourth appearance following his debut album, Terminal, released in November 2018. Before that, he put out two EPs on the label, including his 2016 debut, Bionic Ahmed.

The Egyptian producer, real name Ahmed El Ghazoly, intended to follow Terminal with a dancefloor-ready 12″, but then his gear was stolen and the record was lost, along with a year’s worth of work from his sound library. He spent the following year building his sound world back up again, and All Caps presents these first results. The sixth track, “Penicillin Duck,” is the only survivor from the lost EP.

All Caps catches ZULI “with his foot on the gas, rebuilding his sound, and accelerating the dancefloor pressures heard in his previous work,” the label tells XLR8R.

“Where Do You Go” and “Tany” both mutate out of Zuli’s classic “Trigger Finger” with basslines “sure to devastate dancefloors once again,” we’re told.

ZULI’s music draws from the heavier edges of electronic music, inserting from grime, hip-hop, techno, and jungle.

For more information on Lee Gamble, check out his XLR8R Influences mix of hip-hop explorations here.

Tracklisting

A1 / 01. Tany
A2 / 02. Bassous
A3 / 03. Where Do You Go
B1 / 04. Penicillin Duck
B2 / 05. Keen Demag
B3 / 06. Bro! (Love it)

All Caps EP is scheduled for March 12 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Keen Demag” below and pre-order here.

DVS1’s Mistress Recordings Welcomes Surrogate, a Mysterious Veteran Detroit Producer

DVS1‘s Mistress Recordings has welcomed Surrogate, the new project of a veteran DJ-producer from Detroit who has been releasing under primarily one name with little deviation in the last 20 years.

Mistress 15 follows EPs from ASOK, Frag Maddin, and Anthony Rother on Mistress, a sub-label of HUSH. It features puristic, driving analog rhythms and sinister, gritty dub techno grooves held together by luxuriously layered arrangements.

The release opens with “Saudade,” which refers to the famous untranslatable Portuguese feeling of maybe never seeing a place or person again. It embodies darkness, melancholy, and longing that comes from a happy memory but hurts at the same time. The track uses Detroit sound sprinkles and percussion elements to capture this profound yet bittersweet emotion, the label tells XLR8R.

The second track, “Alcantara,” named after the district in Lisbon where it was also recorded, unfolds a jacking groove, powered by a luxurious dark marine sound, while “Konsequenz,” on the flip, explores a dark, rough-grained sharpness with a persistent yet swinging straight forward techno beat. “Atlantico” closes the 12″ with another puristic, dub-infused slow-burner.

The digital bonus track, “Radikale,” is a more classic modern techno workout with fast drums and a lush dimension to the synth line and bass.

In December, DVS1 released his debut album via Jeff Mills’ Axis Records.

Tracklisting

A1. Saudade
A2. Alcantara
B1. Konsequenz
B2. Atlantico
DX. Radikale (Digital Bonus Track)

Mistress 15 EP lands on February 22. Meanwhile, you can hear clips below. Pre-order links will be added as they become available.

Peru’s Sofia Kourtesis Next on Ninja Tune’s Technicolour

Sofia Kourtesis will release a new EP on Ninja Tune’s Technicolour label, following in the footsteps of DJ Boring, Dauwd, Minimal Violence, and Machine Woman.

Fresia Magdalena follows Kourtesis’ breakout EP Sarita Colonia, released in January 2020, and it’s deeply rooted in her native Peru. She began making the EP during one of her regular extended trips home, and starting with a collection of field recordings around the city of Lima where her family currently live, and specifically Magdalena, their district. “I look at songs like a collage,” she says, “I put all the samples at the forefront and create music around them.” She finished the EP in Berlin, Germany, where she lives.

Alongside the announcement, Kourtesis shared lead track “La Perla,” which is the first time she’s sung on a track, although she has sampled her voice before. Her dream is to develop a live show and she created “La Perla” with that in mind. The song is about staring at the sea, which is the first thing she’ll do when she returns to Peru. She wrote it after losing her father to leukaemia.

Fresia Magdalena is a collection of vibrant dance music that gets under the skin and lifts the mood with distinctive and addictive flourishes, but what makes it unique is “the life bubbling under the surface of the collection as a whole,” the label explains. “The influences, passions, and relationships of Kourtesis as a person are behind every moment—a fierce call to action softened and presented with the warmth of family and home.”

Tracklisting

01. La Perla
02. By Your Side
03. Nicolas
04. Juntos
05. Dakotas

Fresia Magdalena EP is scheduled for March 19 release. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “La Perla” in full below.

French Electro Producer DynArec Lands on Matthias’ Superluminal Imprint

The next release on Matthias‘ Superluminal imprint comes from mysterious French electro producer DynArec.

The release will be broken up into an LP version, titled Vice And Device, which will be available digitally and on limited edition cassette and will feature all eight cuts, and an EP version, titled Slipstream, which will be available on 12″ vinyl and will feature four of the LP’s tracks. There are only two copies left on the vinyl pre-order, however.

Musically, the release presents a collection of electro grooves full of FM modulation and hard-hitting percussion. From spacey outings such as “Audition Me Part 3” to more up-front funk-filled cuts like “The Lost Souls,” Vice And Device is sure to please fans of stripped-back club music, especially those of the broken-beat and electro varieties.

Matthias originates from Italy, but moved to London and then to Berlin in 2016, when he launched Superluminal and its accompanying party series. He’s been making his own records since 2010 and DJing since 2007, but the two go hand in hand: he only plays his own edits and original productions in his sets. On the odd occasion, you’ll hear some demos from friends, but generally if the music has been widely released, it isn’t eligible for play. You can read more about him in his XLR8R podcast here, which he filled with unreleased material.

Tracklisting (LP Version):

01. Trenton Thunder Tickets
02. The Lost Souls
03. Novice Trainer
04. Advocates For Education
05. Audition Me Part 3
06. Guardian Of The Deep Consciousness
07. North Pole Murderer
08. Vice And Device

Tracklisting (12″ Version):

A1. Trenton Thunder Tickets
A2. The Lost Souls
B1. Novice Trainer
B2. Advocates For Education

Both the LP and EP versions of the release drop on February 20 and can be pre-ordered here, with the full release streaming below.

Denver’s DMVU Returns to Dome of Doom with New Album

DMVU is back with Dome of Doom for the release of Praise Be Delusion or, The Ripple, a new album.

DMVU, real name Matthew Philpott-Jones, joined Dome of Doom in 2020 with the release of Two Pairs of Eyes, Gazing Only at Each Other, where he presented some of his most expressive and visionary work to date. Praise Be Delusion or, The Ripple is an “important continuation” of the same sound, we’re told, and we can expect a “spellbinding piece of art that exemplifies the phoenix rising moment of an artist pushing beyond genre expectation associated with past works,” according to the Los Angeles label.

Where the title for Two Pairs of Eyes, Gazing Only at Each Other was pulled from Charlie Kaufman’s 2008 drama film “Synecdoche, New York,” Praise Be Delusion or, The Ripple finds its influence in the revered culture of the ’50s and ’60s beat poet movement. The title is from one of Philpott-Jones’ favorite poems by Jack Kerouac, entitled “Mexico City Blues (228th Chorus)” or “Praised Be Man.”

“This poem in particular means a lot to me in a sense that I spent a lot of my life traveling alone,” Philpott-Jones says. “You learn a lot when you are on the road by yourself, about people and places. You learn a lot about yourself as well. The title is kind of an ode to the knowledge I’ve gathered through traveling. Meeting new people and seeing old friends.”

Philpott-Jones put together Praise Be Delusion or, The Ripple in his basement recording studio in Denver, and he initiated many of the tracks from original piano compositions. The oldest material dates back to 2016, and he captured half of the album over the last six months.

We’re told that melancholic moods derived from the chaos of these times played a major part in shaping the album’s tonality, as did heartbreak and many other personal experiences. Futuristic synth tones, lush drums, and cascading rolls of piano lines dominate the majority of the album, while rustic radio samples sourced from the ’40s and ’50s are sprinkled all over, adding a “tethered portal that hops back and forth from the past to the present,” Dome of Doom explains.

Tracklisting

01. Passed
02. Rhinestones
03. Words like Ghosts
04. The Spectator (feat. Nebr, The Tiger)
05. Breaking Of The Pieces (that keep me intact)
06. My Foolish Heart
07. The Sun and The Shadow
08. Easy Does It
09. Hiding
10. Inside My Dreams I Dream
11. Old Growth
12. Stillness
13. Moon Mask
14. Creature Comforts (the return of pocket rocks)
15. Dorothy

Praise Be Delusion or, The Ripple LP is scheduled for February 26 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Rhinestones” in full via the player below, and pre-order here.

Temporary Residence Unveils Stuart Hyatt’s New ‘Field Works’ Album

Temporary Residence Ltd. will launch Cedars, the ninth instalment of Stuart Hyatt’s Field Works series.

Hyatt, a musician and multimedia artist from Indianapolis, United States launched the Field Works series in 2018. Each album begins with Hyatt’s samples and soundscapes from a particular time and location, before weaving them into musical phrases and ultimately into song cycles intended to give the listener a heightened and more nuanced sense of place.

In 2020, Hyatt released the series’ eighth edition, Ultrasonic, which used the echolocations of bats as compositional source material. Eluvium, Christina Vantzou, Sarah Davachi, Ben Lukas Boysen, Mary Lattimore, and Felicia Atkinson featured.

For Cedars, Hyatt has again assembled a large cast of musicians, poets, and artists. It’s narrated by Youmna Saba and H.C. McEntire, and instrumentalists include Marisa Anderson, Fadi Tabbal, Dena El Saffar, Danny Paul Grody, Bob Hoffnar, Tomás Lozano, Nathan Bowles, Alex Roldan, and Youmna Saba.

Temporary Residence, in Brooklyn, New York, describes the music as cosmic Americana with western ambient and Middle Eastern influences, with pedal steel, banjo, and other instruments creating a singular musical backdrop.

Accompanying the release is a collection of poems by Todd Fleming Davis and Youmna Saba, brought to life in a color comic book.

Field Works collaborators PRINTtEXT designed the elaborate physical packaging.

Tracklisting

01. La’āli’
02. Thāk-al-yawm
03. Badron wa Qina‛
04. ’Arāha
05. In‛ikās
06. ’Aylūll
07. Ar-raḥīl
08. Ḥalaqah ’Azaliyyah
09. The sharp smell of cedar
10. Before we’re born
11. The scars of recent history
12. In the gloaming
13. Drowning in a sky of cotton
14. Each year
15. In the floodplain
16. The pasture

Cedars LP is scheduled for March 5 release. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “La’āli’” and “The sharp smell of cedar” below.

Theo Parrish Interprets Patrick Gibin and Kaidi Tatham’s “Love To The World” on New EP

Theo Parrish has revealed two new reinterpretations of Patrick Gibin and Kaidi Tatham’s “Love To The World” featuring Josh Milan.

Patrick Gibin and Kaidi Tatham’s “Love To The World” represented a joyful and musical reaction from the gloomy climate of 2020, and became a real highlight for Neroli Records, based in Verona, Italy.

The song was part of a glorious EP that would surely have been a burner on dancefloors worldwide. It has been championed by Ron Trent, DJ Deep, Fred P, Tama Sumo, Antal, San Soda, Scott Grooves, and Kyoto Jazz Massive, amongst many other artists.

This message also resonated with Parrish who decided to make his own reinterpretations of the song.

The Sound Signature boss used Josh Milan’s vocals to create two versions in his own unique musical aesthetic. The relentless and hypnotizing piano, in pure Parrish fashion, combined with Milan’s unmistakable voice brings an added depth to the song and makes you want it to last forever. On the flip, you’ll find an acapella version.

Tracklisitng

01. Love To The World (Theo’s Vocal Mix)
02. Love To The World (Theo’s Acapella Mix)

Patrick Gibin & Kaidi Tatham Ft. Josh Milan—Love To The World (Theo Parrish Reinterpretations) is scheduled for February 19 release. You can preorder the release here.

Galcher Lustwerk Unveils Album of Instrumentals on Ghostly

Photo: Collin Hughes

Galcher Lustwerk will release Information (Redacted), a collection of instrumentals on Ghostly International.

The digital album, available on February 5, revisits material from both Information, Lustwerk’s debut on Ghostly, and Proof, its follow-up EP, removing Lustwerk’s vocals and “forgoing the truth in service of the vibe,” we’re told.

These are low-key dance productions, we’re told, some slowed to dubby, hypnotic effect and others “set loose in the night with no narrative guide,” the label explains.

The instrumental format reveals the Cleveland-raised, New York-based producer’s control of tone and mood, his nuanced use of drums, and his clever knack as an arranger, we understand. Though his work was always ready for the club, these pieces become less dramatic than their first iterations and opt to be more primed for implementation at the decks, if even just in your living room.

Two tracks on the back half are new, namely “Warming Up” and “Waltz.”

Tracklisting

01. Graham (Instrumental)
02. I See A Dime (Instrumental)
03. Another Story (Instrumental)
04. Overpay, Overstay (Instrumental)
05. Proof (Instrumental)
06. I Had To Slow It Down (Instrumental)
07. Plainview (Instrumental)
08. Bit (Instrumental)
09. Cig Angel (Instrumental)
10. Fathomless Irie (Instrumental)
11. Been A Long Night (Instrumental)
12. Speed (Instrumental)
13. Leave (Instrumental)
14. Another Story (Another Version) [Instrumental]
15. Cig Angel (Dance Mix) [Instrumental]
16. Left In The Dark (Slowed)
17. Warming Up
18. Thermonics (Slowed)
19. Waltz

Information (Redacted) LP is scheduled for February 5 release on Ghostly International. Meanwhile, you can stream “Warming Up (Instrumental” in full below and pre-order here.

Dial Records Welcomes Georgia’s Irakli for Debut Album

Photo: Rob Kulisek

Georgian artist Irakli will release his debut album on Dial Records, the label of David Lieske (a.k.a Carsten Jost) and Peter Kersten (a.k.a Lawrence).

Major Signals is the Hamburg, Germany label’s first release of 2021, and it follows a debut album by XDB plus a three-part anniversary compilation featuring exclusive tracks from Tracey, Lerosa, Siamak Amidi, and more. It spans house, techno, and ambient.

Irakli, real name Irakli Kiziria, was born in Georgia when the country was still a part of the Soviet Union. He moved to Cologne before ending up in Berlin, where he helms the I/Y and Intergalactic Research Institute For Sound labels. He’a also one of the minds behind the STAUB collective.

Tracklisting

01. Forever
02. Blessings From The Future
03. Major Signals
04. OP 9
05. Sin
06. This Way
07. Circles
08. Surface
09. Black Windows
10. Memories
11. Selfupdate

Major Signals LP is scheduled for March 19 release. Meanwhile, you can stream the title-track in full below.

Four Tet Arranged and Mastered Madlib’s New Solo Album

Madlib has released Sound Ancestors, a new album arranged and mastered by Kieran Hebden, better known as Four Tet.

Madlib and Four Tet, two iconic producers, have been in contact since 2001, having connected through Eothen Alapatt, the label manager of Stones Throw. They decided to work together on an instrumental album in 2019 during a dinner, and Madlib, a rapper and producer born Otis Jackson, Jr., began sending over hundreds of unreleased or unfinished beats, plus live instrumentation he’d recorded with various musicians during studio sessions. It was Four Tet’s job to piece them all together.

“He [Madlib] is always making loads of music in all sorts of styles and I was listening to some of his new beats and studio sessions when I had the idea that it would be great to hear some of these ideas made into a Madlib solo album,” Four Tet explains. “Not made into beats for vocalists to use but instead arranged into tracks that could all flow together in an album designed to be listened to start to finish.”

“I wasn’t looking at it being like I want to stamp my sound onto his in any way,” Hebden said to the New York Times. “It was more, I want to take the things I like the most and make them as good as I possibly can.”

Four Tet originally dropped news on the album in the comments of his YouTube livestream, simply saying, “I’ve made an album with Madlib,” before adding, “got other new stuff coming too.”

The release lands on Madlib Invazion and has been pressed onto CD and a variety of vinyl colors and formats: standard black, purple “16.35 Hz” (edition of 400), blue “20.50 Hz” (edition of 400), and a purple/blue/rust Bundle (edition of 100).

Renowned engineer Bernie Grundman cut the lacquers for the album in Los Angeles, and Errol Richardson took on art direction.

Four Tet released Sixteen Oceans, his latest album in March. Madlib, meanwhile, released a spiritual jazz album with drummer Karriem Riggins as Jahari Masamba Unit in late November.

Tracklisting

01. There Is No Time (Prelude)
02. The Call
03. Theme De Crabtree
04. Road Of The Lonely Ones
05. Loose Goose
06. Dirtknock
07. Hopprock
08. Riddim Chant
09. Sound Ancestors
10. One For Quartabê/Right Now
11. Hang Out (Phone Off)
12. Two for 2 -For Dilla
13. Latino Negro
14. The New Normal
15. Chino
16. Duumbiyay

Sound Ancestors LP is available now. You can order it here and stream it in full below.

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