Podcast 666: Rose Bonica

Now established as a rising talent in experimental electronics, Natalie-Rose Perel, or Rose Bonica, has come a long way since her first forays into house and techno in 2016. From her Cape Town, South Africa home, she’s shared a string of captivating releases, most recently Tears For The Tea Maker, a debut album. Across 13 tracks of dark, celestial electronics, Perel delivered an ode to the intimacy that grows from supporting one another in unglamorous ways. It’s available now on Roses Are Red, her own label.

Perel’s musical adventures began as an escape from the mundanity of regular employment in web development and an equally tedious relationship. Turning to the digital skills she learned, and the various musical instruments she had around home, she began making her first electronic music, and debuted in 2017 with “Stoicism,” featured on Wet Dreams Recordings‘ Work Not Hype compilation. A gritty and chaotic jam with rich percussion and cinematic references, it symbolizes Perel’s work. On subsequent releases, both on Wet Dreams, she broadened her sound palette, ranging from uptempo dancefloor tracks and ambient electronica formed around her her own vocals.

Recorded in her bedroom over the summer, Perel’s XLR8R podcast is filled with her unreleased music and work from her friends. As you’d expect, it’s almost impossible to define by genre. As with her production work, it makes you feel uncomfortable, shaking up the complacency to remind you of the world of music out there that you’re still to discover.

01. What have you been up to recently?

I started my label, Roses Are Red, in June with the first release by the amazing Kai van Dongen, followed by a debut release from Ours, a duo I am part of with Deep Aztec. Other than that, I’ve just been busy with getting my debut album out there.

02. What are your earliest musical memories?

Driving in the car with my family and singing, or more like screaming, along to Queen classics and choreographing silly dances to Britney Spears with my friends.

03. How did you begin producing, and what when did a sound begin to form?

I needed an escape from a bad relationship and a mundane job in web development. I started producing music as a way to express myself creatively. I think it’s only in the last year or so that I’ve really started to understand my sound and feel like it’s me.

04. Speaking broadly, how is the South African music scene?

South Africa is full of amazing talent. I feel blessed to be surrounded by so many talented artists. We’ve got a lot to still overcome and to change, but it’s been inspiring to see so many young artists creating their own spaces and not waiting for the older generation to let them in.

05. How have you been spending the lockdown period?

Other than being stuck in a perpetual existential crisis? I’ve just been reconnecting with close friends through video calls and learning to take my time with things, and healing.

06. What music have you been listening to?

Eartheater, Ase Manuel, Machine Woman, Björk, FKA Twigs, SWAK CATALOG.

07. When and where did you record this mix?

I recorded the mix at the beginning of September in my bedroom, and in bed. It was super cold in Cape Town so under the duvet was the only place to be!

08. What can the listener expect?

Some techno, ambient, and don’t-give-a-fuck-what-your-genre-is kind of stuff.

09. How did you go about choosing the tracks that you’ve included?

Making a mix for XLR8R is like a dream. The pressure was on but I tried my best to let go of all that. I want to give people an idea of what my label, Roses Are Red, has to offer, now and in the future.

11. You’ve included lots of your own productions. Are these going to be released?

Some are released, some are from my debut album, and some are coming out soon, like the Eku Fantasy remix.

12. What’s up next on your agenda?

The fourth Roses Are Red release which I’ve been dying to release for the past three years. It’s a project I did with Eve Rakow called swak. I’ve given you a little taste of it in the mix!

XLR8R has now joined Mixcloud Select, meaning that to hear the podcast offline you will need to subscribe to our Select channel, or subscribe to XLR8R+ to download the file. The move to Mixcloud Select will ensure that all the producers with music featured in our mixes get paid. You can read more about it here.

Full XLR8R+ Members can download the podcast here.

Tracklisting

01. swak “Virtual Memory” (forthcoming on Roses Are Red)
02. Eku Fantasy “Ayodele” (Rose Bonica Remix) (EF)
03. Kai van Dongen “Lost Count” (Roses Are Red)
04. Rose Bonica “Get Off My Tail” (Unreleased)
05. Rose Bonica “Be Your Better Self” [City Bowl Wax Network] (Unreleased)
06. Rose Bonica “Mouthful Concrete” (Unreleased)
07. River Moon “Sinking Floating” (Unreleased)
08. Rose Bonica “Does This Mean I’m Back” (Did I Ever Leave) (CTEMF)
09. Seventhgaze “III” (SWAK CATALOG)
10. Rose Bonica “Smitten” (Unreleased)
11. River Moon “PRODUCT3” (Unreleased)
12. Rose Bonica “And the Agony was Gone” (Unreleased)
13. Rose Bonica “Don’t Always Have To Make Them Dance” (Roses Are Red)
14. Rose Bonica “Your Mother Never Taught You Manners” (Roses Are Red)
15. Rose Bonica “Deathface” (Roses Are Red)
16. Rose Bonica “Tears for the Tea Maker” (Roses Are Red)

Maryland’s Blakmoth Delivers Chilling “Doombient” EP

Blakmoth has shared Deathshead, a new EP of transportive drone and ambient.

Blakmoth, real name Jack Smith, is a rising producer and bassist based in Maryland, United States. While much of his music tends to lean towards lighter ambient, he also uses modular synthesis, field recordings, and tape loops to paint deeply moving soundscapes with dark, brooding atmospheres. It’s what he calls “Doombient.”

“The idea came about because I wanted to push ambient into a darker space,” he says. “Be the complete opposite of bleep bloops and plucks.”

Deathshead, with five tracks, is Smith’s latest addition to an extremely busy year in terms of production. In August and September, he released Offerings and Omens respectively, and in June he put out The Space Between, a new album. NINE, another album, surfaced in January.

Tracklisting

01. Wake From the Chysalis
02. Acherontia Lachesis I
03. Aphothic Fluent
04. Lucent Inarticulate
05. Acherontia Lachesis II

Deathshead EP is available now. You can stream it in full via Bandcamp below, and order here.

Lou Phelps Teams Up with Kaytranada on New Single

Lou Phelps, real name Louis-Philippe Celestin, has shared “Nike Shoe Box,” the first taste of his impending mixtape, Extra Extra!

Extra Extra! sees Phelps laying lyrics over beats from tek.lun, LAKIM, and his brother, Louis Kevin Celestin (a.k.a Kaytranada). Across seven tracks, he takes an introspective look at the highs and lows of rising to stardom.

Like the single itself, the video for “Nike Shoe Box,” streaming below, resides in a relaxed atmosphere, with Phelps going through the motions of the celebrity photoshoot.

A longtime fixture of the Montreal music scene, Phelps started making music in 2011 with Kaytranada as part of The Celestics. As a solo artist, he’s developed a reputation for creating tasteful and danceable hip-hop music. In September 2018, he shared his sophomore album, 002 / LOVE ME, via Last Gang Records, with Kaytranada as executive producer and guest spots from BADBADNOTGOOD, JAHKOY, Planet Giza, and Pony.

Tracklisting

01. Must Be (prod. Kaytranada)
02. Party In LA (prod. LAKIM & Jasper)
03. Nike Shoe Box (prod. Kaytranada)
04. Fire (prod. Kaytranada)
05. Smiling (prod. Kaytranada)
06. New Friends (prod. Kaytranada)
07. Dynamite (prod. tek.lun)

Extra Extra! is scheduled for October 30 release. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here.

Galdre Visions Supergroup Next on Leaving Records

Leaving Records will release a debut EP from Galdre Visions, a supergroup comprised of South Asian-American vocalist and producer Ami Dang; Olive Ardizoni (a.k.a Green-House); Diva Dompé (Yialmelic Frequencies, Diva & The Pearly Gates); and harpist Nailah Hunter.

The four artists were drawn together to remotely create collaborative music reflecting this uncertain moment in history. This transition from negativity to positivity serves as a central theme of the record, which is inspired by Celtic mysticism, outer space, and New Age, we’re told.

“We are going through some extremely difficult times so there is no way that this project has not been influenced by that,” Ardizoni tells XLR8R. “I find that with writing music during difficult times you don’t really become aware, sonically, of the impact of that time until you listen to it way down the road. Writing this kind of music has always been a means of transmuting my pain into joy so that the listener can experience that by proxy.”

Streaming below, closer “The Sun Will Rise Again” glistens and ends the record on a positively ebullient note of optimism. It’s described by the Los Angeles label as a “transcendent vision of hope and things to come.”

According to Ardizoni, the track “acknowledges and validates the feeling of melancholy that comes from experiencing this suffering while being able to maintain the awareness that it will be better again some day.”

Tracklisting

01. Living Space Station (Bad Dream)
02. Super Passiflora
03. Moon Ferns
04. The Sun Will Rise Again

Galdre Visions is scheduled for October 23 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “The Sun Will Rise Again” and pre-order the record here.

Hospital Productions to Release Split EP From Kelly Moran and Prurient

On December 4, Hospital Productions will release a split EP from Kelly Moran and Prurient, real name Dominick Fernow.

The five-track EP, titled Chain Reaction At Dusk, pulls from archival recordings originally initiated for the Merzbow, Kelly Moran, and Prurient United States tour.

Moran’s three tracks on the A-side were recorded at her home in the fall of 2018 and showcase her haunting prepared piano style of psychedelia; whereas Prurient’s two cuts on the flip were composed at the former Berlin studio of Guy Brewer (a.k.a. Shifted) with a collection of analog synthesizers and sequencers, before utilizing “crude telephone dictation manipulation” to complete the tracks with Kris Lapke in New York.

Moran and Prurient originally met in 2018 while supporting Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Myriad” show at the Park Avenue Armory in New York—Moran played keys in the performing quartet—and the two bonded over their working methods of prepared piano, drone, and noise synthesis.

This is the meeting of “psychedelia and anxiety disorder,” we’re told, filled with “classical doom electronics.”

Tracklisting

01. Kelly Moran “Red Storm”
02. Kelly Moran “Helix III”
03. Kelly Moran “Hymn”
04. Prurient “Tokyo Exorcist”
05. Prurient “Help If I May Ask”

Ahead of the EP’s release on December 4, you can stream one cut from each of the artists via the Bandcamp player below. You can pre-order Chain Reaction At Dusk via the Hospital Productions Bandcamp page.

Linkwood and Other Lands Team Up for Athens of the North Album

Linkwood and Other Lands will release Face the Facts, a new album.

Face the Facts is the first time that Linkwood and Other Lands, both from Edinburgh, Scotland, have teamed up on a long-player. The plan was simple: drop them into the mostly finished Athens of the North studio and see what came out.

The results are nothing short of spectacular, Athens of the North tells XLR8R, “but putting them into words is somewhat of a challenge.”

Folding modular textures, post-punk, electro, house, techno, and even some lush balearic business, the pair have moulded their years of experience and translated it into something new, we’re told.

According to the Edinburgh label, it’s easy to distinguish each of the artist’s respective voices across the album, which is to say Other Lands’ guitar work and Linkwood’s deep sense of rhythm and structure.

Tracklisting

01. Theme for City
02. First Take
03. Porty
04. Face the Facts
05. 3VSR
06. Meet in the Middle
07. Don’t Throw It
08. Gold Leith
09. Downright
10. Varial
11. Shapes
12. Silver Nows
13. Up Wrong

Face the Facts LP is scheduled for November 20 release. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “Theme for City” below.

Hyperdub to Release First Film Score with Lawrence Lek’s “AIDOL 爱道”

Hyperdub will release Lawrence Lek‘s score for his debut feature film, “AIDOL 爱道.”

“AIDOL 爱道” premiered at London gallery Sadie Coles HQ in 2019 and has since appeared in numerous virtual and physical art, film, and music festivals and exhibitions around the world. It tells the story of a fading superstar, Diva, who enlists an aspiring Artificial Intelligence songwriter to mount a comeback performance at the 2065 eSports Olympic finale. You can view the trailer here.

Lawrence’s accompanying soundtrack is a “delicate lattice,” we’re told, “complex, opaque, and entirely synthetic.” Diva’s yearning vocals, sung in English and Mandarin, cast classical melodies over billowing, intricately arranged songs. The instrumental tracks of the album, produced together with composer Seth Scott, are elegiac and beautiful, folding in patterns from game soundtracks and vaporwave.

Lek, based in London, is a simulation artist who uses computer-generated animation and video game engines to create films and virtual worlds. Outside of filmmaking, he has collaborated with Kode9 on the “Nøtel,” a simulation of a post-apocalyptic automated hotel, which began as a series of audio-visual performances and continues as a virtual reality installation. Lawrence has also released the soundtracks to five of his previous projects, most recently Temple OST earlier in 2020.

The vinyl release includes four new original prints of the “AIDOL 爱道” virtual world, and a downloadable bilingual lyric sheet in English and Chinese. A limited-edition USB card with a custom-printed case, with hi-res digital copies of the artwork and lossless versions of the tracks will also be available.

Tracklisting

01. Intro (My Single Isn’t Finished Yet)
02. Deep Blue Monday
03. In The Game
04. Chance Encounter (Jungle Theme) w/ Seth Scott
05. Call Of Beauty
06. Welcome To SoMA w/ Seth Scott
07. Unreal
08. Superstar
09. One Nation
10. Beware Your Fans, Diva
11. Call Of Beauty (eSports Reprise) w/ Seth Scott
12. Followers (Diva’s Theme)
13. Farsight’s Greatest Star
14. In My Prime (Bonus Track)
15. Apocalypse (End Credits)

AIDOL 爱道 (OST) LP is scheduled for November 27 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Unreal” below and pre-order the record here.

MAST’s Fourth Alpha Pup Album is a Cry for Unity, Equality, and Justice

Photo | Eron Rauc

MAST will release a new album on Alpha Pup‘s World Galaxy label in January.

Battle Hymns of the Republic is the fourth album that MAST, real name Timothy Conley, from Philadelphia, has released with the Los Angeles label, and all three previous outings have been funnelled through a conceptual lens. 2014’s Omni presents a sonic amalgamation of nature samples, acoustic instruments, and electronics; 2016’s Love and War_ was arranged in a three-act play structure exploring love and loss; and 2018’s Thelonious Sphere Monk is a cosmic journey reinterpreting the great Monk songbook.

In line with this, Battle Hymns of the Republic is a “dissident’s brew of critical environmental and socio-political issues of the day,” we’re told.

Scored by moving orchestral arrangements, poignant spoken word, impassioned jazz sensibilities, and angular electronic beats and samples, Conley reflects compositionally on our present day battles for unity, equality, facts, justice, and empathy for those in need. Each track, or “hymn,” addresses these attacks on not just who and what we are as a country in the United States, but also our responsibility to fellow human beings and the place we hold in the global society.

Like previous albums in the MAST catalog, Battle Hymns of the Republic features various members of the global music community. The group that performed compositions across the release consists of Luis Mascara (violin), Artyom Manukyan (cello), Dan Rosenboom (trumpet), Gavin Templeton (alto/bari sax), Brian Marsella (keyboards), Jason Fraticelli (upright bass), Anwar Marshall (drums), and Maxwell Hallett (drums).

Conley composed full band arrangements and added guitar, bass, keys, beats, and programming himself.

Tracklisting

01. Affirmation
02. Call to Action
03. The Anti-Fascist Battle Hymn
04. The Golden Door (feat Andrée Belle)
05 .Nation of Immigrants
06 .Civil Disobedience
07. Benevolence (feat Dwight Trible)
08. Nation of Refugees
09. Their Fear of Diversity
10. All of The Colors (feat Jimetta Rose)
11. Hymn
12. I Pledge My Grievance to The Flag
13. Diaspora of Climate Change
14. Psalm For All Tomorrows

Battle Hymns of the Republic LP is scheduled for January 29, 2021 digital release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Call to Action” below and pre-order the album here.

Dome of Doom Welcomes Renowned Scratch Artist DJ Ride for New Album

Photo | Aidan Kless

DJ Ride will join Dome of Doom with Lightspeed, dropping at the end of the month.

DJ Ride, real name Oliveiros Tomás Oliveira, is an emerging talent from Portugal. He’s made his name as a two-time International DJ Association World Champion and renowned scratch artist, and has since expanded his instrumentation range to include synths, pedals, programs, and more.

Lightspeed, a nine-track cyclone of dynamic beats, is DJ Ride’s fifth album, following 2015’s From Scratch. The record embraces the fusion of experimental electronic, heady hip-hop beats, trap, drum & bass, and more. Guest spots include Stereossauro, Holly, Subp Yao, LoJ, Not Yes, Dead End, HØST, and Aagentah.

Most of Lightspeed was recorded at DJ Ride’s home studio in Lisbon, Portugal, over the last four months. Due to the pandemic, collaborations were conducted through file-sharing online.

Tracklisting

01. Intro
02. Lightspeed (feat. Stereossauro)
03. Gotta Act (feat. Subp Yao)
04. Luck (feat. LOJ)
05. The Champion
06. I Be Buyin (feat. Not Yes)
07. Bad Bitch (feat. Dead End)
08. Mudarsom (feat. HØST)
09. Láktisma (feat. Aagentah)

Lightspeed LP releases on cassette on October 30 via Dome of Doom. The album will hit digital platforms worldwide the same day. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “Gotta Act” feat. Subp Yao below.

Mark de Clive-Lowe’s New Album Features Tommaso Cappellato and Andrea Lombardini, Plus a Ras G Cover

Mark de Clive-Lowe will release Dreamweavers, an electro-acoustic album in collaboration with bass player Andrea Lombardini and drummer Tommaso Cappellato.

De Clive-Lowe’s stylistic signature is usually found in his role as conductor, producer, and manipulator of sounds behind his customized setup of intertwining synths and drum machines. With all but a grand piano and a few keyboards stripped away from him, and the production in Lombardini and Cappellato’s hands, Dreamweavers is the first non-self-produced Mark de Clive-Lowe album in 25 years.

Lombardini and Cappellato have been a consistent presence on de Clive-Lowe’s European tours for several years now, and it was during a road trip from Italy to Switzerland that the pair envisioned producing a de Clive-Lowe album themselves. The album was composed, for the most part, in Kaga, Japan, and brought into reality over a three-day recording session in Vicenza, Italy.

The record celebrates the sounds that de Clive-Lowe grew up loving, from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s meditative melancholy and Ahmad Jamal’s soulful playfulness, to the rhythms of broken beat, boom bap, and global rhythms. It features eight originals composed by de Clive-Lowe himself, plus “Strolling Down On Degnan,” composed by the late beat maker Ras G.

Tracklisting

01. Mizugaki Prelude
02. Birds Of Prey
03. Strolling Down Degnan
04. Motherland
05. Natadera Spirit Walk
06. Volta Ao Mundo
07. Dreamweavers
08. In Answer To Your Question
09. Kodama Shade

Dreamweavers LP is scheduled for October 23 release on Mother Tongue Records. Pre-order is available here, where you can also stream clips.

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