Preview a Split EP from Helena Hauff and Andreas Gehm

Helena Hauff (pictured above) and Andreas Gehm have joined forces on a split 12″, which will see release via German label Solar One next month. The upcoming Helena Hauff meets Andreas Gehm EP delivers four driving techno cuts built around the unmistakable acid lines of the Roland 303. Hauff, a resident at Hamburg’s Golden Pudel club known for her dark electro DJ sets (not to mention releases on the PAN and Werkdiscs labels), contributes the record’s first pair of tracks, while veteran and Bunker label affiliate Gehm (a.k.a. Elec Pt.1) steps up for the second two.

Helena Hauff meets Andreas Gehm is due out on September 8 and is available for preview below, where the record’s tracklist has also been included.

1. Helena Hauff – Rupture
2. Helena Hauff – The Purely Painful Confrontation Of Opposites
3. Andreas Gehm – HKX
4. Andreas Gehm – Solar Two

Get Familiar: Dark Entries

In the rapidly evolving world of electronic music, it’s all but impossible to keep track of every new artist, label, party, and genre. At the same time, certain names will inevitably pop up again and again at the XLR8R office, some of which we’ve only given passing mention to on the site. In an effort to get our readers up to speed with some of the things—both new and old—that we’ve been digging lately, we’ve launched a new feature series called ‘Get Familiar,’ which aims to shine a spotlight on subjects we think are worthy of a little more attention.

Josh Cheon is passionate about the music he loves. That much ought to be obvious to anyone who’s even passingly familiar with Dark Entries, his label. Over the past five years, he’s created an imprint that reflects a serious devotion to the darker and more obscure side of ’70s and ’80s electronic music—the label’s name is actually an homage to “Dark Entries,” the first single released by canonical UK goth rockers Bauhaus. Splitting his time between reissuing lost classics and releasing new material in the vein of the industrial synth-pop of the past, the imprint has gradually become a major guiding entity in the continuing exploration of the formative years of electronic dance music.

Josh Cheon (photo by Damon Way)

That status was solidified last year with the release of School Daze, a moody and tripped-out compilation of previously forgotten gay porn soundtrack work and collage sketches created by late San Francisco Hi-NRG pioneer Patrick Cowley. (In truth, the record was jointly released by Dark Entries and HNYTRX, the label offshoot of San Francisco’s Honey Soundystem crew, which counts Cheon as a member.) The music’s rarity was obviously key to its appeal, but there was more to it than that; like all Dark Entries releases, School Daze was a beautifully executed artifact, complete with a silkscreened double-LP gatefold, a fresh re-master courtesy of Fantasy Studio’s George Horn, and a memorial article penned by Jorge Soccaras, Cowley’s one-time bandmate and friend. That level of attention to detail runs through the entire Dark Entries catalog.

Cheon started the label in 2009, three years after moving to San Francisco from New Jersey. (It was there that he had developed his taste for synth-pop via trips to a Manhattan goth club called The Bank and also built industry acumen while interning at Beggars Banquet and DFA.) The first Dark Entries release was a reissue of Bas Relief, an extremely rare LP recorded in 1986 by obscure New York darkwave group Eleven Pond. Though it was initially issued as a limited-edition, hand-numbered run of 500 copies, Cheon has since developed a less collector-centric philosophy. “I realized I was just reissuing this stuff to have it go out of print and go for collectors’ prices on the second-hand market,” he says. “Especially with the hand numbering—it becomes less about the music and more about the product and the vanity of it all. It’s not about the value, it’s about getting the music into people’s hands.”

Patrick Cowley ‘School Daze’

This populist ethos can be felt in Dark Entries’ less obviously rare reissues—the label has released remastered Italo disco tracks, like Big Ben Tribe’s “Tarzan Loves the Summer Nights” and classic industrial, like Severed Heads’ “Dead Eyes Opened”—and also on its compilations, like the Bay Area Retrograde series, which features extremely rare tracks culled from the ’70s and ’80s Bay Area new wave, post punk, and industrial movement. “The synth-pop and darker stuff was always more marginalized here,” explains Cheon, “and they just kind of fell by the wayside. I mean, SF has never been a big city. There was a hippy backlash, and I think people thought, ‘How could industrial music come out of this city?’ People can name New York no-wave bands, but not one can name SF stuff.'”

Despite the volume of its reissued content, Dark Entries also releases material from contemporary artists—many of which are based in the Bay Area. “The original plan was to press one reissue and one contemporary record, but I couldn’t sustain that because I couldn’t find new bands. So my fanaticism for digging just kind of delved into finding bands,” Cheon says. Much like his reissue work, he has a knack for finding obscure modern groups that embody the spirit at the heart of his label; for instance, Death Domain‘s “Ethidium Bromide” sounds as bleak as anything recorded during the lows of the Reagan years. The same goes for the industrially tinged REDREDRED and the spikey proto-techno-leaning textures of Inhalt and Max + Mara.

‘Bay Area Retrograde’

As Dark Entries passes its fifth anniversary—which Cheon celebrated last month by embarking on a US tour with a few members of the label’s roster—the imprint is standing strong. Recent months have seen highly anticipated reissues of influential ’80s acts Severed Heads and Xymox, the second volume of Bay Area Retrograde is about to appear, and a double-vinyl reissue of Patrick Cowley’s and Jorge Socarras’ Catholic is in the works, along with more Italo reissues and the labels’ very first Detroit electro reissue. In short, Dark Entries’ seemingly endless procession of material—new and old—appears poised to continue unabated, and although Cheon is unwilling to speculate exactly where it’s all heading, it seems safe to say that there will be plenty of exciting things on the way in months and years ahead.

Arka “You Got Me”

UK artist Arka will issue the “Severan” b/w “The Way” 12″ via the Blah Blah Blah imprint next month, and has sent over non-EP production “You Got Me” to help spread the word. An unapologetically soulful house expedition, “You Got Me” focuses on a series of chunky piano chords, which—along with some low-tuned vocal samples—effortlessly ride atop the track’s slightly swung rhythms and precisely programmed bass. While Arka’s bonus cut can be downloaded below, a preview stream of the Leicester-based producer’s forthcoming 12″ (the a-side of which was featured in Radomer’s recent XLR8R podcast) can be found after the jump, before the record lands on August 25.

You Got Me

Hear Special Request Remix Duke Dumont

Operating under his Special Request alias—under which he turned in a standout debut LP and an impressive XLR8R podcast last year—longstanding UK producer Paul Woolford (pictured above) has turned in a new remix for Duke Dumont‘s upcoming “Won’t Look Back” single. A piano-drenched piece of pop-leaning club music in its original form, Dumont’s track is lined with a much harder edge on Special Request’s rework, its bassline beefed up while its vocals are cut down to quick phrases and hypnotic, wordless loops.

Covering a heavy-handed eight minutes, Special Request’s “72 Hour Crack Binge Mix” of “Won’t Look Back” can be streamed in full below; Duke Dumont’s new single is set to drop via the DJ/producer’s own Blase Boys Club label on August 24.

Tresor Announces Reissue of Drexciya Side Project, Transllusion

Longstanding Berlin label Tresor is preparing to re-release material from Transllusion, a solo project from the late James Stinson of legendary electro duo Drexciya. The Opening of the Cerebral Gate (artwork above), which was originally released in 2001 on short-lived Tresor sublabel Supremat, reportedly saw Stinson shifting away from “the grand narrative of the Drexciyan saga, instead exploring a sub-plot of esoteric concepts revolving around internal, mental, and psychedelic tropes.” A press release goes on to describe the effort as “chock full of hypercharged arpeggios and driving pulse patterns, morse-like tones and chord stabs, huge, u?ber-booming tympanic kicks and grainy snares.” Also to be found throughout the album are “sweeter tones” and “alien electro funk shadings.”

Tresor will reissue The Opening of the Cerebral Gate on CD and triple LP on September 29. A bonus 12″ of three additional Transllusion tracks, entitled Mind Over Positive and Negative Dimensional Matter, arrives a week later on October 6. Tracklists for both releases can be found below.

The Opening of the Cerebral Gate
1 – Transmission Of Life
2 – Negative Flash
3 – Walking With Clouds
4 – Cerebral Cortex Malfunction
5 – Cuban In Guyana
6 – Look Within
7 – Unordinary Realities
8 – Dimensional Glide
9 – War Of The Clones
10 – Crossing Into The Mental Astroplane
11 – Do You Want To Get Down?
12 – Do You Want To Get Down? (Vocal De Void)

Mind Over Positive and Negative Dimensional Matter
A1 – Power Of The 3rd Brain
A2 – Disrupted Neural Gateway
B – Do You Want To Get Down?

Max Cooper to Debut Collaborative Skew & Satirist Project on Upcoming EP

Following the release of his debut LP, Human, earlier this year (and a contribution to our Artist Tips series), Max Cooper has unveiled a new collaborative project, Skew & Satirist, which will issue its first effort next month via the Killekill label. Combining the talents of Cooper and Berlin-based producer Gareth Williams (a.k.a. Raw Hedroom), Skew & Satirist’s debut EP, Through the Compound Eye, is said to present three “twisted techno” tracks from the pair.

As the story goes, Cooper and Williams first met in Nottingham, where they eventually lived together for a number of years, helping each other learn the crafts of production and DJing along the way. Having long collaborated behind the scenes, the upcoming effort for Killekill marks Cooper’s and William’s first official release together, and is described as landing somewhere between “driving weirdo techno, warm melodic acid, and daring sound experiments.” Skew & Satirist’s Through the Compound Eye EP is set to see a vinyl release on September 8, with a digital release to arrive the following week. In the meantime, the record’s tracklist has been included below.

A1 Optic Chasm
B1 Eaten Alive
B2 Morphogenesis

CHLLNGR Readies New LP for Time No Place, Streams Lead Single

Copenhagen-based artist Steven Jess Borth II (a.k.a. CHLLNGR) has unveiled the details of his forthcoming sophomore LP, Form of Release. Set to see a release via Los Angeles label Time No Place, the record will serve as CHLLNGR’s first full-length effort since 2011’s Haven LP, showcasing the further developments of the dub-rooted producer’s “unique amalgam of soul, pop, stripped-down beats, and decaying atmospheres.” Furthermore, Form of Release is said to have been recorded at the newly built Red Bull Studios in Copenhagen, allowing for the inclusion of more live instrumentation within CHLLNGR’s productions.

Out on October 27, the full tracklist for Form of Release is included below along with a stream of the LP’s horn-led first single, “What You Used to Know,” and a brief documentary which chronicles the recording process behind CHLLNGR’s forthcoming sophomore LP.

01 For the Books (feat. JOSIAHWISE IS THE SERPENTWITHFEET)
02 First Time (feat. Dels)
03 Come Around (feat. JOSIAHWISE IS THE SERPENTWITHFEET)
04 Inside My Skin
05 Without Yours (feat. JOSIAHWISE IS THE SERPENTWITHFEET)
06 Fall (feat. JOSIAHWISE IS THE SERPENTWITHFEET & Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild)
07 Yes (feat. Grace Hall of Skin Town)
08 Art, Science, Love (feat. Blaqstarr)
09 What You Used to Know
10 Waiting (feat. JOSIAHWISE IS THE SERPENTWITHFEET)
11 Save Me

Rival Consoles “Helios”

An expansive electronic composition, “Helios” is set to close out the a-side of Rival Consoles‘ upcoming Sonne EP for the Erased Tapes label. Spanning just under five minutes, “Helios” is built on the back of a percussive shuffle, which chugs along as the producer amasses an array of glistening electronic textures. Building slowly at first, the track’s buzzing arpeggios and heavenly drones eventually burst upon meeting a procession of live-played drums that enthusiastically march throughout the song’s latter half. Rival Consoles’ six-track Sonne EP will see its official release on September 15, to be followed later in the month by an Erased Tapes tour, which will find label affiliates Peter Broderick, Greg Haines, Douglas Dare, and Rival Consoles performing along the West Coast across a string of dates; more info can be found after the jump.

Sorry, download removed due to DMCA copyright infringement

Trouw Announces Line-Up for Final ADE Run

Housed inside an old newspaper factory, over the years Amsterdam club Trouw has become one of our favorite spots on the planet to see DJs and producers perform. As such, Trouw has consistently served as a highlight during our annual trips to the Amsterdam Dance Event festival, which will again take over the Dutch city this October (having shared its initial set of performers last week) With this being Trouw’s final year—a closure planned since the club’s inception—the Amsterdam institution has now revealed the impressive full line-up for what will be its last run of ADE events.

Presenting showcases from October 15 to the 19, Trouw will host the likes of Four Tet, Jon Hopkins, Leon Vynehall, the Hessle Audio crew, Motor City Drum Ensemble, Talaboman, Floating Points, Omar S, Mano Le Tough, Gerd Janson, and many more in its main room (pictured above) and its adjoining De Verdieping space. The club’s full ADE schedule is included below, while more details on each upcoming showcase can be found here.

October 15
RUSH HOUR – AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
Ron Trent (Prescription, Chicago)
Hunee & Antal b2b (Rush Hour, Amsterdam)
Young Marco (ESP Institute, Amsterdam)

DE VERDIEPING
RUSH HOUR – AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
Traxx (Nation, L.I.E.S, Chicago)
San Proper (Rush Hour, Amsterdam)
Interstellar Funk & Robert Bergman (Rush Hour, Amsterdam)

October 16
COLORS X HESSLE AUDIO – AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
Ben UFO (Hessle Audio, London)
Pearson Sound (Hessle Audio, London)
Pangaea (Hessle Audio, London)
Midland (Aus Music, London)
Cinnaman (Colors, Amsterdam)

DE VERDIEPING
CLONE RECORDS – AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
Leon Vynehall (3024, Clone, Portsmouth)
Marquis Hawkes (DABJ, Clone, Berlin)
Dexter (Clone, Dolly, Schagen)
Serge (Clone, Rotterdam)

October 17
IMPRINT– AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
Sandrien (Imprint, Trouw, Amsterdam)
ROD (Klockworks, Rotterdam)
Tripeo live (Tripeo, Nijmegen)
Qindek live (Wolfskuil, Deventer)

DE VERDIEPING
LET – AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
Recondite live (Dystopian, Berlin)
Luke Hess (FXHE, Detroit)
Mike Servito (Bunker, New York)
Viktor Palmer (LET, Amsterdam)
Jean Pierre Enfant (LET, Amsterdam)

October 18
RESIDENT ADVISOR – AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
Four Tet (Domino, London)
Jon Hopkins live (Domino, London)
Floating Points (Eglo, London)

RESIDENT ADVISOR – AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
DE VERDIEPING
Motor City Drum Ensemble (Raw Cuts, Utrecht)
Move D (Running Back, Workshop, Heidelberg)

October 19
TROUW OP ZONDAG X DRUKPERS – AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
All Night, All Day and All Night Long
Talaboman – John Talabot & Axel Boman (DJ Kicks, Barcelona/Stockholm)
Mano le Tough (Maeve, Trouw, Berlin)
Gerd Janson (Running Back, Frankfurt)
Omar S (FXHE, Detroit)
DJ Solar (Sunset, San Francisco)
Tom Trago (Voyage Direct, Trouw, Amsterdam)
Job Jobse (Drukpers, Trouw, Amsterdam)
Makam (Dekmantel, Trouw, Amsterdam)
The Love Triangle aka Elias Mazian, Luc Mast & Job Jobse (Trouw, Amsterdam)

DE VERDIEPING
TROUW OP ZONDAG X DRUKPERS – AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT SPECIAL
All Night, All Day and All Night Long
Melon (Ratio?, Trouw, Amsterdam)
Boris Werner (Voyage Direct, Trouw, Amsterdam)
Nuno dos Santos (SoHaSo, Trouw, Utrecht)
William Kouam Djoko (Voyage Direct, Trouw, Amsterdam)
Patrice Bäumel (Black Magic, Trouw, Amsterdam)
Tsepo (Trouw, Amsterdam)
Tim Hoeben (Trouw, Amsterdam)
Olaf Boswijk (Trouw, Amsterdam)

Luke Solomon Preps New EP for Let’s Play House, with a Remix from Benjamin Damage

House veteran Luke Solomon is set to debut on Jacques Renault’s Let’s Play House label next month with the Things Wot I Done, Vol. I EP. Over the course of his decades-long career, the producer has dropped four albums—not to mention countless singles and EPs—via outlets such as Rekids, Crosstown Rebels, Playhouse, and his own Classic imprint, which he operates jointly with Derrick Carter. The tracks on offer in this forthcoming effort reportedly range from a “sharp, powerful house tune wrapped in a barbed wire knot of chunky synth hooks, loose drums, and looped vocals,” to “a little more bizarre and wonky… loaded with effects, unexpected twists and turns, and screeches that are plopped in, seemingly at random.” On the flip, 50Weapons affiliate Benjamin Damage treats Solomon’s “R U Ready?” to an acidic techno rework in the first production reportedly made using his new hardware-centric studio setup.

As the record’s title implies, Solomon’s Things Wot I Done, Vol. I looks to be the first installment in a longer series, and while we await further details on that front, the artwork and tracklist for Solomon’s upcoming EP (out on vinyl September 22, and in digital form on October 6) can be found below.

A1 “Let the Rhythim”
A2 “Wot U Du”
B1 “R U Ready? (Benjamin Damage Remix)”
B2 “R U Ready?”

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