Workaround combines Dillon’s love of UK club music’s syncopated suss and Afro-Caribbean influences with a gamely experimental approach to modern composition and stylistic fusion. It uses inventive sampling and luminous mixing techniques adapted from modern pop to “express fresh ideas about groove-driven music and perpetuate its form with timeless, future-proofed clarity,” the label explains. Dillon recorded it between 2017 and ’19 in London, Berlin, and New York.
We’re told that the album renders a hypnotic series of polymetric permutations at a fixed 150bpm tempo. It mixes meticulous FM synthesis and harmonics with acoustic samples from a range of guests, including UK Bhangra pioneer Kuljit Bhamra, Pharoah Sanders Band’s Jonny Lam, Laurel Halo, Batu, and Lucy Railton, among others.
The album’s literary and visual inspirations range from James P. Carse’s book “Finite And Infinite Games” to the abstract drawings of Tomma Abts and Jorinde Voigt, as well as painter Bridget Riley’s essays on grids and colour.
Dillon last appeared in 2018 with the Selects / Dissects mixtape on Rvng Intl.
Tracklisting
01. Workaround One 02. Workaround Two 03. Workaround Three 04. Workaround Four 05. Workaround Five 06. Clouds Strum 07. Workaround Six 08. Workaround Seven 09. Workaround Eight 10. Workaround Nine 11. Square Fifths 12. Workaround Bass 13. Pause 14. Workaround Ten
Workaround LP is out on February 7, 2020. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “Workaround Two” below.
Adrian Niculae, better known as Priku, has shared a new mix with XLR8R, recorded just under a year ago at Dincolo in Romania.
Niculae is one of several Romanian DJ-producers to have made a name for himself overseas over recent years, along with the likes of Rhadoo, Raresh, and Praslea. He’s now a staple at Romania’s leading parties, including Sunwaves, and he plays regularly through Europe. His sounds have been released on imprints such as Concrete Music, Fabric, and Arpiar.
Following up his exceptional XLR8R podcast, a favourite among many, he now shares another live set, full of stripped-back rolling groove. Press play and enjoy!
Editor note: The podcast is available for stream only. The download is available exclusively for XLR8R+ members, where you can also download a plethora of previously unreleased and exclusive tracks from the likes of Sebastian Mullaert, Vril, Jack Michael, Leif, and many more. SUBSCRIBE HERE and download the mix here.
Andreas Werner will release three new records under three new aliases, Andrew Renew, Audient, and DYKH.
Kicking off his career in 2004, Andreas Werner is widely known as Audio Werner, a co-founder of Hartchef. He signed to Perlon in 2006 and has since released wonky jazz-influenced minimal cuts on labels like Minibar and Galdoors. More recently, he announced a debut long-player through Sushitech.
Earlier this year, the German artist released WRNR222, a three-track 12″ on Aku, a sub-label of Paris-based record store, distributor, and booking agency Yoyaku, to which he recently signed. These records as Andrew Renew, Audient, and DYKH span house, ambient, and electro respectively, and they each come on a Yoyaku sub-label sharing the same name as their respective project. They can be purchased separately or together as a pack.
“The aliases represent Werner’s view on house, ambient and electro respectively,” Yoyaku explains.
“Early December 2018, I spent a whole afternoon in Andreas’ studio in Berlin where he really opened himself; he showed me all the different projects he has been working on, and his music that was unreleased,” Yoyaku’s Benjamin Belaga tells XLR8R. “There was music of different genres: house, ambient, and electro. I am used to hanging around with artists in their studios and I was stunned by Andreas’ level of production.”
All three records will be released on December 2 on vinyl. Meanwhile, you can see the artwork and tracklistings below, along with clips.
Bromley / Still Moving is an ode to the place the record was made, Overmono’s studio in Bromley, South East London.
The space, based in a former magazine printers, had a rich history in UK dance music before brothers Tom and Ed Russell (a.k.a Overmono) arrived, having been in use by various prominent artists and DJs since the ’90s. Leaving the city’s daily to commute to the studio in the suburb of Bromley, the opposite direction to the usual daily grind, has helped back up the duo’s creative ethos and pushed them to make music further outside of the known and well-trodden paths.
We’re told to expect “two intricate and detailed tracks holding a distinctly U.K feel,” that have been already been doing the DJ rounds.
Tracklisting
01. Bromley 02. Still Moving
Bromley / Still Moving EP is out November 22 on vinyl. Meanwhile, you can stream “Bromley” below.
Up next on DJ Three’s eclectic Hallucienda is the new album from Fanatico, titled Love & Dancing On The Brink.
Fanatico is the work of singer/songwriters Jorge Socarrás and Mathias Schaffhäuser. The duo’s previous album came in 2013 on Yellow Tail, titled Dancing Daze, but they’ve kept their collaboration quiet ever since.
Socarrás has been working with cult San Francisco label Dark Entries on the upcoming book on Patrick Cowley, with whom he collaborated musically as Catholic, and indie-disco band Indoor Life. Schaffhäuser, meanwhile, has celebrated the 20th jubilee of his Ware label with three releases featuring reworked and remixed Ware classics.
Love & Dancing On The Brink is the third in a series of artist albums on Hallucienda, following Oona Dahl’s Holograma and Chris Mitchell’s Living In Next, both in 2017—and marks a “clear statement of intent for how we are cultivating artist albums,” label head DJ Three tells XLR8R. Earlier contributions have come from Terry Francis and Reverse Commuter.
The album ranges from club-ready cuts to experimental electronica, and veers “effortlessly from the emphatic to the urgent, all carried by inventive songwriting and a coy sense of Nietzschean humor,” the label explains.
Love & Dancing On The Brink is out November 22 on digital, and January 17, 2020 on vinyl and CD. The limited edition white vinyl LP comes with special-ink artwork and the CD includes the bonus track “Linger” (Live At Suicide Circus, Berlin). Meanwhile, you can stream “Witchin’ Me” and “Then” below.
Tracklisting
01. Take It All (Album Version) 02. Witchin’ Me 03. Ecce Homo 04. El Gustoso 05. Then 06. (Very) Last Call 07. Extrasensory 08. Radical Freedom 09. Recurrence
A psychedelic, experimental jazz record, originally released in 1978, it marked a daring step forward by the Mexico City-based musician. Copies of the original are highly sought after, despite the drummer and composer being much overlooked in both his home country as well as abroad.
Explaining his connection to the record, Peterson says, “This was the first record I heard from that region which had that amazing psychedelic, cosmic jazz sound. It’s somewhere between a David Axelrod record and a release on Saturn. I’ve always had it as one of my secret gems.”
The story behind Peterson re-releasing the record is serendipitous. Several years ago, he bought a copy before a gig in Japan, and it soon became one of his most cherished discoveries. Years later, booked to play at a festival in Mexico, Peterson was introduced to Carlos Icaza, a record collector and musician, who also had a copy of the record. To Peterson’s delight, Icaza suggested they meet up with Contreras who, at 95, is still active and based in Mexico City. Soon enough, the three of them had agreed a plan to re-issue Musica Infinita.
The album is the product of a long, varied musical development for Contreras, and of his productive partnership with Estrella Newman, a scholar who championed pre-Columbian culture and Mexico’s experimental traditions.
The group name adopted for the album, Quinto Sol, reflects the influence of the Aztec Calendar, a concept which Contreras and Newman were inspired to build their shared musical project around. It’s a concept based around an Aztec carved stone structure, known as the Sun Stone, discovered in the late eighteenth century, believed to outline five periods, or suns, which explain the transformations of the earth. Inspired by a nighttime visit to the Pyramid of the Sun, in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, Contreras decided to adopt a group name in reference to the fifth period of the Aztec Calendar. Thus, he picked Quinto Sol, meaning “Fifth Sun.”
Moving forward, Arc Records will focus on selected reissues from Peterson’s archives, “shining light on magnificent records and the stories that brought them to us.”
Tracklisting
01. Sinfonia Del Quinto Sol 02. El Hombre Cosmico 03. Orbita 13
Musica Infinita LP is released on January 10, 2020. Meanwhile, you can stream “Sinfonia Del Quinto Sol” here.
Andrew Wilson will release his debut album as Andras via Tim Sweeney’s Beats In Space.
Joyful is said to cut a path through an overgrowth of nostalgia around ’70s acid folk and ’90s acid house. The seven-track LP sees the Australian musician, formerly known as Andras Fox, cultivate melodic drama and tenderness with memorable hooks and rapturous arpeggios; we’re told that “sentimental strings summon both joyful aspirations and the shadows of faded dreams.”
Wilson has previously used a variety of aliases, including Wilson Tanner, Berko, and Art Wilson, but this is his first album as Andras. He’s released three albums as Andras Fox, two in collaboration with Oscar Key Sung.
The album follows an EP from Anatolian Weapons on Beats in Space.
Joyful is available on LP and digital formats on January 31, 2020. On behalf of Andras, a portion of proceeds from this release will benefit the Invasive Species Council on the recommendation of Tim Low, author of the book “Feral Future and Where Song Began.”
You can stream a video for “Honeybird” below, shot by Josephine Ravitz and Max Ravitz.
Tracklisting
01. Honeybird 02. Live Forever 03. Poppy 04. River Red 05. Harf Green 06. Saga of Sweetheart 07. Goggles
Dekmantel will release the debut EP from Neon Chambers, a new collaboration from Sigha and Kangding Ray, aimed at extending the duo’s “analogous ambitions,” and creating “bigger, and more daring live and audiovisual performances.”
One is a whirlwind of crushing modern sonics, that is equal parts jagged rave, progressive dub-fuelled two-step, and nighttime-ethereal IDM.
“Apollo” is a working of melodic synthesis, with delicate, rolling breaks, while “Cascade” moves into a more grandiose territory, befit with trance-like synthesis. “What It Takes” brings on board a more UK, post-dubstep sound. “Your Touch” toys once more with atmospheric rolling breaks and solemn vocal samples, while “Helles,” the closing track, is an excursion into more compelling, auditory realms.
Sigha (a.k.a James Shaw) comes from a steadfast background in abstract techno, with previous works on Token Blueprint, Avian, and his own Our Circular Sound imprint. Kangding Ray (a.k.a David Letellier) has made a career for himself with experimental sonic adventures that have taken him across labels such as Raster-Noton and Stroboscopic Artefacts. In 2019, he also started his own imprint, ara, for more bespoke, avant-garde releases.
The five-track EP is Dekmantel’s 73rd release.
Tracklisting
A1. Apollo A2. Cascade B1. What It Takes B2. Your Touch B3. Helles
One EP lands November 15 on digital with vinyl coming on November 18. Meanwhile, you can hear clips below and pre-order here.
Cédric Dekowski and Felix Reifenberg form Cedric & Felix, the DJ-production duo based in Frankfurt, Germany. Formed in 2012 with “Nibor,” a contribution to a limited edition 12″ on Samba Utopia, the collaboration has since spawned an album, 2017’s L’Albüm; a handful of 12″s on labels like Pressure Traxx, Raum…musik, and HardWorkSoftDrink; and a live set, which recently toured across the United States and holds a residency at Offenbach’s legendary Robert Johnson club. The duo, friends since childhood and former flatmates, are also both enjoying success as solo artists, holding regular acquaintance with the aforementioned labels.
Outside of making and performing music, Dekowski and Reifenberg also release it via their label, Hardworksoftdrink, a side-project alongside Frankfurt locals Max Vaahs and Thilo Dietrich. Launched in 2013 with an EP from Muanda, the label now positions itself at the epicenter of a vibrant Frankfurt scene; besides the label heads themselves, many of the local artists, including Roman Flügel and Oskar Offermann, have put out music there. They work on a range of cross-discipline projects including music production, clothes design, and events.
The Cedric & Felix sound is the sort of wonky after-hours minimal you associate with Frankfurt, spearheaded by Perlon and continued by Bodin & Jacob, Traffic Records, and the HardWorkSoftDrink label. As you’d expect, their XLR8R podcast, a live set recorded at Robert Johnson in December 2018, is full of unreleased gems and improvised edits, and it’s sure to make you dance. “Let’s say it this way, there’s no segment in the recording we don’t like,” Dekowski and Reifenberg explain.
What have you been up to recently?
We just came back from a really nice tour through the United States. One of our favorite shows on this tour was surely the afterparty of the Movement Festival that was organized by Resolute NY which is also our American agency. At the studio in Offenbach, we’ve been constantly changing and adjusting our music setup to find new ways of producing.
The latest vinyl we dropped was a solo EP by Cedric on Frankfurt’s Pressure Traxx records called Ihou 3 Ep. Big hugs go out to Arno and Frank Frost. Also, the Emacfrench EP is now out on the Parisian label Partou. An equal amount of hugs go out to Teo. At the same time, a new project from Cedric & Thilo Dietrich as Danny Pocket and Mr. No had its first release with a double EP on our own imprint, Hardworksoftdrink, called Danny Pocket and Mr. Noh—Mix. Vol. 1.
How did you find your way into music?
I think we became interested in electronic music when the easy-going big brother of Felix showed us some of his underground drum & bass collection 15 years ago. This was the musical ignition for us. Since then, we’ve been moving like a rocket through the space and the genres.
Where was this particular mix recorded?
It’s a cut from our live set at the Hardworksoftdrink Christmas Party we do every year two days after Christmas at our home club, Robert Johnson. It’s a party for our friends and family where the atmosphere is always something really special and the girls and boys are going wild.
How did you choose the tracks that you included?
We prepared the set in the studio and picked some super old tracks we wanted to choose from a project which is also ten years old; its really mixed up, which was important for us as there’s also a lot of improvisation and tracks we didn’t plan and prepare before.
Where do you envisage it being listened to?
In da club like 50 Cent.
What’s next on the horizon, looking forward?
Next weekend we’re gonna play a live gig at club Modeci in Seoul, Korea. We will see our old wooden friend Thilo Dietrich from Hardworksoftdrink. He is living there at the moment, studying the Korean culture and having a good time with his beautiful girlfriend. What we are also really looking forward to is our next Hardworksoftdrink party at Robert Johnson on September 27. We’re gonna do a little party with Nicolas Lutz and DJ Assault. This will be a banger, for sure. Cedrics solo EP on Traffic Records will be released in December and then there is Christmas again and we can show our new live set to the people!
XLR8R has now joined Mixcloud Select, meaning that to download the podcast you will need to subscribe to our Select channel. 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.
Violet’s Rádio Quântica has released a free compilation to celebrate its fourth anniversary.
What started in November 2015 as an online radio station with around 70 people broadcasting from their homes has become a diverse community of more than 150 broadcasters with a studio in Lisbon, Portugal.
The 24 artists who feature on the compilation broadcast on Quântica regularly, including Violet, Photonz, and BLEID, who compiled the project. DIOGO, Maloka, Odete, Prec, Shcuro, Vandi, and more also all feature.
The compilation is free to download, but any donations will go towards helping the Lisbon studio run smoothly and creating better conditions for broadcasters.
Artwork comes from Daniel Pereira.
For more information on Violet, listen to her podcast here. Meanwhile, you can tune in to Rádio Quântica HERE.
