Earlier this year, Fujiya & Miyagi released Flashback, the latest addition to a 20-year discography that also encompasses 2011’s Ventriloquizzing, 2014’s Artificial Sweeteners, and their Impossible Objects of Desire EP trilogy released throughout 2016 and 2017. It’s informed by the machine rhythms of early electro and their youth spent spray-painting garages and breakdancing on kitchen linoleum, and is their funkiest release to date.
There’s a remix package on the way, titled Flashback Remixes, and in anticipation we’re offering a remix by W.H Lung, who has turned the title-track into a nasty dungeon creeper. Grab it now via the WeTransfer button below or here for EU readers due to GDPR restrictions.
Barker has detailed his debut album, Utility, out via Ostgut Ton in September.
Barker, Berghain resident and Leisure System co-founder, has spent the last few years exploring the euphoric potential of altering key variables in dance music formulas. This is perhaps best captured on his 2018 Ostgut Ton EP debut, Debiasing, which was flush with unconventional rhythmic chord stabs, melody, and percussion but entirely devoid of kickdrums. What seemed like an experimental exercise on paper was in reality equally geared towards the club, and this model— tracks that work for the floor while resisting the genre categorizations that kick drums often provide—has come to define Barker’s sound.
With Utility, Barker turns his focus toward melding experimentation and dancefloor pragmatism with the psychology behind the music-making process.
In his own words: “After Debiasing, it occurred to me that my musical decisions were often unintentionally utilitarian, following an instinct to maximize pleasure in one way or another. It’s sort of unfashionable to admit, but by removing elements that have strong genre associations, this became a natural consequence.”
Accordingly, Utility is a playful musical approach to a whole spectrum of utilitarian and trans-humanist ideas: from models for quantifying pleasure and “gradients of bliss” to abolishing suffering for sentient beings (not just people) through the ethical use of drugs and nanotechnology. Over nine tracks, we’re told that Barker’s vision ebbs and flows through waves of deeply psychedelic musical vignettes; expect free-floating and futuristic melodies and rhythms targeted at brain stimulation.
The album draws heavily on modular synthesis, as well as self-built mechanical instruments and plate reverbs to create atmospheres that are “at once alien and emotionally recognizable, functional and utopian,” the label explains. It follows Barker’s recent white-label 12″, Barker001.
Next up on Marco Shuttle’s Eerie is Tamaño de mi Silencio (meaning The “Extension of My Silence”), the debut album of YYYY.
The 12-track release is inspired by the landscapes of eternal prairies of the Argentinian Pampa, the fertile South American lowlands and YYYY’s native land, where poets and troubadours like Facundo Cabral or Atahualpa Yupanqui have roamed for centuries. Almost all the sounds on the album, including percussion and effects, are derived from manipulating the human voice. It took three years to complete.
YYYY is an anonymous live duo working in the realms of techno, industrial, ambient, and drone. Their work can be found on labels like Weekend Circuit, Planet Rhythm, and Polegroup’s Aine.
“ETMS by YYYY is a wonderful piece of work, extremely musical, deep, and atmospheric. I was immediately seduced by its cinematic narrative, its poetic flow, and the great quality of the production, so much that I signed it on my own label and will release it this year.”— Marco Shuttle
El Tamaño de Mi Silencio LP lands October 1, with the title-track streaming below.
Tracklisting
A1 / 1. Madre
A2 / 2. Resiliencia
A3 / 3. Todo Lo Que Ata (i)
A4 / 4. Pueblo de Orfalese
A5 / 5. ombres de Mi Cimiente
A6 / 6. Es Asesino (ii)
B1 / 7. En La Vida Siguiente
B2 / 8. El Tamaño de Mi Silencio
B3 / 9. Profetiza
B4 / 10. Lo Que Hay Detrás del Miedo B5 / 11. Dejarse Morir
While historically tagged as Mullinix’s acid house alias, JTC has always expressed with a more pliable sense of genre, freely fusing an eclectic blend of classic electronic sounds; expect helpings of Chicago acid, Belgian new beat, and the left-field techno stylings popularized both in Berlin and Detroit. With Indigo, Flesh and Fire, we’re told that Mullinix moves closer to the latter city, adopting a bright, optimistic tone informed by minimalism and futurism.
Since completing his two-decade-long hip-hop trilogy as Dabrye in 2018, Mullinix—the Ann Arbor-based artist and Bopside label head—has engaged his arsenal of aliases with renewed heat. He debuted X-Altera, a new project flexing a hybrid of drum & bass and deep techno, last year, and now he’s back to JTC, formerly James T. Cotton, a moniker that dates back as far as Dabrye and helped define Spectral Sound, Ghostly’s dance imprint. The alias last appeared on the label in 2013.
We’re told that the EP is packed, but still playfully ambiguous. It’s made of five tracks, each with a roughly five-minute run-time.
Pressings are limited to 300.
Indigo, Flesh and Fire EP lands August 2, with the title-track streaming below, and pre-order here.
Gino Serpentini holds the title of the youngest Brainfeeder alumni. Now 20, he made his debut on Flying Lotus’ label aged just 19, having been producing for just over 12 months. Hearing his early Soundcloud uploads, Minneapolis label Renraku snapped Serpentini up for an EP debut, which then caught FlyLo’s attention, who described Serpentini’s beats as “fkn insane” and promptly signed him to Brainfeeder to release ENTER and also contribute to the label’s 10th anniversary compilation.
No more than a year after his debut EP, Serpentini found himself headlining Low End Theory, featured on Noisia Radio, and sharing the stage with artists he had originally taken inspiration from.
Residing in Calgary, Alberta, Serpentini’s music balances intricacy and explosive bass weight, and is played by the likes of Amon Tobin, edIT of The Glitch Mob, Flying Lotus, and many more. Although club-ready and driving, there’s pragmatism at the root of Serpentini’s work, for it serves as a tool for mental stability. With a new EP incoming this week on Brainfeeder and having signed to Madison House to begin touring North America, Serpentini is an artist on the rise. We took the opportunity to catch up with him to learn more about his work.
In support of the interview, Little Snake prepared an exclusive mix for XLR8R, available for download here.
How did you first connect with Flying Lotus and Brainfeeder?
I guess the short answer is the internet. One day I woke up about two or three months after my debut EP dropped, and back then I had only a handful of Twitter followers, but when I checked my account I had a few notifications which was super unusual at the time. I was kind of nervous, but I checked them and the first thing I saw was a video captioned something along the lines of “Did Flying Lotus really just play a Little Snake track?,” and my heart almost stopped. I remember it being a really bad week and the jump from where I was at to the news I had just gotten was like diving into a pool of ice. Really heavy emotional shock.
Which track was it?
It was my tune “Lilith” off of my debut EP on Renraku. FlyLo still plays it all the time and always does his own improvisational edits live. It never gets old to see it being played to massive audiences.
Do you know how he discovered your work?
No, I’ve been meaning to ask. I’m seeing him this month so I’ll have to bring it up.
Had you been a fan of FlyLo for some time?
Yea, it was really crazy for me because I grew up on a lot of Lotus’ stuff. It was some of if not the first experimental electronic I had ever fully experienced. At the time I found out about him I was really experimenting with new perceptions and doing a lot of growing, so it kind of ended up developing this really personal nostalgic bond I had with his sound. To this day it shocks me.
How did this evolve into a release?
I actually messaged him on Twitter. I was really hesitant about contacting him, but my girlfriend at the time wouldn’t stop pushing me to do it. But I caved, and pretty much the first thing he said to me was about releasing stuff on Brainfeeder. It took over a year to get my first bit of music out on there and I only told a few dear friends about it, but when it dropped people were into it. I’m really grateful for the opportunities Lotus and the Brainfeeder crew have given me.
You’re a resident of Calgary, Alberta. How long have you been there?
My whole life, and it’s hard to say much about it as a whole because I’ve actually traveled in the States more than I have here, but the general consensus is it’s a really peaceful and beautiful place to live. Calgary gets a bad rap, but I don’t think I’d ever leave. The music scene here and across most of Canada hasn’t really picked up too much experimental stuff yet compared to other countries, but the community it does have is really strong and loving.
How did you connect with music growing up?
Growing up I actually had fairly simple music tastes, loosely revolving around pop, and basically anything I could download from Limewire. I had an older sister who would always feed me recommendations and it definitely helped to guide me in a direction of sonic art that I resonated with. Of course, it wasn’t anything profound at all, but she always knew what type of sound I would be drawn to.
What’s your first memory of electronic music?
In 2011, my sister had gotten a tip that Deadmau5 was playing a small show at a shoe store in a local mall. I’m 20 now, so I must have been 12 or 13 at the time and couldn’t have gone to raves or shows, so I was really enticed by seeing live electronic music. I was really blown away because I had never seen anything like it. There’s actually really pixelated videos on YouTube of me and my sister like four feet away from Deadmau5, closely observing what he was doing. When I got home that evening, I opened up iTunes and played around with the equalizer settings they had. I was really intrigued by this mysterious wonder of technology-based audio.
“It was a life-altering experience and near the end of the show I kind of drifted off into this beautiful realization that I had found exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
You didn’t actually begin making music properly until 2015. What inspired you?
Yea, I saw G Jones and Bleep Bloop, two of my favorite artists to this day, at a club in Calgary. It was a life-altering experience and near the end of the show I kind of drifted off into this beautiful realization that I had found exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. The day after, I downloaded FL Studio and experimented as much as I could. Later I attended some really amazing local festivals, heard some really inspiring music, and so on.
That’s basically the skin and bones of where I started. As the timeline developed and I started taking things really seriously, more meaning and intricacy behind the sound started forming and I started making my sound and my general philosophy on life synonymous.
What did your first electronic experiments sounds like?
It was interesting, for sure. I was kind of just taking the apex moments I had experienced at live shows and through listening to music on the internet and condensing them over simple drum beats. It was pretty much anything I could throw into an arpeggiator mixed with acid techno leads placed over a footwork pattern. It still got a lot of recognition locally, considering it was my first few tracks, but it definitely evolved into something more as time went on.
How did you learn the ropes of production? Was it trial and error?
That’s actually exactly how it was. I basically pressed every button until I found a cool sound. There was the exception of a few YouTube tutorials on synthesis, but it was almost entirely chaotic experimentation. I still don’t know what I’m doing really; I just know enough about it in my own way to make exactly what I need.
“I’m heavily medicated and I spend as much time working on myself as I can but not a day goes by where I can consistently tell what’s real.”
Why the name Little Snake?
“Serpentini,” my last name, is Italian for “little snake.” As time went on, I started really loving snakes, and the name just kind of stuck.
You told me earlier that music is a “vehicle to sustain your mental health.” What do you mean?
Yes, my mental health took a huge decline around 2015 and since then I’ve been using music as a way to not only cope with it but also to help those that deal with similar situations. I got really into psychedelics to the point I was taking them nearly every day for months. I started falling into these really intriguing, intricate delusions about reality and got caught in this weird pattern of thought that I still can’t get out of. I’m doing a lot better: I’m heavily medicated and I spend as much time working on myself as I can, but not a day goes by where I can consistently tell what’s real. I would touch more on the delusions but they’re difficult to formulate into words. I genuinely think music is one of the only ways to express this intangible thing.
How serious is the problem today?
I’d say it’s pretty bad, but a lot better. I am on the highest dose possible of one anti-psychotic medication and currently take two smaller backups, and that keeps things at bay. If I miss my injection for my main medication for even a day, it’s hard to even see my girlfriend or hold a proper conversation for more than a couple minutes. I’ve never been a danger, but under the right circumstances, paranoia gets so bad to the point where I can’t even speak at times. With all that being said, I am surrounded by the most positive, loving group of friends and loved ones I could imagine and for the most part, I have a healthy, fulfilling life.
How exactly does music production help your mental health?
When I’m in a state of psychosis, depression, or anything in between, one of my favorite things to do is track the thoughts that I’m having. I like to view the way the internal or even external dialogue expands, contracts, tenses or loosens up, breathes, and just how it moves in general. If I have a clear image in my head of these patterns, I try to sonically recreate them to the best of my abilities. For me, it’s a huge release of what I can’t really tell a therapist or doctor. It feels like venting.
On top of that, as implausible as this next bit might sound, I think after sharing these patterns that people start to resonate with a general mind-state you are expressing more and more every time you release something. It might not be necessarily magic, but I really do believe that when you create from the heart as fully as you can, people will see you in detail through your work. In this sense, I feel less alone in where I’m at when I share music.
Your first release landed in 2017. When did you start sending your music out to labels?
I had been shopping to labels basically since I uploaded my first track to Soundcloud. Nobody really listened or cared until at some point some of the people from Renraku reached out to me. It still baffles me because the music I was releasing before that first release was pretty underwhelming. But they did and always will believe in me. I am so honored to be a part of such an innovative, talented team, and I look forward to my upcoming projects with them.
How would you describe your music to some who doesn’t know you?
It’s always a weird thing to explain, especially to family and friends who haven’t really followed the path I took in its entirety, so there’s usually a different explanation from person to person. Usually, it’s something along the lines of just “experimental dance music.” But I was recently added to a Facebook group titled “Omni-Tempo Maximalism,” and I think that’s my favorite label for my music so far.
However, I think the best part about all of the work I do is creating a playing field for a listener to create their own perceptions and ideas about it. That’s not to say that each piece doesn’t have a meaning or intention, but more so about accepting that each listener will see it in their own way and still have the same energetic value associated with it.
How much do you think about where you’re going as an artist?
It’s tough to say because my attention span with certain things is quite short, whereas other areas of my life are thoroughly thought out and curated. But right now with the recent unreleased music and music I’m currently working on, I’ve taken more risks than I ever have. Which is not to say they haven’t been rewarding, because they definitely have been, but I still have no idea of how the general public will receive them until they are actually out. So I guess lately I have been thinking about it more, but there isn’t and has never really been too much worry about what does well because at the end of the day this is really for a select few people. I know that sounds selfish, but I honestly think it has a sort of butterfly effect between people’s inspiration shared amongst their friends.
What would success be for you?
It’s tough to say. Success for me has sort of been fleeting moments laced through dark times. Remember when I talked about the life-altering experience I had with G Jones and Bleep Bloop? Since then, Bleep Bloop has brought me out on tour and G Jones has shown really big love for a lot of releases since my debut. Those are moments that are so intricately fulfilling that I couldn’t design something better if I tried. But there are times that I forget about all of that. It’s kind of an endless tussle back and forth. So I guess these days I would consider success to be peacefulness and harmony between the light and dark moments of my life.
For You and I expresses happiness, anxiety, joy, sensuality, and fear through a vivid sound palette and an experimental sense of rhythm. It’s partly an exploration of the complexities of being in a queer relationship in London, and the ups and downs that come with that. “I’m in love and wanted to share that in some way. I wanted to make songs that reflect layers of my relationship.” The other half of the album is about her: “I wanted it to be about only me,” James says.
Of her process, James says she aimed to make something that wasn’t overthought. As a result, the album is rhythmically free-flowing and sprawling, with melodies that evolve into rippling keys. It’s said to feel like a live jam session with a jazz mentality, contrasting the delicate and abrasive. It features vocals from James’ frequent collaborator and London rapper Le3 BLACK, as well as UK singer Theo and James’ girlfriend.
The artwork, which features a photo of James holding a photo of her estate from 10 years ago, is a tribute to her upbringing. “I started making music in those flats, news of my Dad and Uncle passing away happened in that flat, I came out to my mum crying in that flat. Most of my life has been there and in so many years time this area will no longer exist.”
James was enticed into the world of music through her mother, who would go from playing the steel pans to blaring out music from Metallica to Calypso. Having grown up in Enfield, London, she credits the multiculturalism in the city for broadening her mind and ears, and the results of this exposure can be heard across the album.
For You And I lands on September 20, with “Sick 9” streaming below, and pre-order here.
You can find only two releases from Sa Pa on Discogs, one on Giegling sub-label Forum, and a solitary outing on Marcel Dettmann Records in 2015. The only other original material he’s shared has come out via his “Enter Sa Pa” mix made only of his own music and field recordings, and also as part of Marcel Dettmann’s Rauch mix for Ostgut Ton’s ambient sub-label, A-TON. Remarkably, this is just about everything you can find on him, other than that he’s based in Berlin. Oh, and he can be seen playing at last year’s protests in Georgia. He avoids social media altogether.
As we put this feature together, we managed to extract further bits of information from Sa Pa, but a lot of it is either deflective or too short to really reveal anything. Nonetheless, this is what else we know: the first memory that sent him on his course in music was hearing Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Oxygen Part II” on the radio for the first time. “I was still too young to really have any great context of what the music playing actually was, but I knew the sounds of that song were so out of this world compared to any bands on the air at the time,” he recalls. “It was epiphanic, and from that point on I understood there was more to music than the rock & roll that was omnipresent growing up.”
His musical palette continued to be shaped with late-night music television, foreign film, and soundtracks—”even the music in world football montages sounded cool,” he adds. He came to love trance and learned more about making music when his friend Jug recommended a drum machine and sat him through basic production processes. The only other thing we know is that he connected with Giegling through his passion for tea, the mnml ssgs blog, and what he calls a “passport fiasco,” with no other details disclosed. “The connection was poetry in motion,” he says.
In terms of music, Sa Pa’s work is rooted in lush dub techno and serene atmospherics. Like all the artists on Giegling, it’s elegant and powerful, and possessive of a raw emotion that seems so symbolic of the Weimar crew. His XLR8R podcast, at just over one hour in length, gradually kicks off with beats fading in and out, only to return around the half-way mark, picking up the energy, only to melt into downbeat field recordings and gentle ambiance. It’s also full of unreleased Sa Pa material, the first glimpse of what’s to come in years. There’s an art to keeping the attention and emotions high without a kick, and Sa Pa, whoever he is, manages to do this until the very end.
What have you been up to recently?
Spring cleaning!
You don’t release very much. How much of your work do you share?
As much as needed.
You also maintain almost complete anonymity. Where do you feel the need to protect your identity?
I feel freedom in art and identity a cage.
Where was this particular mix recorded?
In future memories.
How did you choose the tracks that you included?
Faith.
Is there a concept or wider vision behind it?
Connecting worlds.
Where do you envisage it being listened to?
Sitting while moving.
What’s next on the horizon, looking forward?
Dreams. Dreams. And more dreams. I picture the horizon as a vision of absurd lustre; the strange, bright, and shiny things that light the future ahead.
Due to issues regarding the GDPR, EU readers can download the podcast here.
Tracklisting
01. Sa Pa “Ripsketch” [Forthcoming] 02. Easy Changes “RS6 3.5 V10” [Nervmusic] 03. Neotropical “The Chill” [Sketches Records] 04. Jan Jelinek Presents: “Alice Schwarzer, is it true you that you’re a person of great tenacity?” [Fatisch] 05. Jan Jelinek Presents “John Cage, I’ve been asked to ask you the following question: Where are you going?” [Fatisch] 06. Sateq “Unreleased” 07. Jan Jelinek Presents: “Hubert Fichte, your journey through life has been full of twists and turns. Please tell us when and where this journey began!” [Fatische] 08. Sa Pa “Melody Hop” [Forthcoming] 09. Ambiq “Timone” [Arjunamusic] 10. Sa Pa “Unreleased” 11. Soundwalk Collective “Kreatur” [Dischi Fantom] 12. Sa Pa “Recovery” [Forthcoming] 13. Necunoscuti “Vom Ramane” (Vid ‘Piu Piu’ remix) [An|dromeda] 14. Giorgio Sancristoforo – Little Ali (Hommage to Forough Farrokhzad) [ИГРОК – YGROK] 15. Terrence Dixon “Vision Blurry” [Tresor] 16. Sa Pa “Futurist Meets Cubist” [Forthcoming]
17. DeepChord “Vibrational Studies” (In Echospace) [Modern Love] 18. Sa Pa “Unreleased” 19. Sa Pa “Unreleased”
20. Sa Pa “Unreleased”
Up next on Nicolas Jaar‘s Other People label is Bandiera Di Carta, a collaborative album from Pierre Bastien and London-based experimental duo Tomaga (a.k.a Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen).
Bastien has been called a “mad musical scientist with a celebrity following” by The Guardian, and has collaborated with the likes of filmmaker Pierrick Sorin, fashion designer Issey Miyake, composer Robert Wyatt, and Aphex Twin, who released three of his albums on Rephlex.
Tomaga have made more than a dozen records since forming in 2014, pursuing a path of fearless experimentation that has won them fans and plaudits, including Thurston Moore, with whom they collaborated on the CAN Project with Malcolm Mooney, Deb Goodge, and others in 2017.
For each piece, Bastien creates a world in which Tomaga introduce their musical palette. We’re told that the results are curiously evocative of free jazz by the likes of Sun Ra or Art Ensemble of Chicago paired with the percussive sound worlds of artists like Francis Bebey or Muslimgauze, along with the exotic tonal landscapes of composers like Catherine Christer Hennix, Carl Stone, or Egisto Macchi.
“All three musicians seem to find space to bloom in ways that are markedly different to their individual work,” the label explains, “and the resulting album is a strikingly original and powerfully bold affirmation of what can happen when venturing beyond the normal in pursuit of the other.”
Bandiera Di Carta follows Vtgnike’s album on Other People this year. Since 2013, the label has released work from Patrick Higgins, Lucrecia Dalt, Darkside, Ezekiel Honig, Vaghe Stelle, Nicolas Jaar himself, and more.
Bandiera Di Carta LP lands September 20, with the title-track streaming below.
Baltra‘s album debut is described as a “time capsule of expression” that started out as an idea lacking focus, to just release an album, but took on greater meaning when his father passed away somewhat unexpectedly. The album is titled Ted in his honour.
Whilst an unexpected tragedy may have shaped the trajectory of the album and given it a sense of purpose—whilst also tinting it with sadness—we’re told that the result feels more rooted in triumph. As grief can often do, it plunges one deep into themselves, allowing them to connect to a deeper and more intimate level than perhaps normally possible. As result, Baltra’s debut is a “deeply personal, intricate, and stirring collection of electronic music,” the label explains.
Fusing subtle fizzing beats, gently whirring melodies, engulfing atmospheres, and tracks that weave between dancefloor euphoria and isolated headphone listening, Baltra explores the nuances of electronic music. The album gently glides between genres; subtle flickers of drum & bass nestle up against minimal techno, whilst clouds of ambient coat tracks in a dreamy and immersive fog. It lands on July 19 via New York’s 96 and Forever.
In support of the album, we’re offering “Bankrolls,” a gnarly house jam with raw vocals, as one of today’s free downloads. Grab it now via the WeTransfer button below, or here for EU readers due to temporary GDPR restrictions. Album pre-order can be found here.
Adiel is up next on Kangding Ray’s new ara label, following her Cavallina EP made in collaboration with Donato Dozzy. Musicofilia is the Italian artist’s first record outside of her own label.
Due on July 26, the EP is inspired by Oliver Sacks’ book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain” (2007) where the neurologist author depicts the cognitive effects of sounds, addressing the impact of repetition in music and its power to move and heal us. It’s full of intricate rhythms and captivating melodies, and suits a variety of spatio-temporal dynamics, but is crafted for the club.
Adiel is a resident DJ at Goaultrabeat at Rome’s Goa Club, and founder of the Danza Tribale label, where she made her debut in 2016 with Anatomia Del Cavallo.
Ara is a new label curated by David Letellier (a.k.a Kangding Ray), aiming to highlight artists with unique sonic identities that seeks to induce deep emotion through sound. This is the label’s second release.
Musicofilia lands July 26, and in the support of the release we’re streaming “The Call,” a wistful techno jam with a throbbing pulse, in full via the player below.
