Podcast 820: Fabio Monesi

Italian DJ-producer Fabio Monesi has quickly carved out a solid reputation through a unique, rough and ready sound that lands somewhere between vintage, dusty Chicago house and analog-driven hardware techno. You can hear this across Piano Vandals, his latest album, which is available on Ron Morelli’s L.I.E.S. label. The majority of his earlier work has surfaced on Wilson Records, a vinyl-only imprint that has welcomed Chicago pioneers Gene Hunt and Jordan Fields. (Monesi also heads up the Hardmoon London and Lunar Orbiter Program labels.) That includes Parasol Dance, his previous album in 2015, and a string of high quality EPs. And to think all this dates back to his teenage years when he taught himself to mix and some friends who worked for some Milanese clubs gave him the chance to play his first set. Recorded last month in Milan, Monesi’s podcast is filled with stripped-back classic New York and Chicago House cuts, many taken from his latest album. Expect reverb drenched drum programming and scratchy hi hats—and raw undulating Italian groove.

01. What have you been up to recently?
I have been working a lot in the studio. Running more than three record labels and several side projects is not an easy game when you do everything by yourself.

02. What have you been listening to?
I have always been a huge fan of old school hip-hop, that’s what I mostly listen to during my road trips.

03. Tell me about the new album. What can we expect?
The album came along in a very natural way. I usually spend a few weeks in the studio where I try to be focussed and I usually end up with around about two or three good ideas per session. The album is a clear tribute to what influenced me most over the years: the raw sound of Chicago house and the big snares and dreamy synths of the ’80s new wave. I tried to mix my romantic vision of the music, notable in those sexy pads and strings, together with my passion for the raw sound of the analog drum machines, while always keeping an eye to the dancing needs!

04. Where did you record this mix?
I recorded this mix in my current Milan studio.

05. What setup did you use?
I used two Technics SL-1200, the same I started my DJ career with, and two Pioneer CDJs.

06. How did you choose the tracks that you’ve included?
I selected some of my current favorites of the month, some tracks from the album, and a few old gems.
I tried to mix the recent favorites, the old gems, and the personal productions in one mix and I tried to give a good balance between what you can listen to while driving your car or working from home and what you could listen to during one of my DJ sets.

07. How does it compare to what we might hear you play out?
When I DJ my main goal is seeing the people dancing and having fun, so in a podcast I can also play something that I would never have the chance to play in a club. In this case I have to say that I tried to be as close as possible with what I would have played the day I recorded the mix.

08. What’s next on your horizon?
I have many side projects that I try to keep alive. Sometimes it can be hard as I always do everything by myself but this is what makes me feel alive. I am going to keep pushing my music through as many projects as possible as I get bored very easily after a certain period with a specific sound. I am also working on my first US and China tour for 2024 so I cannot wait to meet new people, new cultures, and to finally be where everything started!

XLR8R Subscribers can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R subscriber, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. Fabio Monesi “Jack The Crow” (L.I.E.S Records)
02. Fabio Monesi “The Piano Vandals” (L.I.E.S Records)
03. Fabio Monesi “Future Brain” (L.I.E.S Records)
04. Fabio Monesi “Harmony” (L.I.E.S Records)
05. Fabio Monesi “Moonriver” (Vocal Mix) (L.I.E.S Records)
06. Fabio Monesi “Moonriver” (Instrumental) (L.I.E.S Records)
07. Fabio Monesi “Kit The Dog” (L.I.E.S Records)
08. Fabio Monesi “Critical Rhythm” (L.I.E.S Records)

Nihiloxica’s Second Album is Here

Nihiloxica, the dark electro-percussion group, has released a new album on Crammed Discs.

Source of Denial comes more than three long years after Kaloli, their album debut. It points a (middle) finger at the hostile immigration and freedom of movement policies implemented in the UK, as well as across the world. Fuelled by their frustrations with this intentionally convoluted system, the group have produced their “most cataclysmic effort” to date, we’re told.

Returning to the Nyege Nyege studio in Kampala where the band recorded their early EPs, the band tracked Source of Denial over an intense month of sessions in early 2022.

The cover art is emblazoned with an ultra-metallic new logo, echoing the growing presence of metal influences across the tracklisting, while the hi-vis, official-document styling wryly evokes the bureaucratic nightmare at the heart of the project.

The only spoken words we hear outside of studio outtake “Preloya,” are computer-generated. They speak of application processes, character backgrounds, and accountability, blasted through crackled phone speakers.

The frustrations are a problem the band, a global outfit, has faced continuously. A whole UK tour was cancelled in 2022, and recently, a UK show had to be performed with only three members due to problems with a certain visa agency who “provide services” for the UK, as well as a growing number of countries.

“We wanted to create the sense of being in the endless, bureaucratic hell-hole of attempting to travel to a foreign country that deems itself superior to where you’re from,” the group said in a statement. “We’re focussing on the UK as that’s where we’ve had the most trouble, but the problem goes much, much further.”

“In this system if you have a certain passport or have even visited a certain country then you’re an appropriate subject to be interrogated and insulted time and time again just to prove that you’re worthy to enter, and normally this involves proving you have a good enough reason to want to leave again! The arrogance of it is unbearable,” the statement continues.

Nihiloxica was born in 2017, following the encounter in Kampala, Uganda between two UK musicians (Spooky-J & pq) and four Ugandan percussionists from the Nilotika Cultural Ensemble (Isa, Sally, Prince and Spyda). You can read more about them in their XLR8R feature here.

Tracklisting

01. Kudistro
02. Exhaust / Outsourced
03. Olutobazzi
04. Asidi
05. Interrogation / Welcome
06. Source of Denial
07. Preloya
08. Postloya
09. Trip Chug
10. Baganga
11. Tuuka / Bulung

Source of Denial LP is available now. You can stream it in full below and order it here.

Jake Muir is Back on Sferic

Jake Muir has released a new album of “soft-focus, sensual electro-concrète” on Sferic.

Bathhouse Blues is the result of months upon months of digging and research, with Muir utilizing not only awkward lines of dialog, but obscured foley sounds and mutated snippets of music.

Back in the ’70s, gay pornographic cinema was often accompanied by dreamy, kosmische soundtracks and hypnotic gusts of synthetic sound. Muir takes this as a starting point, subliming his elements even further and stitching an erotic dream from ticking clocks, roaring engines, bedraggled moans, and haunted, narcotic drones.

The album follows 2020’s the hum of your veiled voice, a romantic, neo-noir set of nocturnal rattles and rumbles, also on the Manchester, England label.

Tracklisting

01. Cruisin’ 87
02. Pipe Dream

Bathhouse Blues is available now. You can stream it below.

Moritz Von Oswald’s New Album is Incoming

Moritz von Oswald will release a new album in November.

Silencio is a collaboration with the 16-voice Vocalconsort Berlin choir. Across 11 tracks, the album explores the differences and similarities between human and artificial sound, between oscillations generated by vocal cords and synthesizer voices.

It draws inspiration from composers such as Edgard Varèse, György Ligeti, and Iannis Xenakis to create a “deeply textured collection that shifts between light and ethereal and dark and dissonant.”

The compositions were written in von Oswald’s Berlin studio on classic synthesizers, and these abstract recordings were transcribed to sheet music for choir by Finnish composer and pianist Jarkko Riihimäki and performed by Vocalconsort Berlin in Ölberg church in the city’s Kreuzberg district.

The recordings of the choral versions were then incorporated into the synthesized parts of the album and brought into a new electronic context.

In Silencio, the focus is “not on using one means to imitate the other,” we’re told, “but to sonically discuss the tensions and harmonies between the two worlds and create a dialogue between them.”

The relationship between von Oswald and Tresor Records, where the album will be released, goes back 30 years, all the way to Blake Baxter’s Dream Sequence, which von Oswald engineered alongside Thomas Fehlmann.

Silencio is von Oswald’s first album since 2017’s collaboration with Kyrgyzstani outfit Ordo Sakhna.

Tracklisting

01. Silencio
02. Luminoso
03. Librarsi
04. Infinito
05. Colpo
06. Volta (Version)
07. Infinito (Version)
08. Luminoso (Version)
09. Volta
10. Opaco
11. Opaco (Version)

Silencio LP is scheduled for November 10 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Infinito” and an album teaser below, and pre-order here.

Podcast 819: CORIN

CORIN is the alias of Corin Ileto, an electronic music DJ-producer and performer based in Sydney, Australia. XLR8R readers will probably be familiar with her name from Lux Aeterna, her latest album on Lee Gamble‘s UIQ label, or its predecessor, Enantiodromia, which is also an assemblage of converging styles moving somewhere between IDM, EBM, trance, and baroque-laden ambience. Whatever project she’s working on, she draws on her background in classical piano and an interest in creating a sonic space in which western classical music is hybridized with contemporary electronic production and non-western forms. Recorded in Barcelona, Spain earlier this month, Ileto’s XLR8R podcast does exactly this, while shining a light on some of her favorite tracks and labels including Indonesia’s Yes No Wave Music, Iran’s Zabte Sote, and Ukraine’s Standard Deviation. What this equates to is one hour of ambient vocal-based music with textural club energy—a mix that draws you in with suspense, tension, and release.

01. What have you been up to lately?
I’ve just released a full-length album on Lee Gamble’s UIQ. It’s my second release on the label and I’m really happy with how it’s been received.

02. What have you been listening to?
I’ve been listening to a lot of vocal-based folk music. I’m interested in non-western tuning systems, pitch systems outside of western equal temperament, and I also love this sliding, pitch-bending effect in vocals. It can be so beautiful.

03. What is it that appeals to you about dance music?
I think the most interesting thing about dance music is the communal role of clubs in communities. Although I’m more on the festival circuit nowadays, a lot of my earlier gigs were in small clubs run by DIY collectives. I appreciate having this support. But generally speaking, I love the euphoric nature of dance music, particularly trance. It has always been an appealing genre to me because of the synth melodies.

04. Where and when did you record this mix?
I recorded this from my hotel room in Barcelona.

05. How did you go about choosing the tracks?
I wanted to create some sort of thread, a storyline compiling some favorite artists and labels of mine, such as Yes No Wave Music, Zabte Sote, and Standard Deviation. My favorite discovery was the opening track by Sote and Mazdak: it’s so hauntingly beautiful, I love the combinations of the detuning vocals and synth. I also came across this amazing track by Raja Kirik: it’s so ecstatic, and I love the vocal lines, in addition to the new album from Kasimyn (from Gabber Modus Operandi) under his alias Hulubalang. There’s also a track from Safa who released a great album last year on UIQ as well.

06. What can the listener expect?
Suspense, tension, and release. A mix of ambient vocal-based music with textural club energy in between. Usually I make more straightforward club-based mixes, but I’ve started to return to the way I made mixes in the past, which was a bit more narrative.

07. How does it compare to what we might hear you play out live?
I think the pacing of this mix is similar to the moments and moods I’ve created for my current Lux Aeterna live set.

08. What’s next on your horizon?
I’ll be playing some more international shows to promote my latest album, including a live audio-visual show with visuals by my long-time collaborator and friend Tristan Jalleh. I’ve also started working on some material for future albums.

XLR8R Subscribers can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R subscriber, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. Sote & Mazdak “Unseen Minorities” (Zabte Sote)
02. Fursaxa “Alone In The Dark Wood” (ATP)
03. Akira Yamaoka “Ice” (Silent Hill Shattered Memories)
04. Fatima Al Qadiri “Stolen Kiss Of A Succubus” (Hyperdub)
05. Pan Daijing “A Found Lament” (Pan)
06. Katarina Gryvul “Ocean” (Standard Deviation)
07. CORIN “Sunta” (UIQ)
08. Deena Andelwahed “Insaniyti” (InFiné)
09. Rani Jambak “Fosarune” (Nusasonic)
10. Raja Kirik “Act. V. Waru Doyong” (Yes No Wave)
11. Hulubalang “Piso” (Drowned By Locals)
12. Safa “Gazelles” (UIQ)
13. Soheil Shayesteh “Suspense” (Zabte Sote)
14. Сум “Думки” (Standard Deviation)
15. Flora Yin Wong “The Sacrifice” feat. Adam Sherry (First Light Records)
16. Mabe Fratti “Dirección + Concepción Huerta” (Self-Released)

Portable Next on Circus Company with New Album

Alan Abrahams (a.k.a Portable) is back with a new album on Circus Company.

Augmented Dreams refers to the use of everyday technological advancements to achieve what were once only dreams or visions of past generations. It serves as an imaginative yet hyperrealist narrative on how humanity’s fascination with and reliance on ever-advancing technology defines the times we find ourselves in.

Sonically, we’re told to expect a “sonic soundtrack for the ages.”

Portable’s previous albums have landed on Perlon, !K7 Records, and ~scape. He released My Sentient Shadow on Circus Company in 2022.

Tracklisting

01. The Pull of Time
02. Guiding Me
03. Parallax
04. The Color of Static
05. Begin Again
06. I Need You
07. Beacon
08. Are We Not Above It? feat. NiQ E & L_cio
09. The Mycorrhizal Network
10. Augmented Dreams

Augmented Dreams LP is scheduled for October 13 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “The Color of Static” in full via the player below and pre-order here.

Photo: Mikael Benard

AD 93 Welcomes Surusinghe

Surusinghe, the Australian born and London-based producer, will release a new EP on AD 93.

Brake Fluid is Surusinghe’s third release, following GOOD GIRLS // BAD GIRLS and Get Flutey, both of which landed this year.

“The record feels like a natural progression from my previous releases. The first being relatively introspective and the second being more dancefloor intended,” she says. “Brake Fluid feels like the perfect middle ground between the two.”

The record has also been “a nice opportunity” to take herself and her music “more seriously,” she says.

“It’s something I’m awful at and always try to make a joke out of, however this record has allowed me to dig a little deeper and create in a way that makes me feel proud and not avoidant to show the world.”

Surusinghe is a genre-bending producer known for her innovative and percussive, bass-driven music.

Tracklisting

01. Bop
02. Bet
03. Boka
04. Brain

Brake Fluid EP is scheduled for October 27 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Bop” in full via the player below and pre-order here.

People People Next on Yoyaku’s YYK No Label

Yoyaku‘s YYK No label has released the debut album of People People, a collaboration between André Baum and Gulp, born Gonzalo Perez Scartascini.

On Out of Our Hands, the Berlin-based pair—coming from New York and Argentina respectively—deliver a “cinematic world built from dynamic instrumentals, intimate lyrics, mysterious melodies, drone riffs, and subtle distorted effects,” we’re told.

“21st century synth sparkle meets guitar grit and vocoders, hip-hop influenced backbeats, and numerous sonic twists,” the label continues, “all working together to create a vivid and timeless tapestry.”

The album will appeal to both fans of adventurous electronic music in search of new sensory experiences and lyric-minded listeners keen for a narrative journey.

After a chance meeting in Berlin in 2016, Baum and Gulp spent the next years exploring their mutual range of tastes in the studio, creating a modern blend of electronica, alternative, techno, synth-pop, and downtempo. They released Shock & Awe on Lamache‘s Discobar label in 2020, which came with a Ricardo Villalobos remix.

Tracklisting

01. Hide and Seek
02. Dreaming with You
03. Doubled Sided
04. Running Home
05. Demon
06. Let It Go
07. After the Night
08. Get Ready
09. Gone Slow

Out of Our Hands LP is scheduled for September 29 release on vinyl, with digital available now. You can stream clips below and order here.

Podcast 818: D:fferent Place

Since he began spinning minimal techno records at friends’ parties in 2014, Italian producer D:fferent Place has never looked back. Shirking away from the limelight, he’s instead released a stream of quality EPs on the label of the same name. Last year, he released “Shades of Time,” five-and-a-half minutes of feel-good melodies and chunky low-slung grooves, on XLR8R+, as well as D:fferent Place 005, his latest EP. (Next month he’ll put out D:fferent Place 006, a new EP under the alias.)

Little is known about D:ifferent Place’s origins as a producer but what we do know is that he began with three slick micro-house tracks as Pressure Point, his other alias, on Italian label Castanea Records, and his music instantly gained traction. From there, he signed to Sol Asylum and launched Telharmonic Texture, a little-known label with a big roster: Akufen, Paradroid, and Jeff Samuel, to name a few.

D:fferent Place, born In 2017, was conceived “with a lot of lightness,” the Italian artist says. Whereas Pressure Point is a DJ act, D:fferent Place only plays out live, and what we’re presenting this week is his first published live set. (D:fferent Place has put out a podcast as Pressure Point—featuring 80 minutes of deep, flowing grove from Edward, Youandewan, and Thomas Melchior). In this mix, you can expect one hour of precise, swinging deep house numbers, all made by the man mixing them.

01. What have you been up to recently?
Fortunately, in the last few months I’ve been living a great moment, living the music serenely, without stress, and trying to reach all my goals step by step.

02. What have you been listening to?
Well, I could stay here for a long time explaining but I will try to do a summary. I’ve been deep diving into ’80s and ’90s Italian music which gives me peace of mind. I’ve also been focused on house music from Detroit to Chicago, disco, and Italian house.

03. Where and when did you record this mix?
I recorded it a few days ago in my studio. It’s the environment where I feel more comfortable with my studio headphones, where I can be focused about the live output quality.

04. What setup did you use?
I’m still learning a lot! The live set is endless experimentation. At the moment I work with laptop tools and some analog machines including two Novation MIDI controllers, a small SSL audio interface Korg EMX1SD, Korg ElecTribe SX, and a microKORG.

05. How did you go about choosing the tracks you’ve included?
It was very easy. When the music is your own you can be spontaneous in mixing it and finding the right workflow.

06. What’s next on your horizon?
First of all I would like to bring my live set everywhere and make it known. I hope to debut in some clubs shortly and I hope it will give something more to the music scene. I have a lot of work ahead of me also with my new distributor. I’m waiting for the next EP, D:fferent Place 006, which should be released in the fall. Maybe it’s also time to make some releases outside my label. So, let’s look around!

XLR8R Subscribers can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R subscriber, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. D:fferent Place “Funkedelic” (Unreleased)
02. D:fferent Place “Keep On” (Unreleased)
03., D:fferent Place “U Got Me Up” (Unreleased)
04. D:fferent Place “Autumn Light” (Unreleased)
05. D:fferent Place “Analog Tales” (Unreleased)
06. D:fferent Place “That Place” (D:fferent Place)
07. D:fferent Place “Running Back” (Unreleased)
08. D:fferent Place “New York Groove” (Unreleased)
09. D:fferent Place “Mr Science” (Unreleased)
10. D:fferent Place “Talk About Time” (Unreleased)
11. D:fferent Place “Vibedive” (Unreleased)
12. D:fferent Place “Edit Loop” (Unreleased)
13. D:fferent Place “Collective Struggle” (Unreleased)
14. D:fferent Place “Moonchild” (Unreleased)
15. D:fferent Place “C’mon C’mon” (Unreleased)

Rainy Miller & Space Afrika Announce Collaborative Album

Rainy Miller and Space Afrika (a.k.a. Joshua Inyang and Joshua Tarelle Reid) will release a collaborative album on Fixed Abode.

Since their first encounter in 2020, Preston producer Rainy Miller and Manchester duo Space Afrika instantly knew they would work together eventually. In early 2023, while touring and performing, the pair began working on A Grisaille Wedding, an expansive collection of 11 songs exploring the concept of joyous occasions happening in greyscale, drawing metaphors from the contrast between light and dark.

This project brings together a diverse range of artists curated by both acts, including RenzNiro, BobbieOrkid, Iceboy Violet, Richie Culver, Mica Levi, Coby Sey, and Voice Actor.

“A Grisaille Wedding is a project based in the personification of the semi-fictitious world that Space Afrika have come to build over the years. Using musique concrète and British soundscapes, I wanted to fuse the sonic with both noise and the contemporary,” Rainy Miller says.

“Space Afrika’s work has always contained meaning and message, but it was an early intention of mine to try and perform within their world in a much more literal sense, to put more of a focal point on voice and lyricism for this environment they have created,” Miller continues.

The lead single, “Maybe It’s Time to Lay Down The Arms,” expresses the fight between accepting love and pushing against it. “The disbelief that comes with somebody being willing to put in the effort to love you, and trying to learn to bring down your walls,” Inyang and Reid say in a statement.

The song features a sparse and smudged verse from Mica Levi and the first vocal performance on record from Joshua Inyang. The video which is streaming below is directed by Zane Crowther.

Tracklisting

01. Summon The Spirit / Demon feat. Voice Actor
02. Maybe It’s Time To Lay Down The Arms feat. Mica Levi
03. 00-down / Murmansk 12
04. Sweet (I’m Free) feat. RenzNiro & Iceboy Violet
05. Shelter
06. HDIF feat. BobbieOrkid
07. The Graves At Charleroi feat. Coby Sey
08. 1-2-1
09. Let It Die
10. I Believe In God, When Things Are Going My Way feat. Richie Culver
11. Bobbies Reprise feat. BobbieOrkid (Bonus Digital Only)

A Grisaille Wedding LP is scheduled for November 16 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Maybe It’s Time To Lay Down The Arms” in full via the player below and pre-order here.

Photo: Frankie Casillo.

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