Toada Returns with Second Album

Valdir da Silva, better known as Toada, will release his second album next month, Acalenta.

Valdir da Silva was born in Angola but raised in Lisbon, where he developed his earliest memories after his parents had fled the civil war. In 2015, he conceived Toada, an amalgamation of several music projects that began in Lisbon and matured in Berlin, where he bases himself. His releases began in 2018, all of them through Plūma, set up for his own work.

Peso Pluma came first, capturing Toada’s electronic pop sound, and there have since been several EPs and his debut album, Cambiante, which served as a reflection of human diversity.

On Acalenta, we can expect 33 minutes of “lighthearted, sizzling, and simultaneously complex deep tunes.” Artwork comes from Serena Becker.

You can read more about Toada in his XLR8R podcast here, an hour of deep and emotive electronica. In March 2020, he contributed to XLR8R+20 alongside Thievery Corporation and Blue Fields.

Tracklisting

01. Fagulhas Dentro de Ti
02. Conchas
03. Sólido Cintilar
04. Amálgama 1 (Bálsamo / Novo Spot)
05. Agridoce
06. A Minha Cena
07. Vitamina D
08. Vibe Inerente
09. Amálgama 2 (Orla / Tejo / Maracujá)
10. Odeceixe

Acalenta LP will land on January 26. Meanwhile, you can stream “Conchas” in full via the player below and pre-order here.

Podcast 777: Per Hammar

For more than 15 years, Per Hammar, from Helsingborg in the south of Sweden, has been mastering the art of dub-driven melodic techno, releasing on Infuse, Malin Genie Music, and his own Dirty Hands label. Outside of this, he runs a label called 10 Years with Maya Lourenço (a.k.a Parallax Deep), Malmö’s Kiloton club, and De Vloer, a home for his co-productions with Amsterdam producer Malin Génie. In October, Hammar returned with Returnation, Dirty Hands’ eighth release and the first taste of new music in over a year. (More, we’re assured, will come.)

Hammar’s entry point into music came towards the end of 2009, when he made a remix for Söllscher und Siech’s “Chants,” after which he released his debut original track, “Bang.” The track’s success provided the platform for Dirty Hands, where he’s been releasing music ever since. In the midst of the pandemic, he released Pathfinder, his first studio album, crafted using a Eurorack Modular system plus weirder bits of gear, like old Soviet drum machines. Alongside Patrick Siech (from Söllscher und Siech), he’s recently launched Euromix, an audio engineering service for fine-tuning club music.

Recorded last month, Hammar’s XLR8R podcast meanders through dark and dubby terrains, with some groovy and bouncy baselines too. Rather than pulling from promos and his record collection, and actually recording a mix, he’s produced it in his studio, rendering out bits of previous and unreleased works and jamming them out into a live recording. Some of the stuff will be released soon, but much of it won’t—so press play for a studio mix of all originals by Per Hammar that you perhaps won’t ever hear again.

01. What have you been up to recently?
I recently left Berlin, after a long time living there, to Malmö in southern Sweden and set up my current studio. The big difference between my new studio and my former Berlin studio is that it’s also suitable for analog mix-downs and masterings, which is what I’ve been focusing a lot of my time on recently. In between that, I’ve been touring almost every weekend while trying to keep up with my own productions.

02. What have you been listening to?
Mostly different kick drums on a solo channel! Seriously, though, I listen to so much music in the studio. My clients’ and my own. At the end of the day it feels like my ears are full. When I am at home I listen to different kinds of music. Some random commercial radio, for example, that some team of 40 producers and engineers made based on science and research on what works on the market.

03. What’s the story with the mix you’ve recorded for XLR8R?
It’s not a live mix, but a studio mix, so I produced it here in my studio. I rendered out bits from my previous works and kind of jammed with it and this mix is what came out. So it’s more like a continuous album than a mix. But yeah, in order to sound less pretentious, we can call it a mix.

04. How did you go about choosing the tracks you’ve included?
After the intense work and release of Pathfinder, I felt so tired of my “old” music and kind of wanted to turn the page and get into something fresh. I turned down the intensity on the release front so I could focus more on building up a new library of music. That was almost two years ago and now I have lots of new material that I feel I want to introduce to some daylight. That’s in the mix. Some of these tracks will be released and some are going to stay exclusive to this mix.

05. Where do you imagine it being listened to?
I listened to it a few rounds on my phone. Just walking around and listen to it, just to be able to come back and make changes. I can recommend that!

06. How does it compare to what we might hear you play out live?
Say what you want about the phrase “I always play what I want as a DJ.” Sure that sounds cool, but I believe your chances of doing a good set increases if you analyze what’s going on around you. Are you aiming to have a monologue with crowd, or do you actually want to create something unique in this very moment together with everyone around? The last mentioned alternative can be magic, but it also requires you to adjust your selection. You need to adapt. And you might end up somewhere deep down in your folders or record bag that you didn’t plan. In the studio you don’t have that variable to pay attention to. For me that can actually be inspiring; to be able to do what I want without having anything affect my creativity. So this mix is something else and something that I can back up with all my heart.

07. What’s up next on your horizon?
I have quite a lot of releases planned. The recent release, Returnation, just came out on my label Dirty Hands. So that’s taking a lot of focus right now. In the pipeline, there’s also a release planned for the club Les Enfants Brilliants in Barcelona, which is starting a label. My other label, De Vloer, which I run with Malin Genie, is finally also dropping a new 12″: VLOER02 will come out early next year. Then me and Olga Korol are planning for a follow up EP as well. There are fun times ahead!

Tracklisting

01. Per Hammar “Hydra T Dubb” (Dirty Hands)
02. Per Hammar “Pentium Dubb” (Les Enfants Records)
03. David Delgado & Lucca Tan “DNT” (Per Hammar Remix) (Tanny Records)
04. Per Hammar “Tempo” (Unreleased)
05. Per Hammar & Yaar Kü “Byon” (Unreleased)
06. Per Hammar & Olga Korol “Bechket” (Dirty Hands)
07. Per Hammar & Malin Genie “Airways” (De Vloer)
08. Per Hammar “Lystopad” (Les Enfants Records)
09. Per Hammar “Returnation” (Dirty Hands)
10. Per Hammar & Olga Korol “Darth Vader” (Dirty Hands)
11. Per Hammar “Everybody Hz” (Unreleased)

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

Canada’s Khotin Next Up on Ghostly with Third Album

Khotin & Tess Roby by Hugo Bernier and Tess Roby

Ghostly will present the new album from Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote, better known as Khotin.

Release Spirit is the first album Khotin has released since Finds You Well in 2020. During and after that release, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Edmonton. The change of pace opened space for him to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft— the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material—and this took him to Release Spirit.

With the album, he “releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music,” we’re told. On this go-around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds, mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. His “melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere” remain the “rippling core of the project’s fingerprint.”

The album title borrows from the “release spirit” mechanic in the video game “World of Warcraft.” When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again.

For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing.

Alongside the announcement, Khotin has shared “Fountain, Growth,” a collaboration with Montreal’s Tess Roby (a.ka Dawn to Dawn) for the project’s first-ever vocal track.

Tracklisting

01. HV Road
02. Lovely
03. Home World 303
04. 3 pz
05. Computer Break (Late Mix)
06. Fountain, Growth feat. Tess Roby
07. Life Mask
08. Unlimited <3
09. Techno Creep
10. My Same Size
11. Sound Gathering Trip

Release Spirit LP is scheduled for February 23 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Fountain, Growth” featuring Tess Roby in full below and pre-order here.

John Talabot and Arnau Obiols Become Mioclono for New Album

Oriol Riverola, better known as John Talabot, will collaborate with Arnau Obiols for a new album as Mioclono.

Mioclono started at the end of 2016 when Oriol Riverola and Arnau Obiols did their first recording session at Angel Sound Studios in Barcelona, assisted by engineer Miquel Mestres. This became a tradition and they kept doing these recording sessions every year.

Cluster I, which spans eight tracks, is the result of the first recording session in 2016. During the following months, the duo met up several times and over-dubbed those early recordings. Later it was mixed and mastered later on by Gordon Pohl in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The project is inspired by epilepsy and myoclonus. Myoclonus is brief involuntary twitching or jerking of a muscle or group of muscles, and it’s experienced by a few people with epilepsy, including Talabot and Obiols. The alias derives from its Spanish name.

The only previous Mioclono release was a track on a various artist compilation called Fragments in 2020.

The album lands on Talabot’s own Hivern Discs.

Tracklisting

01. Blue Skies
02. Myoclonic Sequences
03. Fog and Fire
04. Acid Rain
05. Pell De Serp
06. Birth of a Robot
07. Disobedience
08. Retorn (Bonus Track)

Cluster I LP is scheduled for February 17 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Pell De Serp” and “Disobedience” in full below and pre-order here.

Podcast 776: L&F

L&F (an abbreviation of Lost & Found) is the alias of Ali Amel, a DJ-producer born in Iran, raised in London, but who now resides in east Berlin. Growing up within walking distance of Portobello market, Notting Hill, he was exposed to many styles of music through pirate radio stations, record shops, clubs and, of course, the famous carnival. His main love came in the shape of jungle and garage music: the sounds were raw and gritty, and he felt it was his identity; his love.

Though he’s now based in Germany, Amel tries to capture his London roots through the music that he produces, mostly through +98, a vinyl-only label he runs spanning garage, speed garage, and breaks. In September, he released My Shorty, a two-track EP on London’s Mind Music. But before that, his skills for intricately swung drum design, massive bass lines, and jazzy synths drew the attention of Julie Marghilano, who signed him up for her Sol Asylum label. (Small Hours came out in August.)

For this week’s XLR8R podcast, Amel has delivered a podcast filled with garage and groovy house, recorded on the fly last week. Across its run-time, you’ll hear “Hang On,” a standout from his Sol Asylum debut, plus tracks from Pure Sleek, 2 Hot 2 Handle, and Joe Olindo. Press play for 80 minutes of funky, free-wheeling rhythms, born in Berlin but incubated in London.

01. What have you been up to recently? 
My days consist of three things: listening, making, and playing music. The result of this recently is obviously the release on the Sol Asylum label which was an extremely big achievement for myself. I’ve been sourcing and organizing the releases for +98 and I’ve recently started working as a record buyer for a record store in Berlin, called 60 waves, which is owned by Dana Ruh. I focus on buying UK garage records. Also, I played recently at Sisyphos‘ 15-year birthday weekend bonanza.

02. What have you been listening to? 
Well, I watched a Bollywood movie recently called “RRR” and the soundtrack to the film is so good. I’ve been tucked into that for a while now, alongside a lot of grime and hip-hop stuff. I also mix it up between listening to my favorite DJ mixes, which is not only something I enjoy but also helps me be inspired which spills over into the production and DJing.

03. Where and when did you record this mix? 
I recorded it at home last week. My setup consists of two Technics SL-1200 MK2s along with two XDJ- 1000 MK2s. Plus an Allen & Heath 43C mixer. 

04. How did you go about choosing the tracks that you’ve included? 
Well, when you record a mix without a crowd it’s always challenging because you don’t have a venue or energy from the crowd; the journey of the night is missing. So, I always try to best demonstrate the different elements of my particular style. 

05. Where do you imagine it being listened to?
Everywhere and anywhere people are serious about club culture.

06. How does it compare to what we might hear you play out? 
It’s pretty much the same style that you would hear. Obviously in certain events you have to know the people you are playing for and play accordingly, but I try to represent my style as close as I can when I record these podcast-style mixes.

07. What’s next on your horizon? 
I want to get the next few releases for +98 mastered and pressed on vinyl. I’m also organizing +98 events for 2023. Production-wise, I’ve got a digital release coming on +98 before the year is out along with a remix for a producer called Klix on a Berlin label called Loser Records. I’m also working on a few tracks for a label over in Russia and of course I’ll get some more stuff ready for Sol Asylum. My next confirmed DJ date is at Renate in Berlin.

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. Creep Woland “Blantyre 86 Style” (Headset)
02. L&F “D.I.L” (+98)
03. Human Movement “Don’t Say It” (Of Leisure)
04. Bailley Ibbs “Killer Abra” (Safer)
05. David Garrett “Loop Soup” (Mate Spain)
06. Instinct “Phantom”(Instinct)
07. Joe Olindo “Now I Knew” (Plastik People)
08. Masterplan “Upways” (Vibesey)
09. Pure Sleek “Onrical”(Digbeth Records)
10. 2 Hot 2 Handle “Take a breath” (HAF Remix) (Practical Rhythms)
11. L&F “Hang On” (Sol Asylum)
12. Dee Cypher “Crank It” (Pirate Cutz) 
13 Robert James “Space Beats (Outright Records)
14. Julie Marghilano “Intuition” (Unreleased)
15. 67th & Bird “Crazy for Ya” (Bobs Your Uncle Records)
16. Main Phase “Ghosting in a Rave” (Hardline Sounds)
17. Radio Slave “Stay Out all Night” (Commix remix) (Rekids)
18. Lavan “Can’t Wait” (+98)
19. L&F “Just Ride” (Pattern Society)
20. Mikki Funk “4 Da Steppas” (Puresa Records)

Linkwood Releases New Album on Athens of the North

Linkwood has shared a new album on Athens of the North.

Stereo is the follow up to the hyper-focussed LP Mono, which he released last year. Across 12 new tracks, the Edinburgh, Scotland producer fuses boogie, Detroit, and early ‘80s synth joints, while maintaining his warm, fuzzy, and intricate sound.

Linkwood, born Nick Moore, is best known for his releases on Firecracker Recordings, including “Miles Away,” “Piece of Mind,” and his 2015 album, Expressions. He released his first LP, System, on Prime Numbers in September 2009, and it has since been re-mastered and re-pressed on his Night Theatre label. You can read more about him in his XLR8R podcast.

Tracklisting

01. I’m Ready
02. RunStop
03. Joystick
04. Love
05. S-Mode
06. DipDab
07. Clusters
08. Ping
09. Flightpath
10. Glow
11. Lookup
12. We Had A Love (Bandcamp Exclusive Digital Only)

Stereo LP is available now. You can stream “RunStop,” “Love,” and “S-Mode” in full via the player below and order it here.

RS Produções Commit to “Purest Strain of Batida” on New Príncipe Album

Photo: Marta Pina

RS Produções, a collective of artist friends founded in 2014, will release a new album on Príncipe.

RS Produções is made up of DJ-producer Nuno, DJs Nulo and Lima, plus producer Farucox and MC Pimenta. The founder, DJNarciso, who released an XLR8R podcast, himself DJs and produces, but he releases rarely and keeps a low profile. The group is based in Rinchoa, a short drive from Lisbon, and it’s known for tight, across the board grooves, working melody and metal beats with equal proficiency.

Sa​ú​de Em 1º Lugar is the group’s second release, following Bagdad Style, a collection of cuts made in 2018. That release featured only the core of Narciso and Nuno Beats, plus Narciso, but this new release features Farucox, adding more “oblique rhythms to the whole,” we’re told.

What we experience on the 13 tracks, plus interludes, is a “burst of energy,” we’re told. If not exactly extroverted, it communicates a commitment to the purest strain of batida and, for those able to detect hidden feelings, this music might convey some melancholic undertones.

DJ Narciso will be familiar to XLR8R fans because last year he contributed “Saudades,” a deep and moody track, to XLR8R+018 alongside DJ N*gga Fox, BLEID, and Serpente.

Artwork comes from Márcio Matos.

Tracklisting

01. DJ Narciso “ORAÇÃO”
02. Farucox “TABA”
03. Nuno Beats “Tribal”
04. DJ Narciso “Semana Chata”
05. DJ Narciso x Nuno Beats “Mitsai”
06. Farucox “Sem Cabeça”
07. DJ Narciso x Nuno Beats “Texx”
08. DJ Narciso x Nuno Beats “Valentine’s Day 2K17”
09. DJ Narciso “ARMADILHA NO TEASY”
10. Nuno Beats “PrinCIPES”
11. Nuno Beats “Bué de Bass” (acapella)
12. DJ Narciso “Bolor”
13. Farucox “ESFREGA [Ti Lito]”

Sa​ú​de Em 1º Lugar LP is scheduled for December 2 release. Meanwhile, you can stream DJ Narciso and Nuno Beats’ “Mitsai” in full below and pre-order here.

Eluvium Next on Temporary Residence Ltd. with New Album

Eluvium, the moniker of Matthew Robert Cooper, will release a new album on Brooklyn’s Temporary Residence Ltd. in May.

Taking initial inspirations from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Richard Brautigan’s “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace,” (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality deals both with humankind’s need for meaning, and the emergence of algorithms reflecting the feedback loops of humankind’s interactions with machines themselves. This complicated relationship that we have with technology, automations, and algorithms, and the influence they in turn have on shaping our image of the world, is the “mechanized heart and soul” of the album, we’re told.

During the writing process, Cooper began experiencing shoulder and arm pain that rendered his left arm increasingly debilitated. This inspired new compositional methods that blended varying degrees of electronic automations with traditional songwriting. For instance, lyrical themes were built using algorithms rather than a notebook filled with years of scribbled thoughts, poems, and notes on the spirit of existence.

Employing musicians from all around the world, including members of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), Golden Retriever, and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, the music was conducted and recorded remotely via teleconference during the global pandemic lockdowns.

Cooper’s last release on Temporary Residence Ltd. came in the shape of Virga II, released in August 2021.

Tracklisting

01. Escapement
02. Swift Automatons
03. Vibration Consensus Reality (for Spectral Multiband Resonator)
04. Scatterbrains
05. Phantasia Telephonics
06. The Violet Light
07. Void Manifest
08. Clockwork Fables
09. Mass Lossless Interbeing
10. A Floating World of Demons
11. Endless Flower

(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality LP is scheduled for May 12 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Escapement” and “Swift Automatons” in full via the player below and pre-order here.

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Grand River Signs to Editions Mego for Third Album

Aimée Portioli (a.k.a Grand River), the Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer, will release her third album on Editions Mego.

All Above follows 2020’s Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes and 2018’s Pineapple released on Donato Dozzy and Neel‘s Spazio Disponibile imprint. Written over the last two years, it’s the “most ambitious and divergent” set of music Portioli has assembled so far, with a wide variety of instrumentation (including voices, strings, organs, guitars, and synthesisers) focused around the piano. But while that instrument isn‘t always heard, it‘s constantly at the forefront of the album, “shepherding its emotions and anchoring its mood,” we’re told.

Portioli operates in a unique space within the electronic music scene, straddling the art world and the wider electronic music realms. You can read more about her and her work in her XLR8R interview here.

Tracklisting

01. Quasicristallo
02. Human
03. Petrichor
04. The World At Number XX
05. Kura
06. In The Present As The Future
07. Seventy One Percent
08. Cost What It May

All Above LP is scheduled for February 24 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Human” in full below and pre-order here.

Ambient Producer Dylan Henner Next on AD 93 with New Album

Dylan Henner will release a new album on AD 93.

You Always Will Be is the followup to 2020’s The Invention of the Human, an album of gorgeous woozy ambient. Across 10 tracks, the new record touches on themes of nostalgia and longing for times passed.

“The piece tells the story of a single life, from birth to death,” says Henner, a reclusive ambient producer who has also put out EPs on Phantom Limb and Inner Islands. “I’ve been thinking about the passage of life a lot recently as I lost all four of my grandparents but celebrated the birth of my daughter all within a short period of time. The brevity and preciousness of being really hit me.”

The vinyl release consists of a 40-minute piece split across two sides, while the digital release features extended versions of the music in that piece, making up 10 individual tracks. Anyone that purchases the full album from the AD 93 Bandcamp will be credited with the 40-minute piece automatically.

Earlier this month, AD 93, a London label run by Nic Tasker, released Doxa by Venus Ex Machina.

Tracklisting

01. A New Living Being Opens Its Eyes For the First Time
02. Everyone I’ve Ever Loved Lives Here Together
03. Today I Learned What Makes Bugs Sick and How To Tie My Shoelaces
04. We’re So Young That We’ll Never Grow Old
05. The World Moves Quicker Than I Had Ever Realised and Sometimes It’s Unkind
06. With Her First Ever Steps She Walked To Me and She Was So Happy
07. Today I Taught Them How To How To Skip Stones Across the Lake
08. These Photos of My Children Make Me Want To Climb Into the Frame
09. My Heart Is Slowing Down and Soon It Will Have To Stop
10. I Hope I Will Be Remembered As A Good Person

You Always Will Be LP is scheduled for December 9 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “We’re So Young That We’ll Never Grow Old” in full via the player below and pre-order here.

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