Leeds-based DJ-producer Zia originally started off his music career as a drum & bass artist while producing under the moniker, Kodo. Recently expanding from his sonically complex and fast paced roots, Zia ventured towards a new musical direction that has caught the attention of many, including Tiga who ended up signing the artist to his Turbo Recordings imprint. Zia’s debut EP on Turbo back in November titled Voidreceived widespread support from artists like Matthew Dear, Midland, Justin Martin, Mano Le Tough, and James Zabiela.
Having also just released a remix of the Acid Bitchez track “Thinking About Acid” this past month, Zia has chosen to keep fanning the flames of his rising popularity by offering up his track “Hold On” as today’s XLR8R download. This angelic slow house burner incorporates a chugging bassline that gently wafts alongside a succinct soundscape, filling the listeners ears with blissful percussion and leaving them with the sense of being lost on a psychedelic island.
You can find out more about Zia and his recent releases on Turbo by going here. You can also download the track “Hold On” by clicking on the WeTransfer button below.
Moving on from the distinct and elastic sound of his collaborative project, Takahashi has begun to explore new sonic territories. This furtive and crafty release is a unique and exciting “zoomed-in study of timbre, rhythm, and melody,”
“I started a lot of these tracks almost as etudes for myself,” Takahashi explains. “I was trying to draw on my experiences both from the last few years of my life working with TGF and from my musical experiences beforehand.”
You can stream Takahashi’s LP cut “Cella” in the player above.
You can check out more from Logan Takahashi by visiting his SoundCloud page here.
This year, Johannes Albert’s Frank Music is celebrating five years in existence with 5 Years of Frank Music, a two part release featuring label friends including Phillip Lauer, Oskar Offermann, Fred P, Session Victim, Iron Curtis, Tim Toh, Markus Mutzenbacher, and the label head himself.
Part one was released earlier this month and is already sold out on most record stores, with part two dropping at the end of March. Ahead of that release, you can stream Tim Toh’s spiraling, synth-heavy cut “Hidden Beauty” via the player below, with the EP available for preorder here.
The DEMENT3D label has announced its very first album release to date: In Æternam Vale – Pink Flamingos LP.
After the break-up of the In Æternam Vale band in the early eighties, Laurent Prot continued the project as a solo act, writing music alone in a home studio stuffed with synths and custom-made electronics. For over thirty years, most of his works had remained more or less of a secret, until 2009, when the label Minimal Wave started releasing some of his vintage productions.
Still, despite those excellent re-issues on Minimal Wave and more recent creations released by Jealous God amongst other labels, there seemed to remain some unexplored sides to his work.
The collaboration with DEMENT3D started out with the aim of exploring specifically the experimental and drone pieces, and, although the focus got a lot broader in the process, this intention remains as a common thread while listening to the album. Soon, while working on the selection, a lot of questions came up. Does it make sense to mix up songs that have been made 30 years ago with brand new compositions? Wouldn’t it make sense to edit some of the tapes that had been recorded with extended live takes? Those behind the release promptly chose to direct themselves in the most authentic way for them to put an album narration together, with intimacy, length, and space, whenever the music had been made and how. It’s no surprise that the total running time quickly exceeded the two-hour mark, on three slabs of vinyl, with uncut and extended versions of ambient drone pieces—some lasting over 20 minutes, unedited techno jams finishing with a fiery tempo rush, punctuated by short, infectious drone soundscapes, and concluded by an actual song.
To mark the announcement, the label have shared the video below.
MMOTHS (a.k.a 22 year-old Dublin-based musician and producer Jack Colleran) is set to release his long-awaited debut album Luneworks on March 11, 2016 via Because Music/OYAE.
He recently shared the beautiful and bittersweet video for second single “Eva,” directed by the acclaimed Jonas Lindstroem, and now he drops a muscular, clattering remix by rising Portuguese producer IVVVO, which is streamable in full below.
MMOTHS commented on the track: “Eva is the first track I wrote for Luneworks. It’s taken a while but it’s finally here. Excited for you to hear it and what’s to come.”
Splitting his complex multi personality across two sides, Luke Slater explores his innermost dual psyche to create two entirely different tracks, both of which reflect the strengths of the original while taking it into vastly different directions.
First up: Planetary Assault Systems. One of Luke’s oldest and boldest alter-egos, here he provides a nuclear powered bulldozer of a version. Fission hisses and mechanical rasps wrap around the undulating groove that charge relentlessly with a dark funk coded into the bass. Watch out for the additional percussion and brash snares midway for added momentum.
LB Dub Corporation follows. One of Luke’s shyer personas, this is the first LB Dub Corp production since his Ostgut Ton album Unknown Origin in 2013. A deeper, rolling analog groove is at play here, suddenly dropping to reveal the loopy, automaton vocal loop from Josh’s original to awesome hypnotic effect.
Two distinctive, forward-thinking, visceral floor-focused remixes from one of techno’s most respected, long-standing and prolific minds: Remix packages don’t get much bigger than this.
Tracklist:
a. Josh Wink “Denial” (Planetary Assault Systems Mix) b. Josh Wink “Denial” (LB Dub Company Mix)
Josh Wink – Denial (Luke Slater Remixes) is scheduled for March 4 vinyl release, with the digital version set to drop on March 25.
Soulwax have announced news of forthcoming musical endeavors, the soundtrack for Belgica—the new film by Oscar-nominated director, Felix Van Groeningen (previously nominated for Best Foreign Language in 2014 with The Broken Circle Breakdown)
The film sees Soulwax’s influence throughout from composing, arranging and recording the original score to creating each and every one of the fictional musical artists featured. A diverse collection of songs, performed by a similarly varied set of artists has seen Soulwax create what is a unique soundtrack that continues to see them evolve as musical progressionists. The film has already been screened at this year’s prestigious Sundance Film Festival.
Recorded and mixed at Soulwax’s new Deewee studio in Ghent, the entire project has been over twelve months in the making.
As the group says:
“We recorded the original music being played in the club, wrote the music, rehearsed and recorded live on set the tracks played by the bands—ranging from a live kraut techno band, White Virgins, bequiffed psychobilly trio They Live through to hardcore outfit Burning Phlegm (featuring Sepultura’s Igor Cavalera) whilst chanteuse Charlotte represents the other end of the spectrum with her neo soul pop.”
The past couple of years have also seen the brothers launch their innovative and hugely successful Radio Soulwax project as well as continuing to tour the world as 2manydjs.
Tracklist:
01. Charlotte “The Best Thing” 02. The Shitz “How Long” 03. Rubber Band “Caoutchouc” 04. White Virgins “Turn Off The Lights” 05. Light Bulb Matrix “Hot December” 06. Kursat 9000 “Çölde Kutup Ayisi” 07. Erasmus “Ti Ricordi Di Me” 08. Burning Phlegm “Nothing” 09. Aquazul “Slippy Fingers” 10. Roland McBeth “Don’t wait Up For Me” 11. Diploma “Got Any Chris Rea?” 12. They Live “The Cookie Crumbles” 13. Danyel Galaxy “Cybernetic Permutations In The Key Of A” 14. The Shitz “Sell It With Your Face” 15. Robert Vanderwiel “Nine Thousand Eyes” 16. Noah’s Dark “Inward”
[PIAS] Recordings will release Belgica Original Soundtrack on February 26, 2016.
This past November, Dan Ghenacia, Dyed Soundorom and Shonky—collectively, the record-spinning, music-making, label-running, three-headed beast known as Apollonia—were in New York City to play at the U.S. edition of the Time Warp festival, It was just a week or so after the Paris terrorist attacks, and as one might expect, the deadly events were weighing heavily on the partners, who all have called the City of Lights home. (Ghenacia is still based there; Shonky and Soundorom are now mainly working out of Berlin.)
“Everything happened right in my neighborhood,” Ghenacia, who formerly ran the Freak n’ Chic label and serves as something like the unofficial spokesman for the trio, says. XLR8R is sitting with the trio at their Brooklyn hotel, the three wearing different colored t-shirts—one blue, one red and one white, à la the French flag. “The café that I go to eat at everyday was one of the places that had a bombing,” he continues. “A waitress who we know is between life and death right now. The Bataclan…we used to play there. There were a lot of people from the music industry there. We all know people who lost somebody. If you look at what we are wearing, this is for support, for solidarity, for our values. This is something that could have happened to us, and it definitely touches us, and we are really affected by it. We were all the target—but we will stand up and do what we do, which is playing music—and we will keep playing music.”
True to his word, Apollonia’s set that night showed that the three were weren’t going to let the attacks slow them down. It may not have been the most sonically subtle session that fans have ever hear the three play—the festival’s massive, hangar-like setting wasn’t exactly conducive to nuance—but it was a hard-charging and undeniably fun tech-house-heavy set, full of both melodic flourishes and percussive pump. Ghenacia, Soundorom and Shonky, more than anything, came off as determined, as though nothing was going to hold them back—which is actually something you could say about everything they’ve done since releasing their well-received debut album, Tour á Tour, which came out on Apollonia’s eponymous label in autumn of 2014. Just recently, in the midst of an ever-busy gigging schedule, the team has developed and released an Apollonia app, and announced the imminent release of a slew of remixes from Tour á Tour, with a diverse crop of producers—established figures like Charles Webster, Jovann, Thomas Melchior (under his Melchior Productions alias). Mike Shannon and the Martinez Brothers, alongside relative new-jacks Edward, Hold Youth and Terence :Terry—taking the reins. In short, it looks like this could be Apollonia’s year—but to hear them tell it, it’s been a steady, never-ending slog, really, ever since Ghenacia, Soundorom and Shonky started working together in 2012.
You’ve developed and released an Apollonia app, you’re about to release of a slew of remixes from Tour á Tour, and your schedule of dates never seems to let up. Is Apollonia planning to take over clubland in 2016? Dan Ghenacia: Actually, I would say the heaviest time was actually last year. We did a proper tour, which was 60 gigs in five months, on five different continents. That was a lot, for real. Now, it actually seems a bit more human. [laughs] But, really, we’ve been going at it since we began.
Dyed Soundorom: You just get used to it, really. But especially this time of year, when you are touring, you do have to bring a lot of clothes, because the temperature differences can be quite big. You have to bring a small jacket and a big jacket. But really, it’s exciting. We love it.
Shonky: More than anything, Apollonia is the result of a long friendship. And it’s been a dream come true to travel together and play together, and just do all this together. We are living the dream, really.
Apps—not very many electronic-music producers have one, outside of the big-name EDM artists. What made you decide to develop one for yourselves? Ghenacia: Well, it’s true—the app is not really underground at all, I don’t think.[laughs] But I think it’s a pretty cool way for people to follow us, and it’s a way for us to give people some tips, send them some mixes and lots of stuff. If you like to know what we like to eat, we can let you know!
Shonky: If we like a restaurant or something, we can put the restaurant on the application. Besides just the music, it’s a good way to show people how we are living. But the music is the main thing, of course.
Ghenacia: And we are always working to make it better.
Your Tour á Tour remixes are about to come out. For the original album, you had a pair of fellow Frenchmen, Phillipe Zdar and Alexkid, helping out on mixing duties. What was it like to work with a couple of guys who are probably are heroes of yours? Ghenacia: It was amazing. I’ve actually known Phillipe Zdar for many years, and he’s always pushed me as a DJ and in the studio. I can remember playing together with him, I think it was in Manchester, around six or seven years ago. After the party, we were drunk at the airport. I was saying something like, “I’m just a DJ—I don’t think it’s really necessary to produce so much.” And he said something like, “You have to do it. And when you do your first album, I will come and help with some tracks.”
Soundorom: Of course, people say things when they are drunk.
Ghenacia: But when I reminded him, he said, “Of course I remember!” At that point, he was in the middle of his own album and was really busy, but he took the time to listen to the music we had been working on and said, “The song’s are already pretty good. It’s not gonna take too much time. Come in with the boys in two weeks.”
Shonky: We couldn’t believe he was going to do it.
Ghenacia: But he did it, and he took care of half of the album pretty quickly. And it was pretty much the same with Alex for the other half. Just to be working with them at all was a great experience.
It paid off: Tour á Tour is certainly a great-sounding album. Ghenacia: Well, maybe you can thank them for that! [laughs]
The remixes sound great, too. You’ve individually all done plenty of remixes in the past, and you’ve all been remixed by others—but do you find it at all difficult to take these songs that you’ve put your heart and soul into, and hand them off to someone else? Shonky: Not at all. The producers who did these remixes are all people we like a lot, so it was the opposite, really—we were excited to see what they would do.
Soundorom: Of course, there is a little bit of wondering, “What is it going to sound like?” But we trusted all of theses guys; they were already friends, or people who we really respected. The only thing we wanted was that they would do something totally different from the original—and that’s what they did.
Ghenacia: We also wanted to get a good mix of the old school and the new school.
You do have a good mix of veterans and relative newcomers, with people like Charles Webster, Jovann and Mike Shannon representing the former. Ghenacia: And Thomas Melchior, who is one of our producer mentors. We tried to get a wide range of people, to mirror the idea of the label.
Shonky: We really just wanted to be able to release some good music.
Was there anybody you tried to get but couldn’t? Ghenacia: No, but there was one guy—I will not say who—who was going to do a remix, but came back to us and said, “I’m sorry—I have no inspiration. I am completely empty.” And that happens sometimes; it’s natural. When you produce a lot of music, sometimes it just runs out. But he was really sad! [laughs]
How are you releasing these remixes? Ghenacia: It’s going to be released as three EPs. We didn’t want to release it as a full package, just because of the way the market is at the moment. We’re looking at is a month’s worth of music, and it’s better to release it in three parts. It’s more efficient for the DJs, in a way. And it’s not a proper album anyway, so there was no real need to release it as if it was one.
You three have been friends for years, and have been working together for a while now. Do you ever get tired of each other? Do you ever need breaks? Soundorom: For three guys traveling together like we do, it seems to work. It’s really easy for us to be doing this.
Ghenacia: We don’t have fights, we still support each other…there’s never anything like, “Oh, fuck, I have to work with them again?” That doesn’t happen. But we all have our own life. Like, I’ve been working a lot in the studio with Chris Carrier, and doing stuff like that helps me get into a different mindset. And then when I’m back with the boys, I’m happy.
Shonky: The funny thing is that, when you are working alone, you realize that you are actually missing your partners. It’s important that we do work apart—we do need that—but it’s always cool to get back together again.
Soundorom: It’s still fun to travel and DJ on my own—but you miss all that stuff on the side that happens. It’s more relaxed when we are together.
Ghenacia: Way more relaxed. For example, I was a few minutes late for this interview, right? Well, I was still in bed—but I knew it was fine because these guys were going to already be here with you. If I was on my own, I’d be panicking. [laughs]
When you guys play together, how does it work? Ghenacia: There is always one thing we do. First I play a record, then it’s Shonky, then it’s Dyed.
Soundorom: And that is the only rule.
Ghenacia: But it is a very important rule. We don’t always keep going in that order, but we like to start our sets in a super-precise way.
Shonky: It is a way for us to be disciplined.
Ghenacia: Yes, that’s it. After I play the first record, the others know to be ready: “Okay, it’s time to go.”
Soundorom: But we never prepare anything. We never sit in a room and compare records. I never know what they have in their bags; they don’t know what I have in my back. We have no clue, and that’s the idea.
Ghenacia: We need to always be surprising each other. Otherwise it would get boring, hearing the same records all the time. There’s a kind of…I don’t want to say it’s a competition, but the more we surprise each other, the more we respect each other.
So you are playing for each other as much as you are for the crowd. Ghenacia: Yeah, but the crowd…they love to look at us! [laughs]
Top photo: Flavien Prioreau
Tour á Tour The Remixesare scheduled for release on Apollonia Music and K7! on March 18, April 19 and April 29. In addition, Apollonia will present their one-vinyl each, back-to-back concept set at SXMusic Festival on the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean. Set to take place between March 9-13, SXMusic Festival will see performances from Jamie Jones, Dubfire, DJ Tennis, Lee Burridge, Adriatique, Thugfucker, Blond:ish, and more at the forest retreats, beaches, and coves scattered throughout the tropical island.
Learn more about SXMusic Festival by visiting its website here.
Updated calendar:
FR 11|03 Apollonia @ Blackmarket | New york city (us)
SA 12|03 Apollonia @ SXMusic Festival | St Martin
TH 17|03 Marco Carola & Apollonia @ Space | Miami (us)
SA 19|03 Apollonia @ Carl Cox Stage, Ultra | Miami (us)
SA 19|03 Apollonia @ Barbate beach Club | Punta Cana (do)
Donato Dozzy makes his debut solo appearance on New York label The Bunker next month with a new EP, entitled Squadra Quadra. “If there’s one artist in particular whose sound and vision has had an outsize impact on The Bunker, both as a party and as a record label, it would be Donato Dozzy,” a press text reads. The upcoming two-tracker is billed as classic techno, and can be previewed below before it drops in March. Another EP from fellow Bunker regular Patrick Russell is also on the way, which finds the Detroit-bred Brooklynite remixing a trio of techno cuts from Clay Wilson, Romans (the duo of Tin Man and Gunnar Haslam), and Zemi17. The 12″ is due to land around the same time as Dozzy’s, and can also be previewed below.
Donato Dozzy, Squadra Quadra A Quadra Sette B Quadra Nove
Patrick Russell, The Bunker Remixes A Clay Wilson – E4 (Patrick Russell Remix) B1 Romans – Coptos (Patrick Russell Remix) B2 Zemi17 – Rangda (Patrick Russell Remix)
