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The Unity Is Submarine

Butter Sessions: ...Ewan Jansen, Perth artist, producer and founder of Red Ember Records, presents his second offering to Butter Sessions following the 2017 EP Best Intentions. The colourful LP from Jansen, Island Diary, wraps up the end of the year at the label on a distinguished note -- courtesy of Jansen’s 20 years of experience in the Australian electronic landscape.Island Diary was recorded over the last 12 months as Jansen returned from a frantic European tour. He was granted a breather with the lockdown, which allowed Jansen the necessary time and space to properly produce his record. Using this period to create intuitively, Jansen refers to his time spent in lockdown as a “chance for discovery,” discernible throughout the record with his novel genre interpretations.The refined character of Island Diary is made clear with Jansen’s experiments in structure and tone, distancing his LP from the formulaic and conventional approach to classic house music.The LP’s opener Mussel Hustle is a nostalgic and shimmering composition with an infectious hook, evidence of Jansen’s versatility as a producer. Kooka utters fleeting minimal techno with vigorous drum programming and hardy synthwork. In contrast, Hot Rain hits like a cool change with its breezy and balmy melody. Proteus Vs Yoshimitsu channels YMO and other proto-electronic affiliates with futuristic sci-fi electro-pop. Jansen’s signature house sound reveals itself more so in the LPs finale Breadcrumbs, which carves out a joyful and yet refreshing passage of house music.Jansen refers to Island Diary as a “palette cleanser,” an apt sentiment. There’s something here for everyone. He has crafted a release to be taken in from start to finish, a treat for eager ears.

deejay.de: ...Musique Plastique (Visible Cloaks, Pedro) rescue a nearly lost soundtrack to a Belgian avant-theatrical work from the 80s. For fans of Nuno Canavarro, Roberto Musci and Vito Ricci.

C. Lavender is a New York based sound artist and sound healing practitioner whose third full-length album explores meditative physical rituals of sound with binaural recordings from inside a geodesic dome in the Catskill Mountains of New York.“The future is a choice between utopia and oblivion,” noted architect, futurist and geodesic dome theorist Buckminster Fuller. Myth of Equilibrium delves into these divergent paths by featuring equal parts of pastoral raw acoustic percussion combined with C. Lavender’s signature “devastating caustic drones” (Ad Hoc) via her custom bass guitar and synthesizers.An assistant to the late pioneering electronic composer and Deep Listening founder Pauline Oliveros, C. Lavender’s astute editing and the binaural recording process places the listener within the heady fluctuating underworld she has created on this album. The recording environment of the geodesic dome allowed for sounds to transfer out beyond the confines of the walls as well as allowing outside sounds from the surrounding wilderness to permeate in like that of a mutating cell. The album suggests “headphone listening” for the full hypnotic experience Myth of Equilibrium presents to the listener.C. Lavender is a 2020 Pioneer Works (New York) Music Artist-in-Residence.

zamzamrec: ...⧘❒ ⧙❍Surprise Barbue, duo piece of Kevin Valentin and BenjaminMoutte. Ode for synthesizers. Robots with a chlorophyll tastewearing neon pink wigs. They illustrate shaded cinematic frames.They paint misty asteroid vignettes as a tapestry.Cosmic patches, raw textures, arpeggiators either hypnotic orsharp. The character of each keyboards is expressed in a preciseand careful mix, flowing into a synthetic stream in fluorescenthues.With Kabukichō, their debut LP for Zamzamrec, the compositionwas based around the creation of mini landscapes with cosmicand mythological atmospheres. The sounds evoke Sci-fiuniverses, psychedelic ambiances as well as early music andrepetitive music, not to mention the allusions to the pioneers ofelectronic music. Each influence takes place in the differentscenes of the same story.Like their first EP Super Barbu, released on cassette in 2019(ZZ56), the recording creates a unique contemplative experience.Ascending phases and striking chords, frenzied and upliftingsections, for a both rhythmical and meditative effect. While the«live» matter and experiments are remodelled and transcended.The sound becomes denser, more melodic and more balanced.The whole album is shaping by the coherence of a narrative work.Concept album, astral travel, hallucinatory and luminous. Weenter Kabukichō, as we enter in a Philip K. Dick novel : alteredstate of consciousness, parallel universes and Suddenly thevoid...

Butter Sessions: ...Naarm (Melbourne) based collective Butter Sessions celebrate over a decade in business with an extensive glossary of talented friends and affiliates pressed on a three-part compilation series. The label has always held the community closest, as exemplified by the 20+ artists featured over the three releases. Each 12” presents a grand soundscape anchored into the tenebrous energy of the dancefloor, with its inquisitive electronics and fierce pulse. If there was a definition for the Butter Sessions sound of ten years in the making, the answer lies here.The final compilation in the series commences with Time, a masterful blend of mid-tempo digi-dub and two step. Mosam Howieson gifts us Influx, a thick and hazy wedge of techno and Canada’s D. Tiffany serves up the mechanic and restless techno on a knife's edge in Cast the Trance. Ben Fester delivers Tumbo Rumblin, a leftfield slice of intergalactic electronics. Meanwhile, Furious Frank presents the electro and acid charged Blue Light while Makeda plays with genre expectations with the experimental composition Fable. Finally, the record's conclusion is Doordrms by Ben Keynes; dipping in tempo with acid drops, resulting in thoughtful IDM nuances.