Lauren Bousfield
Palimpsest

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 first installment opens with To Be Continued, an erratic composition from Aotearoa’s Vanessa Worm, charged with robotic bass and incessant hi-hats. Perth's upper shelf producers Guy Contact and Ewan Jansen respectively insert their own flavour with Kickflip Bouquet, a mid-tempo trance tinged number, and Back to Blood, a distorted percolating experiment. Meanwhile, Barcelona based Ivy Barkakati contributes Descarga; a gnawing improvisation piece. Sleep D offers up a brooding atmospheric piece of techno with 041111, whilst Japan’s Haruka follows suit with the elastic Ishinoko. Albrecht La'Brooy drifts into more tranquil terrain with the flickering Butter Soft before Low Flung & DJ Mind Leaf & The Herbalist wrap up volume one with the dub-induced Take Out.

boomkat: ...Pop Negatif Wastad’s eponymous EP from 1989, including all of their self penned songs. This is the first release in a series of reissues from the height of the 80’s & 90’s Welsh music scene."Hailing from mid Wales, Pop Negatif Wastad emerged in the late 80’s as the sole collaboration between Esyllt Anwyl and Gareth Potter. Esyllt cut her teeth in the exceptionally bent no wave group Crisialau Plastig, while Gareth – an actor on the UK soap opera Eastenders – was in the midst of breaking away from his post-punk group Traddodiad Ofnus to form the mighty hip hop/acid techno outfit Tŷ Gwydr. With their backgrounds in experimental pop and the thumping beat of the nascent rave scene looming in the background, the duo took an unapologetic approach to music making with no regard to formulaic sound, gender roles, or expectation.Esyllt served as the mastermind behind the music (along with Gorwel Owen on production – Rhosneigr’s answer to Martin Hannett) while Gareth balanced the project with his dialed vocal style and ideological approach. They developed an emotionally driven and fearless collection of tunes, a charged version of synth pop that elaborated on their experience within the Welsh scene while combining influences from emergent sounds akin to what you’d hear on The Haçieda dance floor (where rumour has it, their Be Music/ Section 25 invoking track “Iawn” was played). Stabs, arpeggiated synths, harsh percussion, piano house leads, concertina melodies, warped samples, and dubbed out delay were quilted together to the chug of drum machines, creating a genre-bending landscape woven with vocals reminiscent of New Order and Joy Division (with the added bonus of being sung in the Welsh language)."

EVAR Records: ...With a fundamental emphasis on the encouragement of genre hybridization, Evar Records, the Los Angeles-based imprint co-founded by Trickfinger (John Frusciante) and Aura T-09 (Marcia Pinna), continues its momentum with an expansive 9-track collection from Netherlands-based luminary, Limewax.After making a strong first impression with its 2020 debut offerings, Evar Records has recruited Limewax to carry forward its mission of blurring boundaries and challenging conventions in electronic music. The Ukranian hard drum and bass hero happily obliged, referring to signing with Evar as a breaking point which allowed him, finally, to take full stock of his background in classical and electronic music simultaneously. Although Maxim Anokhin is widely known for his hard-edged breakbeats, releasing on labels such as Tech Itch Recordings, Position Chrome, Freak Recordings, and PRSPCT, the full scope of his artistry shines through on Untitled.

Analogical Force: Hello World,Wheel of fate forced me to lose a tiny life before I understood its meanings. 
Thus I needed to be a chaos swallower for the unnamed.
Damn it, demon
.Y.