Date Course Pentagon Royal Garden
Report From Iron Mountain

ORANGE MILK RECORDS: ...Drop Shadow is the new album from New Zealand native Luke Rowell, and his first release under the Eyeliner name since 2015’s Buy Now (Beer on the Rug). The album is filled with highly composed MIDI pop music that covers a range of mood and emotion, from the uplifting Vince DiCola-esque opener to the beautiful digital vocal “ahh”s that merge into crashing waves at the end of “Keep Calm”. Rowell is using the language of instrumental dance and pop to express multiple themes, the first being personal loss and caring for a sick loved one, as reflected on the suite of songs from “Contact” to “Carry On”. At the albums center these songs form a sort of emotional core that also reframe lighter pieces like “Coffee News” as mini respites along the way.Drop Shadow also explores Rowell’s fascination with American and Japanese music culture and their many intersections, most evident to me on the upbeat “Drop Shadow” which utilizes the Korg Wavestatoion and M1 VST (which is the highest selling synth of all time in its hardware form) and lands somewhere between early house music, a Madonna instrumental, and something from a Nintendo 64 soundtrack.If the previous Eyeliner album LARP of Luxury can be seen as a sunrise record and BUY NOW as night time music, Drop Shadow goes from morning to night and back again. Songs like “Reverie” can feel bright and head-nodding on first listen, only to shift into a hopeful melancholy the second time through.

tagged: ambient electronic electronica futurepast idm malta Malta

Efficient Space: ...3AM Spares is a new compilation of Australian Electronic Dance Music selected by Andras and Instant Peterson, encompassing the darker sounds and later nights of the 1990s and beyond. Following on from forerunner compilation Midnite Spares, this double LP draws from local 12” releases, CDRs and the archives of community radio station 3RRR FM to make a diverse and pumping scene audible once more. No longer confined to beer barns and back rooms, this generation of producers, DJs, clubbers and ravers spilled out into pavilions, warehouses and paddocks, embracing a new culture of machine-metaphor and chemical love.Future Sound of Melbourne’s warehouse triptych Resist The Beat embodies a time when the country’s youth united with juggernaut stamina, partying beyond the long arm of the law. Restored from the ARIA award-winning trio’s original DATs, this debut 12” incited label offers from Jeff Mills, Frank De Wulf and Carl Cox.Released by the likes of Clan Analogue, Creative Vibes, Volition, DanceNet, Juice and Psy-Harmonics, this era’s material has evaded sufficient digital documentation until now, some lost in the decommission of Angelfire, Tripod and Geocities websites. Often these bedroom experiments and one-off collaborations existed solely for compilation inclusions, a plausible scenario for the mysterious Inner Harmony. In the case of Tetrphnm, graphic artist Jeremy Dower’s glacial sub-bass was digitised from the only known CD-R copy, preserved by the 3RRR FM library.

C.Z. - RADIAL LENS [OFFICIAL VIDEO]youtu.be/9hoHn1oCGfUC.Z. debuts on LA's Evar Records with the uncompromising Heat Index EP.The Los Angeles-based producer, beatmaker and DJ sets a course through IDM, techno, jungle and trance to deliver five frenetic, emotionally-charged dancefloor cuts.Over the course of an intensely productive career, Colby Zinser (aka C.Z.) has made music spanning genres like pop, rap, hardcore and jungle. As well as releasing music as C.Z., he's operated multiple aliases, including the prolific Ice Underlord. Drawing from a longstanding fascination with breaks, trance and the IDM of artists like Warp Records' Clark, he's developed his own rich and eclectic style of club music - a sound that crystalized on his 2020 debut album Hyperfocus.