Ménage
Lectroniq Love Affair

P-Vine: ...Just as Pitchfork once said why Japanese people value Radiohead and not Susumu Yokota, Susumu Yokota is so highly regarded overseas that a retrospective exhibition is held in London.A beautiful electronic music masterpiece made in his short life is reissued here.His 30th album, "symbol", the 8th from his label "Skintone", was released on October 27, 2004."I made it with symbolism in mind," he said in an interview at the time, but it can be said that his aesthetics are summarized here."When I think about it, what I came up with was symbolist. Spirits, angels, souls, etc. were always themes within me," Yokota said at the time. ing.While cutting up fragments of classical music, a problematic work that depicts the beauty he pursues ── remastered, its charm is finally released to the world!

Editions Mego: ...Reflecting Ambarchi’s profound love of Brazilian music – an aspect of his omnivorous musical appetite not immediately apparent in his own work until now – Simian Angel features the remarkable percussive talents of the legendary Cyro Baptista, a key part of the Downtown scene who has collaborated with everyone from John Zorn and Derek Bailey to Robert Palmer and Herbie Hancock. Like the music of Nana Vasconcelos and Airto Moreira, Simian Angel places Baptista’s dexterous and rhythmically nuanced handling of traditional Brazilian percussion instruments into an unexpected musical context. On the first side, ‘Palm Sugar Candy’, Baptista’s spare and halting rhythms wind their way through a landscape of gliding electronic tones, gently rising up and momentarily subsiding until the piece’s final minutes leave Ambarchi’s guitar unaccompanied. While the rich, swirling harmonics of Ambarchi’s guitar performance are familiar to listeners from his previous recordings, the subtly wavering, synthetic guitar tone we hear is quite new, coming across at times like an abstracted, splayed-out take on the 80s guitar-synth work of Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell. Equally new is the harmonic complexity of Ambarchi’s playing, which leaves behind the minimalist simplicity of much of his previous work for a constantly-shifting play between lush consonance and uneasy dissonance.

The Wormhole: ...The shadowy forces behind The Tapeworm are delighted to announce the latest release to come flying out of The Wormhole. On a limited edition split LP two of Europe's foremost exponents of the tape loop go head-to-head, recorded within the hallowed environs of a former Buddhist Monastery – with dramatically un-Zen results.On one side, Italian composer Marta De Pascalis mixes loops and analogue synthesis to create densely layered collages of glowing melodic shards and growling bass distortion, her hypnotic minimal synth figures warping and whirling around each other before dissolving into entropic oblivion. 'Her Core' is a rusty, sand-blasted slab of heaviness that provides the perfect continuation from her two solo albums – a hall of mirrors collapsing in on itself, over and over.Meanwhile, Howlround is in full contraction mode on 'Hard Core', heading directly into the murky innards of a quartet of vintage reel to reel machines and using live tape delay to create syncopated rhythmic pulses, crackles and squelches that founder member Robin The Fog describes as 'accidental gabber'. Originally rising to notoriety through sonic portraits of entire buildings, here Howlround dramatically scale down the subject matter to concentrate on mapping out the endless psychedelic dimensions of a circuit board, discovering a whole new world of creative potential in the process.Both sets were recorded live at London venue Iklectik during the fall of 2017 at "A Can of Worms", an event to celebrate The Tapeworm's 100th release. What's perhaps most remarkable about this LP is that it captures a pair of artists in a snapshot, in parallel. Here, Howlround shakes off the back catalogue, stepping out of the comforting confines of the studio. De Pascalis plays harder than ever before. Both artists taken by a moment, into the harsh glare of the unknown. The fact that each has created their noisiest and most abrasive work yet will surely be seen as a happy coincidence. A can of worms, indeed…

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...