Favorite Releases from February 2023
The month of February brings love notes, a wave of passion, and of course, exciting new releases, albums, and remixes to help to get us through the end of the winter. We selected the ten favorite tracks of the month featuring n9oc, Seb Wildblood, Bas Dobbelaer & Vand, Gal Tsadok Hai, Erika, Earth Trax, MPU101, Rising Sun, Khotin, Samuel Rohrer, ASC, and Aural Imbalance.
n9oc
Entity
Die Orakel
Die Orakel welcomes Frankfurt-based n9oc to its lookup tables, hotwiring its community-based operating system anew with 'Memory Allocator.' Her sonic information design echoes fast-paced and beatless, early and spaced-out melodic British IDM, complementing any 90s-informed chord-code library. Compiling six sense-altering code snippets onto vinyl, n9oc's 'Memory Allocator' is future-proof with any higher AI or real-life form to come.
With the airy vibe, the opening track "Entity" combines spacious atmospherics with warm synth melodies and hazy broken beats.
Seb Wildblood
vitara 3000
Oath
Istanbul-based Oath continues its musical journey into 2023 with the new EP from Seb Wildblood. The prolific UK producer has been delivering uncompromising quality music on labels like Church, Omena, Coastal Haze, and All My Thoughts, among others. The "vitara 3000" EP is a follow-up to his sophomore LP 'do you feel it too?' released through his own All My Thoughts imprint. Across its four tracks, the record brims with a subtly euphoric melodicism and infectious rhythms underpinned with hazy textures. In the artist's own words,
'This EP was born out of having the first solid space to be creative in since moving to LA from London. There's a call and response element to the record via vitara 3000, which refers back to my last album 'do you feel it too?' that came out in May via the vocal sample. I see my catalog/discography in phases, and for me, this EP reflects the final few chapters of the sound and energy I've been exploring over the last 18 months or so.'
Khotin
Home World 303
Ghostly International
Canadian producer Khotin returns to Ghostly International with the new album "Release Spirit." Inhabiting musical territory between dreamy-pop, downtempo, and electronica, Khotin unfolds his artistry and embraces all these influences to create a poetic record full of sonic and textural nuances. Here is what the label intends to say about this album:
"The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirits and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go-around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds — including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he's used since the start — mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier, given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best-sounding record to date."
Bas Dobbelaer & Vand
Gateway to Gaia (Gal Tsadok Hai Remix)
Something Happening Somewhere
After two well-received EP's -Laren and ZL2- Bas Dobbelaer and Vand asked a few like-minded spirits to reset the dials of some of their best work. The two Dutch producers carved a name for themselves over the last four years with their melancholic, melodic, and highly detailed techno-infused productions. Donato Dozzy, Marco Shuttle, and Ultrastation are among the names of these great remix package on the trustworthy SoHaSo label.
Italian producer Donato Dozzy takes Transit (a track from 2019) into a lush, green forest where dew water is still dripping from the trees while string-like melodies slowly swirl around them. Beautiful stuff. Gal Tsadok-Hai takes a similar path, though his take on Gateway to Gaia is a bit gloomier. Dusk is setting in, and so is melancholia.
The same goes for Marco Shuttles version of Reflect, a track from 2021. The London-based Italian producer left out kickdrums and basslines, settling instead for a feverish percussion-infused meditation.
Once on the flip side, the club vibe truly kicks in. With a minimalist, bassline heavy remix by Shoal of Story of Blade and an equally effective techno remake from Ultrastation, who turns Runner into a hypnotic peak time monster.
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Erika
Obsidian Sunset
Interdimensional Transmissions
Detroit techno artist Erika Sherman releases her second album' Anevite Void'. The first long-player since 2013 gives the listener a bold blend of sci-fi-inspired elements to create a balance between futuristic techno and ambient, which she spread across ten tracks. "Erika's new album, finds her organically writing songs for her live shows, allowing them to take shape through performance, and later recording them in the studio, making this the first album she has entirely written and produced on her own. Mixed by long time collaborator BMG, she finds this record as the launching point for a new process for her," the label explains.
"Conceptually, this album was inspired by "the irregular life cycles created by three suns circling over a planetary organism that presents two major biomes: rocky crystalline desert, and deep layered forest, each of which exists above and/or below ground, depending on what phase the suns are in." From this realm, the album took shape. She also chronicled this concept in drawings but found this painting by Detroit puckish punk legend Nai Sammon perfectly visually explained the concept and chose it for the cover. She describes, "each track is about an organic process that occurs: acts of survival of the biomes, or what happens between them and the multitude of other beings that they host."
Earth Trax
Skin
Lapsus Records
Warsaw-based electronic music producer Bartosz Kruczyński, also known as Earth Trax, is an artist with a vast catalog of releases for labels such as Phonica Records, Growing Bin, Into The Light, Lost Palms, Les Yeux Orange, and Shall Not Fade. He presents his new album, "Closer Now," showcasing an enigmatic blend of breakbeat, IDM, and downtempo electronica fraught with a meditative melancholy. The album is described as follows: 'Closer Now' is influenced by liminal spaces and cultivates surreal and dreamlike qualities. Conversely, it also possesses a sense of strength and grit, highlighted by moments where electronic distortion bares its teeth. It is an album that refers both to IDM and chill-out rooms. The beautifully crafted "Skin" is an elegant journey, with the finely structured symbiosis between the warm and dreamy melodies, slow-motion chill-out atmospheres, and pulsing rhythms accentuated by the floating percussive textures.
MPU101
umtwtm
Ilian Tape
South Bavarian-bred producer Michal Matlak returns to Ilian Tape under his MPU101 moniker with a brand new album of elegant and subtly atmospheric instrumentation and ambient intertwining of evocative sequenced synth melodies. The third track, "umtwtm," beautifully weaves its rhythmic canvas with an enchanting interplay of Roland synth-based melodies and delicate sonic colors of the endlessly rich layers of lo-fi textures.
Rising Sun
β
Freund der Familie
Rising Sun is a project by the Berlin-based producer and multiple-label curator Steffen Laschinski. He returns to the helm of the Freund der Familie to present a remix package of the two full-length LP's from the label founder Klaus Rakete and Mirko Hunger, 2013's 'Alfa' and 2018's 'Omega.' Channeling the spirit of the dubby house and techno Rising Sun delivers nine unique reinterpretations ranging from ambient soundscapes to dub-driven electronica.
Tinged with deep and dubby techno rhythms, the third track 'β' is a slowly-shifting tapestry of murky atmospheric soundscapes awash with a gradual layering of mysterious widescreen pads and dubby undercurrents.
Samuel Rohrer
Scapegoat Principle
Arjunamusic Records
Samuel Rohrer's newest solo album, Codes of Nature, shows the artist making more refinements and additions to a rich catalog of musical ideas. Though he has excelled in collaborative projects with Ambiq, Ricardo Villalobos, Max Loderbauer, Tobias Freund, Oren Ambarchi, and others, it is fascinating to experience him also working in a field entirely his own yet managing to give the impression of being fully integrated or connected with a larger musical universe. A strange, intriguing ambiguity between the specific and the universal makes Rohrer's music worth playing on a loop – the cool, downtempo, yet energized constructions on Codes are powered by subtle atmospheric and tonal changes that work like a camouflage adaptable to any environment.
This is evident on immersive tracks like "Body of Lies" and "The Banality of Evil": tightly and economically controlled from a compositional standpoint while still leaving enough ambiguous space for listeners to determine where it all leads, these pieces run on a mix of synthetic mallet percussion sounds, sharp snare fills and pulsing, angular melodies. With the density and regularity of events that might occur at a major traffic interchange, yet with the un-hurried, anxiety-free mood of a low-lit lounge, these are both cinematic displays of Rohrer's rhythmic music as a method of travel and transition.
ASC and Aural Imbalance
Ascension
Spatial
James Clements and Simon Huxtable teamed up as ASC and Aural Imbalance for a collaborative EP titled "Interstellar Transmissions." Consisting of four tracks, the record effortlessly moves from atmospheric drum & bass to weightless aquatic tranquility showcasing their prowess and synergy in mind. The first taste of the EP comes from the opening track, "Ascension." This is how the label describes this track:
"Joining forces for the opening track of their first collaborative EP, Spatial's premier duo serve up a solid amen composition, combining ASC's trademark impeccably-engineered crisp breaks with the dreamy sauntering backdrops you know and love from Aural Imbalance. Filters and rolling kick drums carry the reminiscent rhythms and an understated intersection colored with tranquil, processed vocal samples.”