Thabang Tabane - Matjale (Mushroom Half Hour)
Naschkatze - Dilber EP (Geschenk Recordings)
Geschenk is an independent record label from the Republic of Azerbaijan, focused on articulating scarcely promoted / hard-to-classify / rare-to-find music from the region of Caucasus - the heritage artifacts and the actual production alike. Regardless of its home country Azerbaijan, Geschenk is aiming to coin itself as a pan-Causasian record label, but not limited to general frontiers of the region. The Naschkatze duo consists of Farhad Farzali and Ali Hasanov, both pursuing their careers in visual arts along with experiments in music, design, film, video, and sound. They have worked separately on a number of music/sound projects (Promoted Garlic rock band, Frida song cycle, Arsenium live music performance with electronic multimedia, numerous tracks and remixes under the name Azeriff, sound design for Go to the Light multimedia performance, DJ sets in clubs of Baku, Moscow, Kiev) before coming to the idea to produce music jointly. Naschkatze goes beyond strict genre and style definitions and boundaries; the producers' duo constantly works on expanding and developing their sound resources through research of the musical heritage of different cultures of the world, with a special source of inspiration definitely coming from the Caucasus. A number of respected artists such as Ulrich Schnauss (UK), Johan Troch (BE), Nico Niquo (AU) supported the album with their remixes on the key track Dilber.
Rimarimba - The Rimarimba Collection (Freedom To Spend)
Rimarimba was the project of Robert Cox, based in Felixstowe, on the seaside in Suffolk, UK. Rimarimba was not Cox’s first entry into the world of recorded music, but was the first time he explored, most perceptively, the parameters of a particular musical mode: one where minimalism is removed from its “high-art” mantle, Cox inveigling its practices in amongst the do-it-yourself creativity of a burgeoning and beguiling underground, letting the music breathe – and most importantly, letting it play, gifting it with imagination.
Slovenska Televiza - Documento (Peripheral Minimal)
Slovenska Televiza is a minimal electronics duo based in Valladolid and Barcelona. Wladyslaw Trejo and Lunademayo stays close to coldwave then expands to avant-garde and experimental approaches, reaching a proposal as strange as it is fascinating. They produce music that is hard to define with simple comparisons or oblique generalizations, but perhaps an amalgam of Minimal Synth and Coldwave would best express their 'sound'. With that in mind, there is also a melancholy underpinning this release, perhaps it's the haunting vocals of Lunademayo, or the heavily reverb laden soundscapes of Wladyslaw Trejo's analogue synths.
Thabang Tabane - Matjale (Mushroom Half Hour)
Son of the late, legendary Dr Philip Nchipi Tabane and heir to the malombo sound that he originated and pioneered in the early 1960s, Thabang has been touring the world, playing with his father’s band and other South African luminaries since he was 8 years old. Emerging into his own with his debut solo album, Matjale, this energetic percussionist carves a driving, joyous and worldly version of the malombo genre that takes in his continental travels. The album brims with ambition and an appetite for life. Employing brisk tempos, nimble basslines and intersecting polyrhythms, Thabang crafts songs cognisant of the hardships of life, but chooses to deliver them with an irrepressible optimism. Expanding the parameters of what is essentially an artform patented by his father, Thabang and his cohorts seem unburdened by pedigree, infusing the sound with a modern sensibility. His reverence for the vibrational resonance and drive of the bass guitar, not to mention his explosive bursts of hand drumming, gives the album an undeniable, cathartic exuberance.
VA - The Emerald EP (Misbits Recordings)
This is Misbits Recordings’ first chapter from its trip into the experimental territories of electronic music, nothing more than a diary filled with sound fragments that reveal a soundtrack for a surreal story. The Emerald EP is a journey lived by a time traveler through eerie ambient scapes, started from the vintage sci-fi frenzy from the late 50s’ immortalized on side A with Romeo Poirier’s dysfunctional robotic bleeps, continued with Boris Hegenbart & David Moss’ distorted broadcast tape and ended in Christopher James Chaplin’s eerie atmosphere created by an analog choir. Side B hosts a few locked grooves signed by Roméo Poirier, Boris Hegenbart & David Moss aka duo-mono-lith, Shōen 荘園, Smooth Operators, as well loops sampled from Maria Balabas & Punct8 (Tavi Scurtu).
