Back catalogue: Coldwave/Synth

Review: Remastered and reissued with new a new album cover via the Clone West Coast Series, Adult's 'New Phonies' EP first appeared in 2000 as the duo moniker of Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller, two legit electro stalwarts. This is a proper snappy electro EP - of the least sympathetic and most coldly calculating kind - evoking the fright of becoming trapped inside an inescapable subliminal-sonic cybernetic feedback loop, with all human faculties thrown to the wayside. 'Hand To Phone', for example, locks us into a communicative-cybernetic stasis, with spitty acid 16ths betraying the mood of becoming affective chasers of electromagnetic signals, unwittingly carrying out the bidding of our new techno-evangelist overlords. The A-sider 'New Object', meanwhile, with its sizzling 808s, transitional fluctuations and hip-hop vocal refrain - "I need you to accommodate my comunication needs" - touches on several layers of objectification at once: sexual, commodification, loss of the ability to speak. Adult truly dealt with adult themes and embraced their recapture into the machine - now you too can own their New Object.

Review: The Advanced Cookbook Of Mr Selig And Kanzler Z was a short-lived experimental jazz act also known as Cookbook. They put out one EP and two albums, with this 12" being taken from the debut. It came in 1989 and German label the Zoo In You initially and has the vocals of Mr Selig on the A-side, and guitar by Wolfgang Bokelmann and words by Dieter Pougin on the flip. An original will cost you more than a night at the pub and even finding samples online can be hard. Rest assured it is future jazz that still sounds futuristic today.

Review: A new collaboration of Philoxenia Records founders Luigi Di Venere and Neu Verboten, Affekt Unit is informed by an aim to "spark new feelings on the dancefloor". The three track Discorgy EP celebrates their musical obsessions - Italo house, Frankfurt EBM-house and trance - with the result proving an electrifying crossover of these classic genres together with surprising new sounds. 'Oct-Opus' boasts a serious electro component, fused with progressive trance, UK bass, techno, transcendental rave and even a climactic outbreak of rave-era breaks. The title track 'Discorgy' draws from Euro dance and EBM, experimenting with a polyrhythmic bass line and bringing the kind of 'stadium house' that The KLF were always aiming for. Closing track 'Dreams Of Wrestlers' is cosmic house at its sweetest and beefiest, spruced here and there with Italo stabs and pianos, drum machine fills and some lovely subtle filtering. Not so much a case of something for everyone than everything from everyone, you might even say.

Review: Earlier this year Minimal Wave offshoot provided one of this year's most visceral dancefloor weapons in Kino-I, the debut from Doug Lee's new An-I project. Taking inspiration from techno, jack, industrial and punk, An-I successfully drew a line under some of the Berlin-based artist's previous disco-flavoured endeavours. And then some! If you like the Kino-I 12" you will love the new triplet of An-I productions housed on this appropriately titled Gutz 12". The title track alone should come with a health warning; such is the furious onslaught of machine funk it contains, whilst the unnerving "Rut" is the most schizophrenic production you will hear this year. Best of all id closing track "Save Us" sounds like a cross between in Aeternam Vale and Silent Servant. Pressed on a rather thick and dashing slab of magenta orange vinyl!

Review: For a four track electronic music EP, there's a lot here. Opening with 'Burning Fields' by Aphonia, the uninitiated might expect the whole package to nod to that classic electro sound, highly detailed but lo-fi, packed with dark atmosphere but all about dance floor energy. Skip to track two, though, and Angles of Pompeii present mutant indie-punk-dance in the vein of Detroit Grand Pubahs at their most guitar-y, and minimalistic.

Elsewhere, 'Retreat' is a slow mo maximalist triumph, acid lines flailing over the top of a muffled cacophony of noise that places the emphasis on a lunging, head-nodding bassline. Add 'Athma', Odopt's sinister low end and drum machine tune up that could almost be an accidental piece from the movie They Live and you've got not only a complex release, but one boasting replay value set to last for years after the investment.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


For a four track electronic music EP, there's a lot here. Opening with 'Burning Fields' by Aphonia, the uninitiated might expect the whole package to nod to that classic electro sound, highly detailed but lo-fi, packed with dark atmosphere but all about dance floor energy. Skip to track two, though, and Angles of Pompeii present mutant indie-punk-dance in the vein of Detroit Grand Pubahs at their most guitar-y, and minimalistic.

Elsewhere, 'Retreat' is a slow mo maximalist triumph, acid lines flailing over the top of a muffled cacophony of noise that places the emphasis on a lunging, head-nodding bassline. Add 'Athma', Odopt's sinister low end and drum machine tune up that could almost be an accidental piece from the movie They Live and you've got not only a complex release, but one boasting replay value set to last for years after the investment.

Review: A fascinating new slice of neue Deutsche welle from the artist Eine Welt. The track romanticizes the traditional Middle Eastern dish, Knafeh, through the lens of post-punkish electronics, German rawism, and myriad layering and production. The fact that an artist would go to such great pains to record, master, press and distribute a song with such a niche subject matter truly shows the power of Turkish cuisine. Clearly, even in back the '80s, there was mutual cultural appreciation between the Germans and the Turkish.

Review: San Francisco's Dark Entries label does a good line in reissuing obscure, long-forgotten, left-of-centre gems (their excellent collection of Patrick Cowley's little-known soundtrack work for gay porn films, School Daze, was arguably one of the compilations of 2013). Here, they've unearthed another overlooked gem - Art Fine's previously rare-as-hen's-teeth dark Italo-disco gem 'Dark Silence'. It's pretty much a straight copy of the New Wave-inclined original, with the sparser, looser 'Long Version' joining the dense 'Art Fine Version'.

Review: Los Angeles-based ASHRR are back with a new cut which comes from their forthcoming Sunshine Low album which they have re-interpreted as their ASHRR Soundsystem alter ego, while System Olympia also steps up with a remix on this fine new package from 20/20 Vision. In the hands of the latter, 'What's Been Turning You' is a remix with plenty of hi-fidelity cosmic details over mid-tempo deep nu-disco drums. The version from ASHRR is a chugging and Italo-tinged classic with loose-limbed and jumbled drum funk and plenty of bright, shiny arps. A great collection then.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


It's hard to straddle euphoric and dystopic, but Chilean producer Manuel Ortuzar aka Aural Trace has just about done it. The borders between new wave, electroclash and post-punk are all but shattered on their new EP 'Midnight Thoughts', wherein the artist finds it no great feat to inspire a sense of both tension and wonderment in the listener, through combinations of chuffy clap-whacks, quadruplet bass patterns, and an overall neon-drenched synthy style reminiscent of what might happen if William Friedkin directed a cyberpunk film.