Ilian Tape Germany 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Turin techno stalwart Andrea has been serving up slabs of goodness on Ilian Tape since way back in 2012, though "Ritorno" is remarkably his very first full-length excursion. The 12 track set is far more varied than his fine club-focused singles, with the Italian variously turning his hand to swelling, Global Communication style ambient techno ("Attimo"), ultra-deep breakbeat dreaminess ("SKLYN"), melodious, jungle-influenced IDM ("LS September"), bassbin rattlers ("TrackQY", the skittish brilliance of moody roller "Reinf"), dreamy soundscape techno ("LG_Amb"), angular fusions of bass music and dark Italo-techno ("Drumzzy") and picturesque ambient dub slow jams ("Twin Forests").

Review: Mariachiara Troianiello, the Milan-based sound artist behind the moniker Katatonic Silentio, works at the crossroads of electronic music, performing arts and sound studies. Acting as a live performer and an independent researcher, she seeks to bridge different spheres and approaches to sonic production. Now, the ever reliable Ilian Tapes have gave her free reign to use her 15 years in the game to create some exquisite, atmospheric sonic shapes that melt the barriers between genres. Across four sides of vinyl she brings us everything from totally wigged out ambient sounds to lively, bubbling electronica and sub bass-enhanced rhythmic assaults. Her world is a bewildering, sometimes disorientating one at times, downright beautiful at others, but one in which you'll want to hang around in for more than a little while.

Review: Since he started producing music, Berlin-based American sound artist Jake Muir has been obsessed with sampling. His 2018 album "Lady's Mantle" was based on manipulated chunks of vintage Californian surf rock, and its follow-up, 2020's midnight symphony "The Hum Of Your Veiled Voice" was sourced from a wide variety of old records, and inspired by the work of experimental turntablists like Marina Rosenfeld, Janek Schaefer and Philip Jeck. On "Mana", Muir looks back to a misunderstood musical movement. Around 1995, a group of New York producers and DJs - including DJ Olive, DJ Spooky and Spectre - pioneered a genre-dissolving sound by unifying hip-hop techniques with ideas pulled from dub, jungle, ambient music and industrial noise. Badged "illbient", it was a short-lived genre that felt like a high-minded psychedelic cousin of the UK's trip-hop. Muir uses illbient as the springboard for "Mana", utilizing a selection of samples to inform his frothy drones and foreboding atmospheres. He ushers the material into 2021 by diverting it through his own contemporary worldview, attempting to recreate the hyperreal fantasy histories of Japanese RPGs (think "Dark Souls" and "Final Fantasy") and nod to sensual, tactile soundscapes of European industrial labels Staalplaat and Soleilmoon. The result is a magickal, sensory journey that's as physical as it is representational.

Review: Building a refuge for exiled planets.
Conscious absorption of rare elements.
Cloudlike observations of evaporated landmasses.
A wistful emulation of escape.
Preparing food for the moon.
Strange situation test for non-terrestrial officers.
Counterfeiting consumer electronics.
Retuning GABAergic interneurons.
Accompaniment for affective picture systems.
Rituals of self-decompression.
Inquiries into trace minerals.

Review: With the exception of Skee Mask and the Zenker brothers, no producer has released more EPs on Ilian Tape than Stenny. For that reason, it would be fair to say that "Upsurge", his first foray into the full-length format, is long overdue. In keeping with the creative opportunities provided by the longer format, the 12-track set is framed as a "journey through the ups and downs", with hazy strolls through ambient, IDM and dub techno sitting side by side with skittish, off-kilter and occasionally dark forays into more club-focused electro, post-jungle and broken techno territory. There are plenty of subtle variations to be found within both broad categories, with Stenny managing to provide a unified front thanks to the pleasingly atmospheric and mood-matching nature of the collected cuts.

Review: There's an undeniably far-out feel to the Zenker Brothers' second album, Cosmic Transmission, which adds further layers of trippy textures, hallucinatory sounds and smoky intensity to the aural blueprint first explored on their 2015 debut full-length Immersion. There's much to admire throughout, from the mind-bending ambient weirdness of opener 'When Nothing is Safe', and the slipped dub haze of 'Whose In Control', to the drug-addled IDM of 'Natural Connection', and the polyrhythmic techno trip of 'Divided Society'. Most striking of all is the trio of tracks that close the album, all of which are powered forwards not by heavy techno beats (or even their usual crunchy, off-kilter breakbeats) but rather a series of ear-catching, fuzz-soaked synthesizer arpeggio lines.

Review: One half of the former Ilian Tapes fixture The Zenker Brothers, Marco Zenker continues his solo adventures with 12 tracks of idiosyncratic techno productions. If you're looking for a comparison it's perhaps worth looking over the border to Vienna and the two fingers to convention shown by Cheap Records at their height. In similar style, the tracklisting sees lithe, dancefloor pleasers like 'Carefree' and edgily distorted 'Switch Stance' rubbing shoulders with the vintage drum machine-led dubbiness of 'The Tibet Terrier'. So, whether you're after maverick beats or something renegade and yet playable, it's all here waiting for you.