100% Silk   Page 2

Body San

Midnight Companion

100% Silk

Ace ambidextrous addendum to Brandon Knocke’s latest limited vinyl offering, Midnight Companion crossfades a dreamer’s delight pirate mix of unreleased originals, flowing through glow-fi house, balcony bump, decadent noir, and assorted velvet rope rhythms. Both sides slip and slide with signature Body San swing, out late with nothing to lose, skipping steps up to the roof, a 36-minute 360 skyline of magic hour motion and distant city lights. Bring yourself, bring a friend.

Dearly Departure

Genesis

100% Silk

Santa Clarita daydreamer Daniel Crook flipped his DX-7 to dent tuition at California Institute Of The Arts but while there fell in with a crew of fellow hardware heads and began making periodic pilgrimages downtown to soak the city’s thriving warehouse scene. His own productions soon followed, inspired by the moodier fringes of LA’s nocturnal underground as well as the “dark gothic energy” of certain fatalist new wave.  Genesis spans 40 minutes across eight tracks, crisscrossing stained glass house, lovesick jack, and varied states of rhythm delirium into a raw, reflective self-portrait of empty streets and midnight memories. Crook’s process is part planned and part exploratory, mapping melody in advance then ripping live takes at a table of synths in his bedroom. From cobwebbed dub-dance (“Serpent”) to cyber-mechanical disco (“Move”), the songs feel intuitive and imprecise, grainy screengrabs of systems in flux.  Most are solo instrumentals but Crook’s classmate Bludwork guests on the sci-fi sequencer trance “Infrared” while local morbid beauty duo Morticia My Angel haunt the mic for “Words Unspoken.” Even his own voice makes an appearance on “Own Perceptions,” mixed into a glimmering grey haze, pulsing and poignant: “I don't know what to do with me / no more.” Mastered by Matt Tammariello. Design by Britt Brown.

Olsen

Dream Operator

100% Silk

Manchester miasma-house specialist Andrew Anderton aka Olsen sculpts swirling, stream-of-consciousness rhythms inspired by subliminal perception, hyperspace anime, and reflections on how the mind works. His latest is also his haziest, tracked at home on analog synths bathed in echo, tape-hiss, and found sounds, conjuring a liminal realm between sleep and reality ruled by a shadowy figure: the Dream Operator. Opaque acid, mumbling voices, and decayed keys whisper in the periphery, tethered by black hole bass, a narcoleptic kick, and dusty claps. This is music for “the space between,” where the dream operator takes control, and “shows you an image of a tree, soft fruit growing… night falls, and the black dog serenade continues.” Compelling contemporary warehouse noir by a producer poised for heady depths. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Precipitation

Earth / Sky

100% Silk

The latest capsule collection from pensive Vancouver visionist Zefan Sramek aka Precipitation presents a more binary take on overcast house and half-light ambience, split between a rhythmic “earth” side and a smeared cirrus “sky” side. Tracked live to tape and padded with Pacific Northwest field recordings of rainy forests and wet meadows, the pieces soar, sink, and spiral like small birds blown by the wind, isolated and adrift. Past cuts for Ville Nouvelle (in the duo Aquatic Language) and Jungle Gym have shown Sramek’s versatility with vignette melody and soft-focus atmospherics but Earth / Sky distills them even further, into a muted, melancholic expanse of elemental conditions and emotive hypnosis. Mastered by Eric Hanson. Video stills by Zefan Sramek.

Cyclist, The

Alabaster Thrones

100% Silk

Last year’s altered mind opus, Sapa Inca Delirium, showcased The Cyclist at his most eclectic, spanning ayahuasca break-beat and rave jungle pop, but his latest EP returns to the uniquely kinetic and shredded mode of churning electronic rhythm he both named and perfected: “tape throb.” Alabaster Thrones collects four of Andrew Morrison’s recent and most vibrantly blasted house constructs, tracked at his home studio in Birmingham, UK during “the height of mania – a time when I had no time.” The context translates: this is urgent, accelerating music, shifting gears at high speed in dim twisting tunnels. The title is “a deflation of grandiosity” cribbed from Ulysses (“…a noble race, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster, silent as the deathless gods”), though Morrison’s meaning is more personal: “It’s a reminder to level yourself and think of all those around you.” A captivating capsule of ravaged forward motion for a ravaged forward-moving age. Mastered by Eric Hanson. Design by Britt Brown.

Cyclist, The

Beat At The Heart Of The City

100% Silk

A six song sidekick to The Cyclist’s latest extended play offering, Alabaster Thrones, these two magnetized sides span nine years of hermetic hardware experiments conducted in itinerant living arrangements across Derry, Liverpool, and Birmingham. From toy tape loops and echobox gauze (“Diorge Grian” – Irish for “Derry sun”) to shredded soul (“Lucille”) and tightly coiled dub noir (“Cologne Halls”), Beat At The Heart Of The City showcases Andrew Morrison’s singular ear for vibrantly damaged dancefloor energies. Tensions and raptures rev and unravel in intuitive asymmetries, evoking cold clubs, deserted streets, dazed gardens – bleary beauty for crumbling kingdoms. Of the feverish rhythm delirium “One Day In The Life Of Ivana” Morrison even credits illness as muse: “I deeply remember being extremely sick at the time.” It’s grim up north. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

Pleasure Model

The Executive

100% Silk

Amsterdamaged dancefloor industrialist Antoni Maiovvi’s futurist EBM alter ego, Pleasure Model, returns to SILK with a second slate of sleek, surveillance state cyber-jack: The Executive. Recorded in late summer 2016, the album’s eight tracks pulse with android anxiety and pirated voltage, hotwired circuitry snaking through bleached neon tunnels towards strobe-lit ziggurats. More mechanized and weaponized than its predecessor, Kendo Dynamics, these two sides swerve from replicant rave (“International Geographic,” “Sound Investment”) to matrix hacker hardware (“Labelmouth,” “Belinfurbellt”) to liquid chrome catwalk (“Body Double,” “Alumni Precursor”), in the spirit of Bunker, Clone, and Crème. 41 minutes of metro-gnomic sequencing and streamlined code for artificial intelligentsia.

V/a

Silk To Dry The Tears

100% Silk

Sorrow’s only silver lining is the selflessness it inspires in others. The nightmare of last year’s fire in Oakland left so many of us shredded, shattered, and speechless. But a communal compassion surged up in response, with artists, allies, and acquaintances from all over the globe re-connecting and re-committing to the power and potential of independent music as a healing, unifying force. So many SILK friends and family reached out expressing the desire to contribute creatively to a relief effort that it was obvious the emotion needed an outlet. Silk To Dry The Tears collects 31 such songs from a spectrum of 100% Silk alumni and affiliates, threaded across four sides of fogged house, fantasy acid, nocturnal electronics, sleepwalker pop, and rhythmic reveries of varied internal states. Totaling nearly 170 minutes, it’s a sprawl and a statement, shared in the spirit of inclusion, endurance, and empathy. Music brought us together; music will keep us together. Mastered by Matt Tammariello. Design by Britt Brown.  50% the profits will be donated to Safer DIY Spaces, an Oakland-based coalition offering guidance, financial assistance, and labor to non-traditional creative community spaces.

Claus, Michael

Memory Protect

100% Silk

Bay Area beacon Michael Claus operates from an overtly Pacific perspective in his house and techno constructs, shaping fog and bass along shorelines of elusive rhythm. Though active since 2004 he’s only in the past few years begun issuing tracks under his own name to the public domain, the latest collection of which goes furthest in embedding amorphous acid and cloud-soft synths into introspective coastal jack. Memory Protect maps eight hazed designs sourced from three years of work, misting the difference between movement and meditation, atmosphere and anticipation. Past collabs with Nackt hinted at a subtle touch for hypnosis and heightened sensory environment but here Claus captures his essence in its freest, most fluid state. Bodies of water, oceans of memory – what collects, continues. Recorded in San Francisco, 2014-2017. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Inner Self

O.E. Outside Experience

100% Silk

New York producer Andrew Stefano’s freshest guise reflects the different headspace he was seeking last fall, shifting gears from his ongoing jungle fusion project, Trust Image. O.E. Outside Experience finds him flexing more muted and melancholic shades of broken beat, jazz techno, and high-stepping warehouse hybrids, inspired by notions of internalization and exploration – plus “a lot of Detroit shit.” The seven tracks traverse therapeutic contrasts of rhythm and reflection, solitude and celebration, crisp percussion offset with smeared synths, vaporous texture, and acidic bass. A decade of music making has honed Stefano’s instincts for motion, melody, and atmosphere, which he wields here with a distinct, dynamic touch. The Self speaks. Recorded at his home studio in Brooklyn on a mix of hardware and software in late 2016. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Deeper Kenz

S/t

100% Silk

Wayfaring American producer / DJ Deeper Kenz named his project in homage to the “cinematically intense” Northeast Philly hood where he resided intermittently for nearly eight years. Surrounded by dive bars and decrepit lots, he turned inward and crafted a set of recordings “designed as tools to light up a small but intimate community of dancers and lovers.” The A side skews lean and linear, crisp percussion laced with shaded bass and violet textures, while the flip goes more mirror ball delirium, sweat and heat and disco samples “chained up and grooving to the unceasing rhythms of the big city machine.” Indulge, internalize; motion is meaning. Recorded in Kensington, Philadelphia, 2013-2016. Illustrations by Mariah Welch. Mastered by John Flynn at Balance Mastering, UK and Eric Hanson at Maven Mastering, Los Angeles.

Åmnfx

Moscow Beat

100% Silk

Russian producer Vasily Skobeev’s recording alias, Åmnfx – an abbreviation of the phrase “amen to FX” – alludes to the transformative power of multi-effects on devotional music. His own tracks convincingly demonstrate this principle, routing piano, drum machines, samples, soft synths, and field recordings through a selection of pedals and amplifiers to condense and color the sound, adding grit, grain, space, and shadow. Moscow Beat ranges from moody memory house (“Forget,” “In The Café”) to wintry minimal tech-dub (“Build A Home,” “Strictly Dub”) to wavy rhythm deliriums (“Wayback,” “Moscow Beat”), all sourced from recent insomniac workshop sessions: “Most of the good ideas come around 4-7 in the morning, when you’re tired as a dog.” Previous offerings on Opal Tapes, Neo Violence, and Dirty Tapes impressed but these eight FX-flexed cuts trace a fuller portrait of an artist at the threshold. Cover image by Sasha Popov. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

V/a

Sensate Silk

100% Silk

To commemorate the label’s catalog centennial 100% Silk spread its threads coast to coast and station to station for 11 faded blazers and future classics from a fresh cast of characters spanning Okayama to Berlin, England to Echo Park, Boston to British Columbia. Despite such distances the rhythms run parallel: lithe, low-lit, lush, and lost in sense memory. Sensate Silk swirls 75 minutes of smeared neon house, glitter decadence, skyscraper shuffle, flatliner acid, lovesick loops, mutant pulse, rave reverie, and tactile electronics into an expansive voyage of motion, mood, and meaning. Roster includes: Keita Sano, Cromie, Sage Caswell, Inoue Shirabe, Jack Novin, Donny, Badia, PARC, Helios Mode, Nackt, Westcoast Goddess. Defend the dream; feel the feeling. Mastered by Alex Nagle.

Kaazi

Zen Travel

100% Silk

Emergent New York City producer Kaazi conceives of his woozy rhythm experiments in lofty terms – utopian extensions of self, alternate windows of perception, “something to move beyond the static,” etc. – but their mesmeric and transportive properties need little explanation. Zen Travel voyages through nine winding, textured terrains of breathy acid funk, foggy jungle dub, and violet vaporous house, inspired by youthful trips to Tokyo and the adventurous synthetic fusion of Hiroshi Yoshimura and Yasuaki Shimizu. Recorded in the summer and fall of 2015 using a Bass Station, Prophet 600, and minimal palette of FX, the tracks were born from long-form improvisational sessions, then later edited for brevity and essence. The titles gesture at the mood and motion of each microcosm – “Air,” “Tropics,” “Skate,” “Street,” “Cruise” – but taken as a collection Kaazi conjures a sense of expanse, altitudes, flux, and feeling, where the dance floor and the devotional dissolve as one. Mastered by Rioux. Artwork by David McLeod.

Bludwork

Nightmare

100% Silk

Debut public collection of smooth and sorrowful rhythm glides by Long Beach student / soul enthusiast Bludwork feels equal parts loose and lost, vibe-y and vulnerable. Nightmare traces six subtle shades of sunset melancholia through sculpted improvisations of intuitive inner space house, inspired by gospel, southern rap, and rejection. Since starting the project his final year of high school Turner has honed his hardware configuration and emotional palette, arriving at a sensual fusion of midnight melody, muted bass, slippery percussion, bold samples, and spare design, ideal for solitude or celebration. For music so rich and reflective it’s apt he credits family as formative, particularly the “beautiful chords that warm my heart from soul and gospel records my dad used to play when I was young.” New dancefloor nostalgias for the Now by a distinct coastal talent. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Akasha System

Vague Response

100% Silk

Proper extended-play collection of clouded quartz electronics and hushed house designs by pensive Portland producer Hunter P. Thompson aka Akasha System following a pair of promising prior tapes – Sea Glass (self-released) and Twin Optics (issued through his own Cloudbank imprint earlier this year). Vague Response finds him in peak form, leanly tracing muted melodies with fog, bass, glass, rhythm, and reverb. There’s a touch of the current Pacific Northwest scene to these pieces, heavy on vibe, texture, and space, but Thompson cites a 2015 trip with an ex to the temples of Mt. Koya near Osaka as his central inspiration: “These songs helped me close the door on a chapter of my life while opening another into the future.” Compelling portals of shaded motion and dancefloor introspection cut from the dreamer’s cloth. Mastered by Joel Shanahan.

Foans

Frontier

100% Silk

The latest slate of rarified Rocky Mountain nocturnal house moods by sharpening craftsman Andrew Dahabrah distills his production instincts to their starkest, most sensual essence. Tight, tense rhythms intertwine with sinuous bass lines overcast by fluttering software gauze and dizzy sequencer patterns, evoking thin air, cold roads, icy peaks, oxygen deprivation. Since 2013 the FOANS discography has deepened at a steady clip, morphing through pixelated ambience, trip-hop abstraction, and bedroom techno – capped by last year’s Schema cassette for austere Danish electronics imprint Speaker Footage – but Frontier synthesizes the project’s strengths in a uniquely persuasive manner: lush, strung out, blissed out, bleary. Dahabrah paints the picture succinctly: “These tracks were made late at night.” Fluid city hazes in high altitudes by a deepening talent.  Mastered by Alex Nagle.

Ludzha, Buz

Basslines For Life

100% Silk

Buz Ludzha belongs to the “tape throb” lineage Andrew Morrison more prominently pioneers as The Cyclist, but filtered through an even more blasted, resinous speaker cone. Last year’s debut single on All City, Love Repetitive Rhythmics (aptly named, btw), traced the template but his newest EP, Basslines For Life, delivers on its title, going harder and stretching further into his unique splinter mode of wrecked EQ’s: grainy drum machinery, gain-streaked synths, decayed soul samples, motorik dancefloor manoeuvres in the dark. All four tracks are mixed hot and humid, swarming cassette textures churning over conveyor belts of blown-out bass, warehouse rhythm, and salvaged voice, through seas of strangers towards speakers you feel as much as hear. Communion demands desire; believe or be leaving. Black vinyl 12 inches with center labels designed by John Michael. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

Pleasure Model

Kendo Dynamics

100% Silk

Bristol giallo disco meta-morphist Antoni Maiovvi flexes a fresh facet of his production arsenal as Pleasure Model, mapping leaner schematics of vintage cybernetic dread through stark drum machinery and cold fluorescent synthwork. Kendo Dynamics is his debut under this divergent replicant guise; it presents a persuasive world of fiber optic paranoia and technoid effacement. The album’s eight tracks trace various nuanced parallels of brooding arpeggiator jack (“Calmstone On Sea,” “Bealichtbach”), voidist new wave (“Mounnrocc,” “Dreams Of Crystal”), and blasted sci-fi body music (“Eat Itself,” “Abandonment Issues”), coaxing a mood of melancholic circuitry and souls on the brink. Data is DNA; every self, a subdivision. Slit the skin and count the pixels. One of Maiovvi’s finest futurist hours. Recorded at Mantueffelstr, Berlin, in Fall 2015.

Potions

Pushing The Cuboid

100% Silk

Eight new nubby acid permutations by Chicago’s premiere liquid electric projectionist, Potions. Sourced from a set-list of 2015 live staples, Pushing The Cuboid expands Tom Owens’ melting microchip fusion to include a more warped spectrum of bubbling concoctions. Recorded to a Tascam 4-track and digitally mixed with limited overdubs, the album oil-spills an array of fantastical wavelengths: moonbase monorail cruise (“Heel Lift,” “Space Mountain”), rubbery sarcasmic jazz (“Goof Forward,” starring Rob Frye of Bitchin’ Bajas on mult-tracked horns), outer rings cosmos shuffle (“Cool Ride”), cyber warehouse lurch (“Detroit Heart Strings”), etc. As always with Potions, there are no solid states, only alchemic flux – dissolving textures, rhythmic wobble, heavy phasing, cuboids pushed through unstable grids. In addition to Frye (whose flute and bass clarinet color the entire B Side), PTC also shows influence from Owens’ visual collaborator, Jillian Musielak, who projects mutating textural environments during performances. Speaking of: a string of spring dates throughout the heartland and west coast have been mapped to occasion the new release – catch his liquidity live if geographies allow.

Clarke, Hubert Jr

Al Dente

100% Silk

Impressionistic dub-house devotee Hubert Clark Jr. fluctuates through several deviations of Sydney afterhours circuit specialties on his debut, Al Dente. Alternately wired and unwound, classic and contempo, vibed soul and lean house, the EP threads soft-focus funk into longform live voyages, naturalist emotion, dance as relaxed delirium. The vocal samples (“I’m not into this to be traveling around the world / I’m not into this to impress anybody”) evoke a mood of reflective idealism, spirits undiminished, hope in spite of it all. Dusted with memories and reveries of Heavenly, Picnic, and Mad Racket parties, hallucinated Omar-S demos, newer Sex Tags sides, and various nations under a groove, HJC’s 4 originals (plus a remix by Adelaide vibe squad MBM) feel like a beginning, a submerged energy swelling to the surface. Lean back, ride the rise. Black vinyl 12 inches in stickered sleeves designed by Peta Farago with smiley meatball illustrations by John-Henry Pajak and Geordie Cargill. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

Booth, James

Human Rites

100% Silk

Mancunian producer James Booth holed up in various Hulme flats and half-studios with nothing but an old iMac to craft the six lushly overcast house designs comprising his vinyl debut, Human Rites. And, as is sometimes the case, the limitations were liberating: “With all of my gear in storage I downloaded a couple of plugins and tried to breath some life into them… with none of my old dusty buttons and keys I ended up focusing more deeply on the melodies and sound of each instrument.” Building on the misty-lensed techniques of his 2013 SILK cassette, Reunion, Booth’s new set of tracks feel even more nuanced and rain-streaked, streetlights dissolving through night bus windows, suburbs and moors glowing grey in the motorway’s false dawn. Structurally these songs swirl more than peak – synth lines spiral woozily, rhythms flex and fade, emotions come in and out of focus. He sees it similarly, describing Rites as “music for processes and passages; time elapses and we change.” Personal music for an impersonal world. 33 RPM black vinyl 12 inches in SILK label jackets designed by Roland Tings. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

Cherushii

Far Away So Close

100% Silk

San Fran rave loyalist Chelsea Faith aka Cherushii centered her 2nd EP around its title track, which feels like some Balearic brunch dream-jam floating in the ether off the pier of a Mediterranean isle – swooping coastlines, seagulls, liquid sky sax (courtesy of jazz multi-instrumentalist Marcia Miget), sex surfer acid. Loop it and lose yourself. The record’s other three cuts stake her map across varied terrains, from psychedelic catwalks (“Set You Free”) to sensual moonlight (“Nightsteps”) to peak hour DJ booths (“Sweet Spot”). Far Away So Close finds Faith at her freest and most focused, glitter in her eyes and the dancefloor in her fingers. Music for bodies in motion, no matter the ocean. In SILK label sleeves designed by Spencer Longo. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

Mr. Bronson

Trans Pacific

100% Silk

Melbourne hardware flatliner Mr. Bronson (aka Andrew Broughton) strips tracks back to their strobing skeletons, lean sequences of poly-synth and 707, a spiraling infinity window across Oceania. Motion does not equal movement; Pacific vertigo is its own reward. The eight woozy waveforms of Trans Pacific traverse overlapping strands of tranced acid, throbbing bass, and minimal synthesizer design, alternately stealthy and slogged, a low-slung speedboat in the dusk approaching Ball’s Pyramid. Previous limited lathes on his Bad Party imprint have explored similarly endless grids but the cuts collected here cruise the furthest into Mr. Bronson selfhood ritual, raw constructs of mantric pulse and drum machinery, gear in flight. Mastered by Alter Echo.

Nackt

Virex

100% Silk

A decade-plus duration of Bay Area electronic community building has distilled Johnny Igaz’s production alias Nackt down to its rubbery, resinous essence. Virex captures the project in its purest state: all live, all hardware, traced in curvilinear acid. The collection flows from fog machine night-stalk (“Full Coat,” “Ford”) to grooved mothership jack (“Black Widow,” “Trash Brothers”) to 303 soul ("Husk"), cut with verve and variance. Outpost party co-founder CM-4 shares much of the writing and production credit, frequently joining Nackt for live hardware PA performances. A squad of other SF house associates – Michael Claus (Outpost), Jason Key (Rotation), Doc Sleep (Jacktone) – cameo with drum patterns, 303 design, and additional production duties. Both alone and in collaboration Nackt conjures a riveting chemistry: lean, liquid, mechanized, and mesmerizing. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Roche

Dawn Of The Next Cycle

100% Silk

Ben Winans’ work as Roche resists niches and deadzones, threading through various outer rings of electronic trance, proto-techno, and unnamed house. His latest logbook of tracks, Dawn Of The Next Cycle, spirals as deep as ever into red-eyed trips of pulsing, gaseous patterns, electric body music reflections on “a world at war, a world that is falling apart, or perhaps reforming.” Shades of tribal jack, slap bass, submerged disco, cyber club, and programmer haze interweave and evaporate; nebulous melodies swell and dissolve; cycles dawn and die. Adapt or collapse – both man and machine. Even more than on previous releases, here Winans wields an innerspace touch, sinuous and circular, heavy-lidded like a horizon line. It’s always darkest before the Dawn. Recorded in San Francisco, California and mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Auscultation

L'étreinte Imaginaire

100% Silk

Auscultation is Madisonian-gone-Oregonian musician Joel Shanahan’s outlet for slinkier, more subliminal productions, as inaugurated on last year’s sprawling self-titled debut for 1080p Collection. His sophomore set, L’étreinte Imaginaire (which translates generally as imaginary embrace), was recorded off and on across France and Wisconsin throughout the last year, during and between various regional tours. The album’s seven selections swerve through jazzy, sunflared house (“Black Window,” “Composure Fuzz”), glimmering rhythm (“Stranded Love”), and misted, moody electronics (“Drop Off,” “Lost You In The Fog”). As with Shanahan’s work via Golden Donna and elsewhere, structures spiral and slide, textures phase in and out of focus, and a mood of heavy longing hovers in the headphones. Even so, the sense of focus and craft-sharpening here is unambiguous; these pieces are among his most plasmatic, pensive, and aerodynamic. Slow growth on a shadowed vine. The embrace may be imaginary but the touch feels real. Mastered by Alter Echo.

Cherushii

Memory Of Water

100% Silk

Released in advance of her Far Away So Close EP – although recorded almost a year later – Memory Of Water pools together eight dazed Cherushii excursions through sci-fi opera house, digital dolpin-scapes, cloud city slow-dives, ultraviolet synth-wave, and ambient Koi ponds. This is distinctly her least DJ-dedicated collection to date, exploring sprawls and spirals and planetarium modes not intended for dancefloor consumption, although ex-tour sister Ms. Maria Minerva does cameo on “Thin Line,” a prize pearl of Estonian discotheque-pop about “trembling on a tightrope caught between sweet seduction and mass destruction.” But overall these tracks reveal Cherushii's introspective side, vibing rich veins from new wiring schemes, chilled champagne, and Mission District memories. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.

Paradise 100

Northern Seoul

100% Silk

Brussels-based rhythm nationalist Graham Peel aka Paradise 100 returns to the recorded realm after 20-plus months off the grid with a four track EP of “micro fugues” designed to evoke a sense of “hazy ecstatic awe.” That’s one way of putting it. Like his last SILK outing, 2013’s The Loin King, Peel’s pieces pulse with tactical patience, carefully Jenga-piling synths, drum programming, and samples (voice, xylophone, etc) into fluid, curvilinear forms spiked with off-sync hooks, stark breakdowns, and filtered acid bass. Northern Seoul spans a quadrant of moods, from sunblind jack to dusk terrace to shattered glass piña colada, “when we wander around a foreign place for the first time.” Second time’s a charm, apparently. Subtle Seoul-searching by a craftsman out of the lights and off on his own. Pro-dubbed tapes in label J-cards. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

V/a

Sunset Silk

100% Silk

Five years flies by in a flash, but feels like an eon. Sunset Silk reflects on the label’s half-decade dim glow in the distance of dance with new tracks and remixes by Prison Garde, Jupiter Jax, James Booth, C.L.A.W.S., Cruise Family (a vintage unreleased 11-minute recording), Strategy, Sapphire Slows, Afterhours, Roche and his brother CB Radio, as well both Bobbys: Draino and Browser. Though the rhythms come far-flung – Montreal, Malta, Vienna, beyond – the approaches feel unified, faded, fogged, and heavily felt. Woozy coastal house, MIDI new wave, cosmic techno, Oakland dark jack, ripper acid, vapor grooves – the forms fluctuate across 60 minutes of shapeshifting SILK. Body music for the arc of sinking suns. Mastered in Portland, Oregon by Alter Echo.

Jupiter Jax

Visions

100% Silk

Two years ago Maltese musician Rudi Agius aka Jupiter Jax was in London, finishing a PHD in computational biology, awake late and usually alone, when Visions emerged: “My life was literally getting back from the lab, and spending the night (usually till 4-5 AM) making some music… the gloom is something that I love.” Many nights bled into dawn while designing presets for his synths – “sounds that give me feeling” – from which bass lines, beats, and the exploration of “further territory” flowed forth: quartz-clouded, questing house (“Armed For Peace,” “Soul Searching”), foggy breakbeat (“The Deepest”), tranced technoid (“Beyond The Walls”), plus glimmering, ghosted-vocal guest spots by Merwyn Virgo Four, Xosar, and Mykle Anthony. Across eight hazed vistas, Visions never wanes: “Jupiter Jax is about ethereal music.” Deep planetary Italo disco moods dissolved through overcast city voids, haunted by the heartbeat of melancholic early Chicago jack. See beyond the walls. Grid-mapped cloudscape cover art by the artist. Mastered by Alex Nagle.

Bobby Browser

Clubspinning

100% Silk

Bobby Browser’s human counterpart, Andre Ferreira, decamped to Brooklyn last year after nearly a decade in San Francisco but his Pacific moods and Portuguese slang remain undiminished. Clubspinning is his latest EP, culled from a series of 2013 sessions based around a Yamaha SU700 Sampling Unit, the tracks “selected to represent the most unique and memorable performances during that time.” Mission accomplished: “Clubspinning” and “No Attachments” are rich glitterball glides, soft-lensed and silk-spun; “Manchester” a baffling bass-prowler dubbed with synthetic flute and Factory samples; and “Go 90” is a complete soul-in-the-rain ghost comedown, misted in piano, voice, and percussion, empty house for blue lights. That pieces this sculpted came mainly via hardware intuition is beyond impressive – limitations turned hyperfocus. This is Browser at his best, strobing but smooth, four gems of weirdly elegant smiley face minimalism. Mixed by Matthew Patterson Curry at Transmitter Park Studios in Greenpoint, BK. Mastered by Eric Hanson at Maven in Los Angeles. Center label artwork by SF club cat Primo Pitino.

Jupiter Jax

Visitors

100% Silk

Companion collection of eight songs sourced from the Visions sessions, offering a parallel cutaway of Jupiter Jax’s crucial, vaporous house. Soft-edged synth-lines sink through thick snakes of bass, freejacked by ice-dusted drum machinations. As elsewhere, a mood of mirage hangs heavy in these pieces – beats lead in circles, acid spirals, shapes waver. Melodies mediate between cloaked glare (“Knowing You,” “Sequential”) and neuromancer strut (“Basic Rhythms,” “That’s The Way,”), the dance blueprints grainy but glowing. The 4 AM context is clear; the tide of life ebbs back and things reveal themselves. “Until I Can Feel Again” closes this chapter of the Jax reliquary, echoing the promise through corridor-reverbed rhythm, a vanishing point bassline, and chorused chemtrails of keys, stripping the ring around his planet to its starkest silhouette. Wave one last time through the hatch window. Mastered by Alex Nagle.

Body-San

Corporate Interiors

100% Silk

Shopping mall lobby vapors waft heavy in the strutting fluorescent house of Kansas City producer Brandon Knocke aka Body-San's latest collection, Corporate Interiors. The album's 8 tracks share a waterfall window display endlessness, fluttering rhythms and escalator synths chilled with air-conditioned muzak and ambient space. Dance music for posh changing rooms and DVD seminars – utopian, sensual, blanked out. Recorded in the afterglow of relocating to a new "light-drenched Florida Room"/studio in Hospital Hill, KC, MO, these pieces feel uplifted and empowered by positive motion, preferred parking, and plastic plants; the seams of experience gleam. Fantasy-funk urban planning from a musician/mastermind with the liquid crystal touch. Mastered by Alter Echo in Portland, Oregon.

Cosby

Mirror Box

100% Silk

East Coast audio curator Will Creason’s recording alias inevitably exudes a darker resonance in light of recent events, but coincidentally so does his latest sheaf of Cosby cuts, Mirror Box. Inspired by an amalgam of “real and imagined locations” ranging from the Strip District to Surfers Paradise, the album’s six songs stalk starker and steelier circuits than his previous work, from the glassy, paranoid dub of “Mirror Box” to the hollow powder rush of “Gold Coast” to the twitchy trio of bleakly jacking EBM B Side tracks. Each piece is a spiraling ice-slide further inside its own event horizon, cyclical and relentless. Play loud and long after the sun goes down. Mastered by Alter Echo.

Policy

The Republic

100% Silk

Last summer Francis Hsueh (aka Policy) revisited his childhood neighborhood in Taipei, where his parents settled briefly after fleeing China when the communists seized power in 1949. Despite its legacy of displacement and diaspora, he felt a communion by riding the city’s MRT train through hazily remembered suburbs and landscapes: “The sounds of urban life, of people going someplace, made sense no matter who or where I was.” This “steady thump of movement” led to the creation of The Republic, an essentially unbroken 50-minute piece of music, with each section named after stations along Taipei’s subway. Opening with the airy chords of “Shipai,” the album curves through expanses of phased percussion, melancholic organ (“Jiantan”), post-punk basslines, cryptic voice samples (“NTU Hospital”), street ambience, syncopated bells (“Daan Park”), and beyond. But the rhythm never brakes, riding the rails through and past each new cosmopolitan borough, structures ghosting away in the dusk. A uniquely captivating sight-see of sinuous, autobiographical house. Mastered by Alter Echo.

Potions

Phased

100% Silk

Chicago’s Potions (aka Tom Owens) oozes a suitably liquid sub-species of electronic rhythm miasma, which he’s been bottling on boutique cassette reels since 2011, exploring various vibes and viscosities. Phased collects seven of his latest and most luxuriantly languid lava lamp concoctions for what, to our ears, may be his supreme setlist to date. Recorded primarily using “MIDI technology of decades past” (not for nothing was his debut LP called MIDI Jazz Bass), the album slips and slides through jittery cyborg jazz, disjointed lounge-fusion, siphoned acid, and dubby, dissolved house, a bubbling beaker of fluid synthetic textures. The off-kilter percussion programming gives each piece a pleasingly unstable voltage, skewing the equilibrium in whooshes of phaser and stereo rainstick. Fellow ambient sculptress Laura Jane Friedman guests with some gorgeously reflective multi-tracked vox on “Glass Lake,” but otherwise this is an instrumental affair. Mastered by Alter Echo.

Vertical67

Aura

100% Silk

Berlin sequencer Thomas Pahl aka Vertical67 pitches his latest sheaf of sim city nostalgia acid away from the lovers lanes of his last SILK sides, Soulmates, towards a new nocturnal dome. Faded neon, concave rubber basslines, fluorescent synths, and Roland rhythm patterns interweave across expanses of spheric interior space – an Aura pervades. The EP’s 5 pieces patrol different perimeters, evoking various shades of windswept, moon-burned, ecstatic, restless states of mind. Pahl’s interests in electronic textures spill over into his ambient work as The Coloured Chaos, a fixation with fluidity, weightlessness, lasers fluttering between microchips, an android’s haunted thoughts. Interface and inter-place. Features a remix of zero gravity poolside theme “Invisible Presence” by Octo Octa. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

Luca Lozano

Isolation Distorts

100% Silk

Berlin-based label impresario and shapeshifting selector Luca Lozano has sounded a lot of ways over his seven odd 12 inches (for his own Klasse Recordings, plus Optimo, Morris/Audio, etc), but Isolation Distorts spawns from the sensation of solitude warping reality, and the results may be his most skewed and striking to date. Wheezing sci-fi samples ebb into martian techno expanses; quiet organ melodies lilt under lunar acid; dead-end synth-pop burrows into creeped craters of dust. Lozano's pacing emphasis patience, loops and melodies hung across long alien canyons, pivoting from one tranced conspiracy passage to another. The collection pivots positive toward the end, planetary shadow receding to a jazzed breakbeat solar sunrise ("Lifting Forward"), which eventually turns bold moon acid boogie ("The Fox"). Overall, an oxygen-drunk six-pack of general utility space station house music by a man with a plan. Mastered by Josh "Alter Echo" Derry. Edition of 100.

Lunate

Far Shores

100% Silk

Bogota believer Manuel Cortes conjures a specifically spare schematic of autobiographical street house. Jams emerge from visions and lived insights into lean rhythm assemblages bouncing through zones of bass, acid, ballroom, warrior funk, tripped-hop: Lunate. Like the narcotic medication his alias echoes, Far Shores shivers with a blurry pulse through wavering doses of nocturnal lament. "The Liminal," "Cold City," "Molt" – identities unravel in the numbing metropolis, chiming keys flashing like digital clocks in glass mansions. His vacancies are deep; "Pawn Shop Romance" sparkles on a cheap streetcorner runway groove but is about "people who make choices where they sell out true happiness for comfort and wealth." Across 8 tracks Lunate leaves a loose-limbed trail of late nite truths and dancefloor introspections, molting into new percussion-and-sample symbioses. Recorded in Turkey, Colombia, and beyond across the last year, and mastered by Alter Echo. Edition of 100.