Boomkat Editions

Fell, Mark

Intra

Boomkat Editions

Mark Fell returns with an incredible album of rhythmelodic cadences performed with Drumming Grupo De Percussão on the Sixxen metallophone system: a set of six microtonally tuned instruments originally conceived by Iannis Xenakis in 1976.  The eight-part Intra stands out as one of Fell's most immediate and unusual releases; high in concept but also satisfying an obsession for complex polyrhythms as explored and developed by the likes of Beatrice Dillon, Don't DJ, and further out to augmented realities rendered by Kara-Lis Coverdale, Kassem Mosse and even Jlin.  Making use of a kind of conceptual future-primitivism, Fell probes the perceptive difference between ideas of simplicity and complexity by sending instructions to acoustic drummers via electronic triggers relayed through headphones, an idea he first explored on the Time and Space Shapes for Gamelan installation made in collaboration with Laurie Spiegel.  His ongoing interests in the classical Indian "Carnatic" music systems also play a big part here; its mathematical sound rules or Tala, have 35 possible combinations - many more than the usual Western structures of minor and major scales. It's this structure that imbues these recordings with such complex, propulsive and oddly pensive energies.  Concept aside, Intra is a beautiful piece of sound art which sidesteps convention and perceptions of music in a way that’s highly pleasurable, even strangely soothing in its stilted trickle of off kilter tones, revealing successive dimensions with each repeated listen.

Coverdale, Kara-Lis

Grafts

Boomkat Editions

A sublime and quietly hypnotic work belied by steadfast conceptual rigour, Grafts is the most ambitious and involving work yet from Kara-Lis Coverdale, her first since 2015.  In three parts of cascading yet plaintive multi-instrumental gestures, Grafts expands on the processing and self-temperement techniques explored on 2014’s A 480 into a more encompassing palette. Uncompromisingly distinct while redolent of modal minimalism, 70s, new age, and folk music, Grafts effectively blurs distinctions between traditional composition and more open, overlapping genres that hover in the half-light between acoustic and electronic refinement.  Rather than anything grandiose or explicitly seductive, the effect of Grafts is best compared with the subtle intoxication of micro-dosing on LSD or the clarity afforded by quiet meditation, in a sense dilating the listener’s focus to a heightened awareness of the piece’s intricate peripheral tones as much as its melodic centre ground, with a beautifully understated, surreal resolution. The piece flickers with gentle optimism, never at random, illuminating unseen spaces that quickly gradient into nothingness.  In both concept and execution, Grafts firmly resonates with Kara-Lis Coverdale’s deeply established roots as an improvisational virtuoso and accomplished pianist as much as her academically informed approach to electroacoustic composition that showcases a distinct omnivorous appetite for the digital. But it’s an emotional generosity that proves to be its defining, most intangible characteristic. Never fully coming to a resolution. Lingering on like a slowly dispersing plume of smoke.

DJ Marfox

Revolução 2005 - 2008

Boomkat Editions

We’re totally buzzed to present DJ Marfox’s febrile retrospective Revolução 2005 - 2008 via the Boomkat Editions series.   Both a necessary document of Marlon Silva’s early years and a crucial survey of Angolan kuduro’s formative phase and mutation in the clubs of Lisbon, the set collects nine cuts of contagious Afro-Portuguese dance music which maps strong parallels to the UK’s own transition and flux between grime and UKF, whilst also demonstrating why Marfox is now regarded as the main ambassador and catalyst for Lisbon’s colourfully influential and world-renowned style.  Taking his name from Nintendo’s Starfox character (and establishing a trend for the -fox suffix so prevalent in kuduro and tarraxhina) DJ Marfox was instrumental in shaping one of today’s most vital dance scenes with a number of productions from his 17 year old self cropping up on ear-opening compilations such as the foundational DJs Do Guetto Vol.1 in 2006, and later on the Bazzerk - African Digital Dance Music set which turned a lot of DJs and dancers onto this sound.  He’s subsequently released the first record on kuduro’s best alibi, Príncipe, and followed Visionist and DJ Rashad to release on J-Cush’s Lit City Trax, and has also appeared alongside his Lisbon crew on the Cargaa compilations for Warp Records.  However, this set returns to his wildest early years; from the hyper disco-techno drive of Funk em Kuduro or the galloping darkwave-riding horsepower of Un Bes Bai from 2006; thru the killer jump-up downstroke of...

Senni, Lorenzo

Superimpositions

Boomkat Editions

**Stunning new album from Milanese accelerationist Lorenzo Senni. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi** We're more than a bit gassed to pop the cork on Lorenzo Senni's thrilling, incisive new LP, the 10th release for Boomkat Editions. The conceptual sibling to his blinding 'Quantum Jelly' side for Editions Mego in 2012, 'Superimpositions' finds the Milan-based multi-disciplinary artist and owner of the brilliant Presto!? Records accelerating and evolving his idea of "Pointillistic Trance" - an ascetic, extreme approach to the aesthetics of '90s-style trance/hard-trance - in a broader range of song structures, hyper-lucid moiré patterns, and tantric dancefloor arrangements. Again, he "plays" a computer-controlled JP8000 Roland Digital-Analog Modelled S-Source Synthesiser to juice the most potent, searing saw wave arpeggios and spiralling melodies, finding the biting point between real-time, hands-on, emotive human input, and the sleek tension of synthesis. From the serotonin-flooding rush of opener 'Happic' to the beautiful come down of 'PointillistiC', the album plays out a sisyphean struggle for deferred gratification, challenging limbic systems and our sense of equilibrioception thru the spine-tingling aerobic coefficients of 'Elegant, And Never Tiring' and the scything, strobing rhythmelody of the title track, to peak with the palpitating surge of 'Forever Headline' at its white hot core. It's all more effective than a triple-barelled mitsi in the jacksy, and hasn't been off our turntable all summer...