DDS

Collin, Jon & Demdike Stare

Sketches Of Everything

DDS

“Ostensibly Demdike Stare's first proper full-length collaboration, 'Sketches Of Everything' weaves dark moorland ambient blues into guitarist Jon Collin’s windswept Americana. It's a highly evocative swing between porchside strums, sludge doom and weathered dub noise somewhere between Bruce Langhorne’s soundtrack for ‘The Hired Hand’, Neil Young's 'Dead Man', Loren Mazzacane Connors at his most swoonsome and a screwed Prince Jazzbo - proper stoner vistas. Technically Demdike Stare’s first official collaboration, ‘Sketches Of Everything’ was recorded between Stockholm and Manchester and finds Miles Whittaker & Sean Canty inspired to create some of the most quietly expressive scapes of their career, feeding into Jon Collin's strung-out vibe with a mix of layered and smudged backdrops that usher us through ravines of feedback and unexpected midnight hallucinations. Across two long, elliptical sides the results draw spectral parallels between the Pennine moors and ruined industry of Demdike’s native Lancashire, and the kind of moody Western Americana best described in ‘The Hired Hand’. Collin acts as lead protagonist with a lyrical form of guitar that sometimes takes the lead, and at others fades into mystic swirl, rendering naked strums into vapours redolent of Loren Mazzacane Connors or the loner Norwegian blues of Terje Rypdal.  In a sense it’s an album that applies dub mixing techniques to aesthetically dissonant source material, a sort of stream of consciousness flowing into the murkiest, most beautifully low lit interiors.”—Boomkat

Atobe, Shinichi

Yes

DDS

“Shinichi Atobe’s fifth album for DDS, his first in two years. Deep and sublime, the classic Chain Reaction < > Chicago House vibe, but this time with a swarming Drexciyan undercurrent, somewhere between DJ Sprinkles, Dopplereffekt and The Other People Place, and yet still 100% Shinichi.  It’s odd working with an artist without ongoing dialogue; no context or an exchange of ideas. It’s all conjecture. Here's another CD of material in the post from Shinichi, two years more or less since the last one. No words except for the track titles. Oh, a photo this time. ‘Yes’, positivity, hope. But the album starts with a dystopian vision; something like Dopplereffekt’s sound-chemistry experiments, a tense builder. Big optimistic chasms open up, the Piano House euphoria of the title track, beautiful sunset closer 'Ocean 1’. But there’s a noticeable change too. 'Lake 2’ is more fraught sci-fi, 'Lake 3’ a sort of percussive Chain Reaction monster, 'Loop 1’, on a Drexciyan tip.  It’s all coated in that weird - some people say infuriating - toppy production, witnessed this time in a more tempered and different formation courtesy of an amazing Rashad Becker master, all precise but loosely swung arrangements. Everything slow to unfurl but, also, everything in exactly the right place.”—Boomkat

Madteo

Dropped Out Sunshine

DDS

“Dropped Out Sunshine’ is Madteo’s debut album of trigger-happy club graffiti for Demdike Stare’s DDS label, weighing in a keenly anticipated follow-up to 2012’s cult-classic ‘Noi No’ LP for Sähkö with a freestyle jack of mutant house, scorched rap, ragga-tekno-steppers, and poignant shoegaze ambient. For our money, it's a straight-up masterpiece of loose-limbed club gear, especially recommended if yr into Andy Stott, Joy O, Mica Levi, Moodymann...!!!  Spiked with deviant funk and irrepressible attitude, Madteo’s first LP in 7 years forms a fractal, mixtape-like mosaic of asymmetric techno informed by skewed traces of rap, R&B and dancehall. Its 12 tracks are delivered in an enviably nonchalant, freehand style that’s become the Italian-American artist’s ear-snagging signature since 2012’s ‘Noi No’ and ‘Mad Dip Revue’ albums, and also a dozen 12”s and mixtapes over the interim; all of which exerted heavy inspiration for everyone from Andy Stott and Joy O to Demdike Stare over the past decade, making this new LP a perfectly unusual fit for the anything-goes DDS aesthetic shared by label alumni including Mica Levi, Equiknoxx, Iueke and Shinichi Atobe.  Crammed with sawn-off edits that never lose the thread, its wild and effortlessly inventive turns of phrase are anathema to linear club music convention, generating fizzing alchemy from mutually exclusive bedfellows such as dancehall and techno, or R&B and noise that could really only be executed by a producer of Madteo’s calibre. Yet for all its singular nature, the album is also patently symptomatic of the times, sub-consciously...

Atobe, Shinichi

Heat

DDS

“Unexpected new album from Shinichi Atobe - an hour of deeply inspirational House music for the ages that could have been produced 20 years ago, could have been produced earlier this year - we’ll probably never know. RIYL DJ Sprinkles, good times!  Heat is a surprise new double album from Shinichi Atobe for DDS. It follows on from last year’s “From The Heart, It’s A Start, A Work Of Art” set and continues a run of highly enigmatic, acclaimed and completely unparalleled productions that follow their own timeless logic. There’s no sonic fiction involved - this material really does just turn up on a CD sent by air mail from Japan to Manchester, sparse info, no messing, pure gold. What’s that cover art about? prob something to do with the balmy, slightly fuucked, sunstroked material within. So Good, So Right, the 10 minute opener, will force you to forget about all the shite around you for a while. There are also several tracks called Heat; they’re all killer. This music takes you elsewhere almost immediately; that fan on your desk is basically a summer breeze. In fact, this whole album is absurd; completely effortless; a total classic. Convince us that there’s a more life affirming electronic album this year and we’ll buy you an ice cream….”—Boomkat

Conjoint

Earprints

DDS

“After a slew of acclaimed releases by Equiknoxx, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Shinichi Atobe and Mica Levi in 2017, Demdike Stare’s DDS start 2018 in typically unexpected style with a remastered reissue of the little known second album from Move D’s Conjoint ensemble. Late night listeners ’n lovers of Miles Davis, Tortoise or Jan Jelinek’s neon Jazz minimalism will love this - in our eyes a total classic.  Conjoint was the little-known but hugely regarded ensemble founded by David Moufang two decades ago, featuring techno pioneer Jamie Hodge, Deep Space Network’s Jonas Grossmann, acclaimed jazz guitarist Gunter Ruit Kraus and, most intriguingly - Karl Berger (Jazz Pianist and Vibraphone player for Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and George Clinton to name but three).  Earprints was recorded in 2000 and followed their acclaimed self-titled debut album from 1996 (a record hailed by The Wire magazine as worthy of comparison to Miles Davis’ ‘In A Silent Way’) - and this time round the ensemble were accompanied by Andrew Pekler, Anna-Lena Fiedler, Burkhard Höfler, and Kai Kroker, among many others.  Together, they flesh out a full-frequency spectrum of instrumental and electronic timbres, precisely yet louchely coalescing a timeless and cool blue sound that is entirely respectful to its roots, yet dares to imagine them in an altered context. In that respect it’s an influential, memorable precursor to Jan Jelinek’s acclaimed Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records that was released the following year.  Democratic in its construction and flush with pregnant, contemplative space between and around...

Equiknoxx

Colón Man

DDS

Colón Man is the exceptional debut album proper by visionary Jamaican dancehall artists Gavin Blair (Gavsborg) and Jordan Chung (Time Cow) plus their extended crew, aka Equiknoxx - once again for Demdike Stare’s DDS label. Where their widely acclaimed Bird Sound Power primer compilation, issued on DDS in 2016, brought the rest of the world up to speed with the music produced between late ‘00s and 2015, their first album now brings a 2020 sound into sharp, technoid focus thru a baker’s dozen steely, heat-seeking riddims galvanised with clinical electronics and a Midas Touch approach to sampling.  The record’s title, Cólon Man refers to a Jamaican tale (and song) about a mysterious character, whom, like Marcus Garvey, was one of over 100,000 Jamaicans who returned from working in Cólon on completion of the Panama Canal - regarded among the greatest feats of engineering known to humankind, physically connecting the greatest bodies of water on the planet. In context of the album, Gavsborg and Timecow take the story as a metaphorical foundational for a roots and future sound, acknowledging the vital groundwork of previous generations of producers, whilst soundly contextualising their mutant new advancements of Jamaican Dancehall.  Recorded between December 2016 and June 2017, Colón Man forms a stark, stripped down and conceptually blinding record. In tone and texture, the duo favour far colder, more abstract sounds, crucially lit up with sparingly used samples that lend the record its dissonant, harmonic colour and bittersweet hooks, stylishly feeding forward their...

Mica Levi

Delete Beach

DDS

This is Mica’s first musical accompaniment for animation, once again using her signature palette of dissonant strings and combustible electronics that just completely get to us every time. She paints a series of sweeping backdrops to the film's blend of classically-schooled anime and up-to-the-second CGI designs in a way that we find it hard to imagine any other contemporary soundtrack producer could have managed - somewhere between Arthur Russell, John Carpenter and Johann Johannsson.  The film is set in a near future where carbon-based energy is outlawed and supposes a paradoxical scenario, one where fossil fuels - the ostensible accelerator of humanity’s progress and decline - become energy for the toil against state oppression and enforced inequality. In doing so, it resonates with anime’s strong tradition of exploring eco-feminist themes and power dynamics, both socio-political and technological.   The central Delete Beach theme, a diaphanous section of airborne synth-string contours and charred guitar distortion carved in pirouetting turns-of-phrase, appears in Japanese and English-narrated versions as well as an Instrumental mix. They are divided by the beat-driven Interlude 1 and interlude 2 - which is perhaps the standout piece on the whole score and possibly in Levi’s impeccable oeuvre generally - a mix of string slashes mixed with opiated chopped ’n screwed rhythms comparable to her breathtaking deconstructions with the London Sinfonietta.  After her work underlying and exploring complex characters in Jackie, a biopic of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and the alien-woman metaphors of Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin,...

Equiknoxx & Mark Ernestus

Mark Ernestus Remixes

DDS

Mark Ernestus dubs Equiknoxx to the moon and back for DDS with an irresistibly percolated take on Congo Get Slap backed with a jaw-dropping, Basic Channel style version of Flagged Up. We hardly need to stress that this one’s a doozy.  As a big fan of Equiknoxx’s teched-out take on up-to-the-second dancehall, it was perhaps inevitable that the venerable Ernestus, owner of Berlin’s Hardwax and one half of the legendary Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound, as well as his most recent work with the brilliant Ndagga Rhythm Force, would eventually cross paths with Jamaica’s Gavsborg and Time Cow, two of the most exciting producers to emerge from JA this decade.  On both remixes the past informs the present in timeless fashion. The cloud-bursting chords and spaghetti western-esque tropes of Equiknoxx’s Congo Get Slap are deftly diffused in the echo chamber, giving the bass an elasticated recoil and sublimating the chords to scudding, skywards dabs with weightless effect for the dancers.  Flipside, Ernestus takes that aspect one step further, distilling the kinetic dub futurism of Someone Flagged It Up!! into a maze of diaphanous dub chords and rolling, sunken subs that inarguably measures up among his strongest post-Basic Channel works.  Like Shackleton’s dub of The Stopper by Cutty Ranks for DDS, the results here triangulate deep-rooted connections between Jamaica, Lancashire and Berlin, speaking to a mutual respect and reverence of style and pattern which has heavily resonated from sub-tropical Kingston into much colder, European climes over...

Lowe, Robert Aiki Aubrey

Levitation Praxis Pt 4

DDS

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s incredible recordings with Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures are here documented on a beautiful new edition for Demdike Stare’s DDS imprint, coinciding with his appearance on the cover of this months issue of The Wire magazine.  Lowe is something of a polymath; having started out as part of Math Rock outfit 90 Day Men and doom metal trio Om, he progressed to forge his own solo work (often under the Lichens moniker), as well as a slew of collaborations including work with Johann Johannsson on scoring both Arrival and Sicario, an acclaimed album with Ariel Kalma for RVNG Intl’s FRKWYS series, plus involvement in site specific video art and sound installations. His most recent work has seen him release diverse music for Type, Latency, More Than Human and, of course DDS - who have here presented what might just be the most beautiful Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe artefact thus far.  in 2016 Lowe was commissioned by New York’s museum of Arts to contribute to a Harry Bertoia exhibition, which he undertook alongside video director Johann Rashid. He was asked to create sound recordings with Sonambient sculptures; metal rods and gongs that produce highly distinct, resonant sounds when struck, brushed or touched. Beginning in 1968, Bertoia set up an eighteenth-century stone barn on his property in Barto, Pennsylvania, to house these sculptures and from which he would go on to record works for his highly collectable Sonambient label, recently documented on Important Records' breathtaking box set...

Atobe, Shinichi

From The Heart, It’s A Start, A Work Of Art

DDS

This album has its origins 17 yeas ago in early 2000, before Chain Reaction released the legendary Ship-Scope 12”. Three of the tracks here are taken from an acetate cut at Dubplates & Mastering at that time but which wouldn’t see the light of day until now, including another batch of tracks taken from original masters. Only 5 copies of that acetate were ever made so this is the first time any of these tracks are available for public consumption and, for our money, rank among the finest and most distinctive in either the Chain Reaction or Shinichi Atobe’s vaults.  The material is effectively some of the Japanese producer’s earliest work, showcasing the sort of tender, feminine pressure that would bubble up on the Ship-Scope EP and later be revealed in his new productions, Butterfly Effect and World yet, for many reasons, they would lay sunk in his archive for the next 17 years.   The tracks taken from that acetate are labelled First Plate 1-3 and really are quite remarkable, having taken on so much character and added weight over the years that the incidental crackle of surface noise imbues proceedings with an added dimension that’s hard to fathom. it basically sounds like a lost transmission making its way from Paul-Lincke-Ufer at the turn of the millennium to a new, completely changed world all these years later.  The patina of crackle lends a mist-on-bare skin feeling akin to summer garden parties at Berghain in the stepping...

Equiknoxx

Bird Sound Power

DDS

Something special from DDS - the long awaited album debut of avant-Dancehall mutations from Jamaica’s Equiknoxx, already tipped by everyone from Jon K to Mark Ernestus, featuring productions dating between 2009-2016, mastered and cut by Matt Colton, all on vinyl for the first time ever...  Equiknoxx are one of the weirdest, most innovative dancehall squads from Jamaica right now; Bird Sound Power is their debut collective show of strength, packing 12 avant, crooked riddims by core members Gavsborg and Time Cow, plus Bobby Blackbird and Kofi Knoxx, with vocals by Kemikal, Shanique Marie and J.O.E. (R.I.P).  The set was parsed and pieced together by Jon K & Demdike Stare , and now thanks to link ups via Swing Ting’s Balraj Samrai (a longtime livicated supporter), it’s issued on Demdike’s DDS imprint, replete with Jon K’s sleeve design.   Easily identified by the squawking bird idents peppering their cuts, Equiknoxx productions have been big in the dance since Gavin Blair a.k.a. Gavsborg produced Busy Signal’s billboard hit Step Out in 2005, followed by key instrumentals for Beenie Man, Aidonia, Masicka, and T.O.K.  Bird Sound Power arguably marks up the most striking riddim album you’ll hear in 2016, weighted with the potential to open up perceptions of current dancehall thanks to the mad character and broad reference points of its producers, encompassing King Jammy’s foundational digi-dub and Dave Kelly’s Mad House sound as much as rugged New York hip hop and the wigged-out, feminine pressure of Virginia Beach’s...

Atobe, Shinichi

World

DDS

40 minute mini-album of minimalist Japanese house, beatdown and ambient themes from the elusive Shinichi Atobe, recorded some time over the last 20 years in Saitama, Japan, and given life by Demdike Stare’s DDS imprint. Highly Recommended if you’re into DJ Sprinkles, Larry Heard, Kassem Mosse, SND or indeed Shinichi’s previous releases...  The reclusive artist has seen a lot of justified and overdue praise surrounding the reissue of his sole early release, the Ship Scope 12” which was originally issued by Berlin’s Chain Reaction label in 2001 and reissued by DDS last year, following on from the unexpected dispatch of his distinguished and brilliant Sprinkles-esque Butterfly Effect album.  His new World LP will expand your preconceptions, coursing a beautifully louche vibe from the most minimal loops and motifs - the kind that one could play all day without ever tiring of hearing them.  The supple, floating DX7 bass contours and vaporous jazz chords of Intro start up like some Chicago or NYC deep house classic lost in its own reverie, and could happily go nowhere for as long as it wants, before the rainy day piano house melancholy of World 1 promptly inverts that supple aesthetic with a fizzing, hazy sort of depth perception and World 2 switches up again to a sort of trim du momentum in stepping, swinging equilibrium, riding the groove like no other.  Turn over and the lingering, slowed downstroke of World 3 sounds like it got waylaid from a 0PN session...

Orior

Strange Beauty

DDS

Reissue of incredible ‘lost’ post-punk recordings c.1979-1983 from the mysterious Orior, a huge influence on Demdike Stare. Original tape masters baked and restored by Andy Popplewell, mastered and Cut by Matt Colton. DDS keep everyone on their toes with Orior’s previously unheard and revelatory batch of bleak and brooding post-punk experiments, recorded in London and recently salvaged from an attic somewhere in the South East.  Orior’s sole 7” release, the Elevation EP (1979) for the obscure Crystal Groove label, was the root of a mutual obsession for Demdike’s Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty, whose hunter/collector instincts were piqued by rumours of an unreleased LP by this little known artist. Taking a punt, they sent a letter to an old address supplied by Frank Maier - whose V-o-D label issued an Orior track on the Snatch Paste compilation - and received a reply from a very surprised but helpful Jeff Sharp, who was credited as “Clip” on the original 7”. To cut a story short, Jeff supplied some pretty knackered tapes dug from his attic, that were subsequently baked by Andy Popplewell (who does a lot of the Finders Keepers bits), who told Miles there was “pure gold” on them there tapes. And he wasn’t wrong, the material is indeed breathtaking, in some respects typical of the era - lots of experimental drum machine experiments and so on, but also possessed of a totally unexpected character: there are moments that recall the dense atmospheric pieces of Angelo Badalamenti or Lynch’s...

Micachu

Taz And May Vids

DDS

Zinging, absolutey deadly 7 Track EP from Micachu on her return to DDS, featuring three tracks with Tirzah (including the much sought-after Go), plus a Demdike Stare Edit. DDS render a precious haul of new Micachu zingers on her return to the label, ramped up by Demdike Stare's dextrous edit of I Dare You to chase up 2014’s acclaimed Feeling Romantic Feeling Tropical Feeling Ill LP for mutant dancefloors and sun-kissed headphone journeys. Smitten by the hugely addictive, brilliantly slippery 2-step twister on Go (there's been a video online for this track since 2011!) Demdike suggested the cut for release on DDS, and were subsequently privileged to peruse the unique space-time folds and dance/pop sampledelia of Mica’s archive. As they alsofound out whilst compiling her last solo LP; it’s a deeply rewarding experience to explore the Mica’s output: immersing themselves in her peerless world of refractive colours, sawn-off textures and teasing arrangements. They’ve emerged with a joyously unhinged party-ready EP, traversing the mercurial 2-step viscosity of Mica & Tirzah’s Go, to their addictively sticky ohrwurm, Dare You, and the free cosmic pop whorl of trip6love, before taking in the clanking ragga jag of More Red with Brother May, a.k.a. the London-based MC who voiced Mica’s Fact Mix 444 in 2014. The cherry on top is a crucial Demdike edit of I Dare You, featuring Miles and Sean extending and swerving the original just like they would with two copies of the 12". Jus so good...

Lowe, Robert Aiki Aubrey

Cognition / Observation

DDS

Cognition is the very necessary follow-up to Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s physically-modelled, modular trance impulses heard on Timon Irnok Manta, which was issued to critical acclaim by Type in 2012. Bypassing academic practice in pursuit of fluid, instinctive progression, Cognition (Forbes) and Observation (Sophrons) unfurl two long, knotted sequences entangling intricate West African drum patterns and visual motifs in a buoyant, propulsive abstraction of techno and earthed-yet-cosmic electronics. Bass is thick as treacle and buffered by a scratchy, semi-organic flux of dancing sparks and mbira-like metallic twang in Cognition (Forbes) before the same elements refract and tessellate a more nuanced echo chamber sound distinctly recalling the shape of Dynamo’s classic Außen Vor as much as Hieroglyphic Being’s hypnotic improvisations. Rarified, transcendent music of the strongest order.

Atobe, Shinichi

Ship-scope

DDS

Hugely sought-after techno classic - the precedent to 'Butterfly Effect’, originally released on Berlin’s legendary Chain Reaction and out-of-print for 15 years, now newly remastered from vinyl by Matt Colton at Alchemy. A massive personal favourite of Demdike Stare's, Shinichi Atobe's 'Ship Scope' was Chain Reaction's penultimate release in 2001 and, with the benefit of hindsight, also one of the legendary label's most sublime offerings. Phase fwd to 2015 and DDS rightly put it back into circulation with this necessary reissue arriving in the wake of Atobe's much loved archival salvage, 'Butterfly Effect', which caused quite a ripple in late 2014. Notable not only for its unusually sweeter, dreamier ambient tone - especially when compared with the rest of the CR#'s - but also for its happily lost-at-sea feel, connoting a deeply romantic and almost shoegazy late '90s / into-the-'00s deep techno aesthetic that would essentially become washed away with the advent and normalisation of mnml techno's pristine production values. Quite simply, it's a must-have for followers of the romantic streak in Ross 154, Convextion and classic Chain Reaction - do not miss!

O'Malley, Stephen

Gruidés

DDS

The dark interpreter Stephen O'Malley ov Sunn O))) presents his towering orchestral composition Guidés, commissioned by French 35-piece improv orchestra ONCEIM -- l'Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisation Musicales -- and released thru Demdike Stare's DDS label. In early 2014 O'Malley was approached by pianist and composer Frédéric Blondy to write a work for the orchestra, which is made up of exceptional musicians from the fields of contemporary, jazz, experimental, improvisation, and classical. Understandably intimidated by the prospect, but encouraged to "just be punk rock about it," the preternaturally gifted composer has conceived a technically demanding -- for the players, at least -- and richly rewarding long-form drone piece intently focused on harmonic experimentation and overtone study. During its 35-minute lifespan, Gruidés requires the musicians to sustain pitches for several minutes (which is difficult enough for strings, and a real feat of endurance for woodwind), yielding spectra of eliding dissonance rent in sliding tone clusters and lucent geometries punctuated by a similar whipcrack percussion to that used in Sunn O)))'s 2014 collaboration with Scott Walker. It makes great use of the acoustic qualities of Saint Merry church in central Paris, as captured in the recording of IRCAM's Augustin Muller and mastered by Matt Colton with a detached spaciousness evocatively distilled in Jean-Luc Verna's cover art. It's an incredibly immersive piece that comes highly recommended if you're into the work of Phill Niblock, Alvin Lucier, Ellen Fullman, Harley Gaber, and, indeed, Sunn O))).

Atobe, Shinichi

Butterfly Effect

DDS

“Up until the release of his debut album in 2014, Shinichi Atobe managed to stay off grid since his release on Basic Channel’s Chain Reaction imprint back in 2001. He delivered the second-to-last 12” on the label and then disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a solitary 12” and a trail of speculation that led some people to wonder whether the project was in fact the work of someone on the Basic Channel payroll.  That killer Chain Reaction 12” was also longtime favourite of Demdike Stare, who had been trying to follow the trail and make contact with Atobe for many years before a lead from the Basic Channel office turned up an address in japan and - unbelievably - an album full of archival and new material. That material was compiled and released back in 2014 as Butterfly Effect.  And what a weird and brilliant album it is - deployed with a slow-churn opener that sounds like a syruppy Actress track, before working through a brilliantly sharp and tactile 9 minute Piano House roller that sounds like DJ Sprinkles at his most bittersweet, before diving headlong into a heady, Vainqueur inspired droneworld. It’s full of odd little signatures that gives the whole thing a timeless feel - like a sound bubble from another era.”—Boomkat