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Ambient Drone Dub-techno Radio

Flatland Frequencies Live Ambicast: Jeran Portis [Ambient, Drone, Dub Techno]

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Ambient Drone Live Review

SULK ROOMS – Empty Theatre (Live)

‘Empty Theatre’ is the final track from Sulk Rooms’ forthcoming album on Edinburgh’s Werra Foxma Records. Take a look at this live performance, and if you like what you hear the full album is available on October 28th.

Categories
Classics Dub-techno Review

Variant – Thru The Cosmos [Perseids]

The Perseids are a meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle. Peak visibility is between the 9th and 14th of August each year. The name is due to the point in the sky from which they appear to originate, from within the constellation of Perseus.

Variant, aka Stephen Hitchell, was one half of the pioneering Detroit Dub-Techno duo Echospace. This track is a slowly developing drone in the minor scale with noise and textures developed from their minimal techno origins.

If you are reading this close to the time of posting, there is a high chance of a spectacular light show in your skies this evening. Any time from nightfall with the peak from around midnight to 4am. So keep you head held high, maybe you’ll see them fly!

Categories
Classics Review Techno

Florence – The Vineyard

Stefan Robbers, aka Florence aka Terrace, was among the first European producers able to capture the soulful spirit found in productions coming out of Detroit. His music holds a special place for many. The title of this EP, the first on his own label, which he ran with Wladimir M, pays homage to this influence. The homage was taken further with the Alan Oldham-esque cartoon artwork on the label and, unusual for European releases at the time, plastic shrink rap giving the package the same look as an imported release. This was no one-sided idol worship though, but a two-way exchange of like minds, with their music being released on stateside labels and stateside artists being released on their label.

The female spoken word lyric, in style as well as content, draws heavily from Blake Baxter’s When We Used To Play. Melancholic references to frustrated sexual desire, either through the passage of time or lack of opportunities, grace both tracks. A similar feel is on the Terrace track Bewitched, this time the theme being more about unrequited love.

While having definite inspirational origins, Robbers developed his own peculiar vibe, a haunting sparseness that comes from living in the flatlands – in this case, the ones of the Netherlands.

For those not inclined to collect quarter-of-a-century old phonographic disks, a compilation of remastered Florence tracks was released in 2020.

Categories
Electro Review

Contours – That Feeling

A challenge when producing a track is to get as much effect as possible from as little elements as possible. This track achieves that. A simple, driving and insistent arpeggiated chord slowly evolves over an electro beat. Variation supplied by occasional switching to shuffle beat and changes to the attack, with punctuation of added tape echo toms dub style.

Contours is artist Tom Burford from Manchester. The label Slow Life is based in Berlin formed through the meeting of like minds from Spain and Italy. Good music has no boundaries.

Find out more here

Categories
Premiere Techno

Premiere: Komo B – Orbit (EPM Music)

‘Orbit’ is the title track for Komo B’s debut EP on EPM music. We present a short interview below:

1. You’ve been collecting records and mixing for some years now. What inspired you to begin and what has been the most memorable thing along the way?

Yes indeed.  It is all about the music.  I grew up in Maastricht and there were squat parties with different music like techno, electro, acid, deephouse, disco etcetera… So, it were the local DJs that inspired me to start playing records and buying synths and drummachines.  The squat parties at Vendex were memorable.  After, there were others like 10daysoff in Gent but can’t say really which one is the most memorable.
 

2. What was the inspiration for taking the leap into producing your own music? Was it a straightforward process?
 
I was already playing trumpet and piano when I got into electronic music.  I just wanted to explore the (new) electronic sounds of synthesizers, effects, drummachines etcetera and to create.  So yes, it was a straightforward process and still is.
 
3. What are your hopes for the future? Musically or otherwise.
 
I hope to make some more EPs, records and an album.  I would like to do some radio shows and to continue DJing as well.

4. What is your message to the world? What do people need to know?
 
Dance like a bird
Don’t judge someone
Enjoy nature

Categories
Electro House Techno

Jeran Portis – Mutant Radio (January 2022)

Tracklist:

Posatronix – Posatronix
Cliff Dalton – Cleopatra’s Matrix
Dany Rodriguez – Spirit 82
Priori – Receptivity
minorINVENTION – Exposition
Gary Martin – Lounge Blue
Jeran Portis – Unproven [Forthcoming]
Najel Monterio – Cassis
Ian Pooley – Chord Memory
Andre Holland – Vector Research
Fluxion – Correlation
Julian G – Press Reset (Featuring Harry Dennis)
Mark Hawkins – Snow Day

Categories
Feature Premiere Techno

PREMIERE: Tudor Acid – A Static Electricity Overload (Tudor Beats)

A highly personal theme for Tudor Acid on this new release is close identification with the emotions of cyborg and robotic characters in fiction. The character portrayed by the album (who Tudor Acid says is “obviously a stand in for me”) is on a mission to prove that its machine-generated or machine-mediated emotions are as equally valid as purely organic ones.

Following a two-year hiatus, he returns to the Tudor Beats label with a new album, ‘Empathy for Cyborgs’.

Flatland Frequencies · PREMIERE: Tudor Acid – A Static Electricity Overload (Tudor Beats)

What results is an album which represents the conflict between one’s own sense of self – and external, negative perceptions from others.

The cover drawing of Tower Bridge was intended as a counterpoint to this – the sense of a digitally constructed brain demonstrating its sentience and humanity in the process of the art being generated.

Artist: Tudor Acid
Title: Empathy for Cyborgs
Label: Tudor Beats
Cat. No: TB-2626
Format: Digital
Released: 27 January 2022

Categories
Dub-techno Electro Feature House Techno

2021 Flatland Favourites – Electro / Techno / House

Fluxion – Correlation (Vibrant Music)

V/A – Mood Compiled 2 (Greyscale)

Star_Dub – Voodub EP (Dubwax)

Jon Dixon – Detroit Get Down (4evr4wrd)

V/A – Dark Planet (Avoidant)

Roi – Crunia EP (Fanzine)

Detroit’s Filthiest – Fight To The Finish EP (Defrostatica)

V/A – Consortium Vol 3. (Motech)

CYMBA – Secret Loser (Obole)

Jayson Wynters – Filtered Xploits (Eon)

Categories
Experimental Industrial Minimal Wave Radio Synth

Jeran Portis – Mutant Radio October 2021

Field Recording (Holkham Beach, Norfolk, UK)
17 Años – Medio Mutante
Peter Pan – Los Iniciados
Russia – Elisa Waut
Way Out Of Living – Linear Movement
Surface Tension – Analysis
Time – Schicksal
Distortion – Philippe Laurent
Big Man – Plus Instruments
Reassurance Ritual – Das Ding
Witches – Secret Life
I Hear The Bells – Danton’s Voice
Nuclear, Sí – Aviador Dro
Vulcani – Carmody
Beli Dekolte – Oskarova Fobija
Golden Dreams – Deux