Categories
Ambient Beats Documentary Dub Electro Synth

Modulations: Cinema For The Ear (1998)

Modulations is a feature-length documentary that captures a moment in history where humans and machines are fusing to create today’s most exciting sounds.

It traces the evolution of electronic music as one of the most profound artistic developments of the twentieth century. By cutting back and forth between avant-garde composers, Kraftwerk’s innovative synthesizer drones, Giorgio Moroder’s glacial Euro-disco, Afrika Bambaataa’s electro-funk, and Prodigy’s current worldwide superstarstardom, Modulations celebrates, replicates, and illuminates the nomadic drift of the post-human techno sound.

The film examines the kids who have turned the turntable into a musical instrument, disillusioned disco lovers who created acid house out of primitive synthesizers, Motor City mavericks who saw the drum machine as their escape route out of urban neglect, and a generation of British youth who transformed these blips and bleeps into dance floor anthems of their own alienation.

Modulations provides a sense of history and context in which today’s electronic music can be understood. It entertains the converted and remixes the mindset of electronica’s nay-sayers.

Categories
Electro Industrial Review Techno

RLGN feat. Locked Club & Any Act – Drunken Master

Don’t Recordings – Release: 2/8/22

As someone born in the beige area between gen x and millennial, we had no internet until our later teens. Something to pass the time would be casually browsing my local video shop basement, sticky carpet and dank smells galore. All the new releases stayed upstairs, but the horror, soft porn, b-movies and kung fu vids were downstairs and rarely, if ever, seemed to get updated. Over time I got to know the plots and synopsis of many films, by reading the covers and staring at the pics, as I was way too young to actually rent them. Drunken Master was in the Kung Fu section and the images of inebriated Jackie Chan fighting on the back cover stuck in my head. Later on, I developed a musical obsession with Sly & Robbie (still do tbh) and loved the General Echo tune of the same name, which I think is a sort of loose homage to the film, toasting over the ‘My Woman’s Love’ riddim.

Now, 30 years later, another namecheck in the form of some amazingly gritty techno and electro courtesy of RGLN on Don’t Recordings. It’s got a call-to-arms urgency about it, along with some serious dry heave distortion, that manages to reside in the borderlands of industrial, new wave and techno.

It’s relation to the film I have no idea, I’ve still not actually seen it.

10 track album and super limited vinyl available at their bandcamp now.

Categories
Electro Premiere

PREMIERE: FRB BIOSCAN DEVICES (LUZ1Es MECHANICAL CUT)

Censor Music – Release: 15/7/22
Flatland Frequencies · PREMIERE: FRB BIOSCAN DEVICES (LUZ1Es MECHANICAL CUT)

Clean n crispy electro in from the Censor Music base. Tasty premiere of the forward driving remix here from LUZ1E, who takes the bass-weighty F.R.B title track and gives it a more spacious landing pad. Production on this is top-notch, check it on some decent speakers!

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
Acid Electro Review

Controlled Weirdness – In The Shadows

Cultivated Electronics – Release: 25/7/22

This one’s been in the pipeline for a minute and has been a staple in our radio shows over the past few months. Worried acid lines battle with hefty synth wonk, in this 4-track record from London’s Neil Keating.

His experience as long standing underground DJ Controlled Weirdness is instantly apparent, with an individual riff-based approach to composition and is also testament to Cultivated’s on-point curation, selecting these dark tunes for release. Wicked stuff.

Pre-orders open now via Clone

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
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
Electro House Radio Techno

Jeran Portis – Mutant Radio 12th August 2021

Mutant Radio · Jeran Portis [Flatland Frequencies]

Tracklist:

Autumn Dub (Twin Peetz & Moolsaasa Intro) – Retouched [ODrex Music]

Tek Soul – Trinidadian Deep [Noctu Recordings]

Summer 1995 – DJ 3000 [EPM Music]

Mind Goes Blank – Jerome Hill [Super Rhythm Trax]

Positif/Negatif – The Hacker [20/20 Vision]

Secret Loser – CYMBA [Obole]

Direct Hit – Alfred [20/20 Vision]

Voltage Anagnorisis – Terrestrial Access Network [LDI Records]

Forest illumination – Doildoshi [More Rice Records]

Electric Counterpoint – Third Son [Soft Computing]

Kosmische Kueche – Jack Pattern [Cosmic Pint Glass]

Exit Wound – CYMBA [Obole]

Categories
Electro Review Techno

13130 Space Project – International Problem

SECLUSION – RELEASE: 6TH AUGUST 2021

13130 is the number of nuclear warheads currently in existence, so as the release says “we have a problem”, through accident or design the world can be obliterated at any moment.

The music on this EP, the second from French label Seclusion, follows the cold war emergency vibes. Technological but sinister vibes throughout. The original mix is in a classic Jeff Mills vein, whilst the remix, from Aux 88 collaborator Blaktony, takes the beats a more Elektrofunk direction.

Categories
Electro Review

Various Artists – Exit Planet Earth

“When material interacts with light, properties of that material are stamped on the light. This stamp is like a specific fingerprint for each element and molecule. By examining the intensity of light in each color, scientist can work backward to infer the properties of the material that touched the light along the way.” – HubbleSite.Org

Originally released on vinyl last year 20/20 Vision’s Exit Planet Earth series is now be released on digital. Part one is out now, part two is due in August with other the parts to follow. Each EP is named after a different element that is commonly found on earth and is accompanied by a corresponding spectroscopy image. An essential series of modern classics.