‘Where is Agartha? What is the specific region in which it lies? Along what road, through what civilizations, must one walk in order to reach it?.’ Saint-Yves d’Alveydre in 1886

Agartha, the debut full-length album by Japanese producer Wata Igarashi, is a mysterious, divine thing. Named for the mythical secret kingdom, understood as a complex maze of underground tunnels, perhaps designed by Martians who colonised the Earth tens of thousands of years ago, it’s a similarly mystical, perhaps even cosmic trip – but this time, exploring an inner, deeply personal cosmos. Beautifully detailed and bustling with rich incident, it takes Igarashi’s music to new places, which still retaining his unique sonic imprimatur; in this respect, it’s perfectly at home with Kompakt, a label that’s always encouraged artists to make the visionary music they need to create, to take risks and make sideways steps into uncharted territory.

An eloquent producer and DJ, Igarashi has been releasing techno for eleven years now, appearing on such imprints as The Bunker NY, Delsin, Midgar, and Time To Express; he has also self-released his productions via his WIP net label. Throughout, Igarashi has consistently explored his unique approach to techno and electronic music, one that’s eloquent and poised, even when it shifts into more psychedelic terrain; he’s a master at balancing the sensual and the functional, and he has an unerring ear for the right texture, the right tone, at the right time. He brings all of this into Agartha, his most thorough-going expression of self to date.

For Agartha, Igarashi had a strong concept he wanted to explore. Visualising specific scenes from an imaginary film based on the titular secret kingdom, he created soundtracks for those scenes, spending time during the pandemic in his studio, working away carefully at the ten tracks here. Given his background in creating music for television and advertisements, Igarashi is well-placed to explore the marriage of the sonic and the visual in such intimate ways, but freed from commercial concerns, he let his imagination run riot. He also drew on a rich palette of musical influences – techno is in there, of course, but you can also hear the smoky, improvised jazz of the likes of Miles Davis (to whom the album’s title is an indirect nod), and the minimalism and systems music of Steve Reich.

The latter is particularly pronounced on the gorgeous, beatless drift of “Floating Against Time”, where an arpeggiated sequence lingers, lovingly, around your ears for nine blissful minutes, coasting across swooning drones and waves of ambient noise. “Ceremony Of The Dead”, originally composed as part of a Sony 360 Reality Audio spatial sound concert, is a deep pass into systems composition, with various patterns overlaid and interlocking, before a wordless vocal rises from the depths, a gorgeous counterpoint to the swarming textures that gather across the track. On the other hand, tracks like “Burning” and “Subterranean Life” nudge toward Fourth World territory, painting deluxe dreamscapes of uncertain provenance; the title cut is an abstract drift-world, Igarashi painting an alien tableau dotted by shape-shifting creatures.

Agartha’s conceptual framework means that everything on the album sits perfectly together; listening to it in one sitting is a dizzying, lush experience. Its imaginings of inner landscapes recall, in some respects, the nautical, aqueous mythologies of the Drexciyan universe, though from different perspectives. But the result is Igarashi’s own creation, a deluxe, enchanting trip through the visionary Agartha of this unique producer’s cinematic mind’s-eye. More

Fresh from dropping a suitably forthright EP on Mistress Recordings, Anthony Rother returns to Danny Daze's OMNIDISC imprint for the first time since 2017. The long-serving German producer is in fine form from the word go, with opener "Machine" offering a particularly mind-altering blend of broken techno rhythms, wayward electronic motifs, electro sassiness, deep space sounds and robotic, Kraftwerk style vocal snippets. You'll find more vocal nods towards the Dusseldorf legends on "Compute Me", a dark, throbbing and mind-mangling techno stomper, while "Rubber Skirt" is an angular but funky romp through distorted electro territory. Like the rest of the cuts on the EP, it's deliciously weighty and peak-time ready. More

The 3rd release from Japanese Label 'Bitta' owned by Japanese charisma, 'Future Terror' boss 'DJ NOBU'. The release is by 'Wata Igarashi' who was recently featured in 'RA breaking through'. A side, 'Haziest just before the down' deep minimalistic techno which has acid, industrial and spacey running groove and 'The Ritual', minimalistic rhythm with distinctive breaks, looping acid bass, spacey pads which take you another world. B side, 'Haziest just before the down' 2 version remixes by 'Semantica's core artist 'Sverca', deeper electric groove with more experimental approach. More

When Max Ravitz created a few tracks under his new alias Pizzaboy, they were never meant to be released. One friend passed them on to another, until the tracks were in the hands of Mike Servito — quickly becoming regulars in his rotation. As the name aptly suggests, Deep Dish is a body-ode to Ravitz’s upbringing in Chicago. Known for his varied production aliases and prolific releases as Patricia, Ravitz finds a vehicle for some of his earliest midwestern influences in this debut release for The Bunker NY. More

Sometimes you want something so badly you don't even know to ask for it in the first place. Like Adam and Eve stumbling upon the fruit of knowledge — or psychedelic techno wizards Donato Dozzy and Retina.it (aka Lino Monaco and Nicola Buono) producing a pitch-perfect, vintage-styled minimal wave record, filled with icy synths, shuddering bass, and anthemic vocals, sounding like a lost gem unearthed from 1982 for the first time.
Except it's not — this record is brand new. The three Italians first came together under the moniker Le Officine Di Efesto, releasing an EP of murky left-field techno on Dozzy's own Spazio Disponibile. They quickly discovered a shared love of classic post-punk, wave, and synthpop, and not long after, Men With Secrets was born.
"Men With Secrets" might sound like an old-school synthpop act you've never heard of, but the name is actually borrowed from Richard Bone, an early New York electronic musician and minimal pop pioneer. The trio's name is but one of their many homages — Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, New Order, and even Dopplereffekt are additional reference points — but this album is neither imitation nor rehash. It's just as carefully and ingeniously produced as you'd expect a record from Donato Dozzy and Retina.it to be, except it's filled with poppy hooks so brilliantly catchy they'll stick in your head until you hit 'Repeat' and find yourself singing along.
These Men With Secrets clearly have their tongue placed firmly in cheek: check the record's title and artwork for proof. But the music is deadly serious. The drums hit hard, the synths soar to emotional heights, and the vocals intone rhythmically. All of it's coated in the warm fuzz of analogue tape. Not many records on The Bunker New York are as likely to be played in goth clubs as they are by adventurous techno DJs, but then again, this is not your average Bunker New York record. More

Justin Cudmore’s “Are You Ready” is the track that’s making you stay at the party long after you started saying you should really get home. Justin tells us that “Are You Ready” is the result of some early experimentation with the studio setup in his old apartment and one of the first white label acid tracks he began playing out, even before his popular debut for The Bunker NY, “Forget It” was released. “The elements came together quickly in an afternoon session -- I had been recently inspired by a trove of acapellas I’d come across. I would say this is when arranging the track really clicked and I started truly assembling it with the dance floor in mind.” Over the next two years, the track became a secret weapon that made its way into the hands of DJs like Craig Richards, Mike Servito, Jackmaster, Derek Plaslaiko and Gerd Janson, becoming something of a sleeper hit.
As Justin made more music and time progressed it seemed that there wasn’t a proper home for “Are You Ready” so he moved on to other projects and the track was shelved until 2018 when he heard Derek Plaslaiko play it out again in Brooklyn and the idea for Derek to remix it was hatched. The sleazy vibe is timeless and timesuspending, rocking the darker corners of the afterhours with retro-minded, futurelooking vibes. Plaslaiko’s remix ups the sleaze serving a dubbed out mood that brings to mind Monday morning sunrises in Detroit, while Gunnar Haslam’s treatment snaps us all out of it a bit by sharpening up the melody and bringing the percolating acid line to the fore. More

Intricate and detailed jams for your enjoyment in foggy dance floor corners. These tracks all have that unmistakable Marco Shuttle vibe with plenty of deliberate, slightly twisting melodies, shadowy disembodied echoing vocals that let your brain fill in the meaning, underpinned with punches of tautly layered rhythms.
.Marco Shuttle first caught our ear many years ago when we discovered his music the old fashioned way, picking up his Clone Store Only Series record at Halcyon in Brooklyn. This mysterious record led to becoming obsessed with his incredible, selfreleased
podcasts that were floating around online at the time so we reached out to him and ended up working together to put his Fanfara EP out on our label in 2014, when he was almost unknown in North America. Since then, his music career has grown in leaps and bounds. He’s no longer at his day job in the fashion industry but
tours and produces full-time, releasing albums on his own Eerie Records, Donato Dozzy and Neel’s Spazio Disponibile, as well as a string of killer EPs on several respected imprints. His productions and DJ skills have led to repeat bookings at Labyrinth Festival,
Berghain, Concrete, Fabric, De School and just about everywhere else around the world where discerning heads congregate to hear great techno.
When Marco was in Brooklyn to play an 8 hour set at The Bunker Limited earlier this year he played some new demos that stuck out as something exceptional, even by his very high standards, and we knew we had his next record on The Bunker New York ready to go. More

The “Law of Seven” refers to the spiritualist philosopher Gurdjieff’s idea that the evolution of phenomena proceeds according to a universal seven-step process. Clay tells us that while this idea did not strictly factor into the composition of these tracks, “you could abstract some elements into the musical creation process. Gurdjieff was quite a thinker, but also composed music so I thought the lines I was drawing carried some weight... in particular his notion that ‘Creation proceeds through increasing restrictions’ which I find to be incredibly relevant to my process at least. Time limitations and performance settings particularly seem to allow me to be far more productive than just working freely with no solid end point in mind.” More

From the very first track, it’s clear that Abby Echiverri’s debut, the “Ab Initio” EP is something different and rare: a polished and fresh interpretation of electronic music that incorporates classic electro squelches with intricate broken beats and expansive synthesizer zone-outs.
.Although this is her first EP, Abby has extensive history as a musician, sound engineer, DJ and VJ. Her current trajectory started early in childhood when she was classically trained in violin, flute, piano and vocals, cementing music as a part of her daily life. In high school she picked up turntables and began collecting records, eventually moving to NYC to study recording engineering and perform in post-punk bands, and became a regular at Wierd and The Bunker at a very young age. Since then, Echiverri has devoted her professional hours to engineering, maintaining, and manufacturing audio equipment for studios and clubs around the world. This record’s name “Ab Initio” means “from the beginning” or “from first principles”, invoking a propulsive leap into the future and also perhaps including an element of the eponymous. When we asked her to tell us more about the process of creating these hardware-based jams, Abby explained: “It all stems from my own experiences on the dancefloor and wanting to recreate that for other people. I want to make music that rewires the brain: music that is challenging, yet groovy... repetitive, yet evolving. An aural psychedelic. It's a lofty goal - I'm still working on it.” If Ab Initio is one of her first steps towards that goal then we can’t wait to see what happens next. More

Body music, mind music, ass-shaking and head-boggling, Clay Wilson’s third release on The Bunker New York is a dance EP that manages to be both restrained and cacophonous, speaking to his classical training as well as his years as a DJ, producer and sound tech. Since we first met Clay as a new-to-New York City Bunker party regular back in the Public Assembly days, through releasing his earlier music and having him join us at numerous label showcases around the world, we’ve come to know him as an exceptional producer and DJ, an essential part of The Bunker family and a regular fixture in our lineups. This new release is an expression of the deep relationship we’ve all forged through years of raving together - of freaking out to an unreleased track on the dance floor only to find out your friend made it and then getting a crew together to remix it and put it out! More

When we started The Bunker New York label in 2014 there was a short list of artists whose music we knew that we wanted to get out into the world. Lori Napoleon, aka Antenes, was high up on that list, although at the time the Brooklyn-based Chicago native had yet to release her recorded music at all. Five years on, after acclaimed records on L.I.E.S. and Silent Season, residencies at Issue Project Room and Bell Labs plus a busy global touring schedule as both a DJ and live performer, we are proud and excited to present Lori’s Ante Meridiem EP under her Antemeridian production moniker. She tells us that the Antemeridian project is a special outlet for her more melodic synthesizer compositions and the name Antemeridian refers to “morning light and the meridian lines of the planet, the view you would have from above if you were already in the sky/space/seeing the atmosphere also from a great distance.”
With this EP, Antemeridian has created nothing less than a masterwork of synthesis comprising unique soundscapes unbelievably detailed and crisp. We asked Lori to tell us a bit about her production techniques, which include home-built machines from unorthodox source materials including vintage switchboards and telecommunications equipment. She actually built her first synthesizer out of an antique telephone switchboard we donated to her from The Bunker HQ! “I use a combination of synths and controllers/sequencers that I’ve made along with commercially available/ bought or modded analog synths and field recordings that have gone through a number of effects chains. There may be a crackling sound that emerged from the modular which made me think about a flame sparking and burning out, recalling a very organic process in nature - but in a composition it’s a drum element. Perhaps the sense of detail comes from how I work on finding sounds before arranging them in a track so when I find one with little nuances and textures, then I'll be inspired to compose with it. Visceral sounds are very important to me, and sounds that you may not instantly identify with this or that synth model – which is why I like the idea of designing my own palette for portions of tracks.” More

Uwe Schmidt has long been recognized as one of electronic music’s most respected and versatile artists. A man of many talents, projects and identities including Atom Heart and Señor Coconut, Uwe’s playfully ironic and acid- tinged Atom™ moniker is perhaps the identity that most speaks to the New York dancefloors where The Bunker makes its home. Several Atom™ releases are much-loved Bunker classics and with the Future Nights 12” Uwe offers a heady experiment in what happens when a track takes you so far inside your own head that you’re in danger of losing your way back. The A side is comprised of two fuzzy vocal techno tracks that are as fun to listen to as they will be to subject to some heavy tweaking in the hands of a capable DJ. The B side, “Chemistry” is particularly versatile and crazy-making with elements of darker techno stirred into a disorientingly stereophonic maelstrom that’s guaranteed to cause a dancefloor to lose its moorings until the only thing keeping reality from splintering is the track’s dry academic vocal reassuring us that it’s all just chemistry. More

J. F. Burma is a new analog synth project of Jeremy Berman, a longtime friend of The Bunker who we met via the forums of I-F’s Cybernetic Broadcasting System internet radio station in the early 2000’s. While living in Brooklyn, Jeremy spent many hours each week searching for undiscovered gems among the piles of records (and sometimes rat skeletons) at notorious Greenpoint crate-digging spot The Thing. Inspired and educated by the music he was finding, he purchased his first modular and started building synthesizers and modules in spite of his lack of training in electrical engineering. Currently, about half of his current Eurorack rig has been DIY’ed via trial and error. Jeremy put out his first EP on Shaddock Records under the name Factory Aire in 2013 and it found a warm welcome from critics, DJ’s and collectors. After a move to Los Angeles and the birth of his daughter, Jeremy’s music production took a bit of a back seat and The Bunker New York is proud to release the Nomadic EP, his first record produced under the influence of a toddler. All three tracks have a very live feel as Jeremy draws most of his inspiration from interacting with the music machines during late night jam sessions: “When I’m jamming out I tend to gravitate towards trippier vibes, which is just a reflection of my personal affinity for acid and psychedelic music.” The three tracks that comprise the Nomadic EP are the precisely perfect mystical outsider jams for those sunrises when a bit of human-modulated machine music is exactly what’s needed. More

Valere Aude, the debut album from Romans, a collaborative project between New York techno producer Gunnar Haslam and Vienna-based acid evangelist Johannes Auvinen (aka Tin Man). Featuring 12 tracks of hallucinogenic, psychedelic techno, Valere Aude is an acid-etched trip to the outer reaches of the mind. More

Zipper is Zemi17's second release on The Bunker New York, and sees him expanding his musical palette considerably, in which his gamelan-derived sound design pushes further out towards the expanses of techno's realm. Zipper is the product of years of work. "The tracks on this record began as field recordings taken from Indonesia — insect sounds, gamelan, found sounds," says Kuffner. "Each of these tracks comes from a different stage of my music-writing process over the years. I eventually developed a kind of 'sketch and improv' technique, re-arranging groupings and arrangements of a series of elements. Zipper reflects a culmination of this technique, and in my opinion, it's representative of some of my best work." More

Three cuts of heady, cerebral bliss guaranteed to push any dancefloor a little further out into the interstellar, In Russell's hands, Clay Wilson's "E4" becomes a spaced-out stepper's delight. His rework of Romans' "Coptos" lets the acidic undertones of the original run free while snappy percussion holds focus. And while we're not one to pick favorites, Russell's remix of Zemi17's "Rangda," stripped to its bare essentials, is almost a purer representation of the original than the original itself, designed to lift a willing crowd into a trance state. More

The stage is set from minute one on Clay Wilson's new 4-track EP, "Skandha," his second release for The Bunker New York.
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Tough, to the point, no-nonsense machine music is a longstanding Midwestern tradition More

For more than a decade, The Bunker New York has been a nexus point for the transnational techno community More