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L.F.T (Love, Fist, Tears), aka Johannes Haas, returns to Osàre! Editions for another scorching release. As ever, the German producer’s sonic palette is immediately recognisable as he manoeuvres through 1980s- inspired wave and raw, rugged electro. Equal parts dancefloor elixir and cerebral wonderment, Minecrawler showcases Haas’ flair for freewheeling, chemical artistry, and experimentation.

Divided into heavy, vocal numbers on one side and potent, club-orientated material on the other, the EP is unified overall by the frigid crackle of drum machines, primal synths, and goth aesthetics. ‘Halbverdient’ opens up – made in collaboration with fellow cold wave renegade Konstantin Unwohl, the song captures the duo’s shared love for all things dark and driving.

Structured around pummelling basslines, the titular track follows, an electro breed of The Hague’s West Coast variety, and a perfect example of L.F.T’s signature sound. This is vampire music at its finest – fanged, winged, and seductively menacing. Despite its impromptu origins, arising out of a spontaneous jam session, ‘Auf Meiner Haut’ is slick and steady. Cracking some beers with musicians Bella and Viva, L.F.T invited the duo to improvise lyrics, resulting in their detached, icily amorous exchange. Apocalyptic groover ‘Broken 101’ is next up, with ‘Fear and Machines’ preceding, a sparking stomper burning with cool, electric heat. Finally, don’t miss the digital bonus – ‘Planetary Intellect’ broods with penetrating, glacial energy that sends shivers down the spine.

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Duo Lucas Brell and Marvin Uhde deliver fire-powered percussion to Osàre! Editions. Longtime friends and collaborators, they channel a liquid medley of drum menace that flips sideways, swiftly pivoting between wildly different tempos. As disorientating as it is formidable, Purest State Confusion offers up a fractal prism of ever-shifting beat patterns – an endlessly warping vortex of guttural, narcotic sounds.

The titular number, a wormhole techno ordeal, builds steadily, layer upon layer. A crystalline dancefloor pleaser, it subverts classic four-to-the-floor with a delayed kick drum that punctuates every 8th beat. Like black oil diffusing in water, the bass creeps in menacingly to 'The Disappearer', in hard and fast contrast with the sharp fluctuations of the amen break. Slamming in mercilessly, 'Channeling Bryn Jones' opens up the B-side, its fluttering rhythms joining together with an infectious klaxon melody before the IDM stylings of 'Brain Massage' closes out. Purest State Confusion was recorded at various locations in Leipzig and Berlin.

Final touches and mixing assistance were performed by Mike Bierbach at the WSNWG studios. The pioneering techno producer inflects the record with his staunch taste for aerobic club rhythmics, teasing out the whirling tempos and pointillistic harmonics.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
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** 2023 repress

“I've made these tracks for dark days and dark nights” - L.F.T.

Blood in the Grass, an EP of electro tinged new wave from Hamburg-based producer Johannes Haas, aka L.F.T. (Love, Fist, Tears), the title of which takes inspiration from a 1966 tapestry work by the late Swedish-Norwegian textile artist Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970).

Prompted by Colombi and Haas meeting on the dancefloor of Golden Pudel, the eight tracks run the gamut of darkwave and punk sounds, with Haas utilising Korg MS20 and Roland SH101 synthesisers to meld mutant acid with slamming synth lines, ear-worm melodies and opaque lyrics that are left open to interpretation. The new wave aesthetic he draws inspiration from is most evident on tracks Die Geldsmachine, No Covenent and the glistening Chloe-Rose?,? and with its howling guitar riffs and driving energy geared for late nights, Manon is a rough and ready punk anthem and a tribute to Haas’ “gang” of favourite people in Hamburg.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
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* Limited Edition vinyl pressing....**

In October 2021, Spazio Per Azioni Luminescenti culminated the Close Range music residency programme at Het HEM contemporary art centre in Zaandam, the Netherlands. A haunting audiovisual performance and site specific immersive installation, it evokes elements of sound, spoken word and articulated light design. The recording is a twenty minute sonic journey in four moments, each interlinked with one another. This format reflects the iterations of the work which was performed live twice a day over two days. The piece was presented by Tutto Questo Sentire, an artist collective consisting of experimental soprano Olivia Salvadori, composer and cellist Sandro Mussida and filmmaker and video artist Rebecca Salvadori. The group is accompanied by guests Osàre! founder Elena Colombi on synthesiser, vocalist and producer Coby Sey and light artist Charlie Hope.

Conjuring the afterglow of creative encounters; the dying embers that linger when the curtain has fallen, Spazio Per Azioni Luminescenti illuminates impressions embedded in architecture; the echoes of the past that emanate as sensations, affect and memory. Interweaving classical instruments and singing with synthetic production and field recordings, for each performance, Hope sampled the colours of the evening sky, projecting the fluctuating shades of orange like a slowly revolving lighthouse beacon. Emerging from the captured footage, sound and light design processes are concepts of fragmentary action, stillness and rotation, the passage of time and circular motion of circadian rhythms.

Located along the banks of the North Sea Canal, Het HEM is a former industrial munitions factory. Unfolding between the looming white metal girders that make up the building’s infrastructure, Spazio Per Azioni Luminescenti opens with a low hum from Colombi’s modular synth, the oscillations reverberating through the concrete and steel. Filmmaker Rebecca Salvadori plays out fragments of her videos, inviting the audience to listen and imagine the missing images, envisioning “what remains” absent, while Mussida draws a slow, incandescent chord on his cello strings. Voices echo, snippets of conversations between the artists involved, Het HEM's director and curators. Sey harmonises with Olivia Salvadori’s otherworldly soprano, their vocals amplified through a quadraphonic, site-adapted speakers. Slipping into the surreal and uncanny, Spazio Per Azioni Luminescenti plays deftly with spatially: utterances surface, then disappear into the shadows, as ephemeral as a sunset.

Words by Hannah Pezzack

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Welcome to the magenta world of Emil Valev. During the late 1980s and 90s, at the helm of Violetov General, he pioneered a darkly melancholic, avant-garde formulation of the new wave sound. The band enjoyed international acclaim, spending time in the underground scenes of Bulgaria, Berlin and Slovakia. Since then, Valev has gone on to refine his hypnotically idiosyncratic style with a number of solo releases and appearances at electronic music festivals. Now, Osàre! is honoured to present Gentle Reactor. Collecting together twenty-five years of remastered and more recent material, the album is powered by the sensual fission of harsh textures, metronomic beats and playful excess. Label boss Elena Colombi initially received over eighty songs from Valev, two of which appeared on the compilations Il Monte Analogo (2021) and Il Lupo Della Steppa (2020) respectively. But it was clear that a full album dedicated to Violetov General needed to be in the works. The pair spent two years combing through recordings, selecting the tracks that would eventually form the double-sided LP. From the locked-groove beat of ‘Valahoveine’ to 'Poliani’s sizzling industrial refrain and the slap-bass finale of 'Black Cat', Gentle Reactor is a wild ride. The record takes the darkwave genre on a cosmic journey across the realms of prog rock, noise, Eastern European folk-tinged melodies, ritualistic percussion and a patchwork of vocal breakdowns. Driven by an intuitive compositional process and slick production, the retrospective is a fascinating slice of experimental music history that's anything but backwards facing.

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Repress!

*Highly limited*

Novo Line – aka Berlin's algorave maestro Nat Fowler – delivers a noisy, ultramarine voyage into the depths of his archaic hardware. Clawing at the periphery between leftfield electronics and avant-garde pop, Zeit is an entirely new sonic universe, eerily familiar yet utterly uncharted. A visionary synthesist, Fowler is renowned for his productions that make use of mainly '80s equipment including vintage digital synths, discarded MIDI Hi-Tech, tape delay and even an ancient Atari ST computer. But, despite the aged technology, the result is far from nostalgic.

'Ain't That a Mess' slams in with Monica Kremidi's crooning à la Little Annie Anxiety with reeving car engines and guitar-rock static fed through a pan effect. Multilayered melodies soar on 'Stein', the pounding drums matched by gliding strings, crafting that holy grail of cavernous, booming textures and uplifting euphoria that mark out the most transcendent of rave tracks. The deceptively gentle opening bars of 'Morning Star' are interrupted by a viscously squelching bassline, Cass McCombs' vocals dancing deliciously with the raw beat.

Rejecting contemporary tech-fetishism, Novo Line has a near-supernatural ability to exorcise novel sequences, weaving together a record that speaks to the ghost in the machine.

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Limited Edition Vinyl (Hand stamped. Comes in a transparent PVC sleeve with Riso printed paper strip. contains download code)

Making a threateningly potent debut on Osàre! Editions as The Spy, Wessel Janssen combines classic boot-stomping techno with cybernetic groove, jittery IDM and sinister electro. Crackling, liquid synth, as slick on oil on water, channels the potency of club dancefloors through a gripping conceptual underpinning. Capturing fugitives on the run from a mysterious axis power, the mini LP is an action-packed adrenaline buzz.

Launching off with 'Cobra,' the momentous opening track sets the steely tone of the record. ‘Time to Strike’ stabs with polymorphic, stuttering beats, while 'Never Again' wields the high-drama of an urgent getaway. Screeching like a security system gone haywire, 'Cigarette' is set ablaze by J.C.'s monstrous vocals.

Think The Matrix, Mission Impossible and 007, but for dark, pounding basements devoid of time.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
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