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Debut album by Cindy is aptly called I'm Cindy. Produced by Kai Hugo a.k.a. Palmbomen II. Who exactly is Cindy? If producer Kai Hugo used oblique strategies it would be this question that's been central to his past four years of musical output. First appearing on his 2015 LP Palmbomen II as the titular subject of the track Cindy Savalas, her life has become intertwined with the producer's. "Following that release, I made a music video for Cindy Savalas, where Cindy came to life through the portrayal by Blue LoLan,' Hugo explains. 'I really felt a connection with this character and went deeper into developing who she was and the world she lived in. The result was the creation of the LP Memories Of Cindy, where my goal was to reveal more about Carmel Vista, the town Cindy lived in. Afterwards, I imagined Cindy having her own 'lost' album, as if she had once released a record that was kind of forgotten.' I'm Cindy is altogether different though. It sits at an uncommonly explored intersection between Italo disco and shoegaze - Cocteau Twins and Slowdive are mentioned as influences and you can hear that in the blurred textures and hazy synths of the 13 tracks here. But Hugo also revels in a chance to use his self-created character as a conduit to explore his love of both mainstream pop and its more skewed forms. In many ways the record is as much LoL?n's. It was she who gave the character her voice - initially across 27 tracks recorded with the producer - but her own connection to Cindy runs deeper than that. 'It makes me really nostalgic thinking about everything Cindy went through, she and I have similar feelings' says the vocalist. 'Cindy is a mix of me and Kai so when I listen to the album I feel like I'm half entering Kai's head and half in mine, with a whole bunch of deep emotions, purity and loneliness that just makes me want to dance and cuddle with all my cats in a disco forest somewhere outside of Carmel Vista.'

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Kyiv (Ukraine) born Sasha Renkas, made music as Antenna for almost a decade, releasing many EP's and a full length album. Now he follows his urge to make a different kind of music. The result is a full length album with slow, intimate, nighttime music varying from abstract pop ballads to ambient movie score pieces. At times they sound like stripped down Kate Bush instrumentals, drenched in reverb, or introvert Roxy Music with a touch of dub and nineties trip-hop. "This time I wanted to compose music and then perform my instruments live making this album. I used mainly old synthesizers and other instruments and a heavy layer eighties reverb machines. Before moving to the Netherlands, I was growing up in the nineties in Kyiv, surrounded by economic turbulence and a weird mix of music from different decades that overflowed the country after years of isolation. Accompanied by the weird early Ukrainian visual culture I was mesmerized by the music videos I saw on TV and I wanted to belong there. I guess I never really grew up, still drifting like a cowboy through imaginary spaces, in a timeless vacuum, outside of real life. I decided to release this album as Sasha Renkas, because it felt very personal and pure, all coming from a spacious, misty place where everybody is still alive and safe."

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
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DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
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Solo album by Betonkust (Dutch for Concrete Coast). The vinyl comes with a booklet containing drum patterns used on the album, together with a download link of the original samples that you can use for your own music. This record includes a Bandcamp download code for the digital files. Short bio from Betonkust: I was born in Utrecht (1988). I grew up in a very small town somewhere between Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Hilversum. The so-called 'green heart' of the Netherlands. That means there's lots of nature. It was very boring and/or normal. A typical Dutch 1990s upbringing. I've been listening to house music for as long as I can remember. On cassette tapes, on the radio, it was everywhere. Now I live in Rotterdam and there's a lot going on, mainly in the area of electronic music. There is Operator Radio, Clone, Pinkman, etc. Most of my friends are involved in music in some way. The older I get the less I care about gear. I didn't use any expensive or exotic stuff. Korg Electribes (both the sampler and the synth), Korg M1, some Boss effects pedals, a cheap mixer, a Shure SM57 mic, a cheap guitar. For this album everything was recorded in FL Studio. Some tracks on the album started like five years ago with a melody and slowly developed into a full song. Other songs were made one month before mastering. It really depends. But most of the work was done in 2020 and 2021. I think most of this album is about transience, giving up, the infinite sadness of humanity.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More

Repress!
After writing pop-based music under the name Renkas, Sasha Renkas searched for a more carefree and direct approach to making and recording music. His project Antenna is the result of that. He gets his sounds from the unexpected errors and limitations of hardware equipment from the '80s and '90s. Under the Antenna moniker, Sasha has released EPs and singles on labels like Clone, Pinkman, and Beats in Space. This time, Antenna is back with a full-length album. He recorded hours of jams in his studio in Rotterdam and then took a small set-up to Kiev to edit and finish the tracks there. The result is 'Quiet fx', the first release on new label World Of Paint. On 'Quiet fx', Antenna offers melodic soft house tracks with touches of electro and uk breaks.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More