“Featuring appearances from: Special Guest DJ, Ben Bondy, Hysterical Love Project and some other people we can't name for legal reasons"

The holographic swarm that is Downstairs People returns with their latest collection of subconscious songwriting. Simply titled ‘DSP’, Downstairs People’s sophomore album expands on their surreal horoscope of Top 40 musings, with nine works that explore the altered states of pop.

DSP reimagines the FM radio spectrum with distorted hooks, sour candy production and cascading vocal harmonies with no lyrics. Sung to us in an unknown language, it’s an archive of warped transmissions from beyond our solar system, conveniently recorded and presented as a flat, spinning monolith.

A brief history of having no time, and an ode to the subversive power of pop music. More

Fluxing between ambient, mutant-idm and swashes of bass, ‘Luvaphy’ is a drift through the morass that arrives at a leafy plateau. An album that tickles your inner sentience and supplies endless indulgence for the inquiring-mind.

Available on limited edition 12” vinyl, with special embossed print-work. More

INDEX:Records is blessed to announce the homecoming of Ike. It’s been a wee while since his last full club outing, but we welcome him back to this realm with open-arms.

Lacing up with chuggy system-rattler 'Vernis VIP', Pulsar is a symbiosis of palpitating-wub and delicate, soft melody. On 'Rose Quartz', perfectly sedated drums are melded with luscious vox – a gratifying release to bass-driven tension-builder, 'Gage'. Mushing a cherry immaculately on top is a Mathis Ruffing indulgence ('Gage Remix'), who treats us to a frenzied yet controlled excursion into DnB hedonism.

Limited edition 12" vinyl of 150 copies, with full colour centre label artwork, white inners and pink outer sleeve.

Written & Produced by Ike Zwanikken
Remix by Mathis Ruffing
Artwork by Amos Turner
Mastered & Cut by Marco @ Analog Cut
Words by Conna Haraway More

New INDEX:Records transmission comes courtesy of Texan vibist Gi Gi. Trodding his own path of introspective, nu-age-infused ambient scapes and trip-hop-laced downtempo divagations, Gi Gi eases us in a distinctively soothing headspace. A self-driven, immersive audio bubble engineering a polychromatic mix of organic field-recording, exotic dub shades, lushly textured envelopes and smooth loungey jazz accents.

From the A1, “The Lower”, a steady-churning combo of retro-stepping UK dynamics, 90s-schooled atmospheric dub and low-slung, LA beat-style swagger, down to the verbed-out summer pop of “Sinews” featuring Hysterical Love Project, Gi Gi puts on a riveting synthesis of seemingly distant varietals.

On “Maiolica”, the mystique-imbued power of drums and shadowiness of the bass collides with the faux-organic vibrancy of singing robot birds; “Pyxis Glint” shows off an ambiguously feverish ASMR-like temper with its tightly woven web of chimey Andean melody and straight out Rephlex-fashioned escapism, whereas “Palm Slick” heads for further exhilarating heights through Hassellian brass flights a la “Blues Nile" and breaksy off-piste, all set at buckling a few knees along the way.

A full-fledged, soulful trip-hop number disguised in matching neo-vintage camo, “Lilted Song” treats us to a fulfilling blend of bleached pads and FX-laden slo-mo percussions swaying with a strong couldn’t-give-a-damn attitude. Gi Gi coming up with the mind trip. More

Conceived in the literal underground of the INDEX:Records basement studio in Berlin, the enigmatic, new-coming “pop” group Downstairs People, is an unlikely collaborative project to be birthed from 2020 – the year of isolation. ‘Underground Pop’ is a collection of aural serotonin hits that touch the feel good receptors, genre hopping between synth-pop, house and neo-RnB.

The group is conducted and glued together by INDEX:Record's own, Jorge Camacho, the maestro behind his alias, vase. Camacho brings together a gauntlet of Berlin-based artists and INDEX: affiliates, dishing out something fresh after countless late night sessions, only to curate a serendipitously coherent record of left-field pop hits, that arrive just in time for summer.

Underground Pop by Downstairs People is out 16 April 2021 via single disk 12” LP vinyl, in full colour outer-sleeve and black inner-sleeve. A limited run of 250 copies are distributed worldwide by Rubadub. More