DJ Trystero presents his sophomore album Cantor’s Paradise for FELT. An untitled suite languishing in dub dissonance, elusive sounds suspended across the hazy plain.

An enigmatic operator from the fogged-out fringes of techno, DJ Trystero has quickly impressed with a brief slew of releases for Incienso and The Trilogy Tapes. His reductionist style narrates bygone eras in abstracted flow, a singular sound cultivated with an assured touch. FELT’s considered ensemble proves apt for Trystero and his transmissions, welcoming him in as a natural extension to the label’s sonic universe.

Across nine tracks, Cantor’s Paradise detaches further from the imagined dancefloors DJ Trystero once inhabited. The movements within are faded, motorik murmurs and melancholic trails softly illuminating the grey haze. Its atmosphere feels heavy yet serene, a numbed weight drifting subconsciously down the half-woken stream. Sounds echo then float, while time seems still throughout. It’s an engrossing journey that stands as another vital chronicle in the FELT canon and an exciting development along the DJ Trystero path.

Written, produced and mixed by DJ Trystero

Art and design by Lucas Dupuy

Mastered by Tomas Bodén

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Repress with new Artwork!

FELT’s sixth volume extracts another fascinating mineral from Guy Brewer’s Carrier alias, further descending the wormhole of darkside minimalism with his most obfuscated rhythmic explorations yet.

FATHOM witnesses Guy Brewer’s unrelenting distillation of precision electronics develop beyond prior incarnations into unclassifiable mutations. Carrier is his sonic vessel in this new era, liberating his prior restrictions to highlight the outer kinetic recesses of experimental sounds that finds a natural home on Perko’s ever-evolving FELT imprint.

The title track twitches along in hallucinatory abstraction, circling the depths with glitched-out programming and fogged-out atmospherics. The Cusp narrows its gaze, meditating on a tense drum rollage that teeters on mellowed menace. Markers then forms a mechanised rinse-out of rumbling subs and plummeting steppers momentum. Trooper unfurls in a finale of future-shocked half time rollage and arpeggiated textures that affirms Carrier’s unwavering vision in sound and style.

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FELT welcomes back Civilistjävel! with Följd, the follow up to last year’s Brödföda. 7 tracks further chronicling his melancholic murk, ever drifting towards that faint dub glow. Features a collaboration with Thomas Bush [Jolly Discs].

Uncanny are the nocturnal sounds that ebb patiently from Tomas Bodén and his machines. His music continues to uncover equal parts beauty and dread from isolation, a purposeful slow pace guiding those gentle noises through the arctic air surrounding its author. No matter the weather, these expressions as Civilistjävel! continue to find a loving home on Fergus Jones’s FELT imprint.

On Följd, he naturally develops on the inclinations found on Brödföda. XIII’s unsettling warble melts into the dusky spurts of XIV. Further on, the dew-glowed ambience of XV precedes XVI’s dub trudge which casts a hypnotic grey shadow. XVII’s wind-swept acid redux then quietly transitions into the stunning introspective drone of XVIII before closer XIX comes into view, its positive dawn enacted through Thomas Bush’s croons lilting amongst organs, guitars and tempered sound design.

Civilistjävel! continues to emote a great deal with very little, a reliable abstract practitioner that posits Följd as an arresting audio tale within his celebrated oeuvre.

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Civilistjävel! returns with Brödföda, the successor to 2022’s Järnnätter and his fourth release for FELT. The record features collaborations with Laila Sakini, Mayssa Jallad, Thommy Wahlström, ELDON, and Withdrawn.

Tomas Bodén is a revered figure of the aural murk, known primarily for his work as Civilistjävel. It’s an alias that has spawned a catalogue of self-released peculiarities, featuring music that scorns traditional form, instead opting for unfussed symphonies of ice-hued minimalism; soft murmurs that emanate from his studio in the High Coast of Sweden.

On Brödföda, his latest album for Fergus Jones’s FELT imprint, subtle new developments in mood prevail. Across its 75 minutes, Civilistjävel! unveils a breadth of emotions that on previous releases seemed distant. He also invites collaborators on record for the first time: Beirut-based singer Mayssa Jallad mournfully croons on “IV”, “VIII” hosts Coldlight’s ELDON & Withdrawn for an abstracted session of dub-hop murk, Laila Sakini offers a hallucinogenic monologue amidst melodica, sticks & bells playing on “IX”, and Thommy Wahlström floats scant acid dub stylings on “VI”. These additions and developments bring a forlorn intimacy to the music, and suggest an ambition that few artists of his ilk strive for.

FELT’s (un)reliable cast of audio ghouls routinely summon the odd, with Civilistjävel! often its primary culprit; Brödföda gently modifies this path to pursue some of his and the label’s most quaintly beautiful music yet.

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Firnis DC lands on Perko’s FELT imprint with Firnis der Civilisation, an eponymous collection of 9 tracks that transmit the enigmatic meditations of its author; discordant trudges of twilight romanticism from pastures far beyond.

The uncommon threads that bind FELT intersect neatly at Firnis DC. Their previous outings as ????, for Blackest Ever Black, Climate of Fear and AD93, and a pair of The News Cycle releases, were cult hits of uncanny ambient techno and jungle volleys interpreted through lenses of outsider electronics. A snug fit, in other words, for Perko’s unpredictable stable.

On Firnis der Civilisation, we find things paired back further than before. Its 9 tracks play out like beatless symphonies of wayward folk music who’s basement transmissions have been intercepted from the ether; a stirring limbo of grotty emotions that inspire and conflict in equal measure. Tracks offer brief portals into zones of sampladelic oddities, haunted vocals and scatty euphoria that is collectively driven by an (un)willingness to straddle familiar pastures. By the time you reach its finale gut-punch of Dreifach Fiktierung’s twitching breakcore and Innozenz Jahr funk rollage, you are offered a light at the end of a rather odd tunnel that you never quite understood how you got there in the first place.

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FELT summon the hand of two of the most uncannily suited producers around to remix cuts from Civilistjävel!’s "Järnnätter" album one year on from its initial release.

As a regular collaborator with SVN and Dynamo Dreesen as well as having a slew of experimental techno 12”s to his name, A Made Up Sound immediately got the memo. The Dutch producer takes the foggier, subdued angle of his own craft into wildly captivating effect when tasked to build upon the stems from the “civilian bastard”.

Whilst the A Made Up Sound remix constantly builds in intensity, Ossia’s “Disoriented Dub” explores a much more radiophonic, lost-at-sea headspace with echoes of early concrete compositions and a spectral approach to dub; an olive branch of muggy hauntological weirdness extending from Bristol up to Scandinavia and back via the lowlands.

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Repress!

Civilistjävel! returns to Copenhagen label FELT with a four track EP following on from 2022's Järnnätter album.

Equally well placed next to the Biosphere / early Fax +49-69/450464 camp as well as various decades of electro-acoustic drone practitioners, Fyra platser (Four Places) also includes a trip-hop leaning collaboration with Cucina Povera. Whilst Järnnätter drew influence from the cyclical, chasmic nature of dub techno, Fyra platser hones further in on the ‘between’ areas in a minimal, reductivist fashion. The rhythms are there to follow but are primarily beatless and more expansive, though skewing perceptions of time in the same trademark manner.

Three locations in the Nordingrå area of the Swedish high coast are exorcised and channelled through sound. ‘Kolugn’ is a deliberately grainy, sepia-tinged continuation of the likes of Robert Rutman’s work across the 70s American avant-garde. It sits in contrast to the more obviously synthesis-led direction of fellow longform piece ‘Valmsta’. The location slowly changes to Finland via Athens, scenes of cafe conversations and hazy polaroids informing the lyrics of ‘Louhivesi’. The result sounds like a 90s illbient record dropped around 30 bpm and the stylus has caught on a perennial 8-bar loop. The balance of Cucina Povera’s cold, reverb-heavy vocal inflections drive the track into another dimension. If Moral were the Scandi Joy Division, this pairing must be the Scandi Massive Attack.

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Swell Maps / Television Personalities affiliated C86-era indie pop rescued from sheer obscurity and thrust into semi-obscurity by FELT. The Catburgers were a short-lived Scottish group, this recording initially primed for release on Dan Treacy’s Dreamworld imprint yet placed on the perennial backburner as so many creative projects inevitably are.

Soundcloud uploads dating back over a decade ago and the odd blog/twitter post aside, the group seemingly lived on only in the memories of those who happened to catch them on the Edinburgh scene back in the day. Until now! With the help of the National Sound Archives, the original master tape containing these three tracks has been rebaked, cut and mastered for seven-inch.

‘Holiday House’ sounds immediately at home in the Postcard Records nexus, the influence of 1980 particularly tangible. Slower paced and with a touch more melancholy than its companions, the song sounds both in and out of time, as if some young teens raised on a hand-me-down diet of Pastels CDs might have laid it down yesterday.

Jowe Head of Swell Maps joins the group for ‘The Acid Tree’, whilst EP closer ‘Diving For The Brick’ sees the band ruminating on weak knees, sore lungs and stinging eyes down at the local swimming pool.

Accompanying the release is the original demo tape predating this record, recorded at The Rocking Horse Studios in Bathgate in Autumn 1986. The demo is restored from a tape copy owned by journalist Simon Reynolds and contains some of the tracks that made it onto the 7".

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Another Repress coming in July.

There isn’t much to go on other than the soundscapes when it comes to Civilistjävel! What is rumoured to be a figment of the pre-internet era tapping into a similar consciousness as Biosphere, Chain Reaction or early Fax +49-69/450464 is ultimately left up to second guessing. For the average listener crossing paths with the project, a steady run of small-run, minimally packaged LPs has cemented Civilistjävel! as a leading force in the dub techno/glacial drone scene of present.

However niche that may sound, this collection of tracks for Perko’s new FELT imprint navigates the same territories as the previous outings but with the folkloric tag “Iron Night” to help guide our ears. A Swedish expression for long nights of frost that damage plants and crops, the spectral and foreboding atmosphere of the opening cut already hints at the direction of the album. Combining dense ambient synth layers with hard to place industrial motifs (sometimes in rhythm, sometimes chaotically arranged are what Civilistjävel! does best, indeed Järnnätter unfolds as a piece of work you can really spend time with. At points it feels as if the machines in some old factory complex have spluttered back to life through some unknown force and have begun to sing to one another. Other times the atmosphere is akin to a hydrophone placed deep into an ice-covered lake and the synthetic pulses of ‘A2’ are the only vaguely human touch. However, the sparse melodic flourishes across the record stem from an interest in psalms and early Swedish folk music, the juxtaposition of machine-led intuition and personable studiousness adding a hidden depth to the album.

If the collectability of previous Civilistjävel! outings are anything to go by, we encourage you to act fast!


Artwork by Rebecka Holmström.

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Weighing in with more of the deadly payloads that make systems weep, Alan Johnson return to Sneaker Social Club to finish what they started on 2022’s The Stillness EP.
Gareth and Tom’s sharp instinct for the fundamentals of crushing half-step pressure remain undiminished on this latest EP. Their sound palette reaches across contrasting strands of music culture, and every bar is teeming with micro details of sound design which give the tracks a living, breathing quality.

Ten Year Tonnage splits the EP open in whipcrack snares, DMZ flutes and a thick bed of sub, constantly shifting and teasing roots drops before opening up the mids and letting the low end snarl.

The chord hook on ‘Shapeshifter’ nudges towards some bold rave shapes, but there’s restraint and poise in the way the sounds get deployed. The Johnson way is one of suffocating space and uneasy tension, which obviously creates the best kind of dancefloor drama. As ‘Muay Size’ ably demonstrates, the likely lads are happy to pare a tune back to a skeletal framework and keep dancers waiting. When the pay-off comes, it’s not what you might expect, and that’s precisely why their sound is fresher than yours.

‘People Of The World’ goes even further out as it staggers and stumbles through skewed jazz samples and snatches of drums being thrown across the room. For all the splaying angles, there’s still a rock solid weight to the tune which proves Alan Johnson are more than comfortable taking things out to a weird fringe without losing their swagger.

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After Mark Ernestus' mix of Moyege in this series, now his Basic Channel / Rhythm And Sound partner comes to the control tower. Moritz's deep Berlin steppers discloses dubwise traces of our original Lagos recording — the percussion of Yinka Ogunye, the singing of fifties palmwine legend Rolling Dollar, Oscar Olimbi's guitar lick — in with his own Oberheim voicings, additional drumming, and cool-and-deadly rhythm track. It's a tough, masterly dance record in fine Rhythm And Sound style — which during its ten-and-a-half minutes seems to ponder time elapsed and journeys undertaken. Like a stepping razor, but t-u-m-p-i-n. This Reggae Land version is the take-no-prisoners, pared-down dub of Wareika Hill Sounds' rootical rework of Ise Nla. Magnificent trombone and percussion; expert, classical JA mixing. Brings to mind those great dubs of Glen Brown's Black Man Stand Up Pan Foot.


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Pev swiftly follows up the Pulse EP with another four tracks of sprightly club gear that continue to shape out his current areas of exploration in the studio. As ever, there are no fixed concepts or approaches - just an instinct for energising, inventive tracks taking in a range of tempos and rhythms.

The first half of Pulse Modulation EP is marked out by linear rhythms which showcase the most techno aspects of Pev's sound. 'Pulse V' is charged with the kind of alien synth lines which could only come from his studio, but also draw a line to the hi-tech soul of foundational Detroit techno. 'Pulse VI' has a starker, bleep-led sound pitched towards tougher dancefloors.

'Pulse VII' strips things back in comparison, leaning in on a blanket of bass and keeping the drums sparse and to the point - a study in soundsystem pressure. Widening the spectrum of the record, 'Pulse VIII' sees Pev make a rare push up into 160+ territory - something normally reserved for his DJ sets. Swerving obvious break edits, his take on jungle is lean and crisp, delivering a fresh slant on the sound while maintaining the sharp focus of his current output.

Livity Sound is a label set up by Peverelist in 2011 as a vehicle for a raw and exploratory strain of UK techno, rooted in the heritage of UK dance music and sound system culture. It has since become one of the UK's foremost protagonists for cutting edge underground electronic music.


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Building on the promise of nearly 10 years testing limits within club music, Batu presents his debut album Opal. Experimentation is a well-established facet of Omar McCutcheon's identity within the leftfield techno zeitgeist, but more than ever on Opal he seizes the opportunity to incorporate ideas beyond dancefloor impetus into his animated, forward-leaning sound.
Through the course of 11 tracks, rhythmic forms are mutated and manipulated, sonic matter bends across the frequency range and narrative structures coalesce and dissolve according to Batu's own internal logic. Unpredictability lies at the heart of all this music, bound together by a consistent modernist glint. It's a sound intrinsically connected to the superlative string of club 12"s, EPs and collaborations Batu has spun behind him thus far, even as it moves into unfamiliar terrain, guided by abstract inspiration from coastal landscapes and the mineral matter all life on Earth is built on.

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When we established Balmat in 2021, neither of us could have imagined that within two years, we’d be putting out an album by one of our musical heroes: Mike Paradinas, aka µ-Ziq. The British producer has been an inspiration to label co-founders Albert Salinas and Philip Sherburne since the 1990s. In fact, his album-length remix project The Auteurs Vs µ-Ziq was one of the very first pieces of electronic music that Philip bought, way back in 1994. To have the opportunity to release his music now feels like a real full-circle moment.

Paradinas, of course, needs no introduction. Under a slew of aliases, chief among them µ-Ziq, the British artist revolutionized leftfield electronic music in the 1990s—coincidentally, this year marks the 30th anniversary of his debut album, Tango N’ Vectif, for his friend and sometime collaborator Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label—and his label Planet Mu has built up a formidable catalog of visionary, forwardlooking records, mapping virtually every corner of the electronic spectrum. With 1977, he turns the clock backward in a sense, and not just with the album’s title: Rooted in classic ambient and electronic sounds, these 15 tracks evoke the anything-goes spirit of the early ’90s, before the tools and tropes had calcified into cut-and-dried styles.

There’s no shortage of familiar sounds on 1977. There are echoes of raves and chillout rooms and transmissions from the fringes of techno; there are detuned synths and glistening reverb tails and, above all, gauzy vox pads, the eerie glue that holds it all together. The title, he says, is meant to invoke a general sense of nostalgia, bookmarking a year in his boyhood when he became more selfaware. More than anything, 1977 sounds like µ-Ziq distilled: Stripped of his signature breakbeats and customary chaos, Paradinas’ first-ever strictly (well, mostly) ambient album presents the essence of his music in a whole new light.

Along the way Paradinas touches on dark-ambient drones (“Marmite”), horror-film themes (“Belt & Carpet”), jungle breaks (“Mesolithic Jungle”), and even house music (“Houzz 13”), which marks the first bona fide dance-floor moment on Balmat to date). Yet the album never—to our ears, anyway— feels expressly retro. Rather, Paradinas plucks timeless sounds out of the ether and gives them a gentle tap, spinning them into unexpected new orbits. At times, 1977 feels like an experience of extended déjà vu: When we first listened to it, we had the sense that we already knew this music. It was as though we had heard it years ago, perhaps on a battered cassette tape lent to us by a friend, and been searching for it ever since. We hope you feel the same.

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Early DJ Support from: Laurent Garnier, Riz La Teef, Boofy, Ojoo Gyal, Addison Groove, Emerald, Main Phase, Miley Serious, Kouslin, Yushh, Bakey, Tãn, Sister Zo, GRRL (NTS), Syz, Flore, Star Eyes, Lefto, Roger 23, Tailor Jae, Ciel, Om Unit + more

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