A mysterious musical outfit said to be consisting of two Swedes with affinity for frogesque sounds and post-trance aesthetics makes out what is CYSP. CYSP is also an acronym of CYbernetic SPatiodynamic, aka the first spatio-dynamic sculpture, having total autonomy of movement as well as axial and eccentric rotation. The sculpture is celebrated as an early work of cybernetic character that made it into the world of art. Now how do these two phenomena relate to each other? I have no clue.. This sounds like it could have been crafted in an eerie barn in the remote countryside, serving as a never-released soundtrack to an occult underground 90's film about urban trolls - it also sounds like it could be glued-together cassette scraps laying around Richard H Kirk's studio. Laden with an almost grotesque amount of soundscaping, synthesized quirks and sonic riddles that would positively provoke any attentive listener (dancer?), it’s still weirdly danceable in the most head banging sense of the word. While pulling from the past - and meta-versically - the past’s image of the future, this is highly contemporary music - smart and stupid, deep and shallow - physical and cybernetic. More

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The artist name of Inre Kretsen Grupp (translates to ‘Inner Circle Group’) was conceived as a humorous homage towards the curious lingo of private press loners & multi-instrumentalists padding out their image with fantasy band members. For Martin Blomberg, the man behind the name, it was also the mental safe zone of someone breaking out into a solo career after decades of playing in bands. Through the social melting pot of the now defunct Wildlife record shop operating out of Malmo¨, Martin was introduced to the Fasaan Records crew, who released his debut solo EP Dorisk Ordning in 2019. Bonding over mutual goals in music and ergonomic footwear for men, Martin would soon join the label as co-conspirator. This full length album grew out of the live-sets Martin devised around that first EP. Sifting through these after a number of concerts, he brought them back to the studio for an arduous process of finding the right sound. With a kind of gritty and minimalistic new wave in mind, he has gone out of his way to find the right balance without falling for tropes and cliche´s. But however far he steers the controls for the leftfield, there is always a pop sensibility to his productions. Emerging through ambient textures and echoes, opening track “Arpa” sprawls out over a curious soundscape, dragging a rusty guitar loop around mysterious samples and dazed synth pads. The following “Buffo” is an entirely different story, kicking off with a dry motorik rhythm and haunting arpeggios that sets the stage for some epic chords. The same kind of epic pop chords that will resurface later on title track “Raoul”. The recipe for kosmische repetitions continues on with “Habo” but sets off on a more wobbly path, landing in a sinisterly funky bassline and brooding gothic synthwork. Its closest relative is found later on in “Svit” - which also seems to have been conjured in the same dark universe as Joel Graham’s rediscovered masterpiece “Night”. While the drum machines are hard at work throughout, it’s on “Vyn” where the drum beat truly gets to speak - and it does - in a crunchy, head-nodding late 80’s New Beat fashion banging with reverb and pierced with staccato synth stabs of the pseudo-Jamaican variety. Most tracks here chugs away on a steady groove, coupled with firm yet dreamy melodies. One can sense the lingering scent of the Factory Records catalogue imbued in the machinery of the album, yet there is also a crisp Nordic ambiance that demands its rightful space here. Perhaps it’s the presence of fellow label runner Ivar “Golden Ivy” Lantz providing his stark trademark violin as guest musician on “Bonum”, or simply the cold temperatures of Sweden coupled with cheap and badly insulated recording spaces in the industrial areas of Malmo¨. Whatever the case, get ready for some cold waves ahead. More

The group Magizter formed in Malmö, Sweden in the early 90s, and mainly consisted of former members of the Hungarian industrial band Das Kapital, of which some managed to flee to Sweden from the communist regime before the fall of the Soviet Union.

Gyula Szilagyi, who was the first to make his escape via train through Berlin in 1987, recalls: “it was a few weeks before mandatory military service would begin, and our passports should have been turned over to the authorities”. Risking deportation and prison, he was granted asylum in Sweden after some months in Stockholm.

Szilagyi and the rest of the band were all part of the underground scene in Budapest, of which some had been under surveillance by the secret police since their teens. It was a tight knit community where anti-communist and illegal literature was distributed, and many bands shared mutual members.

The track “Das Kapital” was produced in Malmö in 1993 by Szilagyi and fellow Magizter member Zoltan Lengyel, in a home studio overlooking the Möllevång Square, were Szilagyi had moved after some years working at the glass factory in Orrefors. He had managed to save a few performances by Das Kapital recorded on cassette, of which one served as sample material for the Magizter track; an homage of sorts to a group involuntarily disbanded.

The cassette sampled here was recorded in 1986 during a live concert at the university-affiliated venue Ráday Klub, where Das Kapital performed alongside the British industrial act Left Hand Right Hand (who had formed from the Sheffield band Zahgurim).

On the eve in question, Szilagyi remarks: “we used a guitar that we had made ourselves to resemble a Kalachnikov rifle. During the concert at Ráday Klub the guitar was destroyed using a drill machine. It made a powerful sound effect”

A remix of the remix is offered by Vienna-based Heap, who with his own productions as well as his work with the Neubau label is building a bridge towards the new era of European industrial music. More

*More downbeat wickedness on the excellent Fasaan!*

"This double A-sider is the fruit of a long & gestating collaboration with fellow Malmö-based record collector/selector & producer Simon alias Rizzolo DJ (alias Moisture). Closely intertwined with the label in various ways since the start, his path to producing started with re-edits and a more wild-haired approach to deejaying, finally landing into his own groove with the 2018 album A Freak Is Born. Released as a privately pressed cassette, the album featured two tracks co-produced with Fasaan founder Prins Emanuel.

On that first album, the palette was a lo-fi reverie of minimal waves crashing into depths of goth and heights of camp. Here for the 12" format, we instead get the full onslaught of power tools gleaming in the blast of strobe lights. The weight of GAMMUT unfolds and delivers exactly what the title suggests: a complete scope of percussive barrage unleashed in tight locked grooves and smattering reverberations. In addition to that, we are treated with a spine-tingling re-imagining of the concept of a bass drop.

For ORGONE, a 1984 track by Norwegian group Fra Lippo Lippi serves as the backbone of the composition. Championed by cosmic DJ Daniele Baldelli and here pitched down to 'wrong speed' tempo, Moisture uses the original song to bridge the gap between his roots in the re-edit scene as well as in the cosmic tradition. The dry mechanical bassline is flanked by hollow percussion that eventually propels into a crystal-shimmering microcosm of orgone energy." More

Supreme downbeat coolness on Fasaan. After a two year hiatus, Fasaan returns with an EP from the local one-man-band that is Inre Kretsen Grupp. Gems of carefully melted down new wave, dub, aor and boogie sit confidently together on this EP that makes the debut of keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist Martin Blomberg. More

For their 12th release, Fasaan Recordings has dug deep into the techno underground of Malm? and found the drum machine anthems of Frankie Twilight. Not your usual techno producer, the woman behind this Alan Vega-esque alias does not subscribe to any genre definitions. Having played in a Berlin-based punk band as well as acting as resident DJ at a members only 78 rpm jazz club, to say her tastes are diverse is quite an understatement. The DIY spirit is however a red thread throughout the 4 tracks of her Synergy EP for Fasaan.

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The Swedish label Fasaan Recordings reinvents itself once again with a 4-track EP from the Free Arts Band! Still rummaging around in the general field of dance music, but now with a touch more avant-garde on their palette. The faceless entity that is the Free Arts Band introduces us to the simple idea of bringing a drum machine to art school. Infused with the creative space of the white-painted studio, a healthy dose of post-modernist pondering and the depth of traditional lineage, these four jams seem oddly timeless. Each of them riding on the verge of reductionism, they seem to ask: how funky can this get with as limited means as possible? Opening track "Cool Grey" offers synthesized new age jazz with some sundazed guitars, while "KADK" strips everything down to their primal elements and lets the rhythms do the talking, pierced occasionally by a woozy keyboard figure that perfectly mimics the gestures of someone walking in on the wrong party. With lo-fi gloom, the heavyweight of the E.P. that is "Inhouse" rolls along on a beat that gently approaches the aesthetics of a West Coast low rider cruising track. Closing the cycle is a sequel to its opening track, and walks you out into a Japanese garden of British new wave guitar twang and brightly colored Badarou-style synths. More

The OYE Record Store from Berlin is proud to present Fasaan Records from Malmö / Sweden with their 4th release. It's a totally addictive and propulsive afrobeat workout, underpinned with funk bass and expertly executed instrumentation. On the flip Adam Lundberg (founder of the much appreciated Geography label) offers up a beautiful Balearic chugger of an interpretation, stripping back the musical elements into a dubbed-out and delicious new groove More