Bell Curve's new EP Obelisk for Berlin's SSPB provides a daring evolution of her soundworld, channeling the bristling intensity of her previous work into a more expansive headspace. Alongside six mesmerising new tracks from Bell Curve, the EP features a remix from Hessle Audio rising star Toumba. Obelisk compiles Bell Curve's most compelling and enthralling work to date. Reveling in dazzling repetition and delicate sonic nuance, it is a cathartic and defiant statement in an industry that increasingly demands hollow immediacy and caters to short attention spans - an homage to struggles and affirmation of strength and self-belief, while equally offering euphoric escape for those willing to spend time inside its mystic whorl. Club sonics are here plucked from their original contexts and expanded outwards - icy rave stabs on "Staircase" ascending into the heavens or the astral breaks and springy bass of "Hope It Gets Better". Subtle shifts in tone and texture guide the listener through the trip, reverb tails slowly extending into lysergic drift or rippling grain and feedback rising from pulsing bass tones. Jordanian producer Toumba amps up the tempo on his remix of "Staircase" while maintaining the original's emotional core, bolstering the track's dextrous rhythms with distinctive Levantine timbres. Obelisk captures a constant push and pull between emotional states - from anxiety and melancholy to joy and euphoria, working through turmoil to find transcendence. Tracks like "Dance Skeleton Dance" particularly invoke this duality, drawing catharsis from darker sonics, reconfiguring bass pressure and anxious percussion into a humid dancehall stepper. "Without U" contains emotional struggle as part of the very circumstances of its making - written while working through heartbreak, its delicate repetitions and searching tone reflecting the process of reconnecting with oneself. Title track "Obelisk" forms the emotional core of the EP, coalescing from weightless vapors into dramatic synthesizer motifs, evoking euphoric memories of complete immersion on the dancefloor and our ability to find ecstatic experience even in the contemporary hellscape. More

There are no more boundaries in dance music. Transfer, the latest EP from Amor Satyr, not only pulls heavily from trance, but does so while also repurposing vocal clips lifted from Brazilian baile funk. On paper, it seems like an almost unholy musical union, but in the skilled hands of this Parisian, the combination is straight-up deadly. This is body music, and while the record's breakneck tempos and blazing synths are fully rooted in freewheeling rave traditions, its thundering low-end is muscular enough to push even the biggest favela soundsystems into the red. The EP's speedy title track rolls out crunchy melodies atop a broken rhythm and thick sheets of bass, but it's "Quer Dan?ar?" that perhaps best embodies the music's dual spirit, its swirly psychedelics unfolding atop booming, electro-indebted breakbeats and a potent array of face-smacking percussion. That array also includes a variety of finely sliced Brazilian vocal chops, which Amor Satyr expertly employs to punctuate the song's already dizzying drum attack. It's a technique he returns to on "Rebola," injecting a bit more life into the track's rumbling gallop, before wrapping up the EP on a brighter, bouncier note with the effervescent "Bebe." More

Hospital rooms and bustling dance floors. It's hard to think of two spaces that are more different, but when Tomas Urquieta's father was hospitalized for several weeks with a serious illness last year, the NYC-based Chilean producer found himself in a particularly reflective mood--and an urgent need to make music. Armed with only his laptop and iPhone, he started making tracks at his father's bedside, filtering his feelings--along with samples he'd collected of medical equipment in the room-- through his production software. Those tracks now form the bulk of the Calatea EP, Urquieta's potent Seilscheibenpfeiler debut. Named after one of his favorite plants, the record is also a nod to his mother, who filled his childhood home with greenery, but its contents are ultimately closer to an untamed jungle than a tranquil garden. Calatea may have been created in the sober confines of a hospital room, but even its most introspective offering (the EP's title track, which also opens the record) is built atop feverishly percolating rhythms, their bassy swing pulling from Latin club sounds and the UK hardcore continuum alike. "Taro" is a thundering, siren-filled assault, while "Sotto Voce" feels almost claustrophobic, its maelstrom of churning percussion, banshee-like basslines, and blaring alarms grabbing hold of the dancefloor and refusing to let go. EP closer "Vitra" offers no respite, its marauding industrial stomp is as likely to inspire a cardiac event as it is a raucous dance party. These are heavy, hard-charging club tunes, and though Urquieta's father is thankfully all better now, the emotional turmoil caused by his hospital stay will forever be infused into the Calatea EP. More

Dedicated to the dancefloor but completely untethered to traditional notions of genre, the music enthusiastically pulls from grime, jungle, techno, hardcore, footwork and other less-defined areas of the bass continuum, its chest-rattling thumps and fast-flying percussion offering a concentrated dose of instant energy More

This four-track-EP celebrates the spirit out of which Seilscheibenpfeiler was born. It contains two unreleased 1994 productions by Sebastian Szary’s Fundamental Knowledge project, which started the label back in the day. They are complemented with present day reworks by Fadi Mohem and Skeemask, breathing new life into these 25 years old but far from outdated tracks by adding a little extra punch through modern means of production.
Fadi and Skeemask deliberately don’t apply any specific modern elements to Szary’s vintage tracks, instead they enhance their classic Minimal-meets-Hardcore-meets-Acid feel. It’s a transmission from a Golden Techno Age where all was one, capturing the sweaty, hard, yet light footed sound of post-wall Berlin, with all its associations from Tresor to Love Parade.
„1994 - 2“ sounds hypnotic and airy, while rumbling on the lower end. What a perfect opportunity for Skeemask to flesh out the track with his hefty trademark breakbeats! Fadi Mohem revamps the acidic „1994 - 21“ with equal respect and efficiency, providing the kick drum power needed for big soundsystems.
If you don’t look at the titles, it may at first be hard to discern which is which, what’s past and what’s present – a fact that honors both versions new and old.
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„Straight ahead, boomy & effective big room Techno weapons“, one notorious Berlin record shop commented on Fadi Mohem’s Seilscheibenpfeiler debut EP „Reinforced“ back in July 2018. Now the rising Spandau DJ and producer is back for more, simultaneously strengthening and expanding the sound of his previous release with his new „Perception“ EP.
Recently, Mohem not only featured on two tracks off FJAAK’s sophomore album „Havel“ but also built his reputation as a selector - with sets at Berghain, Tresor or ADE and visits to Portugal, Italy, the UK and Vietnam. His new productions are all about the rush of a club night, be it peak time energy, hypnotic build-ups or transcendental moments. Tracks like „CX Sketch“ and „Insight“ show how deeply this young artist has already internalized techno’s evolution from Detroit to Berlin, the first resembling a classy Tresor club era anthem for today’s dancefloors and the latter preaching the minimal gospel of Robert Hood. The title track comes across rough and heavy with an aggressive FM bassline as its core, while closing track „Rinse“ slows things down a bit with deep and atmospheric breakbeat techno. Fadi Mohem is a pro in balancing raw power with well-informed aesthetics, and he only just started. More

The second 2019 release on Seilscheibenpfeiler is reserved for one of the most unique producers of our times and marks the label’s most experimental moment yet. Peder Mannerfelt’s discography stretches back more than ten years to when he first started putting out techno records as The Subliminal Kid. Amongst other things he helped producing two acclaimed albums by fellow Swedish artists Fever Ray and gained recognition under his real name, especially in recent years with releases for Numbers. or Hinge Finger and critically acclaimed albums like „Controlling Body“ (2016) or „Daily Routine“ (2018) on his own imprint.
Last year Mannerfelt contributed to Modeselektion Vol. 4, now he’s back with a set of four tracks following his unique strain of abstract techno. „Life Without Friction“ is about disruption as well as peculiar moods and rhythms, and other than its title may suggest, there’s a lot of friction and tenseness in these tracks. The title cut and „Un - Air“ show Mannerfelt in almost straightforward mode, always ensuring it never gets boring or too comfortable. „Lucid In The Sky“ and „Hold The Line“ combine mellow sounds with stabs of noise and twisted percussion. As always, Peder Mannerfelt’s productions remain unpredictable, but predictably great.
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Seilscheibenpfeiler 003 comes from Canadian native Graham Douglas via his moniker Nautiluss. Having released several EPs on Turbo and Hemlock, he’s now bringing his bass influenced sound from Toronto to Berlin.
In Liquid Sky and Reak, Nautiluss puts his skillful use of percussive elements into action, completed by playful synth lines and thus creating heavy bass vibes which won’t let you keep your feet still. However, there’s no such thing as a comfort-zone for him! Inky, surely the hidden gem on this EP, shows a different side of his production skills: Starting like a 4/4 warehouse banger, it gets a full on twist a` la Nautiluss. An energetic ending to his first release on Seilscheibenpfeiler... More

Fadi Mohem is a fresh face straight out of the creative hotspot of Berlin Spandau. After a first release on WERK, he’s now taken the time to deliver a powerful Techno EP for his debut on Seilscheibenpfeiler.Raw 909 percussions embellished with housy synths cuts make “Moving On“ an unavoidable allrounder, perfect for peak time rave feelings in every imaginable location. With Reinforced and RS-290 he presents two razor sharp 4/4 weapons that perfectly show his passion for the faster and darker parts of the night. These two are to be used carefully...
Fadi Mohem definitely is a producer of variety and cannot be stripped down to just making peak time killers – as shown with Horus: With its dubbed out breakbeat vibes, this track is an immaculate ending to an EP, that might be his first one on Seilscheibenpfeiler, but surely not the last...
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