After touring the globe showcasing their A/V moshpit-inducing live show, they are revealing their new musical creations to an unsuspecting public. Never Sleep are proud to present a landmark moment in the Japanese hardcore new rave scene. The blinding lights of DEATH RAVE point to an untraveled journey, a sci-fi fusion of black metal, gabber, cyberpunk, performance art and techno. It’s their first for the Berlin label (founded by Gabber Eleganza) following 2021’s EP Principle of Light Speed Variance.
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VMO aka Violent Magic Orchestra break through the darkness and herald a spectacular mould-melting sound on their forthcoming album DEATH RAVE.

After touring the globe showcasing their A/V moshpit-inducing live show, they are revealing their new musical creations to an unsuspecting public. Never Sleep are proud to present a landmark moment in the Japanese hardcore new rave scene. The blinding lights of DEATH RAVE point to an untraveled journey, a sci-fi fusion of black metal, gabber, cyberpunk, performance art and techno. It’s their first for the Berlin label (founded by Gabber Eleganza) following 2021’s EP Principle of Light Speed Variance.

Ahead of the release VMO have brought their digital harcore to festivals around the globe, including Roadburn Festival, BANG FACE Weekender, Brutal Assault extreme music festival, Le Guess Who?, CTM Berlin and Dark Mofo. Their performance is the ultimate extreme visual music project in which techno, black metal, and industrial unite to create a ritual from the near future, 2099. All visual art and stage setting is provided by non-touring member, artist and programmer Kezzardrix (who has been visual director for millennium parade and BABYMETAL previously).The power consumption of a VMO show is equivalent to 56 guitar amplifiers, 5000W, a mind-expanding supreme noise and light experience.

The band members all go by the names of classic black metal bands rendered in the Japanese katakana script; “???????”; “????”, and “?????”. Their new LP is the first to feature lead vocalist ????. The record features guest vocals from extreme metal icon Attila Csihar, known for singing with Mayhem and Sunn O))). Other featured artists include Dylan Walker, singer of Full of Hell, punk-techno artist Infinity Division (aka Ash Luk), Icelandic darkwavers Kælan Mikla and Ican Harem of Gabber Modus Operandi.

The result is a leap forward from their 2016 debut, where they have found a singularity where death metal meets Kraftwerk, or Rephlex goes black. Dressed in corpse paint and other hell-raising looks, onstage they are like “Shinigami (death gods) from the Death Note manga”. Singles Venom, Supergaze and Martello Mosh Pit featuring Gabber Eleganza have been released in the lead up to the record and have been shocking techno dance floors too with their hi-NRG-symphonic doom-gaze. They have shared their video for Planet Helvetech (here), created by Berlin-based Patrick Defasten. Helvetech combines the Norwegian word for hell (hevlete) with techno and is a reference to the infamous black metal shop founded by Mayhem’s Euronymous. It’s a song that imagines time travel from 2099 on the planet Helvetech (where VMO comes from) to 1990s Oslo. In 2023, they performed at the CTM festival in Berlin, as well as at Berghain, receiving rave reviews. At Sydney’s leading multi-sensory SOFT CENTER festival they drove the crowd into a frenzy on the 17 metre X 30 metre jumbo screen. They have also collaborated with artists, performing at the two day installation by the trailblazing Tianzhuo Chen - The Shepherd - at the Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival in 2021 here. At Sónar 2023, VMO provided the music for Taiwanese visual artist Yuen Hsieh’s work about virtual life after death DIGITAL AFTERLIFE AGENCY here. VMO will tour the world again for the new record, with appearances at ROSKILDE and media art and music fest Sónar 2024 announced so far and the DEATH RAVE experience getting bigger and bigger.

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
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"The tape is in honour of Shaun Roberts, the sadly departed Fabric booker who was a pivotal figure in the UK's electronic scene. All proceeds go to Bowel Cancer UK."

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
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INTOXTC is the first EP under Ash Luk's post Minimal Violence alias,Infinity Division.

Like a phoenix rising, he continues his ascent through amelodic dystopia simultaneously channeling nostalgia and violence.

No stranger to Never Sleep after our //ZOO release and playing live shows for the club night for many years.

'Visions' has ID howling over eerie pop lubed melodies, jungle breaks which all come together to form a new age in crossover music.

Sounding like nobody else and completely blows the doors off the"Hyperpop" stigma associated with this kind of bravery.

'Thirteen' shows the club some trance fever dreams whilst 'Something Dreamy' breaks the whole fourth wall in its unashamed hands in the arrangement and palette.

Leading the charge is 'T-INT' - a HUGE orchestral noise rhythmic workout and shows the sheer volume that this producer can materialise.

Leftfield break up a mosh pit in NYC's CBGB and find Ian Curtis still dancing.

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Paul Seul joins the Never Sleep fold with 3 incredible tracks for the lovers waiting for the new dawn. The single Amoureuse is nothing short of an instant dancefloor classic. Showcasing Pauls emotional side and love for French pop with a huge vocal, stadium friendly arrangement and a BIG heart. A true force of nature and is guaranteed to start any party.

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Never Sleep welcome Scottish duo 'Alia' into the fold with the CIRCA 90 EP. Liam Robertson (Clouds) and Andy Graham (Sei A) join forces for devastating effect and blowing the doors wide open on that beautiful middle ground between club and ambient. A mesmerising body of work that spans electronic genres effortlessly and compounds a cinematic quality to every avenue of sound design. 'SunLight' leads the effervescent charge with driving percussion and explosive dynamics whilst 'Circa90' breaks the deconstructed barrier with tones of rave, full bodied bass and pulsive symbiotic breakdowns. A hybrid sound from a contemporary duo that are continuously hitting the right notes. Neil Landstrumm and Stina Nordenstam field record outdoor Fairlight CMI in the Allean Forest.

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NZIRIA, the new experimental project by artist Tullia Benedicta, debuts on Gabber Eleganza’s imprint Never Sleep with a full-length titled XXYBRID. Recorded during a period of worldwide lockdown, the album represents the artist’s psychomagic act to redeem their Neapolitan origins and to reinterpret some of the topoi of the Neapolitan culture. NZIRIA integrates the main forms and themes of the Neomelodic song, while regenerating the cis-heteronormative scenario. Through a powerful and androgynous singing, they reinterpret the stereotyped, almost archetypal stories of the Neomelodic genre, welcoming narratives of the LGBTQI+ community and singing of queer love and mercurial identities. Through the album, NZIRIA re-appropriates the Neapolitan dialect, which they learnt from their grandparents: the word itself, 'nziria, is an almost untranslatable dialect word, indicating the obstinate and unprovoked tantrum of children when they’re tired. Neomelodic music, a genre stemming in the mid-Seventies, became a distinctive sound of Southern Italy with the voices of artists such as Nino D’Angelo and Gigi D’Alessio. Being intrinsically linked to illegal practices of divulgation, this genre narrates social collapses and emotional possessivity through hyper-sentimental lyrics and lightweight pop atmospheres, mostly enacting standardised and discriminative patterns. Hard Neomelodic is the term chosen by the artist to describe their quest, generating a sonic space in which disruptive tonalities such as those of the Neomelodic and Hardcore are combined to celebrate hybridity as an arena for unrestricted self-determination. As a non-binary artist, NZIRIA draws from their experience to tackle borderless concepts such as those of otherness, diversity and inclusivity. Their quest in metamorphosing heteronormative and discriminative narratives of Neomelodic applies to the restless battle against genre discriminations, often rooted in Western society. NZIRIA coats the vivid Neapolitan realm populated by pagan symbols, theatrical characters, chimerical figures such as that of the Femminiello, sacred effigies, hyperbolic beliefs with sophisticated sonic avant-garde, inspired by the Hardcore Gabber, Trance and Italodance 2000 tonalities which characterised their adolescent clubbing experience in Ravenna. “I tried to encapsulate in this record that small symbolic universe which, for me at least, is Neapolitan culture. Some of these images are reminiscences of my childhood, while others are things I discovered a lot later, when I decided to look back at my origins and embrace them with pride. I chose to include references to history, beliefs, traditions, to celebrate the Tarantella in a different but somehow related key, and to start the record with a magical figure, the Femminiello, because I wanted this album to be like that: hybrid, mysterious and lucky." 1 XXYBRID shapes as a holy architecture, at times dense and visceral - as in the lovesick and nostalgic verses of Amam Ancora - at times suspended and jagged - as in the fragmented ravey crescendo of Hard Tarantella, a remake of the Neapolitan Tarantella, in which the artist included a conversation with a worshipper on the concept of faith, recorded inside a church in Naples. The sacred is one of the cornerstones of NZIRIA’s debut, being a distinctive element of Naples' magnetism intertwining absolute reverence for Christian icons with pagan superstitions, as for the Devil in ‘ E Riavule 77, which in the Neapolitan Tombola is associated with the number 77, around which a Femminiello tells a myth. Nostalgia is another central theme of the record, best represented in Pensiero, in which this feeling of nostalgia for a loved one overlaps with the one for a place, that is also a time, a golden past painful to return to; after all, nostalgia is etymologically "pain of return". Symbolism and spiritualism reach their peak in the final track, ‘O Dolor, conceived by NZIRIA as a moment of nirvana in which their voice, frantic arpeggios and granular synthesis reunite to then greet the listener with infinite meditative space. XXYBRID will be released on 20th May 2022 on NEVER SLEEP in vinyl and digital format.

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Pure was a clubbing institution in the 90s that fearlessly embraced acid house's rise with a furor of embracing transatlantic electronic sounds and breaking down barriers in the cinematic home of UK rave Edinburgh. Famously being the first club in the UK to ever book a young Jeff Mills and leading into Scotlands most ground breaking club night Optimo Espacio.

Unearthed deep in JD Twitch archive was a lost tape of ragga, techno and dub. Recorded in 1992 (almost exactly 30yrs ago) and the tape sets the tone for the never ending eclecticism, passion for the underground and merging of musical styles of this legendary DJ.

+ all proceeds go to World Central Kitchen in support of Ukraine.

https://www.instagram.com/WCKitchen/
https://twitter.com/WCKitchen
https://www.facebook.com/WorldCentralKitchen/

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DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More