Invigorating Stomping Chakra Grounding

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In no uncertain terms, the debut solo EP from Mantra has been a long time coming. To anyone plugged into drum & bass for the right reasons, her name should already be on the tip of your tongue. At the helm of Rupture alongside Double O she’s nurtured the realest of the real in D&B terms, creating a scene within the scene for all true heads, where the demand for creativity, innovation and sheer integrity keep the music pushing forwards well beyond the confines of the venerated dance. It’s no surprise to hear this four track 12” follow suit - you already knew it was going to be good when you spied her name on the label.

In true Rupture spirit though, you shouldn’t just assume you know what you’re getting. Making her intentions clear from the get-go, Mantra opens up with ‘Damaged’, an icy half-stepper built from raw, rasping drums with an industrial patina. It’s no breakneck roller, but rather a deadly creeper with more than enough bite to satisfy those who want their music fierce.

It’s ‘Murda’ and ‘Victory Dance’ where we can hear Mantra stretching out into the rollers, but even so the breaks come diced at intriguing angles, the energy is teased with a distinct flair, and they only go off when Mantra deems it time to - much like when she’s at the controls in the club. ‘Ala’ offers up something wholly distinct once again, offering the kind of hidden B2 magic that makes a record special with some trippy backroom stepping business shaped out by mellow synth impulses and a pad setting a melancholic mood. Original, innovative pressure from someone largely responsible for keeping such values alive in D&B, as if we expected any less.

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Following their previous Mantra EP, Polybius Trax present here another three track EP from Mantra showcasing a variety of acid styles. Opening track, Blackout, is a solid, no-nonsense acid techno workout, perfect for a strobe filled warehouse, and features builds and drops layered with ethereal tones. Emanation is a maelstrom of moving synth sounds, bouncing delay lines and vocal-like klaxons that combine to disorientate the listener. Final track, Mirage is a classic bad attitude acid track with an unnerving acid line that weaves in and out of aggressive percussive lines.

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2018 Repress! Very wild (lean and mean!) old-school '88 acid house!

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V.I.V.E.K returns to SYSTEM MUSIC with a 3 track EP exploring new grooves within the 140 scope. Following on from his SHAPES EP he continues to try something different within the boundaries of tempo. U Dub harks back to old school jungle territory, ambient synths with heavy distorted 808 bassline. Voices explores an Amapiano style at 140 with heavy log drum bass and whispering synths . While 108 works to bashment style bounce but is heavy on the bass .

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System Music is pleased to welcome Italian supernova Ago to the label with an incredible 4 track EP showing his mastery in diversity within the 140 bpm realm. A break-from-the-norm EP that encapsulates the refined character of the producer. The title track "Your Eyes" opens the EP with moving chords and swirling futuristic arpeggios that brings to light Ago's amazing melodic prowess. An intense track that evokes distant memories and resolves into an anthemic second drop that has been a true dancefloor favourite all over the world in recent years. Crippling follows with sinister synths pulses that stumble into a 2-step groove, enriched by shuffling percussion and Ago’s signature bleeps and sound design. The dreamy bridge temporarily elevates the track into a new melodic realm before falling back into ringing pulses and deep atmospheres. Eight Times Eight takes the listener into a dark room dense with experimental patterns. Pounding techno kicks, airy hi-hats, scattering percussion, strobing melodies and obscure samples that gets the head nodding and the feet stepping. To be listened to the very end. Riverwind is in the name. The final tune flows like water across a beautifully crafted ethereal sound that is encompassed around floating percussive drums, occasionally awakened by sudden effects. Intertwined visions of air and water take us to the banks of new digital rivers.

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Our 40th release to date. Welcoming long time family member VERSA for another trip to sublime soundscapes. This man can do no wrong.

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Very first version of the first single by Cortex, reissued as 7inch for the 1st time. “I remember that I and Alain Gandolfi wanted to put ‘Mary & Jeff’ on the A side, but the producer decided to set ‘L’Enfant Samba’ instead because he thought that the voice of Mireille would be more selling than my piano… 6 months after, at the beginning of 1976, ‘Mary & Jeff’ was a hit in a lot of Disco clubs and radios!” (Alain Mion).

Limited to 500 copies.

La Rue 4:23
Automne (Colchiques) 2:35
L'Enfant Samba 3:00
Troupeau Bleu 5:00
Prelude A "Go Round" 3:52
Go Round 1:20
Chanson D'Un Jour D'Hiver 5:20
Mary Et Jeff 2:40
Huit Octobre 1971 4:22
Sabbat (1ère Partie) 1:00
Sabbat (2ème Partie) 3:15
Sabbat (3ème Partie) 0:26
Madbass 2:50

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Kompakt is proud to announce, finally, a reissue of the first, self-titled GAS album. Originally released on electronica imprint Mille Plateaux back in 1996, it’s been unavailable in its original form ever since – the version of GAS included in 2008’s Nah Und Fern box featured several different tracks. Here, however, GAS is restored in all its glory, the debut full-length from Wolfgang Voigt’s most enigmatic, quixotic project.

There had, of course, been signs of what was to come. Back in 1995, Voigt essayed the first GAS release, a slender, yet remarkable four-track EP, Modern. Its centre label featured a reduced symbol – an overhead or lamp light, switched on, its glow radiating outwards in four bold black lines – a perfect representation of the tight, stylised ambient electronic pop contained on that 12”. A few curious compilation tracks were floating around, too, for Mille Plateaux’s Modulation & Transformation and Electric Ladyland series. If you were attentive enough, you could tell something was up.

But nothing quite prepared us for the languorous, effervescing loops and regular-like-clockwork beats that Voigt folded together on GAS. Its six long tracks, all untitled, neither begin nor end but hazily fade into earshot, vibrate majestically in your cochlea for fifteen-or-so minutes – some a bit shorter, some longer – and then meander away, reading the mise-en-scène for the next example of Voigt’s drift and dream logic to unfold. The material is referential in the most distant way, and you can sense only the most evanescent of ghostly presences, haunting these six compositions.

GAS feels, also, like a more pliable hint at what’s to come, as the GAS concept really solidified on its successor, 1997’s Zauberberg, and reach its apotheosis on Königsforst and Pop. Those three albums share a very similar palette – blurred, hazy samples, often of classical music, stacked and cross-thatched across a muted 4/4 thud. GAS, then, is an outlier of sorts: it’s more expansive in its remit, lighter in its mood, perhaps more fleet of foot. This, of course, is part of its charm.

In clearing space for Voigt, by preparing the terrain, GAS sits both at the edge of the forest, and at the verge of an expansive, wide-eyed future; one where GAS would become truly eternal.

Text by Jonathan Dale

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POP – the album that has become widely recognized as the defining moment in which Wolfgang Voigt brought us into a clearing of his deep, psychedelic forest. A landmark release in the GAS odyssey that drew international attention, POP was originally released in 2000 on the iconic Frankfurt imprint MILLE PLATEAUX. POP was heralded by Pitchfork at the time of release as being “an exercise in sonic texture… pure sonic velvet, the layered drone radiating a palpable warmth.”

POP has since been reissued in 2016 as a part of GAS “BOX” (now out of print) and finally now, POP is released on KOMPAKT – for the first time in its original artwork.

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KÖNIGSFORST – following the 1997 release of ZAUBERBERG (KOMPAKT 370.1), Wolfgang Voigt’s GAS project returned with KÖNIGSFORST, a full length that has stood the test of time as a template for introducing fundamentals of 90’s techno into the principles of contemporary electronic music.

Originally released in 1998 on the iconic Frankfurt imprint Mille Plateaux, and then reissued in 2016 as a part of GAS “BOX”, KÖNIGSFORST is now released on his own label KOMPAKT on 180 gram 3LP vinyl in its original artwork.

KÖNIGSFORST brings glimmers of light into Voigt’s dark, magnificent forest. Melodic strings and brass are added to his signature layers of ominous intensity. The forest path is laid out by muffled kick drums as classical music loops incessantly swirl with no direction.

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Fixate, a core artist of Exit Records, is proud to present Conundrum, a dynamic mini LP. Spanning a variety of tempos, this collection showcases Fixate’s love for house and techno, blending loop-driven beats with dancefloor energy. In his own words, “I made these tracks to fit into my own DJ sets, bridging the gap between tempos when playing out."

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“After releasing my album 'ÖÐRUVÍSI,' which was a very personal and emotionally challenging project, I felt the need to make something weird and energetic for the club. I’m really into tunes that feel both slow and fast simultaneously. The first track on the EP, 'Let’s be Havin u,' was initially hard to place genre-wise, i ended up sending it to Darren, who loved it and wanted to sign it. Releasing on Exit kinda feels like earning a black belt as a producer hah. I never imagined that a decade after buying Exit 12”s in 2014, I’d be releasing my own music on the label. When I started making the EP, I had just begun performing again. I often saw people on the dance floor, too out of it to enjoy the music and often some of them having to be carried by their friends to backstage. This made me wanna make tunes for the dance floor as a bit of a statement on this. I first tested 'Let’s be Havin u' at Prikið in Reykjavik, sounded mad on the little old funktion one. The moment I knew that I was onto something with the EP was when I was Performing in Bristol at Thekla for my friend Boofy. It was wild, the ceiling started leaking during the show. I Love Bristol, feels like home to me. Most of the percussion and hats on the EP are made with an Elektron Model Cycles, and the synths and pads are from a 80s Yamaha hybrid FM/sample synth I found at a thrift store. It doesn’t have MIDI, so I have to record perfect takes for chords and melodies. I often use pedals afterwards or resample the sounds for more tonal control. I enjoy digging for records with unique breaks to sample, as I feel this is lacking nowadays. I usually make all my drums from scratch but when I use breaks I like it to be something I haven’t heard before. The alien percussion sound in the last track is actually me biting my teeth together, resampled repeatedly and ran through pedals and interfaces. I also recorded myself chewing gum for the second track to give it that hand on the hip feel. Most of the EP is made with hardware, outboard gear, or real-life recordings. I’m not concerned about the EP fitting a specific genre or playlist. Too many artists play it safe by focusing on their Spotify stats and abandoning projects that don’t work instantly. I think also Obsessive nostalgia stifles innovation, keeping things stuck in a loop by replicating to the tee, tunes from 2 decades ago. I get it, but there has to be a middle ground sometimes.

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At the latest with the release of the albums "Zauberberg" and "Königsforst", in the mid-1990s, one associates GAS, Wolfgang Voigt's very own artistic cross-linking of the spirit of Romanticism and the forest as an artistic fantasy projection surface, with intoxicatingly blurred boundaries of post-ambient infatuation and the impenetrable thicket of abstract atonality. The distant, iconic straight bass drum marching through highly condensed, abstract sounds taken from classical music by the sampler or modulated accordingly, and the enraptured gaze through pop art glasses into the hypnotic thicket of an imaginary forest, manifested over the years this unique connection of audio and visual, which to understand fully, then as now, would be neither possible nor desirable.

Quite the opposite. The album GAS - DER LANGE MARSCH once again invites us to follow the deep sounding bass drum, to give in to its irresistible pull into a psychedelic world of 1000 promises. In the process, the journey leads us past stations of memories sounding from afar, from "Zauberberg" to "Königsforst" and "Pop", from "Oktember" to "Narkopop" and "Rausch", back and forth, now and forever.

Way. Destination. Loop. - Forest loop.

No beginning. No end.

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GAS – RAUSCH

Rausch with no name / My beautiful shine / You are the sun / This is where I want to be / Rausch with no morning / This is where we burn / The Stars sparkle / In a sea of flames / Horns and fanfares / Fanfares of joy / Fanfares of fear / The wine we drink through the eyes / The moon pours down at night in waves / Careful with that axe Eugene / Personal Jesus / No beginning no end / Eighteenth of Oktember / The night falls / The king comes / The hunt starts / Freude schöner Götterfunken / The long march through the underwood / Trust me there’s nothing / Once upon a time there was a bandit / Who loved a prince / That was long ago / Spring Summer Fall and Gas / There is a train heading to Nowhere / Drums and Trumpets / Future without mankind / Warm snow / Alles ist gut / The bells toll / You are not alone / The murmur in the forest / The murmur in the head / Light as mist / Heavy as lead / Music happens / To flow like gas / A clearing / Heavy baggage / Debut in the afterlife / Death has seven cats / World heritage Rausch / Finally infinite

Wolfgang Voigt 2018

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OKTEMBER is the second EP release under Wolfgang Voigt’s mythical GAS project (it follows "Modern“ on Profan, 1995). The 2 compositions were originally released in 1999 on Mille Plateaux, and then reissued partially in 2016 on GAS “BOX”. OKTEMBER is finally released on Voigt's own label KOMPAKT, pressed on 180 gram vinyl in its original artwork.

This reissue features “Tal ‘90“ (instead of the original A side) – a predecessor to the GAS project originally recorded in 1990 under the alias TAL, it was released as a part of the Pop Ambient 2002 collection. With its sampled strings, horns and guitars, "Tal 90” soundtracks a more uplifting side to what is typically accustomed to being the sound of GAS. The title track “Oktember” is a dense, hypnotic affair that conjures a unique vision of dub techno that few have been able to replicate.

A monumental soundtrack to uncertain times.

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Exit Records proudly heralds a monumental achievement in its legacy with the advent of EXIT 100 - a celebration of innovation and creativity. Following the success of Part 1, we are proud to present Part 2 of our 4-part album series. This instalment features a diverse array of tracks from both established and emerging artists. Their contributions not only redefine our sound but also embody the future trajectory of Exit Records. Thank you for being a part of our journe

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