Special remarks: Limited capsule collection 1/3 from Midnight Shift

Tracklist:
A1. Time Spiral A2. Heed B1. Fading Inward B2. Transitory

Short info:
A homecoming for Singaporean Xhin as he releases on the Singaporean label Midnight Shift for its limited triptych capsule collection focusing on straight-up techno: 'SHIFT LTD'. A 4-tracker full of asiatic heat bound for the dancefloor from the iconoclastic sound designer. This is the first release out of three.
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Xhin's debut album on Stroboscopic Artefacts, 'Sword', showcases the breath of his vision. As the second full-length release on Stroboscopic Artefacts, 'Sword' stretches the remit of the label's identity ever further. Produced and recorded in Singapore, Xhin plucks sounds from the outer edges of electronic music and
fuses them together. Xhin's approach revels not only in a hybrid sound palette but it's also an album designed for multiple contexts. It’s a record typified by duality. Xhin's process seamlessly traversed analogue and digital production, and 'Sword' harbours electronic music that ranges from brutal club sounds to deep and delicate murmurs. It's clear from the way the album is crafted and layered that Xhin is a skilled sound designer. The tracks seem to have been worked on from a 360o perspective. His muse? The void. But rather than soundtracking the abyss, 'Sword' is a strategy, an attempt to negotiate a way out. Part of the answer that he proposes abandons the shadowy recesses of melancholy in search of the ecstatic. 'The Secret Closet' depicts a dream state in frosted tones and icy ambience that is returned to again with the discordant jangles of 'Inside'. 'Wood' picks up the motive once more. At the kernel of 'Wood' is melody that Xhin composed on the
piano and then digitally processed into a state of bliss. However, 'Sword' refuses to languish in a romantic hinterland and the ambience is off set by aggressive,
weighty cuts. 'Fox and Wolves' is Xhin ripping into any nostalgia that opening track 'The Secret Closet' promised. Equally 'Teeth' gnashes and writhes over a bed of deep beats. 'Vent' is fortified with metallic rasps and built from the droning aggression that characterized Xhin's early Stroboscopic Artefacts releases. Even
at its darkest, its most violent, 'Swords' envisions the club as a place of refuge. Proposing a collective acknowledgement of the void, where dancing fends off its grip, and realization is paradoxically escapist. 'Sword' could not be more aptly titled. Xhin creates allusions with track titles that snatch images from a post-modern fairytale: woods, wolves, foxes, wardrobes. Xhin appropriates the fairytale hero's sword and the weapon becomes symbolic of a struggle, a tool against the void. A way out of dystopia. Journeying to the crispy cusp of experimentation and musical questioning, 'Sword' is one of those rare creations that emerge when a producer has absolute artistic freedom. The 10 tracks navigate parallels and paradoxes allowing Xhin to cut a deft mark across the album format.
Tracklisting:
1 - The Secret Closet
2 - Fox and Wolves
3 - Teeth
4 - Insides
5 - Wood
6 - Medium
7 - You Against Yourself
8 - Vent
9 - Foreshadowed
10 - This Is What You Drew While You Were Half Asleep More

‘Cutlass’ is the 12? that precedes ‘Sword’ Xhin’s forthcoming full-length album on Stroboscopic Artefacts. Four tracks from the album have been selected and spliced into completely new forms by four producers with very separate agendas. The minds, computers and analogue tools of Surgeon, Dadub, Pfirter and Perc have extracted new visions from Xhin’s ‘Sword’ with nothing short of scientific precision. A cutlass just like a sword but with a slightly curved blade, and accordingly the way that Surgeon, Dadub, Pfirter and Perc cut into these tracks is experimental and left of the centre. The four producers’ remixes uncover latent facets of ‘Sword’, adding not just anticipation to the release of Xhin’s album, but also widening the scope of Stroboscopic Artefacts’ soundscape. More

upc/barcode: 827170534162 Release: 31st March 2014
Tracklist: A side: One Month Off, The Wall
B side: Cave Dwellings, Marker Shop, Viewpoint

The third release for Stroboscopic Artefacts in 2014, SA22 is the new cut from Italian producer Chevel. 'One Month Off' is an EP built around the abstract themes of construction, starting with demolition and ending on perspective. Opening track 'One Month Off' combines a warm thump with skittering percussion. Ragged cymbals build pressure. As the track continues to strut, through insistence as much as confidence, it gives out. 'The Wall', next up, is perhaps misleadingly a more unsettled affair. There is little linear impetus, a panoply of syncopated beats and foreign noises from the undergrowth. This is a wall of multitudinous surface, a front concealing the unsettled and unsure within. 'Cave Dwellings' is a more organic construct, building from the traditional basics of a kick drum and hi hat. Like the opening number this is a confident piece, but the Caves resonate with greater darkness and menace. The kick squelches at the bottom, the snare drips; glistening echoes bound through the chamber. 'Marker Shop' is fourth up, uniting disparate urges and glorious moods. The beat is uncomfortable, and repeatedly gives way. The record closes on 'Viewpoint', a piece of warmer perspective. It is not, however, a calm scene: in many ways this is a view of something more unsettled than what has come before. It is both jungular and industrial, an uncompromising marriage of nature and noise.
Chevel lands, then, on SA, with a discussion of construction and constructs. Out on March 31st.
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