TCB aka Chris Beißwenger, our boy on Jah bless road, goes a little something like: 1977, born cross-eyed, parents like Boney M; 1984, suburbia USA, DSNY, still cross-eyed; 1988, 98.7 Kiss FM New York on the school bus radio; 1989, Frankfurt Am Main, hyperactive, outsider, got lazered; 1991, drums and piano in cheesy school band; 1993, kicked out of Omen, kicked out of school band; 1994, kicked out of Omen again, got his own band; 1995, kicked out of band, finally in at Omen, The Box, Wild Pitch Club; 1996, got first car, Fasttracker, EMU ESI-32; 1999, no more car, no more Omen, Robert Johnson instead; 2002, first release, High Tide; 2003, Ableton 0.1 Beta, less MIDI, more gefrickel; 2004, exchange High Tide for CB Funk, kicked out of Cocoon; 2005, a silly move to Düsseldorf, Burkina Faso, more synthesizers; 2006, again silly in Düsseldorf, Brontosaurus, disco-house, love; 2007, Cologne and Frankfurt, back to piano, more love, still no car; 2008, with love to Frankfurt, Arto Mwambe on the road, storyteller; 2009, Mwambe still on the road, bored of work; 2010, Live At Robert Johnson, four-day week (thank God), four bike accidents; 2011, Europe, bored of piano, invention of The Citizen’s Band; 2012, modular cookery, thoughts of moving; 2013, Burkinian's death, Delphi's rise, almost made it, 2014, broke out of seven-year cycle to[o] complicate[d] being, TCB; 2015, floor-clearing/career-ending Boiler Room set; 2016, busy doing soundtracks, work overload; 2017, missed the summer hit, wait till next year; 2018, BWL gone live, MoMoMo at Amp, hot in May; December 2019, completed and released album of dubs for ESP Institute, 'Primal Astrology'; 2020, spliffs ignited, world excited. More

Now in its tenth year, Frankfurt-based record label Die Orakel has earned itself a strong catalogue of classy releases in a distinct sonic and visual attitude, its latest being a compilation called Braindance.

A fair assumption about Braindance as a genre could be, that it's rather in the zone of kaleidoscopic and whimsical quirktronica, less about IDM's futurist tropes. From Die Orakel's point of view, its very own Braindance compilation marks the label's tenth anniversary by releasing an intense listener's atlas, to its own and their creative collaborators' musical slant of mind.

While much could be said about spectral traces of a leftfield past, nostalgia isn't heard anywhere. The more you listen to this selection, the deeper the tracks plug into your brain—stretching from ethereal harmonic licks rippling with fragile glitches, bleepy to bass-heavy electroid steppers of any BPM range, to abstract-scientific neo-modular artistry.

Die Orakel's Braindance transmission can be had as a 15-track digi-release, as well as a 4-track vinyl EP. Pick either for your library of the future. The Braindance compilation will be released on 16 February 2024. More

Die Orakel welcomes Frankfurt based n9oc to its lookup-tables, hotwiring its community based operating system anew with 'Memory Allocator'. Her sonic information design echoes both fast-paced and beatless, early and spaced out melodic british IDM, complementing any 90s informed chord-code library. Compiling six sense altering code snippets onto vinyl, n9oc’s 'Memory Allocator' is future proof with any higher AI or real life form to come. More

O-Wells is back on Die Orakel with his fourth transmission, called "Moldoom". This 4-track séance is mainly made of uplifiting, spaced out electro tracks, some rolling along with subtle or acid basslines, lush pads and gently subdued detroitish chords. Die Orakel leave it at your sonic discretion, whether the catalogue number references the year 1996. More

Belia Winnewisser’s debut EP on Die Orakel, 'Mother Earth Took Poison In Her Soil', has her sonic exploration grounded in one of our most pressing topics to day, comprised of braindancing breakbeats intertwined with radiophonic artefacts, lingering between warm melodic pads.

With a slightly melodramatic tone, 'Mother Earth Took Poison In Her Soil' sets a pressing call to Side A, while 'Interlude 1' is a short radiophonic story to engage with your own imagination. This blends into a warm and melodic 'Dancing Patterns', embedded in soft pads. 'Haze' presents a darker facet of this EP, using eery synth pads and tension inducing fast arpeggi. 'Interlude 2' literally tells a sonic fireside tale, before 'Unattainable Promises' accelerate their breakbeats, intertwining with lush pads on half-step passages and sonic layers of different tempi. More

Die Orakel long time collaborator Edward gracefully reappears with a three track emission called Time Stretch. Edward’s appliance of the titular technique is not restricted to various sonic elements at all, as it extends to the tracks’ mental notes and their trajectories beyond the digital realm.

Time Stretch fills the entire side A with vibrant sonic elements, a warm bassline along an eerie pad, all on top of a straight and punchy bass drum. La Grotta’s signature melody, plus chirps and cowbells, inject a slight touch of exotica to the musical meta-data, while time stretch artefacts refer back to a befittingly themed EP. Finally, the undercurrents of Black Sea evolve along a modulated melodic pad, a pulsating bass and beat structure, and a light 90s IDM morse figure on top of frequency sweeps. More

Die Orakel reveals Lake Lemuria EP by Poly Chain, a full-on electro emission loaded with relics of British 90s IDM. The pun intending Max For Death commences the sonic diffusion with booming bass drums, reverberating acid line, plus an elevating meandering melody. Latter qualities extend and modulate subsequently, in variations joined by slowly shifting atmospheric pads and fast paced electroid geostructures, rendering a polychrome four-track braindance-scape. More

Further on the trail of 90s sonic specters, Die Orakel releases Ike‘s Stone Diviner EP, an affiliate with Index Records. The titular track amalgamates the momentum of sparse yet heavy weight breakbeats with the warmth of lush pads, and literally reverberating 90s trance or IDM elements along granular rave signals. The beauty of its subsequent tracks lies in their well-tempered, fresh exploration of past sonic phenomenons, devoid of today’s retromania. More