Modern Love very rarely reaches out to artists outside of its immediate surroundings; it’s happened just a couple of times in the last 14 years. But there’s something about Philippe Hallais that compelled the label to ask him if he wanted to do something together. Philippe has released music on a bunch of cool labels (L.I.E.S., The Trilogy Tapes, Delsin, In Paradisum), but hearing the first tracks recorded for Lighthouse Stories, it was obvious Philippe was hitting on something new: a kinda weird slow/fast dance music that sounded like a Footwork variant sewn up with an exotic production style that was impossible to pin down. These tracks eventually splintered off into different directions, held together by a strong sense of narrative and motion harking back to a teenage obsession with Turntablism, Detroit electro and Ghetto house, and eventually Juke and Grime. Although he’s spent the last few years focusing on more industrial dancefloor variants, for Lighthouse Stories Philippe turned to these foundational influences, as well as his love of mixtapes and sound collages full of unfinished ideas, skits and experiments; all things that inform the flow of this new album.
Lighthouse Stories captures a sense of nostalgia well, but is also a futuristic vision full of that exploratory, vibrant spirit that’s so hard to find in electronic music these days. Frames of reference are hard, but in places it reminds us of the dusted swagger of Anthony Shake Shakir, the acquatic Drexciyan movements of Ultradyne, a loose-limbed take on Shangaan, and of Actress at his most submerged.
But ultimately, it’s an album made by a producer looking to his personal history while forging new ground, pushing ahead with little regard to convention and ultimately ending up with something completely unique: a kind of intimate journal rendered in bright colours and odd shapes.
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Originally composed for a live performance commissioned by the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, French producer Low Jack was given access to the museum's vast music library and used it as a basis for this project. His research focused on the Garifuna people of Honduras, composing a live set by sampling selected pieces from the library's music collection. Despite no initial intention to release this performance, the live recording was later brought to the attention of L.I.E.S. Records, resulting in Low Jack returning to the studio to re-create his set, thus culminating in this LP. Rhythmic, tense, and hypnotic electronic music that lives in the grey area many are unwilling to step into. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy. More

GTCM is back for a very special debut release by Parisian artist Low Jack. At the crossroads between avant-garde techno-funk and a mischievous take on the sound of yesterday, Low Jack's clockmacker beats are channeled through a radiesthesia pendulum and the effects are akin to vertigo-inducing opiates of the strongest persuasion. In addition to the three outstanding originals, this release contains Gerd's very first remix as Geeeman. The wait has been long since his acclaimed releases on Clone and he's delivered an irresistible remix geared towards dancefloor explosion that must not be missed.

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Blawan's new side project Bored Young Adults is up next on Will Bankhead's label The Trilogy Tapes. The Shy Dancers On Bungalowdorf Beach features some restrained and slow burning techno experiments that differ from Jamie Robert's more usual hard-hitting sounds. The seething title track treads the same path as Kassem Mosse or Vactrol Park. The Fentanyl techno of "But We Need This Bench" sounds like an old Regis record played on -8, while devoted fans of the young UK producer's sound will get something a bit more familiar on the menacing hypnotic techno grinder "Check Up From The Neck Up".

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Following the announcement that they've collaborated with perma-masked Zomby on his upcoming LP for Hyperdub, behooded hardware manglers Rezzett return to home soil for their latest, and perhaps best so far, 12" for The Trilogy Tapes. With a very defined, redlining approach to techno and hardcore tropes established across their prior output on Will Bankhead's label, the duo demonstrate there is still plenty of scope for invention on Doyce. In essence you get two versions of the same track either side of this 12"; the A-side is nominally the club cut though there is a feeling of restraint where usually Rezzett deal in speaker bursting madness. The "Yavas" version on the flip is quite something else however, discarding with any rhythmic elements over an eleven-minute journey into mind-bending sonics based around that quite exquisite mangled synth line. More

Blawan's new side project Bored Young Adults is up next on Will Bankhead's label The Trilogy Tapes. The Shy Dancers On Bungalowdorf Beach features some restrained and slow burning techno experiments that differ from Jamie Robert's more usual hard-hitting sounds. The seething title track treads the same path as Kassem Mosse or Vactrol Park. The Fentanyl techno of "But We Need This Bench" sounds like an old Regis record played on -8, while devoted fans of the young UK producer's sound will get something a bit more familiar on the menacing hypnotic techno grinder "Check Up From The Neck Up".

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Terrific record! Eight charged, intimate meditations by Julie Normal and Olivier Demeaux, playing a rickety ondes Martenot and an old church harmonium. Gripping, detailed, stately improvisation — a bit like the ùrlars in classical bagpipe music — which nervily mixes the sternly doom-laden with precarious, other-worldly wonderment. (The ondes Martenot is an amazing twentieth-century instrument — beloved by Messiaen, for example, and Varese. The theme-song of Star Trek is a vocal forgery of its sound. ‘J’aime cette fragilité qui côtoie la capacité de te décoller le tympan sur certaines fréquences inopinément,’ says Julie. ‘Je tiens une bombe dans les mains. J’aime son instabilité, son humanité.’) Wood, breath, blood, eggshells… on the night of a purple moon. Very warmly recommended. More

Four track EP produced by Samo DJ & Elias Landberg. More

Under his Chemotex alias, Marcos Cabral has been one of The Trilogy Tapes most productive artists in recent times. This is his third 12" for Will Bankhead's imprint in less than 12 months. Unlike Cabral's recent album for L.I.E.S, which reveled in its' own distorted, balls-out intensity, Thulsa strives to get a balance between becalmed techno hypnotism, skuzzy grooves and gently melodious intent. This blend is perhaps most satisfyingly mixed on the industrial-tinged clank of "Delta City", though the woozier, scuffled late night warmth of "Music For Security" pushes it close. Twice he heads towards deeper territory; first on the title track's trance-inducing synthesizer loop groove, and secondly on the dubby, locked-in tech-house majesty of "Lorentz". More

Coruscating cut-ups yanked still dripping and yowling from the belly of the beast. Dazzling and invigorating, scary and discombobulating. 'Psychic driving was a psychiatric procedure in which patients were subjected to a continuously repeated audio message on a looped tape, in order to alter their behaviour... often hundreds of thousands of repetitions of a single statement over the course of their treatment. They were also concurrently administered muscular paralytic drugs such as curare... The psychic driving procedure was a chronological precursor to Cameron's depatterning, involving massive doses of ECT combined with similarly large doses of psychedelic drugs like LSD. The intent was to break down the subject's personality — theoretically psychic driving could then be used with some efficacy in establishing a new personality' (Hanson Records). More

Under his Chemotex alias, Marcos Cabral has been one of The Trilogy Tapes most productive artists in recent times. This is his third 12" for Will Bankhead's imprint in less than 12 months. Unlike Cabral's recent album for L.I.E.S, which reveled in its' own distorted, balls-out intensity, Thulsa strives to get a balance between becalmed techno hypnotism, skuzzy grooves and gently melodious intent. This blend is perhaps most satisfyingly mixed on the industrial-tinged clank of "Delta City", though the woozier, scuffled late night warmth of "Music For Security" pushes it close. Twice he heads towards deeper territory; first on the title track's trance-inducing synthesizer loop groove, and secondly on the dubby, locked-in tech-house majesty of "Lorentz". More