Repress!
Wrapping up our 20th year in fine style EPM are delighted to reveal the release of 'Beyond the Reach of Time', the surprise 4th instalment of our EPM20 vinyl series from UK techno master, Regis.

Karl O'Connor (aka Regis) has remained a maverick and iconic figure on the global techno stage, ever since his 'Montreal' EP burned his name across the world's dancefloors some 25 years ago. His unconventional and single-minded label, Downwards, often shrouded by mythology, has also helped to launch fellow protagonist Surgeon as one of techno's most revered DJ/producers.

Never one to tread the easy path, O'Connor alongside known projects such as British Murder Boys (with Surgeon), O/V/R with James Ruskin and Sandwell District alongside Function and Silent Servant has more recently collaborated with artists such as Ann Margaret Hogan (piano) and Justin K. Broadrick on guitar (previously of Godflesh) for a one-off concert performed live in the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, Argolis, Greece as well as releasing last year's stunning new album 'In This Is The Light That You Miss' on Downwards. In his continuous search to side-step convention, he remains one of the more highly regarded creative forces within the British techno/electronic scene.

The genesis of the tracks on 'Beyond the Reach of Time' go way back to 1999 and thanks to various internet leaks have, over the following years, added to the mystique that surrounds them and the artist. Recorded in a period when O'Connor was putting tracks together for both an album on Tresor and an anonymous shortly-lived house label called Housework, these tracks seemed to fit neither the hard-edged Regis sound of the time nor the Housework style and simply slipped through the cracks.

Now over 20 years after their creation we are proud to give these long-lost Regis tracks the official release they deserve. The EP opens with the thumping yet muted tribalism of 'No Love From Above' whereby O'Connor approaches the dancefloor with malevolent restraint before 'At the Side of Silence' fuses this approach with the chord motif that runs through the beating heart of this release.

Rolling in at just under 13 minutes the closing 'Beyond the Reach of Time Pt.2' is epic in both scale and sound, its synth drenched chords taking it closer to Motor City emotionalism than anything O'Connor has committed to wax. Its sister piece 'Beyond the Reach of Time Pt.1' can also be found on 'EPM20', the 21-track digital compilation marking EPM's 20th Year.

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21st anniversary edition of Regis’ sophomore album on Downwards in Silver Vinyl

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21st anniversary edition of Regis’ sophomore album on Downwards in Silver Vinyl

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"Archive: The Downwards Singles collects on one 12" the three original songs from Tropic of Cancer's brace of 2009-11 releases (now both out of print and highly sought-after) on Regis's Downwards imprint, with new artwork by Silent Editions. The influence of Tropic of Cancer's debut single, 'The Dull Age'/'Victims', on Blackest Ever Black cannot be overestimated: in some respects, it's BLACKEST000, the ur-Blackest record, and together with Raime's EP demo it sketched the outlines of a world we still inhabit, and are still exploring. Of course Tropic of Cancer would go on to release the The Sorrow Of Two Blooms EP on BEB two years later, and much else since (including debut album Restless Idylls), but 'The Dull Age'/'Victims', and its 2011 follow-up 'Be Brave', retain a special place in our heart. Now, to coincide with the release of the band's new EP (Stop Suffering), we're pleased to be able to resurrect them. It's obvious now, as then, what the mesmerising, mantra-like 'The Dull Age' owes to the saturnine ambience of 4AD and the early '80s goth/post-punk nexus, but we're freshly struck by the ancient folk-like purity of Lobo's wordless, ship-swaying vocal refrain, and to the song's echoes of Spector-grade 1950s death-discs: with its bruised rock-a-bye backbeat, skeletal arrangement and deep canyons of echo, the DNA of 'The Dull Age' can, we'd argue, be traced right back to The Paris Sisters' 'I Love How You Love Me'. Lobo and Mendez's confidence in repetition betrays not only a love of post-Velvets drone-rock but also an intimate understanding of minimal techno's stasis-in-motion, while the wanton reverb worship invokes classic dream-pop/shoegaze. It is, as it always was, the sound of falling: into eternal darkness or eternal light, who can say? 'Victims' comes from the same place, dialling up the atmosphere of moody jangle; Lobo's guitar and bass sting hard, a suggestively murmuring Mendez on vocal duties this time. If 'The Dull Age' and 'Victims' were made for a small hours performance at the Roadhouse (Lynchian is an over-used descriptor these days, but these narcotic dream-songs surely warrant it), then the void-gargling darkwaver 'Be Brave' is for the wired motorcycle ride home. Here we're introduced to the Suicide-al motorik rhythm that would carry on over into 'A Color' and subsequent TOC cuts; Mendez's voice leads, ricocheting with reverb and delay, channelling Mallinder and Minimal Man, but, as the pedal hits the floor, it's Lobo's moaned, amorphous backing part that exerts the most power - the voice of a dead lover watching over you, or perhaps beckoning you to join her. Archive: The Downwards Singles is the ultimate post-punk, post-techno death-disc, and a very proud, overdue addition to the Blackest Ever Black catalogue."

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"Stop Suffering is the new EP from Tropic of Cancer. It's the first music to emerge from Camella Lobo's project since the 2013 debut album, Restless Idylls, and features three new songs - 'Stop Suffering', 'I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over' and 'When The Dog Bites' - written and recorded by Lobo in LA, with additional production and mixing from Joshua Eustis (Sons of Magdalene, Telefon Tel Aviv). Lobo's deeply romantic, fatalistic music has always luxuriated in sadness, and that isn't about to change; but unlike TOC music of old, these new songs feel less about surrender: even if the title track does seem to address the S-M dynamic at the heart of any high-stakes relationship. This is not a record about loss, but about what comes after. Gone, or at least receding, is that decadent, fin-de-siècle preoccupation with decay, with the end. Stop Suffering is a new beginning. The towering, time-stopping title track is the culmination of Tropic of Cancer's work to date, at once intimate and immense. Eustis's bravura mixing wrings spine-melting effect out of each component, and the dubwise harnessing of space and bass pressure first showcased on Restless Idylls is now a defining feature of the band. The hypnotic, monochord intensity that characterised TOC's previous records gives way here to a more concrete song-narrative - which serves only to heighten the sensation of drowned-world psychedelia. Her divine alto still swims in reverb, but the words are clearer, there's a resolve to communicate through the aqueous haze. 'I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over', which appears here in a different mix to that which opens the US-only BEB comp I Can't Give You The Life You Want, is no less mesmerising, further highlighting Lobo's ever more sophisticated, painterly use of synth textures, and her plangent, otherworldly guitar work. The EP concludes with the elegiac, frozen-space ambience of 'When The Dog Bites'; Lobo's vocal is a radiant blur, consoling across a void of lonesome string-pads, vaporous noise and distant, tranquilized bass-drum detonations. "I've searched all the world," Lobo sings on 'I Woke Up...', "And it turns out I want all the world." With Tropic of Cancer it always comes back to longing: for the impossible, the irretrievable, the unrequitable.

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A new double-LP of glacial electronics, strung-out drone-punk and smouldering space-rock minimalism from Bremen, the Swedish duo of Jonas Tiljander (Brainbombs) and Lanchy Orre (Brainbombs, Totalitär). The band's points of departure are specific: a particular organ sound from J.A. Seazer 1970s recordings, the squalid alien guitar tone of Chrome, the cranked, psychic roar-out riffage of Hawkwind, the melancholic mode of Swedish jazz pianist Jan Johansson, minimalism from La Monte Young to Eleh, “cold eighties electronic sound", and sloppy, lo-fi psychedelic rock from the likes of Pärson Sound and Träd Gräs och Stenar. Tiljander's icily poised synth/organ drones and the grieving cosmic howl of Lanchy's guitar dominate the landscape, but Bremen's instrumental palette has also expanded to include various percussion treatments, saxophone, strings, dissolved vocal fragments. Their exploratory jamming, overdubbing and dub-savvy mixing yield a music of unbelievable eloquence and physicality, and Eclipsed is another masterpiece of black-hole psychedelia from one of the greatest underground rock'n'roll units on the planet. Tracklist 1:On Board 2:Helmet 3:Cold March 4:Scorched Earth 5:Through The Barrier 6:The Art of Non-Existence 7:Universal 8:Events And Non-Events 9:First Leap 10:A Stumble Not A Fall 11:A Glimpse At The Final Moment 12:Sick City 13:Lights Out 14:Soaring With The Mountains

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A unique synthesis of time-dilating folk-jazz romanticism, brittle chamber dub and plasmic post-techno electronics, Tarquin Magnet is Australian artist Tarquin Manek’s first full solo release on Blackest Ever Black, but by no means his first contribution to the label: he is one half of Tarcar (with Carla dal Forno) and a member of F ingers (with dal Forno and Sam Karmel), while his track ‘Not Missing You’ features on the BEB compilation I Can’t Give You The Life You Want. Manek has been busy elsewhere, too: he released Th Duo, an LP made under his LST alias, on Another Dark Age earlier this year. The disturbed and enchanted environments of Tarquin Magnet are the result of improvisation, domestic field recording and fastidious editing; for all its rough textures and strange juxtapositions, this is masterfully mixed and arranged music, its deep spatial dynamics and higher dub logic powerfully apparent. More info ... Tracklist 1:Sassafras Gesundheit 2:Fortunes Past 3:Fortunes Begun 4:Perfect Scorn 5:Blackest Frypan

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Blackest Ever Black presents Fooling Around, a new E.P. from David West’s Rat Columns. The title track is nothing short of a modern rock ’n roll classic: co-written by West and Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring et al) it appeared in truncated form on Rat Columns' album Leaf (R.I.P. Society, 2014), but this is the first time that the original, longer, and definitive version has been given the vinyl pressing it so richly deserves. Its combination of void-chasing motorik, moody jangle, West’s plaintive vocal delivery and Young’s spaced-out synth embellishments makes for a song at once elegiac and relentless: think Splendour of Fear-era Felt or David Kilgour at his dreamiest, strapped to the engine of Neu!’s ‘Für Immer’, and you’re in the zone. The three cuts on the flip confirm the status of Perth native West (veteran of Rank/Xerox, Lace Curtain and Total Control among others) as one of the most powerfully accomplished songwriters in the underground today: the choppy riffage, breakneck tempo and zig-zagging melody of ‘Living In The New World’ summon Orange Juice or Modern Lovers, but with a darker, more delirious edge; ‘Strays’ reprises the swooning, summer-death psychedelia of ‘Fooling Around’; and bedroom-recorded stalker’s lament ‘Should I Leave You Alone?’ brings the EP to a perfectly bittersweet climax, as square-jawed dub bass, chewy tape FX and West’s downcast vox yield to baroquely beautiful guitar phrasing and limpid Moog tone-float. Available on 12” vinyl with picture sleeve, insert and download code (edition of 500), and digital formats. A1. Fooling Around (Long Version); B1. Waiting In The New World; B2. Strays; B3. Should I Leave You Alone?

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