Repress!


“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” The steadily brilliant French producer Nathan Melja – who’s made the rounds between choice outlets over the past half decade, from Mister Saturday Nights to Antinote, via Ninja Tune offshoot Technicolour and Opal Tapes, seems to have learnt Bruce Lee’s lesson by heart, and his seamlessly fluid, no-nonsense debut foray on K.O.C. is here to potently cement his status as one of Europe’s number one club trailblazers, and one that knows all too well how to turn any dancefloor into an infinity pool of pure liquid euphoria.
Drawing its name from the physiological and psychological process that results in a confusion of one’s sensory perceptions, ‘Synesthesia’ is indeed the kind of club single that shall trigger off massive reaction amongst right-minded bipeds and chromakey house suckers. Straightforward club business done right, Melja’s original is a vivid kaleidoscope of skittish drums, swampy bass stabs and a well-rounded, supremely curvy synthwork, tailored to take ravers on a flash journey through space and time without the help of Richard Branson or Elon Tusk (pun intended).

Called in on remix duty, TTT affiliate and Incienso co-founder Anthony Naples delivers a more fragmented and ambientish variation, though functional and club-ready in its own right. Brushing even wider verbed-out pad tapestries for your brain to wander in, the track expands to deeper organic horizons with a field-depth that can not but recall that of the KLF and Bochum Welt’s emotional soundscaping. Meanwhile, Karenn half Pariah takes care of whelming us deep into more techno-friendly terrains, true to his ever masterly touch for epic buildups and multi-level textural innovation, bringing up the acidic phlegm of Melja’s original as he treats us to a carefully orchestrated ballet of synthetic whorls, contemplative chords and propulsive drum programming. More

Nathan Melja drew some favourable attention with choice outings on Mister Saturday Night, Black Opal and Technicolour, but now he's steering his own label Dream Real as a vessel for his wayward but warm sonics. This second release keeps the psyched out tone of his previous work intact, offering up four jams of illustrious synth work and fractured beats for the adventurous souls out there. "Ignore" is a vaporous cut of stuttering drums and fuzzy chord shapes, while "Steam" sports a more clearly defined rhythmic pulse for the deepest house heads. "Raindrops" cools things down to a downtempo lilt, and then "That F Sound" nudges towards a leftfield techno domain that Melja ably makes his own. More

Nathan Melja is the same young Frenchman whose debut EP we released under the name Melja late last year. Since then, he moved to New York and worked at Mister HQ for a few months, manned the light booth at the Mister Saturday Night and Mister Sunday parties (DJs make the best light guys), and spent most of his time outside that making music. Leo Draws is the culmination of that music-making, two murky but beautiful tracks centered around vocal samples and one off-kilter number aimed at the dark corners of the dancefloor. More

The inimitable VTSS returns with a mesmerising 6- track EP titled ‘Projections’ More

Rouge Mecanique and Vakula on the re-whip! More

Recorded in the Autumn of 2017 at their studio in Vancouver’s Deep Blue; “MVX / U41A” is the first new music from Minimal Violence to be released on Ninja Tune’s Technicolor imprint and the first to be recorded outside their usual home production space. The result is a record that intends to reduce pop music to its emotive qualities and apply that abstract nostalgia back into dance tracks. Their penchant for the heavier and more aggressive side of dance music is most evident in its infiltration of the duo’s often raw and disorientating live set. Formed in 2015 the duo, consisting of Ashlee Luk and Lida P, have a string of releases to date with labels such as Lobster Theremin, 1080p and Jungle Gym Records. Drawing on Luk’s years of experience playing in punk bands, they combine hardware sequencers, drum machines and synths, to weave together acid tinged compositions that derive inspiration from early electronic and minimal synth through to heavier UK rave and hardcore. More

Project Pablo will release his new 4-track EP titled â??Hope Youâ??re Wellâ? via Ninja Tuneâ??s Technicolour imprint on 20th October 2017. The Canadian producer has built an impressive discography in recent years with a consistent stream of quality .. More

Tripping pieces from the the incredible NTS sessions aired live in 2016. More

Earlier this year Jamal Moss aka Hieroglyphic Being released “The Disco’s Of Imhotep” album via Ninja Tune’s Technicolour imprint. Drawing on the energy and spirituality of Sun-Ra, Moss conducted his machines to create a raw, pulsating and meditative work that focused as much on the dancefloor as on the synapses. It was universally praised: “Sweaty and ecstatic, elevated and pure…” (Pitchfork - 8.0); “Frequently sublime” (Crack Magazine); “Fires the mind and soothes the soul...” (The Quietus) and earned Moss a thoroughly deserved” Album Of The Month” spot in Mixmag. Never one to rest on his laurels, Hieroglyphic Being returns to Technicolour on 11th November 2016 with an essential 12” two-tracker paying homage to “The Natives” of Chicago’s nascent and fertile electronic music scene in the 90s. Fiercely visceral and channelling the same “rhythmic cubist” approach, ‘This Is 4 The Rave Bangers’ and ‘HOME 95’ are proffered as “Reinterpretations or a Revisionist’s retrospective of the early 90's electronic music based in Chicago during the rise of Rave Culture from a sonic anthropological narrative”. More

Seriously strong Jamal Moss LP under his Hieroglyphic Being moniker... essential.. More

Technicolour maintains it's impressive run of form with the Dollar EP by Newcastle based hardware addict NY*AK. Following up on an excellent 12" for Karakul - a Phonica Records sub-label - he channels the spirit of legendary rhythm architects Herbie Hancock, Theo Parrish, Kenny Dope and Lil' Louie Vega, collating four rough gems made using an MPC, Nord Lead 2, Roland SH101, Roland 606, Juno 106, Jen SX1000, Rhodes 88MK1 and with the help of Mark Hand on keys, Misumami on vocals and Ian Blevins. Each track packs incredible punch in the groove stakes, undoubtedly the characteristic that has attracted the likes of Moodymann, Seven Davis Jr and Gilles Peterson to NY*AK's music. More

Florian Kupfer first burst into dance music consciousness with 2013’s insta-classic Lifetrax, filling much of the subsequent two years with a flurry of singles (more on L.I.E.S., an anonymous but hotly picked-up white label edit of Sade, plus efforts for Rush Hour’s No ‘Label’ and W.T. Records) and DJ gigs across Europe, Australia, the USA and Russia. He surfaces once again for Technicolour — Ninja Tune's singles label—with Explora, a four-track EP, brimming with punchy percussion, swatches of low-end menace, mechanical grind at a steady build, and a deep unidentifiable rumble. There is a certain darkness which pervades his body of work and Explora is no stranger to it, submerging the listener deep in the void somewhere between the crazed collectivity of the dancefloor and the inescapable solitude of the home that awaits. Inspired in equal parts by the solace of Berlin winter, dormant emotions following the 9/11 attacks and psychedelic experimentation, Kupfer proves once again that much magic can be made on a one-take hardware jam in his bedroom. More

Little is known about the London-based producer and DJ who goes by the name of U, but that hasn’t quelled praise from bedroom heads, industry tastemakers and big name press alike. Audio arbiter George FitzGerald originally met U on a holiday in Greece and immediately commissioned a handful of 12”s, each brimming with trademark mechanical bliss, like pleasure tinged with menace. U has since gone on to release for Erol Alkan’s Phantasy Sounds (both as a solo artist and in collaboration with Babe, Terror as BTU), being given the nod by The Guardian, Mixmag and The Line of Best Fit. ThIs newest effort, an EP to be released on Technicolour this summer, takes that same flavour and concentrates it. In a past life, U was turned away from a prestigious Berlin club with the words “this is our place, we decide who comes in.” Spinning this dismissal into the release and leading track titles, U traverses different tempos and sonic swatches: the cavernous thump of techno lament“Our Place,” a hollowed orchestra of bric-a-brac on “Oma,” the tail-end of euphoria gently glowing on “Easy Prayer,” and a slow descent into the comedown as “Arcane Fantasy” fades out. Unlike picky doormen, We Decide Who Comes In ushers you straight through the door. More

Deep and tripping acid backed with some jazzed out drumworks on the flip... Limited to 400 copies and pretty damn bad ass! *Shop customers - 1 copy each only* the label say"Producer and boss of Mathematics records, Chicago's Jamal Moss a.k.a Hieroglyphic Being is a one-off musical explorer. Jamal's music takes cues from the EBM and House that played a huge part in the city's musical underground in the late eighties and early nineties, notably Ron Hardy and Adonis, but also Industrial, Avant-Jazz and Noise. His tireless schedule of rough low-key releases over the last 12 years and his intense, very physical, psychedelic music, have made him a key exponent or maybe even a pioneer of what's recently come to be named 'Outsider House', although he prefers the more Sun-Ra like descriptors of 'Rhythmic Cubism' and 'Cosmic Be-Bop'. His releases, much like his music, have straddled House labels and the more leftfield avant garde electronic imprints with ease. However his deeply held Afrofuturist intent and the discipline of his radical designs set him apart from the pack. Always moving forward, his music is an ever-evolving transmission from his mind to our bodies, or as he sees it, a form of meditation that the supple, tuned listener will enjoy immensely." More