Various
Tone Dropout Vol 10

Hi, this is Remco, who made the music for this record. These tracks are my take on techno and electro cuts with an experimental twist. But I’d rather share a bit on the underlying theme of what this record means to me.Digital Plant System, Solvation, Labyrinth and Altar all touch upon the subject of not always being able to change difficult situations that you encounter. It has occurred to me that the more you seek, the more you will keep looking. Digital Plant System for me symbolizes how it can feel very hard if not impossible to understand the world and how it works, while Solvation and Labyrinth as you might guess by their titles, feel like dwelling on certain problems and getting stuck in thought loops about them. The final track Altar is all about surrendering to the fact that a solution might not come by working ever so hard on analyzing it, but simply yielding to something bigger, and stop resisting.This record feels very personal to me even though it’s one of the clubbier projects I’ve put out, which is why I like to share some of the symbolism these tracks hold for me. I really hope you enjoy them.Sincerely,Remco

A compilation of essential music created to make your nights and days fearless, from house to techno, trough ambient and experimental. A genuine selection of six tracks that speak the same language in different moods. Make your choice: fear or music!

Hypnagogic Surge by AmselysenHYPNAGOGIC SURGE by AMSELYSEN is a dense setup of signal interferences, of jacked up, spliced, reconstructed digital snippets, of outbursts whose amplitude overcooks the microphone's defenseless circuitry. Anxious with unreleased energy build-ups, the music is always pregnant with a double quality, something like a dagger made from ice, the possibility to shatter or crumble into a thousand shards combined with the looming threat of clean rupture posed by the blade's edge. Digital distortion is used here to unmask materials, to frontally attack them and expose their shimmering metallic face; pitch-time processing dilemmas get dodged by exploding into the high frequency gleam embedded but hidden in their algorithms. Completely removed from the "Lo-Fi" paradigm seeking warmth or nostalgia, the present degradation-reconstructions result in newly audible chirp figures, the sparkle of aliasing and the descent into the grainy territory of microscopic sound events. From a more panoramic perspective, these tracks are continually transforming contraptions, with looping frames accelerating, doubling, halting or stuttering, overloading, seemingly struggling to buffer, sometimes mixing with immiscible materials to form a glistening suspension of new sound material.

To celebrate the 10 years of Cracki Records, we decided to offer you a new compilation which is not only a return towards the past, gathering the titles which marked the history of Cracki, but also a glance towards the future with the meeting of artists who always gravitated in our close environment. Our wish is to reunite the constellation of friendly and sincere influences that surrounds us through featurings, remixes and exclusive collaborations. In addition to our usual friends, we will meet on this compilation Juan Wauters, Chassol, David Numwami, Lord Apex, NxxxxxS, Myd, Voiski, Tryphème, Myth Syzer or Black Devil Disco Club.With these new collaborations that cross the borders, Cracki Records projects itself towards unknown territories, always searching innovative projects, against fashion and mercantile imperatives. The artistic effervescence, the sensitivity and the human aspect will always come first.

Voor Harmonium by HellveteIn his essay ‘The Meaning of My Avant-Garde Hillbilly and Blues Music’, Henry Flynt talks about how his music should be analysed as an intellectual tribute to the music of the autochtone, setting aside plain folk references, but adopting academic insights to mold the music one makes as a folk creature. Much of Flynt’s discourse applies to the music of Glen Steenkiste’s Hellvete. Over the past twenty years he has been thoroughly investigating both the ethnic musical language of various regions as well as the contemporary pioneers that preceded him as a drone musician, internalizing concepts such as e.g. deep listening or just intonation. Casting off any redundant ideas or sounds, and stripping down the focus to develop singular concepts, his working method lead to pieces such as ‘Droomharmonium’, in which he shapes the endless variations on a theme, emphasizing detail and nuance rather than multitude. The Indian harmonium here serves as the main device to worship ancient ghosts and masters, and to preserve a continuum in a tradition that touches both folk and avant-garde culture. The materialisations are sustained tone compositions which become a means of appreciation of the people and cultures that paved the way for forms of mutual escapism. This might well be the core of what Hellvete’s music is about. As much as it is a form of self-entertainment – like folk music in the old days – it also invites the listener to a shared experience of sonic reverie, it is a casual gift to the community. This is certainly true for the pieces presented on this album. They were first presented in a smoke filled and darkened art space in Ghent, Steenkiste surrounded by only a couple of candles and just enough stage light to see him erratically moving to the rhythm of the piece, occasionally twiddling the knobs of a Doepfer synth that processed the prerecorded harmonium tracks. Unlike most of his other performances this piece embraced the audience in a trance that was similar to that of an old-school rave club. Flynt writes: ‘The music should be intellectually fascinating because the listener can perceive and participate in its rhythmic and melodic intricacies, audacity of organization, etc. At the same time, the music should be kinesthetic, that is, it should encourage dancing.’ ‘Voor Harmonium’ does exactly that; it builds on the artistic ideas that have long been established in Hellvete’s oeuvre, but the ecstatic nature of these pieces merges the usual spiritual transcendence with one of determined physical bliss. It encourages both mind and body to step into the sound, to be enraptured, to celebrate.