Hiroyuki Onogawa
August in the Water - Music for Film 1995-2005

Press Release:Gordan join traditional Serbian singing with abstraction, energy and minimalism. Their music is marked by radical reduction, seemingly endless ascension and a passion for experiments.The Serbian singer Svetlana Spajić is an internationally recognized and acclaimed artist. She, like almost no other contemporary singer, is a master of all the complex local stylistic variations of singing from Balkan music. Guido Möbius plays bass and various electronic sound generators. Additionally he uses guitar amps, microphones and effects to provoke feedback which either harmonize or are juxtaposed with the song. It is a dialogue between sound and noise which is accentuated or fragmented by means of Andi Stecher’s expressive drumming. With a rich pool of ideas the percussionist drives the sound forward breathlessly and grounds it. Together the trio form a dynamic body of sound.Gordan recorded their debut during the first wave of the Covid19 pandemic in Europe in March 2020. Due to the lockdown in Berlin at that time the city didn’t have many distractions to offer, so the trio just concentrated on work. The atmosphere of being isolated in a recording studio had a big impact on the musical results. All three band members came up with ideas for new pieces, which were immediately tested, worked out and recorded. On abstract instrumentals provided by Stecher and Möbius, Svetlana Spajic sometimes reacted with personal interpretations of serbian traditionals, and the other way around. Most of the time it was as if the music just happend to the band; playing together felt natural from the first moment on.Some of the old serbian traditional songs that Spajic sang are extinct forms with a specific local melodic mode. The skillful improvisation of their lyrics and ornaments was of great importance and very estimated among village singers. The title song Down In The Meadow for instance originally is a love song from the village of Odevce in eastern Kosovo, Serbia. The singing manner is of a great intensity and sonority, with lots of specific local ornaments. It disappeared along with the village communities from the area. Oh, my Rose flowers is from the region of Kopaonik mountain (southwest Serbia) and the mode, scale is known as ”kopaonički glas” (Kopaonik mountain air). Svetlana adopted the style from the late singer Veličko Veličković from the village of Ostraće. It is an old mountain solo chant, rich in fast ornamentation movements and microtonal intervals. Don’t ask how I live is Svetlana’s homage to the new popular folk music movement from the 80ies known as Južni Vetar (Southern Wind) led by a musician and composer Mile Ilić, known as Mile Bas (“Mile the Bass”) which revolutionized popular music introducing tabooed oriental music and original arrangements.All music by Spajic Stecher Möbius except ‘Don’t Ask How I Live’ by Miodrag M. Ilić, original title Što me pitašAll lyrics are traditional, except ‘Don’t Ask How I Live’Svetlana Spajic — vocalsAndi Stecher — drums & percussionGuido Möbius — bass, feedback, electronicsRecorded by Alberto Lucendo at UFO sound studios Berlin in March 2020 mixed by MorphosisMastering by Neel at Enisslab, RomeArtwork by Lorenzo Mason Studio

First ever vinyl pressing of Haruomi Hosono's full album N.D.E. Featuring Goh Hotoda, Yasuhiko Terada, Yasuaki Shimizu, Bill Laswell & François Kevorkian. Big TIP!Ever since his days as a pioneer of Japanese electronic music in the 1970s, Haruomi Hosono has constantly pushed forwards musically. The 1990s was a particularly fertile decade for the Yellow Magic Orchestra co-founder. Following two decades spent creating and releasing innovative electronic pop, imaginary sound worlds and inspirational ambient music, Hosono established the Daisyworld label to showcase cutting-edge ambient, techno and electronica, while also embarking on a wide range of often overlooked collaborative projects.N.D.E. - , one of the headiest, psychedelic, evocative and gently mind-altering albums in Hosono’s vast discography, is one such project. It formed part of a run of albums that saw the Japanese producer embrace contemporaneous influences – think Spacetime Continuum style ambient techno, DJ Spooky-esque illbient, weighty ambient dub and the ‘ambient house’ antics of The Orb – in his own inimitable, far-sighted style.He was ably assisted on N.D.E. by an undeniably impressive roll call of collaborators, most notably no-wave hero turned ambient explorer Bill Laswell (who Hosono subsequently worked with on joint album Interpieces Organisation), NYC DJ/producer Francois Kevorkian, and fellow Japanese ambient pioneer Yasuaki Shimizu.With such a stellar cast-list, it’s perhaps unsurprising that N.D.E. has achieved cult status over the years, despite being near impossible to find outside of Hosono’s native Japan. Remarkably, it never received a full vinyl release, with only five of the set’s cuts appearing on an ultra-limited sampler. Now Rush Hour is putting the record straight, delivering a DJ-friendly, remastered version that spreads that album’s seven tracks across two slabs of vinyl.N.D.E. remains an impressive, unearthly and otherworldly album. Its unique and distinctive sound makes use of multiple nods to Eastern musical culture – think Tabla rhythms, heady violin courtesy of guest musician Arun Bagal, and transcendental synth sounds – but also throbbing techno grooves, Pete Namlook style ambient electronics, spaced-out dub rhythms, bubbly melodies reminiscent of Warp Records Artificial Intelligence-era IDM output, trippy tribal drums, and immersive electronic dream-scapes that recall the greatest exponents of Japanese new-age ambient music.Highlights are plentiful, from the Test Department-at-dawn brilliance of Bill Laswell co-production ‘Edge of the End’ and the sunrise-ready, dew-fresh dreaminess of ‘Aero’, to the surging ambient techno hedonism of ‘Strange Attractor’ – a near cult cut that remains a timeless slab of hallucinatory dancefloor excellence – and the slow-motion space-dub of Francois Kevorkian collaboration ‘Teaching of Sphinx’, whose oddly processed sounds and low-slung bass subtly reference the Orb’s earlier remix of YMO’s ‘Tong Poo’.There’s also the impeccable, pleasingly experimental ‘Spinning Spirits’ – all addictive Indian rhythms, punishingly distorted bass, raw electronics and paranoid aural textures – and the sparkling bliss of ‘Heliotherapy’, a woozy chunk of sun-bright electronic hypnotism that encapsulates everything good about Hosono’s mid-90s productions.

DANS LE CREUX D'UNE MAIN by Salon Privé

Back in 2011, the REPITCH label debuted with "REPITCH 000", a brief compilation that featured tracks from the three originators: Pasquale Ascione (Ascion), Davide Carbone (D. Carbone), Nino Pedone (Shapednoise). Since then, the imprint has been a key player on techno's experimental fringes, pushing music that joins the dots between industrial, noise, bass, and hard dance. In ten years, they've released music from artists like Sote, Zenker Brothers, AnD, Sleeparchive, Regis, and VTSS, and to celebrate their anniversary, REPITCH has fittingly assembled another forward-thinking selection of tracks following on from 2017's acclaimed "Dys Functional Electronic Music.""Dys Functional Electronic Music X" is a state of the union from Ascione, Carbone, and Pedone that highlights not only their label's scope but its intentions for the future. Ten years in, the trio are just as motivated by broadening club music's horizons as they are filling dancefloors, and that's never more obvious than on opening track 'Mastice Riddim (VIP Mix)' from Shapednoise and Gabber Eleganza. The two producers meet at the exact intersection of their styles, with Pedone splitting Alberto Guerrini's fictile trance arpeggios using his patented hi- definition sound design and trunk-rattling drill rhythms.TSVI and Randomer excavate a similar mid-point on 'Overbite,' following on from 2021's "Reflex" EP with a booming, mindboggling fusion of warehouse techno and cybernetic dancehall. Pasquale Ascione's contribution 'Plugged (Heavy- Rotation Mix)' is a disarming future-retro cut, distorting vintage breaks with psychedelic bleep techno synths, while Carbone's 'Hypnotic Experimental Dance' does precisely what it promises, blotting grinding hardstyle kicks into dissonant waves of psychedelic electronics. Los Angeles ravers Baseck and Aura T-09 throw shades over the Cali sunshine on 'Angelz', losing gabber rhythms in tweaked DSP fizz but never dropping the crucial momentum.On the flip side, Italian mainstay DJ Plant Texture turns in a breakbeat slow- burner that sounds like Sheffield via Rotterdam but never dips into empty nostalgia. Russia's versatile Buttechno, meanwhile, brings a weightless sensibility to progressive minimal, layering cauterized harmonics over driving warehouse kicks and dreaming gently of the big room. The compilation switches gears at this point, centering a pair of rave-ready hard dance constructions from fwd-thinking Greek producers DJ Loser and MarcelDune, before grinding to a halt on sci-fi-tinged closer 'Digital Hoarder' from Low Income $quad's Strahinja Arbutina.