Wild Yaks "Monumental Deeds"
From the Wild Yaks:
These songs. Our new record. Our last chance. 20 years in. I often feel like I’ve wasted these men’s lives. Like they’re so talented and I’m so useless they could have been more successful and happier had they never met me!
And now we’ve ensnared Jairo our new lead guitar player, our newest youngest member. He just moved to NYC from Colorado. About a year now. Jose met him when he was on tour with Las Rosas. They played a show together in Denver. Jose made a note of him and filed him away in his database Rolodex. Jairo moved here a year ago for a girl. It didn’t work out with her. He didn’t know many other people in town. Then he became a wild yak. Now he has lots of friends. He stepped in shit
These songs! Most of them were written during covid when I figured I might die alone without ever finding love and beautiful partnership and affection again. It’s our best record yet. Our second purest since the beginning. I still want to see the world. I turn 47 in a little over a week. I hope for world peace and that these songs find a home in the hearts of 200-300 people in every city in the world and we can make just enough money playing every city to keep going. I am resigned to my fate and happy and humble to be my stupid self! Long live life long live love and brotherhood and humanity and dancing!
Terence Fixmer "The Paradox in Me"
Throughout his influential career, uncompromising French producer Terence Fixmer has straddled a precarious line, master-minding his own strain of taut, dancefloor-ready techno while simultaneously paying respect to the EBM sounds that helped crack open his mind as teenager. On The Paradox in Me, his second album for Mute / NovaMute, Fixmer confronts this duality, stretching the limits of dance music by interlacing evocative, cinematic electronics with pounding, peak-time 4/4 pulses. “There’s always a fight between directions,” he says. “This album represents all the sounds I have within me.” The album goes straight to the point, brimming with the kind of raw, all-electronic grit that the artist has inked into an idiosyncratic signature over the last two decades, but there’s a fresh narrative thread this time around, brought to the surface by Fixmer’s hypnotic sound design and atmospheric, soulful melodies.
Fixmer burst onto the scene in the late 1990s, establishing the Planete Rouge label in 1998, and releasing a slew of influential 12″s under a pseudonym before signing to DJ Hell’s International DJ Gigolos and unleashing Muscle Machine, his acclaimed debut album which pioneered a new genre that merging the sounds of EBM and Techno.
Not long later, he achieved a personal milestone, collaborating with Nitzer Ebb vocalist Douglas McCarthy for two albums as FixmerMcCarthy, that bridged the gap between EBM and classic techno. And since then, he’s barely stopped for breath, remixing personal heroes like Front 242, Nitzer Ebb and Depeche Mode, as well as respected peers such as Ellen Allien, DJ Hell, Dave Clarke and Sven Väth, simultaneously building up a canon of work on CLR, Electric Deluxe, Ostgut-Ton and of course, Mute and NovaMute. He channels all this experience into The Paradox in Me, building a world that reconciles his past and present. The essence of the album is the way it effortlessly presents tracks with different kinds of energies and artistic facets, each track has a strong presence, and a unique soul and energy which comes from a place that is specifically – and recognisably Fixmer’s.
His writing process for the album was relatively straightforward. Fixmer worked with his arsenal of synthesizers and focused on the unique textures of the instruments themselves, following his instincts and experimenting boundlessly until happy accidents evolved into finished tracks. Knowing when to stop was the key; if he stumbled over something surprising, whether it was a sound or simply an attitude, Fixmer would endeavour to capture it, and then stand back. On opening track ‘Test of the Times’, he layers dizzying, industrial grain clouds over an undulating rhythm, spiking the mood with hoarse, robotic vocals and haunted sci-fi atmospheres.
Will Gregory Moog Ensemble "Heat Ray: The Archimedes Project"
Will Gregory Moog Ensemble announce their debut album, Heat Ray, an album inspired by the work of Archimedes, the Greek mathematician who lived and worked in the third century BC. The album – recorded by the ensemble on analogue synthesisers, alongside the BBC National Orchestra of Wales – is set for release on vinyl, CD and download on 14 June 2024 via Mute.
The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble – which at times, comprises up to fourteen players – was formed by Ivor Novello winning musician, producer and co-creator of Goldfrapp, Will Gregory. Although they have been performing together since 2005, it took Archimedes to bring the ensemble together to commit these spirals of melody, circular structures, sequences, and patterns to tape. The album’s inspiration occurred during the pandemic lockdowns, when Will started digging into the mathematician’s life, after watching lectures online. “I became a bit of a YouTube fiend. Attending all these lectures I would never normally go to on subjects I had no business to be interested in. Scratch any of these maths gurus and it turned out Archimedes was their favourite mathematician. I wanted to find out why.”
The ensemble’s members – a talented bunch who have worked with the likes of Florence & the Machine and Dua Lipa – include Portishead’s Adrian Utley, a longtime collaborator of Will’s, who plays on the album and produced it. Mute’s Daniel Miller is its “kind of executive producer”, and he even played on one of the tracks. “Given he’s been into synths right from his early days, and is a genius with them, that was a good moment”, alongside John Baggott, Graham Fitkin, Simon Haram, Vyvyan Hope-Scott, Ross Hughes, Hazel Mills, Daniel Moore, Hinako Omori, Eddie Parker, Harriet Riley and Ruth Wall, their instruments include Minimoog, Moog Voyager, Korg 700s, Prophet 6 and Roland JX3P, their individual lines coming together in intricate arrangements creating a stunning superstructure of sounds.
Heat Ray takes the fertile imagination and application of those incredible times, and adds an effervescent spirit of discovery to the mix, one that often crackles and sparkles when musicians are powerfully inspired to make music together. Another legacy of Archimedes’ work rises up as a consequence – an album that brings ancient history into the modern world, pushing us towards an endlessly curious fascinating future.
Donte Thomas "An APPLE a Day"
In the heart of Portland’s ceaselessly vibrant hip-hop scene, Donte Thomas has been something of a secret weapon for a decade—his sharp, introspective lyricism fused with lush, melodic beats that grab both the die-hard aficionados and the casual passerby. His latest venture, “an APPLE a day,” is less a collection of tracks and more a manifesto on survival and growth amidst the chaos of modern life, filtered through the lens of an artist who refuses to lose his footing.
Thomas’s “an APPLE a day” is a full dive into the deep end of life’s complex currents. Through tracks like “GOTTA GET UP” and “RUNNIN,” he takes us on a tour through daily grinds and personal reckonings, his words etching vivid sketches of struggle and triumph against a sonic backdrop that bridges boom-bap nostalgia with the avant-garde edges of contemporary sound. It’s a narrative thread that pulls tight with each beat, weaving a tapestry that feels both intensely personal and expansively universal.
Teaming up with producers like the notable Kaelin Ellis, Thomas crafts each track as a multi-layered experience, where the production serves not just as a backdrop but as a dynamic participant in the storytelling. The result is an album that feels both grounded in tradition and daringly fresh, pushing the boundaries of what hip-hop can be while staying true to its roots.
“an APPLE a day” stands as a testament to Thomas’s growth as both a craftsman and a chronicler of the human spirit. With a poet’s touch and a philosopher’s insight, his music captures the nuanced dramas of everyday life, turning personal anecdotes into lessons on resilience and authenticity. This album isn’t just for Portland or for hip-hop heads; it’s for anyone who’s ever faced a challenge and decided to keep moving forward. It’s a reminder that in the complexity of our lives, there’s always a new day, a new note, a new story to tell.