Back catalogue: Coldwave/Synth

Review: The Advanced Cookbook Of Mr Selig And Kanzler Z was a short-lived experimental jazz act also known as Cookbook. They put out one EP and two albums, with this 12" being taken from the debut. It came in 1989 and German label the Zoo In You initially and has the vocals of Mr Selig on the A-side, and guitar by Wolfgang Bokelmann and words by Dieter Pougin on the flip. An original will cost you more than a night at the pub and even finding samples online can be hard. Rest assured it is future jazz that still sounds futuristic today.

Review: A new collaboration of Philoxenia Records founders Luigi Di Venere and Neu Verboten, Affekt Unit is informed by an aim to "spark new feelings on the dancefloor". The three track Discorgy EP celebrates their musical obsessions - Italo house, Frankfurt EBM-house and trance - with the result proving an electrifying crossover of these classic genres together with surprising new sounds. 'Oct-Opus' boasts a serious electro component, fused with progressive trance, UK bass, techno, transcendental rave and even a climactic outbreak of rave-era breaks. The title track 'Discorgy' draws from Euro dance and EBM, experimenting with a polyrhythmic bass line and bringing the kind of 'stadium house' that The KLF were always aiming for. Closing track 'Dreams Of Wrestlers' is cosmic house at its sweetest and beefiest, spruced here and there with Italo stabs and pianos, drum machine fills and some lovely subtle filtering. Not so much a case of something for everyone than everything from everyone, you might even say.

Review: Earlier this year Minimal Wave offshoot provided one of this year's most visceral dancefloor weapons in Kino-I, the debut from Doug Lee's new An-I project. Taking inspiration from techno, jack, industrial and punk, An-I successfully drew a line under some of the Berlin-based artist's previous disco-flavoured endeavours. And then some! If you like the Kino-I 12" you will love the new triplet of An-I productions housed on this appropriately titled Gutz 12". The title track alone should come with a health warning; such is the furious onslaught of machine funk it contains, whilst the unnerving "Rut" is the most schizophrenic production you will hear this year. Best of all id closing track "Save Us" sounds like a cross between in Aeternam Vale and Silent Servant. Pressed on a rather thick and dashing slab of magenta orange vinyl!

Review: Khidi rolls out another anniversary EP here and it is another various artists affair that takes no prisoners. On their opener, Ancient Methods & OTHR bring some hellish metal and industrial overtones to the stomping, vicious 'Vast Vanishing' with its horror-core vocals. Roman & Boyd Chidt don't let up but offer a more linear and streamlined bit of stomping techno pressure. Silent Servant unleashes lashings of metallic synths over his signature tech sounds and then the floating loops of Unhuman & Vulkanski suspend you just above a rusty old factory floor.

Review: Angela was the studio project of husband/wife duo Angela and Ingo Werner formed in 1981 in Russelsheim, Germany. Ingo had classical training in bassoon and piano at the Akademie fur Tonkunst in Darmstadt from 1966-70. He joined Krautrock band My Solid Ground in 1971 before going on to form his own project Baba Yaga in 1974. In the late 70s he formed the ensemble AIR with Armin Stowe and Reinhard Karwatky. The project debuted with a a concert at ARS Electronica Competition in Linz, Austria 1980, which they won. Klaus Schulze was on the jury with Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog - but more importantly, Angela was in the audience. Two days later, Ingo told the band he needed a singer, so they asked Angela, and recorded two albums for RCA between 1981-82 before being dropped. Ingo wanted to work on a new project that involved dancers and live video. They recruited American performance artist Jyl Porch, who was living in Munich, to assist with choreography with her friend Kirsten McKenley. Jyl ended up recording her own album first, which gained interest from Klaus Schulze, who helped them secure a deal with EMI in 1983. Later that year, the trio recorded 4 songs that would be released on Angela 'Fantasy' single on 7" and 12" formats in 1984.
The music on 'Fantasy' was completely created with computer software of Ingo's own design. The concept of a polyrhythmic, polyphonic, and polydynamic sequencer was realized by Ingo after a visit to Wolfgang Palm in Hamburg. He paired his sequencer with Palm's legendary PPG Wave Computer System, allowing for more dynamic and nuanced programming. Angela programmed the music, sang, and wrote the lyrics to "Painted Love", while Ingo arranged and played all electronics and keyboards. Jyl wrote the lyrics for "Fantasy" and the slow and sleazy, electronic disco B-side "I Gotta Little Love", where she also sings background vocals and the "hot little flame" rap. The original B-side to the 7" version was a cover of the 1967 Hal Hackady and Lee Pockriss song "Kites", made famous by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The EP features the original 1984 cover artwork with a striking photo of Angela styled by Jyl in severe Neue Deutsche Welle fashion, and includes an insert with lyrics and and photos designed by Maycec..

Review: Reissue specialists Be With have a reputation for unearthing slept-on or hard-to-find gems. Their latest 'find' is Anna's Systems Breaking Down, a fairly obscure, left-of-centre synth-pop cut that's long been a favourite with Italo-disco DJs. This 12" reissue includes both versions from the 1982 RCA 7". The A-side boasts the skewed original, where Anna O'Malley's stylish vocal and frustrated screams intermingle with sustained chords, chiming melodies and fuzzy, downtempo drum machine beats. The real killer, though, is the stripped-back flipside "Dance Remix". Boasting less vocal, delay-laden drum hits and woozier chords, it's this version that has long been a favourite amongst collectors.

Review: For a four track electronic music EP, there's a lot here. Opening with 'Burning Fields' by Aphonia, the uninitiated might expect the whole package to nod to that classic electro sound, highly detailed but lo-fi, packed with dark atmosphere but all about dance floor energy. Skip to track two, though, and Angles of Pompeii present mutant indie-punk-dance in the vein of Detroit Grand Pubahs at their most guitar-y, and minimalistic.

Elsewhere, 'Retreat' is a slow mo maximalist triumph, acid lines flailing over the top of a muffled cacophony of noise that places the emphasis on a lunging, head-nodding bassline. Add 'Athma', Odopt's sinister low end and drum machine tune up that could almost be an accidental piece from the movie They Live and you've got not only a complex release, but one boasting replay value set to last for years after the investment.

Review: Having been friends and occasional studio collaborators for the best part of a decade, M>O/S Recordings main man Aroy Dee (real name Steve Brunsmann) and Marc Antonio Spaventi can usually be relied upon to bring the goods. While Brunsmann is of course better known for analogue-rich deep techno, his outings with Spaventi usually explore the pair's mutual love of throbbing, synthesiser-powered Italo-disco. That's certainly the case with 'Sorrow', a mascara-clad slab of raw, arpeggio-driven new wave/Italo-disco fusion that comes topped off by a particularly stylish, half-sung, half-spoken lead vocal. Heavier and more breathless dancefloor thrills are supplied by the accompanying 'Space Dub', where the track's pulsating groove is ratcheted up to 11 and periodically submerged in sparkling deep space synths.

Review: A fascinating new slice of neue Deutsche welle from the artist Eine Welt. The track romanticizes the traditional Middle Eastern dish, Knafeh, through the lens of post-punkish electronics, German rawism, and myriad layering and production. The fact that an artist would go to such great pains to record, master, press and distribute a song with such a niche subject matter truly shows the power of Turkish cuisine. Clearly, even in back the '80s, there was mutual cultural appreciation between the Germans and the Turkish.

Review: San Francisco's Dark Entries label does a good line in reissuing obscure, long-forgotten, left-of-centre gems (their excellent collection of Patrick Cowley's little-known soundtrack work for gay porn films, School Daze, was arguably one of the compilations of 2013). Here, they've unearthed another overlooked gem - Art Fine's previously rare-as-hen's-teeth dark Italo-disco gem 'Dark Silence'. It's pretty much a straight copy of the New Wave-inclined original, with the sparser, looser 'Long Version' joining the dense 'Art Fine Version'.

Review: It's hard to straddle euphoric and dystopic, but Chilean producer Manuel Ortuzar aka Aural Trace has just about done it. The borders between new wave, electroclash and post-punk are all but shattered on their new EP 'Midnight Thoughts', wherein the artist finds it no great feat to inspire a sense of both tension and wonderment in the listener, through combinations of chuffy clap-whacks, quadruplet bass patterns, and an overall neon-drenched synthy style reminiscent of what might happen if William Friedkin directed a cyberpunk film.

Review: One of Frankfurt's best answers to New Order, Axodry consisted of Talla 2XLC and Ra/Hen, two DJs, producers and synth maestros with an adept flair for gated reverb-ing, sampling and cheesy vocalising. 'You' is absolutely covered in processing and compression, characteristic of the duo's contemporaneous synthpop inspirations such as Depeche Mode and John Foxx. Giggles, strange impacts and extra dub FX adorn the new mixes of the single on this new 12" version from DBH; the 'Beasty Dub' mix is stellar as ever, while the new unreleased version sounds well asphyxiated, dry. 'Suspense', finally, explores a misty backroom of chopped tape culture EBM and horror movie samples.

Review: B 2DEP'T were a curio of the early wave of techno in Japan in the 90s, releasing a handful of cassettes and mini-albums but remaining a cult concern rather than breaking through to major success. For those in the know, their productions were way ahead of their time, and Junki Inoue seems absolutely hip to this as he signs them up for a release on his archival label Saisei. If you enjoy the boundaryless exploration of the early techno boom and prefer brightly melodic motifs to match, you'll love this record. It's brimming with oddball personality and it's more than punchy enough to cut it with modern club fare.

Review: Kris Baha had a big year in 2019 with the release of his debut album on CockTail d'Amore and an EP on Pinkman, and now the Australian body music man in Berlin is back with a high-pressure heater for [Emotional] Especial. "Barely Alive" is the kind of sinewy proto-industrial cut that will appeal to fans of Ministry's earlier work, when the synths reigned supreme and there was pop to match the noir. Especial then call on a cast of remixers to interpret the track in different ways, from Timothy J Fairplay amping up the dystopian disco tropes to Das Ding creating a sleek electro-funk twist with the original's gothic undertones intact.

Review: Producer and DJ Stephan Barnem teams up with fellow artist Futuristant for a cross-Mediterranean foray into high-concept melodic techno. 'Don't Cry' is nothing short of a euphoric anthem, mixing tropes from synthwave, electro and big room into a piece that could easily function as the next HALO soundtrack theme. A robotic voice narrates the entire journey - "bringing you light, I am the star, shining so bright, I am the rain refreshing the earth, I am the laughter, I am the mirth" - as if it were the telepathic monologue of a deus ex come to grant salvation to us all.

Review: Hull and Leeds-based band bdrmm finally follow up their acclaimed debut album Bedroom - which was instantly passed as a modern day shoegaze classic - with a new EP. It features the recent single 'Port' as well as fresh remixes by the ever more essential Daniel Avery, plus Working Men's Club, A Place To Bury Strangers and others. That single, 'Port,' took the band in a new direction with a darker sound fun of distorted drones and beats, with howls of anguish and manic guitar frenzies. That is carried over into the rest of the EP next to some radical reworks.

Review: London's Henri Bergmann makes her full debut on Berlin institution Watergate Records here with the Mind Control EP. The Automatik head is said to have created these tracks during the lockdown, and sees her utilise her voice on the productions.The title track is a collaboration with label stalwart Biesmans that's an absolutely euphoric serving of electro-pop, followed by the hypnotic dark disco journey of 'Our Time Has Come', then be bedazzled by the neon-lit Italo influenced groove of 'We Just Keep On Going' featuring Wennik on the vocoder. Over on the flip, some great remixes come from Stephan Jolk and Echonomist remix.

Review: Big reissue here of Biba's classic Italo disco hit 'Top Model.' Originally released back in 1986, it came on the Italian imprint Out Records and was an instant hit in underground clubs. It has remain a much in demand tune ever since and you'll be hard pushed to even find a copy of an OG let alone afford it. It is a glossy, glamours but raw stomper with a great vocal and retro melodies while 'By Night' strips away the vocals. For his part, Flemming Dalum sticks closely to the original but adds new subtle touches to his outstanding take.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition***


Stupendously rare Italo gem from the criminally under-prolific Trieste-based Big Ben Tribe, this quirky poplet first came our way in 1984 on Gong. Last spotted changing hands for hundreds on auction sites, Dark Entries have done the disco world a favour and licensed a reissue. Untouched and naked in all its 80s glory, the synth patterns, abstract lyrics and arrangement were way ahead of their time and clearly influenced many electronic pop and Balearic bands who followed. Vocals just a bit too much for you? No worries, just flip for the instrumental. Tarzan loves summer nights, and we love Dark Entries for unearthing this utter classic.

Review: Bordello a Parigi cordially invites us to enjoy a 'Buone Vacanze' ('happy holiday') in the first of a new series of multi-artist EPs packed full of sparkling, synth-heavy club cuts inspired by European electro-disco of the 1980s. Bizarro Universe steps up first with the thrusting sequenced bass, chiming melodies and bustling drum machine hits of revivalist Italo-disco number 'Acid Sunday', before GUMM opts for darker, sleazier, sequenced bass, bleeps reminiscent of the Flirts' 'Passion' and excitement-building breakdowns on 'Dance of Fortune'. Venice Arms doff a cap to both freestyle and the glossier end of dancefloor synth-pop on 'Cuore Nero', while 'Allore' by C/TRO is a more atmospheric, locked-in and pulsating slab of Bobby Orlando revivalism.

Review: Italian producer Riccardo Buccirossi, owner of Imprints, is back under the Bladymore Galaxy alias for another session in sci-fi themed beats on SMS' Rome-based label Free Voyage. Far From Glaxia is certainly a diverse affair, taking in the sounds of cosmic ('Let You Out'), neon-lit Italo with electro beats ('Known'), alien themed space-funk ('Time Machine') and soulful IDM reminiscent of the early '90s ('Passengers').

Review: Blu-I Boy's 'Night Of Ecstasy' is a real Italo disco rarity from back in the heyday of that sound in 1986. An OG copy will be hard to find and cost you a fair whack even when you do. This reissue offers up a complete package - the original single version, a nice extended version, a special summer version packed with even more heat and a new remix from Flemming Dalum. Also included just for fun is a playable mono meaning there is no way you won't find some moment to slot this into your set no matter where or when you are playing.

Review: Smeary, bleary, watery-eyed Deutsche-Balearica from the fresh German talent that is Tom Bolas, dropping the impressive four-track EP 'Disco-Calabra' for Violette Szabo. An Italo-German dialectic is immediately heard on the self-titled lead track, on which Bolas' enlisted singer Flo Dalton gets her oozy voice glued and washed out between the producer's ultra-limited beatsmithing. The trend continues on the supporting new wave track 'Orientalo', the comparatively grinding post-punker 'Delusion', and the EBM chugger 'I Just Wanna Dance'.