textura

Albums
17 Pygmies
Ælab
Aeroc
Adrian Aniol
Aleph
Artificial Memory Trace
B. Schizophonic / Onodera
Blue Fields
The Boats
Canyons of Static
Celer
drog_A_tek
Fennesz + Sakamoto
Marcus Fischer
Les Fragments de la Nuit
Daniel Thomas Freeman
From the Mouth of the Sun
Goth-Trad
Karol Gwózdz
Mark Harris
Inverz
Kingbastard
Tatsuro Kojima
Robert Lippok
Maps and Diagrams
Merzouga
Message To Bears
mpld
The New Law
Nuojuva
Octave One
Petrels
Puresque
Refractor
Lasse-Marc Riek
Jim Rivers
Dennis Rollins
Scuba
Shigeto
Susurrus
Jason Urick
VVV
Williamette
Windy & Carl
Zomes

Compilations / Mixes
DJ-Kicks: The Exclusives
Future Disco Volume 5
King Deluxe Year One
Phonography Meeting
Pop Ambient 2012

EPs
Blixaboy
Matthew Dear
Fovea Hex
Jacksonville
Kurzwellen 0
Phasen
Pascal Savy

VA: Kurzwellen 0
Kurzwellen

Kurzwellen's inaugural seven-inch vinyl release arrives nestled within a folded, poster-sized sheet adorned with a grainy, WWII-styled photo of gas-masked soliders trudging through a forest—no surprise, then, to learn that the label aims to not only celebrate the ‘80s industrial music scene but also resurrect it, with the intent to incite a new wave of the genre's old-school sound. In keeping with that aim, the promo-only appetizer features material by The Savage Morality plus excerpts from Precision Surgery tracks that will appear in full on Kurzwellen's first two formal releases, limited-edition vinyl outings (166 copies) scheduled to appear in February and April 2012.

Precision Surgery gets the A-side all to itself, and packs it with brief snippets that hint at the fuller presentation to come. Included amongst these macabre micro-episodes are gloomy spoken passages, drum machine beats grown from black Kosmische soil, angst-ridden passages whose creaks ooze menace and foreboding, guitar-fueled blaze full of distortion and psychedelia, and even an uptempo riff on electro-punk—the shape of things to come. The Savage Morality's “Blood Perversion,” on the other hand, lumbers for six minutes like some diseased behemoth clinging to its final moments of life. Powered by a raw, two-toned motif of guitar fuzz and a creature's strangulated drawl, the tune's low-end sludge would appear to be a perfect distillation of the Kurzwellen aesthetic.

February 2012