SEPH Vinyl & CDs

Review: After years of silence, Colombia's Insurgentes, which is run by DJ Lomalinda and Verraco, is back for one final transmission, and we're here for it: la ultima vez is a superb swan song that comes in the form of Fiera, a powerful long player from Argentine producer Seph that was written between 2022 and 2023. It's his most daring work yet and takes the form of eight restless, shape-shifting tracks that dodge predictability and blaze through techno, 90s IDM, dub and ambient with finesse. Limited to 300 vinyl copies, Fiera pays tribute to Insurgentes' decade-long legacy of sonic rebellion and though it's a bittersweet ending, without Insurgentes, there would be no TraTraTrax and no roots for the future we're now living.

Review: For two decades Buenos Aires-based electronic music producer Sebastian Galante aka Seph has been honing his craft in the Latin American underground with his label Aula Magna Records, which in turn gave rise to releases on Echocord, Insurgentes and many more. Recently he's been dropping bangers on Tresor as one half of Oscean, alongside Andres Zacco, and now arrives on Lapsus Records with Septimo Sentido. Here he brings his expert sound design to the fore, channelling classic mid-'90s electronica ala Aphex Twin, Skam, Reload, and/or u-Ziq, except Galante's approach is a lot more digital-esque than those artists' otherwise largely analogue stances. Opener 'OBI' recalls the daydreamy pad-n-stuttery neo-IDM of Lanark Artefax or Quirke; this mood is maintained for quite a while until the first whiff of acid is smelt on the A3 'Felina'. The record gets better and better, airier and airier, in fact; 'Skyways Shuriken' is especially sharp and recondite, and 'Dragonscale' blows us instantly away with its D&D-soundscape-worthy finesse. An aetheric release, one that wouldn't sound out of place as the next Mirror's Edge soundtrack.