Running Back Germany Vinyl & CDs

Review: Roman Flugel is back with his seventh full length titled Eating Darkness. The nine tracks were created during the coronavirus lockdown of 2020, and are testament to the Frankfurt legend's penchant for mixing elements of pop with sounds of the underground - a scene he has been affiliated with since the early '90s. A variety of moods and grooves are all delivered in his idiosyncratic style: from the woozy and broken slow burner 'Chemicals', to the majestic and spellbinding dancefloor drama of 'Wow' or the raw hardware acid jack of 'Jocks And Freaks' which harks to his days as Alter Ego. Elsewhere, there's the heartfelt and bittersweet ambient house of 'Cluttered Homes' and the downbeat bliss of closing epic 'Charles'.

Review: Long time German electronic innovator is back on Running Back with a very welcome new mini-LP, Cyclone Days. The Frankfurt man mixes up his usual influences - indie-dance, Italo, power pop and house - into fresh and colourful new sounds. Melody rules OK across these cuts as they take in vocal gems and instrumental beats with lottos joyfulness along the way. 'Somebody' with Dena is a standout and timeless anthem for any dance floor, then 'Resonancer' has a retro-future disco-house vibe and 'Friends' is so perfectly pleasing it cannot fail to make you smile.

Review: Gerd Jansen's faultless Running Back is back with another of its hard-to-define but essential albums, Keep Looking Where The Light Comes From, this time from Panoram. It is a record that blurs the line between chaos and beauty, with fuzzy synths and improvised rhythms offering up some intriguing sound designs and unusual textures. There is a psychedelic feel to many of those, but so too a dream-like quality where barely-there melodies and half-remembered vocals drift in and out of earshot. Both maximal and minimal compositions feature with nods to ASMR pleasures and a mix of synthetic and acoustic sounds.