Previously unreleased music the producer made with Candida Royalle in the early ’70s features on the upcoming Candida Cosmica.
This is US producer Bill Converse’s second release on Dark Entries and follows the impressive Mediations / Industry debut from earlier this year. Like a summer storm gathering over the sea or the sound of chirping crickets at sunset, Converse’s music is by turns vivid, breathtaking and pregnant with an alluring air of expectation.
Design for records from Antinote, Whities, Dark Entries, Proibito, Paralaxe Editions all make the grade this month.
Warehouse Invocation features a mix of fresh and old material from the Texas-based producer.
For their latest release, esteemed San Francisco label Dark Entries has decided to change tack, turning to a period when Detroit’s electro sound was beginning to morph into what would later be christened techno. Even by the standards of a reissue scene obsessed with unearthing previously hidden or practically unknown gems, Evolution 5 Technology is deliciously obscure. Despite its Michigan roots, the record was originally destined to come out on California’s Satellite Records in 1987. In the end, only 50 promotional copies were ever pressed up; the label ran into financial difficulties soon after, and the 12” – the only one its creators ever made under the Series-A alias – has been all but lost ever since.
The reissue trail is picked up once more as Flora Pitrolo highlights the work of Blackest Ever Black, Superior Viaduct, Dark Entries, WéMè’ and more.
Vintage Roman techno, oddball Yugo-wave, exemplary German minimal synth, Milanese Italo and the precursor to Cybotron feature in the latest archival roundup from Flora Pitrolo.
A compilation of DIY synth, post punk and new wave acts from the UK is reissued on the ever-busy label next month.
March brought archival treats from Das Ding, Heinrich Dressel, DDS, Dark Entries and The (Hypothetical) Prophets – read on for Flora Pitrolo’s thoughts.
The UK industrial archive is infiltrated again with a reissue of the prolific act’s debut album A Dissembly.
Maybe the title is true and time really is just a memory; look at what time has done for The Frozen Autumn. Their debut album Pale Awakening had a song on it billed as “This Time (‘80s Song)”. It’s been on my playlists since I first got my hands on the album circa 1999, and I remember at this time thinking, ‘isn’t it all rather eighties-sounding?’ More than twenty years later, Dark Entries – a label largely devoted to unearthing the ‘80s underground – presses The Frozen Autumn onto vinyl, just like all of the ‘80s songs’ it has mastered and committed to wax over the years. As Diego Merletto sings, an epiphanic twinkle in his voice: ‘shadows coming back!’
The San Francisco label will issue the Sudden Haircut EP from the Börft trio this month along with a 12″ of Lena Platonos remixes by Red Axes.
Meditations/Industry from Bill Converse marks something of a departure for Dark Entries. The San Francisco label spent 2015 in reissue mode, and the nearest its catalogue got to the present day was the Kittin & Hacker 12”. While Meditations/Industry is a contemporary album – originally released on tape in 2013 – Converse’s sound is rooted in the past, albeit shaped by influences not normally reflected in Dark Entries’ lexicon or indeed in its approach to re-issues.
Listening to “Jump Over Barrels”, it’s not hard to understand the ongoing significance and relevance of Crash Course in Science. The US band formed during the late ‘70s, and are clearly a strong reference point for modern acts like Factory Floor and LCD Soundsystem as well as the Nation roster. Indeed, in today’s climate, “Jump Over Barrels” possesses a timeless feel to it and it is hard to reconcile the fact that it was recorded nearly 35 years ago.
Hamburg meets Berlin on the latest Dark Entries release – stream the “amphetamine-laced club ready” Ancient Methods remix of Wolfsheim here.
As another fine year for Dark Entries nears its close, they shine further light on the more obscure end of the ‘80s here with a reissue of Boytronic’s Bryllyant. The work of German duo Holger Wobker and Peter Sawatzki, Boytronic was very much a product of its time and environment, namely 1980s Hamburg (even though a major label-directed version of the act continued into the ‘90s). Living up to their name, Boytronic came about by the duo making music for sex shows on the Reeperbahn. The release also provides an insight how things get done – or don’t get done – in the music industry.
The latest UNTHANK from Firecracker, plus records from Blackest Ever Black, Dark Entries, Nous Disques, Crazylegs and more feature this month.