Like a dream foggily remembered, Loopsel’s ‘Öga for Öga’ is tempting in its beauty yet slightly menacing in its depth. These songs, like paths in the forest, are heavily, almost treacherously, reverberated, with fingerplucked guitars acting as your signposts amongst the flora and fauna of field recordings, pads and the cool, calm voice of Elin Engström. The album is the second from Engström as Loopsel. She is a Gothenburg-based musician and one half of both the group Monokultur and the team behind the tiny Mamma’s Mystersika Jukebox label with her partner JJULIUS. During what seemed like the nadir of the pandemic, the blurry, otherworldly sounds emanating from their living room snaked into the office of New York’s DFA Records, where the otherwise dutifully DIY pair found the scale of worldwide release and distribution.

TRACK LISTING

1. Poison Tree
2. Öga For Öga
3. Skammen
4. Sorgen
5. I En Skog
6. Time Machine
7. Det Vi Inte Får
8. Spit Three Times
9. Tiden

First time available on final! New York's ultra-cool and totally brilliant DFA (Death From Above) label bring us a second round up of all their twelves following on from "Compilation #1". Included are two discs of awesome punk-funk bombs from JOY, The Rapture, LCD Soundsystem and a first ever DFA-Liquid Liquid collaboration "Bellhead" (soooo good!), or more electronic and electro-punk outings from The Juan Maclean, Pixeltan, Delia Gonzalez, Black Leotard Front and Black Dice. The third disc features a DJ-mixed selection by Tim Sweeney and Tim Goldsworthy. You need this!!

“What could have been a mere anthology of the label's uniformly excellent 2004 output is, additionally, a meticulously assembled personal narrative. This is a label that balances its musical and commercial aspirations with an earthy, no-bullshit disposition and - let's say it - the world's best fucking handclaps.” - Nick Sylvester, Pitchfork, in the heady days of 2004.

Behold, "Compilation #2". A compendium what are arguably the best prime-era DFA cuts, mostly all recorded and/or remixed at the old DFA Studios on W. 13th Street (with some notable exceptions), released as 12-inches at the time, and then compiled onto a 3xCD set for convenience because, at the time, people actually bought CDs more than vinyl.

Now, in the spirit of time not really being much of a linear thing anymore, and for our own selfish desire to have this version of Liquid Liquid’s “Bellhead,” produced by the DFA, finally committed to wax, we have reverse engineered this thing back onto vinyl and presented it as a four-record boxed set.

We went back and found the master tapes or files for each song - a not insignificant effort given our habit of disorganization. We then rather painstakingly resequenced and remastered it with the guy we trust with such things: Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service. The lacquers Bob cut were plated and pressed at what we believe to be one of the best pressing plants in the country: QRP in Salina, Kansas.

We tell you all of this to say: we took this shit pretty seriously. Because we felt like it was important and because we felt like some folks would really appreciate it. It sounds remarkable. It looks great. (Rob Carmichael re-did the original packaging, adding a new photo from DFA OG Tim Saccenti from one of the original parties at W. 13th St.) Of course, we somehow can’t stop ourselves from making labeling errors - Pixeltan’s “That’s the Way I Like It” somehow escaped the center labels on the fourth record. It’s kind of the DFA curse. Has to be!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Black Leotard Front - Casual Friday
B1. J.O.Y. - Sunplus (DFA Remix)
B2. The Juan MacLean - I Robot
B3. The Juan MacLean - Dance Hall Modulator Dub
C1. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Rise (DFA Remix)
C2. Black Dice - Wasteder
C3. J.O.Y. - Sunplus
D1. LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Pretentious Version)
D2. The Rapture - Sister Saviour (DFA Dub)
E1. Liquid Liquid - Bellhead
E2. LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Crass Version)
F1. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - El Monte
F2. The Rapture - Alabama Sunshine
G1. Pixeltan - Get Up : Say What (DFA Remix)
G2. LCD Soundsystem - Beat Connection (Extended Disco Dub)
H1. Pixeltan - That’s The Way I Like It
H2. Black Dice - Endless Happiness (EYE Remix)
H3. The Juan MacLean - Less Than Human

Larry Gus releases a single alongside his ‘Subservient’ album. The single features ‘Kerkis (Judas-Tree)’ and ‘Foreign Steps’ from the same recording sessions as Subservient. The 7” precedes an upcoming audio play, written by Efthimis and scored by Larry, to be produced with the Onassis Stegi (AKA Cultural Center). The audio play will be released on DFA in 2020.

The record graciously explores the nuance that can be found within delineated lines: pop and folk music, rooted in Greek tradition; internal anxieties and empathy expressed outward; the tightrope struggle of living in the present and wallowing in the past.

TRACK LISTING

Kerkis (Judas-Tree)
Foreign Steps

Larry Gus (real name Panagiotis Melidis) returns to DFA with ‘Subservient’, his fourth release for the label. ‘Subservient’ sees more pop-oriented than his previous albums, a lush combination of “crisis funk pop and trad Mediterranean grooves.” Lyrics sung in Greek and English address Larry’s overwhelming struggles with being a father, husband, artist, and human in 2019. In the artist’s own words, this album is about “trying to understand empathy and act with it on everyday life,” as well as “the imperative of empathy above everything else.”

‘Subservient’ is sample-free, a first for Larry, who plays every instrument himself: a drum kit, an SM57 microphone, a guitar, a bass, a TE OP-1 synthesizer and a Roland JV-1010 synth module. This is fourth-world power pop, as if Alex Chilton was produced by Eno and Hassell. The thoughtful, upbeat arrangements and gentle vocals are spacious and warm, and tend to offset whatever darker tone the lyrics might imply. Larry confronts more acute tensions, such as being a father in Greece during the crisis, and the parallels of a child’s sicknesses and adult ailments, as well as larger, more existential pressures - the grasp of nostalgia, the weight and meaning of making decisions, and the desire to move from hermeticism towards sociability.

The record graciously explores the nuance that can be found within delineated lines: pop and folk music, rooted in Greek tradition; internal anxieties and empathy expressed outward; the tightrope struggle of living in the present and wallowing in the past. Larry will also be releasing a 7” single alongside the album, which features ‘Kerkis (Judas-Tree)’ and ‘Foreign Steps’ from the same recording sessions as Subservient. The single precedes an upcoming audio play, written by Efthimis and scored by Larry, to be produced with the Onassis Stegi (AKA Cultural Center). The audio play will be released on DFA in 2020.

STAFF COMMENTS

Sil says: Another cracker from DFA. A perfect amalgamation of electronics and pop sensibilities. Deserves your attention.

TRACK LISTING

Total Diseases (Subservience)
A Likely Projection
Text Of Intent
Taped Hands Here
In This Position
Ayler The Pilot
The Sun Sections
Readers And Authors
Classifying A Disease
Bare Concreate (Itea 97- 09)

Chain Tripping — the band’s seventh LP and third for DFA —was recorded between Marfa, Texas and the band’s home in Los Angeles. The ten songs are unlike anything YACHT has ever made: pop experiments from a sideways dimension coaxed into their studio through a portal opened by machine intelligence.

“AI and Machine Learning represent a revolution in music equivalent to the introduction of the synthesizer or the beginning of laptop music. We’ve been a band long enough to watch technology overwrite our assumptions many times, and felt compelled to bring these new tools into our life,” explains YACHT.

YACHT (an acronym for “Young Americans Challenging High Technology”) is Claire L. Evans, Jona Bechtolt, and Rob Kieswetter. For "Chain Tripping", the trio invented their own working method, at the intersection of DIY and high-tech: they used neural networks to break their patterns apart into infinite variations, which they re-assembled into new songs that they then learned, performed, and recorded live. Rather than rely on any single tool, they brought together several distinct AI processes to generate lyrics (Char-RNN), musical data (MusicVAE), raw audio (SampleRNN), and instrumentation (a “neural synthesizer” called the NSynth). They were inspired by the long history of generative composition, from William S. Burroughs’ cut-up writing method to David Bowie’s custom “Verbasizer” lyrics software from the ‘90s.

TRACK LISTING

1 (Downtown) Dancing
2 Hey Hey
3 SCATTERHEAD
4 Loud Light
5 Blue On Blue
6 DEATH
7 Sad Money
8 California Dali
9 Stick It To The Station
10 Little Instant

Montreal duo Essaie pas return to DFA with a single that picks up where their 2018 album ‘New Path’ left off. ‘Earth’ is a blistering ride through the rave, an amalgamation of techno and trance. The galloping bassline is the backbone of the song and Marie Davidson’s vocals climb to new heights against synth stabs. ‘Corps Étranger’, with its stuttering percussion, is a slow burner in comparison. For the remix of ‘Earth’, Marco Passarani of Tiger & Woods (Running Back, Numbers) doubles down on the Italo disco angle and doesn’t shy away from the more anthemic moments of the original, managing to rework it into something akin to a celebration of this place we call Earth.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: DFA duo Essaie Pas find their inner Faithless with a trancey techno journey on the A-side before knuckling down for some arthouse electro on the flip. Italian legend Passarani steps up on the remix doing a 'Lectric Workers meets Visage Italo romper perfect for the next Red Laser party.

TRACK LISTING

Earth
Corps Étranger
Earth (Passarani HiNRG Remix)

The Juan Maclean return to DFA with a compilation LP of 12-inch singles they’ve amassed over the past six years – re-edited, re-mastered, and ready for fans who may have missed the tracks the first time around. From the dub house sway of 2013’s “You Are My Destiny” to the high-energy stomp of this May’s “Zone Non Linear,” and featuring two never-before-released tracks, “Quiet Magician” and “Pressure Danger,” The Juan Maclean once again justify their longevity as a musical force that is more than capable of repurposing club tracks for every setting.

The Brighter The Light is put together in a way that lends itself to appreciating the sheer banging quality of the songs while simultaneously being able to dance to them in your living room. For example, take “Feel Like Movin,’” which Pitchfork called “gloriously beatific” and “pure DFA gold.” In the new remastered version, the fullness of the keys and the kicks takes over, unfurling across the listener. Deep house rhythms, sparkling synths and a certain spaciousness are what’s emphasized across the record. Gone is the slow-motion melancholy disco from their recent full-lengths – The Brighter The Light is all fierce enthusiasm and dance floor missives, perfect for those who aren’t quite ready to let go of summer.

Juan Maclean is a DJ and producer who has been a mainstay of the New York club scene, as well as maintaining a rigorous international touring schedule, since the release of his first records on DFA in 2002. Vocalist Nancy Whang is his longtime collaborator, best known as a founding member of LCD Soundsystem and a busy touring DJ. Together, the two artists have released an extensive catalogue of 12” singles and full-length albums for DFA, including 2014’s seminal In A Dream LP. The proper follow-up studio album will follow in 2020.

TRACK LISTING

1 What Do You Feel Free About?
2 Zone Non Linear
3 You Are My Destiny
4 Get Down (With My Love)
5 Feel Like Movin'
6 Quiet Magician
7 Pressure Danger
8 Can You Ever Really Know Somebody
9 The Brighter The Light

I've never met him, but I'm fairly certain Eric Copeland is a total lunatic. Don't get me wrong, he dealt in the deranged during his time in Black Dice, but since going solo on our ass, the NYC musician has disappeared through the looking glass. Wrong speed brain mulch, queasy tape loops, jacking perx, all brought together with the same narcotic glee you find at the heart of the darkweb.
This time out Eric delivers "Trogg Modal Vol. 2" pushing his 'Freakbeat 4/4' envelope further than ever before. Self-described as “late Night Flight proto tekno,” the tracks pulse with thick layers of percussion, melodic fever dreams, and riffs wrung through a taffy puller.
Opener "Beat It" is less a reference to a lately disgraced child molesting popstar, and instead a slamming combo of girthy bass and kick, red lining hats and overlapping synth work - generally as demented as it is danceable. "High Score Zed" scoots down the coin slot of a Jamaican arcade game, blasting out a high speed hybrid of digi-dancehall and 8-bit funk, while "United Banana" slides a morbidly obese bass sound under dreamy pads and crashing cymbals for some unorthodox house bizz. A-side closer "Pay Off" is optimistic, off kilter and kinda nonsensical in the best way possible - play this and put your lampshade on your head. Over on the flipside "BS Dropout" stomps and squelches like Krang in a washing machine, "Light Fantastic" flips e-funk and new wave into a new form of drug addled wrongness (Super intense!) and "Blazin" sounds like Mr Fingers after 7 bottles of cough syrup. Last but not least "Falo" picks up the videogame vibe, recreating a Sonic in the labyrinth ambiance but with way more bitrate. Top notch weirdshit from my favourite experimentalist.

TRACK LISTING

01. Beat It
02. High Score Zed
03. United Banana
04. Pay Off
05. BS Dropout
06. Light Fantastic
07. Blazin
08. Falo

Reformed, refreshed and reinvigorated, the most important band of the 21st Century (Patch says!) LCD Soundsystem returned last year with the remarkable "American Dream", their finest album to date. Now, Murphy and co pluck a couple of killers from that masterpiece and hand the stems over to a pair of party fiends and friends for a two part remix series. This second serving sees ESP Institute founder Lovefingers putting his own psychedelic touch on sincere synth serenade "Oh Baby". The New York producer and label head adds a rolling house piano and tripped out textures, reworking the original percussion elements and acid tinged fx into a hypnotic shuffler perfect for extended warm ups and post peak euphoria. In time honoured ESP fashion the off-kilter congas come to party while the arpeggios and sequences of the LCD original take on a "Big City" grandeur. Lovefingers drops the vocal just on time, lending the medicated music a mantra for the ages, then twists us out with pitch bent synth riffs and a nagging bassline. I'd go as far as to say this is my favourite Lovefingers production, and the dub version on the flip is the icing on the cake, doing away with 95% of the vocal, and rinsing the rest through the space echo for added cosmic impact. Straight in the bag I should think!

TRACK LISTING

Oh Baby (Lovefingers Remix)
Oh Baby (Lovefingers Dub)

After four years, Berlin-via-Bolton dance producer Planningtorock, aka Jam Rostron, returns to DFA with "Powerhouse". The album is a personal reflection, told via an avant-pop musical narrative that serves as a path to making peace with their family, hometown, and the ever-changing nature of identity. Written and recorded across Berlin, London, New York and Los Angeles,  ‘Powerhouse’ comes couched in the precision-tooled synths that have become Rostron’s signature, though critics and fans will hear a subtle, ear worm-y shift in style here: from the Noughties US R&B swagger of ‘Transome’ and the bubbling old school 90s house of ‘Beulah Loves Dancing’ and ‘Non Binary Femme’, to the funky, flute-laced ‘Much To Touch’ (the only track on ‘Powerhouse’ to feature a co-producer, long-time friend and collaborator Olof Dreijer of The Knife). Ultimately, ‘Powerhouse’ is a celebration of liberation, a groove-filled record that sees Rostron consolidating power both personal and artistic.

TRACK LISTING

Wounds
Transome
Dear Brother
Somethings More Painful Than Others
Much To Touch
Jam Of Finland
Non Binary Femme
Piece Of My Mind
Beulah Loves Dancing
Powerhouse

Shrouded in mystery, the Hermetica are a series of Egyptian-Greek didactic texts, meant to help the willing student better understand the cosmos, divinity, and nature. On her debut LP for DFA Records, German producer Perel takes the listener into deep space and explains it all. Over the course of nine tracks, she shares a striking amalgamation of house, new wave, and kraut motifs that crystallize to form a unique sound.

Born in Saxony, Annegret Fiedler ventured into the realm of songwriting at the age of eight, composing her first songs on her grandmother’s piano while listening to Eurythmics and 2 Unlimited cassettes in her spare time. Moving to the East German city of Halle to study in the mid-aughts, she was heavily influenced by the multifaceted alternative music scene there, and the parties people threw in post-Berlin Wall abandoned buildings. Fiedler went on to develop her craft as a formally trained singer, co-producer, and multi-instrumentalist in several bands, covering a broad palette of styles ranging from punk rock to electro pop and honing her performance skills. A move to Berlin (and the city’s club landscape) inspired her to start recording solo productions under the moniker Perel.

TRACK LISTING

1 Projekt 3
2 Pastarella Al Limoncello
3 Si
4 Alles
5 PMS
6 Signum Viridi
7 Myalgia
8 Crocus Vernus
9 Die Dimension
10 Die Dimension (Dub Version)
11 Pastarella Al Limoncello (Massimiliano Pagliara Remix) - CD Only Track
12 Die Dimension (Jayda G Remix) - CD Only Track

Dawn People’s ‘The Star Is Your Future’ is a studio collaboration between New York musicians Nick Forte and Peter Negroponte. The pair’s mutual disregard for musical categorization results in a genre-bending ride on the nine-track album, which portrays their diverse backgrounds while maintaining a sense of accessibility, continuity and purpose.

Both veterans of the underground experimental scene, the duo entered into the project preparing to make a serious racket. In time, their mutual appreciation for breezy 70s jazz fusion, Krautrock and library funk became apparent, setting the course for the sessions. In the summer of 2016, they started tracking live jams with drums and electronics at the Outlier Inn studio in upstate New York with engineer Josh Druckman. As the tracks took shape, Forte and Druckman arranged the material and Negroponte overdubbed guitar, synthesizer, bass and percussion. Finally, the tracks were handed to Abe Seiferth for mixing and post production.

Dawn People’s dense, funky and psychedelic music is the result of the wide range of musical influences of the collaborators. Nick Forte’s resume spans influential hardcore punk band Rorschach, post-punk outfit Beautiful Skin and recent underground sensation Raspberry Bulbs. With Dawn People, Forte digs deep into his own childhood nostalgia: making mixtapes from the early NYC hip hop show ‘Rap Attack’, watching Christian Marclay experiment with vinyl on the TV show ‘Night Flight’ and his first musical instrument, the Casio SK1 sampler keyboard.

Peter Negroponte is a virtuosic drummer and guitarist whose influences are rooted in rock & roll, jazz, funk, fusion and free improvisation. In reaction to his brief stint at the New England Conservatory, Negroponte sought to transcend what he felt to be an esoteric approach to making ‘experimental’ music by forming the psychedelic art-rock-noise-funk band Guerilla Toss. He has worked with an array of contemporary DIY labels such as Feeding Tube, NNA Tapes, Digitalis and John Zorn’s Tzadik.

The sound of this album harkens back to a time not too long ago, in the early to mid 90s, with groups like Air, Cornelius, Stereolab, Tortoise and Cibo Matto. All these artists combined a love of Krautrock and David Axelrod records into a lushly produced jigsaw puzzle of live instrumentation, editing, sampling and immaculate production. It is a genre that Pitchfork’s Eric Harvey recently described as “recombinant pop,” which is applied to “adventurous, sample-driven and style-copping music.”

‘The Star Is Your Future’ shifts aesthetically and dramatically between sections and phrases, woozy in the best way and never unfocused. Together, Forte and Negroponte have cobbled together a dazzling scope of sonic elements to create something cohesive and mesmerizing.

For fans of Cornelius, Air ‘Virgin Suicides’ OST, Beastie Boys ‘Check Your Head’, Stereolab.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Funky breaks, jazzy woodwind, and the hazy laid-back atmosphere of early hip-hop melt together seamlessly into this brilliantly accessible formation of style and substance.

‘Horse Follows Darkness’ is the second record by Delia Gonzalez, her follow up to the album ‘In Remembrance’.

The title is taken from a werewolf genre film her 8 year old son Wolfgang had created. At this time, Wolfgang also turned Delia onto a genre of cinema she had always resisted - the American Western. Delia explains that what she observed “was all relevant - the album is based on our personal experience of moving back to America (from Berlin) and the journey that followed. The record is a manifestation of that, and what one creates for themselves under the given circumstances. Coming back to America, I felt like a foreigner and NYC / America felt like the Wild West. Most Westerns from the 1960s to the present have revisionist themes. Many were made by emerging major filmmakers who saw the Western as an opportunity to expand their criticism of American society and values into a new genre.”

The narrative of the record is one of re-encountering the frontier mentality that shaped the country but somehow never faded. This time as a foreigner. The genre of the Western remains pertinent, many of the same stories of that brutally deromanticized era are still relevant today.

‘Horse Follows Darkness’ is essentially a modern electronic soundtrack for the Revisionist Western. Even the idea for the record cover is inspired by one of the most well known modern Westerns, Robert Altman’s ‘McCabe & Mrs Miller’.

The album was recorded with Abe Seiferth at Transmitter Park studios, which Delia likens to “going to the finest tailor.” Abe became an integral part of the recording, playing guitar and helping to suggest experimenting with different synthesizers, something Delia was keen to do. Delia refers to Abe as “a magical and incredibly intuitive collaborator” regarding the sound of the record.

The music that emerged from these recording sessions combines a range of influences - from the compositions of Erik Satie to ‘Salon De Musique’, the solo piano record by Su Tissue (of the LA punk band Suburban Lawns). The record also took on a much different shape and sound with the introduction of the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS, as well as a vintage Korg Poly synth and the Roland SH-101. The golden era Krautrock recordings of bands like Neu!, Cluster and Harmonia were touchstones as well, the repetition, swirling soundscapes and locked-in rhythm tracks.

Delia Gonzalez is a Cuban-American musician and artist, based in both New York City and Berlin. Her disciplines include everything from composer to filmmaker, dancer / choreographer, sculptor, painter and performance artist. Her musical career with DFA Records began in 2004 when the label released the 12” single ‘Relevee’, followed by the album of cosmic acid house ‘The Days Of Mars’, with Delia and then musical partner Gavin Russom.

In 2015, DFA released Delia’s first solo album entitled ‘In Remembrance’, which was a full piano score for a 30 minute filmed ballet, a perfect example of the type of work Delia creates as a multi-disciplinary artist.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gonzalez spans the whole range of avant-garde ambience on this stunning release, from clattering field recordings (a-la Set Fire To Flames), Krautrock rhythms and stunning modern classical beauty. An exceptional album from an exceptionally gifted composer.

TRACK LISTING

In Through The Light
Hidden Song
Roulette
Horse Follows Darkness
Vesuvius

"GT Ultra" is the second full length album by Guerilla Toss on DFA Records. The album demonstrates a remarkable shift in sound, musicianship and songwriting, without ever giving up the remarkable unhinged quality that made their earlier recordings so exciting. The album title "GT Ultra" is a clever nod to Project MK Ultra, the government sponsored experiments using new experimental drugs to explore mind control, torture and forced confessions, often with LSD as their drug of choice. These tests lasted from the mid-1950s-1960s but with a new administration in the White House, government sponsored torture is fresh again on many minds. The songs on the album ricochet back and forth between hyper bouncy pop and deeper darker longer, more nuanced tracks. Peter Negroponte’s drumming, always a major highlight for the band, is in full force once again, this time bringing a Nassau / Compass Point feel to many tracks, like the classic recordings of Grace Jones and Talking Heads. Kassie’s vocals and lyrics are both more personal and more cryptic than ever (but you can hear every word this time and there is a lyric sheet). As preferred, the meaning is within the listener. It is a dream state record for sure, meant to take you along on a similar vibe that the band has been tripping on these past few years, filled with an insistence to “hydrate, gyrate, think straight, no weight,” all the while under the influence of golden beams of orange sunshine, glimmering glitter and kaleidoscopic bursts.

Adding to the authenticity, the album is wrapped in vintage blotter acid, created by legendary LSD archivist and artist Mark McCloud and The Institute Of Illegal Images, based in Francisco.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A visceral and heavy-hitting mash-up of worldy psychedelia, funked-up soaring electronica and swirling cosmic freak-outs. Brilliantly innovative, eminently satisfying groovers.

TRACK LISTING

Betty Dreams Of Green Men
Can I Get The Real Stuff
Crystal Run
TV Do Tell
The String Game
Skull Pop
Dog In The Mirror
Dose Rate

DFA hit us up with  "Echo", the first album for the label from acclaimed Norwegian avant garde pop vocalist Nils Bech. A busy stage actor and singer already well known in his native Norway for three albums released on Oslo’s Fysisk Format, "Echo" marks a pivotal turning point for Bech and something of a radical sonic departure too. The keys to this change lie with Bech’s new collaborator, the young underground DJ, producer and beat maker Drippin’, known for his work with American rap artists such as LE1F and Cakes Da Killa. As a result, where his previous work was strange, ethereal and otherworldly - completely and utterly unique - ‘Echo’ throbs with a renewed sense of vigour and urgency, without losing any of the idiosyncratic beauty which marked Bech’s work before. 

TRACK LISTING

Waiting
Too Little Too Late
Glimpse Of Hope
Please Stay
Drip, Drip
Let Go
Echo
Jealousy
A Sudden Sickness

Panagiotis Melidis started writing music as Larry Gus (λάρυγγας [larigas], Greek for larynx) in 2006, after his previous band, the bass and drums duo Ginger, parted ways. Initially his music combined sample-based constructions and psychedelic pop melodies, merged into an infinitely dense amount of layers and polyrhythms. He soon became known for his energetic and chaotic improvised live performances that involve intricate layering of vocals, drums, and electronics… along with lively stage banter.

On his new DFA album, "I Need New Eyes" (a title inspired by a Marcel Proust misquotation), moving slowly out of his sample-based roots and using clearer songwriting structures as his starting point, he stares intensively into his obsessions, anxieties and inadequacies, namely failure, humiliation, subservience, submission, and comparisons with other musicians’ careers, always through the prism of a provincial outsider.

TRACK LISTING

1. Black Veil Of Fail
2. NP Complete
3. A Set Of Replies
4. Taking The Personal Away
5. Belong To Love
6. All Graphs Explored
7. The Sun Describes
8. Nazgonya (Paper Spike)

DFA Records are proud to announce the new album from Slim Twig.

‘Thank You For Stickin’ With Twig’ is to date the most sonically immersive album in Twig’s discography.

Where some records have focused explicitly on sample-based songwriting, while others have been completely live-recorded, the new album arrives at a perfectly produced fusion of fidelities. Twig flirts here with a variety of vibes, most often opting for a three-dimensional approach whereby a warped tape aura is overlaid with colourful laser-cut keyboard and guitar melodies. A fetishization of analogue texture is married to a digital approach.

It's a fuzz-heavy psych-pop fest with hints of early Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd. 

TRACK LISTING

Slippin’ Slidin’
A Woman’s Touch (It’s No Coincidence)
She Stickin’ With Twig
Textiles On Mainstreet
Stone Rollin’ (Musical Emotion)
Roll Red Roll (Song For Steubenville)
You Got Me Goin’…
Fog Of Sex (N.S.I.S)
Fadeout Killer
Trip Thru Bells
… Out Of My Mind
Live In, Live On Your Era
Cannabis

DFA Records are proud to announce the release of "In Remembrance", a multimedia project by acclaimed contemporary artist Delia Gonzalez. The project originated as a 2010 solo show of the same name at Galleria Fonti in Naples, Italy, and was further realized in 2012, with additional work, as part of the exhibition I Must Not Stop To Rest Here in Cologne, Germany. The project was further exhibited in Zurich. Both exhibitions were built around four 16mm ballet dance films, accompanied by the music composed by Gonzalez. In her words, “The film is meant to re-create the fleeting sensation of inspiration - that sacred feeling when suddenly your mind clears and you know exactly what you’re meant to create and become.”

The original piano score was initially inspired by a text by Henry Miller as well as a theory by spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff, which states that “to play scales is to become more in tune with your inner self.” This coincided conceptually with the music that Delia had been making at the time.

Musically, 'In Remembrance' finds Delia Gonzalez again straddling the lines drawn between the fine art and pop worlds. This time, instead of the cosmic, arpeggiated synths of 'The Days of Mars', we are presented with something even more beautiful. The music is immediately soothing and hypnotic, yet it also maintains a sinister undertone. Suspense and tension are expressed in a deceptively simple fashion, providing a soundtrack both mesmerizing and melancholy for the dancers in the film. Delicate layers of piano wind around each other, reflected in the mirrored motions of the dancers, filmed in leering close-ups. The four compositions combine to create a 30 minute avant-classical suite, bringing to mind Satie, or something plucked from Italy’s iconic Cramps Records in the seventies (John Cage’s Cheap Imitation is an reasonable comparison), or perhaps an alternate score to the arthouse horror film Don’t Look Back by Nicolas Roeg.

The the album also features remixes by live collabator Bryce Hackford. Bryce takes Delia’s exquisite piano score and loops, stretches, and consolidates it. There’s a range of treatments at play here - some pieces are layered with gauzy left-field electronic pulses while Track IV get a 4/4 dancefloor makeover, recommended to fans of both classic Detroit techno and newer left-field stars such as Actress. Asked to briefly discuss his mission statement in creating these remixes, Bryce simply stated that he wished that his remixes “maintain the hypnotic and simple beauty of the originals while opening them up to new spaces.”.

CD and double LP formats include a DVD featuring ballet performances set to the music of "In Remembrance".

For fans of Nils Frahm, Kiasmos, Hauschka, Philip Glass, A Winged Victory For The Sullen.

TRACK LISTING

I
II
III
IV
Remix I
Remix II
Remix III
Remix IV