Through 35 tracks stretched across three volumes, "Music For The Radical Xenomaniac" delivers the first ever deep dive into The Netherlands’ colourful house sound of the 90s and the under-celebrated producers and record labels whose music soundtracked a countrywide cultural movement.

Leading the charge were a disparate group of key creators who not only forged links with their counterparts in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom, but also became celebrated figures on the worldwide electronic underground (Eric Nouhan, Aad De Mooy, Orlando Voorn, Stefan Robbers and Steve Rachmad). Alongside key underground imprints (Stealth Records, Basic Energy, ESP, Prime and Outland Records included) and lesser-known producers, these pioneers gave flavour to a radical musical movement via open-mindedness, unheard-of creativity and a genuinely futuristic ethos. All of these artists and labels are represented throughout the series.

So, what defined this hedonistic house sound from The Netherlands? Stylistically, it was varied – as the series so emphatically proves – but was defined by a set of distinctive sonic characteristics: emotive musical motifs, high-frequency synth sounds, mellow basslines, pulsating rhythms and more than a touch of hallucinatory intent.

Volume 1 boasts a wealth of notable tracks and slept-on gems. There’s ‘No Strings Attached (Freedom of the Soul Work)’ by Marionette, a magical spell of percussion-rich fairy-tale house from 1991 courtesy of R.o.X.Y Amsterdam resident DJ Dimitri and mellow pioneer Eric Nouhan, and the sole single by Eindhoven techno producer MAX404 as Faceless Techno Bastards, the rushing excellence of ‘Go Mellow’.

Other highlights include Rachmad Project’s ‘Summer Breeze’, a chirpy house masterpiece from foundational producer Steve Rachmad that first appeared on Outland Records offshoot Spiritual Records, a genuine oddball obscurity from John Krengiëlczak as Land of Fantasy, Tales And Myths (‘And They Lived Happily Ever After’), and a seriously sought-after cut from Rotterdam duo Space Trax, 1992’s ‘Aura’.

Packed full of forward-thinking 90s gems remastered for today’s dance floors by Alden Tyrell, "Music For The Radical Xenomaniac Volume 1" is a life-affirming celebration of a distinctly Dutch musical movement, whose rich textures and melodies are still inspiring new generations of DJs and dancers today.

"Music From The Radical Xenomaniac Vol. 1 (Hedonistic Heights From The Lowlands 1990 - 1999)" is compiled and curated by long-serving Dutch scene stalwarts Christiaan Macdonald and Arne Visser and marks the debut of their new independent label, Amazing! Macdonald co-founded Rush Hour and Safe Trip, and also co-curated the acclaimed Welcome To Paradise and Planet Love compilations. Visser is known as selector and radio host Cinema Royale, and for his Dekmantel-released Italo-disco compilation, Profondo Nero.

TRACK LISTING

Marvo Genetic - The Reprise
Space Trax - Aura
Rachmad Project - Summer Breeze
Land Of Fantasy Tales And Myths - And They Lived Happily Ever After
E.C. Groove Society - A Fish
Quadripart - La Musique Des Enfants Joyeux
Faceless Techno Bastards - Go Mellow
Marionette - No Strings Attached (Freedom Of The Soul Work)
Ramon & Theo - A Quest Of Thousands
The R - Higher
Dream Company - Space Page
Boom Generation - Flageo

Through 35 tracks stretched across three volumes, "Music For The Radical Xenomaniac" delivers the first ever deep dive into The Netherlands’ colourful house sound of the 90s and the under-celebrated producers and record labels whose music soundtracked a countrywide cultural movement.

Leading the charge were a disparate group of key creators who not only forged links with their counterparts in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom, but also became celebrated figures on the worldwide electronic underground (Eric Nouhan, Aad De Mooy, Orlando Voorn, Stefan Robbers and Steve Rachmad). Alongside key underground imprints (Stealth Records, Basic Energy, ESP, Prime and Outland Records included) and lesser-known producers, these pioneers gave flavour to a radical musical movement via open-mindedness, unheard-of creativity and a genuinely futuristic ethos. All of these artists and labels are represented throughout the series.

So, what defined this hedonistic house sound from The Netherlands? Stylistically, it was varied – as the series so emphatically proves – but was defined by a set of distinctive sonic characteristics: emotive musical motifs, high-frequency synth sounds, mellow basslines, pulsating rhythms and more than a touch of hallucinatory intent.

Volume 2 contains a wealth of notable tracks and slept-on gems. These include Q’s ‘From Within (Body Mix)’, a lesser-known cut from the trio better-known as Quazar (Gert van Veen, R.o.X.Y co-founder Eddy De Clercq and Eric Cycle), Eric Nouhan’s melodic masterpiece ‘Technobility’, which is appearing on vinyl for the first time since 1994, and a rare track by Signum Recordings's Maarten van der Vleuten, which was initially released on a special R&S Records’ offshoot set up by the label’s co-founder, Renaat Renaat Vandepapeliere (Integrity II’s ‘Living In Fantasy’).

Other highlights include Exposure’s ‘Love Quest’, a highly sought-after 1991 track by The Hague-based DJ/producer Maurits Paardekooper, and an ambient-infused Andrew Weatherall favourite originally released by Stealth Records in 1993, Hole In One’s ‘Spiritual Ideas For Virtual Reality’.

Packed full of forward-thinking 90s gems remastered for today’s dance floors by Alden Tyrell, Music For The Radical Xenomaniac Volume 2 is a life-affirming celebration of a distinctly Dutch musical movement, whose rich textures and melodies are still inspiring new generations of DJs and dancers today.

"Music For The Radical Xenomaniac" was compiled and curated by long-serving Dutch scene stalwarts Christiaan Macdonald and Arne Visser and marks the debut of their new independent label, Amazing! Macdonald co-founded Rush Hour and Safe Trip, and also co-curated the acclaimed Welcome To Paradise and Planet Love compilations. Visser is known as selector and radio host Cinema Royale, and for his Dekmantel-released Italo-disco compilation, Profondo Nero.

TRACK LISTING

Q - From Within (Body Mix)
Integrity II - Living In A Fantasy
Strange Ways - Strange Ways
Thee J Johanz - Stompin N Rising
Exposure - Love Quest
Tons Of Tones - Oh Ah Oh Ah Oh
Interface - Temazepam
It’s Thinking - Hyperion
Eric Nouhan - Technobility
Secret Cinema - Sundance
Hole In One - Spiritual Ideas For Virtual Reality

Through 35 tracks stretched across three volumes, "Music For The Radical Xenomaniac" delivers the first ever deep dive into The Netherlands’ colourful house sound of the 90s and the under-celebrated producers and record labels whose music soundtracked a countrywide cultural movement.

Leading the charge were a disparate group of key creators who not only forged links with their counterparts in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom, but also became celebrated figures on the worldwide electronic underground (Eric Nouhan, Aad De Mooy, Orlando Voorn, Stefan Robbers and Steve Rachmad). Alongside key underground imprints (Stealth Records, Basic Energy, ESP, Prime and Outland Records included) and lesser-known producers, these pioneers gave flavour to a radical musical movement via open-mindedness, unheard-of creativity and a genuinely futuristic ethos. All of these artists and labels are represented throughout the series.

So, what defined this hedonistic house sound from The Netherlands? Stylistically, it was varied – as the series so emphatically proves – but was defined by a set of distinctive sonic characteristics: emotive musical motifs, high-frequency synth sounds, mellow basslines, pulsating rhythms and more than a touch of hallucinatory intent.

Volume 3 is packed with in-demand tracks and hard-to-find gems, including a previously CD-only cut from Dutch techno originator Orlando Voorn (1999’s ‘Still’), a genuine rave classic from The Hague by hardcore DJ Charly Lownoise as Fluxland, and a killer cut from prolific producer – and genuinely influential pioneer – Aad De Mooy AKA D-Shake. He’s represented on this volume by Paradise 3001 cut ‘Surfin The Cuban Waves’, which first appeared on ESP Records in 1993.

Other highlights include Direct Movement’s ‘Natural Chemistry’, a sought-after slow house cut produced by Dennis Buné, who had an enormous impact on the Dutch house scene as Jaimy, and ‘Delphi (Rewaxed)’ by NYX, a highly regarded and hard to find single from former new wave and synth-pop producer Bart Barten, and occasional studio partner Hanz Meyer.

Packed full of forward-thinking 90s gems remastered for today’s dance floors by Alden Tyrell, Music For The Radical Xenomaniac Volume 3 is a life-affirming celebration of a distinctly Dutch musical movement, whose rich textures and melodies are still inspiring new generations of DJs and dancers today.

"Music For The Radical Xenomaniac" was compiled and curated by long-serving Dutch scene stalwarts Christiaan Macdonald and Arne Visser and marks the debut of their new independent label, Amazing! Macdonald co-founded Rush Hour and Safe Trip, and also co-curated the acclaimed Welcome To Paradise and Planet Love compilations. Visser is known as selector and radio host Cinema Royale, and for his Dekmantel-released Italo-disco compilation, Profondo Nero.

TRACK LISTING

The Connection Machine - Echoes From Tau Ceti
Direct Movement - Natural Chemistry
Paradise 3001 - Surfin The Cuban Waves
Exquisite Corpse - Strange Attractor
Orlando Voorn - Still
NYX - Delphi (Rewaxed)
Stefan Robbers - Afridisiac (Jumpy Mix)
Fluxland - Fluxland
This Side Up - Glider
Georgio Schultz - Trance
Quazar - Cycle Drops (Two Words)
2000 And One - Crystal

The Amazing stay just out of focus. On their fifth album, In Transit, they once again perform the unlikely trick of making music that is both dreamlike, drifting across the consciousness, as well as perfectly constructed. While In Transit shares the sense of mood of many of singer and founder Christoffer Gunrup’s favourite bands – the Cure, My Bloody Valentine, Flaming Lips – it never drifts away into self-indulgence. At the heart of it all, beneath the washes of guitar, the woozy reveries, are sturdy, intensely melodic songs. You hear that from the very start of the album, when Pull slides into view, slide guitar casting shapes and shadows across the arpeggios beneath, while lightly jazzy drums propel the song forward and Gunrup mournfully whispers his barely audible lyrics, before the song ascends into a refrain that sounds like every emotion combined.

That combination of melody and mood comes from the way the songs are made, and the interaction between Gunrup and his fellow members, Reine Fiske (also of Dungen, guitar), Moussa Fadera (drums), Alexis Benson (bass), and Frederik Swahn (keyboards and guitars). Gunrup writes alone, in what he calls “a very disgusting process. It’s just me in my underwear on my couch.” He emerges with a complete song – “the intros, the outros, the melodies, all the chords” – which he takes to the band, imagining they will play it just as he imagined. Except they never do. “They can feel rather than hear what needs to be done,” Gunrup says. “They do pretty much what they please.”

Yet In Transit does not sound self-indulgent. Gunrup’s songs are the very heart of In Transit, and the musicians’ playing always serves them, rather than overwhelming them. On For No One, you can hear the subtlety of their interaction, which is not what one might expect to say of a song in which whistling feedback provides the core of its climax – it’s only at the end you realise how cleverly it has transformed from what begins as fingerpicked near-folk into something very different.

As one might expect, Fiske’s guitars are at the heart of The Amazing: gorgeous tones and textures, sometimes fed through layers of distortion, sometimes kept clear and clean, to convey melody in the most direct way. “He has a sound and a way of playing that not many guitarists do – he’s all about emotion, which is great,” Gunrup says. Benson se Convirtio Completamente Furiosa, just short of 10 minutes long, Fiske displays the full range of his talents. It’s an extraordinary song, beginning with Gunrup’s voice, a lazy sigh, telling of “being caught up in a deadly boring place”, over a gorgeous, circular guitar pattern for two-and-a-half minutes, before hypnotic, swirling instrumental section built on a melancholy arpeggio takes up another two-and-a-half minutes. Gunrup’s voice returns, a little more urgent. Then the song apparently stops – only to return with Fiske playing a furious, squalling solo, a shriek of rage and despair. For the other side, listen to Rewind, a song so simple and gorgeous it sounds as though it has existed forever, in which the playing is resolutely unshowy, yet devastatingly emotive, with one simple hook – a single high note repeated in each phrase – that proves the power of well-deployed restraint.

It doesn’t come as any surprise to learn that Fiske is obsessional about his equipment. A few years back, The Amazing’s practice space was robbed, and their equipment stolen, all bar Fiske’s Stratocaster. “Afterwards we went for a beer,” Gunrup says. “We sat there in silence and felt blue. But the person who was most upset was Reine. He was so much more upset than us, he said, because what would have happened if they had taken my guitar? He couldn’t even comprehend what would have happened to him.”

But there’s so much more to The Amazing than guitar histrionics. “The drummer comes from a jazz background, so he doesn’t do what is expected, which I love.” A mention of Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward having the same background, and adding the same swing sets Gunrup off excitedly talking about a film of an early Sabbath live show. He identifies the common thread between Ward and Fadera: “Someone else would do something you had heard a thousand times before, but he won’t.”

Maybe that freewheeling element is what causes Gunrup to name “playful” as the adjective he most associates with the music of The Amazing, rather than the more obvious “melancholy”. “That’s something I feel, but maybe it doesn’t come across in the records at all. But playful – and, I don’t know, I guess it could sound a bit blue occasionally, when the vocals are there. That to me is what makes it fun to play.”

On In Transit, Gunrup’s voice is mixed a little higher than before. Snatches of lyrics gain clarity, drifting across the music like clouds. Yet you wouldn’t say he had been placed front and centre, and that suits him. “Lyrics are important to me,” he says. “But I am extremely uninterested in coming across lyrically. That is nobody’s business. If people enjoy the way the vocals interact with the music, that’s good. If not, I don’t care.” Much of his favourite music shares the quality of the vocal being a texture rather than conveying a message, he says. “If you listen to Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, I can make out maybe 11 words in one song, but I love that album more than any album ever made.

“If there are words I don’t hear, I can decide for myself what they’re saying and I like that. With 99.9% of all music made in this world the lyrics are, oh, so fucking dumb and boring and stupid. There’s no point in me adding to that stupidity. They are important to me, but you can decide for yourself.”

Work on In Transit began as soon as The Amazing’s last album, Ambulance, was finished. That’s when Gunrup began writing the 11 songs – stretching over 71 minutes – that make up the new record. He wrote quickly, then took them to the band, who recorded them piecemeal in (Fredrik) Swahn’s studio in Stockholm. “We started pretty soon after the last album was released, and did bits and pieces here and there,” Gunrup says. “It’s been forever.”

While The Amazing aren’t the kind of band who insist every album has to sound radically different from the one before. They change incrementally, adjusting and refining their sound rather than revolutionising it. Changes Gunrup had thought were dramatic – like the greater use of chorus pedals and organ on their third album, Picture You – turned out to be minor. This time, the development from Ambulance is a slightly fuller sound. “The last album was just basic tracks and vocals and that was pretty much it.” He ponders for a moment. “I was convinced the last album was better because the songs were better. But now it’s the other way round. This has got more stuff on it: more vocals, more overdubs.”

For all Gunrup’s self-deprecation, for all his unwillingness to reveal secrets and his desire to talk down his desire to deflect attention from himself, The Amazing is something he needs to do: it’s his purpose. He laughs and says that without music, “I maybe would not have killed myself, but I would have been even more boring than I am” – but he is compelled to make music, incredible music, which is why he never stops writing songs. And then he connects with the other four members to create something extraordinary. It’s about that combination, those people, playing those instruments.

“That is the essence of it, so when we all connect in a song it’s pretty nice to be in that room. That’s therapy. I pretty much see everything we do – being on my couch, the recording process – as this therapeutic thing. I don’t necessarily think we go into the studio to do this, this and this, I just want to be with those four guys and play.”

‘Ambulance’ sees The Amazing continue their journey to a place where music is free of restrictions. Despite reflecting Chris Gunrup’s often bleak worldview, the music is expansive and beautiful, marked by playing that’s as much free jazz as rock - pure music without any showiness.

The songs unfold slowly, without a traditional verse / chorus structure, spinning gauzy webs of shimmering mystery with their own inimitable dynamic of sinuous, swirling guitars; rich, ambient basslines; crisp percussion and restrained, church-like, keyboard textures. The stately tempos suggest a room full of shadows desperately reaching out for intimacy but never quite making the connection. The songs brim over with tension and more implied release than actual relief.

Gunrup is known for his reluctance to talk about his process and prefers to let the music speak for itself and if 2015’s ‘Picture You’ was brighter, exploding outward to explore the limits of experience, ‘Ambulance’ is much more intimate. The mix denser and darker, the instruments pressing closer, crowding each other, imploding inward to reconnoitre the uncharted distances that exist between us, even in life’s most intimate moments.

Sharing members with Sweden’s psych forefathers Dungen, the album delves into the hidden recesses of the heart, finding inner space to be just as expansive as the midnight sky. It was recorded in just a few days in one tiny room at Stockhom’s Buller & Bäng studio.

The Amazing’s drummer, Moussa, is one of Sweden’s top jazz drummers and has also played with Rodriguez and Jose Gonzalez.

The video for lead track ‘Ambulance’ features Ross Marquand (AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’).

Previously the band have performed on The Late Show with David Letterman and toured with Tame Impala.

“The Amazing specialize in a beauty that isn’t airbrushed or slick or antiseptic, it’s elemental rock - earthy, molten, aquatic, but using each of their qualities to soothe rather than destroy or intimidate.” - Pitchfork

TRACK LISTING

Ambulance
Divide
Blair Drager
Tracks
Floating
Through City Lights
Moments Like These
Perfect Day For Shrimp