NEWSLETTER

IA MIX 383 ALEX ALBRECHT // CHIKARA AOSHIMA // MAX GRAEF // ULLA & ULTRAFOG // HEDCHEF // MONTY LUKE

IA MIX 383 ALEX ALBRECHT
INTERVIEW BY JASON CABANISS

Australian producer Alex Albrecht produces a lush, dreamy mixture of sounds at the crossroads of house, jazz, and ambient. On the label he co-runs with Sean La’Brooy, Analogue Attic Recordings, and on his stunning solo releases, the Melbourne-based artist explores an emotional, contented melancholy rife with field recordings that imbue the tracks with a deep sense of place.

Stepping up to contribute IA MIX 383, Alex Albrecht delivers a live set from the Natural Order festival in the Australian state of Victoria. Based around improvised, unreleased solo works, this is a gorgeous piece of ambient-leaning electronica. The energy of the set pulsates through your speakers, transporting you into a hypnotic, meditative journey.

Alongside the podcast, Alex was kind enough to answer some of our questions and shed light on his musical background, the underground scene in Melbourne, and how the natural beauty of Australia continues to inspire his music.

FEATURE: CHIKARA AOSHIMA REFLECTS ON THE RE-RELEASE OF ‘CLOSE DOWN’
INTERVIEW BY ASMI SHETTY

Born in Hamamatsu, Chikara Aoshima’s music perpetuates the lightness and the mystery of the regions of Japan. Setting out on his journey as a drummer aged 14, Chikara’s understanding of sound and rhythmic architecture evolved over time, alongside his earlier studies at Berklee.

As a young performer, he performed with bands like ZANZO, making appearances at SXSW 2005, amongst other events, whilst honing his style as a standalone artist at the intersection of all his experiences.

Chikara’s childhood floated in a dream-like aesthetic set forth by the environment his quintessential artist father, Saburo Aoshima’s abstract paintings created—one of which, ‘Finland Winter‘, highly influenced Chikara’s debut album ‘Close Down‘ first released by Somehow Recordings in 2013.

The limited edition release, an amalgamation of all of Chikara’s memories as reflections in sound, was a pivotal moment in his life as a solo artist, especially moving from acoustic phonetics of drum language to transfusing that knowledge into electronically composed leftfield percussions amidst a serene blissed-out ambience.

A decade on, Chikara now re-issues ‘Close Down‘, revisiting the process of its creation and how it’s changed over the ages. We caught up with him to discover more about the album and his decision to reissue.

REVIEW: ULLA & ULTRAFOG: IT MEANS A LOT
WRITTEN BY SIMON J KARIS

LA’s Motion Ward brings us this enmeshed collaborative recording from two notable label associates, pairing Kanagawa-based guitarist and producer Kouhei Fukuzumi as Ultrafog with contemporary underground hero of temperate minimalism, Philadelphia’s Ulla E. Straus.

Across myriad releases for West Mineral Ltd, Boomkat Editions and Motion Ward both solo and in collaboration (see her duo with Pontiac Streator and landmark collaborative recordings with Perila, ‘Blue Heater’ and ‘LOG ET3RNAL’), Ulla’s work is undeniably influential in recent years. Straus and Perila’s warmly coy jumble of fascinated concrete assembly and enveloping electronics has powerfully derailed a steady course through plateaus where millennial ambient music seemed to be settling a decade ago.

More directly, an often male dominated timeline, obsessed with falsified or revisionist ideas about trite sentimentality and unimaginative compositional retreads, respectfully perpetrated by continuously re-adhering shinier layers to the wallpaper which Eno once asked us to stare at. Whilst his immersive epiphanies provided an epochal popular reassessment of music’s purpose, this simple notion and its listening directives emerged now close to half a century ago.

Fukuzumi’s work both self-released and via Angoisse, c- and again Motion Ward quietly trundles along a committed mainline, steeped in sombre yet uncategorisable aesthetics and the porous edges of his uneasy melodic objects. The Venn diagram of these collaborators makes perfect sense as ‘It Means A Lot’, sharing a joyful mutual understanding of youth, shyness and memory – the immediacy of track titles in lower case as though absently texted or scrawled on a classroom desk, the careful spaces and hues we must inhabit whilst listening to them, the earnestness of the album title itself.

It’s worth noting right away the constant presence of processed and played guitar sounds throughout ‘It Means A Lot’ – earnestly tethering this buoyant, unrushed music to an early 2000s heyday of electronic exploration within a context of what came to be blanketed as ‘post-rock’. Treated guitars and vocal echolalia delicately hold the slow melodic interchanges at focal point throughout, sparing and separated inside a sumptuous architecture. With this at the centre, winded hallucinations of romance and detritus wash everything in sight, spectacularly so – one can’t help but recall late period Labradford, Kranky’s defining 1995-2005 run or the cracked, playful scrubbing of Markus Popp/Robert Lippok/Jan St. Werner’s wild glitch work innovations on Thrill Jockey, et al .

Breathable shreds of vocals veer from the Enya-esque early on to a heightened robotic R&B breakdown as the album arcs downward, guitars alternate between free venting and fragmented FX jam ups, translucent sheets of synth padding careen past desolately like cars at night. Straus’ knack for skittering fungified concrete, croaks of ring modulation and the unwieldy resonances of dropped equipment skirt Fukuzumi’s redacted downtuned plinths, in a semi-lucid diorama of abandoned truckstop melancholy.

So what then makes this sound so inherently modern if these gilded touchstones of the early 21st Century ring true? Firstly to my mind, ideas about the punctuative use of deep bass wells are a hallmark of certain millennial trends, which the pair certainly employ here in a remarkably functional sense to crest through numerous moments grazing the brink of saccharine. Secondly, the way in which vocals are treated and audibly digitised – edited into indecipherable, re-pitched, non-literal texts.

The dichotomy of the latter possibly being at odds with an “earnestness” agenda by saying almost nothing is tempered by the objective of replicating a feeling – being moved by the non-literal. How does one describe this with as little tangible language as possible? How do you paint a momentary rushing chemical?

REVIEW: MONTY LUKE: NIGHTDUBBING
WRITTEN BY JACOB BRAYBROOKE

Radiance and shade are sensitively balanced on ‘Nightdubbing’, a refreshing album by Monty Luke, a New York-born now Berlin-based DJ who leverages the multi-prismatic influences that drew him to music, namely the subterraneous dub sounds of Grace Jones of his youth on Rekids, the label by Radio Slave, who has released music from artists such as Nina Kraviz, Mark Broom and Robert Hood.

Kaleidoscopic grooves comprised of psychedelic polyrhythms originating from sparse drums and glistening synths are firmly woven by fastened reverb and garbled vocals demonstrate his instinctive production as an explorer, impulsively feeding his natural curiosity motivated by his spectrum of connections including Carl Craig of Planet-E Communications.

A stimulating sound characterised by percussive Hi-Hat rhythms and vitalising MIDI keyboard melodies permeates through kinetic tracks like ’40 Acres and a Terabyte’ and ‘Old World/New World’ while a more aggressive edge introduced on abstract anthems like ‘Travelling Around The Sun’ and ‘Dark Paradise’ utilise delay-drenched vocals and irregular patterns backed by surreal reggae instrumentals illustrates his refusal to shy away from gloom in his lucid journey. At one point, you find yourself in the midst of a late-90’s acid rave in Ibiza and, the next, you hear the call of a dim club in London beckon your name as melancholy tilts your head away from the sun.

Overall, ‘Nightdubbing’ is a multi-layered voyage through vivid experiences Monty Luke has lived and breather, despite lacking slightly in more diversity of instrumentation in intervals, crafts a tight electronic universe entrenched in nostalgia but matured by faded undertones resulting in a lush attempt to bring exotic influences associated with sunshine to a club culture emerged by dingy basements.

STORE: DIAL DROP III/III

Inverted Audio Store have secured the very last vinyl copies of Dial's back catalogue, the German record label helmed by Lawrence and Carsten Jost.

Dial Drop III/III consists of 12"s from Dial's legendary sub-division Laid. Established in 2009, Laid was the brainchild of Tel-Aviv native Dor Levi together with Lawrence and Carsten Jost.

Operating between 2009 - 2012, Laid issued 16 vinyl only releases exploring the finest deep house from artists including; Rick Wade, John Roberts, RNDM, Smallpeople, Juergen Junker, Kassem Mosse & Lowtec, Lawrence, Marcello Napoletano, Moomin, Christopher Rau, Palisade and RVDS.

STORE: ACTRESS - STATIK

'Static' marks Actress’ tenth studio album. The cosmic collaboration between Darren Cunningham and the esteemed Oslo-based purveyors of elevated sonics Smalltown Supersound.

In this vein, the entire Statik project, from conception through creation and release, has been blessed with an almost unnatural ease. For Actress, who wrote the majority of his subtly majestic new record in an extensive flow state, the project serves as a cohesive testament to artistic liberation.

Resultantly, Cunningham’s new album is imbued with a sense of freedom. And of stillness. The kind of stillness within artistic motion that arises via the deepest states of flow. Once ‘inside’ the Statik experience, listeners may well find themselves newly calm and meditative.

STORE: SENTENA AND DJ SPENCE - SMOKE BAROMETER

Montreal-based record label Doo returns with 'Smoke Barometer', their first 12” of 2024 that pairs up DJ Spence and Sentena with Kozz and Sweets of the Night from local acts Tension Nurse and Drainolith. Composed of six tracks, 'Smoke Barometer' is a mini album merging abstract and experimental electronics with downtempo house music.

STORE: C3D-E & HASHMAN DEEJAY - UNDERSTOOD

Acting Press cohort C3D-E and Hashman Deejay team up for a two-track release on MIDI_bug. Mastered by Mike Grinser and featuring artwork by Leon Eissermann, 'Understood' is a surefire deep house shuffler, whilst 'Denoise' explores chugging deep space territories. One for the heads and the feet.

STORE: CARMEN VILLAIN – ONLY LOVE FROM NOW ON

Released in February 2022 via Smalltown Supersound, Carmen Villain unleashed her fifth album ‘Only Love From Now On‘ venturing down the experimental side of pensive electronic music presenting seven tracks exploring ambient, downtempo, dub and fourth world music. Think Jan Jelinek meets clarinet.

In her creative process, Carmen admits she doesn’t know exactly what the final result will be, preferring to operate by intuition, and seeing the process as a “conversation” with sound. A texture or melody buried in a field recording can be the spark that becomes a sketch. Those recordings are burned with snatches of instruments such as the flute, voice and clarinet, then disappear into evocative granular soundscapes – places where words cannot express what each instrument does when stripped down past its elements.