Mardel
Perceptions EP

Experimental musician and performer Moss Kissing debuts on vinyl for Lisbon collective Vilamar. Thick layers of ambience and intense bass weight form a canvas for plaintive melodies and brooding dance rhythms. These latter range in tempo and gait from dubstep to techno to jungle and back again, summoning contrary moods often within the confines of a single track. This freedom with form arises from Moss Kissing’s background in noise guitar and his current focus on dynamic improvisation led hardware jams, which have gained him notoriety around his chosen city of Lisbon. The British connection is unmissable, though, as the Pass Through LP is haunted by many of the spectres conjured by FSOL, Autechre and Burial before it. As with their previous releases, Vilamar bring to light an artist playing with the boundaries of dance music without ever losing sight of what’s at its core: the physical texture of bodies and minds in space, moving, seeking connection.

Formal yet experimental, each track plays with textural contrasts, gossamer lightness brushing up against uncompromising density. The result is a thing of austere beauty: from the cinematic opener to the climactic rush of the finale you will find shimmering arpeggios, industrial polyrhythms and, at one point, even an unabashedly 80s synth lead.

Portuguese producer Mardel debuts on Carpet’s Circuits series with a tight set of modular jams. Precise, at times introspective but with a driving motor pulse underneath, the three electro tracks touch on acid and bass as they launch into space. For its part, the ten-minute lead track, ‘Ducks In A Pond’, is a dreamy dubby epic, full of surprising textures and watery flourishes.

Carpet & Snares Records in Lisbon continues its analogue series Circuits with a welcome return for Rawax alumnus Brother G. Each of the four tracks here has its own afternoon mood – the lazy, hazy, almost kick-less pastoralism of 'Stress Relief' contrasts with the wakeful buzzing of 'Give It A Try', whose steps and spirals in turn give way to slick and focussed microhouse on '10ml Bottle Please'. Finally, 'Xanax' is nothing but a daydream, its detuned IDM pads and broken beats the perfect soundtrack for self-medication and a cup of tea.

Shine Grooves (Hanagasumi, ФАКТУРА) is a specialist in live and experimental electronic music, blending software and hardware in his studio in Yekaterinburg, Russia. On this sophomore full-length he cultivates an otherworldly Space Garden on a distant planet, populated by alien organisms that move to their own extraterrestrial groove. Dawn breaks and the garden slowly comes to life on ambient opener ‘Morning Mood’, setting a promising tone for the day ahead. A kick shuffles in to work on the dubby ‘Tribal Acoustic’, which builds and builds before leading us into the industrious bounce of ‘Japan Sequencer’. This latter, first optimistic and later frenetic, ends the A-side’s warm-up and primes us for action on the B. ‘Tool’ is self-explanatory, a refined, stripped-down dub techno weapon honed for an afternoon’s hard work. After that exertion, ‘Evening Radio’ is the perfect cool-down, its delicately skittering percussion contrasting with sweet, improvised synth melodies. Finally, the ambient ‘Night Reverberation Jam’ is the sound of darkness falling, our garden’s lifeforms settling down to rest before the cycle begins afresh.