My first contact with I-Robots was a compilation with 1980’s italo smashes like “Spacer Woman”, “Penguin’s Invasion” and others, which well substituted a painstakingly expensive mission of acquiring the originals on wax. Behind I-Robots and Opilec Music is the Italian Gianluca Pandullo whose mission is to unite sounds from differentRead More →
Billy Ray de la Haye, a studio artist with sketchy public CV, comes allegedly from Rotterdam and not from The Hague that was my initial guess, because of ‘la Haye’ of course. By sound, he could be unmistakingly located in the Dutch west coast, when disco riffs and vocoded lyricsRead More →
“To The Cosmos, Let’s Go!” was an adorable piece of fortified disco by Blacknecks, a short-lived super project of Tom Russell and Al Matthews. Half a decade later, many are still incessantly waiting for the duo’s return, which doesn’t mean that our heroes are idling about – Russell with hisRead More →
By sleeve art, one may think the record belongs to the same section with The Moomins or The Smurfs soundtracks, a visual diversion that signals the content being somewhat surprising too. Because when speaking of DeFeKT, another set of electro tunes would have been a reasonable expectation as the IrishmanRead More →
Humanity Plus by Komarken Electronics Buy vinyl from Juno (UK) Buy vinyl from Toolbox Records (FR) Buy vinyl/digital from Bandcamp Rising from the shores of tranquillity Sweden’s one-man electro manufacture is at it again. After in 2016 a brilliant EP on Brokntoys opened my eyes for Komarken Electronics, I’ve turnedRead More →
Buy vinyl / digital from Galaksilevyt (FI) Buy vinyl from Mind Records (FI) Buy vinyl from Levykauppa Äx (FI) Buy vinyl from Kernkrach (DE) Synth love from the land of 188,000 lakes “Ääniaaltoja” is a stimulating synth pop album, over 33 minutes of vocoder songs in Finnish – soundsRead More →
Winds of change on Vortex Traks, a label that set off in Berlin two years ago and has been among the city’s exciting newcomers in electro segment. The arrival of Kimmo Rapatti aka Mono Junk could be well a sign of further electro adventures, but the Finnish analogue guru pays tribute toRead More →
In recent years, Brokntoys has been a trusted platform for inspirational electro, often in its melodic form, and now the label expands the horizon with a techno-inclined offshoot called Eidetic. The sublabel’s first physically available release is the second by the catalogue numbers and comes from Russian producers Kovyazin D,Read More →
As DJ and producer, synth-obsessed Alden Tyrell has been a stalwart of the Rotterdam’s Clone community and remains active to the present day, despite of releasing (the first) retrospective already in 2006. By that time, Tyrell had become a renowned artist in the world of neo-italo and electro disco, who was providing energised tracks for curingRead More →
The comeback story of an analog junkie continues. Everyone familiar with the 1990s techno knows how significant role Kimmo Rapatti and his DUM Records played and not only for the Finnish scene. Luckily we do not need past tense in telling this story because after several quiet years, Rapatti revived his Mono Junk alias and afterRead More →