Tagged with " AMdiscs"
Gunge - “$WIMMIN-IN-MONEY” (Official Video)
Posted under: 
Combining throttling analog synths, 80′s hair metal rifs, and blazed out hip-hop, Gunge is surprisingly cohesive. Not unlike many of his AMDISCS counterparts, he strokes through a syrupy sea of visibly retro influences, but he is able to make a nasty-piece-of-pizza-on-a-tab-of-acid collage-y of a vibe into nothing short of a pleasant excursion. While there are obviously tongue-in-cheek aspects to “$WIMMIN-IN-MONEY”, what is most alluring to me is Gunge‘s raw attitude—I imagine this track being forged with a curled lip and a deadpan stare.
And what a better way to dive into “$WIMMIN-IN-MONEY” than a constant flow of beach and ass, sun-baked in a playful, rippling pastel sheen? Fall off the deep end with the video below and download the single for free via via AMDISCS.
AMDISCS - ‘∜♡MDISCS 2K13′ Compilation
Following AMDISCS on any social media channel feels like logging onto FB or Chatroulette for the first time. You get hit by a deluge of content which, at first glance, seems initially unclassifiable. By the time your brain processes these new sensations as a cohesive aesthetic statement, you have already become a weirder person.
Last week, AMDISCS published the FUTURES RESERVE compilation—a two-part 73-song crawl through the bizarre and beautiful depths of the internet. Diving into the compilation takes you through glossy electro-pop, giddy seapunk, hard synth, cold synth, dark synth, darkwave, witch house, vaporwave, cyber rave, neon screensaver, trollgaze, candy pop, gaudy italo disco that sounds like Modern Talking‘s Greatest Hits filtered through a tower of refurbished Windows 97 machines, and a world of other imaginary genre tags sure to confuse and infuriate the even downest disco dad.
There are “hits” for sure—Kiwi Sisters, GOLDEN AXE, Black Jeans, Kimono Kops, NUDITY, and Dan Svizheny of Cough Cool all come to mind as standouts, but the compilation is most impressive as a scene report, where the ‘scene’ is not rooted in any regional locale but rather on the internet itself.
I caught up with Rado Z, the mastermind behind AMDISCS, over email to talk about his singular vision, the future of vaporwave, and the future in general. Here is that conversation, somewhat reformatted.
The AMDISCS 2k13 compilation is epic. Can you talk about how you put that together? How did you decide which artists would be included?
∜♡MDISCS 2K13 compilation is a natural outcome of my utmost interest in upcoming new music. I read somewhere that its like professional talent hunting, which I basically agree with, because I’ve had a very clear and straight perception of something interesting in music that found [its] way to me before it was widely acclaimed, that literally updates the schemes of what the NOW state of music production is, regardless [of whether it's] being produced in [a] bedroom or pro studio.
The actual compilation was focused on vaporwave not as a genre but as a movement that permeates music production these days together with other influences—underlying influences that are to be found under the ‘hearing facades’ as witchhouse used to be back in the day, like a form of energy that was being released through creative efforts of individuals.
In the not so long past, [that movement] has been the witchhouse aesthetic-the most influential artists did it at that time, updated themselves, and make wonderful music these days as well. I curated one of [the] first festivals in the world [that included] Mushy, who reaps a lot of attention these days because she is one of the most talented artists that grew up from that genre and made it up with [her] own style, O f f, [and] Crim3s from UK, [along with] astral projection music made by Stellar Om Source.
This is just a comparison of how trends in certain time shape a distinct approach, from which grow stars that [have] represented it from [the] beginning, but step further above it and are literally being born truly as they are. 
So back to the current compilation ∜♡MDISCS 2K13, it represents all that stands for the new and innovative, with a taste of being the source of exponential growth of joy. You can’t have something this pure set clearly by intention, these are freshest worldwide energies of delight in music. I produced and compiled it from artists I [have] worked with in the past, and from new ones that caught my immediate interest and with whom I will collaborate later on this year. There are also tracks recommended by artists themselves with whom I’m in constant everyday touch. Putting the tracklist together was more of an inside meditation that took me the most time, because that takes some clairvoyance and is being shaped in time—you got to get some distance from it to set the right balance [of] what each track has to offer to the overall concept of the whole. JOY 2K13. It’s all wrapped in mother-like energies.
The compilation is broken up into two sections. From your perspective, what is the biggest difference between main part and X part?
The first/main part consists mostly [of tracks] from artists [who] share more pop attitudes, [are] influenced or revamped by jazz 2.0, or overgrown by post mediated trancy acid lust, that is just pure expression of joy that could be found in 90′s rave chronicles
The X part is just clearly, incisively stated the most creative ‘junk’ you can hear these days, with side project ‘FERAL LOVE’ by Burial Hex, UK producer Gunge, upcoming star of synth darker pop grounds BRIGHT FUTURE or already established veteran of hallucinating barricades of love Dan Svizeny (Cough Cool) in 0VERTURE, and I can also mention pop that is too sweet to be called even pop by italian project Nø d representing another genre called seapunk, just to pick a few. I could write about each of the tracks for they are all amazing and each bring something special.
When you talk about your artists in your statement (included below), you say, “THEIR MUSIC IS NOT YET TIED TO ANY PRE PRODUCED IMAGINING.” I love that. That reminds me of the idea that once you put a name on something innovative, it stops being innovative. I have heard a lot of vaporwave artists say that vaporwave is dead now because people have put a name to it.
Yes, I think it would evolve into more viable forms for a wider public, but I wouldn’t think of it as dead, its imprint is too fresh and will evolve and be shaped by production of many artists in the near future, even though its fragile VHSesque aura will turn it into something more directly focused once it will be processed & scanned in individual creative ‘grids’. There will be more vaporwavesque releases coming in upcoming months via AMDISCS: Futures Reserve Label, but I don’t myself consider them truly vaporwave representants, just people who creatively bend this kind of aesthetic and put their own exceptional mark on it, too real to fade out
In our lifetime, we have seen the internet go from a way to connect music from different places to being a sort of place with its own regional sound. I feel like AMDISCS is one of the premier labels of internet-wave music. What are some of your feelings about the internet? What would life be like without the internet? Would you be doing the same kind of thing through mail?
INTERNET is life, and I can’t wait when we evolve and start to use our full potential, that will bring us organic internet that we are already capable of being aware, just to mention ways of synchronicities, telepathy, etc, all that is happening is still just a vague picture of what will come, we wont need to turn on computers or tablets, but until the time we fully realize how amazing beings we are, lets use the best available means to keep us connected, lots of love.
What is next for AMDISCS?
At the moment I’m working on and in full preparation for upcoming ∜♡MDISCS: Futures Reserve Label European tour that will take place from 8th June until 11th July with Sensible Soccers(PT), Black Jeans(US) & LINGERIE(US).
Read Rado’s statement below:
∜♡MDISCS 2K13
THIS COMPILATION IS AN OVERT GESAMTKUNSTWERK OF ALL THAT COULD BE ACHIEVED IN THE POST 2.0 ERA, WHERE PRODUCTION BACKGROUND OF EVERY SINGLE CREATING INDIVIDUAL MESHES INTO A GRID OF SOMETHING UNIFIED THAT WE ARE ALL ABLE TO VIEW AS COLLECTIVE CRE’A’TOR‘SHIP. EVERY ARTIST CONTRIBUTING TO ∜♡MDISCS 2K13 IS A SOURCE AND FILLER OF LOVE WORLDWIDE. MAIN PART COMPARTS INTO JAZZFLUENT VIBRATIONS MERGED WITH FUTURE POP OUTLOOK EMBODIMENT. YOU WILL HEAR MORE ABOUT THE ARTISTS THAT ARE FEATURED HERE IN THE NEAR FUTURE, THEIR MUSIC IS NOT YET TIED TO ANY PRE PRODUCED IMAGINING, AND IT’S THE MOST FRESH BAKED SOUND DESERT YOU COULD GET.IF REALIZATION OF CYBER BEDROOM CREATIVE POTENTIAL AND ITS INFLUENTIAL SHIFT INTO THE PRESENCE OF MAIN STREAM MUSIC PRODUCTION WAS EVER TO BE FELT, IT‘S NOW. VAPORWAVE IS SLOWLY GETTING CAUGHT UP IN THE MIDDLE OF ATTENTION AGGREGATING FOCUS, BUILT WITH RESPECT ON CYBER COURTESY OF BRITNEY’S 6TH TUMBLR SENSE. YOU CAN LOOK ONTO RIHANNA’S DIAMONDS AND SAY TO YOURSELF THAT SHE & HER PRODUCTION TEAM MADE IT SO LATE COMPARED TO WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY SEEN BEING PRODUCED IN OUR LIGHT WEBS, IT HAD ALREADY BEEN FORGOTTEN. ALL OUR STEPS UP ARE NOW SHARED AS CO-MOTION OF US ALL, AND EXPENSIVE PRODUCTIONS ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND IN FORGOTTEN REALMS.
X PART IS A REAL TRIBUTE TO UNDERGROUND THAT IS LESSER KNOWN AND THE MORE INFLUENTIAL AS IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN, DANCE LIKE A WILD BEASTS, WITH ANGEL HEARTS, OR JUST LISTEN AND MEDITATE.
∜♡MDISCS 2K13 IS THE FINAL OUTCOME OF WHAT HAS BEEN MY PRIME EFFORTS SINCE THE FIRST DAY I SPENT BEING A CHANNEL FOR UPCOMING AND CREATIVE MUSIC THAT SHAPES THE MUSIC WORLD, OUR WORLD. NO MATTER IF IT’S BEING PRODUCED IN BEDROOM, JEEP, THUNDERDOME’S OR UNDER SKY, BY TEENS OR 40-YEAR OLD KIDS. I‘M LOOKING FORWARD TO OUR OWN CREATIVE FUTURE, FOR ALL OUR LIMITATIONS HAD ALREADY DISAPPEARED. LOVE IS YOU, CREATE THAT WAY. ∜♡MDISCS 2K13.
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK TO ALL PARTICIPATING ARTISTS, ALL PEOPLE WHO HELPED MAKE THIS HAPPEN, SIMON WARD FOR HIS AMAZING VIDEO TEASER, MIKE TEXTBEAK FOR MUSIC EDITING, AND PEOPLE AT HARTZINE AND TINY MIX TAPES FOR GIVING THIS COMPILATION A GO, THANK YOU.
DEDICATED TO ALL MOTHERS OF THE WORLD.
CURATED, COMPILED & PRODUCTION BY RADO Z.
(propheet, foundeer, owneer of ∜♡MDISCS: Futures Reserve Label)”
Kimono Kops - “Driving to the Shore” (Official Video)
German producer Kimono Kops makes music that’s sparkly, synthy, gauzy, and altogether some sort of glossy dance floor love child of vaporwave and disco.
On “Driving to the Shore”, which debuted on the out of control AMDISCS 2K13 compilation earlier this week, he combines military marching band drum cadences with belly dance woodwinds and nu disco lounge vocals to make a rad retro dance jam. To make things even campier, the accompanying video features slow motion gymnastics, tube socks, and a dreamy fuchsia-tinted close-up of an emotionally tense gentlemanly conversation.
The latest Kimono Kops album, Initiation, is out today on Latenz Records, and up for free download on Bandcamp.
Finally Boys - ‘Feelings’ EP
Do you remember the club last night? The sound was pulsating, clear and thick. The lights where swirling, making prisms of out eyes. At one point a critical mass was reached; hundreds of sweaty bodies performing the sacred ritual of a seemingly infinite synchronized grind. Epic and perfect is the only way you can describe a night like this. Let Oakland electronic duo Finally Boys and their Feelings EP (grab it here courtesy of AMDISCS) take us back.
Local Scenes: Berlin
In this edition of Local Scenes, Henning of the wonderfully tasteful music blog No Fear of Pop guide us through the somewhat confusing and remarkably intricate roadways of the fast-paced Berlin music scene. If you’ve yet to explore the city, let this be your free access in.
…
Berlin. So. Well. Why not start with some obvious facts: It’s the city I live in, not the city I was born into, but the city I’ve been calling home for the last few years, and certainly the city I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. Yet though I very much spend my days in the belief that I am part of the larger Berlin music-related society, however loosely defined, I always find myself paralyzed when somebody asks me about the city’s actual “scene”. When I wrote an essay last year for the (forthcoming) first issue of Decoder Magazine, I used quite a lot of words to arrive at the neither very tempting nor terribly compelling conclusion that I can’t be sure, yet as far as I’m concerned, there’s probably none at all. One year on, I’d still stick to that assessment.
But now don’t get me wrong: I do not want to suggest that there is no exciting music emerging from this city, quite to the contrary: I strongly believe that Berlin is one of the most thriving metropolises on earth in this regard, I am simply not sure how all its diversity should in any way add up to a certain something we might want to deem a defining sound of the city. And I think it has always been like that—whatever we have called Berlin’s music scene at a certain point in time most likely appeared clear and well-defined only in retrospect: In the late sixties to mid-seventies, there was the highly influential Berlin school of electronic music that spawned krautrock and kosmische musik; looking back at the grey, dismal eighties, with Blixa Bargeld’s Einstürzende Neubauten and Nick Cave’s significant presence in town, Berlin appears to have been dominated by rock and post-punk just before, probably most considerably till this very day, Berlin became one of the world’s principal hubs for techno and related strands of electronic music during the final decade of the last millennium. But the city certainly is more than just that, and I am also not sure if the talk of one coherent electronic music scene would’ve been justified at any certain point in the past.
So, what I guess needs to be done when thinking about Berlin is to take the plural form of “Local Scenes” literally: There has never been one Berlin music scene, nor is there today, nor will there ever be. Everyone has their very own perception not only regarding the musical history of this town, but crucially also in view of the situation today. What you’ll find below, then, can only be my personal and entirely subjective selection of a few “scenes” or rather mere projects that I find particularly exciting and intriguing, briefly introduced by their founders and members. For everything else—you should really just come and see for yourself.
I’d like to start with Noisekölln—originally initiated as a string of parties and concerts in the Neukölln district “on the fringe of the Berlin club and party scene,” with the focus “towards stuff that is not easy to classify,” in the words of my friend Michael Aniser, who founded it in 2010, “from pedal-fiddling harsh noise and unbearable frequencies to meandering ambiance and future pop things.” And though the so-called ‘tape revival’ never really reached Germany (aside perhaps from Hessen’s excellent Sicsic Tapes), Aniser and his crew recently launched offspin Noisekölln Tapes:
“Noisekölln Tapes is a label to collect and showcase all these artists and findings we came across on our journey. The first release was a split between the post-goth band Ill Winds and the ambient sound artist Moon Wheel. The second release will be the solo record ‘Pagan Easter’ by Tomas Nochteff, who is the male half of Berlin via Argentina band Mueran Humanos. The third release will be a compilation of artists who are close to the loosely knit Noisekölln network.”
Get an idea by streaming the imprint’s first release below:
The second cool initiative I’d like to single out is a bit more elusive. Based out of the yet to be gentrified district of Wedding just north of the center, the New Wedding Avant-Garde is “a platform for independent art, regardless of form, medium, or style,” as one of the initiative’s principal members, Malte Jantzen, told me. Not exclusively focused on music, “we mainly organize exhibitions, concerts et cetera, but we also arrange limited releases of tapes, books, print art and stuff. We work together with friends who are artists or run labels, or with folks who we think are just incredibly talented, and who share our passion for DIY and underground culture.”
Jantzen’s own project S NDY P RLS (read Sunday Parlours) has gained some well-deserved attention in the past months, most significantly representing Berlin at this year’s edition of the AMDISCS-affiliated Creepy Teepee Festival in Kutná Hora, Czech Republic (nominated by No Fear Of Pop, I should probably add), where he was awarded “Emerging Creepy Act 2012” (we’re all still unsure what exactly that means). His music is an intriguing blend of drone-infused ambient and noise-heavy experimentalism, with occasional excursions into melancholic, bleak lo-fi musings on piano. “Rex” is Jantzen’s latest work, available on vinyl here.
Finally, another project that was launched by a dear friend, Michail Stangl, together with the other Berlin nightlife veterans DJ N>E>D, Barker, and Puzzle, Leisure System. Definitely the least obscure of the three projects, indeed quite the opposite: Leisure System has been a club mainstay since 2008, residing in the city’s most famous and probably still best venue, Berghain. However, counting the venture as a part of the Berlin “underground” is still appropriate enough, as its founders successfully disregard all traditional conventions of how a Berlin club night ought to look like. In the words of Stangl:
“Our aim is just to provide an interesting insight into the fringes of electronic music, without having to care for trends or functionality. We just do what feels good and what we think has not existed before in this constellation yet still works out. That means we often end up being eclectic, simply because we don’t want to listen to the same kind of music for ten hours straight. Of course that’s also complicated as it’s hard to pinpoint us: We don’t sell a lifestyle and we don’t organize that one post-rave or that one techno or that one bass music night, instead what you’ll get is a bit of everything. That however works out because Berliners are not just well acquainted with electronic music but to a degree even live it, so they are content to accept experiments. Within Berlin, in that sense we’re definitely a supplement to the rest of the city’s club program. At Berghain, we’re able to do things that wouldn’t work anywhere else.”
Last year, Leisure System additionally evolved into a label. The latest of the three releases so far, the 12” EP “Like an Animal” by core member Sam Barker (who by the way nicely exemplifies Berlin’s rich and ever-expanding expat scene), is among my favorite club records of 2012 so far, especially the track “I Feel”, which you should listen to below.
Together with partner in crime Andreas Baumecker, Barker furthermore pursues music that probably best illustrates what the world has come to know and love as the archetypical “Berlin sound”, meaning techno in all colors and shades, which is why it is perhaps reasonable to leave you with a stellar outtake from the duo’s forthcoming LP “Transsektoral”, out soon on Ostgut Ton, Berghain’s own famed imprint:
There is of course, as already pointed out, there’s simply so much more, and I can’t escape the feeling of falling short in many regards. Berlin, after all, isn’t easy to grasp exhaustively. On the other hand, that’s exactly what still leaves me fascinated and happy to be here, each and every day.
…
Curated by verb/re/verb.
Photos by Tonje of No Fear of Pop.