100 copies on White/Blue Splatter
150 copies on White
250 copies on Black

Oliver Doerell and Roger Doering’s revive their much-loved Dictaphone project, last active in the early-mid 2000s on City Centre Offices, for a new album on Sonic Pieces. Joined this time around by Alexander Stolze on violin, they generate a lavishly cinematic sound, at times distinctly Continental, at others given a decidedly Arabic lilt, especially on the gorgeous ‘Manami’ and ‘Soylent Green (1973)’. There are echoes of the micro-level loop-finding experiments of Jan Jelinek, at others the midnight arthouse blues of Julian Neto, but Dictaphone have got their own thing going, and Poems From A Rooftop is an elegantly constructed work of modern electronic jazz, suavely bohemian without being flip, beautifully detailed without being over-fussy, and warmly recommended.
Poems From A Rooftop brings a number of things into sharp focus: no musical outfit’s sound more powerfully evokes film noir than does Dictaphone, and, further to that, no group melds electronics and acoustic elements as seamlessly. Stylistically, the group’s sound is jazz-inflected, often exotic, laden with mystery, and heavy with atmosphere. The music’s cinematic undertone is also reinforced by track titles, with “The Conversation” and “A Bout De Souffle” overt references to Coppola and Godard films. The album title, however, originates from a different source, originating as it does from Iran’s so-called ‘green revolution,’ where people, afraid to venture out into the street, protested their oppressive regime from their rooftops.
Strings, electronics, electric guitar, drums, acoustic bass, and clarinet (a signature sound) figure heavily into the music Oliver Doerell and Roger Doering have crafted on three albums (including the latest) during the past decade. Now expanded upon through the presence of new member Alexander Stolze on violin, the group’s sound has refined itself over time, such that the album’s nine settings unfold with a natural logic and ease; of course what might seem effortless is actually the product of many years’ work. Adding to the music’s rich fabric, an occasional voice sample appears (a speaking voice during “Poem From A Rooftop,” for example) and, in a particularly ear-catching turn, the vocalizing of Mariechen Danz to “Rattle.”
The nocturnal jazz-blues settings “A Bout De Souffle” and “Au Botanique” are representative of the haunting Dictaphone style, embedding as they do serpentine clarinet figures within dense arrays of electronic textures, stark bass lines, and percussion elements. “Rattle” likewise stands out, not simply because of Danz’s brooding vocal, but due to the rhythmic charge of the drums and vibraphone and the insistent interplay of violin and clarinet; the addition of horns to the latter also emphasizes the group’s jazzier side. It wouldn’t be overstating it to say that this latest collection is not only the group’s most seasoned and mature but also its finest to date, and, based on the evidence at hand, the idea of bringing Stolze into the fold was a masterstroke.

Not much has changed in the very belly of the black metal underground over the past thirty years. Though a handful of black metal bands have found commercial success, complete with big tour packages, merchandise upon merchandise, albums on all conceivable formats, there is this deep, deep undercurrent of artists who solely make music for themselves and their friends. Much like the more publicized The Black Legions, who released music in exceedingly limited amounts (aside from the Black Legions Metal and March to the Black Holocaust splits), only to be leaked to the public through carelessness, small contingencies choose to remain isolated and maintain control over who hears their music. Privacy is an art form, and these underground acts thrust themselves from the world and hide their art. With a mountain of releases generally limited to the low-double digits in copies, German hermit Angra Malakh’s Forgotten Spell is one of those special acts who, without the intervention of now-dormant tape label Parasyte Curse, would still remain completely under the radar.
Bands like Forgotten Spell are special. With only photo documentation proving the existence of 75% of this musician’s solo evolution over the past thirteen years, we can only stipulate as to what eventually led to Forgotten Spell’s first public release, 2009’s Desecrated, Decayed, and Still Holy. Though the mystery still remains, what was obvious was Malakh’s practiced ear for harmony and orchestration made his take on triumphant, Germanic black metal makes Forgotten Spell a unique act.
Epiphaneia Phosphorus (Angel,God or Insanity), Forgotten Spell’s first fully public release (and first official full-length) culminates thirteen years of work honing his skills and isolated meditation deep within the underground. The long-form, densely-composed black metal found in these near-ninety minutes fuse a grandiose, epic scope with a musical evolution entirely belonging to Forgotten Spell. Though Malakh’s musical lineage can be traced directly back to Moonblood (with whom he has shared a split release recently and was audacious enough to cover on this very release), Forgotten Spell’s meditations and elaboration on the epic, Germanic black metal which was fully defined on Taste Our German Steel and Blut & Krieg launch the punctuated style far into the stratosphere. Angra Malakh’s apparent obsession with orchestration leads to lengthy passages of infinitely layered guitars, dense polyphony, and ever heightening climaxes. Even at its most evil, movements like “Along the Ocean of Funeral Sun,” the choir of acoustic guitars which lead its title track, or the mammoth introduction to “Aesthetics of Necromantic Manifestation,” Epiphanea Phosphorus carries itself with a Wagnerian sense of awe-inspiring pomp.
Of course, though Forgotten Spell’s aesthetic is entrenched in black metal, I wouldn’t strictly refer to the music as such. Somewhere across his lengthy solo career as a hermit, Forgotten Spell took on its own unique character in a bout of musical punctuated equilibrium. Scattered among the blasting black metal trappings and medieval folk touches, there are moments of bizarre uniqueness which truly transcend black metal. Take, for instance, the aforementioned “Along the Ocean of Funeral Sun:” the song is aggressive, sure, but the big, fleshed out chords, cleaner distortion, and staccato strumming seem almost psychedelic in nature. Angra Malakh revels in his own chaotic sense of density which results in a frightening, strangely beautiful ambiance. There is just so much sound happening at once that the triumphant nature of the music transmutes into a trance-inducing ethereality.
Granted, there is a quality found in Forgotten Spell which could very well be a glaring source of contention for the masses. Though Angra Malakh’s unique sense of harmony and capturing catchy melodies is enjoyable, he doesn’t really “have the chops” to pull this kind of music off perfectly. That being said, I really don’t find issue with it. We who listen to black metal have become spoiled by practiced musicians in high-cost studios over the years, but black metal’s roots were never concerned with the concepts of “musicianship” and “chops.” There is an earnestness in Angra Malakh’s scattered drumming and wavering, out-of-sync guitars, but don’t let the concept of “earnestness” be a damnation, because the passion and rage which fuels Forgotten Spell’s music outranks any potential issue with “slop” or “mistakes.” The 90 minutes found within Epiphaneia Phosphorus (Angel,God or Insanity) hearken back to a time where black metal was an isolated affair, where friends secretly traded tapes of their own rehearsals and took corpse painted photos of themselves in the woods. Forgotten Spell’s enraged, enraptured music is made by a complete outsider, someone who doesn’t collaborate with other musicians and, at least up until this point, specifically controlled who could hear his art. Some might refer to this type of behavior as “elitism,” but I can’t think of a stronger example of the spirit which fueled black metal’s impetus, of which musicians like Angra Malakh strive to keep alive.
The beauty and hatred found within Forgotten Spell’s Epiphaneia Phosphorus (Angel,God or Insanity) will see a lavish 2LP release on August 1st via long-standing Chinese label Psychedelic Lotus Order, who you might recognize under their alternate name, goatowa rex, with art by the talented Nicola Solieri and Carla Vignali. In a bizarre turn of events, we at Invisible Oranges are lucky enough to bring you, the listeners, and exclusive first listen to the pure, unadulterated black metal of Forgotten Spell’s first-ever full-length release, in which you will find yourself enraptured below.

Formed in Berlin in one night, 14-year-long friends Rhys Edwards and Rhys Williams conceptualized 'Ulrika Spacek' and came up with The Album Paranoia as their debut album title. Moving back to their shared house 'KEN', an ex art gallery in Homerton in the summer of 2014, they began work on the project which was to become 10 track experimental alt-rock masterpiece The Album Paranoia.
Ulrika Spacek's soundscape has drawn assorted interpretations, a cross pollination of hypnotic fuzz, with Tom Verlaine (Television) and Stephen Malkmus (Pavement) guitar idiosyncrasies and intertwining feelings of both angst and melancholia. An amalgamation of their record collection, influences range from Krautrock to Sonic Youth and the above.
Taking a DIY approach to recording the album, the two Rhys' used a drum machine on the first demos, and then brought in three skilled musicians and friends to complete the live formula and re-record the album. The live phase unified The Album Paranoia and 'Oysterland', a series of club nights curated by the band, showcasing their first live performances with art installations.
From pulsating hook-intense opener "I Don't Know", to heady, sky-high "Porcelain" and "Circa 1954", The Album Paranoia twists and turns, taking you from lo-fi haze to profound hysteria in "Beta Male" and "She's a Cult" - the lead single that reflects a "blurry time" for the band, as the track distorts from thrashing guitars to tender melodic embellishments. "Strawberry Glue" and "There's a Little Passing Cloud in You" are road-trips fueled by hallucinatory, culminating on "Airportism", a delicately beautiful OK Computer-worthy finale.
'The Album Paranoia' will be released on 5th February 2016, through Tough Love Records (EU) and Lefse Records (US).

This is the first full-length release for Berlin-based DJ/producer, Shed.The work at hand presents yet another stunning Ostgut Ton acquisition, revealing Shed's irresistible, intense techno sound. Shedding The Past is the culmination of years of continuous Soloaction research, Shed's very own imprint. The recordings fully unfold the total variety in his outstanding crafts of sound. Lineage can be drawn to the Saunderson Detroit sound, Aphex Twin rave and Manix hardcore, sounding like an archive document -- an archaeological history of electronic dance music. Shedding The Past captures the intensity and the purity of club and rave in the early days, without excess nostalgia. Rather, it creates new moments that leave the past behind. Full of energy and vigor, this is true techno music: concentrated and dense, but with a sheer easiness born from eastern Germany. This adeptness has captured the ears of Berghain and Hard Wax ears. As others of his social provenience, Shed took on the opportunities of the early '90s techno culture, which unfolded after the Wall went down, and developed an approach of "just do it." With this easiness in mind, Shedding The Past is just true techno music. The 2LP version includes an exclusive track, as well as two alternate versions specially crafted for vinyl.

The beginnings of the album date back to 2004 when I was invited to perform a live score for Vampyr at the Louvre in Paris. I started making recordings with classical trained pianist Olga Politova whom I asked to play some variant forms of Clara Schumann’s Nocturnes for me, for instance by playing selected chords in extreme slow motion with the sustain pedal held down, or harmonic movements as frozen clusters using strumming techniques. By the same time I started using shortwave radio as a live input for my processing techniques, so I've created various long tracks by modulating Olga’s playing with random radio input. Back then I didn't understand the resulting pieces and since the Louvre performance soon got cancelled, I've shelved the material until Winter 2015 when I rediscovered Dreyer’s movie and decided to work on the music again.
While I had initially planned to create a synced score to play along with the Criterion edition of the high-definition transfer from the 1998 restoration of Vampyr, Radiance X eventually contains a series of sonic images from the film as well as portraits of the three main female characters. In addition to the aforementioned piano recordings I used the 10" record of the Hollywood String Quartet’s performance of Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht and guitar recordings made by Sylvain Chauveau.
Radiance X has a deliberate sonic edginess, so in some parts you will hear a soft harmonic clipping or out of phase content. As always, I recommend to download a lossless version of the music.
Her Dark Gaze Drowned in Light is dedicated to Maryanne Amacher.

Melancholia. Longing. It is difficult to speak about these moods or states of the mind without invoking stereotypes. In ancient medicine, melancholia was considered to be one of the four temperaments, matching the four humours. In fact, melancholia, meaning "black bile" in Ancient Greek, was thought to be caused by an excess of this very body substance. By contrast, in more modern interpretations, literates and Freudians relate many variations of longing to the one primordial longing, the desire to return to one's mother's womb. In this context, the womb is considered to be the place of absolute comfort and cosiness, of total bliss. Thus it should not be surprising that to many of us melancholia is a mood which we like to invoke and to maintain, we like to envelop ourselves in it like in a warm blanket. Our brain and our sensory systems appear to be made for perceiving and emotionally responding to music in a very immediate fashion. Consequently music is the obvious drug for all of us melancholia-addicts. However, there is a thin line between melancholia and sadness, and music which is meant to be melancholic too often crosses this line by far. Only very few artists succeed in avoiding this crossing, and in creating music which is melancholia in its most pure form. It is safe to say that BERSARIN QUARTETT - the electronic music project of Thomas Bücker - is one of them.
After his successfull selftitled debut in 2008 and the sophomore "II" in 2012 - album of the month in many magazines and in numerous "Best of the year" lists - Bücker returns with his third BERSARIN QUARTETT album "III", due for release 6.11.2015 on Denovali Records. Much like his two predecessors, III is a pure paradox. It is the creation of a perfectionist, an adamant control freak. Every element, be it a note, an ambience layer, a string arrangement, a field recording, a baseline, a vocal (Clara Hill on Track 11) or a beat, is meticulously modified and then assigned its place in Bücker's vast but still minimalistic arrangements. Thus, superficially Bücker's pieces seem to radiate a certain mechanical bleakness. However, there is a unique reduced warmth and liveliness emerging from these stainless compositions and transcending them. This transcendence is precisely the point where Bücker ironically looses control over his creations. In contrast to the first two BERSARIN QUARTETT albums, III offers a few darker shades and succeeds even further in narrowing down the arrangements to the absolute essentials without loosing the characteristic grandeur of Bücker's sound. Whereas BERSARIN QUARTETT's debut was merely a description of melancholia in its most pure form, III maybe even goes as far a defining what melancholia really is. It is the only emotion in the vast spectrum of human states of mind which one can bear forever.

At the tail end of 2016, Giegling released a fine EP of remixes of tracks from Kettenkarussell's 2014 debut album, Easy Listening. It seemed like a strange move at the time (even if the remixes were excellent), but thanks to the appearance of this sophomore album now makes perfect sense. As follow-ups go, Insecurity Guard is rather impressive. Deep, atmospheric and, at times, otherworldly, the album flits between crackling, ambient-influenced haziness, locked-in dancefloor wooziness, twinkling, string-laden techno, dubbed-out goodness (the hissing goodness of "Your Hands") and the kind of loose and languid fusions of electronic and acoustic instrumentation that defy easy categorization (see sublime closer "Brueder").

Their submerged "scuba" sound, presented in dark tone colors and reverberating to infinity, is now instantly identifiable as one of the 'soundmarks' of Berlin club culture. Just as importantly, it is still a palpable aftershock of a pre-millenial genre explosion that saw deep dub, shimmering post-rock, abstract hip-hop and art-damaged noise all drinking from the same well of inspiration. For proof of Porter Ricks' enduring legacy, look no further than the fact that "dub techno" is now a stylistic movement that has expanded far beyond the confines of Berlin and the Basic Channel / Chain Reaction label alliance (where Mellwig's mastering skills also played a starring role). Lurid traces of PR's aesthetic can now be found in the work of producers like Andy Stott and Miles Whittaker, showing the potential for the duo's unique 'aquatic' techniques to be applied to a variety of different musical contexts. Their new LP on Tresor, Anguilla Electrica, may be their first full-length release in seventeen full years, but it radiates with confidence and with a clarity and intensity rarely seen in a world so oversaturated with communications noise. It's made clear at once that it's a continuation of a sonic ideal rather than a tribute to what has already been achieved: the duo is not idly sitting back while their newer acolytes do their talking for them.

Since 2004, Volker Bertelmann – aka Hauschka – has, steadily earned a remarkable reputation as a purveyor of imaginative, distinctive, prepared piano music. On What If – which finds him adding player pianos (also known as pianolas) to his arsenal – Bertelmann expands his range even further, defying expectations and delivering what is without a doubt his most ingenious album yet.

Christian L+Ýffler is co-founder of Ki Records and well-known for his intense, deep-moving sound with melancholic undertones. After several stunning releases for Ki and Orphanear, the imprint of Dial's co-founder Pawel, this is his debut album, A Forest. His music signifies an upward curve of rising intensity from which everything non-essential drops away. If the kick drum thuds along reasonably unassuming in the beginning of a track, it is already withdrawn into itself. Dancing, but with one foot in a dream. There is the always-emerging crackling, surrounding the arriving and surrounding what has been, floating, like collapsing chords, circling around a sphere which is nearly beyond the music. And like seagulls chopping through hi-hats, or like the heavy sea's beating bass lines, these tracks roll back and forth with an oblique beauty. "A Forest," for example, casts somewhat Tejada-esque shadows but without the timpani, only with meandering delay. And yes, you will think of sunlight when you hear "Blind" or "Field." There is also "Signals," a track on which recalls Arvo P+¤rt and whose tintinnabuli (bell)-style connects it to the dancefloor in the most beautiful way. Not only does it raise the volume, it also warms the heart. Features contributions from artists such as Mohna, Gry and Marcus Roloff.