Idris Bena
Lankivei

One year on from the passing of label co-founder and artist Alex Smith, Flash as a Rat returns with its 6th instalment. Digby, co-founder and brother to Alex, continues the siblings' form for emotionally intelligent and sound focussed minimal. 'Briefmacken' bumps through waves of kicks and glitches to arrive at moments of peaceful clarity, whilst 'Constantly' swings with off kilter hisses and pops around a metallic organ sequence, making it's claustrophobic way towards a beautifully layered string section at the crescendo. The typically pared back artwork this time inverts the colour scheme from the brothers' first ever release on their own label, marking the record simultaneously the ending of one chapter and the beginning of the next.

Second release on “For Playful Manners” label, presenting Penelope and Ludovic who share roots in the same culture but have been influenced by different surroundings in a lifetime journey. Keeping it warm and playful they deliver dancefloor heat as well as trippy sounds that will lock you in the groove ! Get in the game and discover the positions of the tracks so you find out who made which track

After being marooned in a small beach town in Brazil at the start of the pandemic, California-born Gene On Earth eventually made it home to Berlin. As the reality of the global situation sunk in, he set to work on his second album, working in an obsessive daily rhythm. After gathering an arsenal of samples and inspiration he returned to the studio for 5 months of feverish work. Set for release on June 3rd via his own imprint Limousine Dream, ‘Time on The Vine’ is a slick record delivered with the laid-back warmth of a producer at the top of his game. Breezy yet assured, its wonky minimal rhythms are as feel good as they are fun, a perfect antidote to the long and waning pandemic that birthed them.

Impressions cast from lyric and rhythm – desire in movement, now articulated and set forth. Meaning arises between attention and action. In darkness what is it?Air is breath, like light through crystal; it’s truth and sacred geometry. A version like ancient stone - the sample shows in layers, solid time. Compressed life. Pages packed together and seen from the edge, razor sharp and two dimensional. We are the salt we become, our children and ancestors. All at once, being forever; a verse, then volume and tome.But we slow, dragging like ploughs tilling clay. The physical is a language like memory – translated into real. Turn from backwards to parallel, watch it reduce; remember downstream. The rock, earth and salt, our real reconfigured.Type peels away, turning to sand in the wash. Disordering disorder - now still. Translation becomes everything, set sequence and entropy. Whole, to node, to nothing, and all. Not new, just another.Vector Trancer’s journey continues; re-emerging into the central stream, deep dub glows and woven polyrhythm conjure vital knowledge for protection and expression. Viridis Mantra and outer canopy steam, we’re brought tense rhythm experiments and biospheric reverb – see further excursions in atmos and shades from Touch, Fax, Geometrik, or Ed Handley on a dark one.