Frak
Traditions 20

Since he started producing music, Berlin-based American sound artist Jake Muir has been obsessed with sampling. His 2018 album "Lady's Mantle" was based on manipulated chunks of vintage Californian surf rock, and its follow-up, 2020's midnight symphony "The Hum Of Your Veiled Voice" was sourced from a wide variety of old records, and inspired by the work of experimental turntablists like Marina Rosenfeld, Janek Schaefer and Philip Jeck.On "Mana", Muir looks back to a misunderstood musical movement. Around 1995, a group of New York producers and DJs - including DJ Olive, DJ Spooky and Spectre - pioneered a genre-dissolving sound by unifying hip-hop techniques with ideas pulled from dub, jungle, ambient music and industrial noise. Badged "illbient", it was a short-lived genre that felt like a high-minded psychedelic cousin of the UK's trip-hop.Muir uses illbient as the springboard for "Mana", utilizing a selection of samples to inform his frothy drones and foreboding atmospheres. He ushers the material into 2021 by diverting it through his own contemporary worldview, attempting to recreate the hyperreal fantasy histories of Japanese RPGs (think "Dark Souls" and "Final Fantasy") and nod to sensual, tactile soundscapes of European industrial labels Staalplaat and Soleilmoon. The result is a magickal, sensory journey that's as physical as it is representational.If the illbient producers were encouraging a burgeoning experimental music landscape to emphasize the tactile feeling of turntablism and sample manipulation, Muir is doing the same with "Mana". Each track heaves and breathes not just with his cultural reference points, but with layered, complicated emotions. We can hear joy, sadness, desire and anguish, obscured by disintegrating noise, hallucinogenic harmonies and sub-aquatic bass. It's electronic music that's rooted not in technology, but in touch.

We spent lot of time in a thorough search, looking for gems among our friends producers from all corners of Ukraine. As a result, we got a universal record that can satisfy the tastes and needs of many. First track from A-side made by Victor B, atalented producer from Odesa, whose live performances can often be heard in the walls of the Odesa club PORT. Side continues by the work of Closer resident from Kyiv - O 'Fourty Four aka Pahatam. This man has more than ten years of musical experience behind him and knows how to capture the listener's attention, which he skillfully demonstrates in hiswork. B-side begins with the track of the already well-known musician from Kharkiv, co-founder of the Trance Pandemic label — Kurilo. The track has absorbed all the best technical and stylistic methods of its author. Our friend from Zaporizhzhia Brooht completes the record. A lyrical and slightly dreamy composition that balances so well with dynamicand dance-provoking bangers.

Stoned Pilot continues his flight with the second leg of his collaborative journey!This time, Shonky welcomes Italian producer and friend Giammarco Orsini into his studio, resulting in 4 tracks that merge together the dreamy and driving influences of the two artists, always with a rich presence of analog synths and drum-machines.

In a secret laboratory in an unknown location, two lifeforms not of this world were at work.Based on previous experiments, it was understood that when the two life forms were left alone together, they could create various elements from nothing, somehow communicating with each other what was needed through a sophisticated type of Internal Transmission.As scientists watched and took notes, the lifeforms sat on the floor across from each other. They did not talk. They did not move. They simply sat, doing the impossible. The atmosphere began to transform and one lifeform produced Gold, Arsenic, Carbon, and Radium. Almost simultaneously, the other conjured up Oxygen, Mercury, Nitrogen, and Neon.The elements swirled in the air until they finally combined. The result was astonishing. It was the exact same compound the lifeforms had been discovered with when they crash landed on Earth some 22 months before. A compound never seen before.