[engl] As Light Return – The Telescopes are back with their ninth album.

[engl] Consisting of eight new songs and incantations that form a series of sonic convulsions stretching the parameters of intuitive composition to the point of auditory illusion.

[engl] The Telescopes were initially signed to Cheree Records then moved on to What Goes On Records where they became regulars at the top of the indie charts before gaining more mainstream success on signing to Creation Records. The Telescopes are now with Tapete Records. The previous album for the label – Songs Of Love And Revolution saw a return to the indie charts in 2021, including a Dinked edition with remixes by Anton Newcombe, Lloyd Cole and Third Eye Foundation. The Telescopes music has constantly pushed at it’s own boundaries, it overlaps many genres following its own course, inspiration led. Time has shown The Telescopes music not only withstands repeated listening but also reveals something new with each listen, it has been described by the British music press as 'more a revolution of the psyche than a revolution of the sidewalk'; a thread consistent throughout a highly influential body of work spanning over 30 years. The Telescopes have been cited as an influence on many artists across genres, around the world. The first five albums have all been re-issued by renowned labels such as Cherry Red, Bomp! Rev-Ola, Space Age Records, Weisskalt, Glass Modern, Fuzz Club and many more. Of Tomorrow is the 15th album from The Telescopes, the fifth for Tapete. The album was created entirely by Lawrie at his studio in Shropshire, it is a departure from what the press often refer to as a ’wall of throb’ when describing the dense merge of noise and sound synonymous with most of The Telescopes output. Of Tomorrow marks a complete change in dynamics. Here we have the poetry of motion, solid grooves to the fore, leaving crystallised trails across a fluttering undercurrent of uplifting rhythm and hooks. Lawrie’s voice, usually treated as an instrument equal to the rest of the sound now takes the reins, engaging the listener in a melodic swirl of radiant harmony that speaks, sometimes in a whisper, of love as revolution. Every song on the album stands it’s ground, each one unique. Everything from the composition to the performance, arrangements and production are leaps beyond previous offerings. This is an album to get lost in on the dance floor or headphones in equal measures.

[engl] Songs Of Love And Revolution is a solar burst of trance inducing rhythms gripped at the helm by a wall of throbbing bass held in place by a swarm of encircling guitars. Lashed to the mast of this whirling dervish, incantations abound to dispel what is bound. This is the 12th album by The Telescopes, music for a four-piece ensemble that will never sound the same twice in any given environment or to any set of ears.

[engl] Long before Trump was president, he was a real estate tycoon. The Reagan years were good to him. His locks of hair floating through Manhattan skyscrapers: Power, money, women…World markets opened up and the greedy would get even more voracious. The World is the soundtrack to this golden era of success. The whole World or nothing. The motto here is: More (« Big Money » and « Make It Big »). But sometimes you need to soften that iron fist and talk about love (« The Big One » and « Secrets de Femme ») or taking over the family business (« Hand It Over »), expanding (« On Sight ») sharing (« What Friends? »). And of course leisure («Aquaworld »). The business world had their own newspapers and channels and now they have their music: electric and synthetic textures, sharp perfect primes, very ambitious money making melodies that work better, faster, stronger. Continuously raising the bar when all the others fail. After their self titled debut album released in 2015, « Nights » is a sleepless album, briefcase in hand, living on the edge where one can win or lose everything in a split second. The World is too big for music, their influences are more easily found in movies, whether it’s the cynics Oliver Stone or DePalma, the candid John Hughes and John Landis or the eccentrics John Carpenter and Cronenberg. The World is a strange feeling, a powerful and naive enthusiasm overtaking everything even the future of mankind. Going down with style.

[engl] Wundersam, limited Maxi Single 12 Inch, 200 copies - four dongs from the debut album of TIMBEAU

[engl] Renowned acid cosmologist Johannes Auvinen, best known by his alias Tin Man, leaves the club floor behind for a full-length kosmische excursion on Bureau B. Since his first Tin Man records nearly 20 years ago, Auvinen has impelled acid—in the grand tradition of Phuture and co.—into shapes and forms heretofore uncharted. He does it again on his latest, "Arles," exploring a new realm of impressionistic beauty where pristine, heartfelt melodies dance delicately atop austere motorik rhythms. It's a trip you'll want to take again and again. "Cosmic," as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, means "of or relating to the cosmos, the extraterrestrial vastness," or "relating to abstract spiritual or metaphysical ideas." In that light, the first record by Tin Man, aka Johannes Auvinen, on Bureau B is cosmic indeed— kosmische, if you will. Auvinen is best known for his manifold expressions of acid, in the house and techno sense, that pull your heartstrings as they move your feet. But on "Arles," he leaves his dance floor bonafides behind for an album-length journey through inner and outer space. Although "Arles" isn't built for the club, it's unmistakably a Tin Man record, through and through. (Fret not: adventurous DJs will find much to work with here, naturally.) Auvinen's tender melodies, coaxed from an array of gear including his signature Roland TB-303, dance delicately atop minimal, propulsive rhythms. The form is different, but the fundament remains the same. In the manner of its namesake city, "Arles" is a portrait of impressionistic beauty. One might call it a turning point for Auvinen, a new direction, but like Auvinen's best work elsewhere, "Arles" is disarming in its unveiled simplicity. There is no artifice here; this album has nothing to prove, no need to convince the listener of anything. Its elegance is accessible immediately, its grace given freely. And after the record's done, chances are you'll find yourself dropping the needle right back at the beginning. Each listen reveals a new tenor—each track becomes a new favorite. It's a trip you'll want to take again and again.

[engl] Without a doubt, To Rococo Rot are an exception within the German music landscape. From 1995 until they broke up in 2014, the group around Robert Lippok, Ronald Lippok and Stefan Schneider researched a unique sound between electronic music, ambient, post-melancholy and the further development of a new, free music like krautrock. Pitchfork described their sound as "unmistakably digital, yet 100% human". With releases on labels such as Kitty-Yo, City Slang and Mute Records as well as concerts worldwide, the band has built a remarkable reputation. The trio was invited three times by John Peel to record radio sessions in the BBC studios. Bureau B is pleased to make the recordings from these three sessions from the years 1997 and 1999 available on record for the first time, which, in addition to the live versions of selected album tracks, also contains exclusive, unreleased songs.

[engl] TOKYO KARANKORON could be the best band coming out of Japan right now. To be quite honest, their blend of pop, rock, new wave, prog and everything in between is driving us crazy.

[engl] For those about to rock, the Metz-based quartet TWIN PRICKS (featuring former DEAD FOR A MINUTE and HYACINTH members) unleashes an indie rock bomb as well as a love declaration to the music made in Washington DC during the 80’s and 90’s. ?Stick together. Like glue. They met in high school, when they were young pricks. Eventhough they’re older now, they still are. Pricks. That’s what define them. Two talented wankers not giving a shit about what people think of them or their music. That’s what it ever was, that’s what it’ll always be. Their personal take on pop and indie music doesn’t need to be branded. It is as DC-esque (ie RITES OF SPRING meets RETISONIC) as it is midwestern emoish (the Caulfield scene with a GET UP KIDS twist). And it feels like they’re ready to push the boundaries of their very own defined universe, now expanding and exploring new territories, going from a wild afro beat to an icy r’n’b melody, all at the same time.

[engl] While some are still milking the garage rock for all its cool like it will never dry out, the sleaziest alley cats are gone drinking somewhere else. Sitting on a cinderblock in the darkness of a cave in the suburbs, drinking out of a warm beer, they’d rather witness the convulsions of a degenerating French song. Crafted with some second-hand gear and crumbs of poetry, this lament from the slums has Noir Boy George as its flag bearer, and Jessica93 as companion of misfortune. You will hear it filling the air of tiny and barely sound-proofed venues, to the greatest and perverse delight of all those that the prevailing festivism has made wary, and not quite convinced that we live in the best of times. When you’ve learnt music by fiddling with cheap kids’ instruments from the shopping mall, you end up with a tinkered tune that doesn’t rely on virtuosity, but hijacks anything it gets its hands on, and offers you the result in the shape of a wrecked toy imbued of magic. Nicolas Belvalette, known as Usé, doesn’t really play the guitar, and that is barely a guitar anyway. He hits on it, strikes the same chord ad nauseam, sticks a zinc cymbal on the neck, plays six instruments all at once. With Headwar, that includes three members equally versed in the mysteries of rhythm and multitasking, he atomizes the labels of “noise”, “rock” and “techno” that help us taming noise. He brings us back to the core foundations of sound, those primitive pulsations pre-existing language or melody, when the beating of our heart was all there was to our sound universe, at the bottom of our amniotic condition. For a while Nico managed a concert venue in Amiens, l’Accueil Froid : when the place closed down, he ran in some local election under the label of a fanciful party, le Parti Sans Cible, and got 2,17% of the votes. Right after that, the readers of local newspaper Courrier Picard elected him their personality of the year. L’Accueil Froid reopened, somewhere else. Just another line in a life that already resembles a novel. With a delicate health, subject to the most surreal accidents (during a festival, he got ran over by a car while he was sleeping in his tent), Nico never seemed to have a career plan, and spends half of his life on the road. He juggles with numerous projects (Headwear, Les Morts Vont Bien, Roberto Succo, Yvette Corner But, Sultan Solitude, and many others), he ekes out in this musical interzone that is the great tribe of the DIY, where the release of a cassette or a bandcamp EP are family events. “Usé”, his solo project since 2011, releases today an album on Born Bad, Chien de la casse. On the cover, a dusty van stands in the half-light of an abandoned barn, with a pack of dogs hastily gathered : nothing here is made-up. Yet, the colors are warm, the mood is relaxed. No pity party here. We almost envy the guy at the centre of the picture, who is lucky enough to spend his days indulging in the child-like pleasure of hitting anything the hardest you can, in a pristine environment solely surrounded by animals. Usé’s music is like that free party that we’ve looked for in this pitch-dark night, in the heart of the forest, led by the thumping noise coming from the ground : wild and aggressive, yet welcoming and touching in its bareness. You surrender to the mighty power of the trance, embrace the regressive pleasure of the drums wreaking havoc, the flimsy jingles, the texts rhythmic as a Dada poem. The heck with tomorrow, when the day will rise, because right now everything shivers with a frenzy that feels like life itself, and you won’t find this anywhere else. There are seven tracks on Chien de la casse, duly introduced by the spiteful grunts of a pissed-off mongrel, most likely a Cerberus guarding the trailer of a meth dealer in Indiana. Over the course of six tracks, Usé sounds as though he is writing an ode to break-ins in garbage dumps with the sole purpose of banging on rusty cans until they burst. Only “Sous mes draps” echoes like a sad nursery rhyme, but leaves the realm of social realism to wander on the foggy heights of a fairground horror flick. “C’est si lisse” concludes the album with a fire alarm and some human barking, in an atmosphere of a black mass saturated with backward tapes : the dream ends up in chaos, it’s almost day. Actual violence begins. I’ll see you next week at the squat.