All those creatures, standing there, making time. Fury eyes, golden dust on artificial fog. Dancing on glass, repetitive poems, looping long after the last loop looped away. Oriental acid, frenzied samples, low hanging film noir suspense. This is DALO. Or not. She is many. Dry maniac downbeat is her craft. Or dark-ish pop-not-pop. There is dub, trance, techno, too. She is known for releases on labels like ESP Institute, WARNING, or Tresor. She is part of bands like Init. She played them all, those clubs, that matter, and those that matter more. Live. Alone. As an artist. With a band. Here she comes with her first album. On the R.i.O. sphere. Her homebase. A trusted zone for experimentation. She brings “Duster”. Seven tunes twisted in different dreams. Fast, slow, veiled, enchanted, haunting trenchant. She sings. These songs. To dance. For a different, stripped-back trance. DALO. Her record longs for a stage. Exporting grace, face to face. A work like a mirror. Hypnotizing. A psychedelic portrait of a performer. Nuanced industrial veils ceremonial journey music. Claps, Jungle. Desolate vocal snippets. A whirlwind of words. All those chords, hanging there, kick drum time. Fury eyes, golden horns amid acid fog. Dancing on glass, cyclic synth-lines. DALO. Duster. A-round-and-a-around. Circulating the ritual.

Text: ML

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” a sage modernist poet previously whispered. And here we go, far out and yet so near, the third edition of “Risks Issues Opportunities” brings frontier reverberations scratching at the edges of dance, pop, downbeat, and other trance- portive sectors. Eight fast/slow propelling tracks. Adventurous, full of grandeur, gratifying the dance floor while equally winning the relaxation zones. Pure emotions crafted by newcomers. There is Milan’s Tagliabue, trancing slow and insightful. Or Cologne’s Grischerr, eloquently Tolouse-Low-Traxing. Some go down the slow burning road, where rhythms hang low, and suspense is in full show. Like London’s Frank Rodas, Garnu Depot from Iran, or Xei Ju from the islands of Micronesia, striking all ears with ghostly transcendental percussive science. An autumnally global voyage, which likewise offers industrialized districts by Italian producer Federico Cassetta, Metropolis minimal wave pop by Japanese musician Saeko Killy, or odd swamp funk by Chilean/German duo 7697 Miles. They all show, how far you can go, without losing your distinct flow.

Four track remix package for Pose Dia's Simulate Yourself LP

Pose Dia "Simulate Yourself" (RIO12)

Chansons for the replicates. Hymns for the algorythmed. Operatic minimal wave. Spoken words. Otherworldly electronica. Oh pop, Oh techno. Oh Pose Dia. Now on R.i.O, simulating herself on an album full of weeping synthlines, melding melodies, unreeling theatre between the notes, camouflaging in fashion and rhyme. Impulsive, destructive, yet so perceptive, gently repetitive. “Simulate Yourself” is her second album since “Front View”, released in 2020 on Bureau B. Now the Hamburg-based filmmaker, DJ and musician Helena Ratka, aka Pose Dia, brings a notion of digital archeology. Nine otherworldly chanting cold blooded Lieder and tracks, manic, longing for the real in the un-real. The matter of her poetic-abstract lyrics is rhizomatic, linking psychological “Suspiria” fantasy with sociology, media theory and all that never obsolete post-structuralism. Hyperreality for the hyped. Fully illusionistic. Wrapped in touching airs, drilling into cold waving Risiko spheres. X-mal rotating towards novel corners, shading light on old ones. Track make-up transforms into lacquered songs. Fog and fire. Night and light. Hairspray and cigarettes. Pose Dia transfers fine-tuned dissatisfaction to all those fully satisfied. Welcome to the other side of the Ocean.

A dynamic configuration of rhythms plus melodies, overlaid with musings on repetitive neverlands: R.i.O. welcomes KXB, aka Sam Gill and Wes Holland, a duo that, as they put it, “was born and baptised on the balcony at Robert Johnson in 2019, while Wes lived in London and Sam in Melbourne.” “Areas of Uncertainty” is their first musical outcome. It carries a rhythmic show bag, that circumnavigates streamlined track architecture. From Can-ish live drumming submitted by guest rhythmist Graeme Pogson to sequenced synth spheres, the three multilayered groove landscapes of the Australian duo punch severely arcane. Sometimes techno frankness messes with the big bad dub universe. Or Hacienda- Breakbeats cut tellingly through looped vocal waters, sanctified sung in by “Thrush”, one third of the Melbourne based Aussie/Deutsch swamp beat trio Concentration. Additionally, their buddy Richard Fearless added a remix for the premiere, fishing in dark dub zones, bringing in anxious cosmic tones. All recorded in a deeper shade of space somewhere in Melbourne, Berlin, and Fearless’ Metal Box studio in London, while diving into an avalanche of infinitely hyperlinked cadences.

I was dancing when I was out, I was dancing when I was in. Is it strange to dance so late? Is it strange to dance so soon? Cosmic dancers always ball. Dancing with themselves, dancing space away. Right into the smallest hole a human brain can create: the inner cosmos, a psychedelic region, where time gets space and space turns to haze.

Berlin based producer TM Solver is such a kind of cosmic dancer. He has danced late. And so soon. Since 2008 he released yearly one, sometimes two albums via the German Berlin School dedicated label Syngate and its experimental subdivision Luna. Intensely meandering synthesizer journey music, that is pirouetting on inner universes, genuinely crafted in the tradition of Berlin School and Krautrock. You can catch the unearthly nuances of Can and the spaciously swinging psychedelic corners of Amon Dül, Embryo, Tangerine Dream, or Klaus Schulze. As TM Solver has been a lover of analog synthesizers for almost 30 years, all pulsates on analogue sound orbs under the zigzagging guidance of machines like Moog Prodegy, Korg MS20 and GRP A4, as well as state-of-the-art systems as ASM Hydrasynth and Korg Wavestate. When he got in touch with the Berlin club scene and all its propelling grooves in 2006, a new rhythmic universe joined his vast musical space of sound latitudes. “Tinkering around with sound structures is my thing. Leading the listener into a combination of music and sound spaces.“ he reveals on his emotive musical art. How affecting it works, is now displayed with four epic compositions for R.i.O., Berlin Wedding’s label of novel ways for caved rhythmic patterns. Grooving between 90 to 240 BPM, they offer a vast variety of emotional landscapes, slowing down, rolling up, drifting into genuinely layered tonality magic. Headspace music for vigilant wanderers. Utterly psychedelic and yet so clear. His R.i.O. debut “Subtraktiv Additiv“ comes with five additional remixes, fashioned by R.i.O. conspirator Benedikt Frey, Amsterdam based DJ and producer Mayo, “Die Orakel” magician O-Wells from Frankfurt, Siamese Twin Records co-runner Sunju Hargun, and the versatile club and beyond production duo Red Axes. They all respect TM Solver’s analogue zones and pitch them into the 115 to 130 BPM districts, while transcending his absorbing synth compositions into the world of nervous acid-laden ambient, slow-mo techno, industrial bass, post-trance, and all that hallucinogenic echo house. Nine subtle energy vibrations, epic and full of countless facets, shaped to turn on, tune in, and drop out.

Text: ML

When British Airways got privatized and listed on the London Stock Exchange, somewhere in Canada the first Starbucks outside of the US opened, and the Walt Disney Company signed an agreement with the French Prime Minister to construct Disneyland Paris. In the sky above southern Argentina, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, northern Somalia, and the Atlantic Ocean a hybrid solar eclipse materialized for 7.57 seconds, whilst Margaret Thatcher performed for 45-minutes on Soviet television. Some days later, The Simpsons cartoon first appears as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, Diego Maradona wins his first Italian soccer championship with Napoli, and Eighteen-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust lands a private plane on Red Square in Moscow. In the mists of the world's first conference on artificial life at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Mainland China opens in Beijing, and Prozac gets approved for use as an antidepressant in the United States. Much give way for the future, down there in 1987, the year that marks the title of Benedikt Frey’s freshest mini album, out into the world on R.i.O., the label he runs with some pals in the North of Berlin. It’s a dubby melancholic conqueror, wistfully, repetitive, drilling, absorbing, spooking. It makes you dream. Not particular of the year 1987. But it’s all there: The Red Square, the untouched land of the Val d'Europe, Diego on fuego. Six dark-ish tracks in trance, melancholic dub, downbeat heaven, journey music depths, all full of light and yet so dark. Futuristic dramas linked to a speculative past. In our dreams all might look different. The eclipse may last 27-minutes. You meet Neuromancer cyberpunks and blade running Ghost dogs, all taught to hack by Phrack. Cristal clear melodies, sampled voices, and veiled basslines, analogue scopes, and digital ropes, longing for a past that storm into the future. A time where deep listening widens the acoustics into infinity, while neon glows charm the light smog. Benedikt Frey been down there. Or maybe not. His latest music tells stories from the bygone, vested with the forthcoming. Come in and look out. There is nothing to see, yet so much to hear.
ML

R.i.O. welcomes Pieter Kock aka DJ Peacock, one of the guiding souls behind the Berlin based bar/micro club O Tannenbaum. Musically active since 1986 as singer, guitarist, drummer and noisemaker, Peter already released a string of albums under different aliases like Billie and Ballie, The Hitmachine and Taladu. Since the early 1990s he narrates haunting sonic stories as a DJ, playing a vast palette of styles - from cosmic and leftfield techno to tape experiments, sound-art, wave, world, jazz, punk, industrial, and all that weird pop music. Last year saw him liberating his first solo recordings under his civil name as a cassette tape named “Flocks & Murders of Entitled Spirits”, dropped by the Berlin/Vilnius based label Musikii. It unreels twelve sensitive tunes, made with the help of online synths and drum computers, Youtube travel- and talk show-videos or samples from Youtube synths- and rhythm boxdemonstration videos. Now he refined his idiosyncratic style of music crafting a bit deeper and shares “Facial Recognition” – a gently twisted album that unites hypnagogic pop, library dances, cosmic funk, leftfield grooves and experimental sonic zones under one roof. His seven found sound tunes are layering a rhizomatic veil of unidentifiable web sounds, all transmuted into hazy looped ambiances, that trigger unconscious brain activities with future samples from the past, woven rhythm structures and a simultaneity of moments, derived from myriad world wide web informations. When it’s true, that nothing can have value without being an object of utility, then Pieter Kock managed to give the internet a new rate while using its manyfold informations as a tool to create art. Art, whose originality isn’t defined by the creator’s playful virtuosity. Instead, his sensibility of deciphering unheard rhythms, harmonies, and melodies in an avalanche of prefabricated ideas is his mastery. Pieter Kock transformed them into unfamiliar compositions with a familiar touch, that can evoke the feeling of being synchronous in a world of the many. A data rain without drops, a stream of consciousness without cognizance. Come in, drop out.

They are here, all over: sudden, random molecular movements. Invisible and yet extremely effective. Perceptible only to those who turn on things from a peculiar outlook. Now R.i.O. unfolds the second edition of “Risks Issues Opportunities”, bringing interstellar musical developments full of little, yet profound molecule advances. Eight mystical fate spinners, with the muscle to shed some light on unanswered questions, that will stay unanswered after all. Monolithic, yet deeply fragile compositions, made by terrestrials like Leipzig based producer Syncboy, Pannotia from Sydney, Italy based dusty drum machines lovers Twoonky, Charlotte Simon, known as one half of the art duo Les Trucs from Frankfurt, Berlin mystic’s like Airaboi or Nadia D'Alò of the duo INIT, Brooklyn based “The Thing” housekeeper Willie Burns and Vienna’s symbolist sound poet Bocksrucker. They all created electric signs for the above. Murky analogue prophesiers without prophecy, bringing headway music against the greedy frontier spirit. Hypnotic tones out of a hazy musical outer space. Like a dream that forgot to dream, they wave around with veiled frequencies full of ray, processed through analogue machine power. Music, that is able to in sight humans to an Atget photography. Able to transmit flashes to the firmament, to stars that wander darkling in eternal space. And yes: to some who listen a sudden physical movement might transpire, despite the fact that all was made without a particular practical value. Art for art's sake. In favor of an alternative to reality. Compellingly haunted by itself. Like stone, that awaits a random molecular movement.

I dream of you so quietly. Your likeness is not visible, the wind obscures your silhouette. You create spirals and don't know why. A burning star whirling in an orbit of its own. Each today is yesterday's tomorrow, which is now. And now is all I have, in my dream, so quietly… Four new tracks on RIO, catalogue number 006. Conducted, dreamed, in- and exhaled by Benedikt Frey and Tim Toh, featuring cosmic whisper and aerospace vocoder poetry by Lisa Toh, Tyler Pope, Lukas Diller and Niklas Wandt. Tripping music, dancing with organic Reprazent-break-infinity, saxophone melodies, Neu-Kraut-transcendence, nervous drones, gloomy bass figures, minimal pop and manic computer malfunctioning tones. All wrapped in a warm void of Melancholie, touching the eternal with murky gloves. Pointillist tunes, thoughtfully peculiar, seriously serious. Now is all they need. Now is all they want. Now I dream of you so quietly.

Graphic design and typography by Omnigroup
Mastered by FPSF

Philipp Otterbach’s psychedelic music has never been a sunshine pleasure pill. But yet, the souls of his notes are deeply gentle. With “Everything Else Matters” the Berlin based DJ and producer now introduces his debut album, that follows a long introduction.

Already since a while he devotes himself with endurance to music. He was an early resident at Düsseldorf’s shrine for outernational grooves Salon Des Amateurs. Since 2014 he releases music under his given name or as Grand Optimist on labels like Grokenberger Records, Knekelhuis or Themes For Great Cities and leaves marks as a remixer for artists like DJ Normal 4, Brainwaltzera, Wolf Müller and Niklas Wandt on labels like Growing Bin Records or Second Circle.

His long DJ nights and already released music prefigures the spirits, that he now bunched on his first album. It’s a record, that does not want to pursue a straight categorization. It rather aims to spellbound with an atmosphere, that is made for moments in the absence of hysteria. Tribalistic, trip-hopping rhythms, menacing sounds, cold cool vocal passages, drone chants, morbid goth-ambient spheres, Indie rock indications: its many facets meld into some kind of black highway sound for thoughtful night prowlers in a dissociative state of mind. In context all particles achieve delicate sculptural effects that operate like the surprising architecture of a dream.

A forward-thinking dream, that bundles something otherworldly, something unspeakable, that lives hauntingly between the sounds, rhythms and suggested melodies.

Double Vinyl with Gatefoldcover including Downloadcode + Insert.
Graphic design and typography by Omnigroup
Mastered by FPSF

Chris Imler, who alternates between eternal street boy and dubious magician, has succeeded in upgrading to a prophet with his third record. The 12-inch, completed in January and released on May 22nd on vinyl, is exaggeratedly up to date. Though it would never occured to him in his wildest nightmares while doing it, Chris Imler produced the soundtrack for the state of emergency. „Ich mess die Zeit in Katastrophen / Die Skala ist nach oben offen / Das Haus stürzt ein, es brennt die Stadt / Ein Laserstrahl weist mir den Weg zum Country Club“ says the chorus of “Country Club”. The music itself sounds like an emergency from the first second on. Synths like deeply pitched sirens, a beat like ground troops. And also the second song with the again ridiculously contemporary title “Protect Myself” provides appropriate voodoo vibrations.

Imler couldn't have found better remixers than INIT (Benedikt Frey & Nadia D’Alò / two thirds of the R.i.O. label) and Debmaster (Julien Deblois / Nyege Nyege label), who consistently drive the sound into dark rotations.

With the best of intentions, the worldwide public sitting in their rooms cannot expect more than the cathartic distraction gathered in these four songs.

Pink fog rises amidst the hills; dew covers all in silver paint glittering in the background. Layers covering layers of low clouds, fog and haze.
Shimmering city lights. Silhouettes of figures sitting in the hills, hanging in bridges, on top of houses, looking upon, observing city drive from up high as if it was a meditating bonfire. A notion of something going to happen. But all that remains is a glimpse of pink fog hanging static in the air.

Risks Issues Opportunities, the third release from berlin based R.I.O. Label brings together a collection of electronic wave music from six different performers with one common ground: their mysterious & slightly melancholic aesthetics.

RIO02 is a split 7inch between Nadia D’Alò and INIT.

“Pitcher” is Nadia D’Alò’s very first solo appearance on vinyl. Playful forwarding drums running hand in hand with a laid back wuthering synth line, carrying her melting voice right in it´s fountain.

“Benzin” on the flip side is a much slower, charming impish early morning jam by INIT (D’Alò & Benedikt Frey), based on a simple 808 infrastructure that leaves space for weird guitar riffs, wavy vocals and a bassy undercoat.

Keys are Benedikt Frey and Chris Cox, the front and rear covers of a lucid narrative of an incomprehensible nature. Substance induced Hara-kiri, a human consciousness leaving its temporary and insignificant vessel, a motorcycle ride through the sands of a desolate Martian desert or a twisted eternity dissolved inside Pandora’s Box. These are just a few of the scenes effortlessly evoked by the epic yet somehow erotic omnibus of slow-motion electronica that is Voltage. In a time dominated by robotic beat and melody, this 8 part expedition away from the dancefloor may surprise, disorientate and hypnotise. Allow Keys to seal you in their infinite vacuum of flirtatious melancholia.