Not to be mixed with Bibio from Warp, Biblo (trinket) is Istanbul’s own wonderwoman Pinar Süt, member of Proudpilot, best upcoming band from Istanbul. Out/Land is full of meanders in soundscape / drone land, voice manipulation, eerie synths and blissful calm. 4 pieces and free download, all her earlier works can also be checked for free via last.fm.

Sister labels Tirk & Nang both sent us promos last month. Tirk No. 55 is by Milano discoheads The Love Supreme who’ve already released two 12′’s on Tirk. My gut instinct says the floating Social Disco Club remix might be a dancefloor killer around 3 AM. We might get to test that on this Thursday in minimüzikhol where we will be hosting our own night with el maestro mini bashekim, so join in!

Anyway, the second release Nang 07, is a remix package to Tirk’s best download seller in 2009, by Siberian discobears Acos Coolkas. Bearfunk’s Max Essa (whom we also featured with their new project Soirée recently) and Slovenians Sare Havlicek and Ichisan are on the remix roster, but I’ve chosen their own synthy remix, just because of the lazy vibe once again. Guess all this work on minimüzikhol has made me more lazy than usual.

Cleveland, Ohio soundcrafter Samuel Goldberg’s Wanderjahr is the soundtrack to a hostile exoplanet where nature seems only subtly different than what we have here on earth yet one misstep and you’re strangled by iron oxide tentacles. Out on his own Pizza Night tape label.

Catch him live at @ the smell in LA w/ sun araw, wet hair, and sean mccann this saturday.

Perhaps the “new sound of suburbia” is a bit far fetched, but Colin Kavanagh’s one man show The Council Flats of Kingsbury has managed to adapt bossanova to the electronic age, with hints of 50s suburbia innocence and 60s psychedelic pop brightness. Bright colors, chirping birds, swirling synths, acoustic guitar and an ear for sweet exotic melodies, this 35 minute journey is surprisingly compact and captivating. Don’t miss this out if you’re into folktronica, hauntology, Ghost Box, Moon Wiring Club etc. 3.5/5

“Influenced by the golden age of bossa nova, sophisticated soundtracks, classic psychological thrillers, and the subtle horrors of suburban life, the once enlightened Council Flats of Kingsbury make extreme efforts to hold it together for circa 35 minutes on this delicate home production.”

Set up by a tweet from @mapsadaisical, I found Louis Pattison’s writeup about the new age revival. Efforts by a new generation of artists like Marc McGuire and his Emeralds trio, Oneohtrix Point Never, High Wolf, Steve Hauschildt, Ducktails, Sam Goldberg, James Ferraro, Sun Araw sparked a newfound interest in new age / synth music as well as cassette players, bringing back the glory days of kosmiche music and krautrock. Finally new age is making a comeback to dust off the “worst music genre ever” tag it acquired back in the day.

The best of this music was heroic in its commitment to charting new sonic landscapes, but as new age became a genre, the music’s worst qualities became more apparent. Padded out with blandly exotic world-music influences and Gregorian chants, compilations with titles like The Most Relaxing New Age Music In The Universe were stocked alongside the energy crystals and Wiccan paraphernalia in your local health food shop. Indeed, most new age music seems to follow the formula of homeopathic medicine; it’s so diluted to the extent it’s virtually impossible to find the good bits. @louispattison for Guardian

Here’s what Boomkat writes about Emeralds’ self-titled release.

After the recent rush of Krautrock reissues from Harmonia, Kluster and Eno, ‘Emeralds’ seem to be tapping into a classic analogue sound re-imagined for the 21st century, leaving us to marvel at just how well this group have accomplished the alchemical sound of their forefathers, whilst also opening up their own dimension of mind-boggling tones with a scarily prolific. Boomkat

Bonus : Here’s a tour of the cosmos by Emeralds’ John Elliott for Self Titled Mag. Names named : Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze.

Image by JLM Photo

Just had this Neon Indian’s synth based electro disco treat for Au Revoir Simone’s Another Likely in our mailbox. Not our usual cup of coffee but this hazy nudisco sound has its ups for sure. Coupled it with Nite Jewel’s What did he say. Nite Jewel = The queen of haziness.

It’s a shame, we’re so late to talk about Proudpilot, one of the few internationally notable acts coming out of Istanbul, and y’know what their drummer Golem is an occasional writer for undomondo. Well, maybe that IS the reason, I don’t know, it’s easy to overlook the ones close to you.

Monsters Exist their debut on Peyote Records -the publishing side of Peyote the club, an important hub for Istanbul underground- packs a stone punch right in the middle of your stomach. What else would you expect from a drummer who listens to powerviolence & grindcore and plays dubstep & dnb all the time, and two sisters who make bizarre electronic soundscapes on their own.

Their stripped down core aesthetic is prevalent through the album. Songs don’t develop more than they have to, in a way like early Discharge where they capitulate on one idea throughout the song. The synth is as hypnotic as it gets. The album is dark, dystopic and tribal, like watching the corruption of modern society with no mediator in between. My initial reaction was to criticize it because it wasn’t diverse enough, I take it back because Monsters Exist sound better as a concept album -even though it isn’t it-. A total win from Proudpilot and a fresh page for underground music in Turkey I hope. 4/5

I was suffering from a mental block last week, that’s why I couldn’t get to share this incredible place called Bleep43 which features a lot of amazing podcasts and music writing (I admit I’m quite late in finding it out but hey it’s the internet). Here’s the first one that drew me close a two hour podcast by the Moon Wiring Club, which was featured here last month. The fictitious Moon Wiring Club creates eerie psychedelia like Ghost Box and BBC Radiophonic, expect mucho synths and bizarre soundscapes.

If you check the academic journals in the social sciences field today, you’ll see that most of them deal with language, culture and thought processes. To deal with the perceived difference between Turkish and British cultures I’ve always thought of an hypothetical case where the Turks have evolved an institution like the BBC in place of the bland, etatist broadcasting institution that shaped the Turkish worldview until the mid 1990s, the TRT. That monolithic language present in all the state institutions, the formal education system and dramatically in the universities as well, have minimised the cultural wealth of the Empire and hindered the creative output and the free thinking potential of Turkish people to their bare minimums, unlike the British innovation culture which continues to flourish today. Anyway what was I saying? Thank God for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Founded in 1958 to produce effects for radio, this influential studio has molded the British psyche in so many wonderful and bizarre ways that the Moon Wiring Club or the revered output of Ghost Box is rendered possible today.

Dwelling on a similar aesthetic as his colleagues on Ghost Box, Ian Hodgson has produced an abundance of strange tales and eerie soundscapes on his two efforts both mystically featuring 22 tracks and wonderful artwork.
Like ‘steampunk‘ MWC’s music tells stories from a parallel universe where things have gone awry. It’s always fascinating to enter dreamscapes in order to steal one more bite from bland sobriety that looms over everyday life and thanks to the pioneering works of early library music artists and the imagination of Hodgson, MWC actually manages to convince us about the forgotten history of this esoteric club.

For listeners familiar with the Ghost Box sound, think of a more beat-driven approach to the spooky synth based fantasy worlds. The drum work might sound strange in the beginning but hopefully you’ll get used to it soon to enjoy this haunting psychedelic fantasy world. Released on Blank Workshop.

ED : New Moon Wiring Club CD “Striped Paint for the Last Post” available for pre-order.

After Error101’s Alamooga post, here’s another quick moog post featuring the prolific pianist & composer Dick Hyman a legendary figure who has released more than 100 albums under his own name. The Age of Electronicus from 1969 features lots of well known covers from The Beatles’ “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da” to James Brown’s “Give it up or turn it loose”, alongside the mighty Aquarius and Alfie. Contradicting today’s musicians he’s also immensely knowledgeable about music history, just check out his lesson videos to get background info on jazz piano styles.