Articles
2008 Ten Favourite Labels
Ten Questions Celer
Ten Questions Deadbeat

Albums
Anzio Green
Ariel Abshire
Osman Arabi
Arastoo & AEMAE
Asymmetrical Head
Benoît Pioulard
Bohren & der Club of Gore
Matt Borghi
Celer
Cubenx
Anders Dahl
Davis & Roux
Deadbeat
Feu Follet
Formication
Generic
Stefan Goldmann
Gultskra Artikler / Lanterns
Hauschka
Hexes & Ohs
Koen Holtkamp
I Am Robot And Proud
Illusion of Safety
Integral
Koen Park
Akira Kosemura
Koushik
Library Tapes
Lineland
Mamiffer
Melodium
Moon
Oppressed By The Line
Pillars and Tongues
Rumpistol
Kamran Sadeghi
Sans Serif
Signal Deluxe
Skogen
Saul Stokes
Matthew Sweet
Tapage
Thursday / Envy
Windy & Carl

Compilations / Mixes
An Taobh Tuathail II
Chaos Restored 2
DFPRMX
Kuniyuki
Message Subatomic World
Pero es olor en el cuarto...

EPs
Canyons!
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Cubenx
Dokuro
Fraction
Lee Holman
Ikonika
King Midas Sound
Michael Lambright
Library Tapes
Lilienweiss
MRK1
:papercutz
Spencer Parker
Poratz
Spartak + John Chantler
Andy Vaz

:papercutz: Ultravioleta rmx's
Apeginine

If Ultravioleta rmx's is intended to whet the appetite for :papercutz' Apegenine debut album Lylac, the thirty-one-minute remix set succeeds on that count. Admittedly :papercutz is represented by only one song so imagining what a full album of the group's material might sound like isn't easy; nevertheless, the one we're given is certainly promising, and the remixes are an appealingly diverse lot too.

We should first of all clarify that :papercutz isn't a group at all but the solo project of Bruno Miguel, a Portuguese musician and computer science graduate who's attempting to merge the two interests into a panoramic strain of left-field electronic pop. In his :papercutz original, a kinetic bass line wends a serpentine path alongside a jittery rhythm base while a dense web of harp-like flourishes, synth melodies, and sultry female vocals intertwines over top. It's a busy and head-spinning mix of techni-colour sparkle that's never less than captivating and, if it's representative, bodes well for Lylac.

“Ultravioleta” is pulled down to the oceanic depths in The Sight Below's makeover with only the barest remnants of the vocals bobbing to the surface of Rafael Anton Irisarri's dub-techno mix. Irisarri discards much of the original's sonic material and re-imagines it as a surging tsunami of gaseous vapours and guitar-sculpted reverberance so huge you could get lost within it. Needless to say, Riz Maslen's Neotropic mix is entirely different in character from both The Sight Below's and Miguel's. She transforms the track into a Gothic, swamp-water electronic-blues mutation filled with incantatory vocals (“There is light and shadow on the other side”) and other viral touches. At disc's end, Spandex (Matt Southall) neatly shreds and scatters the original's vocals over a tight and jacking techno pulse before Signer (Bevan Smith) grabs the controls for an eight-minute plunge into a vortex of psychedelic haze.

November 2008