Andy Rantzen
Return To The Source

The debut LP from duo Sunflower Aquarium offers a full spectrum bloom into the electronic ecosystem. Dylan Batelic (Paper-Cuts) and Thomas Martin (Furious Frank) fuse together for a 7 track collection of low-slung immersive deepness, embodying a cycle of life via the ebbs and flows of sonic seasonal evolution. A collaboration of cyber synthesis; written simultaneously Melbourne through Adelaide during late 2021, the result a refined yet spontaneous take on dubbed downtempo through to driving dance deviance.Beginning with a birth, the stand alone Intro’s saturated glow cultivates a vivid timbre and sun kissed sub-stratosphere. Sprouting melodic constructions continue to blossom throughout the record and growing pains are welcomed with open arms, a mature moodiness brooding delicately through assured drums and fleeting Janet vocal fragments. Broken beat patterns group together and tessellate, the woven sunken bass leaves space for flickering hi hat fissure in SA-124, this groove based atmospheric momentum evolving cohesively track after track. Bright, refined concepts that linger and dissolve in your subconscious for weeks. The B Side preserves the introspective tip but dives deeper, faster; Birds Of Paradise melting organic field recordings into blissful synth voices and ricochet breaks. Bubble (Contagious Mix) feels like a midnight highway dub drive, shooting and gliding fluently; coloured lights iridescently blurred as if it was all a dream... then the closing track, which induces a sharp sense of hypnosis. Traditional techno expressions flirt with your ears, layers of repetition locked and loaded, dwindling into the abyss; conclusion of the cycle.

Back in 2021, when Volodymyr Gnatenko agreed to work on his debut album, none of us could have predicted it would be released, post-pandemic, against the backdrop of war. At the time, the 23-year-old producer from Lutsk was riding high on a string of well-received 12s for labels such as Where We Met and Animals On Psychedelics, besides local Ukraine labels such as LSS557 and Rhythm Buro. He was, between covid closures, playing live at Kyiv clubs such as Closer and Kureni, looking to tour in Europe, and spending every spare second making music.How things change. When missiles began to rain on Kyiv, Gnatenko, alongside a few friends from Closer, hid in his studio. For a while, the bombings did not stop. But for the producer, neither did the music-making. Choosing to stay in the city, he continues to make beats, managing only to mix down between bombing raids. He changed his first name to match that of his president, ditching the previous spelling of his name because it was the same as the aggressor, “[the same as] my worst enemy, I am ashamed and disgusted that I started my career with it”. The album speaks of softer, easier times. A combination of rich ambience, and laidback breaks alongside loose progressive and trance-fused dancefloor tracks, this debut brings together all the strands that Gnatenko plays with. The process, he says, was exhausting and long. Yet the results are lighter, fresher. Maybe because, he says, “it is dedicated to my future wife. All the tracks are my words of love for her". Deeply hypnotic and freely moving between ideas, it feels like it was made a lifetime ago, not a matter of months. Now, it resonates with a new defiance. It is a debut with an extra layer of meaning.

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 box-demonstration 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.