Western Alliance
REZ27twentyseven

Venture into the unknown with "SPOOR3" and encounter the eerie serenade of digital tumbleweed as you urbex through the sonic architecture. These tracks are the perfect companions for explorations, leaving you with more questions than answers. Concrete galleries echo, posing existential questions, like the very material they are made of.

Through 35 hedonistic highlights stretched across three volumes, Music For The Radical Xenomaniac delivers the first ever deep dive into The Netherlands’ colourful house sound of the 90s and the under-celebrated producers and record labels whose music soundtracked a countrywide cultural movement.Plenty of books and documentaries have celebrated the riotous raves, legendary clubs, high profile DJs and promoters who shaped The Netherlands’ hedonistic house scene throughout the 90s. Music For The Radical Xenomaniac dares to challenge these narratives by shining a light, for the first time, on those who created the scene’s kaleidoscopic, game-changing and globally influential soundtrack.Leading the charge were a disparate group of key creators who not only forged links with their counterparts in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom, but also became celebrated figures on the worldwide electronic underground (Eric Nouhan, Aad De Mooy, Orlando Voorn, Stefan Robbers and Steve Rachmad). Alongside key underground imprints (Stealth Records, Basic Energy, ESP, Prime and Outland Records included) and lesser-known producers, these pioneers gave flavour to a radical musical movement via open-mindedness, unheard-of creativity and a genuinely futuristic ethos. All of these artists and labels are represented throughout the series.So, what defined this hedonistic house sound from The Netherlands? Stylistically, it was varied – as the series so emphatically proves – but was defined by a set of distinctive sonic characteristics: emotive musical motifs, high-frequency synth sounds, mellow basslines, pulsating rhythms and more than a touch of hallucinatory intent.Volume 1 boasts a wealth of notable tracks and slept-on gems. There’s ‘No Strings Attached (Freedom of the Soul Work)’ by Marionette, a magical spell of percussion-rich fairy-tale house from 1991 courtesy of R.o.X.Y Amsterdam resident DJ Dimitri and mellow pioneer Eric Nouhan, and the sole single by Eindhoven techno producer MAX404 as Faceless Techno Bastards, the rushing excellence of ‘Go Mellow’.Other highlights include Rachmad Project’s ‘Summer Breeze’, a chirpy house masterpiece from foundational producer Steve Rachmad that first appeared on Outland Records offshoot Spiritual Records, a genuine oddball obscurity from John Krengiëlczak as Land of Fantasy, Tales And Myths (‘And They Lived Happily Ever After’), and a seriously sought-after cut from Rotterdam duo Space Trax, 1992’s ‘Aura’.Packed full of forward-thinking 90s gems remastered for today’s dance floors by Alden Tyrell, Music For The Radical Xenomaniac Volume 1 is a life-affirming celebration of a distinctly Dutch musical movement, whose rich textures and melodies are still inspiring new generations of DJs and dancers today.

Quite an intimate affair, including never-ending, quietly glistening jams on the verge of a dancefloor and a chillout room - somber yet including a few secretly ecstatic moments. With sneaky kick drums, ringing bells, chirping birds and the smell of spores opening, the atmosphere here is quite dense, at times relentless, yet empathetic at the core. The EP comes from a classically trained painter and a tattoo artist, Stereometrix, who sets up a rather idiosyncratic set of visual and acoustic references. He's part of Penumbrum, a Warsaw night and label uniting like-minded artists from western Ukraine and Belarus, building a city within a city.

Overthink records is back with a new release contributing the split series... Split 2, this time by Nicolas Etorena as N.E. on the A side and Elías Sternin on the B side.

This release is a mixture of various styles of Electro ranging from future B boy music with a nod to the past and Futuristic idm tinged sounds. I never try to stay in one groove or sound, but more to make the electro sound evolve organically.

Welcome to one of the most prolific producers of the late 2000’s, the Croatian veteran Ilija Rudman. This compilation offers a mix of well known, forgotten, and unreleased tracks from this era.