Monday, May 13, 2024

Dopplereffekt - Gesamtkunstwerk reissue, Datashader remix and more


Dopplereffekt's legendary 1999 compilation of early EPs, Gesamtksunstwerk, is getting yet another reissue on double cream and black vinyl editions from Clone Classic Cuts (due 20/5/24). You can order it from the Clone shop or Bandcamp as well as other retailers. They have great new sharpened images of the personnel headshots on the label artwork.  

You can now order Digital Entropy by Datashader from Tresor. The 12" and digital feature Dopplereffekt's 'Gravitational Remodel' of 'Breath Controller' (now available to preview in full on Bandcamp). 

You can listen to Dopplereffekt's recent live set for Austria's Donau festival here.

The short film, Somewhere in Detroit, made by Roland about Underground Resistance and Submerge and everything they do is now available to watch (12 mins). There are some very good interviews with Mike Banks and his sister Bridgette, Cornelius Harris and many more. Drexciya get a very cool name check from Mike too. There is a very good and useful expanded text version for the film here.

One of my readers, DJ and producer Mark Turner got in touch to point out, 'Originally the sales were pretty low on the Drexciya (Elektroids/Journey Home) projects on Warp, that's why they became high value items in the 2nd hand market, plus they didn't actually do the A+R for those releases, a friend did, he was the one who pushed for them to be on Warp.' This is an excellent 2017 interview with Turner where he talks extensively about DJing at legendary Leeds techno club The Orbit and much more. 

Very cool to see this new video of Drexciya's 'Aquabahn' (1994) pitched-up and played on the street of Detroit and people breaking out their Jit moves on the sidewalk. 

Rob Lawrence, one of DRL's readers, gave this new info about how he first got to here The Other People Place's Lifestyles of the Laptop Cafe.

'Sometime in the summer of 2001 (August 2nd) I went to a playback of the Aphex album Drukqs at the London Planetarium, which obviously in itself was pretty f-ing cool....

Anyway, following this, in a nearby boozer, was a little after show drinks party put on by the label. During the course of the evening they played other forthcoming Warp Records releases, one of which immediately caught the attention of my ears, namely The Other People Place. I got chatting with one of the dudes from Warp and he told me this was one of the last releases that Rob Mitchell, one of the founding members of Warp who sadly passed away earlier that year, had signed to the label, Warp was starting to move in different directions at this point but he was adamant that this should be on the label even if it wasn't quite on trend....Thank you Rob, and Thank you James.'

Rob Mitchell actually died from cancer two months later on 8th October but it's good to learn he was involved with the album and so adamant it would be released. Previously, Sean Booth of Autechre has talked about how he first introduced Mitchell to the music of Drexciya in '93. TOPP's album was released on 3rd Sept and Drukqs followed on 22nd Oct (weirdly, in between these dates 9/11 happened).

Following on from a reader my request for US retailers who stock Drexciya and related projects such as Dopplereffekt, Arpanet, Abstract Thought, Shifted Phases, Transllusion etc, Seattle's Further Records came to my attention. In the US, they have the biggest selection I've seen so far for all these groups and more that US customers could order from and not be hit with large postage fees from Europe. Doing my bit to help.