Netherlands

Music From Memory continue their 12” series with the release of an EP. This 4 track comp holds 3 tracks from the LP and one unreleased.Music From Memory’s latest release in their 12” series focuses on the little known UK band The System. A project masterminded by Bob Lamb, a somewhat cult figure in Birmingham's music history; the short lived group released only one album ‘Logic' and a single in 1983 on the somewhat obscure French label ‘Romantic Records’. This distinctively forward thinking new wave/synth pop album met with poor distribution and with almost no promotion to speak of at the time and quickly dwindled into obscurity. The albums sense of technological exploration, outstanding production value coupled with the band’s gift of writing deeply emotive, yearning pop tunes, make it sound though perhaps more relevant today than many other far more successful albums of it's time.Whilst the band and the album might have sunk into obscurity, the band were no novices to the music business. In fact the highly regarded producer Bob Lamb had played as a drummer throughout the late sixties and into the late seventies for a number of progressive rock bands. The last of which, The Steve Gibbons Band, found moderate success both at home and in US, even opening up for The Who on their world tours. Having travelled the world as a musician, in 1979 Lamb would set up a 4-track recording and mixing studio in his basement flat to focus on production. In this state of the art Birmingham studio he would work with Duran Duran on their earliest work as well as producing UB40's very first album. With this highly developed sense of production, it was here in Bob Lamb’s studio that the four members of The System set out to make a pop record very much driven by the new possibilities of technology and developments within studio recording.With instrumental tracks ‘Vampirella’, sounding almost prophetic of Detroit techno tracks that would not be made until some 10 years later and ‘Pendy! You’re In Some Awful Danger’ a vaporous synth excursion and anthemic drum-heavy vocal track ‘Almost Grown’, this 12" also features the unreleased end of the night jam ‘Find It In Your Eyes’, a track which somehow never made it on to the original LP release.

Amsterdam's cult producer and DJ Steven van Hulle a.k.a. Awanto 3 likes his samples vibrant, his drums wobbly and his synths sweaty... TIP!The MPC wizard returns to Dekmantel delivering two new club cuts bursting with wonderful weirdness. But there’s more, cause the A1 holds a very special surprise.For some of you 'Pregnant' may sound familiar. Due to popular demand, we have decided to reissue this 12:42 stomper that was part of Dekmantel's Anniversary Series back in 2012. Don't be a fool and pay silly Discogs prices. We've fully remastered the 2012 version, so make sure you get this baby second time around. 'Pregnant' continuously builds around a vocal that keeps you locked in, while the beautifully constructed synth progressions show van Hulle's keen ear for melody. Fire on the floor guaranteed.On the flip, Van Hulle serves-up a new fresh cut. 'Star Butchers' is a jazzy deep house gem. The bonus 'Darling Edit' of the latter, is on the deep and dramatic side of things, and easily equally as good. The track is a co-production between van Hulle and the mysterious but utterly talented Darling, who’s responsibly for the beautiful keys.

MCDE shares some of his most prized gems on this compilation that kicks of the limited Dekmantel 'Selectors' series. Check! What, exactly, is a selector? Dekmantel has long been determined to find out, even before the Amsterdam-based crew added an official Selectors stage to its annual summer festival in 2014. While the stage has since played host to an elite class of DJs that includes the likes of Floating Points, Mike Servito, Traxx, DJ Harvey, Ben UFO, and Donato Dozzy, to name just a few, Dekmantel came to realize that the Selectors concept needed a larger platform of its own.As such, 2016 will see the launch of both a limited-capacity festival and compilation series, both bearing the Selectors name. The compilations will come first, with Motor City Drum Ensemble, Young Marco, and Joy Orbison at the helm of the initial three chapters. These are not mix CDs; every Selectors compilation will include a collection of hand-picked, unmixed tracks personally curated by the artist.Admittedly, drawing a line between "selectors" and mere DJs is an all-but-impossible task—it's essentially a "you know it when you see it" proposition—but it's hard to argue that Motor City Drum Ensemble (a.k.a. Danilo Plessow) doesn't tick all of the required boxes. He's been digging for records since his teenage years, and his DJing has become the stuff of legend, thanks in no small part to his head-turning sets at the last few Dekmantel festivals.In truth, Plessow's relationship with Dekmantel dates back to the earliest days of the Motor City Drum Ensemble project, making him a natural candidate to head up the inaugural Selectors compilation. As expected, he's thrown himself into the task; selecting a want list from his collection of 15,000 records was no easy task, but getting permission for the final tracklist was even tougher.One song in particular, Raphael Green's "Don't Mess with the Devil," required him to personally call up a church in St. Louis, Missouri. "The guy, he's a Bishop," he says. "When the Ferguson protests were happening, for example, he was on CNN explaining his thoughts on the whole thing, so he's a known public figure, but nobody really knew that he had this amazing record that was recorded in '79 or '80. His voice is just unbelievable. It's the kind of record that when I heard it the first time, I couldn't believe that there had only been like 100 copies pressed, and that this wasn't actually big."Motor City Drum Ensemble's record bag is full of these kinds of gems, but he has no qualms about sharing a few of his secret weapons with a wider audience. "I wanted to get some of the stuff that is really, really hard to get, and make it available for younger people," he explains. "I used to be in the same situation. Back when I was 18, I would listen to a Rainer Truby mix and he would only play these $400 Brazilian records. I was like, 'Fuck, how am I ever going to be able to afford these?' I was glad when there was a reissue, and it's a bit the same with the compilation now." "Basically," he explains, "the approach for the compilation was, 'If I walked into a record store, what kind of compilation would I buy?' That's what I did."