Southern Outpost

Totally missed this review taken from German magazine, Groove.de:

Scape One alias Kurt Baggaley ist einer der herausragenden britischen Electro-Producer, man kennt ihn von Releases auf SCSI-AV, Emoticon oder Science City. Die genretypisch düsteren Tracks sind sehr originell aufgebaut: „Cosmic Waves“ verzichtet ganz auf eine Hookline, Melodien sind allenfalls im Bass anzutreffen, in den höheren Frequenzen gibt es ein Fiepsen und Pfeifen, das einen Bezugspunkt zu Drexciya herstellt. Der Track realisiert die Vision einer Musik, die ganz aus den Geräuschen der Maschinenparks einer industriellen Welt zusammengesetzt ist. „The Star Fraction“ ist freundlicher, die Claps und Cowbells der 808 erzeugen eine gewisse Milde. Dcast Dynamics ist ein neues Pseudonym von Shad T. Scott aus Miami, der besonders als Gosub mit Releases auf Labels wie Isophlux, Frustrated Funk oder Kondi bekannt geworden ist. Die Tracks brechen das fest gefügte Trackschema von Electro auf: Die Grooves werden linearer und fließender, entwickeln fast so etwas wie einen minimalen Charme, die Synthie-Figuren erzeugen eine in diesem Zusammenhang überraschende Trippigkeit, die Sounds sind ganz weit draußen und wunderschön. Nicht nur für Fans des Electro-Genres ergiebige Tracks.

I’ve held onto the secret for long enough, so it’s time to let the cat out of the bag.

We are proud to be releasing a very special limited edition 4 track audio cassette by San Francisco native, bvdub, entitled ‘Monuments To Oblivion‘. The cassette will be limited to 100 copies, so you’ll need to get onto Clone real quick. The first 100 tapes will be bundled with a 12″ ep which will contain two tracks off the tape. As always the design has been made with love by maneki.

SOSP-001 Audio Cassette Tracklisting:
1.1 One Day You’ll See
1.2 Panopticon
2.1 Tears For A Fallen Empire
2.2 Gone Are The Days

Mastering by Dubplates & Mastering, so you know this is going to be quality!

Click links above for soundbites.

The idea to release Monuments To Oblivion on audio cassette were two fold. The warmth, hiss, imperfection and the eventual decay of magnetic tape adds another textured layer to each track that no other medium can reproduce. No two tapes will end up sounding exactly the same. Secondly, we purposely took a step back from the current direction of the industry to produce a product that is, in these days, unique and less immediate than a digital format. It will take a little more effort to hear this ep, but it will be well worth it when you do.

Southern Outpost Special Projects was setup to release quality music from all genres in special formats. All releases will be produced in limited editions and will not be available in digital formats to ensure that these will remain unique and distinct.

Once again, don’t sleep on this, only 100 audio cassettes are available exclusively from Clone.

We have started a little side project for Southern Outpost aptly called Southern Outpost Special Projects. SOSP was setup to release great music, in limited editions, from all genres in non standard formats, no digital.. we are going old school with this stuff!

Our first release will be SOSP-001″Monuments To Oblivion” by San Francisco native bvdub who has released for such labels as Night Drive, 2600, Styrax, Millions Of Moments and his own Quietus label. If you know his music, you’ll know that this release is going to be deeep!

You can read a recent interview here.

I’m not giving away too much right now, so check back in a few days for more information about this release!

The Cybernetic Broadcasting System played a mix by one of our supporters, Pervert. This is a super rocking mix of great electro tracks. To top it off, he throws in one of our tracks: Let Us Chip from SO-008 - Source Code ep.

You can download Pervert’s “Kernel Panic” mix here.

Tracklisting is as follows:

01. SOUTHERN OUTPOST – Let us chip (Southern Outpost´s basschip mix)
02. ECTOMORPH – Malfunction
03. MICROTHOL – Mechanical Empire
04. COMPOSITE PROFUSE – Unknown
05. THE CONSUMER – Datacare
06. URBAN TRIBE – Eukaryotic
07. DYNAREC – Double jix remake
08. THE CONSUMER – Superior
09. DOPPLEREFFEKT – Cellular phone
10. DYNAREC – Caged train
11. MODEL 500 – No Ufo´s (D-mix)
12. MICROTHOL – Drive control
13. PROFESSOR X – Profesor x (Saga)
14. MR. PAULI – Hydra
15. DER ZYKLUS – Mxyzptik
16. DYNAREC – Mind to body
17. THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER – Babylons gifts
18. UR – Electronic warfare
19. DYNAREC – Your hand
20. UHU – Kinetic energy part 1
21. THE ADVENT – Womens scent ass mix
22. MODEL 500 – Future (Vocal)
23. DMX KREW – The hunt
24. VOLTAIC – Fin
25. NAGASAKI NIGHTRIDERS – Unknown
26. AUX 88 – Tom tom beats
27. DMX KREW – Emerging technology rmx

image via Hans Veneman

One of the “silent” legends of Detroit Techno, the behind the scenes guy who made it possible for all of Detroit’s early pioneers to make those records you know and love, Ron Murphy passed away Saturday 12th January at 4pm.

He was one of unsung heros of Detroit Techno. When one thinks of the legends, you immediately think, Juan, Derrick and Kevin. But Ron was the one who helped propel these guys into the limelight, with no fuss, no claims to fame, he just loved what he did. You often don’t think of the mastering engineer when thinking about these artists, but his audio mastery made those records so special and so “Detroit”. He cut pretty much all the Detroit labels for many years, UR, Metroplex, Transmat, KMS, Planet E, even all the early Southern Outpost records were cut by Ron. He really had a knack of making those DATS/CD’s/Tapes into something really special.

There was nothing like going to visit Ron when he was cutting your record. His studio was old school, no digital equipment, computer or “plugins” all hands on analog gear he tweaked on the fly. That’s what made the records sound so good, the analog warmth of that amp he had in the rack really made it something special. Watching Ron at work was amazing, it schooled me on how records are made and how they should sound. Once his work was done, he always took delight in chatting about the state of music today, reminiscing on the old days of techno and was always a great resource of funny stories about various producers who came through his studio. Ron told it like it was and that’s why he was so respected… and he’ll always be respected by those who knew him and even to those who only knew of him by seeing his “NSC” etching in the runout grooves of the records he cut.

Ron, you’ll be missed greatly, you may never really know what an impact you made to the music that so many people all around the world respect so much.