Research Laboratory of Electronic Progress - self released

Stephen from across the pond took a chance on the postal services (and lost) with his project Research Laboratory of Electronic Progress. Here's a photo from his site of the 7" pressed....those bastards! Turns out he's since moved on to other projects, but the tracks still exist on 7" vinyl if you drop the lab a line.

If the tracks posted on his website are any indication, I'm having a heavy Clockwork Orange soundtrack flashback. It's the sounds that are distinctly from the dawn of the synth. The first circuits were just soldered together, the first crazy bastard that attached a speaker to the end of those resistors. When just the sound of an analog wave was so amazing, it didn't even matter if you played an entire album of Bach. The heavy waves were such a novelty, everyone had to try to include them in their band. These tracks were probably recorded to tape as there's a distinct hiss and texture to most of these melodies. The obsolete heavy massive analog synths paired with distorted-to-hell samples. It's not overwhelming, jam packed with every clever sound and excerpt...just subtle and completely anti-organic sounds.

Like Jason Urick it's not coming from a DJ place, with the pressure to work the experiments into a rhythm, they have their own internal clock and sound.... they could be the cheapest thrift store synths run through a million processes or Stephen broke into Robert Moog's personal museum.

There's even a Ducktails feel to the more somber pieces... a source material Matt would use as a starting place...a piece of melody that hints at a cultural location but contains parts of everything. Particularly #4 on his home page.

I don't see why if you're into DJing yourself or classic analog synth experimental work you wouldn't import this direct from the artist.