Blog: .phonq

after a year's sabbatical .phonq is planing to return to the regular schedule. stay tuned!

Its those funky cats from the Disciples of Ageema clan! The self proclaimed Textile God of Sweden brings you a selection of raw funky soulful experimental disco hiphop cuts. Confused yet? No worries, we'll guide you through this hybridizes yet stylish mishmash (in its most positive sense). From the raw dirty organ funk-house meets ambient on Mary's Poem (bootleg) on to Alice, a hazy collage of

The amazing Drift records released a full album of crunchy analogue IDMtronica by the one called Maus featuring 13 tracks of retro analogueness. Strongly reminiscent of ye olde amiga demos with some crunchy contemporary beatwork amalgamating into a luscious blend of now and then. Excellent stuff indeed! Now where did i put that WinUAE? 3 - 0 No Value Token Triaxial Roswell Reset Please Come

'twas a while! We're still here altho a bit hampered with the loss of broadband internet and the warm sunshine. A very lethal combination and we lagged behind on the reviews. So lets get started! Leibniz is a russian netlabel which introduces itself to the netlabel grind with a warm compilation of minimal everything tracks. Featuring scene alumni Selffish as the icebreaker of the compilation in

After an amazing debut release comes an equally enchanting album by DoF who produced some sincerely moving acoustic melodies for Sinestetici. He keeps the same style on his album, classical music merged with crunchy idm beats. The pianos and flutes mix with the digital snap-crackle-pop like peas in a pod. Album has an additional twist to it by naming each track as one month in the year and

Japanese label Bumpfoot is new on the blocks and you're all probably thinking its more weirdness from the land of the rising sun. So wrong! Third one by Zucchini harkens back to the heyday of hardcore techno circa mid 90ies and evokes the opposite side of it, heralded as detroit trance then, nowadays more known as deep-something. Dreamy simple melodies with the oldskool handclaps and cowbells

Micromusic is the chip lovin' community that's been around for years. As part of their existence they feature a monthly stack of fresh chips (chips, hehe, get it? pun! not funny? oh well!) by unknows and well knowns (Goto80, Bitshifter, Role Model) of the scene all for free, barring the short registration process. And some of those tracks are really great and we thought they are too well hidden

X-Dump 8bit collective storms the scene with the second release after the critically acclaimed (that sounds cool), but not .phonq featured, Skruvmejsel's "L8 Mas-Q" (Psilodumps remix on that one is something). Psilodump is welding 8bit crunch with sample jacking, rock guitars and a kitchen sink. Four tracks of Psilodumps madness (or is it - brilliance) and remixes by Pippilina (folktronica way),

Maybe its just a coincidence or a start of a welcome new trend but the netaudio scene gets another world music release, this time from WM Recordings. Its finest african folk pop by a senegalese band Salam taken from their live performances. Miraculous percussion with guitar and violin influenced by the sound of the Casamance (a river in Senegal apparently). Quite enchanting music really, genuine

Thinner remains at its usual high level with this fine release by Timm Kawohl and heaps of remixes by the usual suspects (Taho, Mateo Murphy, Brian Kage, etc.). Six lovely track of nighttime techhouse music, swinging and grooving, and equally as much remixes, one for each track, by the Thinner alumni. Some more clicky, some more detroit, some more tech, but all summery and beautiful. Again an

Now this is something special. A professional bellydancer accompanist plays arabic melodies with improvisationalism typical for jazz performances. Real world music experience, its autochton and ethnic. Doesn't matter if you listen to individual tracks or the album in its entirety it has the force to just whisk you away from your regular life onto the arabic sands and markets. Its uncommon to

some extra nice beat goodness coming your way via Hungrymen Records , fresh netlabel from Berlin. Cushman serves you 4 chilled hip/triphop instrumentals, oldskooled and laidback. First two tracks being dominantly hiphop in its core and the other two going the trippy Bristol way. We're very partial to Stories in Stories and its unobtrusive vocals that are hidden under layers of lo-fi goodness. tracks we like: Act on Your Instruction Scratch [...]

You might remember Elysis from his works on NOISE (now defunct netlabel but with their cataogue still available for download). Now he's back on Corporate Identity with a retrospective LP+ of almost and hour and a half of his works from 1999 till today. Elysis' tracks have always carried an atypical warmth for electronic pieces and that is no exception on this LP, mostly drawing influences from Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, The Orb, FSOL and alike. Whilst most of his works are deeply analogue and electronic in nature like Vapour [...]

That lovable collective that brings you the podcast and britney - the netaudio mother braves the music side of netlabel "business" and makes a release on the swiss Realaudio label. Starfrosch is the name and Da Schau Her is the release title. Funk being the primary definition of the music found on the release with tender vocals, filtered here and there, funk guitars and a steady rhythm section

GILO, a portuguese born Londoner, brings you his downtempo ep via Enough Records and their quite minimal website (hint: scroll all the way down for the release list). As we are suckers for laidback trip-hop beats we got hooked on the annoucement and promises of the aforementioned. Lucky, lucky, cause some fine downtempo we got indeed. First track, Ai Visto... filled with scratches, floating

Pentagonik is a new german netlabel, apparently specialized in tech/micro/click house variants and they started their life with a big compilation filled with mostly unknown names (at least in the netlabel world). The first two tracks are a tad boring sparse click affairs and aren't replayable, maybe they work only on the dancefloor. Things really start to move with Ludwig Coenen's acidy L5 and a

Suh-weet! After a lengthy pause Tokyo Dawn Records bursts at the seams with a full album release filled with lovely souljazzhiphop goodness! Comfort Fit graced us with a chock full album of thoroughly souled hiphop beats. 20, yup, 20 tracks of what you're used to from TDR, a whole lotta soul, a bit jazz, retro hiphop beats and a slice of techno even. All that produced and mastered to perfection

Following the well trodden path of rephlex and warp signed artists, Lily Lavandula comes in full force in an incredible mishmash of downbeat, drum'n'bass, idm, drone, electro, ambient, etc. that is called Neccopuck EP. The short temp8080 romps in a Squarepusher style, ambient strings and windpipes over complex processed breaks. ximer2 goes the way of glitch'n'noise confronting slow tripped out

When you roam the net as a music geek you download your music to the hard drive first in order to hear it later. You can get quite frustrated when you realize the netlabel didn't do its job with naming and tagging the sounds. Phlow (& phonq!) recommend you mp3tag for that purpose. Quality filled out ID tags, be it Ogg Vorbis or MP3 files, should be a virtue of netlabel owners. True, it costs

straight from the heart of berlin comes this (mini)album of dub flavored downtempo by the amazing Authist & Dub One!. conveying the true jamaican spirit, the first half of the album are all genuine dub jams, not so heavy on delays like their rolemodels but nevertheless excellent. the duo also explores the world music edge of the spectrum with Around the World and Insomnia in Dub featuring a