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Aufnahme + Wiedergabe

Current 909 – Enthusiasm (2021)

I literally only discovered Current 909 last week. I was making an “angstpop” playlist on Spotify and I was looking for less typical projects. So I started to scan Aufnahme + Wiedergabe releases to see if some of their older material would be fitting. I do not remember if I ever heard of the name Current 909, but I sure did not know their music.

The style is not really “angstpop”. Actually this project is better fitting in my “electronic doom” playlist. There I compile slow, minimalist, dark and gloomy techno such as the great project Oake.

Current 909 already has a few releases. Three on a label called “Atmosfear” that I do not know and “Enthusiasm” is the third release on A+W already.

So the new album (a 12″ with four tracks and a running time of 23 minutes) contains slow, minimalist, dark and gloomy techno. How fitting. I do not like it as much as the early material of Oake, but this is pretty good music, probably better than the later material of Oake.

In the early days of A+W I liked quite a few of their releases. Nowadays this is less often so, but I must say that with “Enthusiasm” the label has a great new release on their roster.

Link: Aufnahme + Wiedergabe

v/a * Modern Movement (cd 2013)

I usually do not review material that is ‘old’, but I actually thought this was a recent release when I ordered it. Besides, inspite its limitation to 400 copies, there are apparently still copies available of this release. Many even, if the number on my copy is has the highest sold number yet.

Aufnahme + Wiedergabe is a relatively young label from Germany. I love their name which is makes a great wordplay reference to Haus Arafna (Aufnahme + Hingabe, but then made into ‘recording + playing back’). Two years after their founding, they released this scene-overview.

I think I discovered this label a couple of years ago because they release material of projects that are also on Beläten. They mostly operate in the field of “minimal wave”, a style of music that I had known for a couple of years before I ran into this label. However I have been listening to “minimal wave” for some 8/9 years, there still prove to be bands and labels that I never heard of, even on Spotify/Deezer. There is so much of this music, that it often starts to sound alike or simply be not my taste. A+W released a few good things, but I do not blindly buy their releases, since they not all sound too good to me. But a compilation cd with book sounds like fun, does it not?

The ‘book’ is more of a photo album with photos (one per page) of artists, DJs, etc., mostly in their weirdest cloths. The photos are not necessarily of people from the bands on the cd, but more like people from the scene.

The cd, as ever, contains bands that I never heard of. Actually I only knew a few. The cd has 18 Tracks and a descent running time. It starts nicely with good tracks, not too typical minimal wave. Towards the end come the more typical sounds (and the typical awful singing), but overall the compilation is quite nice and looks nice as well.

Get your copy directly from the label and scan their catalogue and mailorder for more interesting stuff.

Link: Aufnahme + Wiedergabe