Running Back Germany Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Wild Pitch Club is next up in the excellent and ling running Running Back Mastermix series. It's a legendary space that has very much defined the Frankfurt and wider german scene and was also something of a predecessor venue to the new well-loved Robert Johnson. That club was itself a place where Panorama Bar's very own nd_baumecker really made waves and it is they alongside co-founder Ata who have curated these tunes. The venue was hooked on the US sounds and often hosted the likes of Robert Hood and Claude Young to Kerri Chandler all of which shows in the sounds of the tunes.

Review: Roman Flugel is back with his seventh full length titled Eating Darkness. The nine tracks were created during the coronavirus lockdown of 2020, and are testament to the Frankfurt legend's penchant for mixing elements of pop with sounds of the underground - a scene he has been affiliated with since the early '90s. A variety of moods and grooves are all delivered in his idiosyncratic style: from the woozy and broken slow burner 'Chemicals', to the majestic and spellbinding dancefloor drama of 'Wow' or the raw hardware acid jack of 'Jocks And Freaks' which harks to his days as Alter Ego. Elsewhere, there's the heartfelt and bittersweet ambient house of 'Cluttered Homes' and the downbeat bliss of closing epic 'Charles'.

Review: Gerd Jansen's faultless Running Back is back with another of its hard-to-define but essential albums, Keep Looking Where The Light Comes From, this time from Panoram. It is a record that blurs the line between chaos and beauty, with fuzzy synths and improvised rhythms offering up some intriguing sound designs and unusual textures. There is a psychedelic feel to many of those, but so too a dream-like quality where barely-there melodies and half-remembered vocals drift in and out of earshot. Both maximal and minimal compositions feature with nods to ASMR pleasures and a mix of synthetic and acoustic sounds.

Review: There was much excitement when Pink Eye, Maurice Fulton's first album under the Syclops album for five years, first appeared online last month. In typical fashion, Fulton hadn't let anyone know it was coming. As with some of his other projects, it's now available on physical formats via German titans Running Back. As with previous Syclops albums, it's wonderfully bonkers and hard to pigeonhole, with the Sheffield-based Chicagoan combining mind-altering electronics, skewed drums, riotous analogue grooves and cheery piano and synthesizer motifs in a variety of hugely impressive ways. There are naturally some suitably filthy club workouts present - check the intergalactic madness of "Sarah's E Is Back", the druggy, afro-tech romp that is "Spin Cycle" and the sub-heavy insanity of "Kelly Is On Her C" - alongside loved-up compositions and productions that indulge Fulton's less discussed often overlooked jazz influences.