Eel (Philipp Matalla & Robert Schulze)

Long before Howard Williams crawled out of Honest Jon’s basement to kick out his jams as Japan Blues on NTS, and record, he had been running a micro label, Ethbo. Possibly the slowest label in the world, clocking up 10 releases in over 20 years. But, when they happen to be the first 12” by Mike Cooper (2000); Tokyo bass, drum and vocal outfit Femini Flyers; Electronic Rock Non Music maven Kadmon; and, when most tragic hipsters thought Japan was just sushi and manga, Killing Melody, a killer selection of Japanese gangster soundtrack funk (2010). Not to mention 60s garage rockabilly Dean Carter. To name a few.

For light relief, last year he also co-started JWM Records, with a compilation of 20s to 50s Yiddish jazz from London’s East End. Not satisfied with that, he has once again revived the Ethbo mini-monolith. Ramping up the speed a little, with four releases in the pipeline for the first half of 2019. The first, Leipzig unit, EEL.

Ever tried to grab an eel? If so, maybe you’ll have an inkling how difficult it would be to pin down the sounds you’re about to deal with on this EP. Think you’ve got it nailed down? Nah, suddenly, it’s slithered out your hand and is lithely hurtling off into the water.

“HDD is EEL’s first bundle of rendered audio. Soldered textures wrapped in duct tape embracing recycled aesthetics on four tracks. Yelling snapshots that went down the data bus to result in de-culturalized patchworks. Not from a sphere but from all of them. EEL are Philipp Matalla and Robert Schulze.”

• 1 HDD1
• 2 HDD2
• 3 HDD3
• 4 HDD4