patten's Kaleidoscope label announce release from mangled techno project Vanilla Hammer

Kaleidoscope, the fledgling label from tangled beatsmith patten, has announced its third release.

Kaleidoscope’s had a fine run thus far. Sculpture’s Slime Code LP was a sprawling cut’n’paste capriccio, spotted with the sort of whirrs and wails you’d expect from a BBC Radiophonic Orchestra recording. London producer/singer Karen Gwyer’s I’ve Been You Twice was even better, a warped dream-pop record full of twinkling drones and kosmiche flourishes.

K*CC003 arrives courtesy of mysterious one-man techno project Vanilla Hammer. Biographical details about the producer are scarce, but his bitcrushed 4/4 takes its cues both from the sort of lo-fi house being parped out by L.I.E.S, and the industrial-inflected fare produced by the likes of Forward Strategy Group. Retreat will be his debut release, and features seven new tracks. It’s a diverse set, ranging from loping hip-hop to speccy glitch fare.

As with the above two releases, Retreat falls under the aegis of the label’s ‘LIMITED DUBS’ project. As well as being available as a free digital download, the record has also been recorded directly onto (seriously limited) cassette tapes, each of which differ from one another. According to patten, “the seven tracks were produced in a master version (available digitally) which was then re-performed live directly to the first tape. An exquisite corpse-like process followed, with each subsequent cassette a remixing/reworking of the material from the former, again directly through to tape, producing 5 unique C25 compact cassettes”.

The spooky video for skittering album opener ‘Burning Sand’ is available to watch below. Retreat will be available to buy or download from the Kaleidoscope website on November 5.