On August 19th Marius Lauber AKA Roosevelt releases his stunning, self-titled debut album via Greco-Roman / City Slang records.

To mark its launch Roosevelt unveils this video, which features two tracks from the album - ‘Colours’ and ‘Moving On’. This double-bill approach gives more insight into the album than the usual standard one song video format, but the intention was creative as much as it was practical. With a surreal sensitivity akin to his previous videos, ‘Colours’ stars Roosevelt alongside various characters in an abstract exploration of the five senses (touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing). The segue into ‘Moving On’ then follows the protagonists’ walk from their dream-like state into an everyday street scene, where they find themselves lost in the sensory overload of real world modern life.

Roosevelt’s signature hazy sound which ascends ever skywards is still present and correct on the album - but this time it’s honed, crafted and less loop based. ‘Roosevelt’ showcases Lauber as a fully developed recording artist, with an instinctive synthesis of different soundscapes. This is a record with a deep affinity to the dance music world unified with sophisticated, classic song structures.

The glistening and gently undulating disco of ‘Night Moves’ features uplifting layers of delicately constructed guitars atop propulsive beats and expanding acid synths lines, whilst ‘Moving On’ utilizes Balearic slo-mo percussive grooves to mesmerising effect. The Tangerine Dream-esque ’Belong’ is pure euphoria, ‘Heart’ is a bright and breezy airborn anthem, and the stunning sunrise instrumental hypnosis of ‘Daytona’ blends seamlessly into the sublime, cooly life-affirming ‘Fever’.

Influences span continents and decades - from a pinch of French electro pop, a smattering of LA yacht rock, the hypnotic repetition of German pioneers like Ash Ra Tempel/Manuel Göttsching and Neu!, to classic floor-friendly 80s pop from Chic, Talk Talk and New Order. Nu school figureheads like Floating Points, Todd Terje and Metro Area are also partially audible - all weaved into his own unique sonic tapestry.

Roosevelt’s growth was catalyzed by an early DJ residency at Kompakt’s Total Confusion party alongside Superpitcher & Michael Mayer, with the label also releasing an early remix of his for COMA. These experiences helped Lauber realize how dance music connects to its audience in a different way to what he'd experienced from earlier days spent performing in bands. “What I really enjoyed about DJing was that you could see the results immediately - there was feedback and interaction from the crowd”, he explains.

The darkness hinted at in the title of ’Night Moves’ is also a nod to the energy you can get from a well-timed crowd climax. “It's about the situation at night in a club when the energy is created as the night comes to an end,” he says. “The later the night gets there's this peak of energy and people are having the illusion that there's no end to it, and that power is incredibly strong.”

Following this nightclubbing baptism, his career as an electronic artist gathered momentum. With praise from a selection of taskemaker media, mixes for Boiler Room, Electronic Beats and i-D, support tours with Hot Chip and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and a litany of high-profile festival slots around the world, Lauber steadily built up a dedicated following.

Written, recorded and produced by Lauber over a period of two years. ‘Roosevelt’ the album is a pillow-soft hallucinatory dreamscape of nocturnal reveries and a lilting sense of melancholia, where sounds build and swell like waves.

Maybe the murder of screeching crows that surrounded Connecticut's Clubhouse Studio—turning all the trees jet black—was a sign that something was up with its latest tenants, Xeno & Oaklander. Well, that and the lunar eclipse that lit the starry night sky while Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride plowed through another propulsive minimal-synth piece called "Palms." "We've always referred to our synths as elemental," says Wendelbo. "Fire is what powers energy, voltage, and electricity. Electromagnetism is electric energy, like lightning in the sky. We control it with potentiometers and buttons; we shape it with filters and envelopes."

That explains why Xeno & Oaklander's music has always felt so alive, the result of chemical reactions at its core and chain-linked keys that rattle, hum, and howl. The duo's fifth album, Topiary, is no different; taking its title from hand-sculpted gardens like the stately grounds of Versailles and the highly ornamental Levins Hall, it's an enchanting listen, welcoming you into its self-made world with warm synth washes, moody chamber melodies, and Wendelbo's haunted yé-yé hooks. (Topiary is the first Xeno & Oaklander album McBride—a.k.a. solo artist Martial Canterel—didn't sing on, although his plush keyboard parts more than make up for it.)

Much like their seamless live sets—which have won over contemporary art crowds, underground dance clubs, and painlessly cool indie kids—songs bleed into one another, too, becoming moving parts of one streamlined organism, textured and orchestral at every turn. To reinforce the duo's self-aware sequencing, each side of the vinyl pressing is even bookended by a striking pop song and opulent instrumental. Another reason it's so fluid is the fact that Xeno & Oaklander broke out of their comfort zone by transplanting their synth-flanked Brooklyn space to a pro setting: Tom Tom Club's longtime studio, the Clubhouse.

"We began from a kind of Year Zero," explains McBride, "nothing written, nothing recorded, just a bracketed amount of time in which to compose, arrange, record, and mix the album. For me, this was a highly inspired month—living and breathing music from sun up to moon up."

Topiary's artwork echoes its electromagnetic themes as well; Wendelbo based it on a blown-up X-ray of protein molecules, shot through an electron microscope—a form of crystallography. Or as she puts it, rather cryptically, "What is deep inside of us is a reflection of what is above us. And electricity runs through it all."

Tour Dates:

05.03 Vienna, AT @ Rhiz

05.07 Bratislava, SK @ Subclub

05.14 Leipzig, DE @ Wave Gothik Treffen Festival

05.19 Antwerp, BE @ Der Kleine Hedonist

05.20 Paris, FR @ Petit Bain

05.25 Rennes, FR @ Bar'Hic

05.26 Bordeaux, FR @ Café Pompier

05.28 Madrid, ES @ Club 33

Minor Victories - the indie supergroup comprised of Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, Editors’ Justin Lockey and his brother James - will release their self-titled debut this summer, and today they share a stellar new track off of the record.

Following the hauntingly cinematic ‘A Hundred Ropes’ and the gorgeous shoegaze of ‘Folk Arp’. ‘Scattered Ashes (Song For Richard)’ takes the band in a brighter direction and features James Graham of The Twilight Sad.

Dates:

03.05 London, UK Village Underground

04.05 Bristol, UK Thekla

05.05 Leeds, UK Brudenell Social Club

06.05 Glasgow, UK Art School

03.06 Dudingen, Switzerland Bad Bonn Kilbi Festival

04.06 Mannheim, Germany Maifeld Derby Festival

17.06 Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands Best Kept Secret Festival

05.08 / 07.08 Katowice, Poland Off Festival

07.08 Sicily, Italy Ypsigrock Festival

12.08 St Malo, France La Route Du Rock Festival

20.08 Hasselt, Be Pukkelpop Festival

Next Friday the new album from The Arch will appear on the German Trisol label, home of Clan Of Xymox and Project Pitchfork. But first, there is good news for the fans, as all the earlier work is digitally released by Trisol now: including the hard to find double-CD Sex that contains all the songs that were released between 1987 and 1997. The two recent records Engine In Void and Beating The Balance are also available as stream and/or download. Revenge Revival !!!