BLACK SITES – R4 – 2LP – Vinyl

2LP – Black Vinyl.

A long-dormant signal reactivates from Hamburgs hidden places: Helena Hauff and F#X return as Black Sites with R4 on Tresor Records – their first full-length album and the first release under the moniker since 2014. Like a hieroglyphic recently discovered and translated R4 feels more like a long-awaited resumption than a comeback.

Across ten tracks, Black Sites traverse a landscape where genre dissolves into intention. It migrates through electros danceability, acid houses corrosion, and into the liminal realm of machine funka genre coined by Andrew Weatherall, which sounds like the results of technology dreaming of soul where the emphasis is on live execution, on immediacy over perfectiona sound forged in the act of creating, not polishing.

Recorded to tape with minimal editing or post-production the record is a classic example of the symbiotic relationships that can come from the interaction of human and machine. This punk ethos isnt invoked through distortion alone, but through method; in the albums breaking from the received wisdom of hardness tethered to speed as most of the tougher pieces are lower BPM and vice versa (with one notable exception in the mind-melting stomp of BLOKK).

From the opening crawl of C4 (a name that like the music foreshadows the explosions to come) to the end-of-the-night bliss of Motherjam via the intense peaks of Blokk, 707, and classic acid track 3D its clear that R4 is a work made with serious intent; a refutation of a world where streaming has made the two-minute single the dominant musical form again. R4 demands immersion, not just attention. It is not a collection of tracks, but a singular, recursive experience: a mirror in which sound and listener repeatedly rediscover one another.

Tracklist:

A1. C4 [04:48]
A2. BOXX [04:33]
A3. BLOKK [06:05]

B1. FLIKK [06:47]
B2. 3D [06:16]

C1. 707 [07:07]
C2. II [05:28]
C3. SKKETCH [01:55]

D1. UURWERK [04:08]
D2. MOTHERJAM [08:55]