Category: Kuu

Artist: Kuu
Title: Pixels EP
Label: Monotonik
Catalog #: mtk217
Release Date: 2009/12/06

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Everyone who likes Monotonik at least a little should know Kuu, aka Joonas Vähämäki, from his Substance releases that date back at least ten years on the site. But he’s also released under his more uptempo Kuu alias at times, and it’s fitting that one of the last releases (for now?) should be under that alias.

‘Pixel EP’ is surprisingly large, and mixes some of the things that Monotonik holds dear – melodies, cutup drums, and swishing noises – in carefully contained cylinders of sound. From the upcoming ‘Xib I’, which is almost cheeky in its straight ahead happiness, through tracks like ‘Voxel’, which cut the heck out of beats, it all makes sense.

Things end up good, too, in ‘Horizontal Pitch’, a blissed out finale to a story that’s lasted for a long time. Just look at the pixels on that thing, won’t you?

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Tracklist:
01 – Xib I
02 – Bits N Bytes
03 – Rectangle Dots
04 – Voxels
05 – Horizontal Pitch

Artwork:
Front Cover

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License:
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US)

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Artist: Kuu
Title: Ioplus EP
Label: Monotonik
Catalog #: mtk170
Release Date: 2006/08/27

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This is, believe it or not, the first Monotonik release for Kuu (formerly known as Substance, and definitively known as Finland’s very own Joonas Vahamaki) since 1999 (!). But after a 7 year absence, we’re delighted to welcome him back to the fold with the awesome ‘Ioplus EP’, 4 tracks of beautifully crunchy IDM.

Since we last released music from him, he’s done a bunch of neat work for various labels, most recently returning to the breakbeat hardcore massif with fellow Finn Niko Virta and their duo Nervous & Anxious, which has releases on UK oldskool breakbeat labels like Enormous Mouse Records, Mert Wax and Hardcore Projectz. But this material is definitely Monotonik-ish, led off by the looping, almost cosmic ‘Io’.

There’s plenty more goodness in here too, though – ‘Rosa’ is all crunching beats and carefully rising and falling moods, much like the .MODs Joonas used to compose for us as Substance in the early days of Mono. Things finish out with ‘Pine’ and then ‘Bonus Track’, which is low profile and loopy and finally transcendental. Plenty of kicks, right?

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Credits:
pic by Kuu

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Tracklist:
01 – Io
02 – Rosa
03 – Pine
04 – Bonus Track

Artwork:
Front Cover

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License:
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5)

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Artist: Kuu
Title: Contours Of Infinity
Label: Monotonik
Catalog #: mtk005
Release Date: 1999/05/19

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kuu, aka substance, scores a majestic little piece of monotonik-ness from the depths of his pure sinewaved soul. beautifully drifting for most of it, the final couple of minutes change tack into a minor hailstorm of electronic noise. the sustain goes on forever.. just a really, serenely beautiful track. comparisons are needed but not really forthcoming – perhaps a little like Luke Slater when he’s being a little mellower? Who knows? Well, you do when you download it, we believe.

[apologies, btw, that it’s so big in k, but it’s a long tune and the pureness of it dictated we put it out at a slightly higher compression quality, 160kbps to be exact.]

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Credits:
cover by hotwire

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Tracklist:
01 – Contours Of Infinity

Artwork:
Front Cover

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License:
Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial 1.0 Generic (CC BY-ND-NC 1.0)

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