Various Artists - Metaflora (3x12") [Habitat Recordings]

Format: 3x12" Deluxe Boxset with transparent vinyl.

Mind Against launch their eagerly-anticipated Habitat label with a 15-track compilation titled METAFLORA, available on a luxurious 3LP transparent vinyl box set, complete with a 24x12” fold-out poster.

Fittingly, the compilation brings together new and emerging artists with whom Mind Against have a relationship, exploring recurring motifs of subtly disquieting melodic house and techno, building alternative worlds in soundscapes.

Mind Against & Sideral’s Criseide announces this new world with a pounding, ominous beat and bass, while the melodic synth sings beneath it like a beauty surviving under threat. The vocal and lyric convey a nuance of alarm: “if you think it couldn’t happen to you…”

Dyzen’s Talk To Me (who also collaborated with Mind Against on their fabric presents compilation) combines majestic chords over an agile beat, with a sombre piano and a delicate, high-pitched voice creating a nu-medieval, post-apocalyptic world. Sam Shure’s Plus Ultra, for its part, features vibrant percussion and a melody that sounds like a coded message from an abandoned ship, to which something responds with cold tones…

Marino Canal, whose debut album was released on Nicole Moudaber’s MOOD and is backed by big names, including Keith Reilly (fabric founder), delivers in Ample notes that unsettlingly oscillate up, down and off-scale for a disturbing effect. Meanwhile, Swiss duo Read The News in A Place set a fast, pounding rhythm against a female vocal yearning for “a space where she can just be.”

Remcord, frequently played by Black Coffee, Tale of Us and, of course, Mind Against, proves why on Entourage Effect, while Laroz delivers a vibrant melody and intense chords on Don’t Touch with Sheera, whose fresh, provocative and layered vocals take centre stage.