Mute Station

The final part of our 8 part series. Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes.

Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for the final part of this series.

Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 7 of this 8 part series.

Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 6 of this 8 part series.

Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 5 of this 8 part series.

Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for the fourth and final part.

Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 3.

Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 2.

After a 6-year break from recording, musician / producer Alan Wilder returns with Recoil's 5th studio album, subHuman, released on Mute today. Here, Alan discusses the project for this exclusive Mute Station podcast. The album will be available on CD and limited edition gatefold vinyl as well as in a special collector's DVD package featuring an enhanced stereo CD, a 5.1 Surround Sound version, an exclusive ambient reworking of the entire album and all the Recoil videos to date. Collaborating with Recoil on subHuman is Bluesman Joe Richardson, whose evocative vocal style is complimented by accomplished guitar and harmonica performances. Born in Southern Louisiana, Richardson spent years immersed in the murkier side of New Orleans life and offers a unique commentary on conflict, religion, incarceration and personal struggle. English singer Carla Trevaskis, a songwriter in her own right, brings an expressive range and control to subHuman and has worked with artists as diverse as Fred de Faye (Eurythmics), Cliff Hewitt (Apollo 440) and Dave McDonald (Portishead). Wilder's skill at blending diverse and eclectic musical styles with often controversial subjects has produced an album of complex sonic imagery and expansive dynamic range. subHuman asks us to reach within ourselves and extract the very essence of what makes us human - and more importantly what allows us to subordinate others, sometimes with the most brutal consequences. We are all subHuman in somebody's eyes. www.recoil.co.uk | www.myspace.com/recoil

Komputer release a brand new album, Synthetik. The follow up to 2002’s "Market Led,""Synthetik" will be available on digital format only on August 14 2007. In this two-part podcast, Simon and David discuss the album. Komputer’s sound is rigorously electronic, their subject matter is varied: from Russian cosmonauts to rubbish compactors and mobile phone ringtones – as on new track Headphones and Ringtones, their paean to a time you could listen to songs on the radio, bird song and the wind in the trees, rather than today’s ubiquitous headphones and ringtones. For Synthetik, the band’s third album, the music gradually evolved over a long period of time, tracks were tried out in live sets then discarded or reworked in the studio, maturing into a return to the more traditional electro sound of the first album, The World Of Tomorrow, with the incorporation of a more experimental and contemporary electronica approach. Opening with the futuristic International Space Station, a farewell song to planet Earth, the album looks to the future, takes a slightly nostalgic look at time’s past, nature (with the pounding, relentless Rain) and then, unapologetically tells the listener how it is with the artisan anthem What We Do. Komputer is the project of two London-based synth-meisters: Simon Leonard and David Baker who, described as an electronic evocation of Syd Barrett’s madcap laughter, originally signed to Mute in 1984 as I Start Counting and continued with releases under the moniker Fortran 5 until the release of Komputer’s debut album, The World of Tomorrow (1998), a reaction against Oasis’ glorification of The Beatles, a rewriting of pop music with Kraftwerk as heroes.