{"title":"Sandwell District","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSandwell District is a groundbreaking electronic music collective formed in 2002. Comprised of David Sumner, Karl O'Connor, and Juan Mendez, they have pushed the boundaries of techno with their innovative soundscapes and hypnotic beats.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTheir unique approach to production has earned them critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base. With releases on esteemed labels such as Ostgut Ton and their own imprint Sandwell District, they have become synonymous with cutting-edge electronic music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKnown for their enigmatic live performances and immersive DJ sets, Sandwell District continues to captivate audiences worldwide. Their ability to create an atmospheric journey through sound has solidified their status as pioneers in the genre.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"feed-forward","title":"Feed Forward","description":"\u003cp\u003eSandwell District with a brand new release of their era-defining 2010 album \u003ci\u003eFeed-Forward\u003c\/i\u003e - out on vinyl for the first time since its original pressing via The Point Of Departure Recording Company.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe original print of the album, described by RA a decade later as “the final transmission from a collective whose influence still colours music today”, was effectively a private press that sold out on impact - 3 days before Christmas, with no accompanying promotion – and, despite it changing hands for up to 4 figure sums, it has never been repressed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSandwell District - Peter Sutton (Female), David Sumner (Function), Juan Mendez (Silent Servant) and Karl O’Connor (Regis) - was a label, a collective, an impulse, an in-joke, a suicide mission, a gang, a point of view. An amphetamine-fuelled fever dream, a group psychosis, an out-of-hand piss-take which happened to reinvent techno in its own bleakly modernist image. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrowing out of the Downwards label that Sutton and O’Connor established in 1993, throughout the 2000s the collective had a powerful mystique. Its records sell and its reputation swells by word of mouth alone - and for a long time it revels in being faceless, opaque, impenetrable. After a move to Berlin, Sutton and O’Connor intensify their time in the studio, while Function is a resident and Regis and Silent Servant become regular guests at Berghain, giving the collective a key test-laboratory. Mendez meanwhile overhauls the visual identity of the label, giving Sandwell an outlaw style all its own - techno has never seen anything quite like it - and the music itself deepens and darkens as if to meet the challenge.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first O’Connor hears about a Sandwell District album is when Sumner refers to it in an interview. He calls him up. “Dave, what are you talking about!? There is no album!”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Now we have to make it, man.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is a huge task: to distil the essence of this sprawling project but also take it somewhere new. To seamlessly interweave the contributions of its four members, creating something which does justice to their ferocious club incarnation but which can also be listened to from start to finish: at home, in the car, under the covers with your eyes closed. They manage all this and more.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNo previous Sandwell release can prepare you for \u003ci\u003eFeed-Forward’s\u003c\/i\u003e technical and emotional achievement. It is supple, sensuous and utterly widescreen. Driving, infinite-horizon techno - vectors of pure energy - slashed with concussive polyrhythms and draped in swooping strings and a haunted, melancholic musicality only glimpsed on the preceding 12”s, if it was there at all. Above all it is a powerful concentration of atmosphere, its morbid romanticism drawing subtly on influences from post-punk, industrial and the early ‘80s avant-garde and culminating in a breathtaking final third of eerie concrète and beatific synth sequences. \u003ci\u003eFeed-Forward\u003c\/i\u003e is one of the great, elegiac evocations of Berlin, minting the future but grieving and ghost-filled; the offspring of Bowie’s Low and Basic Channel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSandwell District continued for another year after the album’s release, before disbanding. Today that world, that vertiginous sense of emptiness and possibility, feels entirely vanished, irretrievable. An imaginary world that only Feed-Forward can give us access to. Its influence in the 2010s and beyond has been colossal, if not always duly credited; those reverberations are still being felt. And this timely reissue gives us occasion not only to celebrate Sandwell District as it was, but to ask what it might still be, what it might yet become. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Point Of Departure Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50401987002699,"sku":"2024563","price":74.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/SD_FF_May_Single_2023_8f20c3e2_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726528231"},{"product_id":"where-next","title":"WHERE NEXT ?","description":"\u003cp\u003eSandwell District issue a compilation of singles from the collective's history, entitled \u003ci\u003eWHERE NEXT ?\u003c\/i\u003e, featuring tunes by Function, Silent Servant, Regis and more, some of which have never previously been released. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis release comes off the back of the reissue of their seminal album \u003ci\u003eFeed Forward\u003c\/i\u003e, released in 2023 as a 3LP boxset which sold out all 1000 copies almost immediately.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Point Of Departure Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"Black LPx2","offer_id":50426592231755,"sku":"2174950","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/SD_WH_COMP_3000x300_bf7d66d4_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726813993"},{"product_id":"end-beginnings","title":"End Beginnings","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSandwell District\u003c\/strong\u003e release their highly anticipated new album \u003cem\u003eEnd Beginnings\u003c\/em\u003e - via Point of Departure. The group's first music since \u003cstrong\u003eJuan Mendez\u003c\/strong\u003e (Silent Servant) tragically passed away in January 2024.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEnd Beginnings\u003c\/em\u003e is a majestic coming together of cinematic techno and mind-bending dancefloor dynamism; an album that marries \u003cstrong\u003eDrexciya\u003c\/strong\u003e's idea of techno being an act of seditionary innovation to a sense of unbridled fun, an imperative that means an awful lot to O'Connor. Having a good time is pretty much why you get into it in the first place, he notes wisely. And it is fun. I think we feel a lot more fortunate now, especially with what happened with Juan. We're grateful.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEnd Beginnings\u003c\/em\u003e then is also a moving requiem to a fallen soldier – \u003cstrong\u003eJuan Mendez\u003c\/strong\u003e. At the beginning of 2024, Mendez tragically died just as things were moving in the right direction for the collective. Mendez’s stunning artwork and visuals were always a central pillar of Sandwell District; indeed, he was working on a piece of art entitled ‘End Beginnings’ that was mooted to be the album cover. That work was never finished, but O'Connor and Sumner took the title to honor their friend's contribution. It remains a fitting tribute to the stop-start nature of this rebel alliance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWe were a real gang, O'Connor reminisces. We used to come into town, tear it up and go home. We got banned from about three airlines for fighting with each other. We used to turn up at the airport, get hammered and it would go downhill from there. No wonder they were described as techno's answer to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young by online music organ, The Quietus. O'Connor laughs when that interpretation is put to him. That's brilliant, he says. It's probably very accurate. As long as I can be Nash.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Point Of Departure Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"2LP - Black","offer_id":51082565026123,"sku":"2239047","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"2LP - Blue","offer_id":51082565419339,"sku":"2239291","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":51082564829515,"sku":"2239046","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/5400863174064_419d69e6-8a30-4a27-8c53-de1eecd1552f.jpg?v=1752234357"},{"product_id":"end-beginnings-1","title":"End Beginnings","description":"\u003cp\u003eSandwell District with their highly anticipated new album \u003cem\u003eEnd Beginnings\u003c\/em\u003e the groups first music since Juan Mendez (Silent Servant) tragically passed away in January 2024.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEnd Beginnings \u003c\/em\u003eis a majestic coming together of cinematic techno and mind-bending dancefloor dynamism; an album that marries Drexciya’s idea of techno being an act of seditionary innovation to a sense of unbridled fun, an imperative that means an awful lot to O’Connor. “Having a good time is pretty much why you get into it in the first place,” he notes wisely. “And it is fun. I think we feel a lot more fortunate now, especially with what happened with Juan. We’re grateful.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEnd Beginnings\u003c\/em\u003e then is also a moving requiem to a fallen soldier – Juan Mendez. At the beginning of 2024, Mendez tragically died just as things were moving in the right direction for the collective. Mendez’s stunning artwork and visuals were always a central pillar of Sandwell District; indeed, he was working on a piece of art entitled \u003cem\u003eEnd Beginnings\u003c\/em\u003e that was mooted to be the album cover. That work was never finished, but O’Connor and Sumner took the title to honour their friend’s contribution. It remains a fitting tribute to the stop-start nature of this rebel alliance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“We were a real gang,” O’Connor reminisces. “We used to come into town, tear it up and go home. We got banned from about three airlines for fighting with each other. We used to turn up at the airport, get hammered and it would go downhill from there.” No wonder they were described as techno’s answer to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young by online music organ, The Quietus. O’Connor laughs when that interpretation is put to him. “That’s brilliant,” he says. “It’s probably very accurate. As long as I can be Nash.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Point Of Departure","offers":[{"title":"2LP - Gold","offer_id":55940321280331,"sku":"R0239-6481","price":34.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/SD_PODR012LP_digital-cover.jpg?v=1763555988"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_bfbf6e26_thumbnail_4096_6d69fbbe-a966-434a-bbd9-58c2d52904d0.jpg?v=1726528213","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/sandwell-district.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}