Skip to main content

Premiere: Russell E.L. Butler ‘The Home I'd Build For Myself and All My Friends’

Live techno artist Russell E.L. Butler’s debut LP ‘The Home I'd Build For Myself and All My Friends’ is out this month via Left Hand Path. The title track is rapid, electrifying and bursting with hopeful melody...

Oakland-based live techno artist and DJ Russell E.L. Butler will release their debut LP on 15th November via San Francisco label Left Hand Path.

With numerous EPs notched up on labels including 100% Silk, CGI Records, Opal Tapes, Jacktone Records and more, the Bermudian producer has become known for their urgent, hypnotic style and highly improvised live sets. They have also been an influencing voice among the queer, black diaspora in the Bay Area, both through their musical themes and otherwise.

Years of work, discovery and the forging of a community have led to the release of ‘The Home I'd Build For Myself and All My Friends’, a ten-track collection powerful, propulsive and invigorating techno cuts and experimental electronics which, according to a press release, “[recall] techno's emancipatory, Afro-futurist roots”.

“The album attempts to set out an idealistic space for the community,” said Butler in a recent interview “A space to dream in this frantic, late capitalist system, and feel what freedom and transcendence would be like. What does it look like when everyone has a home? What does it look like when rapists are held accountable? What does it feel like if everyone had clean water to drink? What does it feel like for a woman or a transperson to walk freely down the street?"”

The album is dedicated to the 36 individuals who lost their lives in the tragic fire at Oakland’s Ghost Ship in December 2016 during a 100% Silk party.

Below, you can hear the album’s rapid and electrifying title track; one which despite its frenetic energy (think Karen Gwyer’s wonderful ‘Rembo’ LP) flourishes with a hopeful melodic undercurrent.

Pre-order ‘The Home I'd Build For Myself and All My Friends’ via Left Hand Path here, featuring colourful cover art by Muzae Sesay.