[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

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Showing results 801 through 850 of 5033.

Local out-there electronica label Dial is the latest label to explore the lathe cut technology from the New Zealand lathe press run by Peter King. The Church Steps are Chris Douglas (aka O.S.T. and Rook Vallard) and Mike Donovan (label bossman of Dial) drifting rather sad melodies of electronic bells alongside downtempo beat skitter, not unlike Markant or Boards of Canada. As good as it is limited.

The Church Steps are Mike Donovan (on guitar and vocals) and Chris Douglas (electronic sound-meister aka OST). The duo's brilliance lies in their coming at the music from opposite directions, meeting in the middle where few dare tread. Mike writes and sings quietly pretty sometimes melancholic songs. Some so quiet and personal that it almost seems that he's singing them to himself more than anyone else. And while on his own releases Chris is a well documented eardrum shredder/pummeller, here he takes it down a few notches and applies a very nice counterpart to Mike's lo-fi meditative guitar lines. Lightly abrasive textures and occasional beats almost like a very fine metallic sandpaper swirl over and around the often murmured vocals. The duo's artistic vision is completely realized, an irresistible mix of Smog-like loner vocals mixed with epic yet quiet electronica, like ambient-era Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and Portishead. So good! Better than, yet similar to, Wisdom of Harry! The Jewelry EP is five songs in all, a perfect "jewel" of a record and a fine intro to Church Steps. Released on Mike's own Dial label (home to releases by Blectum From Blechdom, Iran, OST, and Hot Fucking Jets).

RealAudio clip: Mathematical Tongue

One listen to this and you can see why the likes of Andy Votel and Demdike Stare would rush to release this radiophonic electronic gem on a newly created subsidiary label, Dead-Cert, (a subsidiary of an already subsidiary label Pre-Cert which released lps by Slant Azymuth, Apple Head, and Anworth Kirk). Dead-Cert's mission statement, we've been told, is to reissue albums that virtually no one has heard before and this by all means is one of the rarest of that ilk. Recorded in 1970 for an art installation by Harold Paris in Brussels, there were only 50 copies of Voices of Packaged Souls made, and were given away at the opening. Unlike the material on the recent Suzanne Ciani archive reissue, Lixiviations, Voices of Packaged Souls is 13 experimental sound pieces made on the modular Buchla synthesizer, each one introduced by a male narrator in both English and French, with mystically ominous titles: "First Voice: Sound of Hair Bleeding" "Eight Voice: Sound of Bones Growing", "Seventh Voice: Sound of an Eye Tearing", "Fourth Voice: Sound of Wetness", "Tenth Voice: Sound of A Lighted Window", that suggest a clinical litany of library sounds and actions, similar to the remote feel of a Demdike Stare recording. But what separates this from just a standard bloop-bleep electronic record is the impeccable sound design, with high relief-textural dynamics that jump around the audio spectrum, sometimes sounding right against your ear and other times receding away from you. Would have been neat to see this sound / sculptural installation in person. Beautifully spooky! And beautifully packaged, too.

Perhaps most widely known as one of the bigger stars of New Age music's MOR commercial peak in the mid-eighties (think Mannheim Steamroller's Fresh Aire series and Ray Lynch's Deep Breakfast), most folks don't necessarily consider the Private Music label's pop new age princess Suzanne Ciani as being a second generation electronic music pioneer or a highly inventive classically trained synthesist. But this fantastic new anthology of early works from Ciani's archive on B-Music/Finders Keepers is aimed at changing that perception. Fact is, Ciani has had a hand in many of the innovations in electronic music from the late sixties to the early eighties, in what has been a largely male-dominated field. A classically trained pianist, she met Don Buchla through a mutual artist friend and mastered the Buchla Synthesizer (pictured on the cover) and soon began seeking out projects for art galleries, experimental films and pop music (Meco's Star Wars theme for example), before moving to New York and becoming a valuable asset in the experimental underground and commercial advertising fields. She supplied the sounds for Xenon's pinball machines as well as doing sound effects work for films The Stepford Wives and The Incredible Shrinking Woman. Her company Ciani Musica became a testing ground for many of electronic and computerized music's new developments where she built up an incredible portfolio of recording experiments that make up the bulk of this collection. Alongside advertising spots for Atari, ITT, Almay, and Coca-Cola, are longer compositions of electronic grandeur that point to her later new age music career, but are also steeped in electronic music's recent past. Percolating oscillations, robotic breathing, percussive mechancial rhythms, and long-form and layered computerized tones are assembled into warm and engaging pieces that aptly put Ciani in the same league as Laurie Spiegel, David Behrman and even the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. This is an exciting anthology that sheds light on an overlooked period of electronic music innovation and one of its most vital players. Recommended!

MPEG stream: Lixiviation
MPEG stream: Princess With Orange Feet
MPEG stream: Liberator (Atari TV Spot)
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I may have to go back and check out some of the older Cinematic Orchestra releases now, 'cause I really dig this new one. I had sort of written them off as yuppie cocktail makeout music (a la Kruder and Dorfmeister), and maybe it still is, but it sure sounds a whole lot better than I remember. Dark and moody and sexy and creepy, but also playful and fun. A newly recorded soundtrack for Tziga Vertov's famous 1920's silent film Man With A Movie Camera. The music is very reminiscent of Portishead with its lugubrious smoke-y and murky downtempo dirges but with some shuffling acid jazz and wild and wooly funk mixed in as well. Goes from super sinister, dangerous dark alley, late night cinematic soundscapes to almost-wacky twenties slapstick caper music to skittery Mission Impossible style spy music to fuzzed out Hammond organ funk to dreamy, melancholy instrumentals. Really cool. We also have the DVD that includes a restored version of the film with the new soundtrack, as well as live footage and interviews!

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RealAudio clip: Melody/Dawn

Record number two from this NYC abstract electronic alchemist, who as we mentioned in our review of his debut, Gray Panic, counts Porter Ricks, Skullflower, Techno Animal, Portal, Main, Pan American, Scanner AND Bark Psychosis as influences. And while lists of influences are generally impossibly hyperbolic, somehow Gray Panic actually did manage to live up to the promise of the groups that informed its sound. So when City Surgical got in touch with a new album, describing it as even murkier an druggier than the first, we were pretty much already sold. And once again, we were not at all disappointed, after a brief opening of blurred shimmery and gauzy ambience, the sound coalesces into a sort of mumbled skitter, all muted throb and skeletal pulse, with the promise of some sort of impending big beat, but instead, the tension is gradually ratcheted up, the sounds swirling and ethereal, it's not really until part three of the opening four part 17+ minute title track song suite, that any sort of actual beat coalesces, and even then, it's a murky bit digital dub wreathed in gnarled static never fully coalescing, instead seeming to fade in and out like bad radio reception, giving the sound a lost ghost like quality, tending more toward Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, with the beats existing more as some strange sonic artifact, the woozy pulsing synthiness which also surfaces in part three seeming to channel a little Goblin / John Carpenter too, before devolving into a deep murky pulse. Part four is like an ultra minimal reinterpretation of Chain Reaction style heroin house, peppered with strange bits of glitch and squelch, more ethereal and ambient than rhythmic, the various submerged rhythms more adding texture than propulsion. The final two, non title track numbers, continue in a similarly woozy, washed out, dreamily druggy direction, draping chiming metallic melodies over rhythmic backwards swoops and a sea of thick gristly sonic swirl, a haunting robotic lullaby, that morphs into the gorgeous final track, a thick sprawl of gristled low end, roiling beneath some dark dubbed out rhythms, stuttering chopped and looped pulsations, and multiple layers of hazy and gauze and shimmer, the sound a constant dreamlike swirl that coalesces into a Raster-Noton like stretch of gorgeous electronic late night minimalism, that once again has us wondering why City Surgical is not a way bigger deal. So great! Packaged in striking hand screened three color origami like sleeves, with color printed cardstock inserts. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

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It's tough to argue with a band whose influences include Porter Ricks, Pan American, Skullflower, Techno Animal, Portal, Scanner, Main, and Bark Psychosis, and even tougher when somehow, against all odds, the band actually manages to sort of sound like a bastard mix of all of those. Such is the case with NYC one man avant abstract electronica outfit City Surgical, whose sound is not so much electronica as it is created electronically, if that makes any sense, sure there's buzz and skitter and glitch, but the way those elements are assembled makes the sounds on Gray Panic sound more organic, more mysterious. Right from the get go, "Our Blood Will Roar In The Pipes" is a strange bit of pulsing ambience, but the pulses are thick rumbles and muted roars, wreathed in strange muffled skree, and in between there's lots of space, filled with some barely audible hiss and fuzz, like some lost transmissions, barely making it through the ether, very haunting and creepy, and with a definite nineties Pathological vibe. "Pi Needle" offers up something similar, a strange electronic buzzscape, the rhythms skeletal skitters, that slowly build to something more substantial, while the bass whirs and throbs, and smeared melodies expand and contract all around. "Low In Silhouette, Irregular In Shape", begins as a stuttery bit of low slung skitter, but then the track skids to a halt, and shifts gears, expelling think swaths of industrial creak and warm melodic buzz, a lurching start stop, that is soon joined again by a muted rhythm, and a woozy bassline, only to get more and more distorted and abstract as the track progresses. And so goes the rest of the record, a twisted collection of post industrial electronica, of skeletal abstract bass music, of muted blackened ambience, Kompakt style minimal pulses wind around haunting late night drift and darkly groovy basslines, dubbed out minimal crunch splinters into fragments that are left to float through hazy fields of FX and ghostly melody, creaking, crumbling haunted house ambience is wrapped around little flurries of electronic glitch and tangled melody, while thick streaks of warm liquid buzz hover over moaning sheets of feedback and delicate rhythmic frameworks, super distorted hiss drenched buzz swirls around dizzying flurries of rapidfire skitter, and finally, the record unwinds in a tangled blowout of throbbing bass heavy grooves and seriously corrosive blasts of crumbling psychedelic soft noise... Killer stuff.

MPEG stream: Our Blood Will Roar In The Pipes
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Before the release of Rainforest, the first proper solo effort from New Jersey producer / beatmaker Mike Volpe, aka Clams Casino, he was primarily known for making tracks for hop hop icons like Lil' B, Soulja Boy and others, and here those tracks are presented sans vocals, revealing them to be pretty much fully formed as they are, and making it perfectly clear why hip hoppers were freaking out over these jams. The witch house vibe still looms large, as does that whole slo-mo RnB thing, obviously fans of How To Dress Well, not to mention the whole Tri Angle catalog will flip for these tracks, gorgeous, and low slung, creepy and haunting and pretty, deeply rhythmic, softly psychedelic, blissed out and a bit druggy, in some ways these tracks couldn't sound less hip hop, but again, that's precisely what made them stand out. It's hard to imagine Soulja Boy rapping over "All I Need", with its hazy, woozy Portishead creep, slowed down vocal croon, and strange crunchy percussive skitter. Everything wrapped in an ethereal gauze, peppered with skittery high hats, hand claps, a spare simple drumline, it's all ballady and blissfully blurry. It's equally hard to imagine Lil'B rapping on "Real Shit From A Real Nigga", and it's just as difficult to imagine a track this pretty and washed out with that title, and the sound, all warm swirling synths, distant choral vocals, clouds of shimmering glistening melodies, and a low slung shuffling beat drifting amidst all manner of glistening flutter and smeared sparkle. And so it goes. The tracks here are incredible, and definitely have us wondering why more big names haven't tapped this guy for backing tracks, this stuff is totally next level, way more advanced than any of the stuff we hear on the radio, but as we mentioned before, these songs already sound essentially finished, totally fleshed out, expansive and lush and melodic, and in some ways, adding anything else would only take way from their power. And as much as we loved Rainforest, and we did, BIG TIME, we might be digging this one even more!!

MPEG stream: All I Need (Soulja Boy)
MPEG stream: Real Shit From A Real Nigga (Lil' B)
MPEG stream: Realist Alive (Lil' B)

Another killer chunk of outsider electronic music from Triangle, who has also given us amazing records by witch house outfits oOoOO and Balam Acab, and while Clams Casino, a twenty something hip hop producer from New Jersey who's done production for Lil B and Soulja Boy, is not technically witch house, it's easy to see why he ended up on triangle, cuz to our ears, many of the elements are the same, the sound woozy and warped, muddy and murky, washed out and ethereal, stuttering loops, disembodied voices wreathed in effects and layered into their own sort of rhythms, the sound a gorgeous creepy crawl, some seriously dreamy drag, everything blurry and indistinct, field recordings hover beneath smeared synths, and muted pulses, downtempo beats wrapped around sci-fi shimmer. Crumbling distortion envelops slooooowed down crooning, a sort of slo-mo soul laced with clanky percussion, and tinkling late night pianos, a little bit crunk, a little bit witch house, a swirling swoonsome sizurp vibe, that oozes into everything, the perfect wasted late night drift off zone out melting dancefloor alien chill out soundtrack for sure. Definitely for fans of dark electronica, chopped and screwed hip hop, witch housers Salem, oOoOO, Balam Acab, and all the various strains of slo-mo soul and doped-up drag...

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The latest from local soundmaker Dan Vallor, whose last two releases we could barely keep in stock, including one that came housed in an actual tape player, and that tape player wrapped in a melted/warped vinyl record! We had long been a fan of Vallor's mysterious music, a music that eventually found him more than one home away from home on labels like Celebrate Psi Phenomenon and Ecstatic Peace!, so it's easy to imagine the sort of spaced out minimal abstract soundscaping and tripped out droneworlds Vallor has conjured up on past releases, although this new one is something else entirely. As the title suggests, DNA on DNA is a track-for-track reimagining of DNA's legendary DNA On DNA record, and, as the cover art hints, Vallor is paying homage to those songs in the form of abstract freeform solo piano(!), with each track the same length as the original, but here, it really is just piano, and it's pretty fantastic. Not sure if DNA fans will necessarily dig this, but hell, some probably will, Vallor weaving strange, mysterious, and quite lovely landscapes of twisted melody, of lush shimmer and bombastic chordal pound, plenty of atonal free jazz freakout, it is after all meant to pay homage to one of the cornerstones of No Wave, but for every burst of dizzying minor key splatter, there are gorgeous stretches of contemplative moodiness, the sound shot through with subtle drones, swirling overtones, very minimal and spare, lots of space, the sound drifting, slipping into wild squalls, and then settling right back down again. Included as a bonus, is a second disc called Retrospekt, which sonically falls more in line with other Clarinette releases, which makes sense since it is in fact a greatest hits of course, sampling tracks from EVERY single Clarinette release, as well as including a handful of previously unreleased songs. The sounds as you might imagine are quite varied, from experimental bursts of crunch and rumble, to beautiful sprawls of swirling shimmer, from spaced out psychedelic drift, to echo heavy distorted crumble, and from ethereal almost pop ambience, to dizzying modern minimalism a la Reich Or Riley. If you weren't a fan already, this disc will change that for sure. LIMITED TO 125 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and housed in a super striking full color printed transparent plastic sleeve, adorned with some super cool (and funny) Peanuts / DNA artwork.

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Over the years Clark (aka Chris Clark) has proven to be one of the most reliable and pleasing artists on the Warp label as many of the label's bigger electronic names have been a bit spotty in their productivity and prowess in recent years. While Clark still might not have the same high visibility and name recognition as folks like Squarepusher, Plaid and Aphex Twin, we have to say that while he may have been influenced by all those guys, these days he seems to be creating sounds way more interesting than any of his influences, making him one of the best bets in the world of modern electronica. Ted is the follow up e.p. to Body Riddle, one of the best electronic records of the last few years and one we think was sadly overlooked by most. Ted is the single from that record and also includes a stellar remix by Bibio and four new tracks that continue to demonstrate Clark's amazing exploration of beautiful skittering color soaked washed out sounds. Very nice!

MPEG stream: Ted (Bibio Remix)
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Clark put out one of the best and sadly overlooked electronic albums of last year, Turning Dragon. A high adrenaline rush of colorful spazzed out electronic perfection. Totems Flare finds Clark adding vocals to the mix on a few tracks (with varied results) and while we're not as much in love with this album as we were with his previous outings, Totems Flare still has plenty of crunchy, glitchy, color that pops out of our speakers and here and there REALLY hits the spot. In many ways Totems Flare has a sound reminiscent of Go Plastic era Squarepusher and it certainly is the most vintage Warp sounding record to come out on that label in a long time. And actually, the more we play this, the more we find ourselves getting into it. Check it out...

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A few years ago Chris Clark decided to drop his first name as he continually tweaked and changed his sound, making his records some of the most consistently interesting and innovative releases in the world of electronica. With his latest album he's made more bold changes, probably the most immediately felt (and heard!) of his career. Clark's sound is changed to full throttle on this outing and we are loving it. This is way more four on the floor full on crazy dance party style than anything we've ever heard from him before, but still with such an interesting and unpredictable sound palette. While it taps a bit into 90's Aphex Twin and the more raging side of Kid 606, we still can hear Clark's great and eclectic touch in all of these songs. This is the soundtrack to a rave we'd love to spend all night, every night at. We gotta say this is making us want to do a hit of E and dance the night away, but what's awesome about the record is that it also appeals to those of us not too keen on the dance floor, but who still love pounding and driving electronic music that we can totally spazz out to. Definitely a contender for electronic record of the year!

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The mid to late '90s were a really exciting time for electronic music. Artists were emerging displaying endless possibilities for electronic music and laptops. Sadly more recently, many of those artists sort of just treaded water, while a new crop of wanna be's merely copy the Boards-Of-Aphex-Square-Autech-Plaid-Pusher of that golden era. Luckily there are still some folks committed to pushing the envelope, taking risks and releasing records that are challenging and weird. Chris Clark is one of them. He won our hearts with his debut which managed to fit perfectly with the refined Warp roster of the time (Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, etc.) while creating a totally distinct sound all his own. Since then he has taken some serious twists and turns but has yet to make a bad record. And while he has ditched his first name, the sound is still quite exciting and reminiscent of his earlier releases, all AQ faves. Body Riddle is both melodic and challenging, diverse and flowing. We definitely get the feeling this album was mixed with headphone listeners in mind as its sonic scope is so dense and wide that the sounds constantly bounce back and forth between your ears. Not just dreamy. Not just pulsing. Not just melodic. It's a little bit of all of those, but very coherent and well thought out. Striking just the right balance between intelligent dance music for the mind and physical dance music for the body. One of the better electronica records to come our way in quite a while!

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This is a strange turn for Chris Clark who was responsible for one of our favorite records of last year, the totally amazing Clarence Park. Gone are many of the things that made Clarence Park so engaging, which is not to say this isn't a cool record, because it is, it's just a little less unique. The sound owes heavily to 'Girl/Boy' era Aphex Twin. Skittery hyperactive lo-fi drum and bass with a gritty ambience (giving it a sort of antiquated feel) and spastic breakdowns. A lot less melodic than its predecessor, but in the place of melody is some new found electro spunk and manic dancefloor splatter.

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New on Warp, and fuck if this isn't the only glimmer of hope in the overcrowded and under-inspired world of electronica. The glitches and pops and Pole fallout are kept to a minimum here and instead, Clark uses actual sounds, unrecognizable as they may

RealAudio clip: Dogs
RealAudio clip: Bricks

A fine return for Clark, "Empty the Bones of You" will certainly be a relief to fans who loved Clark's first full-length "Clarence Park" and who were maybe a little disappointed by his interim EP. And no doubt it will win over some new converts as well. The tracks on "Empty" harken to a time, not too long ago, when Aphex Twin and Autechre ruled supreme; smart, playful and yet infinitely musical electronica. Smart and playful, the way Autechre could wrassle up some crunchy rhythms and construct eminently catchy melodies out of fairly unmelodic glitch and buzz, and musical in the way that Richard James' could turn jagged, stuttering freakouts into hooks that would stick in your head forever. Imagine the melodic elements of Boards of Canada or Bola, but with a harder rhythmic edge and a more organic sound palette. Really nice!

MPEG stream: Empty the Bones of You
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Who would have thought we'd be freaking out over a compilation called I (Heart) Techno, 'cuz, barring some particular strains of techno, we (or more specifically in this case, I) don't actually (Heart) techno all that much. Chain Reaction, Kompakt, Pop Ambient, Plastikman, Gas, Thomas Brinkmann, Richie Hawtin, are all great, sure, but as a whole, techno has to be really fucked up and weird, murky and mysterious and minimal to hit the spot. But holy shit if this stuff doesn't totally destroy. Especially the first track. And to be honest, we had this comp in stock, and had been listening to the first track and ONLY the first track for months. It is the minimal techno jam of the year. Never heard of Christian Smith or John Selway but their track "Coming Storm" is fucking perfect. It had us wishing they had done a Villalobos and stretched it out to fill a whole cd. But that's what the repeat button is for. So we eventually did listen to the whole comp, and it's really really great, but even so, the first track is SO GODDAMN GOOD that even if the rest of the comp was total and complete shit, it would be well worth highlighting and spending $15 bucks on. So what has us all in a tizzy? It's hard to explain really, it's minimal, but not murky, the rhythm is loud and hard, the beats thick and crunchy, but right out of the gate, it's like two beats all tangled up, slightly out of phase, so it sounds like techno galloping, as the two beats compete, other bits of percussion join in, and the sound somehow manages to get more busy and chaotic, but without losing the minimalism that makes it so appealing. Like Plastikman and Thomas Brinkmann remixed by Oval, but then housed up just a bit. Or imagine a way heavier less murky but no less Heroin-y Chain Reaction. Eventually, some throbbing bass joins the melee, and it's downright grooving, but still in a weird haunting minimal abstract way. Female vocals drift into the picture, but they're not diva style, they're cold and clinical, an alien sonar throb offers a melodic counterpoint to her chilling sung spoken vocals, smoothly morphing into the next track� Phew. Before we go one, and talk about just how goddamn good this whole comp is, let us again stress how amazing that first track is, and how badly we NEED to hear more from these guys. Okay, on with the rest of the review. Since it's a mix, the first few tracks seamlessly morph from the super minimal opener, gradually shifting, the house elements becoming more and more pronounced, but everything so static and hypnotic, that you almost don't notice the change until you're 3 or 4 tracks in. Raudive's "Magnetic" is the perfect follow up to "Coming Storm", a simple melody and rhythm looped over and over and over, various other rhythmic bits and strange electronic squelches joining the fray, before dropping out again, and leaving just the skeletal framework, and those haunting female vocals again. By three or four tracks in, we're definitely in more traditional house territory, but the sounds are so alien and repetitive, it's pretty mesmerizing. And definitely has us reconsidering our non-love of most house music. The whole rest of the disc, while not reaching the pinnacle of the opener, or even the follow up, still retains a certain cold droning hypnotic quality that is pretty hard to resist. The disc finishes off with "The Same" by the problematically monickered Velvet Underwear, who offer up a killer slab of chilled euro disco electro house, the main melody looped amidst huge bass throbs and crunchy crumbling synths, over which, the vocalist, who sounds like a frigid but VERY sexy European dominatrix, delivers her lyrics in a cool aloof monotone, eventually dropping out and letting the track unwind in a killer coda of buzzing serpentine synths and throbbing basslines. So awesome, even (and maybe especially) for the house-phobic and dancefloor averse amongst you...

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"Lakte" is definitely something completely new from Kit Clayton, whose last few recordings delved deep into the melancholic dub of Pole and Monolake. Clayton himself describes this 4 song ep with the following: "Scraping your head against the ground, you hear sounds you do not tend to find while scurrying amongst carefully constructed and willfully digested worlds. Puddles of knobs, twigs, paperclips, loose change, and other items unnamed. What you were listening for is sidestepped by environmental residue's unwavering determination to be heard. Background and foreground are reversed. And reversed again. And again." Mostly arrthymic and atonal, "Lakte" is a willfully difficult piece of avant-electronica recalling the likes of '60s tape-music pioneer Tod Dockstader much more than current artists like Autechre.

Hmmm. Joshua Kit Clayton offers a concept album of electronic music based upon the global seismic activities over the last two years, mixing in field recordings of water and rocks from the San Francisco Bay. After the surprising experiments found on the

Kit Clayton broadcast this piece live on KALX in Berkeley using a shortwave radio to generate all of the material that he shoved through his sequencer and laptop. While stuff like Stockhausen's "Hymnen" and the work of John Duncan may be suggested by the use of the shortwave, Clayton's electronic manipulation overwhelms the usual aesthetic of the shortwave (like the strange flanges of alternating currents run simultaneously, the erratic behaviour of the huge electro-magnetic field which shortwave travels through, the general static, etc...). There is no doubt this is a digital production, with harsh glitches and timestretched compterized drones. By the end of the piece, Clayton does work in some of his trademark electro dub rhythms, which push the whole piece into a more dystopic environment than before. Certainly not as consumer friendly as his work for Scape, but a very interesting tangent from one of the better practitoners of the plastic arts.

Stefan Betke (better known as the electron dub twiddler Pole) asked San Francisco's Kit Clayton (Mimic & The Model, Cytrax, etc.) to contribute the first single on his new label Scape, which is dedicated to be unequivocally groove-oriented and will be responsible for the new automatica installation of dub music. Apparently, so struck with honor of releasing a single for Pole, Clayton manufactured a strikingly similar sound to Pole's granular synth & digital pixelated dub. An exemplary piece of neo-dub, if uttering a little whisper of hero worship.

Right after the granulated dub single for Pole's record label, the prolific SF electronica artist Kit Clayton (who is also responsible for the Hardwaxish Cytrax label and the stellar Mimic & The Model ep) returns to the Bay Area with this release on Drop Beat. The seductive neo-dub elements of bubbling synths and processed digital distortion submit to a shuffling groove of techno 4/4 syncopations. Andee would call this house (in other words, it's not).

A listenin' delight from two electronica artists with strong ties to the Bay Area (Clayton lives in San Francisco, and Safety Scissor's Matthew Curry used to run the exceptional Static weekly club before moving to Berlin). This EP, keeping true to its namesake, is super light, playful, "popcorn"-esque and anything but static. Within the continuous mix across 36 tracks, but a extra brief 18 minutes, "Ping Pong" ricochets throughout the spectrum of silly, ironic electronics that at times recalls Dick Hyman moog albums with a chorus line of tap dancers as the rhythm section, and at others clunky fusions between house and '50 circus music.

RealAudio clip: Track 1
RealAudio clip: Track 2

We raved about Cloaks' 2009 release Versus Grain, a caustic collection of crushing beats and sculpted noise, with sounds sourced from recordings of breaking glass and clanging metal, and live shows reported to rival the craziest rock bands in terms of blood, sweat and destruction of gear. It was in fact a record that we ended up listening to so much and for so long, we realized in retrospect that we really should have made it a Record Of The Week. So here we are 2 years later, and Cloaks return, but VERSIONS Grain is not a new record, instead, it's their own twisted idea of a remix record, with Cloaks contributing a couple new tracks, but with the bulk of the record made up of reinterpretations of jams from Versus Grain, by an eclectic crew of "remixers", including Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, Pale Sketcher, etc.) and former Record Of The Week-ers Legion Of Two, as well as Dead Fader, Ancient Methods, Devilman, Volt Music and Oyaarss, who all manage to retain the originals' beat heavy brutality and almost avant dancefloor destroying noise, while adding whole new dimensions, that make this easily as worthwhile as the original. The record opens with Cloaks own reworking of Versus Grain's closer, and like the original, it's a lurching sprawl of super distorted crunch, weird industrial robotic whirs and buzz, lots of gristly static and blurred muted white noise, like the sound of some alien factory set to some dubbed out crumbling slowed down DHR beat. Which leads directly into Legion Of Two's version of "Against" which ends up sounding like it could have been plucked right off LO2's own Record Of The Week, with live drumming, wild dubbed out snares careening all over the place, thick undulating almost dubsteppy basslines, lots of super blown out synths, cascading decaying electronics, way groovier than the original, but totally spaced out and psychedelic at the same time, another heady chunk of industrial machine funk that kills. Broadrick takes on "Rust On Metal", and actually cleans it up a little, the original was claustrophobic, the sounds bleak and blackened, and while there is still a bit of a grim vibe, the beats are more skeletal, the melodies more synthy and swirly, and then about 2 minutes in, it explodes into something way more metal, churning industrial beats and chugging distorted riffing, not to mention howled dub drenched vox, total Godflesh territory for sure, peppered with bouts of skitter and droned out mesmer and finally finishing off in a blaze of white hot buzz. Ancient Methods also dial back the crunch and robotic churn on their version of "R.F.I.D.", wreathing everything in a cloud of gristly static, strange processed vox, woozy low end rumbles, and then some pulsing dubby minimal techno beats, lots of clipped samples, truncated melodies, stuttery and staggery, weirdly hypnotic and off kilter, that over the course of its 9+ minutes is barraged by twisted sci-fi electronics, warm warped distorted guitar melodies, lush swirls of fuzzed out synth, more strange voices, that beat slipping from muted and minimal to speaker destroying block rocking crunch. "Sixmenace One" finds Cloaks imagining a first part to accompany the second that showed up on Versus Grain, and it gets a serious working over, even more damaged and noisy, super filthy and crusty and distorted, weirdly creepy and soundtracky, while ultimately just a gnarled ever shifting tangle of crumbling pulsing synths and swirling swaths of electronic hiss and some seriously brutal almost-beat heavy buzz. Oyaarss follows up with their version of "Sixmenace Two", which is drastically different, adding a weird ethereal almost shoegazey sheen to the proceedings, a super thick, slithery big beat fat bass dubstep, with some of the filthiest most distorted bass wobble ever, but melded to some dreamlike melodic shimmer not to mention some drifty harplike melody, for dubstep headz, this might be THEE jam here, we can't help but imagine this as a 12", and the sort of rib cage rattling dancefloor destroying damaged that would result. "Dead Fader" keep the spirit of the original "#00148", which opened Versus Grain, if anything, they just stretch it out, brighten it up a bit, strip away some of the murk, but add their own extra ingredients, which includes some twisted beats, some strange wailing synth melodies, not to mention all manner of synth squiggles, and grinding glitch. Devilman's "Against" again reinvents the original as something much more abstract, at least in the beginning, and buzzing, hissing, fuzzed out industrial creep, until the beat proper lurches into motion, and the track becomes a weirdly mesmerizing noise-dub groove, that lumbers and swaggers menacingly, until the last minute or so, where it seems to transform into some strange sort of post Bollywood whatthefuck, with all sorts of weird 'rewinds', chaotic drum programming, and cloying melodies, which go surprisingly well with the extremely dense and brutal buzz. Finally, Volt Music finish things off with another version of "R.F.I.D.", which starts out all murky and staccato, before the song stumbles into motion, and unwinds like some super slow-motion gabber track, sped up this would be a pounding acid anthem, but here it's a maniacally mesmerizing rhythmic churn, laced with little bits of jungle-y filigree, not to mention all sorts of distorted and decaying FX. Awesome stuff. And the sort of electronic music that should appeal to heavy music folks as well, dark, distorted, loud as fuck and so good.

MPEG stream: Sixmenace One
MPEG stream: R.F.I.D. (Volt Music Remix)
MPEG stream: Agains (Legion Of Two Remake)
MPEG stream: #00148 (Dead Fader Remix)

Don't confuse THIS Cloaks with the other Cloaks we've reviewed in the past, or you're in for a rude awakening. Whereas that Cloaks was a Starving Weirdos related bit of tripped out dronemusic, THIS Cloaks is a crushing, super distorted beat heavy juggernaut. They're described as Burial meets Einsturzende Neubauten, which is not that far off the mark. It IS sort of dubstep, the rhythms, the beats, but the fact that many of the beats are constructed from experiments in damage and destruction, treated recordings of pieces of metal being pounded, glass shattering, well that's where the Neubaten comes in. Apparently these guys rarely play live, as their performances typically leave tons of equipment damaged and / or destroyed, and crowds (be they metal or dancefloor) confused and a little bit freaked out. We, however, are psyched, this is so right up our alley, and presumably some of yours, easily the heaviest, crunchiest, ultra distorted-est dance music EVER. Heck, even calling it dance music makes this stuff sound not nearly as caustic and abrasive as it is. Not sure how many folks remember the Fever record on DHR from years back, a crazy noisy distorted hiphop record, well this sounds a bit like an instrumental version of that record, but even noisier and more chaotic. The beats grind and throb, pulse and pound, set amidst a churning sea of malfunctioning electronics, thick feedback, buzzing synths, and all sorts of other processed noises, the beats stutter and skitter, it's definitely groovy, but at the same time just SO mean sounding. This is the direction we wish industrial music had taken. From murky muddy throbbing minimal shuffles to full on pipe fight pound, to blown out buzz drenched dirge, these jams are ear candy for folks like us into decay and destruction. It almost sounds like some dubstep record remixed by Tim Hecker or Fennesz or Merzbow, or heck more like all three! The beats seeming to rust and crumble before our very ears, the surrounding sounds gritty and grimey and filthy, the vocals sung into a broken transistor radio broadcast through a short circuiting bullhorn, all that stuff, dipped in distortion, wreathed in damaged FX, wrapped up into some lurching, lumbering post industrial dubstep pound, capable of destroying any dancefloor that crosses its path! So totally recommended.

MPEG stream: #00148
MPEG stream: Junk
MPEG stream: Against

This is another one of those records, that's almost too good, and too weird, to be true. Especially coming as it does from the Dead-Cert label, run by weirdo music obsessive Andy Votel. In fact, based on the description, AND the sound, we were pretty much convinced that this had to be Votel himself conjuring up some imaginary lost sonic artifact. How could it not be? Son Of Octabred is/was apparently a 'birthing' record, as in an album to assist/instruct with giving birth (?), recorded on primitive analog synths and 'originally broadcast' on a radio show in Anchorage, Alaska - its sound a strange hybrid of kosmische synthscapery, spaced out kraut-psych, minimal dronemusic, and percolating early electronica. But once again, whether it's all true or not, almost doesn't matter: if it IS true, what a ridiculous and impossibly WTF find, and if it's NOT, well, goddamn, total brilliant art prank / fictional sound conjuration. The record begins with a female voice instructing the listener to breath and push, with some strangely poetic descriptions of having a baby, then a man's voice talks weirdly about 'his pregnancy', before in swoop some space synths, and we're off, on a cosmic journey, some alien planetarium show, swirling percolations, swooping FX, shifting textures, playful melodies, there's definitely a sort of John Carpenter / Klaus Schulze vibe, pulsing kraut-psych gives way to weird vocodered vocals, not singing so much as just humming/crooning more textures, and again if this is real, it's hard to imagine just flipping on the radio in the middle of the night and hearing THIS. Or, being born, and hearing it! Crazy. The sound soon erupts into something much more sinister, thick swells of swirling shadowy rumbles, and staticky clouds of hiss, all over buried voices and keening melodies, some serious black ambience for sure, that sounds like birthing music for Rosemary's Baby. The flipside returns to the playful percolation of the opening, sounding a bit like Perrey & Kingsley, before devolving into a weird sprawl of dubby gamelan like percussion, and strangely processed abstract rhythms, all floating in the ether, before a Close Encounter synth melody surfaces, swopping wildly from speaker to speaker, the whole thing dizzying and seriously trippy, before once again drifting into darker sonic territory, some ominous shadowy drift, that eventually returns to the light, for a final bout of bouncy bloopy synthiness and one final burst of wild tangled psych-synth freakout. So cool, and so weird. Real or not, we love it! ----* ----* Highlights : ----*

Debut long player from the Cologne duo of Matias Aguayo (formerly of Zimt, alongside glitter-tech-house rocker Michael Mayer) and Dirk Levers. Certainly one of the most pop oriented Kompakt outfits, Closer Musik synthesizes glamourous electro and erotic lyricism with that mesmerizing minimal thump of Cologne. Includes the killer singles "Closer Dancer" and "You Don't Know Me" plus the beautiful "Departures" that was featured way back on the Kompakt Total 3 compilation.

RealAudio clip: Giganten
RealAudio clip: Departures
RealAudio clip: You Don't Know Me

Latest from these long time aQ faves, a heady blast of kosmische kraut-synth bliss, released on the always ruling Trensmat label, and like the last few records, this new 12" finds them continuing on in their deep space-ward trajectory, the sound minimal, but simultaneously dense and driving, a relentless cascade of pulsating synths, swirling sequenced melodies, like the best bit of the Logan's Run soundtrack, looped and layered, and distorted and sent swirling into the ether. It's like the soundtrack to some tripped out sci-fi art film, totally hypnotic and WAY psychedelic, new age cranked to 11, at least until about 6 minutes into the first track, where programmed drums come crashing in, bringing with them, a thick pulsing bassline, and dreamy ethereal female vox, the resulting hybrid a rad mix of dubbed out electro pop and swirling kraut-drone synth-wave. The flipside is more rhythmic and industrial, a sort of looped and lumbering robo-kraut, crunchy beats, jagged melodies, super distorted buzz drenched bass rhythms, swirling sci-fi shimmer over the top, dense and driving, and relentless, less dancefloor groove, and more fever dream freakout. These guys just keep getting better. The lp includes a download of the two tracks on the record proper, as well as two extra bonus tracks, nearly fourteen minutes, the first some seriously dreamy celestial new age, all swirling synths, and woozy rhythmic pulsations, the second a dense tangle soft chaos, a roiling cloud of intertwined melodies, swooping effects and processed synth squelch, dreamily hypnotic and cosmically psychedelic. Already out of print and sold out at the label, we got a bunch, but once we sell out, we may not be able to get more, so best grab one before they're gone. Packaged in super striking, hand screened pink on white jackets.

MPEG stream: Born Blonde
MPEG stream: Sea Cycles

The first Clubroot disc was our dubstep record of last year, and remains one of our favorites, a lush, expansive electronic record, that traded the skeletal skitter and ominous minimalism of most dubstep for something totally different, something otherworldly, bursting with warmth, synths and voices, everything gauzy and hazy and hauntingly beautiful, organic and dreamy. So hopes were high for this new one. Number two more than lives up to our expectations, continuing to push the sound away from traditional dubstep. The only remaining vestiges being THAT beat, some low bass warble, but very little else. In every other way, the sounds on II are ethereal and ephemeral, washed out and spectral, melancholy and wistful, vocals play a much bigger part too, which we can tell you is what usually turns us off when it comes to jungle or dubstep, but this is no diva shit, instead, the female vocals are ghostly and soulful, drifting amidst the various other layers, adding a distinctly human dimension to Clubroot's sound. Imagine some mysterious blend of the Orb and Portishead, a sort of dark, brooding, chill out sound, and you'll get a rough idea of what to expect here. Long stretches of gauzy synthy shimmer hovering over rumbling bass, but instead of just explosive squelches, the bass is sculpted into something way more melodic and textural, giving the songs heft and weight unconnected to the dancefloor. The vocals, while sometimes left to drift and float, othertimes are chopped and processed and become another rhythmic element, and the beats, well, while the 'beats' themselves hew pretty close to the dubstep standard, they deviate enough to keep things interesting, sometimes getting all shuffly and spare, but other times more tangly and dense like some sort of slowed down jungle, but always perfectly suited to the sounds swirling around it, and the beats remain unobtrusive, more a part of the overall sonic scenery, which helps to make the sounds here so soothing and mesmerizing. For true dubsteppers, this might be so far removed as to not necessarily qualify as dubstep at all, but for the rest of us, that's not a bad thing at all, which is why Clubroot occupies a special space in our heart (and record collections) somewhere right between Kode9 and Burial... WAY RECOMMENDED! While they last, the cd version comes with a bonus disc, featuring 3 tracks, that might be even better than the tracks on the record proper, but only the first 500 copies have the extra disc, and once the 20 or so copies we have are gone, they are GONE. And fear not vinyl folks, the sleeve for the lp version is oversized, just a bit, to leave space for the forthcoming 12" version of the bonus disc, which we'll have as soon as they're ready!

MPEG stream: Orbiting
MPEG stream: Waterways
MPEG stream: Dry Cured
MPEG stream: Cherubs Cry

Record number three from this dubstep revolutionary, and another shift even further away from proper dubstep. Like the two preceeding records, Clubroot unfurls a lush landscape of ethereal drift and deep beat driven ambience, and while fans of the first two will find much to love here as well, there have been some subtle sonic shifts that are worth noting. Not that the opener would give any indication, a lush expansive stretch of washed out dreamy cinematic synth shimmer, that remains beatless throughout, the sound grows gradually darker, until sampled voices surface, and this 'intro' leads directly into a track that sounds almost like Phoenix or Miike Snow, at least at first, a repetitive piano figure that in other hands would lead into some dream pop, but here, provides the melodic backbone for some seriously mesmerizing dubstep skitter, the beat thick and heavy, but still skeletal, while all around, fragmented melodies swirl, bits of vocal surface and fade away, "Summons" though is where the record comes into it's own, and displays a shift away from the lush ethereal atmospheres and toward something a bit more stripped down, the change is subtle, but it definitely works, sounding more like Burial here, a creeping tarpit drag, with some thick corrosive bass wobble, that's wreathed in effects which gives it a whole different effect, and the vocals here, hazy and and angelic, balanced by some sped up soul vocals that are transformed into woozy abstract melodies, it's the sort of jam that transcends 'dubstep' or any genre classifications, a gorgeous bit of electronica that we could listen to forever. But then "Lurking In The Shadows" lays down another killer groove, with more super distorted bass wobble, the whole track driven by a sped up looped vocal, and suddenly what we perceived as a less lush sound, or a more stripped down sound, is revealed as something more akin to economy of sound, it's not that things have been removed, but that everything is perfectly place, and there are no superfluous sonics, which becomes more evident as the record progresses, whether it's a loping dubbed out stutter, or a whirling sprawl of psychedelic ambience, a skittery almost hip hop groove, or Muslimgauze like Eastern tinged trip out. Ethereal and blissed out and dreamy one second, haunting and ominous and sonically sinister the next, check out the closer "Restraint", a gorgeous chunk of dubbed out rumbling bass heavy slo-mo soul, an be sure to stick around for the hidden track, which might be the darkest and heaviest of the bunch. Yet again, another album of untouchable beat bliss innovation from maybe our favorite dubstep outfit out there...

MPEG stream: Ennio's Eden
MPEG stream: Left-Hand Path
MPEG stream: Summons
MPEG stream: Demon Drum

After two stunning full lengths of abstract ethereal dubstep, a sound utterly distinctive in a genre that seemed to be gradually growing more and more homogenous, comes this killer, super limited, 3 track remix 12" (which comes with a cd-r version as well), offering up 3 pretty dramatic reimaginings of two of our favorite Clubroot jams. The first comes from a drum and bass producer called SPL, who takes the original and supercharges it, jacks it way up, and transforms it into a fucked up and fierce slab of buzzing dubstep, the beats jagged and booming, the bass thick and sinewy, and that low end wobble sooo thick it'll rattle your ribcage. Big blasts of buzz and wobble separated by stretches of washed out softly pulsing swirl, but EVERY time that bass drops, it just KILLS. Up next is Bryan Zentz, a techno/dub producer, who keeps the mood of the original, just dubs it out a bit more, and adds a bunch of bass, but not that buzzing dubstep wobble, instead, just a warm whirring layer of thrum and throb, while the various beats get wreathed in echo and reverb, the whole track a bit more washed out and abstract, and the drops here too, manage to be just as dramatic, just more moody and minimal, and the bass, still manages to get the woofers woofing. Finally, Vancouver dubstepper Kuma takes the original, and somehow manages to make it even more ghostly and haunting, all shadows and slow shifting textures, the dubbed out bass dialed way back, the ambience pushed to the fore, the whole vibe laid back, woozy and warbly, a bit foreboding and soundtracky, perfectly complimenting the original. Rare is the remix record where they all get it right, changing it enough to make it worthwhile, but without losing the spirit of the original... Not sure how limited this is, but we do know it's already gone, we got about 15 copies, and we can NOT get more, so grab one while you can. Housed in a plain black sleeve, with a little built in pocket for the cd-r.

MPEG stream: Sempiternal (SPL Remix)
MPEG stream: Dulcet (Kuma Remix)

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

We've been going pretty crazy around here for the epic atmospheric dubstep of Clubroot, heaping crazy effusive praise on both full lengths, the second of which, we managed to get a very few copies of a super deluxe edition, that featured a second bonus disc, that we thought was maybe even better than the album itself. Those tracks were not included on the vinyl version, or on the single cd version, but now, that bonus cd has been pressed up as a super limited 12", so folks who bought the vinyl, can grab one of these, to make their version of II-MMX complete, and folks who bought the cd but didn't get the bonus disc, now's your chance to nab those extra 3 songs, and trust us, it's well worth it. And for those new to the magical musical mystery of Clubroot, the sound is lush and expansive, trading the skeletal skitter and ominous minimalism of most dubstep for something totally different, something otherworldly, bursting with warmth, synths and voices, everything gauzy and hazy and hauntingly beautiful, organic and dreamy. These sounds are an ever evolving mutant strain of dubstep, ethereal and ephemeral, washed out and spectral, melancholy and wistful, vocals play a much bigger part on the second record, which we can tell you is what usually turns us off when it comes to jungle or dubstep, but this is no diva shit, instead, the female vocals are ghostly and soulful, drifting amidst the various other layers, adding a distinctly human dimension to Clubroot's sound. Imagine some mysterious blend of the Orb and Portishead, a sort of dark, brooding, chill out sound, and you'll get a rough idea of what to expect here. Long stretches of gauzy synthy shimmer hovering over rumbling bass, but instead of just explosive squelches, the bass is sculpted into something way more melodic and textural, giving the songs heft and weight unconnected to the dancefloor. The vocals, while sometimes left to drift and float, othertimes are chopped and processed and become another rhythmic element, and the beats, well, while the 'beats' themselves hew pretty close to the dubstep standard, they deviate enough to keep things interesting, sometimes getting all shuffly and spare, but other times more tangly and dense like some sort of slowed down jungle, but always perfectly suited to the sounds swirling around it, and the beats remain unobtrusive, more a part of the overall sonic scenery, which helps to make the sounds here so soothing and mesmerizing. For true dubsteppers, Clubroot might be so far removed as to not necessarily qualify as dubstep at all, but for the rest of us, that's not a bad thing at all, which is why Clubroot occupies a special space in our heart (and record collections) somewhere right between Kode9 and Burial... The three bonus tracks from the original double cd bonus disc, take all of the above and weave them into something even more magical, incredibly captivating and catchy, but still haunting and otherwordly, groovy and funky for sure, but that's not really what it's about, as much as painting pictures in sound, or opening a portal to another dimension, these tracks are like the soundtrack to some space station chillout after hours session, or some early morning fog cloaked empty earth stroll, or an eyes closed, mind open astral projection inner space exploration. This stuff is both epic and cosmic, intimate and personal, and still ranks as some of the most incredible electronic music being made today. And a note for vinyl folks who bought II-MMX on wax, the sleeve for the lp version is oversized, just a bit, to leave space for this here 12"!!

Longtime aQ fave, cinematic dubstepper Clubroot released the amazing III - MMXII record not too long ago, and folks who bought the vinyl version, missed out on two of our favorite tracks from that record, due to space limitations, which have now been released as a super limited 12" single, with a bonus track, only available previously on mixes, and not included on the cd version either. Folks who own the cd, skip down to read about the bonus track, as you've already got the other two. Vinyl nerds, luxuriate in the A side, the lush, brooding "Summons", with its thick rumbling bass, skeletal beat, woozy swirling ambience, spaced out and darkly psychedelic, subtly sinister, with gorgeous hazy vocals drifting above the slow churning groove below, listening to this now, it's hard to imagine this was a track they left OFF the lp. Same with "My Kingdom", not nearly as dark, but more skittery and textured, with fluttery flute like melodies, Burial like slo-soul vocals, all wrapped around a killer stuttery groove, backed up by ominous strings, and swoonsome synth swells, super spacious and spare, haunting and very cinematic. The bonus track is much house-ier, soft swirls of synth chords drift beneath a pulsing shuffling beat, more of those slo-mo soul vocals, and with a MEAN drop, the bass thick an corrosive, a rib cage rattling wobble that underpins the rest of the song, chopped up into a weird rumbling rhythmic counterpoint, and laced with bits of staticky glitch. The song darkening considerably from the beginning, and blossoming into something more drifty and ambient as the fluttery flutes return and the sounds gradually blisses out into an ethereal soft focus electro-dub shimmer.

MPEG stream: Summons
MPEG stream: My Kingdom

One of two discs vying for our personal dubstep disc of the year. The other is the recent Mordant Music disc, which we'll try to review next time, an unlikely collaboration between Mordant and the Skull Disco crew, and this, the first full length from mysterious atmospheric dubstep soundscaper Clubroot. We know nothing about this guy (or these guys?), other than he takes that dubbed out skitter we love so much and sets it in expansive fields of swirling ambience, creeped out dronescapes and all manner of super evocative and gorgeously textural soundworlds. Where as most dubstep is super spare and stripped down, skeletal even, the sound here is lush and sprawling. Thick layers of synths whir and shimmer and buzz, deep swells throbbing and pulsing, everything hazy and gauzy and washed out, every song some sort of otherworldy dreamscape, shot through with some super bad ass bit of pounding churning dubstep stutter. The massive basslines and fluctuating synth buzz that usually adds texture to typical dubstep, here just becomes another element in Clubroot's mysterious mist shrouded sonic landscape. The cover features a lonely tree, set atop a rocky outcropping, the sky dense with clouds, the picture all misty and hauntingly lonely seeming, which perfectly reflects the mood of the music here. Strip away the beats, and you'd still be left with an incredible bit of blackened new age swirl, of abstract kosmiche krautdrone, but add the beats, and these sounds become something entirely other. This is definitely not dancemusic, this is mind expansion music. Late night, lights off, starting at the stars drifting off, other dimension, spaced out, dream dub music. Clubroot taps into the same darkside as Burial, and Kode9, and the more atmospheric beatmakers, but where those guys pull back before the fog grows to thick, Clubroot pushes forward, traveling through the dark forest, into some forbidden zone, some land lost in time, lost from time, a massive emptiness, as beautiful as it is lonely and ominous, and this is the soundtrack to that lost world. So intense and haunting and unlike any other dubstep, or electronic music even, that we've heard before. The rare sort of record that lets even the most jaded and heard-it-all listener get totally, and fantastically lost. And if you need more than our effusive gushing praise, look no further than Fenriz, 1/2 of legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, a long time lover of techno and electronic music, who has this to say about Clubroot: "This is the sort of soaring dubstep I'd never expect to come out of the US! I just transferred the adorable "Embryo" track to my MP3 player FAVES 09 list, as I am going tenting and swimming in a forest lake tomorrow with some connoiceur-friends [sic]. It's sleek and not nasty, the melodic kind and not the grimy. But wait a minute, it seems like the newest tracks are on first, as the last songs drift into some de-tranced balearic style, even with vocals stabs and 90s synths! Blimey." And if you can't trust Fenriz on matters of dubstep, then who can you trust? WAY recommended. And quite possibly dubstep record of the year!

MPEG stream: Low Pressure Zone
MPEG stream: Embryo
MPEG stream: High Strung
MPEG stream: Dulcet

ULTRA limited repress of this long out of print aQ favorite, remastered, and with a slightly different sequence, pressed on heavy white vinyl, and hand numbered (only 200 copies!!!). Here's our review from when we first listed this way back in 2009... One of two favorite dubstep discs of the year (2009) so far, the first full length from mysterious atmospheric dubstep soundscaper Clubroot. We know nothing about this guy, other than he takes that dubbed out skitter we love so much and sets it in expansive fields of swirling ambience, creeped out dronescapes and all manner of super evocative and gorgeously textural soundworlds. Where as most dubstep is super spare and stripped down, skeletal even, the sound here is lush and sprawling. Thick layers of synths whir and shimmer and buzz, deep swells throbbing and pulsing, everything hazy and gauzy and washed out, every song some sort of otherworldy dreamscape, shot through with some super bad ass bit of pounding churning dubstep stutter. The massive basslines and fluctuating synth buzz that usually adds texture to typical dubstep, here just becomes another element in Clubroot's mysterious mist shrouded sonic landscape. The cover features a lonely tree, set atop a rocky outcropping, the sky dense with clouds, the picture all misty and hauntingly lonely seeming, which perfectly reflects the mood of the music here. Strip away the beats, and you'd still be left with an incredible bit of blackened new age swirl, of abstract kosmiche krautdrone, but add the beats, and these sounds become something entirely other. This is definitely not dancemusic, this is mind expansion music. Late night, lights off, starting at the stars drifting off, other dimension, spaced out, dream dub music. Clubroot taps into the same darkside as Burial, and Kode9, and the more atmospheric beatmakers, but where those guys pull back before the fog grows to thick, Clubroot pushes forward, traveling through the dark forest, into some forbidden zone, some land lost in time, lost from time, a massive emptiness, as beautiful as it is lonely and ominous, and this is the soundtrack to that lost world. So intense and haunting and unlike any other dubstep, or electronic music even, that we've heard before. The rare sort of record that lets even the most jaded and heard-it-all listener get totally, and fantastically lost. And if you need more than our effusive gushing praise, look no further than Fenriz, 1/2 of legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, a long time lover of techno and electronic music, who has this to say about Clubroot: "This is the sort of soaring dubstep I'd never expect to come out of the US! I just transferred the adorable "Embryo" track to my MP3 player FAVES 09 list, as I am going tenting and swimming in a forest lake tomorrow with some connoiceur-friends [sic]. It's sleek and not nasty, the melodic kind and not the grimy. But wait a minute, it seems like the newest tracks are on first, as the last songs drift into some de-tranced balearic style, even with vocals stabs and 90s synths! Blimey." And if you can't trust Fenriz on matters of dubstep, then who can you trust? WAY recommended. And quite possibly dubstep record of 2009, and we're guessing many years to follow!

MPEG stream: Low Pressure Zone
MPEG stream: Embryo
MPEG stream: High Strung

Back in print, now in a nicer edition on Bureau-B! Nobody did spaced out krauty ambiance better than Berlin's Cluster. Maybe best known for their collaboration with Brian Eno, it was their work leading up to those monumental records that helped usher in a new wave of sound that's been latched onto and updated by many over the years. It's hard not to hear their influence on folks like Mouse On Mars, Aphex Twin and the atmospheric moments of Kid-A era Radiohead. It's always so great to remember and be reminded that they did it all without synthesizers (really, they say so in the liner notes!). Instead Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Plank were each armed with an organ, effect pedals, analog echo machines, alarm clocks, violin, etc. 3 songs and 40+ minutes long '71 is such a nice record to put the headphones on and begin to wander and fade away into their hypnotizing sounds.

MPEG stream: Untitled (15:33)
MPEG stream: Untitled (21:14)

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. German electronic music pioneers Moebius and Roedelius live on their first ever US tour.

Famed electronic krautrock duo of Moebius & Roedelius, like it says, live in Japan.

Either you'll love it or hate it, but that may be the case with most stuff from Digital Hardcore. Cobra Killer is the collaborative effort from Gina of EC8OR and Annika of Shizuo (whom you may remember as the woman from Shizuo's recent tour grinding relentlessly to Shizuo's music on stage and exposing herself to the audience). Taking 60's Blue Note soul records and purposefully arrhythmic beats, Cobra Killer does not groove in the least. Instead they take Throbbing Gristle's gleeful antagonism to rock & roll, electronica, whatever... and scream like Lydia Lunch (age 16) over top. A very stupid record.

Of all the folks involved in the world of ultra stark, minimalist techno and barely there click and glitch, we've always been pretty partial to Ivan Pavlov, aka COH. Not sure exactly what it is, but he always manages to take his stark minimalism somewhere full of life and emotion and energy. What in other hands would be nothing but a sonic experiment, in Pavlov's becomes a song, or a groove, or just a big chunk of sound that resonates with energy and creativity and power. Not sure if the title is supposed to intimate something about the music within and it's supposed relation to classic pop constructs. But in no way is this Pavlov's poppiest material, not by a long shot. That's not to say it isn't great, it is, it's just much more barebones and barely there. Disc one sounds like Neu! after being dipped in acid, so all the flesh and organs have liquified and sloughed off, leaving just a skeletal framework, an intricate assemblage of static and stutter, hiss and click, with an innate funkiness that might just be flecks of melody clinging desperately to the already picked clean bones. Disc B is a reissue of a 1997 release originally released in a limited run of SEVEN copies and given only to friends. This disc is a little more all over the place, while the recurring theme is still definitely Pavlov's microscopic glitch funk minimalism, there are random moments of Ikeda like test tones, stuttering synth squelch, and once in a while even a little bleeping blooping outer space swoosh. Packaged in a cool geometrically abstract double digipak.

MPEG stream: Da Kota Rap
MPEG stream: Apex (Twig)
MPEG stream: Post-Pop Reprise

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. The fourth in the monthly series of 20 minute compositions that countdown the end of the Millenium. COH has provided perhaps the most 'listenable' so far (which isn't to hard after the gut wrenching sine waves of Ryoji Ikeda's contribution for March)... slippery layers of soothing drones. Drifting and dreamy minimalism.