Wow, we kind of forgot what a weird and wonderful record this is. We've always had a place for the Flying Lizards in our hearts, but their blaze post-punk dub covers of fifties and sixties songs always seemed to outshine their other interesting qualities. Led by avant-composer David Cunningham, with the help of David Toop, Vivien Goldman, Steve Beresford and the flat vocal delivery of Deborah Evans, The Flying Lizards got their break when Virgin released their first single in 1979, a purposely skewed and dispassionate version of Eddie Cohran's "Summertime Blues" and it became a minor hit. But it was their second single and more enduring cover of Barret Strong's "Money" with its clanging prepared piano and trap percussion that got them on the charts and signed for a full album deal. That song gets a little overplayed these days, but the long version has one of the best extended dub breakdowns of the period that just doesn't get played enough. But besides the two covers and the channeling of Dagmar Krause (Slapp Happy, Henry Cow, The Art Bears) in the goofy cover of Kurt Weil's "Der Song Von Mandelay" that opens the record, lies a much stranger record. Sure there is the punk disco of "Her Story", "TV" and the danceable experimentation of "Russia". But there also is the triptych of minimalist dub experiments in the tracks "Flood" "Trouble" and "Events During Flood" that take the record to a much darker place. Culminating with Vivien Goldman's hushed and strange "The Window", proving that although the band was a one hit wonder, they were no one trick pony. This reissue doesn't contain the bonus tracks of previous reissues, but does include the single edit of "Money". Here's hoping Microwerks will reissue their other two records, Fourth Wall and Top Ten as well! Great stuff!
We fell so hard for the latest Flying Lotus release, Los Angeles, that we knew we had to go back and give the proper attention to his debut. We'd heard bits and pieces of it before but never really got to spend any quality time with. Until now.
Proving that his latest great record was not just some fluke, 1983 offers up for display lots of the roots and promise that would blossom into the powerful cosmic instrumental hip-hop/electronica that made the latest Flying Lotus release one of our favorites of the year. This disc, from a few years back, barely pales in comparison. While not quite as explosive and engaging as FL's newest record, it's still a skillfully crafted and delightful to listen to chunk of crunchy yet smooth flowing beats and melodies with equal nods to downtempo, hiphop, and electronica. Definitely the kind of record that should appeal to anyone into Madlib, Boards Of Canada, Prefuse 73 or even prime era Morr Music outings. Glad we took a moment to look back, as this is proving to be a record that deserves a home here at AQ and we hope on your shelves as well!
Coming up with a new album on the heels of a hit like Los Angeles is definitely difficult, but Flying Lotus have created a pretty perfect follow up with another amazing disc of esoteric electronica, rife with everything we loved about LA, as well as some serious sonic twists and turns.
While their past releases always found Flying Lotus with a foot firmly planted in the world of hip-hop production, Cosmogramma finds Flying Lotus branching out much more with an energy that is both frantic and majestic, a combination that is pretty damn hard to pull off, but they do manage it here with flying colors!
What makes Flying Lotus so unique and sound so ahead of their peers is that you can't sum up their music with one word, genre or catch all phrase. Yes there are moments of dubstep, and hints of their more hip-hop minded past but there is also a nice use of instrumentation including harps, strings, horns, and keys that help give the record a rounded and celestial feel. But along with those majestic and pretty moments there is a whole lot of frantic and urgent energy that runs throughout the record. Like the last outing, there are a few tracks with guest vocals (including Thom Yorke!), and with all these varying ingredients, what makes Cosmogramma such a success is that they all meld together so seamlessly and create a true album listening experience. This is a start to finish listen, in that you get to really feel the music, and get swept away by the range of sounds and the feelings that weave all these songs together into a single organic and expansive whole. So great!
There is no doubt that this record is going to find itself near the top of many of our year end favorite lists. This is one of those rare records that on first listen you are grabbed by its immediacy & intensity and with each repeated listen you melt deeper into its richness. While just in his early 20's Steven Ellison (aka Flying Lotus) has crafted a record wise beyond his years. There is a fluidity and transcendence on Los Angeles that defies categorization. Call it instrumental hip-hop if you want, but these are songs that would sound right at home next to spiritual Afro-jazz, psychedelic soul and even dubstep. Taking inspiration from the late great J Dilla, Flying Lotus understands how to extract such punch and soul from all the sounds he takes and creates. Flying Lotus has a wide world vision that's as informed by Eastern grooves and psychedelia as it is hip-hop, electronica, video games and cartoon culture (he used to make music for Adult Swim). This is stirring many of the same emotions and excitement as when Four Tet released the Rounds record and in many ways it brings to the next level what so much of Prefuse 73 tries to do.
It actually didn't surprise us that much to find out that Ellison is the great nephew of Alice Coltrane as you can hear the amazing legacy of her spiritual and universal consciousness in the sounds that Flying Lotus create. In fact there are a few upfront Coltrane moments on the record including "Aunti's Harp" which is an all too short but beautiful majestic minute of Alice on the harp. Flying Lotus has found a spot next to Madlib as a much needed ambassador of someone taking hip-hop as a launching pad orbiting to such pleasing outer dimensions. In fact , some of us couldn't help but daydream about a Flying Lotus/Erykah Badu collaboration as they both are so tapped into a magical and exciting landscape of hip-hop & soul that soars in spiritual and psychedelic horizons. Filled with undeniable passion and of course highly recommended!
A frenetic 7 song ep that finds Flying Lotus building more nervous kinetic rhythms and lurching arcade game textures than on past releases (though we got some hint of it on the first half of his last full length Cosmogramma) This reminds us a bit of a Zomby's One Foot Ahead of the Other, but on a more wonky tip than Zomby's 8-bit rave-ups. We're not sure if this is just a moment to release some pent-up anxious energy or a sneak peek into a possible full blown assault on their next outing. Got to give them credit for their exploration and experimentation, but we find ourselves missing the majestic downtempo moments from past releases.
Flying Lotus is back and with every new release seems to bring something new to the table. This time around he doesn't spread himself as far out sonically as he did on Cosmogramma but instead reigns himself in to refine the details of his complex musical palette. This is definitely a late night record, full of lucid dreamy qualities, referencing obscure quiet storm RnB, celestial jazz, and narcoleptic funk, but with a soaring jewel-like exactitude. Cinematic in scope, we don't just listen, but become engrossed in his floating oceanic soundworld. Guest stints by Erykah Badu, Thom Yorke, Thundercat and others add to the ponderous gauzy midnight feel. Recommended! Vinyl comes with download.
This record is so wackadoo, and we mean that in the best possible way! Flying Lotus records have always been more about the whole than their individual parts, often built around a large abstract metaphysical concept, where multiple ideas and spaces can congeal and separate. This time around, that concept is revealed in the title, and this album is a journey of short vignettes where like the process of death, there is a hectic loss of control, regrets and fears bubble to the surface, and then there is the quieting and majestic expanse, and sometimes this happens all in one track. When we first put this on, some of us were like, 'What in Jaco Pastorius hell is this?' The sound of prog jazz fusion may not be everyone's cup of tea - regular Flying Lotus collaborator, Thundercat, who makes his own George Duke inspired soul jams, provides the fret-hopping bass and Herbie Hancock (!!) is on the Fender Rhodes! But, those fusion sounds are tempered by some of the most sublimely beautiful ambient passages. What keeps this from being overtly indulgent are the short track times (mostly every track is under 3 minutes) and the genre-jumps from instrumental hip-hop to jazz prog, from cosmic ambiance to mind-rattling raps provided by Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dog, and Flying Lotus alter-ego, Captain Murphy - who has a vocal affectation of stuffed-up worry that could easily be a voice from one of the Fat Albert kids. You're Dead may be the aural equivalent of the film Enter The Void, but with a sharper focus and an incredible all-encompassing flow that really feels like we have been through a life-altering event. Nothing else out there sounds like this, a black prog beauty!
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
These showed up on Friday last week and we were so excited we made a whole "in-between" list out of 'em! If you didn't happen to see that, well, we got more in this week and here's that 'first impressions' review again (yeah, we sold out so fast last weekend that none of us here have even gotten a chance to pick one up yet!):
Hey, it's like Christmas in March! The new Buddha Machines are here! We wanted to let you all know, since it's been three long years since the last one - and ten years, believe it or not, since the FM3's original Buddha Machine appeared. Hence, the release of Buddha Machine 5 marks "a decade of drone." If you're not familiar with the Buddha Machine, well... we're very surprised. We've sold SO many of Buddha Machine I, II, III and IV.
But in case you haven't seen one yet, it's basically a small, handheld device - a "battery powered sound box" or, as some would have it, "pocket sound system" - that plays a discrete set of loops of ambient music. Kind of a Zen alternative to the iPod, in a way. Ever since the FM3 created their first iteration of the Buddha Machine, they've been extremely popular, with artists remixing the loops, museum shows, copy-cat sound boxes, and whatnot. Brian Eno was a famous early adopter. You could take a look at our earlier Buddha Machine reviews if you wanna get more info on what they're all about.
So, fans have been hankering for a new Buddha Machine, we were hoping it would be here for Xmas last year (they're the best stocking stuffers for music/sound geeks), but better late than never. We'll let you know the basics about it now - but really you know you want one (or more) already, right?
Buddha Machine 5 contains nine blissful, beautiful new loops by the Beijing-based experimental duo FM3 (Christiaan Virant & Zhang Jian), featuring, among other things, "deep, orchestral drones, a Steinway grand piano, and the ambient washes of a vintage monosynth". It's got the usual volume and pitch controls, and a line out so you could plug it into a stereo or whatever, although of course it's self contained with it's own little speaker. In a departure from the many neon hues of the Buddha Machine 4, there are two colors available for the Buddha Machine 5, a Black one (this one) and a White one, each with "a special five-layer silicon coating", providing "a warm and fuzzy handfeel", which sounds kind of kinky. We'll be trying it out tonight.
And oh yeah, requires two AA batteries (not included).
These showed up on Friday last week and we were so excited we made a whole "in-between" list out of 'em! If you didn't happen to see that, well, we got more in this week and here's that 'first impressions' review again (yeah, we sold out so fast last weekend that none of us here have even gotten a chance to pick one up yet!):
Hey, it's like Christmas in March! The new Buddha Machines are here! We wanted to let you all know, since it's been three long years since the last one - and ten years, believe it or not, since the FM3's original Buddha Machine appeared. Hence, the release of Buddha Machine 5 marks "a decade of drone." If you're not familiar with the Buddha Machine, well... we're very surprised. We've sold SO many of Buddha Machine I, II, III and IV.
But in case you haven't seen one yet, it's basically a small, handheld device - a "battery powered sound box" or, as some would have it, "pocket sound system" - that plays a discrete set of loops of ambient music. Kind of a Zen alternative to the iPod, in a way. Ever since the FM3 created their first iteration of the Buddha Machine, they've been extremely popular, with artists remixing the loops, museum shows, copy-cat sound boxes, and whatnot. Brian Eno was a famous early adopter. You could take a look at our earlier Buddha Machine reviews if you wanna get more info on what they're all about.
So, fans have been hankering for a new Buddha Machine, we were hoping it would be here for Xmas last year (they're the best stocking stuffers for music/sound geeks), but better late than never. We'll let you know the basics about it now - but really you know you want one (or more) already, right?
Buddha Machine 5 contains nine blissful, beautiful new loops by the Beijing-based experimental duo FM3 (Christiaan Virant & Zhang Jian), featuring, among other things, "deep, orchestral drones, a Steinway grand piano, and the ambient washes of a vintage monosynth". It's got the usual volume and pitch controls, and a line out so you could plug it into a stereo or whatever, although of course it's self contained with it's own little speaker. In a departure from the many neon hues of the Buddha Machine 4, there are two colors available for the Buddha Machine 5, a Black one and a White one (this one), each with "a special five-layer silicon coating", providing "a warm and fuzzy handfeel", which sounds kind of kinky. We'll be trying it out tonight.
And oh yeah, requires two AA batteries (not included).
Whoa Fog, we almost mistook your latest full length for a Beck album! Mind you, not any that Mr. Hansen's released to date, but sorta like one that he might make in an alternate universe. And with regards to the album's title, we wanna let you know that we haven't really registered much of a freakout here. If there were any, they must've been deeply internalized. No, this is slouchy, boyish, shufflin' about. They've always had indie rock leanings, but 10th Avenue Freakout pushes the farthest in that direction to date. Still very eclectic though, and much more cohesive than their previous release, the meandering Hummer EP.
A nice 12" from Fog, the one man band from Minneapolis that sits expertly astride the line separating "rock" from "electronica". Gorgeous strummed guitar gives Check Fraud its texture, while numerous sonic interruptions, vocal snippets, and bloopy bleeps enhance it. Kid Koala provides a stunning remix of the piece, slowing it down and making the melody even more pretty and sweet. Very nice. Good for DJs. I'm going to spin this for sure.
In early 2001 Windy got really into the original release of the Fog record, which I guess we and a few stores in Minneapolis carried, and that's it. Well, the fine and talented folk at Ninjatune signed Fog, and here's a re-release of the album, plus three
Fog is a one-man project out of Minneapolis that takes you on a journey through said guy's twisted brain. As evidenced by the preponderance of mournful, epic guitarwork on the record, Andrew Broder's background is certainly with guitar-based rock music, but hey it's the new millenium now and samplers have changed everything. Thus the record begins with a spoken piece by hip hop emcee MF Doom, followed by a lengthy tornado of manic samples and swirling percussion. The tension's got you half expecting the breakbeats to kick in at that point (yeah, that's how much this record's first few minutes sound like a DJ Shadow or other Mo'Wax record), but instead you get Beck-like stuttering beats and languid, albeit heavily processed, vocals. In fact this reminds us a lot of Beck (who in fact came in a few weeks ago with Dan the Automator and they both bought the Fog 12"). A bevy of swiped genres battle one another throughout the record, turntablist scratching overtakes doom-laden moans, Broder indulges his inner DJ's penchant for using sampled vocal snippets to carry on an album-length narrative, and it all finally culminates in a nine minute impassioned aching guitarsong at the end that reminds us of Joel Phelps or Rex. Eclectic indeed! In a good way. It's not perfect, but we still recommend it.
BTW, this The Fog is no relation to J. Mascis' similarly named band.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The ultra-electronic parasitic duo Fon regurgitates the technological mutilations of wired arrangements of broken televisions, microwaves, metal detectors, etc. within piercing electronic architectural rhythmic packages. Released in conjunction with the Viennese conceptual electronics thinktank Mego, mutant electronics and digital glitch worship abound.
Around these parts (Aquarius), 'post-rock' has become sort of a dirty word, synonymous with 'adult contemporary' or worse 'really bad jazz'. Yet a few gems have escaped the black hole that is Tortoise's all encompassing influence on the current state of indie rock, and done something interesting... Fridge's latest album "Eph" being one, and another being Fonn's "Field 831". Fonn's sonics do touch on the jazzy rhythmic elements of the Chicago scene, but employ the experimental spirit of Faust and bring a number of space rock guitar tricks to the realm of electronica, not unlike Bowery Electric.
4th album from Norweigan avant-fusioneers, 2nd for Rune G.
Norway's Rune Grammofon label has become one of those imprints whose releases we ALWAYS have to pay attention to -- and not just 'cause of the lovely packaging courtesy artist/designer Kim Hiorthoy in which they are invariably resplendent, but because they are often quite excellent. As is this one, Food's "Veggie" (housed in, of course, a handsome Hiorthoy digipack). Apparently it's the third album from this experimental jazz group. The other two, unheard by us, were live recordings, but with "Veggie" Food move into the studio, and not just any: the "Audio Virus Lab" of Norwegian sound artist Deathprod. In the context of Helge "Deathprod" Sten's electronics-infused production, this becomes something rather other than normal "jazz". It's experimental indeed. Led by British saxophonist Iain Ballamy, the Food quartet also features Supersilent's Arve Henriksen on trumpet, Mats Eilertsen on acoustic and electric basses, and Thomas Stronen on drums (and most of 'em are also credited with "sampler", so it's not just Deathprod doing the electronicky stuff).
If you count Mr. Deathprod, who is also a Supersilent member (and who actually gets a whole track here, "Nofood", all to himself), this band is 2/5ths Supersilent, and boy, do we love Supersilent -- they're our favorite Norwegian "death-jazz" improv n' electronics group. So already we were anticipating good things from "Veggie", and you don't have to listen for very long to encounter echoes of Arve Henriksen's breathy solo album "Sakuteiki", the glacial drones of Supersilent's "5", and the electronic chaos of Supersilent's "1-3" as well. Bubbling underneath with electro-acoustic beats and drones, this is spacey, lyrical, melodic, 21st century jazz, establishing a range of moods from a mellow Miles Davis trumpet at sunset looking over a North Sea fjord kind of thing to more abrasive, paranoid glitching and shrieking experience... Really nice. Good, and good for you.
DJ Food's trip hop ironies appear not so tongue in cheek now, as if the jokes once required within the hip hop tricknological breaks to be a Ninja Tune record aren't a part of the matured DJ Food. Filmic scores of sweeping strings, stand-up basslines, and so-downtempo-you-gotta-be-stoned breaks. In spite of the seductive spoken poetry of Ken Nordine, there's an atmosphere of sadness that pervades the moody theatricality of this album. Nice.
These oddly monikered psychedelic electro kraut synth wranglers return, after the super awesome Mango Sunrise record we reviewed a little while back, which was equal parts classic Klaus Schulze, synth-kraut worshippers and aQ faves Bitchin Bajas, and of course John Carpenter and Goblin. But on this new 12"s FP take those sounds and focus more on their dancier side, still weaving lush tapestries of layered synths, and electro skitter, which were definitely all over Mango Sunrise, but here that sort of retro cinematic futurism is given a dancefloor makeover, the end result being a sound closer to, say, Majeure than Zombi, that sort of Italo-disco style soundtrackery, fused to Food Pyramid's undeniable krautrock leanings.
The opener, had the beat been removed, would be a pulsating groover, but with the house-y beat, and the reverb drenched megaphone vox, this sounds like some weirdo dance party, noisy, a little post punky, but most definitely groovy, funky and tranced out. The second track adds a whole mess of murk, positioning the sound more toward the James Ferraro side of the sonic spectrum, a sort of old VHS tape vibe, but then when the thick buzzing synth comes in, it could almost be Daft Punk or something, albeit a much more raw and underground version.
The flipside offers up two similar jams, the first a super driving groove, with super distorted, crumblingly distorted guitars over what almost sounds like a calypso beat fused to a house music pound, again, sans beats, this would be some blissed out ultra distorted guitarnoise psychedelia, so imagine that sort of sound anchored by a churning looped groove. The closer is more sparse and skeletal, cheesy eighties synth pads over blurry synth drifts, the background almost sounding like ABC or Spandau Ballet, but then female vocals drift in, and the song becomes a glimmering late night downtempo driftscape, that sounds like a more post punk 4AD given a modern krautdrone synth wave makeover, the whole thing hazy and gauzy and dreamily druggy.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Housed in a cool, full color DJ style 12" sleeve, and includes a digital download as well.
Ecstasy And Refreshment is the latest from these psychedelic new age kraut worshippers and might just be their weirdest yet. It's sonically all over the map, although you might not immediately realize that from the openng track, all swooshy and washed out, airy vocals drifting over pulsing minimal krautock, sorta like Can crossed with Stereolab, but then the second track immediately mixes things up, a little more cold wave, all icy electronics, and steely female spoken vox over a sort of electro new wave vamp, laced with swirly FX and synth throb, still managing to be sort of shimmery and psychedelic but definitely something we haven't really heard from these guys before. And from there on out, while the record does dip occasionally back into swirly krauty psych, it spends much of it's time way more far out. Like the spaced, slowed down, tribal electro jam that sound like an even more psychedelic Omar Souleyman (!), echo drenched vocals wrapped in tons of FX and swirling swath of thick billowing synths, and then things get even more African sounding, like we're suddenly listening to one of those Saharan Cellphone comps, groovy, and propulsive, before the sonic gears shift again, and suddenly the vibe is almost disco-y, total dancefloor throb, and yet, still peppered with some noisy crunch, and glorious cascades of dubbed out FX.
Finally, the band slip back into more tripped out krautrocking motorik shimmer, but this time with sultry witchy vocals that end up making it sound like it something that would be right at home on the Italians Do It Better label, before getting even more blurry and dreamy, super blissed out and ethereal toward as we near the end of the record, returning to the washed out kraut-age of the opener, but instead of ending like that, they toss in one more sonic curveball, with a closer that gets a bit funky, adding a deep bassline, some more chantlike vocals, that again remind us a little of Omar Souleyman, as well as some trippy FX and some turntable squiggles, all in all a heaping dose of serious slinky grooviness transforming what would otherwise have been a dark dubbed out swirl into a woozy groovy electro-dub slow-jam.
Cool!
We dug the most recent Food Pyramid record, Mango Sunrise, a fantastic collection of psych kraut synth wave weirdness that we couldn't stop listening to. So we were super excited for this, a collaboration with the oddly monikered Roy Orb D.MT., not sure who, or what that is, but he/they make a good match for Food Pyramid, this collaboration even more blissed out and ethereal than the FP record proper. The opener sounds like a warped, lysergic reinterpretation of Vangelis' Chariots Of Fire, with swirling, soaring washed out ethereal melodies, that distinctive 'ch-ch-ch-ch' dubbed out drum skitter, the whole thing laced with eighties style drum fills, squiggly melodies, and crunchy squelchy synth swirls. The follow up is another sprawl of soft shimmery synth swirl, but here wedded to a programmed beat, which grows more and more propulsive as the track progresses, eventually the track transforming completely into an awesomely cheesy chunk of eighties VHS chase scene / credit sequence synthscapery, replete with shredding guitar leads, and pulsing Carpenter like synths.
The rest of the record sonically splits the difference, from the electro pop via psychedelic hypno-rock of "Summit Expedition", to the buzzy, noisy, dubby kosmische skitter of "Sandstorm", to the prismatic planetarium, synth bliss out of "Passage Rites", to the low slung electro-funk pop synth swirl of closer "Corealis".
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
It's been a longtime since we've heard from DJ Food, and the funkjaztikally tricknological lingusitics of DJ Food have certainly been missed. Working on one track with the seductive baritone spoken word of Ken "Colors" Nordine, DJ Food lays down four tracks of slippery noirish trip hop that would make Barry Adamson proud.
'U.K. co-conspirators Jonathan Moore and Matt Black record under a variety of names, including Hedfunk, Coldcut, Hex, and their more widely known moniker, DJ Food. A Recipe For Disaster is a collection of tracks--some old, some new--incorporating everything from lazy, ambient hip-hop to smoking R&B/funk to blazing, hyperkinetic jungle. Headz who've peeped the pair's past releases on the Funkjazztical Tricknology compilation and the handful of releases on their own Ninja Tune and Ntone labels will be pleased to know that the relentless experimenters have not rested on the laurels of their early successes (which include everything from the legendary "7 Minutes Of Madness" remix of Eric B. & Rakim's "Paid In Full" to cuts for Lisa Stansfield and Yaz, to full-length club gear such as Coldcut's Philosophy LP) ... Recipe is among Black and Moore's most listenable efforts to date, repaying repeated listening with a good mix of body and mind--sex music for the booksmart.' --Sean Cooper
Yay! With all the drama of DJ Shadow's seminal early single "What Does Your Soul Look Like", DJ Food's new EP on the always-dependable Ninjatune label is a 16-minute masterpiece of tension, buildup, and release. But where Shadow uses hip hop as a template with which to venture outwards, DJ Food beautifully manhandles post-rock. (And thank god, seeing how post-rock's been behaving badly lately.) This is the record Tortoise should've made. Filled with sounds of glass -- rims being rubbed, sustained chimes, etc. -- the record begins with four minutes of atmospheric minimalism that sounds like you're in deep silent outer space... and then Mr. Spock radios in (really) with some deep words and you realize you ARE in deep space. With a swoosh of broken glass, the drums kick in, brightly echoing layers of active breakbeats John McEntire probably has wet dreams over. The album concludes serenely with warm glass chimes. It's so lovely, a wonderfully refreshing surprise. Highly recommended.
Another oddball obscurity from UK horror movie soundtrack vinyl reissue Death Waltz, this one the 1982 cult sci-fi / horror 'classic', Forbidden World, aka Mutant, which like many Roger Corman films, was a rip off of a more popular film, in this case, Alien, and like most Corman rip-offs, it was grittier, shittier, and featured a lot more nudity. In fact, our memory of this movie from our childhood, is that it was maybe best known for the infamous lesbian shower scene! Even so, it did when some awards, and did achieve a kind of cult status, in part for the score, which is pretty weird by most movie music standards, in that it was made by composer Susan Justin, who was the singer/keyboardist in an arty new wave band called Pink Plastic, and the soundtrack to Forbidden World is essentially weird sci-fi new wave, the sound vaguely John Carpenter-ish, but mostly piano and synths, over simple funky drumming, with echo heavy wordless female vocals, the sound at times spaced out and kosmische, at others, almost like futuristic porn music, and at others like super haunting, and almost a little Radiophonic Workshop sounding. The slower tracks, burble and percolate, the sounds softly swirling and ominous, haunting synthscapes peppered with strange sound effects, and slow shifting textures, while other track pulse ominously, and others explode into full on groovy psychedelic new wave.
Oh and the plot? Well, some spacemen devise an experimental lifeform, meant to feed the whole galaxy, but something goes wrong, and that lifeform gestates and becomes something that is later discovered to be borne of human DNA, and said lifeform infuses its victims with some of that mutated DNA strain, which makes them melt and get all gloriously gooey and gory, and become the perfect food for the titular insectoid mutant. God bless Roger Corman!
Like all the Death Waltz releases, the packaging is SUPER deluxe. The vinyl is pressed on heavy, milky clear vinyl, the sleeve is an oversized casebound tip-on sleeve, with super striking new artwork (shower scene!), that artwork also reproduced on an oversized full color poster, inside a booklet, with liner notes from the composer, the director, and the artist, as well as reproductions of the original movie posters, and rare photos of Susan Justin recording the score in the studio. And as usual, these are super limited, and thus will be gone sooner rather than later, so don't blow it, and nab one before they're gone!
Yes, the Lopatin in this duo is in fact Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never fame - and Joel Ford was his partner in Games. For whatever reason, the duo have dropped the Games moniker, but they are still producing their earnestly reverential homage to '80s trashy electronic pop. This is the second of four singles, not sure what happened to the first one, as we never got that, but no matter as this one has all of the trappings of a Harold Faltermeyer production circa 1984 (you know "Axel F" from Beverly Hills Cop, or the score to Fletch). "Emergency Room" is all cocaine and legwarmers in its mid-tempo electro-funk groove built on sampled slap-basslines, vapid-but-catchy blorping melodies, vocoder vocals (augmented with modern day auto-tuning, mind you), and even an over the top LA rocker guitar solo thrown in for no real reason other than Harold Faltermeyer would have had an LA rocker at his disposal. The two B sides are from The Bug, who strips the song down to a slow motion crawl with lots of dubby atmospheres and little remaining but the vocals, and Gavin Russom, whose remix is a bubbly number that smoothes out many of the '80s references into a tumbling left-field techno number. Pressed as a picture disc with X-rays of spine and hands. Limited to 300 copies.
Channel Pressure is a record that seems wholly devoid of irony, even though everything indicates that it should be dripping with it. Daniel Lopatin is the mastermind behind the polygon electronica of Oneohtrix Point Never, and together with Joel Ford, he recorded one hell of an electro-pop single as Games that could have been lifted from any club circa 1986. That sense of time travel is still being dialed in for Channel Pressure (authored by Ford + Lopatin, who have dropped the Games moniker for something more in keeping with Stock, Aiken, and Waterman, although their sound is firmly American). This album is completely unashamed of its mid-'80s electro-pop aesthetic, with many of the boyband falsetto vocals popping out of the slick, urban-pop productions like ghost-jams of forgotten MTV wannabes of that time period. The spry electronic rhythms and bent-synth melodies become all the more ridiculous with the hair-metal guitar solos that spring to life for no good reason other than because they could. Ford + Lopatin even managed to convince Mexican Summer to spring for them to record in Jan Hammer's studio. Yeah, the same Jan Hammer who scored the Miami Vice theme song! Where Oneohtrix Point Never expresses some dripping emotions through the mainframe of sci-fi computing, Channel Pressure has its head buried in a pile of cocaine, imagining itself as a sci-fi lovestory with robots and super-computer, but comes across more as a pretty straight homage to the production styles of Nile Rodgers and Harold Faltermeyer. A new New Jack Swing awaits.
It was only a matter of time. If Forest Swords hadn't done it, someone definitely would have, but hard to imagine it could have sounded as good as this. DRONESTEP. That's what they call it. A fusion of dark post-rock ambient drone music and skittery spaced out dubstep. Warm languid guitars, brooding atmospheres, and laid back downtempo grooves. In the wrong hands it definitely could have been lame, but Forest Swords nailed it, the result so organic and warm and mesmerizing, odds are the last thing you'll be thinking about is what to call it. Instead you can just sit back, and let these lush droned out grooves carry you off.
Had this not been on Olde English Spelling Bee, it certainly wouldn't have been out of place on some upstart dubstep 12" label, it definitely has the same sort of lugubrious soporific feel as Burial or Kode9, murky, washed out, muted, muddy and bass heavy, but instead of being sample based, guitars unwind, spidery melodies all tangled up in clouds of hazy reverb, vocals drift in and out all spectral and ethereal, in fact if anything, it's like some awesome, nineties slowcore jam, Codeine, or Seam, or someone like that, remixed by Portishead, transformed into a different kind of slowcore, a bleak, moonlit, forest dancefloor slowcore, everything bathed in dark blues and soft blacks, smokey and gauzy, the beats skeletal and minimal, the guitars chiming, glistening and glimmering, the bass, rumbling and throbbing, a rib cage rattling hum, samples woven into the mix, but doused in effects, so vocals becomes little swirling clouds of truncated melody, and melodies drift heavenward like wisps of grey smoke. Every track here is a smoldering late night blur, a bleary ear-ed slither and skitter through some soft focus soundscape, dreamlike and hypnotic.
Gorgeously dark, otherworldly, warmly mysterious, and darn close to being our favorite new record this year...
Comes with a download coupon as well...
We made the first record from Forest Swords, Dagger Paths, a Record of The Week, way back in 2010. And like we said in that review, how could we not? Music that was originally described to us as "drone-step", and did in fact live up to that descriptor. That record definitely had a Burial / Kode9 vibe, and since then groups like oOoOO and Vessel have definitely channeled some of the same sound, but Dagger Paths sounded like outsider dubstep, created in a vacuum, and home recorded, the sounds raw and rough around the edges, as if someone who had never heard dubstep, and had been raised on experimental 4 trackery and abstract minimal noise music, figured 'what the heck? I'll give it a try.' So it was, lots of guitars, blurred into droning swaths, lots of reverb and hazy vocals, huge bass rumbles and murky beats, everything spectral and ethereal, sorta Codeine crossed with Portishead. So we were definitely taken aback a little by the new record, which at first blush, is way more polished, and lush, and high fidelity, and as much as we try not to be like THOSE people, who don't want bands to change, and just want the band to make the same record we love already over and over, it was hard to not miss the grit and the grime of the old record. But honestly, that knee jerk reaction lasted all of about 30 seconds, cuz holy shit, the new sound is equally awesome, woozy, and dark, and druggy, and lush, and layered, the beats hypnotic, the whole sound mesmerizingly tripped out, guitars are still in the mix, but they're more deftly woven into the sound, so they sound almost like orchestral swells, the vocals too, here garbled and distorted, becoming yet another part of the bigger picture, that picture being the sort of murky tarpit slo-mo soul we can't seem to get enough of. And yeah, if you already love Burial, oOoOO, Vessel, the most recent Haxan Cloak, Holy Other, etc., we're guessing a few seconds of the first sound sample below and you'll be sold BIG TIME.
Everything we loved about that first record is still present, but just a bit more polished and recontextualized, the vibe is still a sort of darkly psychedelic electronic slow-core, the sonic palette is much expanded though, giving the songs here a seriously prismatic sprawl, total wasted, zoner, late night come down chill out club jamz, with occasional forays into slightly more upbeat climes, a little jungle-y skitter here, a bit of dubsteppy throb there, dub looms large everywhere, in the liquid basslines, in the reverbed and echo drenched beats, and fear not, it's still occasionally weird as fuck, with songs splintering into chaotic drifts, or crumbling into warped noise, twisted samples and Morricone-esque guitar twang, all before lumbering back into another fantastically tranced out stuttery, skittery, electro-dub drone-soul lope. So good!
Forma are a Brooklyn synth-trio, fabricated from the same mold that gave us Oneohtrix Point Never, James Ferraro, and Stellar Om Source. Their Kraut-inspired electronics revolve around brightly rendered step sequencing, squelchy percolations, soft streaming melodies and quasi-ambient pads set upon drum machines. It's the rhythms that set Forma apart from many of their contemporaries, looking back to the Connie Plank productions in the early '80s (especially those Moebius & Beerbohm records) and without any indication that Forma has ever heard a techno or disco record, well maybe they've heard Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II, but that would be the most recently forward-thinking production that Forma would be referencing. Everything else is firmly planted at the Kosmische center of Cluster and Harmonia. Released on the suitably retrogarde Spectrum Spools imprint curated by Emeralds' John Elliott and funded by Editions Mego.
Richard Formby is someone you are probably less familiar with than most of the bands he has worked with: Vibracathedral Orchestra, The Telescopes, The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, Fuxa, Mogwai, Spaceman 3, Dean & Britta, The Pale Saints, Hood, the list goes on. Known mostly as a producer and remixer for the past twenty years, this is his first release as a musician, and we're surprised it's taken so long as this is really quite good. Part of a planned three volume set, Volume 1 is comprised of 8 instrumental compositions perfect for a blissful night-drive. From the motorik propulsions of "Karoli" (a memorium to Can's Michael Karoli),the minimalist groove of "Oscillate", the cinematic "Universi", and the wistful chamber pop of "Crater Ives" to the dreamy loping drones of the 20 minute final track, "The Church Bells at Filey". Recommended!
We see that the press release for this new ep from WFMU DJ Jason Forrest (nee Donna Summer) mentions that his previous full-length The Unrelenting Songs Of The 1979 Post Disco Crash "surprised many with its revolutionary rock-disco sample ideology". Well, yeah, it was pretty cool if that's what they mean! We dig Forrest's "rock-disco sample ideology" quite a bit! So now he's back with a teaser for his next full-length. There's four tracks here (with a bonus fifth on the vinyl only), starting off with a blissfully droney piece entitled "The Work Ahead Of Us" that's got the "feedback guitar" of none other than David Grubbs on it somewhere, for some reason. You can't tell it's Grubbs of course, but it is a nice shimmery cut, though not what we expect from Forrest exactly -- but what we expect (mash-up madness!) does for sure come into play on the next (title) track, a computer-assisted collison of prog and jazz, chaotically cut up and then synth-smoothed. Following that, there's "The Lure Of You" which sees Forrest collaborating with vocalist Margareth Kamerer for a schizophrenically new-wavey *and* folky pop number. Lastly, "Sperry And Foil" wraps things up with eight minutes of blenderized beats and snatches of spacey melody, including a sample of something we really like that we totally know but just can't quite put our fingers on right this second -- what is it? Some krautrock electronics, or Joe Meek or something? Argh it's gonna drive us crazy. You'd think that if Grubbs and Kamerer are gonna be credited, this significant sample should be too.... wait a sec, we figured it out, it's Neu! Anyway, the track is great, a little more manic than something DJ Shadow would do, but not that far from his stuff really. A nice lil' ep then, and we're looking forward to the upcoming album!
We love the mashed up million beats per minute ragga jungle drum 'n bass spazzcore as much as the next guy. Breakbeats chopped to bits and re-assembled into unplayable-by-humans hyperspeed electronic grind. Can't get enough. But anyone with a computer can whip up a earsplitting storm of beats and NOISE. There are of course a select few who approach their beats and samples and fist-to-the-face aggression as if they were, well, WRITING SONGS. Obviously this stuff is not for the dance floor, and as much as we love a huge slab of all out white hot sonic mayhem, a deft touch and some strange ideas applied to the very same ingredients can result in something truly amazing. The most recent Venetian Snares is a perfect example, dizzyingly complex drill and bass perfectly placed amidst gorgeous strings and melancholy melodies. And now Mr. Jason Forrest, formerly known in electronic music circles as Donna Summer, has decided to take his own personal splattery drumfuck brutality and temper it with songs, pop songs, vocalists, guitars, some serious HOOKS. Every track on here is still an amazing piece of masterful slicing and dicing, a busy blur of sample upon sample, beats careening wildly into other beats, getting all tangled up into gnarled chunks of dense rhythm and strange lumps of rock guitars and clipped vocals. Each track sounds like it was assembled from someone with ADD whipping through the classic rock stations on the radio dial, lots of wild guitar leads, wailing rock vocalists, throbbing rock bass, groovy pianos, shuffling jazzy interludes, full on rock freakouts, snippets of Steely Dan, Blondie and about a million more almost recognizable samples and of course lots of incredibly dense and un-funky and completely unhinged drum programming. Country chantuese Laura Cantrell sings on one of the prettiest tracks, her gorgeous croon, laid atop a smeary blur of glitchy beats and hiccupping grooves, purloined from seventies AM radio. But that's merely the calm before, and after, and between the storms! Soon you're back on a bucking bronco made from every song you loved in highschool tossed in a blender, careening wildly through dense thickets of heavy metal guitar, prickly drum and bass, walls of guitar solos, cheezy synth jams, and old school funk grooves, creepy childlike vocals, and of course the kitchen sink. This is one of those records that seems too busy and too overwhelmingly jampacked to be at all listenable, but somehow Forrest manages to take all those parts and tie 'em up with a big red bow. Shamelessly Exciting indeed!
Fort Lauderdale's '1001 Revolutions' could easily be a lost DJ Food or Depth Charge album of funky breaks (some which sound as if they're live) and catchy film noir melodies.
Most DJ mix cd's end up leaving us a bit cold. Either the selections are too obvious, or the need to scratch and make it "funky" kind of kills the mood and wastes the good tracks that might be there. But leave it to Kieren Hebden (aka Four Tet) to get it just right! We would kill to walk into a club to find him behind the decks. Especially if this is the stuff that was flowing from the speakers. His taste is pretty damn immaculate and refreshingly varied as well. Starting off with the avant pioneer David Behrman (cofounder of Sonic Arts Union) and along the way dipping into everything from Heldon, Curtis Mayfield, Gong, Madvillian, Cabaret Voltaire, Heiner Stadler, Stereolab and so much more. Like the best DJ's, Hebden is a master of timing, pacing and flow. Seamlessly spinning from an early '80s electro jam to a classic Nonesuch explorer series track from Zimbabwe like they were always meant to be side by side. Keeping your body twitching and your synapses firing... what else could you want from a DJ? Highly recommended!!!
Everything Ecstatic introduces an unexpected, fresh direction for Four Tet. We haveta say though that the title does seem somewhat incongruous with the music. After referring to the dictionary, we wouldn't say this album evokes: 1. a state of being beyond reason and self-control; 2. a state of overwhelming emotion; especially: rapturous delight; 3. trance; especially: a mystic or prophetic trance; nor 4. a synthetic amphetamine analogue... (with) mood-enhancing and hallucinogenic properties. Nope, none of the above. Really, that title seems like it would've been more fitting for any of Kieran Hebden's previous releases. The song titles are oddly playful and sweet too. Weird, maybe Hebden was ON ecstacy when he was naming stuff and deciding on the kooky album art?! Hmmm. Anyways, after a consistent stream of well-crafted, dreamy, shimmery electronica, Hebden (also of Fridge) has allowed the storm clouds to build. This is a much darker, heavier and even funkier Four Tet, encorporating considerably more aggressive rhythms and ominous sounds (for instance deep resonant chimes replace delicate tinkly cymbal washes). Edges are harder, resulting in tracks that come across as more sturdily constructed and defined. It's not a complete transformation however, you'll still find some of the old Four Tet loveliness lingering.
Geez, should we be calling this release Four Tet's 'black' album? Besides the predominant color of the cover art, the music contained within is some of the darkest to date from Mr. Kieran Hebden aka Four tet. This album follows up his Everything Ecstatic 'white' album which came out last summer, and which offered some hints as to the heavier, edgier direction in which he was apparently heading. This jam-packed Part 2 is comprised of a dvd filled with videos and animated bits plus a cd with five new tracks (including radically expanded and revised versions of a couple of numbers from Part 1). We'll cheekily propose that the second track places Hebden firmly in the running to uproot Philip Glass from his Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack throne. These thirty five minutes of music are at times meditative and hypnotic, at others highly kinetic and frenetic. In fact, there's an explosive segment around the ten minute mark of the lengthy lead-off "Turtle Turtle Up" during which it wouldn't be at all surprising for a big pink stuffed teddy bear to drop from the ceiling amid a cloud of streamers, confetti, bells and whistles. Yay, you win!
My Angel Rocks Back and Forth delivers pleasant, slightly sweet, non-threatening electronica by Fridge's post-rocker, Kieren Hebden. The sound is minimal and ambient using broken chimes, a little backwards feedback and a DJ Shadow kickdrum. This album is more just contemplative than overly challenging. Some very pleasant listening. It also includes a DVD disc featuring four music videos!
