THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With this punishing record, Hellfish & Producer has filled the surprisingly empty noise-beat market left wide open by Alec Empire and the rest of his Digital Hardcore empire, which has been remarkably quiet for the year 2000. "Constant Mutation" is a continuously mixed disc of singles previously released by Hellfish & Producer. Unrelenting 909 gabba / drill & bass beats tear throughout the record well beyond the pace that a sober / non-tweaked individual can keep up with. Silly samples that anthemically call for the death of rock 'n' roll and headrattling blasts of white noise march through the pounding beats. Yup, Hellfish & Producer certainly give Mr. Empire a run for his money.
More fantastic electronic weirdness from the Pan label, this one, the latest from Luke Younger, aka Helm, who crafts a dizzying expanse of blunted post industrial rhythms, and blurred psychedelic ambience, lazer blast blurts that sound like light sabers are tangled into strange shapes over throbbing low end pulsations, while all around clouds of hiss and static and thrum swirl and shimmer, noisy and psychedelic, but darkly hypnotic. Elsewhere the sounds splinter into weird avant musique concrete, blasts of noise swooping from speaker to speaker, a wildly ecstatic 'pipe fight', sculpted into an abstract psych-noise groove. Younger also delves into power electronics, with keening arcs of feedback, draped over a churning chordal thrum, peppered with bursts of strangely melodic static, sounding almost like Skullflower attempting to make dance music, and failing fantastically, before finally finishing things off with a haunting bit of deep drone loveliness, sinister shimmering clouds of muted rumbles ripple out in soft clouds, an ominous, haunting and harrowing sprawl of hushed mesmeric murk that might be the dreamiest bit of grim black ambience we've heard in ages!
Like all Pan releases, the packaging is stunning, a plain white sleeve in a clear PVC plastic jacket, printed in purple ink, liner notes on one side, the band name all tangly and geometric on the other. And yeah, limited too!
Henke - software engineer for Ableton and one time Chain Reaction recording artist - had been approached by the Swedish installation artist Fredrik Wretman to use his track Indigo, which Henke had offered as a free download on his own website. This was a softened piece of nocturnal ambience that Henke had sourced from the drips of his own bathtub! Out of that original material, Henke stretched out a Brian Eno meets Thomas Koner driftscape of rumbling tones, sustained washes of dark, grey/blue sounds, and occasional interjections of the dripping water itself. While Henke did not feel it was appropriate for Wretman's installation to merely broadcast a stereo feed of Indigo, he recontextualized the composition through six-channels (i.e. three cds with different mixes, all in stereo); and as he instructed that those three cds would be started at different times, the loops of the cd would thus warrant a constantly evolving composition to match the rippling pools of water and light which Wretman had installed in the Fargfabrieken Gallery in Sweden. Yeah, this is pretty commonplace for a sound installation strategy; but the sounds that had come together for this re-re-composed stereo mix is pretty entrancing. Certainly for fans of Koner, the darker Brian Eno records, and Bass Communion.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another gorgeous, gorgeous minimal drone record. Not sure what to say. Our drone thesaurus is darn near tapped out. Shimmering, rumbling, drifting, ethereal, dreamy, Signal To Noise is all of those and more. The first two tracks are composed and performed utilizing only an old Yamaha SY77 synthesizer, filtered, pitch shifted and processed into two lengthy smears of glacial sonic whir. The last track was composed using filtered noise and granular delays to emulate a thunderstorm. A barely there ambient crawl, like a lonely hike through the desert late at night, with the occasional crackle and boom of artificial thunder. Haunting and quite lovely.
Henriksen is a member of AQ-faves Supersilent, the unclassifiable and brilliant Norwegian improvising outfit. On this, his debut solo album, he blends his gorgeous, haunting trumpet playing with the drone-ful production of electronicist Deathprod (aka Helge
Pierre Henry's musique concrete gets the remix treatment, contributors include William Orbit, Fatboy Slim, Coldcut, Funki Porcini, Dimitri from Paris, and others.
Her Space Holiday's Marc Bianchi slathers his pop poetry with just enough peanut butter and honey that you can't taste...or um, hear...what a vulnerable sandwich he actually is. You can't see that he's making a sly bid for your heart and soul until you finish bopping your head along to the bedroom beats and the occassional spaceship-blippy quirk. Can't see the weight of the dangerous world on his aching shoulders until you open up the liner notes and read lines such as "push all your friends away with the cruel things that you said/if you need company you've got the voices in your head." He's like a depressed sunbather who can describe all the beauty of a physical situation without actually enjoying it himself. The music swells along, but Bianchi is always pulling his presence along in the undertow, sanding down his vocals so they share space democratically with the other instruments on the album.
It all comes off kind of like The Postal Service but without the huggable whine, or the spacier bits of the Field Mice without the wide-eyed clarity. "The Past Presents the Future" is not as musically offbeat as earlier H.S.H. efforts, "The Young Machines" or "Manic Expressive"; it is smoother, slightly more mature, and a bit more lyrically global, though it still mostly sticks with the sounds and methods that are tried and true for Bianchi. So...there are less chunks in the peanut butter, but still plenty of bees in the honey.
Easily most accessible presentation from Matthew Herbert (aka Doctor Rockit, Wishmountain, Radioboy, etc.), Bodily Functions is a shuffling house homage to the jazz vocal standards from the '40s. Fans of Portishead and Lamb, who may be looking for a slight variation on ethereal / noir female vocalist fronted classy electronica, might want to check this out.
There are a many sides to the busy and talented Matthew Herbert. Some people know him for his more experimental outings, like last years Plat Du Jour which was an excellent political record and statement against the corporate food industry using food, coke cans, apples crunching, pigs in shit, etc. as the source material for a very adventurous and successful outing. Others know him simply as Herbert, one of the most innovative 'house' producers of the last decade. And for others his name rings most familiar for his skilled remixes for the likes of Bjork, Jamie Lidell, Soft Pink Truth, Super Fury Animals, Harold Budd, etc. In many ways Scale feels like the follow up to Bodily Functions, his 2001 album which mixed warm recordings, danceable beats, creative arrangements, and the sultry vocals of Dani Siciliani. For Scale, Herbert went all out. Whether it was recording a drummer under water, an orchestra at Abbey Road or using the sounds from fuel pumps and coffins as source material, one can listen to this record and not know any of that and just revel in its totally pleasurable overall sound. With Siciliani singing as beautifully as ever, and melodies that are so irresistible, this is that sort of smart and seductive dance record that sadly is so rare to come by these days.
When Matthew Herbert, the lauded electronicist who has also recorded as Wishmountain and Doctor Rockit (and probably a few I don't even know about), releases music simply as "Herbert", then you know he's in his experimental house music guise. Therefore you must
What we have here is a double cd of remixes Herbert has executed for other folks, and a few on himself too. Remixees include Mono, Moloko, Nils Petter Molvaer, Motorbass, Terra Deva, and lots more. Now, as much as I like Matthew Herbert's Doctor Rockit persona, where he displays his delightful penchant for sampling the sounds of everyday objects like crunchy apples, I also have to say that with all these remixes gathered here in one place, Herbert's formula becomes clear: [1] take a vocal snippet from the original song, [2] loop it "artistically", [3] add some tinny house beats, and [4] let the thing repeat itself for six minutes. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to gather the remixes in one place -- because you kind of don't want to know that the guy has a formula at all. However, there are lots of folks who just love this sound, represented by the audio clip we've included below (of Gainsbourg's "Bonnie & Clyde" for heavens sake!), and will like this. I'm just not one of them.
The debut by Hercules & Love Affair back in 2008 was an absolute game changer. Not since Daft Punk's Discovery had a dance record moved so many people into pure ecstasy. It helped usher in a new generation's appreciation of the magic that disco and house are capable of conjuring up. But most of all it transcended any genre, and became one of those records that just about any fan of good music would end up blasting nonstop.
So how do you follow up a debut as amazing as that? You take your time! No doubt Andrew Butler, the mastermind behind Hercules & Love Affair understood the kind of pressure riding on his sophomore outing, and he was smart not to rush it but instead take his time in crafting a new batch of songs. That's one of the things that often gets overlooked with Hercules & Love Affair, is that Andy Butler is an excellent songwriter. Sure he has immaculate and obscure taste in vintage disco, house, and techno but under all of that you can tell he is a student of good songs. The tracks on Blue Songs all carry an emotional weight, and it's the music that leads those emotions to moments of ecstatic release, and energizing empowerment.
A lot of the attention of the first Hercules album was due to the vocals that Antony contributed to several tracks, but he doesn't make an appearance on this outing. And in a way we're actually happy about that, not that we don't love those tracks with Antony, they were amazing, but it's nice for the world to see that Hercules can stand on their own feet and no matter who they collaborate with they are able to reach amazing heights together. This time out Kele Okereke, of Bloc Party fame lends his voice on a few of these tracks with awesome results. In recent years Kele has publicly embraced his sexuality and this seems like such the perfect vehicle to allow him to sing on dance minded tracks with a pride and freedom he's been yearning for. On other tracks Hercules members Kim Ann Foxman and Nomi take the mic with dynamic flare, and Mr. Butler sings some as well.
Blue Songs is a grower, and with each listen we get more and more into its grooves. No sophomore slump here, this is another great album!
We're happy we waited for this domestic release as it includes three bonus tracks as well as an entire extra disc of remixes of a couple songs from the album (cd version only).
No one has done more in recent years to renew faith in the power of dance music than Andy Butler. With his amazing debut album as Hercules & Love Affair he took his passion for decades of dance floor culture, from disco to house, to create one of the most vibrant and memorable debuts of the decade. Sidetracked finds Andy putting together a mix of music that truly moves him. So in case you are confused this is NOT A NEW HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR ALBUM, but instead an awesome document of many of the sonic ingredients that helped inform Andy's taste, and were a huge part of the amazing sounds he creates with Hercules.
HOWEVER, there is one brand new Hercules track in his mix and oh my god does it kill! "I Can't Wait" has this manic house vibe of ecstatic empowerment that's made us play that track more times then we can count! The first disc is the actual DJ mix so you can also get a feel of what it's like to be on the dance floor for one of his DJ sets. He culls his tracks from tons of classic house records (many of total obscurities) as well as some left-field disco gold. Dubwise, Studio X, Dr. Buzzards Original Savanah Band, Gino Soccio, Rainbow Team, In Flagranti, Daniel Wang and lots others. The second disc pulls out eleven of those tracks and keeps them unmixed in their original form but remastered so even those of you lucky enough to have a worn out 12" of some of these burners now can hear them all clean and shiny for a change. Of course we're anxiously anticipating the actual new Hercules & Love Affair album, but until then we're loving being Sidetracked!
We've been so excited for this one for a while! While disco has received a much deserved renaissance in the last couple years there has been a big void of anyone new really making true great disco that captures the best moments of the golden vintage days of the genre. Luckily the guy behind Hercules And Love Affair, Andy Butler, has had quite an education in the history of the last three decades of charged and soulful dance music , due to his experiences dj'ing at a leather bar in Denver, and his last several years immersed in New York's club culture. With a super talented cast around him, Butler has made one of the year's best records, for sure one of the greatest and smartest vocal driven dance records in years!
While Antony (Antony & The Johnsons) has been lending his voice to many records over the last few years, Butler uses him in such exciting ways knowing that under the usually mournful and melancholic side to his voice there was an inner dancefloor diva just ready to let loose. Antony's vocal delivery evokes a sound and spirit that is reminiscent of Sylvester and you can tell that Sylvester, Arthur Russell, Patrick Cowley, Frankie Knuckles and the heyday of the Chicago house scene all served as major inspiration to the making of this record. Along with Antony there are also great vocal contributions from Nomi (who has toured a lot with CocoRosie) and Kim Ann Foxman as well as Butler himself on a few tracks. The album is a full band affair with great horns, strings, keys and Tim Goldsworthy (DFA) production and drum programming all merging together for such a full and rich sound. Above and beyond anything, these are such well crafted songs that aren't just winks to the past but instead carry the torch for impassioned and joyful sounds well into the future, keeping your body moving and your spirit raised high. Highly recommended!
We reviewed a record from local garage pop indie rockers the Herms way back in 2006, and if memory serves, we did dig it, but Castle Face head honcho and Oh Sees mainman John Dwyer insisted we forget all about that old record, and revel in this new one, which is not actually a proper record so much as a collection of demos and outtakes and unreleased rarities, but all the songs were hand picked by Dwyer, and definitely demonstrate the sort of lo-fi outsider pop what-the-fuck weirdness these guys were capable of, which wasn't really even hinted at on that way more polished record proper from back in the day. In fact, all it should take is a quick listen to the first track, the awesomely titled "Power Joystick", which sounds like some alternate universe Kinks, with way more bass buzz, some trippy psychedelic keyboard noodling, everything just a bit detuned, maybe recorded on a boombox, and with a totally unexpected midsong burst of blown out super distorted baroque pop majesty, before lurching right back into more of their noisy, jangly, wobbly Velvets-y groove. Fuck, so good. We had to listen to that track 5 or 6 times before letting it play any further. And if you dig that first one, pretty much all of Drop Out Vol. 1 is gonna push all the same buttons. "The Organisation" sounds like some weird archival track from the sixties, replete with dramatic spoken word vox, over warbly whirring organ, crunchy trebly jangle and simple drum pound. "Volleyball" ups the fidelity a bit, hinting at the band's more polished potential, but it all still sounds just a bit off kilter, the mix kind of just slightly wrong, the vox down in the mix, the keyboard melodies WAY up front. Hooky, and fuzzy, and jangly, and pretty much a perfect fit on Castle Face. Fans of Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, the Mallard, Bare Wires, and of course Thee Oh Sees will definitely dig. We're also reminded a bit of the idiosyncratic home brewed poppiness of Cleaners Of Venus, albeit the Herms are a bit more ramshackle and garage-y. For every moment of classic garage pop jangle, or fuzzy hooky indie pop crunch, there's some twisted, almost avant sounding blast of fractured art rock to balance it out, or sometimes completely cancel it out, often in the same song. A new (old) aQ fave for sure!
It's finally here!! Holly Herndon's mini-opus Movement is a striking electronica debut that addresses the intimate relationship that entwined humanity with technology. Conceptually, this San Francisco electonic music alchemist has honed her craft through her studies in the masters program at Mills College and through her current PhD work at Stanford; but she's also got a handful of years absorbing minimalist techno from Berlin's finest dancefloors. The album pretty much splits the difference between the humanist splendor of Kraftwerk's Man-Machine and the technological horror of any given Cronenberg / Ballard amalgam of science fiction. She's quick to assert that none of her sounds are dystopian, even as the human voice is strangled and hacked apart into bite-sized components which she shuffles in and out of slippery, shifting digital sequences. The slow crawl of "Terminal" opens the album with clinical pulses pitched to half-speed and pricked with sharp lazer emanations of probing sound. "Fade" harkens back to her Berlin club days with a tautly engineered burst of angular techno with Herndon's voice reversed and modulated into anthemic chords smacked between Chris & Cosey and The Knife. This is an awesomely fluid track but is somewhat at odds with the uncomfortable cybernetic gaspings of "Breathe" that follow. It's clear that Herndon intends for the album to offer release through the rhythmic aspects of "Fade" and the title track later on in the album, and build in tension through the polymorphous digital abstractions that dot the rest of the album. Movement makes for a bold album that's certainly for fans of Matmos and AGF.
Hip party kids around town have been droolin' for this one for months! Yup, sliding in beside their old Stacy Q and Kylie records, it's the debut release from local candy electro partymeisters Will Schwartz (formerly of Imperial Teen) and Tomo Yasuda (formerly of The Boy Explodes). In response to those naysayers who've been expecting to find irony amid the cheese (we mean that nicely!), Schwartz has proclaimed emphatically that their '80s dance pop love is true... and yes, unlike many music-makin' kids these days whom you know weren't even born when that music was first made, Schwartz is indeed old enough to have experienced it first hand. These cats genuinely adore the most fluffiest and shiniest sounds -- ones that many folks perhaps would've preferred be kept in the past. They along with their pair of dancers have dusted them off and brought them back to their basement discotheque hideaway, along with their shiny rainbow patches and gold sequined skirt 'n' pumps set (except for Schwartz who's opted for the shirtless beefcake pose!). They've offered up just four songs to get the good times rolling, but they've loaded 'em up with fun fun fun! Actually that might be all you can take in one dose before succumbing to sugar-shock. HW partner in crime Yasuda has programmed up a remarkable replication of that decade's lip-glossy backing tracks, while Schwartz has come up with an avalanche of coy, naughty lyrical cliches such as those that pepper the giddy second track "Magic Window". "I play you like a baby grand, I feel you melting in my hands" and "I can make you scream, I'm better than a Krispy Kreme" and "Come to the party in my pants!" Oh my!
Excellent collection of remixes by Mouse on Mars, Cornelius, Kid Loco, Jim O'Rourke, Stock, Hausen and Walkman, Schneider TM (of Kreidler) and one they remixed themselves. This is really really good, simple, pleasant electronica that will please beginners and advanced folk alike.
Nice tripped out split from these two New York outfits who both venture into psychedelic sonic realms in their own compelling ways. High Places is a duo that we've heard in passing before but we didn't remember them sounding like this. Their side is one long, really spaced out and percussive slow burner with early Throbbing Gristle like textures, infused with an underlying dubbed out and hypnotic groove. We realized that the first few times we played this we had it on the wrong speed but we have to say whether you slow it down (and the vocals start sounding like some cool mixture of Arthur Russell and Panda Bear) or you play it at the correct speed, it sounds pretty awesome either way, so you kind of get two rad long High Places tracks instead of just one.
Soft Circle is the project of Hisham A. Bharoocha, well respected visual artist and a former member of Black Dice (who in our opinion have never been quite as good since he left their fold). His debut as Soft Circle from a couple years ago was a great exercise in warm exploratory percussive bliss. This outing finds him gravitating more towards a drugged out pulsating dancefloor sound, in fact one of the songs "Don't Just Stand There" was remixed on the latest Milky Disco compilation. It's really cool to see folks finding refreshing new avenues to reach such soaring psychedelic heights.
Higher Intelligence Agency and Biosphere are two of the hold overs from the early 90s ambient / electronica scene which featured The Future Sound Of London, The Orb, and KLF, as the prime movers. This collaboration is a chill-out number with lots of windswept knobtwiddling, kaleidoscopic post-acid patterns, and occasional beats.
Drum'n'bass full-length from this young Japanese artist.
John and Peter Hinds (of Sun Ra Research 'zine fame) return with their second album of hybrid jazz/electronica grooves. The mix includes drum'n'bass beats, dub elements, spacy synth, faux-classical compositions, AND incoherent interviews with homeless people
The Brothers Hinds return with another eclectic release. Don't let the title fool ya, this is a far cry from a typical dub mix collection. It's a super trippy meltdown of jazz, drum'n'bass, and yes, some dub too. As always, well executed and with a few unexpected twists thrown into the mix.
The brothers responsible for the locally-produced, fab, & obsessive "Sun Ra Research" zine have released this very original and enjoyable electronica/jazz recording, kinda like a meeting of Muslimgauze and Bill Laswell. Organic grooves. Recommended.
Odd, left-of-center electronica from Kim Hiorthoy, who I believe runs the Rune Grammofon label (and does their distinctive graphic design). An abstract and playful disc that brings to mind stuff like Mouse on Mars, Autechre, Mira Calix, Concentrick, and other
It's been a while since we've seen a proper full length from Norwegian artist and Rune Grammofon label design guru, Kim Hiorthoy. Better known as a designer for both that label and for Smalltown Supersound, he has amassed quite a body of visual work, but we're glad he hasn't given up on electronic music. My Last Day is a varied playlist of idiosyncratic and leftfield sounds comprised of dance tracks, energetic pop, mutant jazz, carnival lullabies, melodic abstractions and sampled beats, that flows surprisingly well despite its almost haphazard nature. Smalltown Supersound is already on a roll with their recent batch of releases with Arp, Bjorn Torske, Sunburned Hand of The Man, Tussle and Lindstrom. Add My Last Day to their long list of stellar releases.
AQ customer Rick Kitch, Jeph Jerman and Randy Grief collaborate in His Master's Voice, in a similar fashion as on Chine Nual's amazing plate lunch release, with Grief and Jerman doing most of the recording.This time wire fencing is the main source (as well
Bombastic UK glam rock disguised as electronica funk with guest appearances from Jon Spencer, Bobby Gillespie, and Martina Toppley-Bird (whose duets with Tricky were featured on all his early records). Not as bad as UNKLE's "Psyence Fiction," but a similar idea of throwing every coked-up idea at a sampler (the result of glorifiying DJs as artists and then forcing them to make records--what else are they going to do but get a zillion guest to come in and actually make the music?).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Whoa what a cool and refreshing discovery! Imagine Barry Adamson or De La Soul on Mo'Wax -- yes it's that good! Very accessible and crowdpleasing breakbeat tracks mixed with vocal snippets taken, seemingly, from the streets of New York. Highly recommended!
The duo of F.X. Randomiz and Joe Schlammpeitzeger make quite a groovy album of self-made synths and intricate sampling.
Latest from this Oakland tape label, who has been killing it recently, with the reissued synthscapes of Ron Berry, the grim, liturgical Black Legions black ambience of Moevot, the droned out buzzscapes of Bre'r, the grinding and gorgeously glitchy Starlite Coffins, the debut tape release of solo surf twang guitar from artist Rich Jacobs, sheesh, we can barely keep up, but it's been a blast trying. There's two more good 'uns from Sanity Muffin on this week's list, elsewhere you'll find some fantastic bay area new age from the eighties, and then there's this, the first we've heard from a mysterious outfit called Holy Family, which in fact is a duo half of which is none other than Lawrence English, and whose sound is settled uneasily right between the classic psychedelic minimalist drones of groups like the Taj Mahal Travellers, and the more noisy, blown out floor-core of modern synth/drone combos. Three sprawling slabs of minimal dronemusic trip out, thick sheets of pulsing, pulsating thrum, gristly and distorted, churning and blackened, but sort of blissed out and cosmic, the first track begins as a total zoner-drone drift before splintering into something a bit more atonal, sound like some lost Hermann Nitsch aktion recast into something a bit more blurry and abstract, a sky of bleating keening tones, smeared into lush chordal swells. So good.
The relatively brief second track, begins as a barely there shimmer, a whispery low end creep, before blossoming into some seriously corrosive crumble and crunch, a weird stretched out upper register drone wreathed in swirls of superdistorted buzz, heady and hypnotic and seriously dense and heavy. Which leads directly into the 16 minute final track, a weird field of fractured, fragmented electronic melodies, delivered in sharp spurts, chopped and spread out, surrounded by wide open expanses of hum and thrum, laced with little soft swirls of effects, all above a sea of ever shifting textures, super laid back by comparison, a tranquil bit of buzzy, dreamy drift, that seems to smolder with some sinister shadowy undercurrent, one that always seems to threaten to overwhelm, but instead, just pulses ominously beneath the roiling soft noise shimmer above, when what finally overtakes the sound, is a sort of gristly static, that rises up in an insectoid cloud, before fading out into a hazy, hardly there hum...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Individually tea-stained tape labels!
- MPEG stream: I
- MPEG stream: II
How 'bout some blown out loops of space kraut-iness pushed into overdrive? Yes please, and could you make it with some wonderfully thick stewed synthesizer flatulence pouring across the driving drums? Okay, why not? Better hope nothing gets in their way 'cause when their full throttle music juices up your speakers it'll vaporize anything in its path. Imagine Stereolab meets Man Or Astro-man? but produced by David Fridmann. Hell, yeah! It might even make us exclaim the band's name! The fifth track "They're Going To Take My Thumbs" unexpectedly slams on the breaks, but for good reason. It reveals a different facet of HF in its super brooding dubby tones that brings to mind Massive Attack and Twilight Circus. Oh and did we mention that there's a sloth on the cd artwork? That always wins bonus marks. Very cool! And very very recommended.
It's been a while since we heard from Holy Fuck, we were pretty into their debut, a swirling mash up of blown out loops and space krauty synths, of fuzzy bass and fractured beats, and it seems like maybe things have gotten even more twisted and far out on this latest. After a slow tranquil drone, that gradually builds to a wall of white noise, comes a sort of looped Beastie Boys style funk jam, all loping bass, wah guitar, shimmery synths, but it's not necessarily as simple as that, it sounds, well, created, not played, so there's an element of lurch and stutter, the sounds jagged and not entirely smooth, occasionally locking into parts that almost sound like skipping cds, peppered with little shards of glitch and squelch. And that's sort of the way the record plays out, fuzzy, synth heavy grooves, that sound a bit motorik, a bit spaced out, super propulsive, and heavy in their own way, sometime slipping into almost jazzy sounding post rock, a la Tortoise, but still like that opening track laced with all manner of subtle electronics and production weirdness. There's definitely a pop element, as well as a space age bachelor pad vibe too, a la Stereolab, and tracks like "Silva & Grimes" are total krautrock Neu! worship, repetitive and hypnotic, swirling synths and clouds of distorted buzz wrapped around total head nodding beats, and while those elements inform the rest of the record there's also plenty of big block rocking beats, Daft Punk style synth wave, lo-fi electronic skitter and crunch, and a closing jam that's like some super cool eighties new wave jam, super charged and doused in crumbling distorted synths and buried blown out beats.
Latin might just be the weirdo dance party record of the year... And both the cd and the lp come in super cool, super swank diecut covers!
Technically this doesn't come out until next Tuesday, so locals will have to wait until then for us to put 'em out in the store, but mailorder customers, go ahead and order like normal, since it'll take at least until Tuesday for you to get your package anyway, most likely.
We've been trying to get his new Holy Other record for ages, and while the vinyl version remains tantalizingly out of reach, we did manage to get the cd in, and for you cd folks, grab one asap, cuz it was well worth the wait, another gorgeously warped and woozy collection of nocturnal slo-soul post-witch house groovery, but with some bigger beats, the sound still druggy and drowsy, but with some seriously extra heft, that doesn't detract from that nocturnal / somnambulant vibe AT ALL. Shit this record would be worth it for the first track alone, with a garbled, crunchy, distorted intro, a throbbing pulse, swirling disembodied processed vocal fragments, the momentum building quick, to a loping laid back groove, laced with blooping, bleeping melodies, some handclaps, all sorts of buzzing clanging percussion, sort of muted and muffled, and then when the big beat drops, it's epic, somehow totally bangin'/boomin', but still gorgeously murky and lysergic.
The rest of the record takes a sound that could very well be a straight continuation of With U, all Burial style slo-mo soul, with sped up vocal fragments, and muted muddy barely there beats, and twists it all up, making it even more fucked up and experimental in places, while in others going full on commercial, while somehow managing to stay plenty fractured and fucked up. Check out "Inpouring", which sounds like a straight up radio pop soul ballad, but chopped up, jumbled up, and reassembled as some sort of avant dub soul, turning it into precisely the sort of stuff we WISH was all over the radio. In fact, much of this new Holy Other record, sounds like H.O.'s misguided stab at commercial radio, taking just some of those commercial elements, and then weaving them into his way-too-tweaked-for-the-radio sound. And the end result is some of the deepest, darkest 'soul' music we've heard. The sound shifts constantly from swirling Pop Ambience, to stuttering almost dubstep, to murky skittery drift, to -almost- straight up pop, the record super vocal heavy, but in a way that doesn't at all alienate the diva vocal averse around here, in fact, if anything, we're digging this even more that With U, which we LOVED. The tracks much more lush and fully realized, as much about song as sound, it's like these twisted murky witch housey soul jams were written specifically to be pop hits, but then Holy Other just couldn't help himself, and sliced and diced and fucked with the sounds until what once might have had some commercial potential, ended up this twisted slab of dreamy electronic outsider dub-soul weirdness.
Yet another fantastic disc of murky mysterious electronica from the Tri Angle label, after records from oOoOO, Balam Acab and How To Dress Well, Holy Other falls right into place, another group straddling the line between witch house, slo-mo soul, dubbed out minimalism, and just murky otherworldly spaced out psychedelic hip hop. And while Holy Other has his own distinctive take on the sounds, it will probably only take you a matter of seconds to feel the sound's warm embrace, and make the connections to other groups mining similar territory. The tempos creep and drag, the vocals, when there are any, are chopped up and processed, looped to make hauntingly layered rhythms, or placed judiciously to help create a sort of spectral soul. Skeletal grooves drift over spare rhythmic skitter, low end whirs and rumbles, beats surface and submerge, the hooks, as unlikely as they are, seem to be built from those fragmented vocals, and when a certain phrase, delivered by a clipped voice is sent bouncing from speaker to speaker, creating ghostly harmonies, it's pretty incredible, and then when those are woven into lush dreamlike arrangements, total electro dreamdrift bliss out. "Touch" might be THEE jam here, its definitely the most Burial beholden, but the vocal hook, and the arrangement, the lush dark groove, it's so darkly dreamy and mysteriously soulful, and the thick buzzing low end just makes it that much more haunting and gorgeously ominous. Tri Angle are pretty much untouchable when it comes to this shit, they're four for four at this point, we can hardly wait to see what's up next. So if you're in the market for hazy, gauzy, washed out, dreamy and druggy, then Holy Other is probably right up your alley.
We were really happy to see that Type has added Ezekiel Honig to their great roster, as he's someone whose been making fractured, fragile sounds over the last several years with such great results. His latest shows how masterful he is at crafting dreamy and drifty soundscapes with such a subtle touch. In many ways it's the subtlety of his work that really allows the listener to slowly get lost in the haze and sway of the tracks on Folding In On Itself. Like the most delicate moments on records by Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, Philip Jeck, William Basinski and Fennesz, and with the dream world atmosphere found on recordings by Colleen, Mum, and Koss... This has been our early morning and go to bed soundtrack, as it's just so perfect in slowly transporting you to a softer, dreamier dimension. Understated, shimmering beauty.
Ezekiel Honig has a delicate musical touch, and has crafted some well textured and nuanced electronica albums over the years, so we were surprised to find that somehow we had never actually listed any of his records. His latest, Surfaces Of A Broken Machine Band, is a great place to start for newcomers and a welcome addition to his backcatalog for those who've kept up with his warm and crackling soundscapes. Seamlessly melding bits of field recordings with minimalist beats and dreamy tones for a sound not unlike the most tender moments of Fennesz, Boards Of Canada, Mountains, Machinefabriek or Jasper TX. In fact Honig would make a great contributor to Kompakt's Pop Ambient series, as these are sounds made to drift, dream and get lost to. So nice!
Album number five from this mysterious UK collective. Though quite disorienting upon first listen, the new musical direction Hood has taken is quite refreshing and highly original. Combinig elements of the Hood we once knew -- melancholic, guitar driven
Hood are so schizophrenic; each of their albums sounds different. With some bands you feel like this means they haven't really found their true sound yet, but then again Hood's records are so well done that maybe that means they're just good at whatever they do. This mid-length 5-song record runs the gamut from Mogwai-like loud-soft dynamics with tons of layers and drama, to
