While not straying too far from the rest of the Italians Do It Better catalog (which we'll admit we're big suckers for!) Invisible Conga People definitely, defiantly have their own identity. A bit more dark and brooding then most of their labelmates, there is most definitely a really rich sense of atmosphere in their slow burning electronic sizzlers. You can tell there is some love for the minimal leanings of krautrock and post punk channeled into their dark corner of a seedy dance club. This isn't as much for the dancefloor (though it would be on dancefloors we would frequent) as it is for late wasted nights alone in your bedroom when you just want to close your eyes and get lost in some sizzling sensations. Full on sensual seduction!
The Standard Version of this multi-package features features 20 minutes of electronica sound bites created by Ios Smolders and additional software (one CD is Mac compatible and has D-sound Pro, while the Dub Zap Pro Version is for Windows and has Cool Edit & possibly Hammerhead). The Pro Version (18.98) is a compilation of sorts on which the artists invited to appear on the album took these programs and samples to create tracks of their own. Featured are Bryn Jones (Muslimgauze, Rehberg & Bauer (Mego), RLW, Dummy Run (Stock, Hausen, and Walkman), LoSD, Twilight Circus, and more.
A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED debut album from this Olympia Trio! Lo-fi drum & bass whose ethos of live instrumentation at all costs lends comparisons to a quirkier, more lively Red Snapper or at times Can (like what the 'Sacrilege' remix album was supposed to sound like)! This is one of the few groups who can carry off their sound live, including theremin, turntables, standup bass, and keyboards (and NOT ONE preprogrammed tape) into the mix.
What was your teenage dream? IQU (formerly a trio known as ICU, now a duo, but still pronounced ee-koo) and friends give hints to their adolescent aspirations in the liner notes of this cd. "Teenage Dream" just happens to be the name of an IQU song (featuring some very rock guitar and various samples of Japanese singing, greetings and spoken word), and it gets the remix up and down by such pop electronic luminaries as Looper (aka Stuart David ex-Belle And Sebastian) and Sonic Boom. The latter track is one of the two cd-only bonuses. The other is IQU's own K.O. treatment. Quite boogie-worthy indeed.
Better known as ICU, this Olympian electronica trio provides a minimalist downtempo electro squiggle for Miranda July to do her best Laurie Anderson impression.
We weren't really sure what to think when we were first exposed to the strangely named Iron Bitchface (thanks AQ pal Guy from Guelph), ostensibly a black metal band, IBF ended up being so much more than a mere metal band. In fact, barely a metal band at all, more some sort of metallic techno digital hardcore sort of thing. Needless to say, we LOVE it. And odds are you will too. That is if the idea of grim black metal crossed with spastic DHR style techno pushes your buttons. And c'mon, it really should, cuz this stuff is amazing. Completely baffling, wild and heavy and totally fucking bizarre.
Iron Bitchface is K-Rot and We Are Trolls collects four out of print releases, Return To Gran Mountain, Flirtinis All Round!, I Hate The Internet and Caffeine:Caffiend. Each one a confusional blend of relentlessly inhuman drum machine blasts, bizarre synths, buzzing blackened guitars and growled demonic vocals. The synths pluck out playful melodies over washes of guitar buzz, the drums spastic and hyperspeed. Some songs are almost straight black metal, others are weird abstract synthscapes, others are weird block rockin' techno, like some sort of lo-fi Basement Jaxx, while still others are some weird sort of alien house music. But as you might imagine, the best bits, and thankfully, that means most of the tracks here combine all of the above into totally damaged danceable black thrash techno hardcore whattheefuck. Awesome.
And even more awesome is the fact that this is a split, with the also strangely named Chaos Through Programming, who as much as we hate to admit it, might be even cooler and weirder than IBF. Where Iron Bitchface is sort of buzzy and lo-fi and home brewed, the sound of Chaos Through Programming is HUGE, a dizzying chopshop, mixing big dance beats, bizarre samples, and massive crunchy metal guitars, like a metal obsessed Chemical Brothers with ADD, but with surprising moments of melodic lucidity and killer rhythmic complexity scattered amidst the brain melting bursts of collaged metal dance weirdness.
Packaged in an oversized slimline DVD case with full color artwork and a full color insert.
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Five versions of new Mixmaster Morris track, including remixes by Amon Tobin, Fila Brazilia, and DJ Food.
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"Lucky Cat" is yet another album from Isan, whose "Salle d'Isan" came out a couple of weeks ago. Not really ostensibly different from the preceding album, "Lucky Cat" continues down the path paved by Boards Of Canada, with pleasant if somewhat bittersweet IDM / electronica.
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irwin
While the landscape of "dreamy" electronica has been quite flooded in the last several years there will always be those that rise above the flock in any crowded genre, and Isan are one of the few who do indeed float high above most of their peers. What makes Isan so special is the songs, using their laptops and keyboards to create airy melodies and lovely lucid washes of sound. While so many of their contemporaries have added forced vocals on top of their sounds, often big name guests, in order to break into the "next level" we're happy that Isan have kept it purely instrumental, as the songs they write feel totally complete as-is and allow us, as listeners, to bring more of our imagination to the songs. There are definite similarities to like minded and former label mates Mum, especially their first primarily instrumental debut, as well fleeting glimpses of Boards of Canada at their most blissed out, and perhaps like a less skeletal version of Colleen. We also keep thinking a lot about how Isan in many ways represent this generation's version of Durruti Column. Delicate instrumentals made with a graceful touch and an invitation to float freely.
It's not surprising to hear that a couple of Isan's tracks had been licensed for commercials here in the US. What marketing firm wouldn't kill to have some pleasant electronica that is simultaneously relaxing, happy, definitively European in origin, slightly obtuse, but totally catchy, and always leaving you wanting more? Isan specializes in wistful electronica melodies that hold more
Oh, shiny pretty electronica! There's a lot of Styrofoam around AQ these days -- his newest album Nothing's Lost (which features some collaborations with Benjamin Gibbard among other folks), last year's I'm Here To Show Something's Missing, and this split Japanese tour cd with likeminded labelmates Isan and The Go Find (although strangely the front cover doesn't list The Go Find's band name with the other two). You get three tracks from Isan and two each from Styrofoam and The Go Find. Have we said the bands' names enough yet? Nope! Isan's contributions are chiming musicbox-y tracks (one of which is a cover of the old traditional Japanese song "Akatombo"). The two Styrofoam numbers are covers of Lou Barlow's "Think (Let Tomorrow Be)" and Elliott Smith's "Between The Bars". The latter proves that Styrofoam's Arne Van Petegem can sing just like Smith. It's totally Elliott Smith-meets-Notwist. The Go Find's gentle pair of tracks nestle in nicely between the others. This gathering actually serves as a pretty accurate sampler of the Morr Music label's unassuming electronic pop sounds.
This is hardly a tough sell. AQ faves Isis, the 'indie rock Neurosis', masters of the metal meets post rock pummel, with a flair for epic emotional song writing and capable of tempering their fist-in-your-face brutality with gorgeous melodies and strangely tranquil post rock passages, remixed and reinterpreted by an impossibly perfect lineup that reads as if they were handpicked by us! (Or you!) Fennesz, Thomas Koner, Venetian Snares, James Plotkin, Dalek, JK Broadrick, Tim Hecker, Speedranch and more! Most folks have already leapt out of their seats and tossed this puppy in their shopping cart, and we can't blame you. But for those of you who need a more in depth look, here's a track by track synopsis.
Disc One:
Fennesz offers up his immediately recognizable glistening sun dappled digitization, dreamy and otherworldly.
Ayal Naor of the band 27 delivers a version that is pretty true to the original but with some extra production tweakery and effects fuckery.
Thomas Koner unfurls a crumbling militaristic nihilistic drone, with creepy whispering voices, industrial whir and claustrophobic ambience. So good.
James Plotkin's version of "The Other" is all dreamy and melodic, with backwards drums, and isolated vocals, and plenty of deconstructed riffs and melodies, smeared into warm ambient noisescapes
The first of Tim Hecker's two takes on "Carry" is a wash of shimmering guitar, stretched into an epic thrum, a pulsing throbbing swirl of overblown guitar with minor key melodies buried underneath.
Teledubgnosis (featuring Ted Parsons of (Prong, Godflesh, Jesu, Swans) offer just what you'd expect, a modern dub version, with everything stripped away except the vocals and the background ambience.
Mike Patton adds his particular damage to "Maritime" turning in a super tweaked version with bizarre vocals, lots of random sound effects and loads of studio weirdness.
Disc Two:
Venetian Snares spits up a bizarre mix of dubbed out drums, super stereo panned guitars, isolated growly vocals, and reverb all over the place. Almost like a King Tubby / Lee Perry metal dub!
Tim Hecker's second version of "Carry" is a dense landscape of churning whorls of fuzzed out guitars, and warm whirls of ambient blur.
The Oktopus (aka Dalek) turns "False Light" into an industrial hip hop jam, with buzzing analogue synths, and the original's howled vocals careening from speaker to speaker. Like African Head Charge meets Neurosis.
Speedranch isolates the female vocals and douses the drums in massive reverb, and then chops the song into new shapes with hypnotic cd skipping riffs. Definitely the coolest, least annoying thing Speedranch has ever done!
The mysterious Destructo Swarmbots' track is a murky subterranean trawl through underground caverns and bottomless pits of droning rumbles and minimal distant melodies.
And JK Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu) takes on "Hym", staying pretty close to the original, adding his machinelike rhythms and turning the majestic midtempo metal of the original into a lost Godflesh / Jesu track, which is most definitely a good thing.
Differences between techno and house do exist but have become a matter of semantics rather than aesthetics. But the differences are such that I can unequivocally state that I hate house music. I really hate house music.
There's a lot of electronica albums that walk tentatively on the border between techno and house. I had always assumed that the crossovers from techno into house could be chalked up to irony. But really it was just because some stupid knobtwiddler had bad taste. The Chain Reaction label- best described as heroin house - is one of those entities which dangerously walks on the tightrope between house and techno. Or rather if a Chain Reaction record sucks, it's because it's house.
I know this doesn't seem like sound critical analysis, but we all have our prejudices and this is one of mine.
Isolee - like Chain Reaction - balances itself on the razor thin line between house and techno, and unassumingly shows off a pop sensibility with weird arpeggiated abstractions that phase into seductive melodies. If the awkwardly funky bleep techno of the early Warp sound (LFO, Tricky Disco, Sweet Exorcist) continued as an established aesthetic instead of fading either into the minimalism of Sahko or the lowest common denominator of Euroclub hits, it would sound something like Isolee. It sounds almost as if Isolee is trying to make techno without MIDI sequencing, instead they're running live sample loops and drum machines straight to the mixer. All of the elements that should be aligned to a metacontextual rhythm are allowed to fall out of that rhythm from time to time. This little trick makes the synchronization of the melodies, basslines, and huge 909 drum cracks sound all the more impressive. A smart techno record that isn't too cerebral. If you don't know what I've been talking about, I don't blame you, but check out the sound sample anyway, you might like it!
Rajko Muller, aka Isolee, has been one of the leading forces in smart and infectious microhouse over the last decade. His ability to merge dance floor ready beats with nuanced production has made Isolee popular with both club kids and more heady avant types. Well, Spent Youth, is the long awaited follow up to We Are Monster, and Isolee sound as precise, icy and sexy as ever. With menacing and moody undertones, Isolee unleash minimal dancefloor grooves that radiate with repetition and restraint. We thought that Kompakt would be all over Isolee by now, as they really have perfected the sound that label has become synonymous with over the years. Phenomenally chilling!
We're beginning to think if it wasn't for Planet Mu, we wouldn't be hearing any dubstep at all... Can't really figure out why more labels aren't getting more of that stuff over here, hundreds, maybe thousands of killer 12"s, DJ mix tapes, proper albums, and only a trickle actually makes it over here, bit the folks at Planet Mu obviously have great taste (or at least taste a lot like ours) cuz the stuff they do put out is the cream of the crop: Starkey, Vex'd, Distance, Milanese, Legion Of Two, Boxcutter, Pinch, Virus Syndicate, MRK1 and now Ital Tek. Not sure how we missed the last Ital Tek record, cuz this one is a doozy, not super dark or sinister, instead this definitely falls somewhere closer to stuff like Clubroot, Ikonika, Zomby, Burial, Shackleton, warm and fuzzy, the beats low slung and laid back, the usual dubstep bass warble toned way down, still thick and fuzzy, just less warbly, disembodied female vocals adding a subtle soul element, some of the tracks are super lo-fi and 8-bit sounding, others are more new wavey and sound a bit John Carpenter-ish, while others are dark and skittery, and still others are haunting and nearly ambient, but Ital Tek's unique vibe is the thread that runs through all the tracks, a little washed out, a little eighties, dreamy and dubby, shimmery and skittery, the lighter side of dubstep, with just enough darkness to keep things interesting...
Kiyoshi Izumi may or may not have had anything to do with a really early incarnation of the Boredoms, although his previous outing for Rephlex a few years back made such claims. "Orange Sunshine" is Izumi's most recent collection and has nothing really to do
We had never heard of Nicolas Jaar before, a well renowned techno producer apparently, but we were immediately blown away by Space Is Only Noise, which seems to be only tangentially 'techno', to our ears it's more a collection of brooding electronic ballads, exploring the world of slo-mo soul already being mined by folks like Burial and How To Dress Well, but In Jaar's hands, that sound becomes something else entirely, just have a listen to the opener "Etre", after a minute or two of lapping waves, and some strange samples, Jaar creates a gorgeous landscape of mournful melody, and strangely clipped and stuttered vocals, the remove most of the sound and render those voices more as rhythm, the combination of the two is so mysterious, and so otherwordly, and when he then introduces the sound of children playing, it ends up being gorgeous and creepy, as the piano grows more dissonant and chaotic. Heck, we would have been happy with a whole record of just that. But there's so much more going on. "Colomb" takes some Pop Ambient swirl and adds a strangely stuttery handclap beat, and some strange autotuned vocals, the resulting croon, both warm and sensual, and strangely alien. Elsewhere, like on "Too Many Kids Finding Rain In The Dust", Jaar channels Gainsbourg, and creates a dark rainy day ballad, that is techno only by merit of the programmed rhythms, "Keep Me There" is another sultry soundscape of skittery beats, liquid samples, dramatic melodies, handclap rhythms, and strange processed vox.
We could go on, track by track, but you should have a measure of what's going on here, and how much we're digging it. A mix of French pop, minimal techno, slo-mo soul, downtempo electronica, with a heaping helping of strange samples, moody warped vocals, lush textures, subtly twisted percussion, and smoldering moodiness to burn, is making this a new favorite for sure. Fans of Blue Daisy, Burial, How To Dress Well, Holy Other, Kode 9, Swarms, Balam Acab, Shlohmo, as well as dark brooding electronic pop music, would do well to check this out!
Norwegian label Miasmah has long been home to a stable of artists creating the sorts of sounds we can't ever seem to get enough of: dark, brooding, electronic flecked hauntological cinematic soundscapes, and late night mysterious classical infused dronemusic, artists like Elegi, Macus Fjellstrom, Gultskra Artikler, FNS, Kreng, Jasper TX, and of course Jacaszek, aka Polish electro-acoustic composer and soundscaper Michal Jacaszek, and while Jacaszek only made one record for Miasmah, it was such a perfect fit, that it was easy to imagine Jacaszek as emblematic of the label's sound. But here we are a few years later, and Jacaszek has already moved on to a new label, but thankfully taken that 'Miasmah' sound with him. And if anything, this new one is even more fully realized than Treny, which was already a unanimous aQ fave. And really how could it not be? Like Treny before it, Glimmer unfurls a ghostly world of blur and shadow, of hum and thrum and glitch and crackle. Operating in a darkened world not that far removed from the Caretaker or Philip Jeck or Demdike Stare, albeit with a bit more of a classical bent, Jacaszek conjures up haunting brooding soundworlds of lush shimmering strings, of echo drenched harpsichord, of woozy loops and hazy staticky record crackle, soft slow swells, that grow so distorted and intense, they slip easily into the red, transforming into something much more harrowing than the music of many of his sonic brethren. The sound threatening to collapse or explode, an urgent pulsing, nearly grinding buzz, that as quickly as it blossomed, seems to slip right back into languid expanses of soft focus drift. Horns and strings, acoustic guitars, all layered delicately into creaking faded stretched of hushed mesmer, an old timey chamber music, transmitted from the other side, much of the sound damaged and decayed as it crossed over, resulting in some darkly alien dronescaping, that slips easily from warped, looped murky moody ooze, to lush, almost pop flecked cinematic post classical drift, the sound at either end of that sonic spectrum flecked with bits of glitch, and audio detritus, the sound seeming to gradually fade and flake as the record spins, almost as if on the next play, it would sound even more washed out and hazy.
There are moments where the sound coalesce into something much more polished, and more traditionally musical, but even then, the music is underpinned by an ominous foreboding, wreathed in strange muted loops, and mysterious sonic fragments, as if being listened to through some sort of dusty old sonic veil, loveliness gradually darkening, shadows lengthening, melodies unwinding and growing subtly more menacing, the recording revealing more and more crackle, swirls of hiss like little dustdevils, all woven into some sort of otherworldly funereal threnody, dreamlike and lovely, but always on the verge of drawing the listener into the mysterious dark place from which these haunting sounds emanate...
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Well, it would be nice to see as well as hear what's documented here, but it's still pretty interesting... this Harry Partch-ish music was part of a audio-visual Planetarium show, and was originally released on LP by Folkways in 1959.
Considerate, slightly pensive, intelligent, emotionally-balanced, fun-loving, stylish, SCANDINAVIAN, really into lying in a beautiful field on a clear night staring at stars, and really REALLY into lavishing you with loads of attention. Sound like a pretty sweet boyfriend? A boyfriend named... Jaga??
Hmmm, I know that was pretty weird, but it just seems like this double cd album from Norway's mega 10-piece band, Jaga (formerly Jaga Jazzist), is the perfect mate for plane or train travel, curling up with at night to read by the fire, afternoon painting sessions in the studio, and, oh, I don't know, dining on smoked salmon by the sea at sunset in a futuristic floating space-bar made of ice.
Jaga's latest -- a limited edition 2cd album, What We Must/Spydeberg Sessions -- is a stylistic culmination of their cosmic space jazz form. AND NOW! With more guitars! What We Must (the first disc) takes this trippy dippy blissful ride through a jazzy cosmos that doesn't seem TOO many light years away. Definitely their/his most mature and well-formed album to date. Every instrument, including all those electronic, is perfectly balanced in the mix. At no point does one speak more loudly above the others. That is, until the second song on the second disc!
All I Know Is Tonight (on disc 2) apparently is a "rough rough mix", but I love it! A nearly raging guitar lashes out at you in the first few measures before settling down into the musical pit. We must say, the roughness is really quite wonderful. The polish of their proper album songs almost lacks character in a way, leaving you to float around intelligently in their prozac'd smooth-space-jazz blissdom. It's nice to have both here. Glad they included this second disc! Other treats on it include demos of "Mikado", "Stardust Hotel" and "Swedenborgske Rom".
Fans of Sea and Cake, Tortoise and other like-mindedly thoughtful Thrill Jockey post-rock type artists should truly love this record. For you, it will take that sound to a new level. Level '05. Fans of Jaga's earlier works should be radiantly pleased with this. Tres recommended!
The name James Din A4 is a new one to us, but most likely not for longtime fans of minimal techno and leftfield electronic music. This disc collects a whole mess of previously released tracks, all culled from super limited self released vinyl lps, on cd for the very first time, and is really pretty difficult to describe. Opener "The Seaside" is quite possible our electronic jam of the year, and pretty much displays the best of what James Din A4 has to offer, crammed into a single track. From the opening fuzzed out loop, which could have been yanked wholesale from a Field B-side, to the skittery super minimal click track, to the spaced out electro groove that follows, various strange chopped samples and vocal bits, over the course of the first few minutes, the track gets less and less minimal and more and more playful, all sorts of beep and buzz, the melodies all sunshiney and bubbly, but still all wrapped around that warm whirring intro, finishing off with a snippet of the sea shanty that gives the track its name.
This is definitely lo-fi minimal techno, but there's some electro going on, some definite nod to the 8-bit side of electronica, that opening track is so warm and whirry, especially the main loop, that we can't help but think of The Field, but the rest of the record not so much, more sort of playful and goofy, definitely plenty of dancefloor silliness here and there, the sort of sounds that could easily spawn their own ill-advised dance, but for the dancefloor averse (like some of us) this is total headphone ear candy, that slips from wild and wooly and weird to muted moody and minimal, some tracks sound like fractured exotica, others like skittery Oval mashups, still others are just gorgeously minimal and dark, while still others are groovy and playful. Maybe our favorite track is "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me", a way too brief song constructed from chopped and looped fragments of sixties jangle pop, reminding us a bit of Terry Riley's "You're No Good", and similarly would have sounded amazing expanded to fill up a whole disc.
This year has been crammed with amazing electronic music, and with less than two months to go, Fistel Rose has surfaced just in time to join our list of 2008 favorites...
Packaged in a 6 panel black and white digipak, with a huge booklet filled with all sorts of crazy artwork, from back and white line drawings to eye popping full color collages, all done by Mr. James Din A4 himself!
Jane is a collaboration between Noah Lennox (a.k.a. Panda Bear of the Animal Collective) and long time friend and fellow record store co-worker Scott Mou. The title track, "Berserker", is a dreamy number with some sort of strumming guitar and cooing vocals soaked in gobs of reverb. It sounds equally like a lo-fi reworking of Cocteau Twins production techniques circa 1984, or a possible inclusion on the next Kompakt Pop Ambient comp. If that don't bring you back, wait to you hear the second track -- "AGG" Report -- which we swear is the Chain Reaction equivalent of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" (as the keyboard melody closely resembles a slowed down version of the first half of the riff from Mr. Stewart's most famous of tunes). The third track, "Slipping Away", begins with a crumbly bass line, with echoing vocals that builds into a chugga-chugga train-like huffing paint experience not disimilar to some of the nicer dance beat tracks from Polmo Polpo's first record, before decomposing into a glistening soundscape of spacey goodness like some early Tangerine Dream record. "Swan" picks up from this soporific state with a 24 minute organ drone and heavily echoed vocals not unlike if Owen Ashworth (of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone) got really, really, really stoned on some of that super potent B.C. bud and started singing whale songs. It's that good! (And we mean that sincerely.)
Second long player from the moonlighting project of the mysterious Detroit duo known as Dopplereffekt (first act on Detroit's Intuit-Solar). Cold, rhythmic electro grooves circa 1984, very reminiscent of New Order's "Confusion" sans vocal track. Nothing
Apparently this album hit the Billboard "New Age" charts! Not sure how or why, you wouldn't think that a collaboration between one of the Swans and a member of Godflesh would qualify as New Age (and it really isn't!). Downtempo electronica with some avant-garde elements, more like, with hints of doomic menace. If you're looking for the crushing metallic guitars of Godflesh, you won't quite find them, though many passages are deep and dark and spooky enough to remind us of Broadrick's current project Jesu.
The deal with this perhaps inevitable collaboration (inevitable given Broadrick's obvious Swans fandom, and Jarboe's openness to collaborative ventures, witness her earlier disc with Neurosis), is that it's JB making mostly electronic backgrounds for Jarboe to do her thing vocally... operatic excesses, and mewlings and moanings... so obviously you've got to be into "her thing". Some are, some aren't. The ambient, layered and looped wailings of the opener, "Decay", should separate the two camps pretty clearly. Some will find Jarboe's vocals to be full of mystery and emotion, others, simply irritating (though it's only on "Tribal Limo" that we really got annoyed with her, the track featuring weird Diamanda Galas yodelling over junky Gang Gang Dance-ish beats).
That said, for those into Jarboe, there's a lot to like here. And we can kind of see how, New Age or not, this could crack the charts on the strength some of the better cuts, like "Let Go" which sounds a lot like Portishead or Bjork, Jarboe effecting a babygirl voice under a blanket of crackley drone, accompanied by a spare snare thwack...
Somewhere right now Thom Yorke is blushing, now that this 1973 soundtrack has been reissued. Well, that's our speculation anyway, 'cause the main theme sounds SO MUCH like a Radiohead song (which one, we haven't quite figured out. Not "Paranoid Android" but close.) At any rate, this was either a big inspiration to Radiohead or it's just a marvellous coincidence. You'll hear it for yourself we're sure. Thom certainly needs to hear this if he hasn't already (as we suspect). And it's not just the melody of this soundtrack's main leit motif, but the singing voice itself. A French female doing wordless ah ah ahs -- play it back to back with Radiohead and you'll swear it's Mr. Yorke's famous falsetto. But that's only part of the reason this soundtrack is so fascinating. It's also a very very early electronica effort by a young Jean-Michel Jarre, later in the '80s to become well-known as a New Age superstar famed for spectacular multi-media shows. In the seventies, though, his output could be considered credible electronica pioneering. 1977's Oxygene is a pretty cool album after all. But this was before even that, and it's way more extreme. Truly jarring electronic sound that's hard to reconcile with the idea of "background" music in film! And Les Granges Brulees was not, as far as we're aware, a horror or science fiction flick where such might make sense. As far as we can tell, this Jean Chapot directed movie was a mystery / romance (staring Alain Delon btw). Certainly the vocals are romantic, and much of the rest of Jarre's crankier-than-Kraftwerk electronics are suspenseful, a la Goblin. One track breaks the mood a little bit -- "Zig-zag" must be from a scene where the characters visit a circus or something, as it's got that Jean-Jacques Perrey zaniness to it. But most of this is interplay between the haunting theme and freaky electronic fx. A very cool, out of the blue reissue, forshadowing Kid A some thirty years ago!
Ah, Kompakt! The current kingdom of electronic music has produced another exceptional album from one of its citizens. There's not much to be said about Jatoma, as this Danish trio seems to be flaunting an air of mystery through a half-hearted attempt at anonymity. Regardless of their backstory, Jatoma are impressive magicians when it comes to their eccentric techno productions that recall the best of Four Tet, Matthew Herbert, and even Matmos from time to time.
With an opening sequence of sparkling digitalia on "Little Houseboat" that teases at a precious melodic phrase in the same way that Oval captured our imaginations with his impeccable Diskont 94 album, Jatoma is clearly onto something quite special. This becomes obvious when they push through a jumble of electronic squiggles and clockwork clicks into the soft whump of a techno pulse and accompanying bass groove that fleshes out just the first number on the very impressive debut. References to Animal Collective have been offered in comparison to Jatoma, but their sound relies less on lithium-addled bubblegum electronica and more on a chimerical synthesis of Pop Ambient dreaminess and the tech-house dramatics of build-and-release. It's no wonder that Kompakt signed them! "Durian" and "Bou" are both curious anthems with their auto-tuned, chill-wave melodies and warbled acid motifs fused onto thumped deep-house rhythms and hi-hat swing. While there are distinct tracks which stand on their own as the singles amongst the album, Jatoma take the time to subvert the iPod listening experience with very short interludes, codas, and intros of transitional squelches and tuned melodies that bridge the moods and atmospheres of Jatoma's varied tracks. Yup, it's an album that works best when listening from beginning to end!
Like many of the recent Kompakt releases, the vinyl comes the cd of the same material found within.
We love it when something unexpected, unknown, and essentially totally off our radar shows up and then completely blows us away! Which is exactly what happened with this chunk of epic cosmic psychedelic space-out by French artist Etienne Jaumet. By the looks of his photo on the cover we first thought this was going to be some sort of smarty pants singer songwriter, Jarvis Cocker sort of thing, but talk about about how you shouldn't judge a book by its cover! Instead, Night Music is one of the most satisfying and fully realized analog synth driven discs we've heard in ages. Imagine Goblin and Kraftwerk gliding through cosmic space, as the record's opening 20+ minute track really does evoke some sort of interstellar autobahn, the listener whirling through the stars and sky, Night Music a deep rich and nuanced soundtrack for that late night cosmic excursion. We also think about some of our fave modern psych-space rockers, like try to imagine Expo 70 remixed by Jonas Reinhardt, or Arp channeling Franco Battiato or Subway stretched way out into a sonic stratosphere pioneered by Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze. Folks who dug the Altres record we listed last time should definitely dig this too. We'd also bet the Black Devil Disco folks and both Zombi and Zomby lovers will find loads to love on Night Music. Oddly enough when we starting doing some digging to find out more about Jaumet we discovered he was in a group called Zombie Zombie (not however, related to the above Zomby/i's).
You can tell that Jaumet also has a deep love of cosmic free-jazz as he introduces subtle saxophone on parts of the record with perfectly understated results, bringing to mind Herbie Hancock's Sextant album for sure, and also Sun Ra as reimagined by Four Tet, particularly on that epic opener "For Falling Asleep" - the very next track sure says "wake up", though, bringing in more of a techno thump to the proceedings, but still staying wonderfully spaced out. Pretty much every time we play this in the store either a customer or one of us who works here asks if this is a reissue of some long lost kosmiche gem, maybe from Germany in the 1970s. In fact we found out that Jaumet based the sequencing of the record on many of those same amazing cosmic psych records from the '70s, where first side of the vinyl is one long track and the other side is filled with shorter tracks. Jaumet also has such an obvious understanding of composition, especially how to stretch tracks out without letting them overstay their welcome, and thus Night Music is just long enough to totally transport us to another dimension, yet focused enough to stay listenable and sonically complex the entire time.
Something which only makes us love this record even more was the discovery that long time AQ favorite, '70s French folk-psychstress Emmanuelle Parrenin adds her voice as texture on a couple tracks (sounding very Yoko Ono, at times) as well as playing harp and hurdy gurdy. Furthermore, the mix was "directed and imagined" by none other than Carl Craig and you can totally tell, as the whole record flows with such a lush layered sound and driving pulse that is both immediately satisfying and utterly hypnotic!
Before the word 'prurient' became affixed to a trendsetting contemporary musician with a great haircut and an even better taste in noise, electronics, and metal, this particular word could accurately describe much of the transgressive electronics of industrial culture. It was easy to find an unhealthy obsession with deviant sexuality throughout the late '70s and early '80s, often contextualized as an escape from the mechanisms of social control; and the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound, and Whitehouse all titilated their audiences with the notions of sexual perversion anywhere along the spectrum from critical detachment to full-on engagement. The outspoken Stefan Jaworzyn has been privy to such sociopathic aesthetics, including a couple of stints joining William Bennett as a member of Whitehouse as well as being a founding member of Skullflower. Drained Of Connotation marks some of the very earliest recordings for Jaworzyn, dating back to 1982, well before he was part of either of those projects. These were created with just a Korg MS10 and Dr. Rhythm drum machine - two staples of the DIY / industrial / noise community - and it's easy to draw parallels to Maurizio Bianchi, Nocturnal Emissions, and Konstruktivist. A suitable sleaziness emanates from Stefan Jaworzyn's track "Sinister Eroticism In Oslo" which lashes lazer-beam synth oscillations to a slinky, yet cheap drum pattern. Yes, prurient is the right adjective in describing the track, which Jaworzyn so aptly titled. He's always been a man of choice words, and the track "Psychoanalytically Speaking, You're Fucked" is sardonically perfect. The cluster bombs of synth-noise above the sampled kettledrum loops on that track are pretty damn awesome too. Throughout the whole record, Jaworzyn articulates a brain-scrambled sense of desperation through these rough sketches of noise-laden synths that belies the cocksure swagger of his outsized personality. Limited to 700 copies, and likely not long for this world...
Fifth record in less than a year, from legendary noisenik Stefan Jaworzyn, former member of Skullflower, Whitehouse, Ascension, Descension and head honcho of the legendary Shock label. After a self imposed hiatus, Jaworzyn has released more in the last few months than he has in the last decade, including two reissue/retrospectives, and now THREE proper new releases, and they've all been pretty great, all focusing on some seriously twisted modular synth wrangling and obtuse rhythmic soundscapery. The A side here is actually quite dreamy, in its own fucked up way, a synthscape for sure, but don't be expecting any of that kosmische bollocks everyone and their mother seem to be making these days, no Jaworzyn is crafting something much more tweaked, a layered creation that fuses a backdrop of what sounds like synthesized rainfall or maybe crickets, to a burbling percolating psychedelic swirls, and some seriously caustic, percussive punctuation, the sound super dynamic, hushed one second, blown out, and ultra distorted the next, those percussive thunks, nearly flipping the needle off the record, while the background sounds are wild little tangles of squiggly electronics, blurred into constantly shifting textures.
The flipside is like some alien transmission, being misinterpreted by an ancient computer, and being spat back out as a garbled squall of synthnoise. A bed of tense layered drones, pulses and undulates, gristly around the edges, laced with crackle and staticky hum, while over the top, clouds of melodic squiggles, and malfunctioning FX, swirl and flit wildly, the sonic equivalent to a jar of fireflies AND bees, shaken wildly, producing a seriously unstable reaction, a sonic cacophony, that ends up being surprisingly listenable, certainly maddening to the less iron eared, but for the rest of us, some seriously mesmerizing psychedelic synth trance out.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
Ah, the art of fine song titling. --AsphaltvibratorÊ, --Hi FansÊ. And the music? Sweet, playful techno-pop not too shy to heft a big bass beat every once in a while. Kinda silly. Almost dorky at times. Oh yeah, and if you look closely, you just might spot some members of StereoTotal.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Because Jega has only produced some compilation tracks and a legendary, impossible-to-find lp on S.K.A.M., they have remained in undeserved obscurity. Thanks to Mu-Ziq's new label, they have released two new recordings. Sharp and quirky beats fusing techno, electro and 80's Euro-pop. Much appeal to fans of Autechre, Mu-Ziq, Aphex Twin and even Vince Gil. Stellar. Highly recommended.
Dylan Nathan is Jega. Who were his college roomates? Richard James (Aphex Twin) and Mike Paradinas (Mu-Ziq). Maybe he spent more time actually going to classes and got a job or got married or something, but his music career has hardly been as prolific as theirs -- this is only his second album, following up his debut "Spectrum". Released on Paradinas' label (licensed by Matador), "Geometry" is a excellent piece of electronica, with skittering distorted beats giving way to melodic, moody atmospheres and back again. It'll definitely appeal to fans of Jega's college roommates, as well as Squarepusher and Autechre fans (the Rephlex/Warp/Planet Mu axis).
Sharp and quirky beats - a fusion of techno, electro, so-called "drill 'n' bass", 80's europop and film soundtracks...for fans of Autechre, µ-ziq, Aphex Twin, and Vince Gil. Finally domestic. Stellar!
The world of 'dreamy electronica' has been polluted by those better aimed at selling you a Volvo then actually taking you to a different state of being, but thankfully there are still talented and lucid minds like Jan Jelinek who actually does create music that makes your mind wander and washes away your moment in time. The sound is much warmer and organic sounding then the super click n' cut sounding Loop-finding-jazz-records he released a few years back. This time Jelinek seems to be going beyond creating an amazing surface sound (referred to as wallpaper in an earlier AQ review) and has created an album that actually seeps through walls and time and space and slowly melts into your ears. Highly Recommended!
It may be a strange obsession, but The Wallpaper Lifestyle is something which has been popping up in the collective consciousness of Aquarius. It would be nice to say that it's the lust for chic Danish furniture, sharp Italian clothes, and hot Scandinavian
Anyway, Jan Jelinek must have the same fantasy and has constructed the perfect soundtrack. It's a blissful electronica record full of all of the click 'n' dub that one would expect from Scape Records (run by Pole's Stefan Betke). The title is a bit misleading as this has very little to do with jazz, and more having to do with the process of creating the record (by fragmenting the sounds from his jazz vinyl collection through the sampler to arrive at the very Pole electro-dub). So clean. So digital. So Wallpaper.
Seems like you can almost trace the evolution of Jan Jelinek's based on just his album covers. While his early releases were packaged in monotone no frills minimalist sleeves his more recent releases have been covered in designs with much more blur, mystery and texture. And it's pretty accurate to say that the same goes for the sounds he's been creating. Gone our the days of his crisp, clean and ultra linear creations, making way for a much more seductive world of murky and rich soundscapes. In fact, this outing's cover art first made us think that it was on the Hapna label, and it actually does have the sort of sound would be quite at home on that fine label as it demonstrates a mysterious almost field recording like sound mixed with organic electronica, which also had us wondering what it would sound like if Boards of Canada got their heads out of the clouds and buried them in the mud.
Peacefrog Records has typically published the more soulful strains of Detroit techno with a steady stream of releases from Moodymann, Herbert, Robert Hood, Ian O'Brien, Glenn Underground, and Planetary Assault Systems. So, Peacefrog seems to be an unusual home for Darrel Fitton, whose back catalogue as Bola and Gescom (in collaboration with Autechre) ranks very highly within IDM circles. Nevertheless, Fitton's debut recording as Jello bridges the increasing stylistic chasm between IDM and soulful Detroit techno. At the heart of "Voile" Fitton uses the midtempo / downtempo IDM rhythmic skitter that can be found on those Bola / Gescom recordings, but has smoothed out much of the dis-ease found in most post-Aphex electro-paranoia. As the album begins, Jello seems like a slightly friendlier version of Bola and still firmly entrenched within the IDM aesthetic, yet as the album progresses, Fitton gradually turns his focus towards a jazz-tinged electronica with Lamb / Portishead female vocals, digital approximations of bass-slapping, Rhodes organs melting into the alien jazz sentiments of Herbie Hancock, and stream of consciousness beat poetry.
When we think of Nashville, maybe tweaked out art damaged techno is not the first thing that comes to mind. But lucky for us, some pretty fucked up and great damaged electronic pop IS in fact coming out of the country music capitol of the world, courtesy of Jensen Sportag. With cover art and guest vocals on a track by Ariel Pink you can begin to imagine what kind of wonderful weird world Jensen Sportag inhabits. And any link to the totally nuts Ariel Pink should give you an idea of what's in store. Citing influences from Sun City Girls to Autechre to R. Steevie Moore, this is most definitely outsider techno in all its warped glory. While electronic music is jam packed with way too many posers aiming to make the cleanest, the crispest, the dreamiest and the smoothest music around, it's so damn refreshing to hear someone remember that for the most part electronic music is best when it's cheap, sleazy and out of control!
A few lists back we made a record called Ndagga Versions our Record Of The Week, that record was released at the same time as this one, and we essentially a 'dub' version of this record, as in less vocals, a bit more tripped out. But we loved that record so much, as did loads of you, that we figured we oughta list the record proper. And a funny thing happened when we returned to this one to review it, we realized that even though this is the 'vocal' version, the vocals are still a pretty minimal component. That said, some of the vocals are fantastic, and it's nice to hear them incorporated into the dense Senegalese rhythms. Needless to say, some folks who bought Ndagga Versions, might feel like they don't need this one, or more of this sound, but we're guessing lots of folks who read the aQ list are like us, and ALWAYS need more. So this is essentially the same review as Ndagga Versions, slightly altered, so just know that it's much of the same music, but with more vocals, check out the sound samples to hear what we mean, and read on, we recommend 800 Percent Ndagga almost as much as Ndagga Versions... And if you don't have either, you might actually want to start with this one, if you like to hear singing.
Mark Ernestus is probably best known as one half of the Basic Channel production team and record label (along with Moritz Von Oswald). The two also ran the Chain Reaction label, and both continue to make and release music, Ernestus most notably recently remixing tracks by Konono No.1 and Tony Allen as well as co-releasing the amazing Shangaan Electro compilation we reviewed a while back. Apparently, over the last few years, Ernestus became increasingly obsessed with Senegalese Mbalax music, which is super rhythmic, featuring multiple drummers playing wildly syncopated rhythms, the drums augmented with marimba like synths, the music wild and tangled, dense and driving, groovy and funky, dubbed out and super trancey - it's not hard to see why a techno visionary would find this stuff utterly mesmerizing. And thus was born Jeri-Jeri, a collaborative project between Ernestus and a griot clan of Senegalese drummers. At first we were maybe expecting a sort of African/techno hybrid, but wisely, Ernestus let's the drummers and other musicians do their thing, while he mostly mixes and produces. And that THING is track after track of hyper rhythmic grooviness that definitely speaks to the sort of looped mesmer of techno music, here accompanied by a handful of amazing vocalists including Baaba Maal and Youssou N'Dour doing their own thing over these rhythmic workouts. Even with vocals, the drums are obviously the focal point, but there's also sinewy basslines, the occasional keyboard and synth, often adding yet another rhythmic component, and some subtle melodies, some guitar jangle here and there, adding some minimal tonal coloration, and echoes and fragments of the various vocal lines surface throughout, dubbed out and heavily effected even on the non 'version' version, but really, every track here is a glorious celebration of rhythm and sound, of drums as divine, and they sound so divine here, with most tracks featuring both a complement of Sabar drummers as well as a drummer on a traditional kit, the overlapping rhythms, the syncopated grooves, the barrage of beats, cascading grooves, all wound around simple looped melodies, and locked tight, it's totally irresistible, the sort of singular sound that is both dancefloor ready, but also dense and nuanced enough for headphone listening, some track wild and raucous, others tightly wound and darkly groovy, all of them sublime, emotional, and energetic, lush and organic and ALIVE. Drummers, and fans of drum music will be in heaven, but really, anyone and everyone who is drawn to the rhythm in sound, whether it be techno music, world music, metal music, will be hard pressed not to be totally mesmerized by these sounds.
