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, even moreso here, as this is the instrumental version of the Jeri-Jeri record, the 'versions' in dubspeak. Which is not to say the record proper is not great, it is, and features a handful of amazing vocalists including Baaba Maal and Youssou N'Dour doing their own thing over these rhythmic workouts (and we do have copies in stock, just ask!), but stripped of the vocals, it somehow becomes even more mesmerizing, the drums 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 subtle tonal coloration, and remnants of the original vocals surface here and there, dubbed out and heavily effected, 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.
We first were made aware of this great New York dance floor pop group, with their mind blowing single "Prisoner Of Love", which features Antony on vocals and is one of the best modern disco burners we've heard in ages. We immediately were reminded of the game-changing Hercules & Love Affair album that Antony guested on a few years ago, and then we realized that Jessica 6 is a group led by Nomi Ruiz, one of the vocalists in Hercules & Love Affair. In fact all three core members of Jessica 6 worked on that great Hercules & Love Affair record. So it should come as no surprise that See The Light, is filled with a similar sound, yet a little more pop, and the jams here come out so damn charged. Kind of like if you took records by Cristina, Vanity 6, Culture Club, Hot Chip, and Madonna and made the ultimate dance floor mix. It's actually really refreshing to hear a great vocal filled dance record that hits the spot so right on.
Now this is a holiday record we can get behind. Originally released a couple years back, now reissued with a bonus remix, Justin Broadrick, of Godflesh, Ice, Techno Animal, JK Flesh, Final, Pale Sketcher, etc., tries his hand at writing a modern metalgaze Christmas carol, and pretty much pulls it off. Although the only real Christmas-y bits, are the lyrics, some chiming holiday bells, and the song's sort of wistful lullaby like vibe - otherwise, it's a primo slice of blissed out psychedelic shoegaze post metal chug and shimmer, Jesu style, with swoonsome swirling verses, all hushed vox buried beneath whorls of woozy crystalline thrum, and churning chugging downtuned choruses, laced with strange squiggly melodies and distant tangled melodic filigree, much of "Christmas" plays out like a slowed down, super distorted M83, which seems to a reasonable shorthand description of Jesu's sound in general. The song balances heartfelt melodic dreaminess, specifically the Christmas-y break midsong where the aforementioned bells toll over lush acoustic guitars, and the hazy dreamy vox, with some serious metallic heft, the results perhaps not appropriate for your family holiday get together, but perfect for that heavy holiday mixtape.
Broadrick tacks on three remixes, each by one of his other projects/alter egos. Up first is the new track, credited to JK Flesh, which hadn't really happened when this was first released, but in that guise, Broadrick, pushes the sound back a bit toward his bleak industrial roots, transforming the blissful holiday shimmer into a brooding expanse of grim blackened ambience, anchored to a plodding death march beat, which is soon augmented by some murky jungle breakbeats, the tolling bell drifting on long stretches of droned out minor key shimmer, the vocals too reimagined, and transformed into a strange alien chant, a serious slab of not very Christmas-y electro-industrial blackened jungle grimnity. The Pale Sketcher version heads for the exact opposite of the sonic spectrum, stripping the original down into a hazy swirl of barely there beats, echo drenched vox, lots of softly billowing synths, everything gauzy and sun dappled and so dreamily washed out. And finally, Broadrick slips back into his Final persona, originally more of a solo guitar project, and takes the original version of "Christmas" and Caretaker-izes it, blurring the sounds into ghostlike ambience, and long softly undulating tones, a smeared sprawl of drifting melodic fragments, of soft focus sonic shards, the track building to a sort of crescendo, a softly roiling, dreamily psychedelic climax, before settling right back down into something even more muted and minimal, a bleary stretch of shadowy, soft around the edges chordal shimmer.
SUPER LIMITED!! Once we run out, odds are we won't be able to get more.
Not a brand new Jesu record, instead, this ep collects the three tracks from Jesu's split lp with Eluvium from last year, and adds two alternate versions to flesh it out a bit. Folks who missed out on that now out of print 12", or those amongst you who remain turntableless, will for sure want to pick this up, and Jesu fanatics, might just find this worth it for the two extra alternate takes. First the songs proper:
Three new songs from Jesu, and as if we didn't already see Broadrick and Co. heading in this direction, they've almost entirely jettisoned the heaviness, in favor of a blissy new wave-y drift. Really! No massive sludge, no blissed out crunch, in fact, most of this sounds like Jesu doing the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie, all drift and croon and no crunch and pummel, but it's really nice, and pretty, and still suitably Jesu-like. Imagine Simple Minds or the Cure but raised on Slowdive and Chapterhouse and Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine, doing the theme song for Sixteen Candles 2008 (which if our calculations are correct would be more like Forty Candles). The first song would be a massive hit, sort of melancholy and romantic, dark and dreamy, but still sort of catchy and hopeful, like sunbeams barely making it through grey storm clouds. The final track sounds like it could be from that last scene in Sixteen Candles 2008, the one where the boy and the girl finally make it to the dance after all of the crazy mishaps and misunderstandings and are finally sharing that slow dance... lugubrious and fuzzy, and soft focus and so great actually. It's weird, and a bit unexpected, but as much as we love the glacial crush of past Jesu discs, this new-wave-y drift really suits them, which is a good thing, since they seem to be heading even more and more in that direction with each new release.
The two extra tracks are definitely not -drastically- different, but different enough certainly to make them worth having. "Farewell" gets even more washed out, the whole thing muted and over saturated, the chugging guitars, disembodied and more textural than heavy, the whole song suffused with chiming harmonics and sun dappled soaring bittersweet melodies. "Why Are We Not Perfect", the above mentioned Sixteen Candles 2008 closer, hews closely to the original, the change more in timbre and texture than anything, the vocals still weary and woozy, the beat a loping skittery shuffle, surrounded by shimmering clouds of effervescent streaks of warm buzz, swirls of backwards melody, all whirling softly and dreamily.
Beautifully packaged in a super thick oversized Japanese style mini lp cd jacket, with a thick printed inner sleeve.
Perhaps the most mellow release to date from the already very downtempo Jet Black Crayon (aka Tommy Guerrero and co). Although the titles make references to topics of the mind / psychic phenomena (the album title as well as those for a couple of songs "The Mentalist", and "Eyes Closed, Numbers Appear"), words unread this is simply perfect listening for when the summer sun's out and it's so hot you just don't feel like moving much. Make yourself a fruity frosty beverage, let your mind wander and allow the laidback shufflin' rhythms, lazy horns and warm chiming melodies to do all the moving for you.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Local electronicists Tommy Guerrero and DJ Gadget along with Monte Vallier of Swell. A subtle, simple downtempo record, with bass, slide bass, and more bass.
Release from the Japanese label Shiranui, which has developed a rather unique variant of drum & bass, which employs spastic asynchronous breakbeats accompanied with austere modernist jazz overtones of bowed metal, stand-up bass, and muted horns. Not at all dissimilar to the early Spymania releases by Squarepusher, though more dissonant and less groove-based.
DJ Spinna and MC Kriminul are together the duo Jigmastas, and they make a straight up deeply heavy style of hip hop with guests such as Sadat X from Brand Nubian and even Vernon Reid (Living Color) on guitar. This isn't strictly a super underground release since Spinna has worked with the likes of De La Soul and Mary J Blige, but nonetheless blink and you might miss this. Comes with a
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Entropy" is a minor stumble for Tomas Jirku, whose previous outings (especially the "Immaterial" album for Subtractif / Alien8) had been some of the better recordings of clean, minimal techno along side Vladislav Delay, Chain Reaction, and Pole. Yet this album never stands beyond the formula of subdued shuffling rhythms, delicate clickery, and those ubiquitous swelling synth pads which sound like a digital cross between a ring modulator and a rhodes organ. On the plus side, the packaging with its sewn booklet is quite nice.
Tomas Jirku's "Immaterial" makes no claims of innovation; however, this album stands way above the crowded field of electron engineers who have been peddling an increasingly mediocre and hollow form of minimalist techno. As in Jirku's previous recordings, "Immaterial" (released through Alien 8's new electronica imprint Substractif) owes a great debt to Pole and Vladislav Delay for
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Tomas Jirku's "Sequins" is the second album from this techno reconstructionist. For the past year or so, he's been posting his work online to receive comments, criticism, and advice from anybody whose wanted to give it to him. While his first album, "Variants", kept to a techno minimalism a la Mika Vainio and Vladislav Delay, he's been listening to a few too many house heads who've insisted that he inject more "soul" into his work. But instead of soul, he put a rod up his ass.
Tomas Jirku�s --VariantsÊ involves an interesting additive/subtractive process whereby Jirku would post one of his minimalist techno pieces online at www.notype.com for a period of time, then replace it with a new composition based on previous experiments... sorta like an ongoing remix project of his own material. --VariantsÊ is his first proper album, collecting the best pieces to date from this continuing series. Each of these post-techno excursions vary from track to track, falling at times near the moodiest minimal techno of Carl Craig, then at times sounding like Vladislav Delay�s dubbed out Chain Reaction hypnosis. Jirku�s finishing touches and general minimalism also recall the frigidity of Mika Vainio�s brilliant album --MetriÊ. All in all, an excellent first album.
We had been hearing about this record for ages, mostly that it was the best thing Justin Broadrick had done since Godflesh! Which would be discounting everything he'd done as Jesu, much of which we hold near and dear, so while we're actually inclined to agree with the above sentiment, it might be more accurate to say that, besides Jesu, which is an entirely different beast, we haven't dug a Broadrick project this much since the days of classic Godflesh. Which makes sense really. The first hint was the name, Broadrick having resurrected a name he used back in the Techno Animal days, and in fact, JK Flesh reminds us a lot more of Techno Animal than Godflesh. The jams here all remind us of the kind of weirdo experimental electronic stuff Broadrick was doing on the side, when he was still doing Godflesh. The sort of jams that you'd hear on some obscure comp alongside Alec Empire, or Porter Ricks or Spectre or Scorn, if you remember those Macro Dub Infection comps from back in the day (if not, you should track them down, they are incredible!) or remember any of the more obscure Broadrick alter-egos, Curse Of The Golden Vampire, the Sidewinder, Techno Animal of course, especially the opening track on Posthuman, which lays down a spare lurching beat over buzzing droned out guitars, and features some super intense heavily effected vokills that sound unlike anything else we've heard from Broadrick. And instead of being heavy, it's more a sort of brooding malevolence, a hypnotic lumber that borders on some sort of industrial demonic dub. And had the whole record sounded like that, we would have been just fine. But the other thing we'd been hearing about JK Flesh, is that it was like Godflesh, but with dubstep beats, which may have had some folks crying foul, it actually sounded pretty goddamn good to us, and we're happy to report that it does in fact sound about as good as we imagined it would.
The same sonic template as the opening track for the most part, but with distinctly dubstep beats, and the thing is, it totally works, the dubstep element really becomes secondary, as Broadrick unfurls some of his fiercest and heaviest guitar work in ages, his vocals a thick, hellish bellow, far removed from the shouty vocals that marred the last few Godflesh records, this is some sick, fierce, and yeah, slightly groovy heaviness. But think how radical the drum machine driven Godflesh was back in the day, playing alongside all these crusty grind bands and straight up metal bands, that actually translates pretty well to the now, with JK Flesh, melding that sort of crusty chugging heaviness to a more modern beat. The first few tracks really don't even really get dubsteppy at all, instead, seeming to ease the listener into this brave new world, two massive slabs of massive downtuned machine-doom heaviness that kills. It's not until "Devoured" that things get crazy, when the beat is actually skittery, sounding a bit like Clubroot remixing Godflesh, which is obviously not a bad thing AT ALL. The title track too, is all manic skitter, wreathed in an impossibly thick gristly patina of crumbling super distorted buzz, and it's a crazy killer mix. The sort of thing that just might have metalheads tempted to poke their heads out onto the dancefloor, but should most definitely have the dancefloor heaving, with what is essentially some of THEE heaviest dubstep EVER. "Earthmover" introduces some of that blown out bass wobble, but it's mostly lost amidst all the churning metallic riffery and squalls of effects. The record finishes with another weird one, a good bookend for that opener, a sort of abject creeping doom dirge, driven by a skittery beat, but not so overtly dubsteppy, instead, a pounding lumbering lurch, with some seriously sick vokills, and while there is a kind of drop, it turns into something much more washed out and psychedelic, with clean vocals, and thick washed out guitars, the result sort of dreamy and druggy, and a little bit like a darker noisier heavier Jesu.
For those of you, like us, who always found yourselves way more into Broadrick's extracurricular sonic activities, this is a no brainer, it pushes all our Techno Animal buttons big time, but it definitely is the closest thing we've heard to Godflesh in a while, but still different enough to be fresh and exciting. Needless to say, this totally rules, and is WAY WAY WAY recommended (& anyone who digs Necro Deathmort, in particular, should check this out).
Pretty killer match up between two aQ faves, Justin Broadrick's (Godflesh, Jesu, etc) new electronic outfit JK Flesh, and long running experimental noise/power electronics combo Prurient. The JK Flesh tracks here are about the darkest and fiercest we've heard from Broadrick, opening with a thick corrosive buzz, droned out and dense, before exploding into a dense churning industrial dirge, which soon blossoms into some old school jungle, and thus flits back and forth between chugging, metallic, almost Godflesh like crush to still bleak, but more beat-y drum n' bass stutter.
The other tracks follow suit, laying a groundwork of beats and rhythms, and then dousing them with noisy, psychedelic sound, a loping breakbeat is looped over a dark background of industrial clatter and buzzing synth squelch. Creepy gothy electro roils ominously, the lumbering machinelike grooves sounding not unlike classic Skinny Puppy, albeit a bit revved up and dirtied up.
Prurient, aka Dom Fernow (Cold Cave, Ash Pool, Cold Cave, etc.) counters with whirring drones, mysterious disembodied voices, all reverbed and processed, and set adrift through fields of soft noise thrum, buried feedback, and heavy crumbling sheets of distortion, even some synthy cold-wave style pulsations, haunting and murky and muddy, at super rhythmic at times, reminding us of some of Fernow's other recent projects, Vatican Shadow, Silent Servant and Christian Cosmos. The final track though is the perfect blend of noise and dreamlike ambience, a Caretaker / Tim Hecker style gauzy drift, a swirling sprawl of ethereal ambience, haunting reverbed piano melodies, floating in glorious expanses of dep hum and slow shifting thrum, and beneath it all a constantly roiling sea of jagged, but muted and muddied feedback, all smeared into a hazy bleary eared, but still subtly corrosive, dronescape.
Pressed on ultra thick vinyl, and packaged in heavy, old school Stoughton style tip on sleeves.
That's right, we're not crazy. We knew we'd be hearing some more skweee soon. Skweee? That's the Scandinavian DIY funked-up, glitched-out instrumental electro subgenre that we got all addicted to when we discovered it last year. We raved about two rad skweee comps, the Museums Of Future Sound Vols. 1 and 2, released by the Swedish skweee-centric Flogsta Danshall label. And we figured we'd be hearing more, once word really got out.
Well, it's England's Planet Mu label who now takes the lead in getting down with the skweee, signing Eero Johannes for his debut album. Eero had a track on MoFS Vol. 2, which also appears here (re-recorded?): "Finnrexin". That one is killer, but there's lots more here besides that's cool too, from the nervous blip-blip-blippage of "HAL Manifesto" to the 8-bit-y video game funk of "Natt I Sparvagnen" to the utterly catchy "We Could Be Skweeeroes" (which we'd encountered before on the internet)...
Indeed, all 13 tracks on this eponymous disc find Eero droppin' the bass with some slammin', squelching fat beats, gettin' jiggy with it, yet somehow (mostly) stayin' chill and relaxed at the same time. He's got a knack for working catchy melodies into his tracks, however frantic they may be. While our preference in skweee leans towards the stuff that's most lo-fi damaged and fucked up, and Eero's music, whilst crunchy, is sorta on the somewhat more polished/produced side of skweee, we're digging it plenty, spinning it a lot in the store.
Heck, didn't we tell ya? This is just the beginning. Warp had better make a skweee signing soon too.
Best skweee album of the year, so far!
The Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson has now signed to 4AD, after a couple of mighty fine albums released through Touch; and 4AD is certainly the right outlet for this album, as Johannson's grandiose scores for orchestral arrangements, vocal chorales, and electronics enjoys the same weighty sentimentality heard in many a Dead Can Dance or This Mortal Coil album. Lush, cinematic, and utterly dramatic, this album curiously is not a soundtrack (although it has all of the repeating leitmotifs and syrupy pathos of a big budget Hollywood film of the tragic / romantic genre); rather Johannsson contextualizes all of these majestic, post-classical elements as a tribute to the IBM 1401, a state of the art computer from 1960. The computer came with a audio training manual from which he culled samples about the machine's maintenance. While some of the exchanges of Michael Nyman-esque orchestral phrases with the authoritarian vocals from the manual are quite interesting, the album is wholly saccharine in scope, rendering whatever nostalgia for technologies past as something of a quaint detour from the orchestral bombast.
We weren't sure what to make of this one at first, a mix of modern electronica, and traditional African music, the story of how these two guys got together is a good one, John Wizards, aka John Withers, was living in Africa, when he met Rwandan singer Emmanuel Nzaramba, the two talked music, while Nzaramba was at work, and Withers was walking around with a guitar, they then parted company, Nzaramba losing his job and his cellphone, only to meet a year later, in a different city, at which point the two decided to work together. The results are pretty strange, but wonderful too, minus the vocals, this might be some idiosyncratic Planet Mu oddity, but the vocals root the music in the traditions of classic African folk music. The sound is a dizzying hodgepodge that aQ-ers might imagine would result from a mix of Shangaan Electro, Music From Saharan Cellphones, and some of the weirder Sublime Frequencies releases. The first two tracks deliver what sounds like a plunderphonic collage of sounds and influences, swirling calliope like melodies, twangy guitars, reverbed piano, disco-y drumming, groovy psychedelic synths, handclaps, what sounds like a looped field recording, transformed into a woozy melody, whistles, thick bass buzz, steel string guitars, wild psych jams, drum machine stutter, all of which gives way to some stripped down drums, and what must be Nzaramba talking to Withers over a strangely electrified version of African high life, then some autotuned vox, and the song unfurls as some warped modern day variation of classic African music, laced with all sorts of warbly electronics, dubbed out drum beats, mutated synths, the song stripped of all the weirdness might be too saccharine and straight, but as imagined by Withers, it becomes something super freaky, and super fun. And so the whole record goes, the songs leaping from sound to sound, style to style, groovy disco-funk, stuttery R&B, woozy slow jams, mellowed out dubstep, cheesy eighties MTV style pop, dreamy collages glitchery, and pretty much every twisted variation in between, the recording super loose and abstract, with some of the songs just stopping, allowing us to hear Withers and Nzaramba talking in the studio, before the song bursts back into action. So good, so strange, and so fun. Easily the coolest, weirdest 'world' music record we've heard in a while. Anyone into the above mentioned comparisons (Sublime Frequencies, Music From Saharan Cellphones, Shagaan Electro), should definitely check this out...
We're beginning to think that Debacle might just have to be our new favorite label. Certainly one of the coolest weirdest cd-r labels around. With a massive catalog we've only begun to work our way through, the spaced out krautdrone bliss of Expo 70, the hazy mantra like synth/vocal ritualism of the Slaves, and the tripped out synthscapery of Megabats, all killed, and now we have these, one of two releases on this week's list from Demian Johnston, who we knew nothing about, until we read that maybe he was in legendary technical metalcore outfit Kiss It Goodbye, which makes more sense here (than on the split tape with Mamiffer, reviewed elsewhere on this list), as this is some seriously corrosive, and caustic heaviness, not in the sense of metal, or rock, or even riffing, this is some dense, heaving, roiling blacknoise ambience that rivals Blue Sabbath Black Cheer for sheer power and intensity, but unlike the nearly impenetrable black hole sound of BSBC, the sounds here are infused with melody, and for every blast of brutality, there's a stretch of hushed shimmer, or creeping minimal drift.
Oh did we mention we have no idea who or what Mink Stole is either? The Debacle site offers no insights, a quick web search reveals that it's a guy called Chris Negrete, and that this whole record was born of a single guitar effects improv jam, recorded live, by Johnston, and then sent off to Negrete to fuck with, and fuck with he did, adding all manner of texture, extra noise, percussion, transforming a cloud of swirling guitar growl into a sprawling soundscape of black ambience, and foggy low end creep. The opening track is a harsh blast, but the follow up is a hazy, distorted slowcore free-drone drift, the record unwinds and unfurls gradually, slipping from sound to sound, hazy almost new agey krautdrone one minute, complete with haunting crooned vox, to deep minimal ambient thrum the next, an oozing black cloud of sound, laced with thick percussive low end flutters, and blasts of tweaked effects, otherworldly and a bit harrowing. Elsewhere thick swells of metallic buzz pulse over creaking, groaning industrial landscapes, SUNN-like sheets of blackdrone guitar buzz billow over buried barely there melodies, washed out shimmers float weightlessly alongside operatic vocals, in a gauzy expanse of warm layered warble and crystalline guitar shimmer, and roiling seas of whir and hiss churn over a submerged series of mechanical drones and machine like pulsations. Awesome, and dark. For fans of Kevin Drumm, Prurient, Wolf Eyes, and the grim bleak side of the black drone spectrum.
SKWEEE!! DJ Jon AD (who runs the LoDubs and losonofono labels as well as the kick ass Anthem Records store in Portland) claims responsibility for the "first skweee mixed cassette in the known universe". Yep, that's probably correct. Kudos to him, and as skweee connoisseurs ourselves, we can tell you it's a damn fine mix, dense with percolating glitch and electronic future-funk freakiness from some of the best in the biz.
And you're reading this and wondering what the heck this "skweee" is of which we speak, well first off this tape will school you, and secondly, just do a quick search on our site and you'll find reviews of previous skweee comps like Skweee Cruise and Skweee Tooth that should explain it.
Jon wanted to demonstrate that skweee can rock a (dance) party, and definitely succeeds. We like how he mixes in a few ringers - non-skweee, or perhaps we should say pre-skweee (?) tracks by the likes of Boogie Down Productions and the Beastie Boys, to give the listener a sense of skweee's hiphop, b-boy roots. The tape is also crammed, of course, with the work of such Scandinavian skweee luminaries as Limonious, Daniel Savio, Spartan Lover, Mangrove, Uday, Rigas Den Andre, V.C., Randy Barracuda, Slow Hand Motem, Beem, and Joxaren. The new wave of American skweee is represented too, with Portland's Lazercrotch leading off side A...
Over the whole tape, there's nearly 30 individual skweee cuts seamlessly mixed together, in quite a dense and frenzied fashion. Each side of this C-60 cassette was recorded in a single take, with two turntables, mixer, and effects ('cause skweee can always use MORE video game zipps and zapps).
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Comes with download code, so you don't actually need a tape deck...
Ltd to 300 numbered copies. Includes dvd, poster.
Ready to go clubbing? In another galaxy? With his latest record under the not-a-person-but-a-band Jonas Reinhardt moniker, Jesse Reiner (and friends) have turbocharged the synth swells and flourishes of their previous kosmische krautrock-inspired releases with some powerful booty-shaking beats. As much as we loved their self-titled debut, and Powers Of Audition (both on Kranky), we're happy that Jonas Reinhardt are providing fuel for our dance-making body parts. Such an effort seems fitting with their new home on Not Not Fun Records, a serious concern in new electronic and dance music that has also released material by aQ faves Peaking Lights among others. The result is an entrancing visit to planet space disco that owes as much to Giorgio Moroder and other Italo devotees as it does to Neu!...
To kickstart the party, Reiner and co. rely less on the amazing motorik drumming of Damon Palermo and more on drum machines, which creates an equally ecstatic vibe, but for a more vertically positioned human. Frequent Jonas Reinhardt participants Phil Manley (Life Coach, Trans Am, The Fucking Champs), Diego Gonzalez (3 Leafs), Tim Soete (The Fucking Champs), Steve Moore (Zombi), and others are also on on board. Don't let all our talk of discoing make you think Mask Of The Maker is a soundtrack to the coke-fueled lives of mere beautiful people, because Jonas Reinhardt forms melodies with otherworldly synth sounds and stratospheric mantras from the ethereal mouth of Meryl Press (check out "Elimination Street") to guide you on your imaginary extraterrestrial journey. Thus Emeralds is still a definite comparison.
Perhaps the Philip K. Dick quote "It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity" on the inner-sleeve suggests the journey you are on is actually to a star called The Real You. Or maybe this turn towards real-deal dance music is the revelation that follows. That's just a guess, though. Jesse Reiner and his Jonas Reinhardt cohorts may have pulled back the veil a bit, but we still don't know what truths lurk under Reiner's red beard (which is on full display on the front cover), now do we?
Sometimes you have to go straight to the source to get it really right. And no doubt, for the sounds of Jonas Reinhardt, that motherland (er, fatherland?) is Germany, as their kosmische sound has no doubt been shaped heavily by so many of the groups that came out of the Krautrock scene of the seventies and eighties. Spending some time in Berlin and recording this new record there seems to have really helped take JR's sounds to the next level. Music For The Tactile Dome, their vinyl only debut for Not Not Fun, is the most successful outing yet by JR, demonstrating different facets of their sound while still keeping a focused eye on the unknown cosmic sky. It also has some of the darkest elements that we've heard from these guys so far and those sounds really suit them so well. Analog synth overdrive orbiting a pulsating planet with mysterious and surprising twists and turns along the way. Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze would be proud!
Two new killer tracks from one of our favorite modern day kosmiche music crews, Jonas Reinhardt. Before we get to the music we got to say the vinyl itself is pretty fucking cool, both sides have etchings on them and side A is pressed as a 7" to be played at 45rpm, and side B is cut as a 10" to be played at 33rpm, but ON A 12". Ok, now that we got that out of the way we can also geek out on how great the music is.
If it's possible this might be the most intergalactic and spaced out Jonas Reinhardt offering yet, as the synths pulsate and glide with other dimensions on their mind. Channeling Klaus Schulze and Manuel Gottsching, in a spirit similar to other kosmisce explorers we love like Expo 70, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Emeralds. We dig that for how cosmic and baked these tracks sound, there is also a sense of song writing and structure within the grooves that really makes it a record you just want to flip over and over, dazed and blissed out by the these sweet sounds...
Import, limited to 500 copies.
It's been a great year for krautrock inspired kosmiche pastiche. As records by Arp, Cloudland Canyon, Growing and White Rainbow have found a new generation using old analog synths to orbit the earth with lots of great results. It was so fitting and ideal that Jonas Reinhardt got to make their live debut playing the after party for the Cluster show in Big Sur at the beginning of summer which some of us were lucky to see, and we were immediately impressed with what is slowly becoming one of the most exciting outfits to emerge from San Francisco in a long while.
Reinhardt is the alter ego of Jesse Reiner who played in Crime In Choir and Ascended Master, as well as serving as one of the guitarists in Citay, whom he recently parted ways with so he could focus all his attention on this project. He's really managed to find his inner Klaus Schulze with this record creating an album that shimmers and pulsates with strength and grace. Like the best of '70s era Tangerine Dream with the ominous moments of Goblin and healthy nods to Cluster and Harmonia this is sure to please fans of spaced out propelling cosmic adventures in sound. It seems as this was recorded before the live version of the band was formed as recent live shows finds Jonas Reinhardt catching much more of a groove as they create 'kraut style' dance parties with totally thrilling results. We can't wait to hear them capture that side of their sound on tape, but until then this is a really great beginning of what we have a feeling will be a long running and rewarding project!
Okay, no bullshit. This is one of the stupidest things we've ever heard. But with the catchiest electro-pop groove accompanying a male German disco diva reciting I'm The Disco Dancing! [sic] complete with vocalized whip snaps, the b-side to this single has become THE club hit for the AQ staff this month (you wouldn't believe how many times we've played this in the store!). A-side 'You're The One' is certainly less of a brain rot boogie with croonsome vocals a la Jarvis Cocker and a squelchy big beat pop song that destroys Fat Boy Slim and the Chemical Bros. Oddly enough, Aphex protege Cylob is responsible for the two great mixes filling out this four-track single. Better than 'I'm Too Sexy', up there with 'Der Commissar', somehow kinda like both. No ifs, ands, or buts...you'll either think this is silly and hate it, or think it's silly and love it. We love it!
Calling all skweee-jays! Or would-be skweee-jays. We've got four new 7" singles of fresh skweee straight from the source, imported from Flogsta Danshall in Finland. They're in plain white sleeves, the only art to be found here on the labels. If you've followed our other skweee recommendations (both Museum Of Future Sound comps, the more recent Skweee Tooth collection) then you know all about this Scandinavian DIY electro b-boy instrumental 8-bit phenomenon, and you'll also already be familiar with the strange names of the artists on these four singles.
Flogsta boss Limonious' slinky "Swedish Pommak" already wormed its way into our ears via the Museum Of Future Sound Vol. 2, though the jittery yet spacey b-side "Hurri Up!" we hadn't heard before. And all the tracks by Mangrove, Mrs. Queda, and Joxaren (all three artists hailing from Sweden) are new to us as well. Suffice to say, if you like skweee, you'll like these cuts, presented here in skweee's ideal format.
Joxaren's "Ritam Bluz" is a chiming, exotic, slightly sinister groove. Mrs Queda's laidback "Post-Pubertal" bleeps and bloops nicely along aided by robotic handclaps and digital hisses (oddly, her MySpace page lists Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum as her only influence). Maybe our fave of the batch, Mangrove's "Angry Animals", is a bit of a fractured funky banger, bringing down some rigid buzzin' beats. The flip is pretty solidly crunchy / catchy too. The various other A- and B- sides on these 7"s are all pretty darn skweelicious as well! Seriously, if you're a DJ, just throw one of these on in your set for instant skweee cred. Listening at home is fun too.
Go here: http://skweee.com/ for a lot more interesting skweee info, including interviews with some of the folks we just mentioned.
One of six new tapes from the always awesome Holodeck label out of Austin, Texas is this washed out retro '80's synth jammer from Juan Cisneros, who previously operated under the moniker, VC Childkraft (and who had one of our favorite tracks on the Brainclub Vol. 1 compilation). Vaporware is a hard to quantify mix of post-witch house haziness through a glaring Miami Vice heat. "Shattered Glass in Oil Rainbow" jarringly begins with a choked speedboat motor noise before settling into a calm seascape invoking a sonic comparison to The Holy Other channeling slow motion Jan Hammer. Romantic synth textures and even far away saxophone, taking us back to some love scene from an unrealized Michael Mann thriller, but filtered through an even dreamier veil of alien sensuality, placing an unfamiliar tense spin on a forgotten nostalgic moment. "Angel Cop/Black Market Exotica" brings some danger to the proceedings with sounds from a futuristic Asian crime thriller with crowd screams and laser bursts. Less tongue in cheek than someone like, say, Umberto, JU4N actually manages some thoughtful compositional choices that takes this to a deeper place than the references invoked would suggest. This is not your standard, Carpenter/Goblin synth worship, instead diving bravely head-on into some scarier Phil Collins "In The Air Tonight" territory and re-emerging rather unscathed with a unique sonic twist. Wear your Ray-Bans and proceed with caution! Limited!
Seems like a lifetime ago that John Maclean was dishing out noisy and spacey postpunk with his '90s band Six Finger Satellite. The past decade has found Maclean completely embracing his love of electro-dance music and thus has become one of the staples of the DFA roster. The Future Will Come finds him further exploring that classic 'Berlin' sound with a full on dance assault rich with color and fury. We tend to prefer the tracks with Nancy Whang handling the vocals more than the ones with Mr. Maclean on the mic. Not quite exciting us like his last outing Less Than Human did, but certainly filled with a handful of really good tracks.
There's absolutely no information about Judah as to the who, the what, or the when. We could be really bold and say that this bleak, murky synth-punk outfit was active in the early '80s emerging out of the Bowery alongside the likes of Suicide and Dark Day; but in all likelihood, this is a contemporary project that has all of the minimal wave trappings. The arrangements on this eponymous album are suitably stripped down with just syncopated bass-tones, monophunk drum machines, and motorik pulses through pure analogue electronics with very little touching on melody. The vocalist (whoever that may be) strikes a sneering rock pose certainly modeled on the rockabilly vocals of Alan Vega with a few funhouse Elvis grinds by way of Karl Blake of Shock Headed Peters. This is a pretty damn compelling record, and one that we wish we could tell you more about. Unfortunately, we do have very limited stock on this, with very little hope of getting more...
A self-taught musician with a keen understanding of electronic circuits, F.C. Judd published the first of 11 books on the nascent field of electronic music in 1954. This was a few years before the BBC founded its Radiophonic Workshop, and documentation exists that Judd and the Workshop's Daphne Oram were in communication with each other. That said, Judd might have counted amongst the hundreds of amateur enthusiasts who tinkered in garages, basements, attics, and sheds throughout the UK (and beyond for that matter!); but his anonymity was not for a lack of trying, as he did publish those 11 books, founded the Amateur Tape Recording magazine (with a run from 1959-1967), and funded a couple of record labels, all in the pursuit of disseminating experimental tape music to a wider audience. Many of those singles did get bundled by Studio G for library use (and subsequently, one of those tracks made it onto the G-Spots compilation from the Studio G archives, curated by Trunk Records), and Judd did create the electronic sound design for the children's sci-fi puppet show Space Patrol in 1963.
Judd's late '50s / early '60s studio featured various oscillators, tape decks, and filters alongside a primitive drum machine and an experimental synthesizer, both of his own design; and he rendered an eerie array of vibrations and electronic plonk, coupled with a rough-cut / hand-spun approach to tape edits and loops. Judd varied from the spookily abstract paralleling (and predating) the sound design from the Forbidden Planet and Dr. Who soundtracks; and some delightfully playful electronic poptunes looking forward to Joe Meek's gleeful electronics as The Blue Men. Interspersed throughout the electronics and tape experiments, Judd offers up his own thoughts on the tracks themselves with a dry sense of humor tossing about explanatory definitions of basic musique concrete techniques and various electronic circuits. A fantastic and compelling document of the earliest and nearly forgotten pioneers of British electronic music, to which Judd himself said it best: "Musique Concrete is fascinating!"
When's the last time you bought a goddamn CASSINGLE?? The nineties? The eighties? Well it's about time to make it right goddamn now, cuz this latest blast from Milwaukee rapper Juiceboxxx (yeah, he's added an X since last time) is a doozy. Now that's it's cold and grey, rainy and grim, this is THEE summer jam that will make the inside of your car feel like you're cruising down the coast, top down, sun shining, cracking 40's, smoking blunts, and scamming on the ladies (or the dudes). Total Beastie Boys style radness, hooky loops, big bouncy loops, and a whole mess of guests including local boy Antwon, who each contribute a verse, the sound slipping from bombastic boombox hip hop, to sample heavy summery electro-pop, with a main vocal hook that will stick in your head like crazy. And flip it over, and you get the a capella, which somehow is just as cool / even cooler. Pressed on a bright pink tape, housed in a full color cardboard cassingle style sleeve. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!
Classical inspired daydream electronic ambience crafted with an immaculate touch. Marsen Jules should be familiar to anyone who loves the blissed out sounds found on Kompakt's yearly Pop Ambient series, as he's had tracks featured on four of those collections. Nostalgia is rife with solemn undertones, making it the perfect soundtrack for broken hearts and tearful moments, surrendering to the intensity of the moment. It's music that would perfectly suit some 16mm gauzy Kodachrome film panning through the sky, city, and glimpses of old friends, lovers and faded memories. A record that makes us think of our favorite outings by Sylvain Chauveau, Gas, Biosphere, and Klimek.
Completely gorgeous.
Another list, another batch of tapes from UK label The Tapeworm! This one comes from a guy named Phil Julian, who despite apparently being quite active in the experimental music underground since the nineties, we had not previously heard of. But all it took was a few seconds of his Live Flux to convince us that that was definitely an egregious oversight on our part. Huge billowing clouds of low end rumble and buzzing metallic shimmer, all constructed from experiments with "unstable/chaotic systems", aka modular synths, contact mics, feedback etc. It's impossible to tell what the source is for these sounds, but it hardly matters, just sit back and let these thick sonic swells wash over you. Undulating, and softly pulsing swirls seem to coalesce into heaving walls of sound only to immediately dissipate into drifting clouds of sonic particles, before beginning to gather once again. The sound eventually settles into something much more serene, a sort of Niblockian stretch of layered tones, backed with all manner of incidental sound, voices, shuffling feet, pieces of wood on concrete, hard to say if these were purposeful or not, but they do add mysterious texture, to Julian's dronemusic, which even in its more serene state, begins again to build to something dense and intense. The flipside is more of the same, but the recording is more raw, wreathed in hiss, the sounds pulsing madly as well, as if tones were chosen that were just off enough that their overtones would collide and disagree, the results though are a wild chaotic cloud of hissing, throbbing soft noise, that for all of its noisiness and abrasion, still manages to be weirdly hypnotic.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's always exciting to get to experience an artist at the beginning of what you know will be a long and rewarding journey of musical and artistic exploration. We first encountered Julius Smack (aka Peter Hernandez) by chance. Some of us here love the avant-drag party High Fantasy thrown every Tuesday night at one of the last standing gay bars in the Tenderloin, Aunt Charlie's. One night we saw an artist whose performance consisted of cool projections, a super distinctive look and persona, meditative movements and even some full on voguing. But what struck us the most, was the alluring music playing during this performance, especially some beautiful entrancing vocals. Our first thought was "Oh my god, how cool, a drag/performance artist using unreleased Arthur Russell tracks as his music!" So we approached him after his stunning performance and asked what the music was and if it was Arthur Russell as we suspected? He humbly replied that the music and the vocals were his own, and that's when we know we had encountered something special.
This debut release features his take on left-field electronic pop, with warm melting synths, and that irresistible voice. It's impossible to not hear Arthur Russell in Julius Smack, but we also hear touches of Owen Pallett and maybe a more clubby version of David Sylvian. This ep features four original tracks, some tasteful interludes laced with field recordings, a few remixes of the title track, and two covers. His take on Al Green's "I'm Still In Love With You" is a stunner... and make sure to stick around for the 'secret' Arthur Russell cover (of course) which appears after the last track.
This is music that is both delicate and self assured, bold without being flashy, and sensual without relying on played out signifiers. Not sure how many of these were pressed, so best to grab one quick so you can say you knew him when...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
While many have followed their lead, aping their electro fueled indie-pop, Junior Boys still have so much more class and sophistication than the wannabe masses that flood the scene with their watered down sounds these days.
Begone Dull Care is the Junior Boys' third album and while their songs have always been slow burners, this album is probably the slowest yet, with a bit of patience required to fully appreciate, but if you stick with it, the rewards are pretty damn great! It's tricky to make an album of electro-pop that isn't totally initially catchy or in your face, but Junior Boys have proven that they understand so well how to create an overall mood and sound that can take a few listens before the impact is truly felt! Always the perfect soundtrack for late nights and coming down sessions, enticingly sleek and so richly smooth. While so much of electro-pop these days is about flashing fluorescent colors as bright and obnoxiously as possible, Junior Boys remind us all that it's possible to create something much more fluid and composed while still being able to move bodies with such ease.
We slipped this one in the cd player this morning, and started our day off right... with some 'get the blood flowing' remixes of Junior Boys' tracks. Hot Chip, Carl Craig, Kode 9, and Tensnake all take turns at flavoring the already infectious tracks from JB's latest album So This Is Goodbye ("In The Morning", "Like A Child", "Double Shadow" and "FM" respectively). But bringing Dead Horse to a cool down close sans beats is the cdep's highlight, Marsen Jules' remix of "FM" which opts for a lulling wash of hazy static and ethereal sighs. That cd-only track fits snugly (and snuggly!) between your Ovals and Panda Bears. Aaaah.
Over the last few years there has been no shortage of '80s inspired bands, creating electronic infused pop with an indie sensibility. But well before this retro explosion of bands boldly proclaiming their love for the '80s, Junior Boys hit the scene at a time when indie pop was in such desperate need of something more sensual danceable, an indie pop sound that did more than just flirt with the dance floor. What's given the group lasting power is that they aren't just about tapping into an era, or sound, or giving you ironic winks about the keyboards they are playing or the outfits they are wearing. While many continue to nail the strictly aesthetic side of '80s electro-pop, Junior Boys are one of the only groups who truly capture the romantic and emotional side of this often cheapened landscape. There is so much soul and substance in the songs they create, and Jeremy Greenspan has one of the smoothest and most seductive voices of any singer around.
It's All True continues their streak of great albums, filled with steaming movers, and sizzling slow burners. Imagine Aphex Twin getting a hold of George Michael and Boy George and helping them create their most understated and sexiest recordings ever. Or New Order reworking Japan's Gentleman Take Polaroids. As refreshing as Junior Boys were when they originally hit the scene, their continued earnestness and ability to craft songs that have an emotional weight to them is equally as refreshing in this moment in time when it all seems to be about irony and capturing just the surface of another moment in time. Highly recommended.
You've gotta be a little wary when a band is being promoted by their record label as sounding like a current hip buzz band. Such is the case with the Junior Boys' newest album (the other band being Franz Ferdinand), and actually they're not really much like F.F. at all. Nor are they 'synth-pop' as we've also seen them tagged in other reviews. They're much more mellow, minimal electro / techno-based with gently stuttering beats and hushed spoken sung vocals (often very David Sylvian-ish). Serene and elegant.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Holy waters of Nazareth! There's still a faint ringing in our ears after listening to this debut disco-metal machine of an album, whose title is simply a cross, by the much talked about French duo, Justice, on the French electro imprint, Ed Banger Records. No electronic group has received as much hype and hysteria (mainly via internet music blogs and much remixed material by big name producers and DJs) in so little time as Justice, and Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay, the men of Justice, more than meet expectations with all barrels blazing dishing out 48 minutes of a near-perfect, sinister beats 'n' synths face-off. We must admit, with all the long drawn out hype and remixing of their first few singles within the last two years, "Waters of Nazareth" (more or less the jump start for Ed Banger Records all together), their smash collaboraton with Simian, "We Are Your Friends" (which you probably would have heard everywhere in Europe in 2006), and their more recent single "D.A.N.C.E.", the two slowly began to drift out of our interest, especially with the 18+ months it's taken "Waters of Nazareth" to make it from French 12" to worldwide CD. But of course after hearing the debut, we were sucked right back in.
The opener, "Genesis", takes the electro cake, with a super theatrical intro building up to mysteriously cranky synth lines, slicing, over-compressed drums, and frazzled disco trills, reminiscent of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" but with a sonic twist. "Let There Be Light" is dirty disco pop with hints of Daft Punk-esque melodies and bass riffs. Justice thrill most when using old sputtering analogue synth sounds over momentous rhythms as in "Waters of Nazareth" and "Phantom" parts 1 and 2. "Stress" is a heavy beast of a track with it's chaotic string arrangements, backing sirens, and random abrasive sweeping glitch effects throughout the drums and bass. We ran like four red lights on our bike listening to this one (dangerous, kids don't try this at home). But there's an apparent balance within the album with sweeter numbers like "Valentine" with it's melodic electric piano, the popular recent single "D.A.N.C.E." voiced by the London Children's Choir, and the mashed-up funk of "New Jack" in which human voices are cut up and recycled into new arrangements.
As a whole, this album is filled with squelchy sound textures and wild arrogant dance patterns and rhythms.
In the last year everyone has been basically hoping Justice would release the equivalent to any of Daft Punk's epics, "Homework" or "Discovery", assuming Justice would emerge as the next big French electronic leaders. Though the comparisons to Daft Punk are inevitable, the album proves that Justice can stand on their own just fine without borrowing too much from their predecessor. Overall... a full on aural assault. A pulsing and shimmering piece of electronic music standing at the forefront of the current rock'n'rave collision.
Hot damn! No sophomore slump here, Justice return with a fucking cool follow up to their awesome debut from four years ago. Audio, Video, Disco finds the group pushing in a much proggier / poppier direction, in fact everytime we listen to this it sounds more and more like an amazing combination of Daft Punk and Rush, in the best possible way. A little less four on the floor and in your face than the debut, but with much better actual songwriting. In fact there are parts of this record that rival the ecstatic pop of folks we love like Cut Copy and Hot Chip, but instead of pulling from '80s pop bands for inspiration we get the feeling Justice has been listening to as much Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, and Queen as they have dance bangers since they released their debut. It serves them so well, as their sound now seems to have a more expansive reach, without losing the immediacy and intensity that made us first fall in love with them. There's even an awesome reference to the great CSNY song "Ohio" on here. But don't worry the record still packs a dynamite dance floor punch!
Super exciting to see a group who got tons of attention and popularity, not play it safe and make the same record twice but instead push themselves and come out with something different yet still totally rewarding.
