THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With more than a dozen LPs (17 as of this date) released in less than a year or so, Markant's prolific output has been compared to an electronica diary by Drew from Matmos... Working remarkably similar to Boards of Canada and the Skam output, Markant excels at constructing beautiful and melancholic melodies over sputtering post-AFX electronica breakbeats. With so many of his records out, there's sure to be a dud. So our recommendations are for... Cat M-5, Cat M-14, Cat M-17 and Cat M-18, but we will do our best to keep as many of them in stock!
Yup, the twenty-first album in less than two years (!?!) from the Bavarian electronica prodigy is his most diverse and most humorous so far. The sputtering breakbeats and melancholic melodies found on the previous 20 albums are fused with near jazz experimentations that would make any Squarepusher fan happy!
After a seemingly endless barrage of vinyl only releases, Carsten Endrass (aka Markant) has finally produced his first CD -- a format much better suited to his extended passages of melancholic, IDM-based electronica. It's not entirely clear if these tracks had come from the last couple of Markant singles, but we have encountered rumours that "Infam" may in fact be a compendium of his
The once hyper-prolific Markant entered the IDM / electronica community with a flurry of releases, which seemed to appear with almost monthly regularity. These vinyl only releases (now all out of print) were short albums or long singles each clocking in
Yo, skweee fans!!! Skweee alert!!!
We're always happy to have something new to share with you from the realm of this wonderful Scandinavian-originated electronic micro-genre. This time, from the same label that last brought us Daniel Savio's Nekropolis lp, here's a limited edition cassette tape from the duo of skweee big shots Rigas Den Andre and Mesak (also an ex-member of Mr. Velcro Fastener)! Collaborating together, they're calling themselves Markis Sage (?), and making skweee with a "Boogie Disco" infusion... This, their first full-length effort, consists of seven new cuts as well as alternate versions of three tracks that previously surfaced on singles and comps.
As any skweee fancier might expect, this is hip hopped lo-fi glitchfunk, full of choppy electro zip-blip and '80s style synth wobble. The tempos are probably too slowed down (or the rhythms too jittery!) for the dancefloor, but great for groovin' in the car or at your crib. And while it's almost all-instrumental, like most skweee, the cover and some track titles suggests a comic book horror theme ("Creature Of Lagoon"), but one with paper boats, blimps, and other oddities of their skweeed-up imagination.
Ok, now pay attention, here's some special info pertinent to his release/format, you'll wanna know: this cassette is strictly limited to 100 hand-numbered copies, and comes with a download code, as well as a coupon that will allow you to get the album on vinyl direct from the label for only $5 (+shipping), WHEN and IF the vinyl version comes out. Basically, they're only gonna do an lp of this if they sell all the tapes first. Which, we can't imagine they won't.
The minimal wave rolls on! Martial Canterel is the work of Sean McBride whose darkened electronic tunes have come to us by way of his work with Liz Wendelbo as Xeno & Oaklander; and this album actually predates the exceptional Saracen record from Xeno & Oaklander. That said, all of his productions could have come via some Belgian post-punk imprint circa 1982, so the exact timing of his records matters little. There's plenty of similarities between his solo work and his work in Xeno & Oaklander, meaning that if you loved that record, this will not disappoint. Recorded entirely on analogue sequencers, synthesizers, and drum machines and first released as a cassette (foreshadowing the current resurgence of tape releases by a couple of years!), Refuge Underground bristles with dark pulsing energy, snapped around whip-cracking drum programming, tinny metallic sequences, and seriously infectious melodic arppegiations (think the best of DAF, Dark Day, Nitzer Ebb, or Absolute Body Control). McBride's monotone somber delivery accentuates the moods set through his cold and sparse, synth-pop constructions. Another great recapitulation of the past-future from Wierd Records.
While there are some fantastic labels crate digging for those awesomely obscure synth-wave / post-punk reissues, there's something to be said for Wierd Records in championing some of the best current practitioners of retrogarde cold-wave. It seems that at every step of Wierd's brief history, there has also been the sounds of Sean McBride, whether that be from his work in the exceptional Xeno & Oaklander or the sporadic tracks released with Three To Forgotten or his solo work as Martial Canterel. These dark-eyed synth-pop projects all share a lot of similarities in their modern romantic poetry working through the urgent marches of interwoven arpeggiation, flanging tone, spectral synth flourishes, and propulsive drum machines; and McBride's vocals carry an affected delivery with British inflections. McBride is quick to point toward his impressive collection of vintage synths and sequencers, speaking of the craftsmanship required to master these instruments. There is self-awareness of the irony in such a statement, given that so many of the great electronic bands had been accused of being less than human through their use of electronics, and McBride wholeheartedly embraces his role as a fetishist and an archivist, presenting all of his arrangements with a flawless reclamation of a forgotten future. As such, all of McBride's productions look toward the classic early new wave works of Human League, OMD, and Depeche Mode, with You Today nestling very comfortably amongst all of those references of old.
Here's another lost gem from Minimal Wave, the label that has been digging deep, very deep into the realms of post-punk and new wave to uncover many a release that might have been lost. For those who have procured plenty of terminal obscurities from such blogspots as Mutant Sounds, No Longer Forgotten Music, or Systems of Romance, some of the reissues on Minimal Wave may be familiar. But these are no grey area reissues. Minimal Wave has assured us that they have taken great care to procure the rights for each of these recordings!
Martin Dupont was a French new wave band with a brief run in the mid '80s, and according to Minimal Wave, the band had acquired something of a cult status in their homeland for their peculiar take on synth-pop. Amidst the catchy melodies and mechanoid drum machines, Martin Dupont alternated between the wailing, barking vocals of Alain Seghir and the ethereal voices of Catherine Loy and Brigitte Balain. Kraftwerk and Joy Division are the references that the band claimed as their own; but their sound resembles the crypto-weirdness of Fad Gadget complete with splatters of trumpet, disjointed left-field rhythms, and purposefully over the top theatrics care of Seghir.
Not sure how we first heard Ian Martin, a Dutch visual and recording artist, but we do remember it only took about two minutes of one track, and we were totally hooked. With a super minimal set up, never more than two synths, and absolutely no drum machines, Martin manages to create strange overlapping patterns and haunting synthscapes that manage to be ultra minimal, and that are driven by subtle rhythms created from the synths alone. The track that did it for us is the opener here, "Moving Activity", which unfurls long slow chordal swells, lush and haunting, over a murky looped percolation, that makes it sound like some sort of Philip Jeck installation, the feel of a skipping record driving the track, all gauzy and hazy and wreathed in a patina of barely there tape hiss. It's totally mesmerizing and utterly hypnotic, a gorgeous chunk of minimal mesmer that ends way to soon after only about 8 minutes.
It's almost as easy to get lost in the rest of the record "Drups" lays down a dense layered sprawl of atonal drones, over which Martin sends a series of bleeps and bloops pinging back and forth, giving it the vibe of some sort of early electronic space music, raw and primitive. "Voice Of Space" is a bit more crunchy and caustic, the percussion made up of little bits of squelch and static, over a strangely hypnotic loopscape that is both mesmerizing and tense, very cinematic too.
"Stream" probably ranks as a close second to the opener, another Jeck like loopscape, this one flecked with what sounds almost like a Morricone style twang, the rhythm a murky softly crunchy bit of churn, gorgeously hypnotic and hauntingly cinematic, another one we could listen to all day. "Wires" is a lot like "Drups", much busier, and another song that seems to approximate some lost primitive space music, a field of bleeps and bloops, strange tinkling melodies, all over a field of buzz and shimmer, and driven by a muted thump, very playful, almost reminding us of Raymond Scott at times. And finally, the title track, which unfurls a lush metallic buzzscape, that sounds almost like it was woven together from the sounds of grandfather clocks, chiming and tolling tones, all drifting above a strangely clattery abstract rhythm, the sounds crystalline and glistening, a gorgeously mesmerizing sprawl of glimmering synth drift mesmer that's the perfect way soundtrack to drifting off, disappearing into the heavens, are body and soul becoming one with the stars. Fantastic.
jeremiah
Martyn was responsible for one of our favorite records of 2009, Great Lengths, which found him tweaking and turning dubstep into a completely different monster, infusing that distinctive sound with all the best aspects of so many sides of electronic music. So it's well deserved and fitting that he's in the captain's chair for the 50th installment of the legendary Fabric mix series, putting together a manic, uptempo 71+ minute mix of TOTAL BANGERS! No denying how seamless and flawless his mixing skills are as each track jets right into the next, and his taste for some of the most colorful and exuberant artists in the modern landscape of electronica couldn't be more satisfying. Zomby, Kode9, 2562, Joy Orbison, those are just some of the awesome artists who get the Martyn mix treatment. There are no lulls or sleepers in the mix, from start to finish this is total high octane dancefloor destroying energy. Martyn definitely focuses on the more bouncy, techno and pounding side of dubstep, but really what we love about Martyn is that he doesn't get lost or locked into narrow or restrictive electronic sub-genres, instead he's more concerned with moving bodies at a dizzying rate and he so totally succeeds with this killer mix!
We're constantly amazed how dubstep keeps getting tweaked and pushed outside its seemingly limited conventions. Individual touches and uniquely inventive flourishes, including nods to elements of dance music's recent past, keep getting added to the skeletal structure of cavernous bass and dark stripped down rhythms. Either by pushing the expansively deep dark edginess like Shackleton or Kode 9 or augmenting the rhythmic textures and movement for more dance floor-friendliness like Burial and Benga, we never get tired of it! Zomby was the last wunderkind we got excited over as he brought in a playful acid-house rave vibe to the standard skitters, creaks and froggy wubbles. Today, we're getting worked up over Dutch producer / DJ, Martyn, and his debut Great Lengths! Coming from the same fertile scene as 2562 (whose dark and amazing record, Aerial, we have yet to list!), Martyn has been at it since the genre's beginnings releasing a string of singles notable for their use of techno and drum and bass elements alongside and within dubstep's fledgling sounds. Great Lengths ups the ante even more by adding plenty of vibrant colors and textures: Warped hiphop, Detroit Techno, Chicago House, and hints of reggae pushing the rhythmic movement forward while the melodies retain dubstep's darker allure. This is a good crossover record for those new to the genre or for those looking for the next essential release in dubstep's expanding evolution! Definitely, one of our favorite records so far this year!
Marz is the work of Ekkehard Ehlers and Albrecht Kunze, although fans of Ehler's gorgeous digital aerosolization on his Plays album or his collaboration with Stefan Mathieu would be hard pressed to find aesthetic similarities between the two projects. According to the press release, this album of delicate if obtuse, post-70s AM radio pop continues "to fashion their inviting and seductive landscapes out of folk, pop and club influences: explicit, prodigal, subtly differentiated, but also displaying a greater desire to take risks than on Love Streams, so much so that only an idiot would chose [sic] not to tarry here a while." Um, if this sounds like a description of Jim O'Rourke's smarty-pop albums Insignificance or Eureka, that's because Marz adequately redresses the same quizzically alluring schmalztiness as heard on O'Rourke's aforementioned pop constructs.
Gross! Okay, referring to the cover art, wherein an image of a naked man sitting in a chair with a FireWire cable superimposed in place of his dick via Photoshop is coupled with a similar image of a man's ass sporting a rather large USB port: One of the most
Our beloved customer and friend Jesse Zeifman loves this album more than any of the AQ staff did, so we asked him to say a li'l something about it:
It's been five years since Massive Attack's startlingly aggressive Mezzanine marked a turning point for the Bristol trio credited, by most, for creating trip-hop. In the interim, the band's lost two of its three founding members, leaving the reins in Robert "3D" Del Naja's hands.
From Blue Lines (1991), a debut that used hip-hop as an endoskeleton and had a body made of soul music, to the muted, austere, follow-up Protection (1994), no Massive Attack album has sounded alike. For their new release, Del Naja has managed to shape-shift the group once again, eschewing Mezzanine's guitars and static and grit for something closer to ambient electronica.
Beginning with "Future Proof" and its combination of galloping electronic blips, reverberating guitars and layers of feedback, Del Naja throws an unexpected curve when, rather than delivering his lyrics with his signature blunted raps, he sings. Sounding like Thom Yorke stoned might, he doesn't display a lot of range, but he phrases things accordingly, effectively, and where it could have felt soft and wrong it doesn't.
As with their previous efforts, the sound-system dynamic with which the group was built remains in place. While Del Naja helms four of the album's nine tracks, he calls upon two other vocalists, Sinead O'Connor and Horace Andy, to give voice to the rest. O'Connor is, unfortunately, underused, leaving her songs the album's least interesting, but Andy, especially on the lovely "Everywhen", fares better. "Small Time Shot Away" is the album's warmest song. If any tonal comparison is to be drawn, it would be with Boards of Canada's "Music Is Math" (from their latest, Geogaddi). "Antistar" closes 100th Window with a threatening guitar loop smashed against Middle Eastern-flavored strings and Del Naja at his most claustrophobic. Juxtapositions of the beautiful and the ominous betray this track's genetic lineage. It's the take-no-shit younger sibling of Mezzanine's, "Risingson."
The rigor of Massive Attack's production always sets their work apart and 100th Window is no different. It may feel, upon first pass, like a pleasant soundtrack to your next dinner party. Check again. Tracks upon tracks of percussive elements, of tingling, stuttering, noise, of lost guitar loops moving independently, churning in their subterranean canals, makes for an experience of uneasy listening.
Recommended for fans of the group -- if you're new to Massive Attack, please start with Mezzanine.
We wanted so much to like this new Massive Attack record. It had all the right ingredients (vocals by Horace Andy, Hope Sandoval, Damon Albern, etc.) but damn if it doesn't just fall a little bit flat. There are a few nice moments but as an album it feels a bit dated and really underwhelming. Some consolation can be found in the fact that another record came out not long ago, reviewed last list: King Midas Sound's record Waiting For You, which sounded exactly how we were had hoped the new Massive Attack would, warped and dark and dreamy, hypnotic and otherworldly, washed out and so divine. So if you love how Massive Attack sounded way back when they were great, maybe pass on this one and get King Midas Sound instead!
Scoffing at Portishead for not really extending themselves beyond the John Barry inspired trip hop of their first album, Massive Attack's Mezzanine is an excellent departure from the blunted references from Protection into a darkly polished gem that features Elizabeth Fraser of The Cocteau Twins on vocals! We think this record out-Trickys Tricky.
Bachir Attar and the Master Musicians of Jajouka are teamed up with producer Talvin Singh for this traditional Morrocan trance-music meets modern club beats experiment. If you've seen the movie "The Cell" you've heard some music from this album, used as the soundtrack to the "desert" sequences, all layered, massive, and wailing.
As we mentioned in the review of the MSV 7" a while back, for a genre that seems to be the NEXT BIG THING, actual physical recordings are surprisingly difficult to come by. Which is maybe the point, much of the musical output comes in the form of tracks on SoundCloud, videos on YouTube, as super limited cd-r's or downloads, and most of the bands have names that are essentially un-Googlable, all symbols and shapes, A's become little black triangles, or three stylized crosses becomes 'Ritualz', etc, hard not to become intrigued, or obsessed, and we most definitely seem to be both.
Salem was the first glimpse the mainstream world got of this strange new genre, a sound that somehow melded blown out lo-fi synths, minimal electro, twisted samples, old school goth, minimal techno, slowed down Southern style chopped and screwed hip hop, choral vox, big beats, into something distorted and murky yet weirdly epic, a sound that the creators described as Witch House, but has also been dubbed grave rave, zombie rave, cave rave and is sometimes lumped in with nu-gaze and chill wave and other outsider electronic micro genres. And Salem is the shit, hell, we made it our Record Of The Week, how could we not, it was and IS one of the coolest record of the last few years. But if Salem are the young witch house upstarts, ramshackle punks legendary for their chaotic live performances, yet who somehow managed to make what is possibly THEE defining record of the genre, and if groups like oOoOO and Balam Acab are crafters of a witch house that is more melodic and dancefloor friendly, then Mater Suspiria Vision are like some mysterious bearded witch house council, the masters of the scene, black cloaked figures that live in a cave somewhere, never glimpsed in the flesh, only via their transmissions, mostly amazing, twisted, fantastically fucked up YouTube videos, mini horror epics, always accompanied by MSV's dirgey, haunting soundtracks, often releasing 3 or 4 in a single day. No idea where these guys are from (Kabul?), if it's one person or a group, male or female, the mystery only adds to the appeal, the imagery, the videos, and the music, which even in a genre defined by it's 'witchiness' manages to be seriously dark, and grim, creepy and scary.
Originally released as a super limited cassette tape, Crack Witch has now been resurrected on vinyl, by the newly launched Living Tapes label (run by the guy from outsider black metal weirdos Yoga by the way), and is probably the best witch house document since Salem's King Night. But MSV's witch house is something else all together, something all together more EVIL sounding, not sure if it's that they're conceived to accompany videos, but they also tend to be super cinematic, just check out the opener "Call Of The Witches", thick buzzing ominous synths, strange snippets of foreign language dialogue, strange spaced out stuttery beats, a stumbling groove, terrified shrieks, sobbing and weeping, everything reverby and echoey, and then an awesome dizzying blast of strange processed melodies, backward synths, almost like Teenage Filmstars style witch house, totally tripped out and seriously sonically scary.
"Evil House Of Forbidden Fruit" offers up big echoey beats, strange heavily effected vocals, the sound super distorted and crumbly, stuttery and rhythmic, underneath mysterious melodies swell, subtle synths pulse, all building to a crunchy corrosive climax. "House Of 7 Witches" is all swirly and shimmery by comparison, until the shimmer is buried beneath an avalanche of heavily delayed beats, and buzzing synth squelch, the beats getting louder and more distorted, careening back and forth, eventually totally obscuring all the other sounds. Finally, side one finishes of with the much more subdued "Wtxchs (A Suite Of Decay), with a low slung groove, wreathed in skitter and hiss, crackle and buzz, and some ominous reverbed female vocals courtesy of someone called Shazzula, the result a sort of warped witchy Portishead, downtempo and lo-fi, a grim ghostly ballad, that quickly splinters into a noise drenched cacophony, all thick synth buzz and glitched out electronics, buried vox, swirling effects, all draped over a skeletal beat, buried in the mix, a lurching dubnoise creep.
All of side 2 is taken up by the 24 minute epic "Trip 2012", a darkly cinematic epic, cobbled together from what sounds like bits of film music, as well as snippets of dialogue, but super reverby and echoey, like a sonic fun house mirror, it's not until about 3 minutes in that the synth drops, a thick, buzzing, snarly bit of wheezing chordal crunch, the various shards of delay and echo coalescing into a sort of beat, again weirdly reminding us of the most far out Teenage Filmstars jams, a sprawling, dubbed out dronescape, every single note, every melody, every voice, transformed by malfunctioning effects into streaks of otherworldly sound, like a way more dubbed out Wolf Eyes in places, a sort of heaving, crumbling industrial crunch, but way more spaced out, and ominous, more creepy and cinematic, and WAY more witchy.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Super striking eye popping full color covers.
For all the Witch House music out there, it seems like very little of it actually gets released. Instead it's shared, and downloaded, offered on Soundcloud and various other sites, occasionally released as super limited cd-r's, but proper releases are few and far between.
As far as we know this may very well be the first proper release (definitely the first and only vinyl, there's been a cd-r and a cassette) from the mysterious collective called Mater Suspiria Vision, purveyors of witch house, or perhaps ghost drone, haunted disco trance, or even drag, depending on who you ask. The sound of witch house, for the uninitiated, is a twisted hybrid of classic goth, nineties techno, DJ Screw style slowed down sounds (hence the term drag), and all manner of spooky creepy atmospheres, horror movies, giallo soundtracks, all woven into a witchy bit of electronic psychedelic creepiness. And the various monikers tend to be heavy on the strange symbols that you get by pressing option or control on your keyboards, you know, little black triangles, tiny crosses, all those sorts of zapf dingbats style icons. Anyway, Salem is probably the most high profile witch house combo out there, but of all the other outfits we've heard, Mater Suspiria Vision is probably the only other group that comes close to conjuring up the same sort of mystery, coupled with the same sort of sonic heft.
No idea if MSV is a group or a person, it seems to be some sort of collective, or where they're located, all of their various pages list their home as Kabul, which seems suspect. In addition to music, they also create incredible tripped our psychedelic videos, that perfectly capture the same twisted vibe as their music. And they somehow manage to release a continuous stream of sights and sounds, new ones seemingly every day, which is why it's even more remarkable that this is one of only a tiny handful of actual MSV releases.
Regardless, it's a doozy, if you dug the Salem, and the oOoOO and the Balam Acab and maybe that Big Pink Tapes comp, then you are definitely gonna want this. And if you've yet to take the witch house plunge, but dig stuff like Leyland Kirby and Demdike Stare, odds are this is gonna be right up your alley.
A two parter titled provocatively "Exorcism Of The Hippies", it's all fat fuzzed out woozy warbly bass, thick low end swells, strange stuttery handclap rhythms, swooping spaced out effects, creepy dubbed out slo-mo atmospherics, strange voices, vocal snippets and samples, all blurred and smeared, a hazy, gauzy lysergic psychedelic trip out, the soundtrack to some strange foreign horror film from the seventies, coupled to some primitive old school techno 12", both spinning at 16rpm, the whole thing doused in cough syrup and left in the sun, cursed by a witch, buried in a graveyard, only to be dug up, melted down and mixed with liquid thorazine and a handful of horse tranquilizers and then pressed into this here 7". SO GOOD!
Packaged in super swank full color covers, and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
Just as Christian Fennesz transformed the canonical rock icons The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys into sublime electronica-glitch perfection, Stephan Mathieu has pillaged the 'public domain' archives of the 20th century to create his own
Why he records under the moniker Full Swing some of the time and his given name Stephan Mathieu on other occasions is a mystery, as the blueprint for all of his work remains a constant. Nevertheless, Mathieu is quickly becoming the most consistent electronica composer, often upstaging Christian Fennesz and Carsten Nicolai. Picking up where Mathieu left off on his exceptional Full Swing "Edits" album, "Gigue" is a live recording of his synthetic swells expanded out of digital minutae. His signature buzzing resonance drifts warmly out of digitized crackle and thick droning hiss. While such sounds had been common on the aforementioned "Edits" album, Mathieu pushes these sounds even further into a tumultuous wash of reverberant static, white noise and digital percolations, which stand out as quite intense for the typically sublime Mathieu. This crescendo of noise never strives for Merzbow, rather it presents the metaphor of the vast pressures and heat from deep sea hydrothermic vents where blackened plumes of scalding water blast upward amidst the frigid seawater at the bottom of the ocean. A short 30 minutes from this accomplished musician, but well worth every minute!
The Macintosh iBooks and iMacs at Aquarius are getting old in digital years, and they're gradually showing their age. So, let's hope and prey that neither the "sad mac" icon nor the "chimes of death" start to haunt our aged computing system. For those Windows operators out there, these are the Mac equivalent of the "blue screen of death," calling attention that something quite dreadful has happened to the computer. Such anxiety producing indicators of a malfuncting computer are the subject matter for this album from German sound artist Stephan Mathieu. Despite the nail-biting angst that such dilemnas can cause, The Sad Mac is a benevolently tranquil recording in which a variety of sounds have been smeared into melancholic ambience, perhaps composed more as a balm of having to deal with those computer problems. Having established himself as one of premier digital composers with the Full Swing album Edits as well as his collaborative Heroin album with Ekkehard Ehlers, Mathieu makes a profound shift in methology as he eschews the "DSP-Magic" of his earlier albums in favor of a much simpler arrangement with a few digital programs applied as pixelated flourishes upon field recordings and minimalist compositions for violin, pump organ, and harpsicord. Even without all of the pixel pushing from his Max-MSP patches of yonder year, Mathieu still manages to construct beautifully sustained drones, seamlessly combining all of the elements as the flicker, echo, dissolve, blur, and expand with his signature fluidity.
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"Wurmloch : Variationen" appears to be the first release for Stephan Mathieu who managed to land his debut on Ritornell -- the high-profile experimental subsidiary of Mille Plateaux / Force Inc. Mathieu has constructed these 5 pieces using an original 11-minute long piano piece which has been digital dissolved into ringing drones scraped with glitches. Occasionally the piano is allowed to speak with its original voice, as elegant chords somberly march through a very slow melody; but for the most part, Mathieu prefers to exploit the coldness of digital entropy as it takes over his piano composition. Quite nice.
Similar to their relationship with Dutch radio station VPRO which resulted in the Mort Aux Vaches series, Staalplaat has begun a cooperation with the Dutch arts initiative Extrapool to release work from Extrapool's artist in residency program. The goal being
What separates both Mathieu and Ehlers from the rest of the glitch electronica field is their wonderful fascination with antiquity and their maintainence of surface noise and grit within a technological setting that typically has an intrinsic aesthetic for cleanliness and sterility. The rich cracklings of surface noise and fuzzy static of an old tube-amp radio emerge throughout their "Heroin" collaboration. Mellotron organs form whimsical melodies before dissolving into warm pools of warbling timbres; a melodica offers playful tunes over a looped and glitched backing track of the same instrument. Occasionally, Mathieu and Ehlers produce something more in step with the purity of the Raster-Noton sound, but for the most part have constructed a beautiful (if mutant) remnant of pop sentimentality, sounding more like a slightly digital version of Philip Jeck.
- RealAudio clip: Herz
- RealAudio clip: Rose
NOW BACK IN PRINT! Similar to their relationship with Dutch radio station VPRO which resulted in the Mort Aux Vaches series, Staalplaat has begun a cooperation with the Dutch arts initiative Extrapool to release work from Extrapool's artist in residency program. The goal being to encourage strange and interesting combinations. In light of this program, Extrapool's choice of laptop glitch technicians Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers is almost too obvious, as both artists have developed similar styles, digitally recombining disfigured yet emotionally dynamic sounds. One of Mathieu's recent projects has been the Full Swing "Edits" 10"s of confounding remixes for Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork, and Ehlers too has been on the remix tip with his reconfigurations of Albert Aylers and Cassavettes.
What separates both Mathieu and Ehlers from the rest of the glitch electronica field is their wonderful fascination with antiquity and their maintaining of surface noise and grit within a technological setting that typically has an intrinsic aesthetic for cleanliness and sterility. The rich cracklings of surface noise and fuzzy static of an old tube-amp radio emerge throughout their "Heroin" collaboration. Mellotron organs form whimsical melodies before dissolving into warm pools of warbling timbres; a melodica offers playful tunes over a looped and glitched backing track of the same instrument. Occasionally, Mathieu and Ehlers produce something more in step with the purity of the Raster-Noton sound, but for the most part have constructed a beautiful (if mutant) remnant of pop sentimentality, sounding more like a slightly digital version of Philip Jeck.
Along with the "Heroin" album, Orthlorng Musork has commissioned a number of remixes from contemporary electronic artists Josef Suchy, Nobukazu Takemura, Kit Clayton, Frieband, Fennesz, Oren Ambarchi, Carmen Baier, and Akira Rabelais. Unfortunately, the track listing is slightly screwed up as the Frieband and Kit Clayton tracks are switched on the disc. Oops.
- RealAudio clip: Herz
- RealAudio clip: Rose
A previous Mutek release found the minimalist techno outfit Goem collaborating with a number of artists who simply stopped by Goem's hotel room during the 2001 Mutek festival. While Goem's record had all of the good natured intentions of warm comradery, it fell flat as a poor recapitulation of Goem's micro-techno. Fortunately, the second effort between artists collaborating in a hotel room during the 2002 Mutek festival is a much better offering. With none of the blunted hip-hop rhythms of Timeblind, none of Radboud Mens' fragile minimalist techno, and few slivers of Janek Schaefer's bleak sonic abstractions, the dominant aesthetic is that of Stephan Mathieu, which is totally fine by us! As a result, "Quality Hotel" is a delicate affair of fizzing digital ambience, with samples that flicker, twist, and bloom into sleepy drones cracked with miniscule glitches and glassine vibrations. It's a very subdued record, but is is just as good as any of Mathieu's previous outings.
The Matmos back catalogue of quirky electronica features an odd litany of sound sources which sets them apart from the contemporaries trapped within the bunker mentality of laptop trickery. Whoopie cushions contextualized as surface noise, the
The album begins with the light shuffling house groove of "Lipostudio (And So On...)" which introduces an odd textural duet between human fat gurgling through a tiny vacuum and a bleating clarinet supplied by Stephen Thrower (currently of Cylobe, formerly of Coil). "Spondee" works another house groove around the rhythmic recitation of spondees -- duo-syllabic words / phrases in which neither syllable is particularly stressed -- by an audiologist testing deaf children. Strangely enough, Matmos hadn't considered this track a mockery of San Francisco's candy flippin' trance / house organization Spundae. By the end of the album, Matmos needed to address the reality of death and did so with "Momento Mori" - a 23Skidoo death-funk groove built out of sounds generated from a human skull.
Easily this is Matmos' most successful record to date, and will make fans of Coil's "Love's Secret Domain" or Doctor Rocket's "D Is For Doctor" very happy!
A teaser ep from Matmos' upcoming record "A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure" -- the medical album for San Francisco's beloved electronica duo, who of course keeps this rather sterile and grim theme lighthearted and wacky. In keeping true to the medical theme, Matmos procured remixes from Dr. Rockit and Surgeon of the title track... and did a cover of Coil's "Disco Hospital" (which features Stephen Thrower - formerly of Coil). Who said drilling through a person's nose or suctioning out all of the fat from some rich lady's ass couldn't be fun? Or sound great?!
This limited pressing 3" cd from local sound alchemists Matmos continues in the same conceptual vein as their last major release, The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of The Beast, where each track was dedicated to a musical, philosophical or literary figure (Boyd McDonald, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Larry Levan, etc.). The material for this cd was originally commissioned by members of The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Matmos took the opportunity to create three pieces for one of their scientific heroes, Alan Turing. Who is Alan Turing, you ask? Well, Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer who became a pioeering figure in modern computing, and who contributed much to the debate about artificial intelligence and whether machines could ever develop consciousness and independently think (ever hear of the Turing Test?). But what makes Alan Turing an even more interesting and ultimately tragic figure for Matmos is the charges that were brought against him in the early fifties of "acts of gross indecency" for admitting to a sexual relationship with another man. After being put on probation and ordered to undergo hormone therapy, Turing ate an apple laced with cyanide. His death was ruled a suicide. Taking cues from Turing's work with cryptographic devices (otherwise known as the Enigma Machine) and his personal effects including postcards he sent to his lover before his suicide entitled Messages From The Unseen World, Matmos gained access to an actual Enigma machine and were able to use its sound for this recording. Enlisting help from David Tibet of Current 93, and Clodagh Simonds of Fovea Hex, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Matthew Curry and Mark Lightcap, Matmos have created three beautiful and touching pieces paying tribute this important and tragic figure. Limited to 1000 copies, and highly recommended!!!
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Simply filing this excellent album under "experimental electronica" is to give it short shrift. San Francisco boyfriends Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt (whose faces are morphed into one on the back cover) have crafted a record each of whose songs is a concept brought to fruit and to full percussive grooviness. One piece is composed entirely of manipulated samples of human voices, anothers sole instrument is a stretched wet latex shirt, and yet anothers sound source is the "silent recordings" which came about as two walkie talkies were held over a 4 channel tape recorder with nothing plugged into it, the resulting audible interference manipulated a la the theremin. Don't be put off by the weird instrumentation, this record heavily grooves like '80s electro, clanks like Balinese ketjak, and blips'n'bleeps like the best Mouse on Mars tracks. Highly, highly recommended!
Eek! Rats! You can always count on the mischevious Matmos (Drew and Martin, SF's darling duo of experimental electronica, who you probably know not only for their own weird, wonderful releases but also their work with Bjork) to make the most of the strangest sound-sources. In this case, a rat they (humanely) trapped in their Tenderloin apartment! Why? Well this is one of Locust's "Met Life" releases...that's not an insurance company but rather a "location sound series" for which sound artists were asked to both provide field recordings of their urban environment as well as "respond" musically to that environment. This 30 minute cd consists of two tracks. Track one is just the poor rat giving a solo performance, of squeaks and screams. If you have a cat this might interest them greatly. On the second track Matmos join in, turning the rat's cage into a nightclub for Intelligent Dance Music, with beats ranging from the purely abstract to the downright groovy. The rat's squeaks remain the same, coming in as if on cue in breaks in the music as orchestrated by Matmos. The rat's no house diva that's for sure, and we like the effect. Matmos' dance grooves are totally dark, and rat-appropriate while other parts of this (and the rat's original performance) echo some avant-garde 20th century classical with its use of space and silence. A successful 'collaboration' indeed. And don't worry, I don't think they actually subjected the rat to this mix. Furthermore, in the liner notes Matmos explain that "the following morning we took the rat to a wealthy suburban neighborhood and set it free."
