WOW marks the second album this year (2012) from the German duo Mouse On Mars, and it's jam packed with ideas, detours, and mutations of their already genre-bending take on electronica. The opening track is graced by a yelping vocalist who's a cross between Damo Suzuki and Eye Yamataka; and such histrionics only occur in a couple of a places dotting the record with barked syllabic utterances. The blorping electronics that spills out of this intro morph into a Zomby (that's the Zomby with a Y, not the Zombi with a Carpenter / Goblin crush) re-animation of dub-step dripping with colorful tones and oddball rhythmic inventions. Elsewhere, Mouse On Mars cut their teeth with some sci-fi / futuristic R&B synth stabs that might as well have their origins in the Personal Space compilation from Chocolate Industries, and mercurially twist those into acid house trax blossoming through squelchy glissandos and operatic vocals with occasional blurts from that Suzuki-esque madman. Quite the wild ride!
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Well now. Here's a new 12" from Germany's electronica superstars Mouse On Mars. It's pretty special for a few reasons. For one, it features The Fall's Mark E. Smith on two mixes. It also features New York's Tears The Muffin Man (who happens to be, we're told, a Flavor Flav protege) on a third. It's also special because within these three mixes, MOM has limited their usual exercises in electronic deconstruction, moving into a more song-like approach, with wonderous results. I almost found the (in total, four) mixes on Wipe That Sound more enjoyable than MOM's last amazing full-length, Radical Connector. But that's just me. Something about slathering Mark E Smith's vocals within buttery layers of glitchy oompop works so well. Tears The Muffin Man's idiosyncratica raggarap is unparalleled. Overall, MOM's Wipe That Sound 12" is stellar pop-electronica.
It's been a while since we've heard from Move D after a number of releases for Warp, Fax, and Source in the mid '90s. Here, Move D (real name David Moufang) has hooked up with writer / musician Thomas Meinecke for an album "committed to deconstructive feminism." With slowly looping drones, pulses of electronic static, and various academic texts of "political discourse on the discontent of the sexes," this album starts out quite nicely, recalling the information theoretics of the Hafler Trio. But then things goes jazz. On the same label that brought us that great Philip Jeck double cd.
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.
Coming from the cross-pollinating community of Bavarian post-rock and electronica hybrids, Ms. John Soda is actually a duo comprised of Micha Acher (of Tied & Tickled Trio, Village of Savoonga, and the Notwist, often times working with his brother Markus) and Stephanie Boehm. Both worked together six or seven years back as Couch, a data-pop / post-rock ensemble with not a thing in common with the Michigan scum-rock band by the same name. Their reunion as Ms. John Soda for their first album "No P. Or D." doesn't stray far from the Morr label template of bittersweet ambient-pop; so we give a word of caution to fans of Village of Savoonga's angular darkness, which you won't find in any Morr productions. Boehm's simple if slightly detached vocals wistfully float through each song not unlike those of Laetetia Sadier on early Stereolab albums like "Peng." Barring their Neu! references, those early Stereolab albums make for an adequate parallel to Ms. John Soda in their mutual applications of retro fetishism, effortless indie-pop grooviness through jangliness, and an unassuming intelligence (which Stereolab has lost as of late). It's almost as good as the Notwist's "Neon Golden," which has grown to be one of the sleeper gems of 2002! Certainly worth checking out.
Ms John Soda make pretty pretty pop-tronica, the kind that very much defines the Morr Music label. With their droll yet airy female vocals, chiming electronic effervescence and occasional counterweight of electric guitar, this German duo are very very akin to their dreamy Morr labelmates LaliPuna, if perhaps a little bit more insistent. Heck, the striking resemblance is really not all that surprising since each group has an Acher brother in its lineup (fyi: Micha and Markus Acher are also prominent members of The Notwist, Village Of Savoonga, Tied & Tickled Trio, 13 & God, among others). Also very much for fans of Broadcast or Postal Service.
Ms. John Soda's previous album No P. Or D. was a great complementary record to the the likes of Notwist's Neon Golden, the Postal Service's Give Up, and Broadcast's Ha Ha Sound, as this Bavarian duo of Stefanie Boehm and Micha Acher (who also plays in the Notwist) successfully recreated much of the same wistful indie-pop sensibility of those other bands while adding their distinct signature of retro chic mired in technologically advanced programming. This new While Talking EP moves a bit away from that pop sensibility, at first picking up more of an avant-rock groove by adapting their sound to incorporate the jagged guitar riffs of Blonde Redhead or Sonic Youth around their Fake Can Be Just As Good or Goo albums, respectively. Elsewhere the songs begin to fragment into pretty electronica splatters smoothed over by Boehm's voice. 5 tracks, 27 minutes.
In less skilled hands the plethora of incredibly diverse styles, source material and directions that come into play on Bilious Paths might've resulted in a total jumbled mess, but fortunately this is not the case at all, for this is a Mu-Ziq album. Under the skilled hand of Mike Paradinas, sonic order and disorder coexist like the best of buddies. Chopped up and assembled meticulously, the flying chunks of farting digital blurts, hard gutteral bass lines, and drum'n'bass-jungle-ragga-gabber-techno beat fragments frolic, engage and disengage at whim. Nothing new or terribly groundbreaking, but we've got Knifehandchop and Hellfish and Venetian Snares to annoy and brutalise us now (in a good way of course). All we need from Mu-ziq is more of the same good stuff.
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If a record could laugh it might sound like this long lost µ-Ziq album on Aphex Twin's label. Musical horsing around, much like his Clear full-length (released under the moniker Jake Slazenger). Very accessible, full of layered sonic elements, like epic difficult dance music for the too-easily bored.
First proper full length in nearly 5 years from Planet Mu label head honcho Mike Paradinas, aka Mu-Ziq, and the first Mu-Ziq record we've reviewed in over a decade! So what's changed since we last heard from Paradinas? Quite a bit it seems, at least based on the last record we heard, 2003's Bilious Paths, at which point he still trafficked in a strain of genre hopping short attention span ADD-core, his modus operandi all splattery splice and dice drill and bass, but with the remarkable ability to weave millions of little blurts and squelches into something both melodic and weirdly catchy, densely rhythmic and furiously frantic.
But on Chewed Corners, it seems Paradinas may have mellowed a bit, which is not entirely a bad thing, and we're definitely digging this new sort of sprawling, rhythmic, atmospheric, almost cinematic sound. Check out the opener "Taikon", which starts off with a wistful little melody, before in swoops a crunk-ish beat electro beat, and some thick almost dubstep bass buzz, woozy and moody, shadowy synths, al shimmery and minor key. And while the beat does splinter and get a bit skittery, the rest of the sounds get sorta cosmic and spacey, sounding a bit like some eighties style Goblin-y synth score, swirling processed voices drifting over the top, all tangled up with bass buzzing skitter. Which is pretty much how all of Chewed Corners plays out, very cinematic and synthy, sweeping and epic in places, "Christ Dust" is a plodding synthy dirge, epic and dramatic, Paradinas tweaking it by adding weird ominous low end pulsations, as well as some prismatic chordal swirls, but otherwise it remains moody and atmospheric. "Wipe" does get a bit more stuttery and manic, but eventually remains tethered by some sinewy bass synth and cool cheesy eighties drum bombast, all wound around some swirly John Carpenter synths. And speaking of Carpenter, some of the tracks get downright creepy, check out "Monyth" with its looped minor key melody, that sounds very Halloween-like, but here it's beneath layers of moaning drones and prismatic synth shimmer, not to mention some cool rhythmic skitter, and so it goes, a pretty fantastic collection of epic sountracky electro synthscapes, textured and atmospheric, darkly rhythmic, a little psychedelic and kosmische as well, all of which should for sure hit the spot for the current crop of cinematic synth nerds without pandering to the flavor of the month, and most likely won't disappoint fans of the old Mu-Ziq. We dig!
Mike P.'s two import-only drum&bass 12-inch records on one cd.
From the same label that brought us the amazing electro-metal / glitch-grind of Whourkr (whose debut is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and whose newest records we made our Record Of The Week a while back), comes this equally baffling and brilliant chunk of glitched out electro deathgrind hypermetal from the oddly monikered Mulk, a one man band who basically makes some of the most twisted, complex and convoluted metal ever. With head spinning drum programming, wild gouts of lightspeed blasts and inhuman flurries of beats, chopped up and sliced and diced and reassembled into furious bursts of outsider deathmetal weirdness, laced heavily with strange effects and electronics, the sound constantly stuttering and skittering and transforming, the beats splintering into weird blasts of buzz, the sound glitching out almost as if your cd player were melting, or imagine playing a Morbid Angel record and an Immolation record at 78rpm on two tapes that were recorded on a busted up boombox on old tapes that had been left on the dash in the sun. It's like a futuristic cybergrind Faxed Head! Theres definitely a big drill and bass electronic component, but instead of mixing beats and riffs, this guy mashes them together into a single raging sound. It almost sounds like a death metal record made by Venetian Snares. It's hard to describe, if you dig Whourkr, you definitely need this, and if you're after the heaviest, weirdest most fucked up death metal / deathgrind record EVER, this is most definitely it.
What could be cooler than a French guy in the '70s, hanging out with naked chicks and teetering stacks of analog synths, making underground DIY futuristic psychedelic new wave punk drone proto-industrial music??? Uh, not much. Particularly when said French guy (Thierry Muller) is so good at it. Longtime AQ list readers might recall us raving some time ago about something called Ilitch and something else called Ruth, both bands/projects of Muller reissued on the Fractal label. Now, those discs are all out of print (why? they should repress!), but the label has just presented us with a collection of mostly previously unreleased material from the man's various projects over the period indicated in the subtitle... and even the stuff that has been available is super rare. None of it included on those previous Fractal cds of Ilitch and Ruth. For the uninitiated, let us say, Thierry Muller was a French pioneer in the realm of electronic/prog/punk weirdness, an "early Industrial" genius indeed! This disc is all the proof you need. There's material from five different Muller led projects: Arcane (1974), Ilitch (1975), Breaking Point (1978), Ruth (1978), and Crash (1984). The progression, if we can generalize, from "band" to "band" is from the more abstract, lo-fi distorted homebaked soundscape-psych displayed by Arcane all the way to the robotic sci-fi FX pop of Crash. But it's all got a kind of tense krautrock meets the new wave vibe, and if you like the likeminded work of Muller's countryman Richard Pinhas (Heldon) you should check this out! You could buy it just for the blissful 28 minutes of Ilitch's 1975 "Un Jour Come Tant d'Autres" and get your money's worth. Highly recommended!!
Confusingly enough, there are two Mum's who have popped up at around the same time and revolve around similar artistic spaces in electronica. The Mum we're talking about here is the Icelandic Mum and is the Mum which has been garnering tons of rave reviews and Sigur Ros-esque hype as being the next big thing from Iceland. Boards of Canada, Sigur Ros, Bjork, and even Belle & Sebastian are adequate jumping-off points in describing Mum. The latter reference may be of interest as Mum's twin singers Kristin Anna and Gyda Valtydottir had been cover stars for Belle & Sebastian's "Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant". Mum builds bright-eyed, electronica tunes filled with childlike wonder, but contextualized by the grown-up disillusionment that those dreams will never step beyond the realm of innocent fantasy. Thus, a benign sadness seeps through Mum's adept orchestrations that (like Bjork) seemlessly integrates live instrumentation (accordion, melodica, glockenspiel, synthesizers, music boxes, guitars, bass, and cello) and laptop tricked-out beats and tweaks. All in all, Mum is pretty good, but never really jumps beyond any of those references.
Hey, fans of Mum! Here's the reissue of their second release (the one just before the beloved Finally We Are No One). It's comprised of two originals, one 'interlude' and six remixes of those two songs by Arovane, B. Fleischmann, Isan, Phonem, Christian Kleine, and Styrofoam. Unlike their latest Summer Make Good on which they embody the now-familiar "Icelandic" glistening atmospheric sound and their childlike qualities prominently take center stage in the vocal form, Please Smile My Noise Bleed's visions of infancy are much more subtly infused -- only hinted at like faintly glimmering memories. Very chiming musicbox lullabies meet programmed thud-beats and scritch'n'scrape sounds. Nice!
Where you stand on this new Mum album (not physically! haha!) very well may be hinged on where you stand on adults singing like creepy little kids. As expected, their instrumental arrangements are total glistening elegance, however the vocals all adhere to a frail, childlike affectation, and they're chose to present them very prominently in the overall mix. Plenty of comparisons have been drawn to fellow Icelander Bjork -- sonically, not simply because of their common homeland -- however unlike that of Mum's vocalist Kristin Anna Valtydottir, Bjork's otherworldly dynamic delivery covers a much more vast range, veering in and around the pixie-like. Some may find Ms Valtydottir's voice positively enchanting, while others may find it maddening.
Mum fans, you're probably already aware that Mum's debut album has been reissued, aren't you? But if you've yet to acquaint yourself with the shimmering pop majesty that is Mum's music, you simply won't go wrong with any of their gorgeous albums, but this one is a mighty fine place to start.
Here's what we had to say the first time around...
Mum hails from Iceland, a land whose musical exports have received proportionally higher praise per capita than bands from any other country on the planet. And, yes, Mum has been hailed as the next big thing from Iceland after Sigur Ros. This outfit places themselves within the border regions of electronica and post-rock, where they augment delicate IDM algorithms with Durutti Column-esque guitars, trumpets, and clarinets, but never dabble in the stagnant Tortoise sound. As a result of incorporating acoustic instruments into digital structures, their sound has a rich color palette somewhere between rich acoustic warmth and glistening digital. Mum's sound often recalls the romantic leanings of the early IDM sound (Aphex / Reload / Autechre), but without any of the big floor-filling techno rhythms. It's the aural equivalent of layer upon layer of delicate tulle, gauzy blankets, and goose down duvets. May we say this is dramatic and ever so much more than ok.
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Another quite nice drone/bliss release on the ever reliable Time Released Sound label, available as per their usual operating procedure in two different versions: an ultra-limited edition in super deluxe packaging, and also a cheaper, no frills edition too. We're still enjoying TRS's previous release, by The Inventors Of Aircraft, and this other new discovery of theirs is equally dreamy. A thing of shimmering beauty, from a Japanese ambient artist we'd never heard of before. This may be his first release - we'll certainly be looking out for more in the future.
Ten tracks of slowly unfolding murmer and mesmerism, sunny sleepy afternoon music for sure, with gentle melodies (on piano, we think) and rhythms surfacing amidst the glimmering drones, Murkami's music seemingly inspired by nature and the seasons, possibly ghosts as well� Murkami thanks his ancestors, and one track is entitled "Vorie's Ghost Sanitarium".
The deluxe cd version is limited to 100 copies only, and comes in a handmade (stamped, sewn, assembled) six inch square booklet, composed of antique paper ephemera from Japan including fold out tissue maps and Meiji-era apothecary ledger pages, plus a double sided insert printed on bamboo. This booklet is banded by a strip of vintage 8mm film depicting scenes from the aftermath of the great Japanese earthquake of 1923, and is nestled with the cd inside a "clouded" translucent vellum envelope decorated with cherry blossoms. A Japanophile's dream! But if you don't want the fancy packaging, you can also get the cd more cheaply, packaged in a simple hand printed sleeve. Either way, recommended.
Another quite nice drone/bliss release on the ever reliable Time Released Sound label, available as per their usual operating procedure in two different versions: an ultra-limited edition in super deluxe packaging, and also a cheaper, no frills edition too. We're still enjoying TRS's previous release, by The Inventors Of Aircraft, and this other new discovery of theirs is equally dreamy. A thing of shimmering beauty, from a Japanese ambient artist we'd never heard of before. This may be his first release - we'll certainly be looking out for more in the future.
Ten tracks of slowly unfolding murmer and mesmerism, sunny sleepy afternoon music for sure, with gentle melodies (on piano, we think) and rhythms surfacing amidst the glimmering drones, Murkami's music seemingly inspired by nature and the seasons, possibly ghosts as well� Murkami thanks his ancestors, and one track is entitled "Vorie's Ghost Sanitarium".
The deluxe cd version is limited to 100 copies only, and comes in a handmade (stamped, sewn, assembled) six inch square booklet, composed of antique paper ephemera from Japan including fold out tissue maps and Meiji-era apothecary ledger pages, plus a double sided insert printed on bamboo. This booklet is banded by a strip of vintage 8mm film depicting scenes from the aftermath of the great Japanese earthquake of 1923, and is nestled with the cd inside a "clouded" translucent vellum envelope decorated with cherry blossoms. A Japanophile's dream! But if you don't want the fancy packaging, you can also get the cd more cheaply, packaged in a simple hand printed sleeve. Either way, recommended.
Tijuana-based techno musician Fernando Corono (a.k.a. Murcof) has released an album that serves as a worthy successor to those that have so obviously influenced him -- without asking Corono, we'd point to the abstract dub-masters of the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction crew and Richie Hawtin's experimental work under his Plastikman moniker. Previous Murcof work has garnered attention for its intricacy, and led to him being considered a sort of electronic classical composer. The newest offering, Cosmos, bears witness to an increasingly pastoral sensibility that is at once both choatic and hymnal. Maybe the easiest way to describe the music is to make reference to labelmates M83. But where the aforementioned pop-electronic-shoegazers sometimes fall flat with incessant drumroll crescendos and a flood of pre-programmed "choir voice" pads, Murcof manages to shine with an intensely cerebral effort that presents itself for both active and passive listening.
The Nortec Collective have succeeded in convincing the masses (including Chris Blackwell of Island Records and all of the arts editors at NPR) that an idiosyncratic, cute fusion of traditional Mexican music (such as the tambora flares for tuba and accordion ballads) and club-friendly, big-beat rhythms would be a good idea. I have not been convinced, holding the ill-tempered opinion that they are electronica's version of The Gypsy Kings, or at least that they've allowed themselves to be marketed as such. Thus, it came as surprise that Murcof is a pseudonym for Fernando Corono, who is one of the members of the Nortec Collective. While the appropriating force is still at work in Murcof, it's handled with a considerable greater sense of gracefulness than the archetypal Nortec sound. Furthermore, it's Morton Feldman and Arvo Part that Corono is sampling, and not North Mexican folk music. Looping evocative motifs from those minimalist composers into elegant patterns, Corono adds very simple Chain Reaction heroin house grooves to create a very pleasant, very polite sound that runs through the Martes record. The result is a melancholic electronica album that complements Boards of Canada, without resorting to mimickry.
This is the 2nd full length by Tijuana-born electronic composer Fernando Corona aka Murcof. Loosely connected to the Nortec Collective and a major player in the creative art scene in Tijuana over the last several years, Murcof makes music rich with tension and melody. With a strong sense of the elements of both classical and electronic music and composition, he creates an inciting blend of contemporary composition and minimalist Mexican techno. In lesser hands that could be a cringy combination, but Murcof blends the two elements so naturally and with such rich skill that there is no doubt he is one of the great electronic composers of the 21st century. Highly recommended!
Mexican electronic artist Fernando Corona has previously worked alongside the much-ballyhooed Nortec Collective, although you'd be hard pressed to hear any of Nortec's fusions between traditional Mexican music and big-beat electronica in Corona's Murcof project. Where Nortec is brash and tumultous, Murcof is cool and detached; but Corona doesn't entirely leave the ideals of Nortec behind as he develops a chimerical space where disparate styles are forced to cohabitate, dialogue, and ultimately work together. Here, it's a hybridization of 20th Century orchestral composition and the clinical precision of clicks 'n' cuts techno. In sampling the likes of Arvo Part and Henryk Gorecki, Corona grafts a hallowed, filmic atmosphere of lilting strings and sustained chorales onto the studied techno formalism as heard in the microhouse facets of Kompakt. Utopia is a remix album dotted with a few original tracks from Murcof alongside the reworkings from Deathprod, Sutekh, Jan Jelinek, Colleen, GeoffWhite, Icarus, and Fax. Unlike a lot of remix albums, Utopia is relatively seamless with most of the artists constructing sympathetic moods and surfaces to Murcof's signature sound.
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I see Mr. Jones got himself a copy of the Conet Project. The creepy numbers station broadcasts found on the infamous Conet release work very well with Muslimgauze's Arabic rhythms. As "Baghdad" progresses, Muslimgauze shifts course from one of his more standard sounds to UK digidub layered with funky basslines (!!!) and scratchy static. A different take on the prolific Muslimgauze, but a good one.
With so many Muslimgauze releases, finding one with as much history / trivia associated with it is a rarity. Both "Coup D'Etat" and "Abu Nidal" were released on Bryn Jones' Limited Editions Records on vinyl in the late 80s and were compiled for the first release on Soleilmoon. That aside, these pieces represented the earliest documents of a mature Muslimgauze with the insistant tension of Jones' Arabic percussion and dark synthetic washes representing the last remnants of an industrial past.
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"Gun Aramaic" finds Muslimgauze in one of his darker moments, sinking the trademarked Arabic percussive hypnosis deep within arid digital dub atmospherics. If you're asking, this is one of really good ones.
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As you may know Bryn Jones (the mastermind behind the hyper-prolific Muslimgauze) died in January, 1999 of complications from a rare fungal infection. In spite of his passing, the huge backlog of material that he left behind ensures that the constant stream of Muslimgauze releases continues to remain, well, constant. With that said, "The Inspirational Sounds Of Muslimgauze" is not anything new, rather it is a 'best of' compilation from his late period Staalplaat recordings - including tracks from "Mullah Said," "Izlamaphobia," "Fatah Guerilla," and "Azzazin." While those four albums do not constitute a broad cross-section of Muslimgauze's 150 records, they do provide an excellent introduction (or refresher course) into this period of work. With sly production techniques, Muslimgauze deftly transforms a variety of Arabic percussive instruments into complex dub electronica grooves that mostly steer clear of recognizable rhythmic structures. One caveat: while Universal Egg did pick some great tracks, their graphic design aesthetic leaves a lot to be desired...
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This is a third and unlimited pressing of "Maroon" which had previously enjoyed rather fancy, strictly limited packaging in its previous incarnations back in 1995. "Maroon" remains one of the stronger Muslimgauze albums, or at least representative of some of Muslimgauze's strongest work. Vast ambience culled from sitar and organ drones tuned to Arabic cadences, dappled with indeterminant Arabic radio samples and dub inspired techno crafted from tabla rhythms and thick hovering basslines.
MPEG Download: "Track 7" [/audio/muslimgauzemaroon7.mp3]
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