Fewer things could bring more delight for us kraut and space prog heads than a 2cd anthology of Tangerine Dream rarities compiled by Edgar Froese, and for such an affordable price! Froese, the one mainstay of the band through 13 different lineups (the band including in their ranks at one time both Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze), has provided a compelling overview of the musical evolution of the band from their psychedelic roots to their later period as electronic film score stalwarts and everywhere in between.
The double disc set begins way back before TD, with their 1967 pre-incarnation 7" single as The Ones, a band more rooted in the sixties psychedelic rock of Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead than the spacey sounds they embraced later on. But the real highlight of this set is the inclusion of TD's rare first 7" single from 1971, "Ultima Thule", an epic two part space rock excursion that begins in stratospheric Hawkwind territory in part one, but in part two takes a Magma like instrumental prog trajectory, that prefigures the minimal electronic direction the band would take through records like Electronic Meditation, Zeit and Alpha Centauri. The rest of disc one explores these sci-fi themed gaseous realms of gorgeous brooding ambience.
Disc two covers the bands' later, mostly early eighties output, which saw the band more as composers of action film music with a definte increase in rhythms and sequencers, but still with a spacey electronic edge. While John Carpenter may get all the credit as progenitor of all the latter day eighties arpeggiated synth worshippers like Jonas Reinhardt, Majeure, James Ferraro, and Umberto, Tangerine Dream was equally influential in this regard. A lot of the later period Tangerine Dream output can be sometimes cheesy, but the careful curation of this compilation shows there were also plenty of gems as well. This may prove to rethink the general attitude that TD had completely lost the plot, when they started turning to film score commissions, and rhythmic dance music in the eighties and nineties.
With one or two exceptions, most of this music here, as far as we can tell, has not been released on any of their major records, but there is little information to tell if these tracks ever saw proper release at all. So this is a very worthy exploration for the newly curious as well as for seasoned fans. Highly Recommended!!!!
We really didn't know what to expect from this Brooklyn duo, whose pedigree not only includes goofy dance pop combo Professor Murder, but also legendary post/math rock outfits Don Caballero and Storm & Stress, we might have been expecting the impossible, some strange mix of the two, but instead, Mixed Emotions ends up being a super fun, fuzzy, bouncy, hooky, and yeah danceable, pop record, lots of squelchy synths, programmed drums, groovy rhythms, soaring intertwined vocals, chiming guitars, fuzzy riffs, handclaps, it's hard to know who to compared these guys too, it seems like folks who dig groups like Animal Collective, and who aren't averse to the more electronic/dance pop side of things would love these guys, but also people into stuff like Phoenix and Miike Snow. And the band definitely are a proper rock band, with songs like "Green Grass" melding their more electronic side with a super hooky fuzz pop indie jangle that's pretty dang irresistible. Opener "Brothers" is all brooding stripped down electro pop, but it "All Of Me", the single, that really demonstrates just how good these guys are, and why it wouldn't be that weird to hear these guys on commercial pop radio, it's the kind of super hooky, synth heavy, big chorus. pop gem, that makes people want to get up and move, even grumpy wall flowers like us.
And so it goes for the rest of the record, electro pop meets groovy fuzzy indie jangle, majestic almost orchestral electronic epics meet woozy tropical dreampop, synthy strings meet crooned percussion heavy new wave pop, all those various strains of electronic pop and classic indie songsmithery melting into one gloriously dreamy whole.
This is the first we'd heard from Taragana Pyjarama, aka Danish producer Nick Eriksen, but all it took was a quick listen and we were smitten. This is the sort of blissed out loop heavy electronic dreaminess we can never seem to get enough of. Right off the bat it reminded us of The Field, but even more washed out and woozy, the opening track is pretty much the perfect chunk of sun dappled pop ambient dreaminess, all swirling synths and swoonsome melodies, dense layers and lush melodic tangles, pulsing and pulsating and shimmering, a cascading kaleidoscopic stretch of electronic dreampop loveliness that almost kept us from making it to the rest of the record. The second track is more of the same, this time harnessing those same sounds into something subtly more propulsive, a dreamy pulsating new age synthscape, that just gets more and more lush and gloriously blissed out, we were almost convinced that maybe the whole record was this pure soft focus shimmery sweetness, but it is on Kompakt after all, so there are beats, but even the beat driven tracks are dreamy and playful. "Lo Ng" is s tripped down minimal house track, of woozy bloops and bleeps, that blossoms into a hazy tropical cinematic groove, before slipping into a stripped down electro pulse. "All Those Weird Things" almost sounds like Animal Collective if they were on Kompakt, the same sort of lush, psychedelic pop vibe, but here wedded to a garbled stuttery underwater beat. "Pinned (Part 1)" has a beat at its core, but it's nearly swallowed whole by the woozy warped synths, and the title track, is a gorgeous abstract skitter, that sounds like it was collaged from chiming bells and and samples scrapes and rattles, like some sort of abstract field recorded Muslimgauze, the track eventually becoming a gorgeous stretch of meditative bell like tones, and so it goes. From blooping bleeping synth heavy house-pop, to playful electro skitter, to bleary blissed out synth-drone ambience, easily our new favorite electronic record, and way recommended for fans of The Field, Gui Boratto, Actress, and other outside-the-box electronic alchemists...
Like so many bands, it's the singing that'll make it or break it. Tarwater's monochromatic Germanic mumble worked with their bleak electronic / post-rock albums, but when attempts to sport songwriting chops and to arrive at the baritone croon of Stephin Merritt are met by uptempo funboy electro pop tunes, the results can make skin crawl. Swear to God, while we were listening to it, Windy kept asking if it was the new Lou Reed album. Still, it's not *all* that guy's vocals, and the music is that nice Tarwater submerged sample crackle, so...
Excellent album! Tarwater come out of a very fertile German electronica meets rock scene, one which has also sprouted To Rococo Rot and Kreidler, both big AQ faves. You want details? OK -- Tarwater is the duo of Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram. Ronald and brother Robert are in To Rococo Rot along with Stefan Schneider who is in Kreidler and who also lends his keyboard sound to Tarwater on a track here. Jestram has engineered a couple of To Rococo Rot's recordings.
This close proximity has resulted in a some amazingly beautiful records from all three of these groups, and as a whole they just keep bettering themselves for our delight. Dwellers On The Threshold is one of the very best of the bunch. Just gorgeous! About half instrumental, the album's vocal tracks feature Lippok's vocals which are a morose sort of talk / sing murmur that reminds me of Tindersticks. Several of the tracks feature bittersweet strings and the exact same lush plucked harp-sounding thing that made the last Kreidler record Eve Future so stunning. There's lots and lots of serenely picked guitar amongst the programmed beats that don't call too much attention to themselves; rather it's the melody and songwriting that stand out. And the whole thing runs on a consistently stately pace. Really well done. Highly recommended, especially if you're a fan of the Notwist, Fridge, Tindersticks, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler, etc. A big fave of Windy and Allan.
After the fairly savage review we gave to Tarwater's previous effort (we said we thought "Animals, Suns, and Atoms" sounded like a new Lou Reed album!) we can happily say we like this new one better. Indeed, we'll call it a comeback for the Tarwater duo of
Germans Ronald Lippok (of To Rococo Rot) and Bernd Jestram are Tarwater, and this is the follow-up to their fine 11/6 12/5 album which seemed to bridge Nick Cave and Portishead. Here's some of what Forced Exposure's email list has to say about the new disc: "DJing (loops, breakbeats, cut-ups, speeches), electronic experiments and classical song structures lay next to each other in Tarwater's music, which leads them in the direction of artists as DJ Shadow or Tricky...and one can find a long list of other references: early 90's East Coast Hip Hop, the Coil of the Horse Rotovator Phase, the Crooklyn Dub Consortium, the minimal electronic sets of DJ Kazi Lenka and Taschensound, and the compositions of Carl Wilson. Still: the intuition kicks out the strategy and gives this music a rather mysterious pop-appeal."
Tarwater, the German postrock/electronica duo featuring a member of To Rococo Rot, has had their ups and downs with their fans here at AQ. If you look back at our reviews of their several previous albums you'll find some we rave about and some we pan. Their last full-length, Dwellers On The Threshold, got a rave. So does that mean that this new one, their first for new label Morr Music, is bound for the downswing? Or are they at last on a steady upward trajectory with us? Well if you're a fan by now you've probably made up your own mind 'cause this has been out for a little while now. But for what it's worth, we like this one. The unique Tarwater charm -- the combination of bloodless vocals and mellow beats and instrumental textures -- does it for us again. Relaxed, pretty, downtempo stuff for the most part. With the aid of various guests, Tarwater's Robert Lippok and Bernd Jestram have come up with 14 songs that (as always) blend "live" instruments and singing and electronics into a variety of melodic, moody soundscapes and low-key synthpop tunes. There are some more upbeat numbers with percolating rhythms but the vocals are never upbeat! Indeed, the singing remains the thing that is either going to make or break this for most listeners. Depends if you like their style of gently spoken-sung, kinda soft and dreary, English-language vocals. Their unexcitable, deadpan delivery would be easy to parody. But Tarwater's intimate, rainy-day electro-acoustic symphonics give this album human warmth. The Needle Was Travelling is mysteriously groovy, whilst being laid-back and droney too. It's modern-day krautrock after all. Some might like it better in an instrumental version, but Lippok's vocal limitations are for better or worse a key part of the Tarwater sound that we enjoy.
"Too wrong and too dreamy." So says the press release for this 2cd set of electronic curiosities from Natalie Beridze; and it's a strangely apt description of these sounds, of course, meant in the best possible way. Beridze hails from the former Soviet republic of Georgia; and some time ago, she caught the attention of Thomas Brinkmann, who has since helped produce her albums and released them on his Max Ernst imprint. There's a strange intimacy to her collages of whispered spoken word and MIDI-sequenced piano solos that stream around the concrete slabs of post-techno breakbeats and electroid glitches. Given the leftfield abstractions of her work, references to Autechre and Aphex Twin have been popping up in the media; but her work (like that of Ukraine's Zavoloka) speak with a whimsical playfulness through electronics and semantics that is almost completely detached from a dancefloor context. A difficult set of recordings to take in, given its atypical agenda; but this is well worth spending some time with.
Combining the wonders of cEvin Key (of Skinny Puppy and Download to name but two of his many projects), Edward Ka-spel (of Legendary Pink Dots), Ryan Moore (aka Twilight Circus) and their cast of like-minded co-horts, it's Tear Garden. Rich, velvety, and hypnotic. Check out track 3 "In Search Of My Rose". If you like the more dub-tinged moments of the Pink Dots' album A Perfect Mystery (undoubtedly due to the bass and percussion presence of Mr. Moore), this earlier album is definitely for you. Gorgeous!
Boy / girl lo-fi electro duo Tearist were originally lumped in with the whole witch house movement, in part we would imagine because of a cd-r release on witch house flagship label Disaro, but even back then Tearist were doing something way different than the hordes of slo-mo death drag creepers, sounding much more like some warped version of Zola Jesus, or a way more fucked up Glass Candy, a sort of eighties new wave by way of Eurodisco by way of lo-fi psychedelic industrial murk, and yeah, a little dash of witch house.
On Living, which seems to be a retrospective of sorts, we're treated to what appears to be a live show, with all the old hits getting aired out, the weird thing is, the live recording, the lo-fi sound, the weird mix, the crowd sounds, the various conversations, the vocals way down in the mix, actually makes this sound WAY more witch housey than these songs are proper, but which actually makes this stuff somehow even cooler. Muddier, murkier, messier, there are moments where the new waviness shines through, her voice sounding a lot like the woman from the Divinyls, but elsewhere, things get grimy and downright sick, like on "Lo V" (we think, hard to tell where songs start and stop), Tearist unleash a cool churning electronic rhythm, that even on its own is super mesmerizing, frantic and frenzied, stuttery and a bit off kilter, growing ever more fragmented, the vocals super dramatic, and doused in effects, and still elsewhere, like on "Closest" (again we think), Tearist get all gloomy and gothy, a sort of slo-mo doom pop, swirling synths muted rhythms, the vocals dramatic and dark, it's these moments that will have the Zola Jesus / Glass Candy crowd smitten. And so it goes, from almost poppy eighties style new wave, to dirgey dancey murkiness, to warped druggy electro, to hazy Euro synth wave, to droned out industrial drift, a pretty twisted and killer sampling of live Tearist.
Like their awesome "Dead Man's Curse" cd single I raved about a coupla months ago, this newest full length from Techno Animal is dark, dark screwed-up mutant hip hop with an unavoidably ferocious driving breakbeat on the bottom end. *Totally* heavy and
About half the tracks are instrumentals and they stand on their own quite well -- interesting, dynamic, not repetitive -- but even their excellence pales in comparison to the tracks that have various hip hop MCs adding to the mix, cos those are REALLY good. With Dalek, members of Anti Pop Consortium, Rubberroom, El P from Company Flow, and last but not least Toastie Taylor toasting deliriously on "Piranha". I like this record more every time I listen to it. Highly recommended.
Fucking totally heavy and intense 3-song single from the English duo Techno Animal (Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick who've worked variously in such outfits as Godflesh, Sidewinder, Ice, God, etc). This is dark, dark screwed-up mutant hip hop an unavoidably ferocious driving breakbeat on the bottom end that will appeal to fans of the Wordsound label (Sensational, Spectre,
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A collection of a ton of compilation tracks (mostly from their contributions to the "Electric Ladyland" series on Force Inc) and singles for Chrome. More of the devastating dub and heavy-handed hip-hop you've grown to expect from Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick.
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Five dark and sinister new tracks with great remixes by Porter Ricks, Ui, Spectre, Tortoise, and Alec Empire.
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A teaming up of UK industrial/electronica and American indie-rap. Side one is a Techno Animal track -- Megaton -- and a remix of Dalek's "Classical Homicide", side two is the other way around: Dalek's "Homicide" and Dalek's remix of Techno Animal's "Megaton". Surprisingly "big beat" stuff for Techno Animal, the remix of Dalek has some serious ass bass that makes our neighbors call up and complain no matter how quiet we play it!
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Avant-electronica turntablists Otomo Yoshihide, Frank Schulte, Christian Marclay drop huge breakbeats around the free music improv-noodling of Marc Ribot, Fred Frith, Iva Bittova, Chris Cutler, Phil Minton, Jon Rose, Sainkho Namtchylak, Nick Collins, Evan Parker, and others. Odd and enjoyable.
The first two records from this UK psychedelic space rock combo were primo examples of the current space/psych sound that we can't seem to get enough of - huge lumbering Hawkwind beholden sprawls of epic kosmische heaviness and tranced out kraut jams and blissful FX drenched atmospheric drifts. The band seemed to align themselves with the usual suspects: Carlton Melton, the Heads, White Hills, Mugstar, the Hills, etc. Those earlier Teeth Of The Sea records took that spaced out psychedelic sound and twisted it all up, adding near metallic heft in places, cheesy eighties soundtrack music, sci-fi electronics, swirling synths, raga like drones, heck even horns, so this new one came with lots of high expectations, but somehow, even as weird as those other records were, we weren't prepared for this.
After a weird bit of garbled vocals, the first proper track kicks in, with a pulsing, eighties sounding electro drum machine, then some percolating synths, reverbed percussion, weird electronics, processed horns, tinkling chime-like melodies, deep chordal drones, the band definitely dipping into the whole John Carpenter / Goblin sound, but making it totally their own. Immediately sounding like a WAY heavier version of our recent Record Of The Week from The Slasher Film Festival Strategy, and we were totally prepared for the whole record to unwind like some lost eighties soundtrack, but still in the first track, in come big, bombastic drums, some almost funky bass, the synths pulsing, a lumbering, loping cosmic soundtracky groove that's so good! All before the song EXPLODES into a wild, synth heavy, distorto guitar psych-prog blowout. Already worth the price of admission right there, and we're barely seven minutes in. Thankfully, it only gets cooler and weirder and WAY more far out.
Echo drenched horns are looped into a strange melodic cycle, sampled spoken vocals drift in and out, all over a skeletal electro groove, before the sound blossoms into some ultra creepy cinematic synthscapery, the synths buzzy and gristly, the vibe sinister and ominous, those looped, effected horns giving it a strange sort of almost Morricone gone Goblin vibe! From there, the sound devolves into a weird loose, super abstract almost-dub, reminding us of some old Adrian Sherwood record, via Muslimgauze or African Headcharge, but give a sort of heavy psych reworking, before in swoop swirling dizzying prog synth tangles and more spidery Morricone like guitars, the horns too, laying down a droned out brass backdrop, heady and hypnotic and really amazingly strange and original sounding. Pushing lots of our musical buttons, but turning those familiar sounds we love on their head.
At this point we're only halfway through, with the second part not letting up for a second, creepy atmospheric ambience, giving way to buzzing metallic crush, and blurred out slo-mo dooooom, laced with subtle synth and guitar filigree, shimmery outer space drift, ethereal and celestial that floats weightlessly, before some mariachi horns (!) bring it back to earth, gristly, grinding grey noise, and disembodied vocals, draped over a field of static, driven by buried pulsations, making for perhaps the most harrowing 2 minutes on the record, before launching into another psychedelic electro-dub excursion, all synth squelch and reverbed rhythms, which build to some seriously caustic crunch, before the record settles into the epic nearly 11 minute closer, a total eighties, soundtracky electro synth masterpiece, the perfect score for some lost horror art film, tribal rhythms, wheezing synths, tripped out vocodered vox, electronic beeps and trills, shimmery psych guitar, some driving propulsive grooves, and those horns, nearly driving the song at one point, and when matched to the grinding synth buzz, the swirling atmospheres, the fuzz guitar crunch, and the psych-kraut groove, make for something twisted and fantastically fucking far out. Masterful!
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Nice title! And, oooh. It's a very nice recording too. This debut album by electro-acoustic glitchtronica artist Mark Templeton should appeal to fans of Paul Wirkus, Mitchell Akiyama, Guiseppi Ielasi and others working in the experimental-but-beautiful, lowercase field of painterly abstraction, processed instruments, delicate drone, and (last but not least) ambient melodies. Mark Templeton's use of guitar, accordion, vibraphone, cymbals and especially banjo have us most closely comparing this to Geoff Mullen's wonderful thrtysxtrllnmnfstns, as Templeton is similarly submersing the notes played acoustically into a warm, electric bath of creaking staticky stuff, accompanied by murmuring field recordings and chirping digital glitch, like the pleasant but disintegrated soundtrack to some grainy super 8 footage, barely heard beneath the whirr of the film projector itself. Sweet swells of sound throb and drift, fracture and coalesce. It's all very lovely and mysterious, gentle caresses for curious ears.
Tennis is the collective nom de plume for British electronica artists Ben Edwards and Douglas Benford, who are respectively known better as Benge and Si-Cut.Db. At first, their collaboration sounds like a mutation of the utopian neo-dub of Pole and Kit Clayton, in which all of the grooves have been shredded into jagged patterns, and reassemled into disjointed filter techno
This bespectacled Finnish eccentric continues his journey into the darker corners of exotica lounge-land... often coming across as an accomplished, cocktail hour Joy Division. Sort of like a soundtrack to the dark'n'swirlies you get after one too many flaming fruity hi-balls. A great wind-down album after you've boogied the night away to the strains of the Moroder cd we've also listed
This record was quite a surprise. None of us had any really strong feelings about Jimi Tenor, other than knowing we really didn't care for his weird brand of loungey exotic electronica. And while that sound is still evident, it is tempered by some amazing pieces written for and performed with a 60 piece Polish orchestra. Dark and brooding and surprisingly original, sort of like an extra dark Hitchcock soundtrack laced with loungey jazzy exotica. Really great.
Also, the sticker on the front points out that the players on this record got their inspiration from eating the same cabbage and sausage meal every day!
More trippy dippy lounge-a-tronic from Finland. Yes, Mr. Oddball Jimi Tenor is back as we knew he'd be. In his "Utopian Dream" he draws from the past... his own. He borrows bits from both of his earlier albums "Intervision" (1997) and "Out Of Nowhere" (2000).
Is this a soundtrack for a porno film? Jimi Tenor and his funk lounge rhythm section Kabu Kabu are certainly laying it on hot and heavy on this new outing on nu-soul label Ubiquity. We've been entertained in the past by Tenor's eccentricies whether they be working with a drunk Polish orchestra or channeling Prince via his own Finnish techno-cabaret style musings. Not sure what people will think with this one. While the rhythm section is tight, with some full on seventies blaxsploitation "schwing", Tenor's creepy lothario persona can either make folks swoon or cringe. You decide.
Hands down the best mix collection we've heard in ages. Something about those Norwegians, damn do they know their way around space disco. We've already loved what we've heard by folks like Lindstrom and Prins Thomas, but Todd Terje's ability to create seamless mixes and imaginative edits and remixes has made him one of our favorites from that fertile scene. Remaster Of The Universe finally gives a nice big document to the amazing work Terje has been doing over the last few years. The first disc is his continuous mix of tracks by folks like Chaz Jankel, Gichy Dan, M, Jose Gonzales, etc. while the second disc is a collection of individual remixes and versions he's created for some of the same folks on the first disc as well as Antena, Lindstrom, Studio, Shit Robot, and more.
Terje really is a master at creating mixes that roll with such a shimmering vibration. He's able to respect the original tracks he uses yet totally infuse them with a new energy and a signature sound that is unmistakably his own. We like how that as seamless and smooth as he can be he's also not afraid to get really weird and left-of-center in his approach and song selection. Crossing eras and genres like the best kind of DJ's can, Terje has got us all moving and gliding to these dancefloor gems.
When we reviewed Halo's seminal Guattari (From the West Flows Grey Ash and Pestilence) album, we described them as "one of the heaviest, creepiest, most intense bands we have heard", we went on to compare them to Godflesh and Neurosis and Earth and Whitehouse and Cop Shoot Cop and Gore and Noisegate, holy shit, just writing that has us wanting to hear Halo again...
Anyway, it's been at least 5 years since we've heard a peep out of Halo, but even back in the day, one of the Halo guys had a side project called Terminal Sound System, which at the time ditched the crushing industrial metallic pummel of Halo in favor of creepy dark ambience and skittery electronica. Well since then, it seems that Terminal Sound System has developed into a full time concern, and in the process TSS's sound has soaked up all kinds of electronic music along the way, from jungle to dubstep, while remaining creepy and heavy and super intense, and we are digging it big time.
The record begins with some creepy pulsing ambience, the drums an almost jazzy skitter, until 'the drop', where the background sounds grow jagged and harsh, the drums exploding in a squall of rhythmic freakout, before it immediately simmers right back down. It almost sounds like a junglized Necks, long stretches of smokey dark shimmer, peppered with blown out blasts of grinding metallic dubstep rhythms and thick buzzing drones. But then the song shifts gears, and the drums pull way back, returning to their muted skitter, while over the top, Young Gods like guitar loops add a sort of carnivalesque prog element to the proceedings, growing ever more dramatic and tense, exploding in an incredible climax of massive rumbling bass, like some sort of doom dubstep. Fuck, I know we say this all the time, but that track alone is worth the price of admission.
But moving forward, the title track, is a brooding chunk of old school tech-step jungle, with plenty of blackened droney ambience hovering beneath the still sort of jazzy programmed drum and bass stutter. "Year Of The Pig" is another fractured take on dubstep, the drums, chopped and hiccuppy, heavy with FX, careening from space-y shuffle to dense staccato pound, while all around the beat swirls minor key piano stabs, swooshing spaced out effects, shards of metallic buzz, the whole track freezing occasionally and locking into a super jagged stop start stutter. Again, somehow the sound is a bit jazzy, but so heavy and dark and aggressive...
The rest of the record is all over the place, from subtly industrial post rock, complete with chiming guitars hook filled melodies, and strange effected vocals, sounding almost like a Jesu / Nadja sort of thing, to dark shimmery black ambience laced with super low bass buzz, and haunting minor key swells, to Eastern Muslimgauze style electronic drifts, to what can only be described as a sort of fractured dubstepped cabaret jazz, to fuzzy gauzy, reverb drenched Portishead-ish downtempo shimmer, to epic, ethereal blissed out post rock electronic drone, like Jesu meets Godspeed meets Asbestoscape, which is how the record finishes up.
Seriously fucking awesome. Has us wanting to hear more Terminal Sound System, and has us hankering to go back and revisit Halo as well...
Been a while since we've heard from Terror Danjah, whose past releases have been HUGE faves around here. As the world of dubstep moves further and further toward the dreamy and pastoral, the minimal and blissed out, and grime seems to have disappeared completely, we sometimes find ourselves missing the massive rib cage rattling basslines, the pounding big beat pummel, the crazy grimy flows, and the grim sinister dark edges sonics that seemed to define that sound in the early days. Thankfully, in Terror Danjah's warped soundworld, very little has changed, the beats still stutter and pound, MC's still toast wildly over rambunctious beats, and most importantly, things are dark, and scary, ominous and freaky. After a killer near symphonic cinematic intro, rife with killer chaotic programmed beats, in comes "Mirror's Edge", which starts out like some twisted seventies horror flick, all ominous pianos, wistful vocals, everything wreathed in static and record crackle, until BLAM, the beat drops, the bass too, thick and squelchy, that churning dubstep groove fused to the weird dark grimnity of that soundtracky opening, the whole thing fractured, funky, fucked up and seriously dark. The track laced with a sinister laugh that pops up on most every track here. And speaking of recurring sounds, the "Dark Crawler" track pops up constantly, as a sort of interlude, but featuring some seriously bad ass toasting from all sorts of killer MC's, hell if this record was just multiple version of this one song we'd be perfectly happy, but those "Dark Crawler"'s, are bookended by some seriously dizzying dubstep workouts, warped bass heavy electro jams, and psychedelic breakbeat driven groovers, the bass throughout super thick and ultra distorted, the beats dense and complex, that creepy laugh, it's almost as if this is some sort of alternate universe soundtrack, to the sort of fucked up horror movie / dubstep musical that we wish existed, so goddamn good. And for some of us, this might be THEE electronic record of the year!
Once again, Planet Mu steps up to the plate, to single handedly provide us with our grime/dubstep fix, this time in the form of Power Grid, a brand new ep of avant abstract griminess from mysterious producer Terror Danjah, who mixes classic rave sounds and playful melodies, with blown out buzzy bass warble, warped stuttery beats, clipped vocal snippets, spaced out FX, fuzzy squelchy synths, into something simultaneously cosmic, groovy, melodic, yet rough and gruff and a little bit aggressive.
"Space Traveller" is all synth and minimal, sounding a bit like Ital Tek or Zomby, but then "Menace" swoops in, sounding, well, menacing, with a woozy atmosphere, swirling melodies, dramatic strings and orchestral stabs, all sent skittering, maybe one of our favorite electronic jams in recent memory.
"Twisted" is another killer, that drops big beats, over buzzing FX drenched warped synth swirl, some twisted (yup) toasted vox, a clinical two step beat, all wound up into some seriously tense dancefloor damage. "Horror Story" is haunting and harrowing and skeletal, the beats cloaked in grit and buzz, the track laced with weird haunted house ambience, the rhythm sliced and diced, sped up vox, all creepy and crawly, but still fuzzy and funky.
This stuff is so goddamn good. Can't imagine it'll be too long before Terror Danjah finally gets the same sort of hype as folks like Zomby and Benga and Skream and the like, especially considering the fact that this stuff is SO much cooler and weirder...
Oh man do we love Terror Danjah. We may get more and more dubstep over here, but grime seems harder and harder to come by, not sure why, but thankfully Planet Mu is still on the case, and finally offers up this the latest brand new full length from Terror Danjah, a killer disc equal parts synthy dubstep skitter, and sinister, blackened dubbed out grime, which KILLS. Like the Power Grid ep we reviewed a while back, TD whips up super cinematic landscapes of big stuttery beats, squelchy synths, tangled melodies, orchestral stabs, looped samples, choral-like backdrops, that are situated firmly in dubstep territory, that is until an MC grabs the mic, and then everything shifts and stuff gets gloriously grimy, FAST. And Undeniable shifts frequently back and forth, from brooding ominous low end darkness, to buzzy synth swirl and back again.
The record opens with the very grimey "Grand Opening", with its stripped down beats, choir like textures, synthy strings, booming bass, and fuzzed out low end warble, all beneath Dream McLean's raw rough flow, winding and slithering through the fields of buzz and thrum and skitter. "Acid" is a blast of house-y Daft Punky dubbed out synthy stutter, which leads directly into "This Year (Pro Plus)", another grime jam, fuzzy and washed out, with some seriously dueling MC's both male and female, stuttery and twisted and abstract.
"Minimal Dub" is just that, a super minimal slab of abstract dubstep, peppered with vocal snippets and bits of synth squelch, all laced over a fragile sounding crystalline beat, which leads directly into the pounding almost dubhouse-y "Breaking Bard", with its relentless beat and swirl of buzz and rumble and thrum, not to mention fractured vox and ravey synths.
And on it goes, long stretches get all sci-fi and synthy, sounding like the dubstep version of the current craze of Carpenter/Goblin worship, but heavy on the bass buzz and stuttery beat, while others get super stripped down and minimal, skeletal and spidery, while still others get all soulful and trip hoppy.
A killer collection of dubstep /grime, that is absolutely essential listening for anyone who has been digging the recent spate of dubstep comps or any of the recent jams from Zomby, Clubroot, Vex'd, Ikonika, Guido, Mount Kimbie, etc.
And be sure to stick around until the end for a secret track, a bad ass blast of old school dubstep ragga style jungle, Terror Danjah style. Makes us wish he'd do a whole record of that stuff for sure!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We were watching this show on MTV, something like 'The Top 21 Under 21' that was a countdown of all the MTV stars who have hit the big time before they're even old enough to drink. Which was pretty depressing (the authors of this review are well into their
The Thievery Corporation tries to make silky music. But the silk that their sound emulates is the cheaply made synthetic stuff that is woven into the erotic apparel sold by Adam and Eve. Clad on unsexy white people who saturate themselves in Drakkar Noir, these cheap silken garments (bright pink for the ladies, purple paisleys for the gents) have the intrinsic defect of chemically adhering to the skin as soon as it is permeated with sweat. Despite the best efforts of clumsy grinding, the romantically inclinded duo has the unfortunate task of attempting to peel this molecularly fused cloth from their skin before moving onto more unmentionable things. Cotton is king.
Four song ep from this popular electronica act, one track taken from their "Mirror Conspiracy" album.
Right from the get-go of their latest full length, Thievery Corporation are keeping their audience on their well-heeled toes (and maybe knockin' a few of them back on their heels a bit). The reason? Well, for one thing the first track "Marching The Hate Machines (Into The Sun)" features the Flaming Lips! Seemingly odd bedfellows, doncha think? Their participation on this album will surely open them up to a whole new audience. 'Lips presence aside, fear not dear TC fans, all of the duo's suave smooooth grooooovin' is intact, but they've encorporated a multi-culti vibe into each track. Their ultra mellow downtempo core, which already had a lot of jazz and dub in it, has now been even more deeply infused with the sounds of India, Brazil and Jamaica. Special guests include Sista Pat, Perry Farrell, Loulou, Gunjan, David Byrne, Sleepy Wonder, Gigi Rezende, Patrick de Santos and the aforementioned 'Lips.
Found myself getting rather sleepy while listenin' to this new Thievery Corporation DJ set album. It seemed like Outernational Sound was going to be another trademark T.C. moody, lush downtempo affair, but no! That was only until the eleventh track (of nineteen tracks total) when things kick in something mighty! Getting all funky and hip-hoppy... and we've got Breakestra, Antonio Carlos Jocafi and Major Force to thank for that. They're the ones responsible for the eleventh, twelveth and thirteenth tracks respectively. From there, the T.C. gents continue to do as they please, 'spinning' a totally mixed bag of musical selections. Thus, this is more of a keep-you-on-yer-toes mix rather than a flowing, sink-in-and-get-groovy one. Three things we're not so sure of about this release though: 1.) whether or not we need yet another version of George Harrison's "Within You Without You" - sitar-fest or otherwise, 2.) whether or not we need a song based around that lame, cheesy 'oriental' melody -- y'know the one that begins that 80s tune "Turning Japanese", the one that get's played when Long Duk Dong appeared in Sixteen Candles, 3.) whether or not we need an artist named Crazy Penis. Ewww!
We've long been pretty into Thieves Like Us, whose M.O. had been a sort of eighties style electro pop, a vintage sounding new wave that fused the sounds of classic New Order to an icy futureworld beholden to sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, but then something strange happened on their last record, the band ditching vocals completely and transforming into something totally (okay, well, maybe not totally) different, conjuring up a sound much more cinematic and krautrocky, definitely shifting toward the current crop of Goblin worshipping John Carpenter wannabes, experimental, psychedelic, kosmische, so that's pretty much what we were expecting from this, their brand new full length, but it seems that brief bit of sonic dabbling, was indeed just that, and with Bleed Bleed Bleed, regardless of the very evocative album title, the band returns to that shimmery eighties synth pop sound, the opening title track, slow burning and sultry, with a percolating bassline underneath swirling synths, and icy dueling boy / girl vocals. "Stay Blue" sounds opens up with a brief bout of serious Kraftwerk worship, before blissing out into something much more swoonsome and ballady, sounding like some lost jam straight off eighties FM radio or classic era MTV, reminding us more of ABC or Thompson Twins or any of those bands, more than the krautrock forebears who the band also obviously count as influences. And so it goes, a hazy time machine trip back into vintage new wave electro pop, and while more modern moments reminds us of M83 at times, folks who flipped over the anomaly that was the band's krautrocky last record, Berlin Alex, might be a bit confused, and perhaps even disappointed, but for the rest of us, who were already digging their fuzzy retro sound, this definitely hits that same sweet spot.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Once in a blue moon an absolutely perfect single drops from heaven onto us mere mortals. It's almost unheard of that this phenomenon would be realized by the same band twice. Yet Matt Elliot, Mr. Third Eye Foundation first gave us the brilliant "Semtex" single... and now "Fear Of A Wack Planet".
Majestic choral voices delicately float as haunting historical texts to a Baroque past with elegantly simple breakbeats forming the basic structure. Yes, this is the same alchemic formula that Enigma has been boring the world with for some time now, yet Third Eye Foundation's ability to manifest the sublime provides that elusive transcendental quality that makes this one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard.
Like a Kranky release set to kill, "Ghost" unleashes an entrancing storm of beats and noise that would rather pierce than caress. "Ghost" is a wailing banshee with a rhythm section, where Bristol space-rock meets drum and bass.
I think we can all agree, that this is perhaps the worst name for an album ever ('cept for maybe Total's Buffin' the Celestial Muffin), but musically this record is pretty great. It's basically a collection of other people's songs remixed by Third Eye
