The Answer Is In The Beat

Ruxpin: This Time We Go Together (n5MD, 2013)

June 14, 2013 at 6:59 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

8th full length album (including a remix LP) from Icelandic downtempo ambient IDM artist Ruxpin. Inevitably, reviewing something like around the release of a new, return-to-form Boards Of Canada album, there’s bound to be some comparisons. Well, this one, as can be deduced by the sentence-heavy song titles, is a lot more literal and straightforward, as opposed to cryptic and mysterious. The melodies are clear instead of hazy, the tempos are a little bit more up, and there’s some actual vocals instead of obscured snippets. The female vocalist on several tracks sounds a hell of a lot like Bjork. Inevitable comparison for an Icelandic artist, but so it goes. “As We Exhale, We Enter” definitely gives you that pastoral BoC feeling more than anything else on the album, but with some lovely occasional drift-off vocals, and a few bursts of distorted synth. “Cloud In My Spacesuit” starts vaguely chiptuney at the beginning, and gets pretty scrambled/cutup towards the end. “Where Do We Float From Here?” has really active skittery beats and has a few points where the beat slows down a bit. “With Our Hands We Form Contact” has a bit more of a danceable beat and autotuned Japanese vocals. “We Have Come To Our End” fittingly serves as an epic, dramatic climax with operatic vocals and soft yet intense skittering beats, and then “This Place Was Ours To Begin With” is a short ambient epilogue, bringing our journey to an end.

v/a: 50 Weapons Of Choice #30-39 (50 Weapons, 2013)

June 9, 2013 at 5:39 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Latest comp of tracks from the limited 12″s on Modeselektor’s 50 Weapons label, which started in 2006 but didn’t really pick up steam until a few years ago. Dark Sky starts the comp off with some slow, heavy bass eruptions and shuddering claps, then picks up a 4/4 beat which skips a beat every other bar, and ticking hi-hats, and some light pads, not too much of a melody. Phon.o’s “Schn33″ starts with a classy disco-house beat, then builds to a dramatic progressive house melody. Addison Groove’s “I Go Boom” continues his melding of Chicago juke/footwork with UK bass, looping the titular phrase over mellow synths and detailed, slightly aggressive percussion. Bambounou’s “Deepstaria” has burbling, Drexciyan synths (think “Bubble Metropolis”) and a kicking beat, but doesn’t add too many other elements over its 9 minute running time. Thom Yorke’s Atoms For Peace project appears in remixed form, with the “Stuck Together” mix of “Other Side”. It starts with quiet, clicky beats and bass, and some hard-panning synths bubble up into the beat pattern, and gradually Thom Yorke’s voice sneaks its way into the mix, albeit mangled and looped. The track stays minimal, but it keeps growing and changing, and ends with some vocodered vocals and a pretty synth melody. Really an impressive track, definitely more interesting than anything else I’ve heard fromt his project. After this is a typically mindblowing track by Anstam, who is easily the secret weapon of 50 Weapons. It starts out with a huge blast of almost breakcore-intense beats, then turns into a slower, glitch-heavy tempo, with dialog samples, and sung vocals saying “hey boy, don’t you wanna dance?”, tabla-sounding percussion, and some ecstatic synthwork. Really not sure why people don’t talk about Anstam more, everything I’ve heard by him has been fantastic. Next up is a track by 2562′s alias A Made Up Sound, a clunky, disjointed techno track called “Malfunction (Despair)”, which starts off with a flickering synth pattern which makes you wonder which direction the track is going to go, but then it completely changes direction once the beat comes in, although the flickering sound does reappear underneath the beat, along with some synths providing a hint of light. Cosmin TRG’s “Sommer” is typical of his recent output, steadily building techno with lots of snare rushes and some dubby echoes. Marcel Dettmann’s “Linux” keeps it minimal with a loud thumping beat, but a solitary synth sequence repeating throughout the entire track. Benjamin Damage’s “Swarm” is another minimal techno track with synths that do swarm a little bit, but not as overwhelming as you might expect a track called “Swarm”. Newcomer Datei42′s “They Explore Themselves” is one of the comp’s exclusive bonus tracks, and is slightly dubby minimal techno with an emphasis on sweeping, static-y percussion sounds. Truncate ends the comp with another exclusive track, “Switch”, a big thumping minimal track with a clipped voice repeating something that sounds like “gather”, or maybe “gabber”. So basically, the comp starts out a little moresong-based and varied, and gets more minimal and track-y during its second half. But I guess these are relative terms. Anyway, interesting stuff as always from 50 Weapons.