May | 2013 | The Answer Is In The Beat

DEMF weekend 2013

May 29, 2013 at 12:14 am | Posted in Movement (DEMF), Photos | Leave a comment

I took my new camera to DEMF this year and took a lot of photos. The battery ran out halfway through the first day, so I had to resort to a few phone photos until I could get home and recharge.

Saturday 5/25/13

The line getting in the front gate

Peering through the fence at the Made In Detroit stage

T. Williams

Dancing during T. Williams

Lucy

Shigeto

Onra

Moog demonstration in the technology room

Moodymann

Walking into the center of Hart Plaza

Carl Craig

The Bug

Sunday 5/26/13

ADULT.

Tommy Four Seven

Dancing by the underground stage

Stala Infinite sculpture

Behind the pyramid

Wall painting

Bloom Box

Dancing at the Made In Detroit stage

DJ Minx

Pharos3 sculpture

Audion [Matthew Dear]

Why is there a Warp logo flashing onscreen?

Because they’re premiering a new Boards Of Canada song!

Stacey Pullen

Planetary Assault Systems [Luke Slater]

Daniel Bell

Looking out at Detroit from the Made In Detroit stage

Masters At Work [Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez & Louie Vega]

Steve Rachmad

Squarepusher

Thanks to Eric Stephenson for taking these videos!

Monday 5/27/13

Dantiez Saunderson

Dabrye

Carlos Souffront [former host of WCBN’s Crush Collision]

George FitzGerald

TOKiMONSTA

Erika [former WCBN DJ]

Don Dada [DJ Zebo & DJ Godfather]

Spontaneous dance circle during Don Dada’s set

Nicolas Jaar

Cajmere [aka Green Velvet]

DJ Psycho in the technology room

Truncate

Breaking out the glowsticks

Silent Servant

François K in the pouring rain

Kevin Saunderson & Derrick May

Show #192 – 5/25/13

May 26, 2013 at 1:13 pm | Posted in The Answer Is In The Beat | Leave a comment

Mic break music = Marsen Jules: The Endless Change Of Colour

3:01 AM Justin Walter ~ Lullabies & Nightmares ~ Lullabies & Nightmares ~ Kranky
3:10 AM Taylor Deupree ~ Negative Snow ~ Faint ~ 12k
3:18 AM Sam Rosenthal ~ Rae ~ The Passage ~ Projekt
3:30 AM 303 Committee ~ Aught ~ 303 Committee ~ Inam Records
3:33 AM Bruce Gilbert ~ Re-Exit ~ Monad 7″ ~ Touch
3:39 AM Mike Harding ~ Broken Window ~ Repaired / Replaced 7″ ~ Touch
3:42 AM Chris Abrahams ~ Bone And Teem ~ Memory Night ~ Room40
3:54 AM Mike Cooper ~ Po Mahina ~ White Shadows In The South Seas ~ Room40
3:57 AM Chris Corsano ~ Scalpels ~ Cut ~ Hot Car Warp Records
4:02 AM Pharoah Sanders ~ The Gathering ~ Elevation ~ Impulse
4:16 AM Sao Paulo Underground ~ Six-Handed Casio ~ Beija Flors Velho E Sujo ~ Cuneiform
4:20 AM Delia Derbyshire ~ Pot Au Feu ~ BBC Radiophonic Music ~ BBC
4:23 AM Preditah ~ Vinyls VIP ~ Grime 2.0 ~ Big Dada
4:27 AM Slava ~ Crazy Bout U ~ Raw Solutions ~ Software
4:36 AM Autechre ~ Cloudline ~ Exai ~ Warp
4:46 AM Jaga Jazzist ~ Kitty Wu ~ Live With Britten Sinfonia ~ Ninja Tune
4:53 AM Richard Pinhas ~ Circle ~ Desolation Row ~ Cuneiform
5:04 AM Mounds ~ Pontiac ~ Mounds Of Earth ~ Symbolic Capital Records
5:08 AM Ritual Howls ~ Cemetary Guards ~ Ritual Howls ~ Urinal Cake Records
5:13 AM Skate Laws ~ Confusion ~ split 7″ w/ Terrible Twos ~ Haunted Cave
5:15 AM Feelings ~ Glue ~ 7″ ~ Beehive Recording Company/Italy Records
5:18 AM Dolores Boys ~ Tear Wager ~ clear flexi-disc ~ Psychic Mule
5:20 AM Radiant Marks ~ Ominous Feeling ~ 7″ ~ Party Nogg! Records
5:23 AM Saturday Looks Good To Me ~ Break In ~ One Kiss Ends It All ~ Polyvinyl
5:26 AM Bill Baird ~ Sailing ~ Spring Break Of The Soul ~ Pau Wau Records
5:39 AM Saksiam Petchchompu ~ Saksiam Krab Fan ~ Theppabutr Productions: The Man Behind The Molam Sound 1972-1975 ~ ZudRangMa Records/Light In The Attic
5:43 AM Wang Liliang, Wubien Ren, Tza Posi, Pu Sansei & Li Apa ~ Amukadela ~ Ethnic Minority Music Of Southern China ~ Sublime Frequencies
5:47 AM Azita ~ Baba Heydar ~ Sedayeh Del: Funk, Psychedelia And Pop From The Iranian Pre-Revolution Generation ~ Pharaway Sounds
5:51 AM Diesle ~ Shell ~ Lord Of The Mics IV ~ Lord Of The Mics
5:56 AM Marisa Anderson ~ Deep Gap ~ Mercury ~ Mississippi Records

v/a: Lord Of The Mics IV (Lord Of The Mics, 2012)

May 20, 2013 at 1:12 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Lord Of The Mics IV

The UK grime scene is alive and well and underground as ever, even with Wiley releasing poppy major label albums and having #1 UK pop hits. This a fantastic, mixtape-style sampler of the current crop. P-Money shouts out to other grime artists and clubs all over the world. Diesle’s “Shell” is an excellent song about music bringing him out of his shell. Jammer reps Boy Better Know for life. M.I.K. assures that whoever told you he couldn’t do this is a liar. Shorty reps Boy Better Know some more with a nice freestyle over a tight minimal beat by Masro. Sox offers an incredibly sharp, funny rap called “I’m Not Stupid”. “Straight Up” is a huge posse cut adhering to the credo of “no bullshit, no lies, straight up”. “Skyyy” by Frisco (another BBK veteran) is another highlight, and then Wiley kills it freestyling over Preditah’s “Circles”. Discarda and Jammer’s “Banged Your Head Off The Wall” is hilariously drunk and pissed off, flinging insults aimlessly like beer bottles. Lay Z & C4’s “Pride” is another instantly recognizable Preditah production (having a few signature samples dropped in every track you produce will do that), and the rhymes are tight and hilarious as well (“I just turned David Blaine on a bitch”). K Dot’s “Nail In The Coffin” is another loud, brash slayer, opening with a taunt of “are you daft?” and not letting up until the 3 minute mark, after which the track fades out. JME acknowledges Skepta and Wiley as his peers, and everyone else as inferior competition, with a sly, sing-song flow over a minimal, martial beat. I didn’t have time to watch every minute of the DVD, but I watched at least a little bit of all 7 MC battles, and my favorites were particularly fierce battles between Lady Shocker and L.K, Blay and Fangol, and Jaykae and Discarda.

Richard Pinhas: Desolation Row (Cuneiform, 2013)

May 19, 2013 at 10:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Richard Pinhas: Desolation Row

I’d been aware of Richard Pinhas’ solo work for a while, as well as his recent collaborations with Merzbow and Wolf Eyes, and I’d always enjoyed all of those, but I finally got around to hearing Heldon recently, and WHOA. Totally insane progressive synth-prog-noise-rock, and maybe a bit underappreciated. Now he’s back with a politically charged solo album, and Etienne Jaumet, Lasse Marhaug, Noel Akchote and Oren Ambarchi are on board as guests. Arpeggiating synths, smoldering noise guitar, and trippy drums. Seriously top quality avant-noise-rock. Songs go on forever and you wouldn’t want them not to. “North” is molten lava overload, “Square” is relatively chilled and straightforward, and “South” starts spacey and pulsey and gradually gains drums. “Moog” is a long Moog drone with 4/4 dance beats and cosmic sax. “Circle” has a constant, shifting drum beat which gets buried by delay/flange-heavy guitar and insectoid synths. “Drone 1” is a long, fractal noise drone with sax and heavy, shredding guitar, in line with most of Pinhas’ solo albums. Another great album from a truly innovative artist, always pushing the boundaries of progressive and electronic music.

Violeta Vil: Lápidas y Cocoteros (Young Cubs Records, 2013)

May 19, 2013 at 8:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Violeta Vil: Lápidas y Cocoteros

Dream-pop from Spain via Venezuela, Chile and the Canary Islands, with shadowy female vocals in Spanish, drum machines as well as live drums, gauzy synths and gazey guitars. Some woodnlock-sounding percussion, but I would hesitate to call their sound anything close to “tropicalia”. But there’s definitely some Factory Records vibes here, plus some bits that sound like psychedelic ’60s pop songs where they’d bring in a harpsichord, even though this band isn’t actually using an instrument like that. Easy standout tracks are the opening title track, “Amish”, the peculiar beach-psycch of “Tormentas (Sonrisas)”, and the 4/4 shoegaze-disco-psych thump of “La Pericona”. This leads into a bunch of remixes that end the album, the best being Not Not Fun associate Cuticle’s murky take on “Amish”.

Minus the remixes, you can listen to the album here.

Saturday Looks Good To Me: One Kiss Ends It All (Polyvinyl, 2013) + Forever/Inside tape (Life Like, 2013)

May 18, 2013 at 6:42 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Saturday Looks Good To Me: One Kiss Ends It All

Local heroes SLGTM return to Polyvinyl and to their early-mid ’00s sound; multiple singers, heavy Motown and Northern Soul influence, and tape-damaged lo-fi production. Except it’s a bit more hi-fi this time around, with a drum machine on first single “Sunglasses” and touches of modern indie-pop production throughout (the relaxed tempo and hazey synths of 8). Very subtle and layered production, plenty of hidden voices, some Arthur Russell textures, some spacey interludes. But most of all, it has the exact type of catchy, instantly memorable songcraft of all the other SLGTM albums. Betty Marie Barnes returns on two tracks (“Negative Space” and “The Everpresent New Times Condition”), Amber from Swimsuit and Damned Dogs is on a bunch of tracks, Autumn from Bad Indians and Rebel Kind sings on “Empty Beach”, and new vocalist and violinist Carol Catherine is all over the album. Also, the NOMO horns return on a few tracks, which is welcome. Basically, it’s another classic SLGTM album, and it’s arriving at the perfect time, right as it’s starting to feel like summer.

Saturday Looks Good To Me: Forever/Inside tape

Also just released is a new tape on Life Like, the latest in a long stream of mostly tour-only CDRs and tapes of demos and outtakes and rehearsals that SLGTM has been releasing since the beginning. This one’s particularly muddy, demo-ey and collage-like. Lots of brief snippets of tracks from the new album, 2 Velvet Underground covers, a few oldies, and a “screwed” version of “Sunglasses”, which slows the song down, adds heavy glitching, and tons of spacey effects. It’s completely overwhelming. It’s also the longest song on the tape, at just over 3 minutes. Everything else is usually just a short, abruptly cut off fragment, and it all runs together in a delicious mess.

Show #191 – 5/18/13

May 18, 2013 at 6:31 pm | Posted in The Answer Is In The Beat | Leave a comment

3:02 AM Violeta Vil ~ Lapidas Y Cocoteros ~ Lapidas Y Cocoteros ~ Young Cubs
3:07 AM Saturday Looks Good To Me ~ Invisible Friend ~ One Kiss Ends It All ~ Polyvinyl
3:09 AM Julian Lynch ~ Onions ~ Lines ~ Underwater Peoples
3:12 AM Marisa Anderson ~ Mojave ~ Mercury ~ Mississippi Records
3:14 AM Richard Pinhas ~ Square ~ Desolation Row ~ Cuneiform
3:22 AM Jaga Jazzist ~ Music! Dance! Drama! ~ Live With Britten Sinfonia ~ Ninja Tune
3:30 AM Quicksails ~ Night Bats ~ Mayville Dream ~ Spectrum Spools
3:34 AM Moss Of Aura ~ Stone ~ Wading ~ Friends Records
3:38 AM [PHYSICS] ~ Hydrazine ~ Spectramorphic Iridescence ~ Digitalis
3:41 AM Pan•American ~ Relays ~ Cloud Room, Glass Room ~ Kranky
3:48 AM Locust ~ Do Not Fear ~ You’ll Be Safe Forever ~ Editions Mego
3:53 AM Sonogram ~ Outlands ~ How We Saw Tomorrow ~ Simulacra
4:01 AM Bibio ~ You ~ Silver Wilkinson ~ Warp
4:06 AM Lapalux ~ Straight Over My Head ~ Nostalchic ~ Brainfeeder
4:09 AM Boundary ~ Overcast ~ Boundary ~ Self-Released
4:13 AM Adventure ~ Catching Up ~ Weird Work ~ Carpark
4:21 AM Mark Fell ~ SOA-7 ~ Sentinelle Objectif Actualité ~ Editions Mego
4:25 AM Visionist ~ Dem Times ~ Grime 2.0 ~ Big Dada
4:30 AM Eugene Carchesio ~ Circle Music II D ~ Circle Music II ~ Room40
4:37 AM Suburban Knight ~ The Art Of Stalking (Stalker Mix) ~ 12″ ~ Transmat
4:44 AM Wiley ~ Step 1 ~ Lord Of The Mics IV ~ Lord Of The Mics
4:47 AM Belaboris ~ Kolme Askelta ~ Once Upon A Time ~ Dark Entries
4:50 AM Q4U ~ Creeps ~ Q1 Deluxe Edition 1980-1983 ~ Dark Entries
4:53 AM Kitchen + The Plastic Spoons ~ Liberty ~ Screams To God ~ Dark Entries
4:54 AM ADULT. ~ At The End Of It All ~ The Way Things Fall ~ Ghostly International
5:01 AM Wolf Eyes ~ Choking Flys ~ No Answer : Lower Floors ~ De Stijl
5:07 AM Barn Owl ~ Void Redux ~ V ~ Thrill Jockey
5:13 AM Peals ~ Lonestar ~ Walking Field ~ Thrill Jockey
5:18 AM Future Islands ~ The Ink Well ~ 7″ ~ Friends Records
5:21 AM Quttinirpaaq ~ Golden Needles ~ No Visitors ~ Rural Isolation Project
5:26 AM Black Bug ~ Nightstick ~ Reflecting The Light ~ HoZaC
5:29 AM Glenn Jones ~ The Vernal Pool ~ My Garden State ~ Thrill Jockey
5:35 AM Lonnie Holley ~ Fifth Child Burning ~ Just Before Music ~ Dust-To-Digital
5:49 AM Sun City Girls ~ Soar/The Flower ~ Eye Mohini (Singles Volume 3) ~ Abduction

Crush Collision 5/16/13

May 18, 2013 at 4:20 pm | Posted in Crush Collision | Leave a comment

DEMF is next weekend. Here’s some artists playing it.
Crush Collision 5/16/13
11:03 PM The Bug feat. Warrior Queen ~ Dem A Bomb We
11:05 PM Moodymann ~ Why Do You Feel
11:07 PM Silent Servant ~ Utopian Disaster (End)
11:13 PM Daniel Bell ~ Losing Control
11:18 PM Carl Craig ~ Dominas
11:23 PM Slam ~ Positive Education
11:27 PM Cajmere ~ Conflict
11:32 PM Audion ~ The Pong
11:35 PM Marcel Dettmann ~ Planning
11:39 PM Moby ~ Slight Return
11:41 PM Derrick May ~ Freestyle
11:44 PM ADULT. ~ Hand to Phone
11:48 PM Tronik House [Kevin Saunderson] ~ Straight Outta Hell
11:51 PM Squarepusher ~ My Red Hot Car
11:54 PM Mala ~ New Life Baby Paris
11:59 PM DJ Hatcha ~ Dub Express

Lonnie Holley: Just Before Music (Dust-To-Digital, 2012)

May 12, 2013 at 10:13 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Lonnie Holley: Just Before Music

I’ve been completely fascinated by this album lately, can’t stop listening to it at all. Holley is an artist who creates sculptures out of found, discarded objects, and his artwork is amazing, but this album is something else entirely. Meditative minimal synthesizer backing free-associative sung verse about technology, humanity, earth, and cosmic beings. 3 of the tracks stretch well past 10 minutes, the longest being the 25-minute “Planet Earth And Otherwheres”, and these longer tracks are my favorites because he really gets entranced in what he’s saying. Most devastating is the 15-minute “Fifth Child Burning”, about a little girl in Birmingham who burned to death in her own house. One of Holley’s sculptures was constructed from objects found in the burned-down house. The song features wavy synths, which Holley stops every time he sings a line, and it’s just unbelievable. Really forward thinking space-age blues. “Earthly Things” is another eye-opener, where he stretches his soulful, throaty, world-worn voice over minimal ambience. And then “Planet Earth And Otherwheres” is another long, devastating meditation, moving a bit slower, and eventually featuring double-tracked vocals. Unbelievably life-affirming, conscience-expanding music, that sounds like absolutely nothing else on earth. Holley also recorded a 2-hour session at WFMU, all unreleased, improvised material, and you can download this for free at the Free Music Archive. And you should, because it’s also incredible.

Sun City Girls: Eye Mohini (Sun City Girls Singles Volume 3) (Abduction, 2013)

May 12, 2013 at 7:42 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Sun City Girls: Eye Mohini (Sun City Girls Singles Volume 3)

First off, why do we have almost nothing by Sun City Girls at WCBN? We have a huge chunk of the Sublime Frequencies catalog, and some Alvarius B, which is great, but barely anything by SCG, which is criminal. For a band as legendary, diverse, influential, prolific and weird as SCG, we should have the entire catalog. Anyway, this is the third CD volume of singles and rarities from the band. The full tracklist, track times and dates the songs were recorded and released are listed in the liner notes. Most of these songs were originally released on 7″ vinyl, so they tend to be short tracks. The tracks from the “Eye Mohini” 7″ from 1992 sound like they were mastered off of vinyl, with audible hiss and crackle. Everything here was originally released in the early ’90s, but as with a lot of their 7″ releases from that period, there’s a lot of tracks that were recorded way earlier, as far back as 1986. A lot of the collection focuses on brief Arabic-inspired surf-ish instrumentals, pseudo-Asian vocal styles (most of the lyrics aren’t in English), and mostly acoustic guitars, although there’s a few electric tracks here, such as the 30-second opener “Sun Damaged My Ass”, 2-minute freakout “It’s Ours”, and the devastating final track, a 10 minute live version of “Soar/The Flower”. Tracks 3, 7 and 11 are credited to “traditional folklore”, but it’s hard to tell whose. A couple other highlights are “Rose Room”, a minute-long country-ish instrumental, and “Esoterica Of Abyssynia”, which actually features both Bishop brothers playing electric guitars. An excellent collection of hard-to-find tracks from a visionary, much-missed band.

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.
Entries and comments feeds.

The Answer Is In The Beat