The Answer Is In The Beat

Nephew: After School Special tape (Atrium Tapes, 2016)

September 26, 2016 at 10:40 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This mysterious tape from an Ann Arbor-based label contains over 2 dozen short pieces, most of which are fragments of glitching, crackling, scrambled radio transmissions, and sweet, sugary drone bursts. Sometimes there’s some crashing drums, and maybe a spare melody or rhythm here or there. There’s some moments reminiscent of old school musique concrete, but it’s futuristic and updated, without sounding like it’s in line with any current trends in music. Even with the track titles in front of you, it’s almost impossible to follow along (listening to the tape at is, listening on Bandcamp might make more sense of it), but that’s beside the point. What matters is that this is a curious truly sublime little twisted sound-world. I’m glad I was dropped into this world somehow.

Cyber People: Void Vision – The Album (ZYX, 2016)

September 25, 2016 at 7:59 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Cyber People’s “Void Vision” has always been one of my go-to Italo-disco tracks. Giorgio Spagna released two other tracks under the Cyber People name, “Polaris” and “Doctor Faustu’s”, and they’re both pretty similar to “Void Vision”. Uptempo beats, arpeggio basslines, sunny melodies, really awesome, detailed arrangements, and some vocodered vocals. There was a 4th Cyber People single, “Digital Signal Processor”, but it was basically by two members of Hipnosis (including one who was also in Black Box). It definitely has the Cyber People sound, it’s actually hard to tell that it was created by someone else than the first 3. These 4 singles were everything Cyber People ever released, but the singles all had remixes and alt versions, so that’s what rounds out this CD. The “slow version” of “Void Vision” is pretty killer, otherwise the rest of the remixes aren’t too different from the others. Well, the “Swedish” mixes of “Doctor Faustu’s” add an extra fluttering synth line. Anyway, if you don’t already have the songs on Italo comps, here’s an entire CD collecting them all.

Variant: Sequential Sleep 2CD (Echospace [Detroit], 2016)

September 25, 2016 at 7:36 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Variant is Stephen Hitchell (aka Intrusion), who is part of cv313 and Echospace along with Deepchord’s Rod Modell. He has dozens of albums as Variant and, unsurprisingly, they’re all pretty similar, especially his newer releases which mostly consist of hour-long aquatic ambient dub tracks. I have several of them, and for whatever reason, this one has been hitting me the hardest. Very washed-out, slow-moving, weightless, but bass-heavy, fluid, and amorphous. One disc is the “Granular Mix” and the other is the “Modular Mix”, and there’s apparently another version of the same album (with the same title and barcode) that has dub versions of both. So what makes this Variant album stand out from the others? I’m not really sure. I feel like searching for the answer to that question will take away from my enjoyment of it. All I know is that it feels like being in some sort of weird flotation tank and the last thing I want to do is get out of it. Both discs are an hour long each and I thought they were too short.

Koba/Matthew Crowe: split tape (5cm Recordings, 2016)

September 18, 2016 at 5:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Koba shreds. Not quite in the way you’d expect though. Actually I can’t even tell if he’s playing a guitar. Nevertheless there is some sort of intense riffing going on, and sometimes it just breaks some sort of threshold of intensity. Matthew Crowe wields some sort of device that makes really rusty feedback. It’s pretty controlled though, it comes close to lacerating your eardrums but it never quite gets there. His untitled piece is 13 minutes so it’s pretty easy to get lost in it. Anyway, free DL at Bandcamp.

Funkhouser: Reworks Drekka tape (NO!, 2016)

September 18, 2016 at 4:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

On this tape, Indiana’s Rob Funkhouser takes a Drekka LP from last year (plus live performances from around the time of its recording) and transforms it into something else. Very foggy and amorphous, but yet it’s also glitchy and somewhat sharpened. Imagine smog that’s holographic and projects visions, but can also sort of cut you. But not in a painful way. A dark gray atmosphere made of crystals which are no longer solid but they can still channel the future and alternate dimensions. Available on Bandcamp.

SeixlacK: Bed Bug Bites 12″ EP (X-Kalay, 2016)

September 18, 2016 at 4:12 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Brazilian producer Fernando Seixlack released an incredible LP of hissy techno on Delroy Edwards’ L.A. Club Resource under the name INNSYTER earlier this year. This EP sounds slightly less outsider-y, but it’s still super raw and high quality. “Wintergreen” has a cool cowbell-like sound and some sort of bubbly, whooshy synths. “Sofazone” is a slightly higher fidelity electro track. All of this is rad, seems like everything he’s doing under both names is incredible. Also the name SeixlacK sounds like “sex lack” which *sigh* yeah.