The Answer Is In The Beat

Underground Resistance mega-post

June 11, 2022 at 6:54 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Underground Resistance doesn’t release new music very often, so a new batch of fresh releases and reissues is major news. Unfortunately Submerge wasn’t open this year during Movement weekend, but the nearby Underground Music Academy hosted a popup shop which stocked some UR merchandise. The most buzzed-about new UR release is the EP by Wavejumpers, a duo including Tyree Stinson, brother of the late James Stinson of Drexciya. Tyree previously released music on UR as part of the Aquanauts. As expected, this is Drexciyan electro machine funk, although it seems a little more repetitive than that group. The tracks are meant to be played at 33, but there’s pitched down voices and kind of stiff midtempo beats, yet it clearly sounds wrong at 45. The last track has a pretty excellent groove but the ending is surprisingly abrupt. It’s a good record but it isn’t going to surprise anyone who is familiar with Drexciya or UR.

Mano De Fuego, on the other hand! I had no idea what I was in for, and as soon as I put the needle down on the first side, I was just grinning from ear to ear. Straight up classic UR, at their most positive and uplifting. “Sol” just bleeds sunshine and I could listen to it on loop for hours. “Descenso” is more electro, and “Mito” is another truly joyous, lightbringing UR-style techno-soul track. Just a lovely, amazing record. Essential UR and an excellent first showing from the mysterious Cedillo Brothers.

I also picked up a new reissue of Electric Soul’s “X²”, a classic Mad Mike electro track originally released on Direct Beat in 1996. I hadn’t even heard this track before, but it was a huge late night radio hit in Detroit back in the day apparently, just a fantastic night cruiser with effects-shrouded vocals and a levitating synth break. The reissue has a remix by Tommie Cool, which I guess must be new, but it’s minimal and barely has any vocals and it’s just not as memorable or exciting as the original. Finally, the other new UR release I picked up was “Covalence” by Mike Ellison. It has four versions of the same track, two on a house side and two on a techno side. Mark Flash’s edit on the house side is the winner, with more UR-style uplifting synth chords backing and elevating the spoken poetry, which touches on Detroit techno’s legacy and its future. The poem is then isolated on its own. On the other side, the Detroit Tech Edit strips out nearly all the words and just sticks to the beats, then the Extended Edit incorporates the full lyrics, but there’s a lengthy instrumental intro so it’s easy to mix. Definitely more of a DJ tool side, I like the fuller emotions of the Mark Flash mix better, personally.

Peter Coccoma: A Place to Begin (Whatever’s Clever Records, 2022)

June 7, 2022 at 7:50 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Ambient composer Peter Coccoma’s first album was inspired by a trip to a frozen island in the far north part of Lake Superior, following the near death of a loved one. Coccoma worked on music there as winter turned to spring and the lake gradually thawed away, and eventually the water burst forth into motion. His music seems to capture that seasonal awakening, from the rising of “Opening” onwards. Reverb stretches the keyboard notes and strings (by Clarice Jensen and Oliver Hill) outward, dissolving them into mist and regenerating. “A Connection to All Things” has a much deeper bass swerve than you would expect for an ambient piece (that one Stars of the Lid track notwithstanding), and “Towards Light” has some similar rumbling at the beginning, reminding me of Thomas Köner’s best work. “Clouds of Understanding” has richer strings, turning into more of a neo-classical meditation. The short but sweet album ends with the cloudy, slightly warbly tone poem “Begin”.

µ-Ziq: Goodbye Remixes (Planet Mu, 2022)

June 6, 2022 at 6:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Right in front of this Friday’s release of the new µ-Ziq album, I figure I’d better post something about his latest EP, which is remixes of the EP built around the album’s first single. Magic Pony Ride is intended to be a sort of sequel to Lunatic Harness, which is getting a 25th anniversary reissue soon, so it’s a return to the more jungle and breakbeat hardcore-influenced side of µ-Ziq, but not quite the type of inspired madness present on his most legendary album. “Goodbye VIP” is basically just a bass-heavier variation on the single. The remixes come closer to the footwork influences of his work from the 2010s, and the Planet Mu label as a whole, since that sound is generally missing on the album proper. Still, footwork-adjacent producers like RP Boo and Jlin incorporate more breakbeats than on their usual work, and DJ Manny seems to toughen “Goodbye” up a little bit without losing its essence. Newcomer Xylitol helps the track bloom a bit more, giving it more springlike synths as well as harder breaks and more biting acid.

Raphy: You Can Have A Piece Of My Soul For The Lows (Bruiser Brigade, 2022)

June 4, 2022 at 11:51 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

A member of the Detroit Lines collective as well as Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigade, Raphy presents this mixtape made up of 16 vignettes, each of which seem to be fashioned from old soul records played with a needle that constantly skips. The tracks are slowed, stuttered, and played at shifting speeds, and there’s also a sort of morse code beep pinging through it all. It’s just a masterful example of how to take broken, malfunctioning “mistake” sounds and incorporate them into something that sounds complete and deliberate. Glitch-hop rarely ever sounds this soulful.

Saajtak: For the Makers (American Dreams, 2022)

June 3, 2022 at 8:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Detroit electro-prog band Saajtak have finally released a full-length after putting out several mesmerizing EPs and becoming a must-see live act. Their songs are unpredictable collisions of hard-to-contain rhythms, synth cascades, and Alex Koi’s operatic, expressionist vocals. “Concertmate 680”, early on in the album, is the type of Saajtak track that catches my attention, with fast, rattling drums and tumbling synth notes and glitches, plus vocals that soar and re-sample and fold in on themselves. “There’s a Leak in the Shielding” is one of the album’s progressive epics, flowing from poetry to dream pop to freewheeling drum alchemy. Detroit saxophonist Marcus Elliot guests on the prismatic funk jam “Borders”, then “Oak Heart” is a time-dilating duet with the stunning David Magumba. “Mightier Mountains Have Crumbled”, the final 8-minute suite, has space for both tender, floating vocals and abrasive noise-spiked frenetic, physical percussion. I’m absolutely amazed to see the progression this band has made, landing on a well-regarded label like American Dreams and expanding their collaborative circle.

Automatisme & Stefan Paulus: Gap/Void (Constellation, 2022)

June 2, 2022 at 6:24 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Automatisme’s third full-length on Constellation is a collaboration with Stefan Paulus, a Swiss writer, artust, and field recorder who has released several ambient albums on his own. Paulus recorded audio incorporating natural and musical drones, and Automatisme tore them apart and re-arranged them into beat-forward compositions, as well as more intense soundscapes. Opener “Säntis” starts out accumulating audio precipitation, then surges into broken, static-riddled beat patterns, sounding dubbed out then washed with lo-bit distortion. Then it all falls silent before roaring winds slowly take over. Then “Marwees” drizzles low, thumping kick drums with cloudy vibrations. “Üble Schlucht” has a steady pace but the beats themselves become frantic and bunched-up, only rinsing out near the end. “Blau Schnee” has a steady, upfront beat, and a gorgeous swirl of dub-techno echoes gradually takes shape. “Stoos” ticks along in 3/4 time, with maintaining steady propulsion as the additional, detached textures seem to get jostled around. “Wisswand” is a minimal industrial trudge, and it’s hard to tell exactly what the time sig is, the loops crumble to dust under the beats. “Schwarzhorn” and “Tothore” are both ambient pieces that blur natural sound together with shoegazey distortion. “Nob” throws all these elements in a pressure cooker, ending up with vibrating noise but boiling away the beat. “Wisshorn” feels like several storms superimposed, ending up like a dub vortex of gloom. The release could easily appeal to fans of the more ambient side of dub techno (beatless releases by Rod Modell and various Basic Channel affiliates) as well as sound artists like Daniel Menche, and of course Loscil and Gas.