July 16, 2020 at 7:12 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
v/a: Physically Sick 3
At this point, Discwoman and Allergy Season’s
Physically Sick compilation series is an institution within the underground club music world. They all feature exclusive tracks by dozens of artists shaping the scene, and they’re all vital reactions to the state of the world, while giving back to those in need. Proceeds from the newly released
third volume go to Equality For Flatbush, which has been fighting racist police abuse and gentrification since 2013, and has been supplying Brooklyn residents with groceries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like the other volumes of the series, the tracks here provide a good mixture of innovation as well as nods to the legacy of club culture, which can be especially poignant now since clubbing is quickly turning into a distant memory and none of us know when or if we’ll ever be able to do it again. Kicking the compilation off is a track by
Anz (a recent breakout star thanks to her absurdly good
Invitation 2 Dance EP and a new 84-minute mix of original productions) which uses the deathless vocal from C’hantal’s “The Realm” (although it seems to still be a mystery who exactly the vocalist is and whatever happened to her). Also in familiar sample flipping mode, the mighty AceMo takes the sample best known from Lil Wayne’s “I Feel Like Dying” (originally from the 2003 song “Once” by Karma-Ann Swanepoel) and turns it into a darkside rave nightmare straight out of the mid-’90s. More playful are tracks like SHYBOI’s cheeky banger “Eat That” and MoMA Ready’s intricate, sorta post-dubstep (remember that?) “Portal Step”. Providing diversions from club rhythms are a few experimental tracks, including a typically soul-searing noise piece by Dreamcrusher, an abrasive fuzz convulsion from SYANIDE, and a glowing levitation from KMRU. CCL and AYA both elevate the pace from trippy moonwalk electro to something closer to drum’n’bass, and Savile also uses the more atmospheric end of d’n’b as a launch pad for a brighter future. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lower applies his modular synth wizardry to pulsating, forest-vibes techno. BEARCAT’s “SHRILL” is a skeletal alien dancehall riddim which sounds like it was made from the drum sounds of a Casio-grade keyboard, yet it bangs harder than a lot of high-definition electronics. Special Request’s “Wallabies” goes as hard as any of his recent club detonators, no surprise there. Olive T’s “What Comes After” is perhaps the most overtly political track here, with a monologue sample asking how this revolution is going to be sustained, over lush beats and electrifying guitars. DJ SWISHA (who mastered the comp) provides some paranoid sci-fi juke. Korea Town Acid’s “Body Clock” is one of the comp’s most pleasant surprises, building some twisted elastic rhythms and playful samples, and then setting it all into a chiptune-jungle frenzy. After a serious but hopeful midtempo track from Surgeon, DJ Python smooths everything out, although this is closer to his house side than the deep reggaeton he’s become known for.
July 14, 2020 at 8:16 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
v/a: Unbroken Dreams of Light
FaltyDL’s Blueberry Records presents a meaty
compilation featuring a mixture of legends and newbies, keeping with the label’s ethos since it was launched seven years ago. Like FaltyDL’s own music, there’s no one style that’s focused on, it’s all just creative, original electronic music, whether it be for the dancefloor or more reflective purposes. His own “Ruby Rod” is a gentle, citrus-tinged whirlpool of cyclical tones and breakbeats, sounding like jungle and lush but dense post-dubstep all at once. From the “gets” corner, there’s a slightly sinister acid collab between Todd Osborn and Luke Vibert, some absolutely killer oldskool rave pressure from Horsepower Productions, broken beat from Cousin Cockroach (Dego of 4Hero), and a woozy downtempo gem from µ-Ziq. Besides the big names, there’s some eye-openers from within Blueberry’s own stable. XGLARE follows up her crazily underrated record from 2 years ago with some complex avant-club head-trickery. Dasychira’s “Deadnettle” is profound and cartoonish at the same time, and Bénédicte’s “Softillusion” is similarly comforting yet spiked with pangs of ecstatic jubilation. Lastly, Tenant’s “New Life” is a fizzy, funky slice of skittering drum programming and acid frippery — ridiculously tight, actually.
July 12, 2020 at 11:01 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
v/a: HOA010
This past Juneteenth, New York label HAUS of ALTR released a massive compilation focusing on “the future of Black electronic music”. The proceeds for
HOA010 are split between three organizations (For The Gworls, Afrotectopia, Afrorack) and the artists themselves. This one looks huge just glancing at the track listing — 27 tracks, and lots of artists who have been blowing up the club world lately, including many artists who have been on
Towhead Recordings‘
New York Dance Music comps. AceMo and MoMA Ready are both well represented, delivering ecstatic diva rave as well as fun, bashy breaks with an Aaliyah sample cruising in the middle. L.I.E.S. alumni Bookworms delivers crunchy, polyrhythmic breaks with the distorted goodness of “Dehydration”. DJ SWISHA’s giddy “New Luv” is like juke and happy hardcore meeting on the dancefloor and unexpectedly falling in love with each other. James Bangura (recently on Vanity Press) impresses with his breaky, shifty “Same, But Different”. Continuing her victory lap from her groundbreaking album last year, Loraine James gets in reflective mode with “Now”, which is filled with refracted trap beats and scattered R&B vocals. Russell E.L. Butler proclaims “You Think We Ain’t Have To Go This Hard, But We Really Do”, but their skittering drum’n’bass isn’t so much hard as persistent, scrambling forth in a constant search for justice, acceptance, clarity, answers, meaning, really a great number of things. Speaker Music’s “The Stamp of Color” features a powerful speech by Salenta, telling you how every Black person you see walking down the street is a miracle. Plenty of lesser-knowns impress as well. Amal’s “Pyschopass” mixes interstellar melodies with hard, crushed breakbeats, sort of approximating intelligent jungle with much more of an emphasis on feeling than scientific calculation. Escaflowne’s “The Blenda” is an effervescent house track with its waving hands pointed straight at the sky at all times. BEARCAT’s “Emergency” shows that there’s other ways to construct a powerful house groove, with a constant whooshing, whirring sound and percussion which sounds like shakers, hand drums, and clinking dinner glasses. “Dreamscape” by DONIS is built on a classic house foundation, but a slightly more complex twist to the beat, and a bit of Detroit cityscape synth. Max Watts’ “Hesitancy” is a new mutation of the speaker-demolishing freight train techno which has been fueling Brooklyn raves since the dawn of humanity. Then at the end, TAH’s “Breathe” is a potent shot of high-octane hybrid club music for getting down in a factory.
v/a: HOA11
I got around to buying
HOA010 on the most recent Bandcamp Friday at the beginning of this month (hopefully they’ll do more of these?) and as soon as I did I noticed that the label had also snuck out
HOA11, so naturally I had to grab that one too. Much of the same cast reappears, starting with a burning jungle reflection from AceMo. Amal’s “Go!” is a heady space journey which tactfully deploys hard, banging beats, NRG-spiked breaks, and rocket power. AshTreJinkins’ “Not My Problem” also goes super hard, with gabber-y beats and frantic arpeggios crumbling into each other. DJ Autopay’s “More Femme, More Masc (It’s Pride Black Pride Mix)” is an anthemic 2020 club update of Nice & Smooth’s “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow”, with a big emphasis on its all-important interpolation of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”. Escaflowne provides another highlight, with the tumbling hybrid jungle of “My Mind”. Huey Mnemonic’s “Respect My House (I-94 Mix)” is straight up classic-sounding acid house, with its mix title nodding to the highway connecting Detroit and Chicago (a road which happens to be right by my house). Other gems include MoMA Ready’s defiant “The High Cost of Living”, the jacking disco loops of Max Watts’ “Flowin”, trippy tunnel techno from James Bangura, and so much more.
July 9, 2020 at 6:55 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
v/a: Lost & Found Vol. 1
For the most recent (and final? hopefully not) Bandcamp Friday, longtime TAIITB faves Dark Entries released
Lost & Found Vol. 1, a collection of rare and unreleased tracks by ten of its artists. All proceeds go to the artists as well as
Black Trans Youth Fund (which I just donated to in addition to buying the album, and I encourage you to do the same). Like much of the label’s recent output, this skews a lot closer to dance music (particularly acid house and analog techno) rather than post-punk and minimal wave, but there’s some of that too. Bézier’s “Fig” is racing, hi-NRG electro drama, then Bill Converse’s “Another Day” is a warm, fizzing bath of sparked-up pulsations. Billy Nightmare’s “106 Miles” is a fun, spooky travelogue filled with suspenseful organ and skittering beats. Borusiade follows her excellent recent album with another entrancing isolation ode. Doc Sleep’s tune is just sunny, day-cruising Detroit-esque techno and it’s beautiful. Group Rhoda resurface for the first time in years with the shadowy, curious “Neptune”, and a lost Detroit electro oddity is resurrected with Magnus II’s “Roctronic (Remix)”, pitting hard early-rap beats and space invader vocals with metal guitar chugging. The Maxx Mann track is a lo-fi synth pop gem and might be even better than the songs on the album that DE recently reissued. The Patrick Cowley track is just a short bit of drum machine covered in swirling effects, more a transition than anything else, but still worth including. Finally, Sepehr’s “Tribalism” is a tripped-out techno banger with dislocated voices flying at you from several angles. Due to both the pandemic as well as the world’s biggest lacquering plant burning down, Dark Entries has drastically reduced its release schedule this year, so until they’re back at something resembling their previous output, this is an absolute must for anyone who appreciates the label (and wants to support a worthy cause). It also might not be a bad time to explore anything the label has
released during the past decade that you didn’t catch when it came out, since it’s all too easy to have lost track at some point.
July 8, 2020 at 5:45 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
v/a: Music in Support of Black Mental Health
Several fantastic benefit compilations have appeared on Bandcamp recently, often for the days in which the site has been giving all of its proceeds to the artists/labels, or to charity, as on Juneteenth.
This one was compiled by Mike Paradinas and Lara Rix-Martin, but curiously they didn’t brand it as an official Planet Mu release or mention it on the label’s website. The proceeds are split between five charities in the U.S. and the U.K., particularly ones that provide therapy for Black queer and trans people, and all of the Black artists on the compilation were compensated for their work. Most of the contributors are from the current Planet Mu family, with a few other techno, IDM, and experimental club artists making appearances. The release kicks off with an excerpt from a collaborative piece by Speaker Music, Ariel Valdez & Catalina Cavelight, with frantic, clattering beats underpinning a righteous speech about the commodification of Black culture and music; the phrase “Let’s
make techno Black again!” is repeated several times. For further illumination, Speaker Music’s recent
Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry is also recommended. Beyond that, John Frusciante goes surprisingly hard with his storming drill’n’bass composition “Lyng Shake”, possibly a preview of his forthcoming release on Venetian Snares’ Timesig. FaltyDL goes back in sentimental jungle mode, and µ-Ziq attempts to create “Hip House Breakcore”, which somehow never happened before. Vladislav Delay’s “isosusi” continues in the direction of his astounding new album
Rakka, delivering a tsunami of scattered voices and manic, distorted percussive glitch. Jlin works her magic on a piece by composer Michael Vincent Waller, and Jana Rush presents the original version of “Divine”, one of the highlights from her still-astounding 2017 release
Pariah. Tracks by artists such as Zora Jones & Sinjin Hawke and Kuedo aren’t too different than their usual output (I honestly thought the Kuedo track had already been released before, maybe it’s an alternate version?), but the Felix Lee track is surprisingly bleak and noisy compared to the sadboi trap stuff on his album; I’d call this “cloud noise”, maybe, and I’m down with it. Likewise, the Sami Baha track is a definite evolution from the mutated trap of his underrated 2018 album, sounding much warmer and closer to ecstatic. Bogdan Raczynski’s “Average Banger” (agreed on the second part) sounds straight off of
Boku Mo Wakaran, and I couldn’t possibly have a problem with that. Much like his recent
Momentary Glow, FARWARMTH’s “Onwards, Forever” is a thing of beauty, with church-like organs and voices manipulated as samples, constantly clashing into each other, then being freed through rhythm and hand claps. An extraordinary amount of excellent music for an important cause, do support if you haven’t already.
July 6, 2020 at 7:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Danny Clay: Ocean Park
Danny Clay makes gorgeous, expansive music using seemingly any tools available, including toys and found objects.
Ocean Park, the fourth release on
laaps (a successor to
eilean rec.), is an ambient chamber work which continuously ebbs and flows. It’s played by a string trio and a harmonium player, with Clay utilizing a music box, combs, turntables, and his own voice. Some parts of it are gently frayed as if it’s all being played through an old gramophone or a decaying tape reel, yet it’s largely not as lo-fi-sounding as you would expect. The flowing strings are soothing, and the scratchy static noises are prevalent, but they still let the cleaner elements of the music breathe. I can only imagine audiophile classical music purists listening to this and being thoroughly confused and/or annoyed, but that speaks to my sensibilities. Incredibly lovely, especially the end.
July 2, 2020 at 7:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Pauline Oliveros and Alan Courtis: Telematic Concert LP
This is the first-time release of a 2009 concert recorded at the Deep Listening Institute’s Dream Festival in 2009, virtually reuniting Oliveros with Alan Courtis of Reynols. Oliveros appeared in person, while Courtis was projected on screen behind her, digitally beamed in from Buenos Aires. Even though Oliveros played accordion (and “expanded instrument system”), the resulting improvisation is a far cry from the drone work she usually created using the instruments, and perhaps closer to her groundbreaking early electronic compositions. But it’s still on another level than that. Courtis brings waves and bursts of guitar feedback and noises from other sources; sometimes it crashes against Oliveros’ accordion playing, or outright obscures it, and other times they ride together. While most of the album feels like a gradual push/pull, the last few minutes alternate between eruptions of noise and stiff silence, taking the soundclash in its wildest directions.
June 30, 2020 at 5:38 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Exaltics & Heinrich Mueller: Dimensional Shifting
from German electro artist The Exaltics is a collaboration with Heinrich Mueller, and for all intents and purposes, it sounds like a new Drexciya or Dopplereffekt album. Okay, maybe it’s not as submerged as vintage Drexciya, but the spirit is there. It definitely has the one-take energy, even if the fidelity is a bit higher. Super-scientific electro that cruises easily through space and time, gliding stealthily on smoother tracks like “Time Aperture” while fizzing heavier on others like “Encoder”. Paris the Black Fu of Detroit Grand Pubahs (and now Techmarine Bottom Feeders) stops by to drop some science on the aquabahn-riding “Dimensional Shift”, and others feel like the rays of alien transmissions are starting to hit the receivers. It’s just incredibly excellent music, a must for all lovers of sci-fi electro.
June 29, 2020 at 8:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Black Taffy: Opal Wand
The
newest album from the Dallas beatmaker has speaker-blasting rhythms draped in lavender veils of tape hiss and curdled lo-fi textures, with the melodies supplied by flutes and harps rather than synths, funky guitars, or any other instruments you might normally expect to hear in this type of boom-bap. There’s parts that remind me of the first Colleen album but with thumping beats. It’s a fantasy storybook dream tale which sounds on the verge of drifting away but the heavy bass and blunted drums are what keeps it grounded. Perfect mind-wandering music, but there’s still tracks like “A Foxes Wedding” which just stop you in your tracks due to their sheer beauty. Moments such as “Pillow Urchin” vaguely seem like ghostly premonitions, setting it apart from mere chill-out music. While this isn’t exactly trip-hop, I always feel like downtempo beats of that sort kind of lose the plot when they get too comforting and snug, and this is eerie enough not to fall into that trap, yet it’s also gorgeous as hell.
June 26, 2020 at 5:19 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Brain Rays & Quiet: Butter
The low-end duo also known as Baconhead returns with some ace footwork/jungle hybrids. Brain Rays used to make breakcore as Ebola, and he released albums and EPs on Sublight, Wrong Music, Mutant Sniper, and a business card CD-r on Here’s My Card (!), so he has loads of experience making heavy, mutated breaks, but this is much closer to legit jungle/hardcore with a modern bent. “Hemlock” layers tons of complex polyrhythmic breaks over pads that are just calm enough to make it all glide smoothly. “Creeps” is firmly in footwork territory, with zero jungle throwback-ness, and it has a low-down swing which makes it feel like it’s walking on air. “Emeralds” starts out similarly, but then launches into high breakbeat pressure later on. “Crewcut Apex” builds up to more jumbled, crushing breaks and sets it off, and “Draco Mills” injects more of a rave flavor while retaining more current-sounding bass. “Delilah” is a little more washed out but still hyped. Really excellent stuff from two artists who work in a lot of other modes; Brian Rays has also released
grime with London MC Louis King and a few EPs with wonky techno master Neil Landstrumm.
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