The Answer Is In The Beat

Mikkel Metal: Resemblance (Echocord, 2016)

March 22, 2016 at 12:16 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Mikkel Metal is best known for his records on Kompakt, but he’s actually released far more material on Echocord; this is his fourth album for the label. If you’re into Kompakt-style tech-house, you won’t have a problem getting into this one, though. Repetitive, hypnotic techno, but tracks like “YFO” and “Affirmation” have vaguely industrial/EBM-ish melodies which seem to waver and drift over the steady beats. A couple tracks have sinister voices drifting underneath, and some dubby effects. I can’t tell if this is done with a laptop or with hardware, but I’d guess hardware, it seems a little rough and loose and lo-fi. “Allowance of Ignorance” has a constant eerie, stuttering echo that makes it sounds like it’s vibrating down the hall. “Stronghold” starts out with one of the albums most forceful beats, but it seems to stargaze a bit once the melody comes in. “Quietly Calling” ends the album in a thick, dark pool of ambient techno fog.

Magnus International: Echo to Echo (Full Pupp, 2016)

March 21, 2016 at 11:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Mixed by Prins Thomas and released on his Full Pupp label, this is quality space disco (which doesn’t sound quite that disco-ey, but it’s not really straight house or techno either). Really bright and melodic and cheerful without being cheesy. There’s definitely a healthy dose of the sort of rave nostalgia that makes Lone sound so refreshing, recalling 808 State and the sunny, melodic side of classic Detroit techno but with modern-day production sensibilities. “Rise Above” has a touch of vocoder and a chilly Kraftwerk-ness to it. “No Release” is more repetitive and not as melodic as most of the tracks here. But “Metroid Boogie” is basically a “Blue Monday” cover, except slightly altered, and how can you go wrong with a song about Metroid? “Synths of Jupiter” is a really good spacey synth-funk-house track with hand drums and a cool Detroit-y house melody. “Fun and Games” lives up to its title, and has a bit of an Italo bounce to it. Really fun album!

John Bellows: L O N G EP tape (Planted Tapes, 2016)

March 20, 2016 at 1:37 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This EP is long enough to be an album, really. 4 of the 7 songs here are around 5 minutes or longer, and they’re carefully composed and wordy. The cassette even comes with a lengthy foldout lyric sheet, which I haven’t seen since before I switched to CDs sometime in the mid ’90s. These songs are far more serious than Bellows’ earlier material, dealing stark narratives of isolation and uncertainty. The music ranges from cello, drum and guitar arrangements to just Bellows stomping on the floorboards during “Aimless Road”. This is not an easy, pleasant listen, and it sounds like a direct transmission from a hard life full of loss and disillusionment. Proceed with caution.

Kobosil: We Grow, You Decline (Ostgut Ton, 2016)

March 17, 2016 at 9:43 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The first thing this artist name reminds me of is Hobo Barf, an imaginary band name made up by Longmont Potion Castle. I can’t see the name Kobosil without thinking Hobo Barf, I just can’t. Kobosil’s new album is not a split with Basilica Gel, nor is it made by a band of musical gnomes. Instead, it’s a Berlin-based dude who makes minimal, atmospheric techno which hisses and pulses. Tracks like “Reflection” and “The Exploring Mountain” have muted kick drums and synths which seem to gaze off rather than hone in. “Aim For Target” appropriately seems a little more focused, gradually moving closer and getting more intense but only really moving into clear view for a brief moment. “When I Speak” has eerie swirling voices taunting you, and “Eihwaz” is slow, creepy, ominous, and almost threatening. “You Answered With Love” has even more creepy, evil, cackling voices, and this time there’s a beat attached. “They Looked On” is another frightful, haunted track with a ticking beat. There’s plenty of tracks on this album that will work in a DJ mix set, but overall the album seems more concerned with sneaking up and scaring the bejeezus out of you.

Thomas P. Heckmann: Ghosts (Carpe Sonum Novum, 2015)

March 15, 2016 at 9:02 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Thomas P. Heckmann is the type of long-running, overwhelmingly prolific musician whose catalog I’ve almost entirely ignored, aside from a few compilation tracks and a GTO remix. This album just crossed my path, and just after listening to the first few tracks, it already sounded completely unbelievable. It seems like a cliche to refer to an album called Ghosts as haunting, especially with its shadowy artwork, but there really isn’t anything else this album could’ve been fittingly titled. Heckmann explains in the liner notes that while recording this album, he began to hear voices that weren’t there (or possibly were), and it’s not hard to hear what he’s talking about. This is legitimately chilling music, and it sounds better and more haunting the louder you turn it up. Dark drone music that makes extensive use of bass is always a good thing. “Scream” adds crushing Tim Hecker-y distortion (yes, their names are a bit similar, but Heckmann was around first) and it just slays. There’s just so much going on in these tracks, there really are a tone of barely perceptible sounds that sort of emerge through the fog and sometimes take over, turning into beats or beginning to sound like voices. An incredibly inventive, ever-shifting, honest-to-Satan frightening (at times) album.

Orson Hentschel: Feed the Tape (Denovali, 2016)

March 15, 2016 at 8:22 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Orson Hentschel’s electronic compositions utilize intense, stiff repetition, often sounding like a machine that’s been jammed and won’t budge, but he does shape them into rhythms that build and progress. His music is obviously inspired by classical minimalism, but he builds on that repetition until it converts into tension. Opener “16 mm” goes through various stages of Oval-like glitch before it settles on a suspenseful melody. The album’s cinematic title tracks utilizes string stabs and skittering drums, and “Slow-Moving” builds up eerie strings and circular melodies before fading to near silence and then building it all back up again. “Noise of the Light” is built on a stammering beat, eventually boiling up with smoking guitar and cracking drums. “Shirari” also begins with a loop that sounds like it’s stuck and then just builds on it, making a sneaking rhythm with wubby (yet nuanced) bass. It took me the entire 8 minutes of the song’s length to realize that the word “Shirari” was actually being looped throughout the entire song. The more ambient “Florence” seems to float free from rhythm, but its beginning features a loop of Philip Glass-like operatic vocals, which eventually appear again later in sync with clanging industrial loops. “What’s Going On” features more skipping loops (including its titular phrase) which become more intense when you realize there’s actual drums playing along to the loops and adding subtle embellishments. The track also goes through some quiet periods before returning to the intensity.

Sensational & Kruton: You In the Right Spot 12″ EP (Power Vacuum, 2016)

March 13, 2016 at 12:23 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The main reason I’m reviewing this new Sensational EP is so I can immortalize the story of the one time I met the guy. It was about 10 years ago during the annual CMJ festival in NYC. I used to get free passes to CMJ every year when I was a DJ at WRSU in New Jersey. So I’d take the train into the city every night and go to a ton of shows for free. One time I was standing in line outside Webster Hall to try and get in to see Lady Sovereign (lol). This guy comes up to me and he introduces himself as Sensational and he has a new CDR that he’s trying to sell. I’m like oh wow cool, is it on WordSound? But it wasn’t, it was a self-released album. I didn’t really feel like buying it, I’m not really a huge fan of his, but obviously that CDR is pretty rare now. But anyway, he kept asking me if I could get him into the show, but I didn’t really have any way to do that so I couldn’t really do anything. But then when I got in, he found his way in too, and he recognized me and it was all good. Anyway, this EP is par for the course for him, “You In the Right Spot” is one of his more straight-up party tracks, and it’s presented in 2 versions (the “original demo” is the more dancey of the two). The other tracks have his trademark stream of consciousness style with kind of scattered beats and synths, but not as grimy as his early material, which was infamously recorded using headphones plugged into a microphone jack. This is still messy and abstract to most ears, but he knows what he’s doing.