The Answer Is In The Beat

Dubcon: Martian Dub Beacon (Metropolis/Subconscious Communications, 2016)

March 11, 2016 at 7:38 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Dubcon is a dubwise collision of Twilight Circus (Ryan Moore, formerly of Legendary Pink Dots) and cEvin Key (Skinny Puppy, Plateau, Download, etc). For all intents and purposes, this sounds like Twilight Circus, which means that it’s amazing modern dub. (Also I might as well mention that The Answer Is In The Beat is an indirect, in-joke reference to something Twilight Circus-related… it’s hard to explain, you had to be there.) The album sounds as extreterrestrial as the cover art, but despite the dubby effects and electronic rhythms and synth washes, it still has an earthly quality to it, thanks to drumming from the late, great Style Scott and vocals by Black Uhuru’s Michael Rose. A few tracks are influenced by dubstep’s golden era of a decade ago; “Something in the Sky” strongly resembles Pinch’s classic “Punisher” or any number of Distance singles from around that era. “Watching and Wondering” and “Red Planet” are both good mixes of cavernous, echoing vocals and dub-techno bass. The album seems to a unravel a bit with the trippy, swirling crossed radio-waves of “Passing Phobos”, the final track. I don’t have the best desktop stereo setup in my room, but this album sounds nice and booming.

Midwich Productions megapost

March 5, 2016 at 4:31 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

James Marlon Magas co-founded the beyond-legendary Michigan noise label Bulb Records in the early ’90s before moving to Chicago. Last year, he started a new techno label called Midwich Productions, and all of the releases are super high quality with stunning artwork. The label’s first release is a double 12″ by Moon Pool & Dead Band, a techno offshoot of Bulb Records alumni Wolf Eyes. All 4 sides of this record are devoted to mixes of the duo’s most straightforward dancefloor jam yet, “MEQ”. Sludgy and suspenseful horror-influenced techno, with a cluster of scuzzy sounds and delay over a straightforward beat with a bit of a disco shuffle to it. The various mixes all emphasize certain elements of the track, sometimes making it a bit higher fidelity, but they all keep its spirit intact. Dykehouse increases the tempo a little bit, adds a slight bit more of a disco bassline, but keeps a lot of the swarming noise. Patrick Russell’s mix is a bit more minimal and icy, sounding like a disco inside a snowglobe. JTC (Tadd Mullinix) goes for a stripped down acid jam, emphasizing the melody and adding some dub-techno and ’80s disco textures. Definitely one of the highlights of the package. WCBN/Crush Collision’s own BMG does the longest mix (nearly 8 minutes), and it’s one of the darkest, most minimal ones here, submerging the sounds under an insistent bassline and a sparse, ticking beat. ErNo (also known as Erno the Inferno) starts out by mutating the sounds under a regular shuffling beat, then it gets deeper and more pounding before returning to the original mode. Ice Cold Chrissy (aka Coyote Clean Up) works that 100% Silk magic, pouring fizzy neon cola over everything and turning it into trippy, strobe light echo chamber disco. Nate Young ends the set with a Wolf Eyes mix, slowing the tempo down to a drunken stumble and adding some guitar notes along with the corroded electronics. It ends up really heavy and sludgy, sinking further and further into a pit of quicksand.

Next up is Magas’ own Heads Plus 12″ EP, which is a bit different than the electro-punk records he put out on Ersatz Audio over a decade ago. The tracks here have steady tempos aimed at the dancefloor, but there’s still layers of buzzing distortion and other sounds sources from junky old electronic equipment. “Heads Plus” seems like it’s going to turn out to be a pretty straightforward house groove, with conga-like percussive rhythms, but then there’s a mess of sloppy (but not really noisy) sounds lurking beneath, and a “Blue Monday”-ish melody poking its way through. “Checkers” has more of an electro-punk beat, and develops a very simplistic buzzing, festering melody which boils over into feedback until it’s not really a melody after all. “Machete King” seems to have twangy guitar riffs, but they’re entirely synthesized, and some siren-like melodies skitter and whizz by in the background. “Countess” has a bit more of a euphoric cyber-disco groove, with a nice synth bassline and some dubby echo effects over the insistent 4/4 beat. “Layers of Understanding” is a little slower and way more haunted, with just a few simple, creeping melodies progressing over its minimalist horror-disco beat.

Viands’ Temporal Relics LP is a document of an improvised session recorded at Trinosophes in Detroit’s Eastern Market by Dave Shettler (Moon Pool & Dead Band) and Joel Peterson (Chatoyant). It’s definitely the least “techno” sounding of the first 4 Midwich Productions releases, but there’s still a distant rhythmic pulse guiding these synth explorations, at least for part of the way. The first side definitely seems more focused, with expressive melodies flowing over the ticking rhythm, which kind of dissolves near the end of the side. The second side starts with the rhythm, but most of the side is more of a nebulous, freeform exploration, getting quite sparse at times, and meandering through outer-space jazz keyboard sounds most of the way.

Mick Travis used to live in Ypsilanti, and he put out a noise tape on Hanson Records in 2008, but Face Disappears After Interrogation is his excursion into abstract modular synth techno. It’s basically just twitching synth sounds, blips from a rhythm box which sounds like it’s malfunctioning, and some tape echo. As simple as that sounds, “Multiple Roles” still sounds like there’s three rhythms going on at once, making it sound delightfully confusion. “Aggravate the Grave” is a bit more uptempo, bouncy, and a bit squishy. “Face Disappears After Interrogation” is 9 minutes of staring into the void, with a sparse, jumpy rhythm and dark, delayed synth washes, and little else. “Frigid Finger” has another jumpy, messy-but-minimal rhythm and a kind of silly, squealing synth line, and then it ends with a nervous stammer.

Coming next month are new Midwich releases from HIDE and Alex Barnett.

Lesley Flanigan: Hedera (Physical Editions, 2016)

March 4, 2016 at 6:12 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Lesley Flanigan creates experimental music using her voice and wooden speaker feedback systems she built herself, bringing to mind the work of Jessica Rylan. This EP goes in a different direction than her previous releases, with the CD’s 20-minute title track anchored by a shuddering rhythmic vibration sourced from a broken tape deck, with Flanigan’s ethereal vocals floating on top. The rhythm seems far more considered and subtle once you zone in on it, but the vocals show much more obvious growth and development, blossoming into a choir of the same lonely, yearning voice. Hypnotic would be an understatement, and it’s not hard to be transfixed and not even notice the 20 minutes passing by. “Can Barely Feel My Feet” is much shorter and sparser, merely consisting of whispery layers of vocals before a thin wave of buzzing feedback enters the mix.

Traxman feat. DJ Fred: Slash Time – The Album (Duck N’ Cover, 2015)

February 27, 2016 at 8:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Footwork hasn’t been the same since DJ Rashad’s untimely death, but there’s still been some great releases (especially by other Teklife members and Indiana’s Jlin) and worldwide development of the genre. Following 2 Planet Mu albums and digital releases, Traxman joined fellow Chicago innovators DJ Clent and DJ Roc by releasing an album on Duck N’ Cover Records. The album definitely keeps with the spirit of the original, gritty footwork sound, not the Hyperdub one with more of a connection to the jungle, techno, and EDM worlds. Tracks on this CD such as “Boogie Woogie” have uptempo 4/4 beats and even breakbeats, and might have been produced a decade or go, it doesn’t specify the recording dates. “She Take It In The Face” is annoying, sexist, and easily skippable, but after that there’s plenty of intriguing weirdness, like the squirmy Mr. Oizo synths of “Taken A Trip U”, “Unstoppable”, and “Electro Tekk”, and the warp speed laser whip “Slash Time”. “Survive” features an oddly gospel-ish vocal sample and overdriven rave piano-like synths, and then the beats just push it over the top. The last few tracks dig up dusty old soul records from the closet for sample-mining purposes, and “We On Mars” sounds more sleepy and even melancholy than you might expect. Traxman has said that this isn’t a sequel to his Planet Mu albums, but it doesn’t really differ from them too much, it’s still from the same mind.

CDR: Acid Waltz (AD AAD AT, 2015)

February 27, 2016 at 7:40 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

According to Discogs, so far this year, CDR has released 3 splits, an EP, and a 50-track album. This is all in addition to the hundreds of other releases he’s put out or been featured on since the late ’90s. Acid Waltz still seems to be the most recently released CD by him, thanks to AD AAD AT, who also released the dynamic split 12″ he did with DJ Topgear, which might be his best work to date. This album focuses on marring acid techno with his signature smashed-up Amen breaks and sometimes classical-inspired melodies (not really any anime samples on this album, as far as I can tell). There’s 2 “Acid Hell” tracks which appropriately take his sound into its most overwhelming level of intensity. Not to mention “Too Much Monster Energy”. But then there’s the softer, pretty tracks like “Fin” and both versions of “For You”. And the mutilated hardstyle of “What Is EDM”. You can grab (lo-bitrate) mp3s for free on AD AAD AT’s site, but the CD is well worth buying.

IXTAB: Voice-Hand tape (Tymbal Tapes, 2015)

February 27, 2016 at 7:13 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

You know those signs that say “This is a good sign”? Maybe there should be a roll of tape that says “This is a good tape” for when I review cassettes like this. OK, maybe that’s a dumb idea, but this is still really good. Recorded between Austin, Seattle, and Dartmoor, UK, this is nearly a full hour of steely industrial techno made with an old guitar, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a circuit bent Casio SK-1, found sounds, and nature recordings. Very kinetic machine music which sometimes feels a bit airy and thin (“Hask”) and other times has fat throbbing beats and distortion (“Ysel”). Still feels more like lo-fi techno than industrial, but there’s undoubtedly an industrial element/construction to it, and it flares up into spark-emitting noise and gets warped and noisy at times. After some more straightforward 4/4 tracks, “Inducer II” is more of a hollowed-out ticking mid-’90s Autechre thing, then “Brink” goes back to the hazy industrial pounding. “Down” is a brief beatless respite before the crackling ’80s electro-techno of “Flatland”. The tape-ending “Modulous” features the album’s most splintered, scattered beats; speed it up 50 BPM or so and it’s basically breakcore. Tape’s sold out, and you can’t have mine, but you can hear it on Bandcamp.