Remaining with Dark Entries for her fourth album as Group Rhoda, Mara Barenbaum inhabits several different sound worlds. The tracks are minimal, yet they’re anything but simplistic, twisting into different movements and switching into different rhythms. The opening interstellar waltz “Float” nearly gets caught in a spiral and slows to a crawl before regaining balance. “The Beauty’s in the Waste” is more upbeat and racing, and while you usually expect to hear stiff android-like vocals with this brand of minimal wave, Barenbaum’s voice is more varied, conversational, and expressive, and it sounds more operatic or phantomlike on other tracks. “Alibi” is a major treat, with a skittering footwork-y rhythm and a super suspenseful breakdown. “Twin Studies” is dreamy cosmic disco, and “This Flame” is a bit slower, more sensual (that bassline!), and more mystical. The invocation-like “Earthly Ark” takes its lyrics from a Margaret Atwood poem, and “Nevermore” bids farewell to a cat who has departed, yet it’s less somber than it might seem.
12-20-20
Max Headroom ~ Merry Christmas Santa Claus
Negativland ~ Before I Ask
rkss ~ modern EDM tracks ni such styles as: electro house, progressive house, bigroom, dutch tracks! Incognet Club Essentials Vol. 1 is first
S8JFOU ~ Analog Things
Multiplex ~ Angles (Spark Mix)
Konx-om-Pax ~ Shibuya Sunset (Hardcore Mix)
Kreggo ~ New Age
IVVVO ~ Consumed
The Caretaker ~ Memory Fifty Four
The Twilite Tone ~ I Still Need Love
Mux Mool ~ Teeth
His Name Is Alive ~ Return to Never Version
DJ Shadow ~ My Lonely Room
Xyla ~ Ways
London’s PVA play danceable post-punk which mixes several U.S. and Euro influences. “Talks”, the lead track from their first EP for Big Dada, fuses programmed synths and live guitars and drums, and would sound right at home on DFA 15 years ago, although the half-spoken vocals with swaggering British accents clearly indicate that this is not New York’s brand of dance-rock. “Sleek Form” has much tougher sequencers, a heavier 4/4 kick drum, and more gliding synths, arriving near the intersection of EBM and Detroit techno, but still containing the energy of a live band. “Exhaust / Surroundings” has more of a dark new wave vibe, with paranoid acid synths and a scratchy guitar solo facing off halfway through. The remixes almost entirely concentrate on the band’s dance influences, looping vocal hooks over front-and-center drum beats, but Daniel Fox of Girl Band’s mix of “Exhaust / Surroundings” stretches things out more and applies some acidic guitar noise.
I’m not sure how I’ve never heard of Breakbeat Heartbeat before, but she’s been releasing albums since the late 2000s. I can’t even remember how I came across her latest album either, but it’s a melancholy but charming fusion of wistful indie-electronic and chipbreak. The 8-bit melodies and textures are there, but the songs don’t feel like they’re contained inside a tiny box with an LCD screen. There’s lush acoustic guitar melodies and a few driving pop-punk bits, a little like Anamanaguchi but mostly instrumental. Likewise, the breaks kind of creep up subtly rather than recklessly piledrive over everything. It’s just a really nice mix of delicate dynamics, pretty melodies, sad feelings, and jungle-esque breaks in a decidedly non-jungle context. The last song is even in a sort of waltz tempo and has lilting strings. Mega-lovely.
Longtime NTS regular Moxie has been presenting compilations of forward-thinking underground dance music since 2014, with artists including Violet, DJ Python, Ikonika, SCNTST, and so many more. Volume 5 just arrived last month, and it’s a tantalizing set of various broken beat and club flavors. The first two tracks, by Yu Su and Al Wootton respectively, are both quite lush and dubby, with Wootton’s landing closer to garage. rRoxymore’s “Soleil Synthétique” starts out with steely breaks and gets much sunnier and housier, with some ear-tickling keyboard soloing near the end. Ronan & Teleself’s “Ocular Reflex” is the type of electro that doesn’t feel entirely trapped in the grid, thanks to its breakbeats and dubbed-out vocals. Ciao’s “Vibra (Fran’s Deep Mix)” comes closest to sounding like a vintage Transmat or Metroplex 12″, but with just enough of a modern touch. Pursuit Grooves’ “This Concentrated” is off-center house with a nimble bassline and unique touches like rainstick-sounding percussion. System Olympia’s “Miya Says” is a mellow house cruiser which just radiates blissful vibes, and briefly flashes back to electro-funk during its breakdown.
12-13-20
Cabaret Voltaire ~ The Power (Of Their Knowledge)
Ekoplekz ~ Aquatikz
Com Truise ~ Peach (6809)
Liv.e ~ I Been Livin
Material Girl feat. City Light Mosaic ~ Flood
KeiyaA ~ Hvnli
Nazar ~ UN Sanctions
Smurphy ~ Growth
Shygirl ~ Tasty
Suzi Analogue ~ Super Smooth
Thanya Iyer ~ Look Up To The Light
Nailah Hunter ~ Hidden Tiger Lily
Botany ~ Schoolday Morning TV
Serge Gainsbourg ~ Érotico-Tico
Sophia Loizou ~ Vestal Waters
Beavis’s Ass Is On Fire!
Sneaker Social Club’s newest compilation is a testament to hardcore and jungle’s longevity over more than three decades, and while it isn’t a definitive survey of everyone making waves in this genre at the moment, there’s still a wealth of outstanding material to be heard. The best tracks here push breakbeat choppage as far as it can go while still being recognizable as club music, while also adding something unique. Etch’s “Monoxide” is super obtuse but still funky, and Egyptian producer ZULI folds some Arabic rapping into “3ankaboot”. DJ Guy’s remix of Manix’s classic “Special Request” actually de-emphasizes the hardcore and is more of a smooth, slightly dubby house cruiser. Christoph De Babalon takes things fra beyond the dancefloor into the realm of surreal cosmic horror with “Where Are You Going?” Clouds’ “Can’t Anticipate” isn’t as jungle as some of their other stuff, it’s more of a noisy club track with a beat that skips along and some damaged breaks in there. The Forest Drive West track has some heavy breaks, but it mainly seems to float in a void. Dream Cycle’s “ESP” is a bit more lush and bassy, but a little fried and burnt out. Ashford Knights’ “Sinkhole” moves from craggy breakbeats to bleeps and crystalline electro, then slaps ’em together. Soundbwoy Killah’s “Something Special” is halfway between breakbeat hardcore and speed garage, with time-stretched vocals and mutant bass as well as spinbacks. After that, there’s further winners from Konx-om-Pax, Hooverian Blur, and especially Anz, who mixes Outlander-style rave with dubstep and then accelerates into jungle at the very end.
Thomas Park has almost 400 releases listed on Discogs as Mystified, and dozens more under his own name and as Mister Vapor, Autocad, and other monikers. This is an hour of detached industrial loops and concrete soundscapes which has little in common with the cosmic electronic and new age releases typically put out by Spotted Peccary. Created using a generative computer program he developed with Python programming code, the album features a lot of loops, waves, flagpole clangs, and other sounds layered on top of each other, usually not in sync, but somehow making some sort of sense together. Several of the tracks have evenly paced 4/4 beats, but this almost seems like it happened by accident, as they’re barely tethered to the drones and other sounds. It might be disorienting to some, but I think it sounds rather soothing, so it makes some sort of sense appearing on an ambient/new age label. There’s a lot of common sounds used throughout the tracks, so it seems beside the point to pick out highlights. It’s just a really good set of sounds to sleepwalk to.
12-6-20
Nahash ~ Changement de Régime
Rian Treanor ~ Metaplasm
Richard Devine ~ 5schim
Tim Reaper ~ Cityscapes
patten ~ Cloak
Orbiscorpus ~ Giver
Linea Aspera ~ Equilibrium
Civic Center ~ Fly on the Wall
мхи и лишайники ~ Вниз в парке
vhvl ~ garbage5
Burial, Four Tet & Thom Yorke ~ Her Revolution
2 8 1 4 ~ アルカディア
Ana Roxanne ~ Slowness
Now apparently without Upgrayedd in front of her name anymore, Smurphy resurfaces on Bokeh Versions with a brief but fiery EP benefitting Eden Reforestation Projects. From the start, she constructs choppy footwork-esque beats with blips of Casio percussion and super relaxed synth pads. “Growth” is similarly lush yet rough, with timestretched ragga-jungle vocals and an aired-out Jersey bounce, and even a hint of bhangra, at least to my ears. “Instinct” is much more abstract, with rapid, spluttery noises giving way to “Dooms Night”-style bass and more aggressively cut-up drums, and pitched-up vocals floating up like bubbles (and a dolphin near the very end). “Intellect” is another footwork-y track that stretches a handful of vocal samples up against throbbing kicks, throws in a pinch of minimal techno, and actually still sounds kind of chilled out somehow. “Intuition” hits that sweet spot between hyperkinetic footwork and jungle/hardcore, although it’s not quite as atmospheric as the latter. Anyway, really strong EP of hybrid sounds and unpredictable samples.
The Answer Is In The Beat 