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Horse Power

I still haven’t got round to posting any MP3s of the recommendations that I made this week - will try do it over the weekend as I’m too busy at the moment going through new releases for the next batch of reviews for various magazine assignments. I’ve also got my hands on the debut album by Samim and Jay Haze as Fuckpony, ‘Children Of Love’, due in the next few months on Get Physical. I just spent part of the afternoon talking to them about the album, which borrows heavily from classic deep and Chicago house, but with a modern twist and the benefits of a lot of experience making stripped back, tripped out techno. I’d be surprised if it isn’t one of this year’s biggest underground albums- I know, that sounds like a tautology – but the curious journalist in me prevailed and I had to ask them about its goofy title. It turns out that these guys have overcome a lot of personal problems: Samim had to fight off cancer and Jay was homeless for a while in San Francisco as well as pursuing a career as a glass blower. Seriously, there’s a good book in there ( better not reveal to much of the rest here!) and it certainly made a pleasant change from interviewing monosyllabic techno producers…

F Con?

Laurent Garnier’s label F Comm are putting out a compilation called ‘Essentials’, but what I don’t get is why they feel the need to resurrect many of their big tunes from their back catalogue. Do we really need to hear ‘Man With The Red Face’ or ‘Flat Beat’ once again? Indeed, is there anyone out there who hasn’t heard these tunes? Maybe F Comm need the money, which is fair enough. It can’t be easy to run a label these days. Anyway, re-releasing well known, arguably overplayed music is the kind of tactic that the majors engage in, and not behaviour that befits a bastion of underground music. Garnier is the only big name DJ who is still in touch with what’s going on at a grass roots level, so let’s hope it’s a case of F Comm needing to pay some bills and not them resting on their laurels. I can’t be too negative about this compilation, because ‘Essentials’ also contains Jesper Dahlback’s soaring acid rewiring of Jori Hulkkonen’s ‘Silence’ and the deeper version that Technasia did of ‘Silvery Sounds’ by Sound Of K, before they turned into a booty techno act and everything went tits up. Will post up some MP3s of these tomorrow, but bear in mind the usual rules apply…

Three Thousand And Six…

It takes a lot to give me a shock, but I’ve been in a state of surprise all week because someone from Detroit has actually managed to make a decent album. That honour falls to none other than Submerge  affiliate (he wouldn't be from Detroit if he was just a plain and simple producer, now would he?) DJ 3000, whose ‘Migration’ album is bloody good, and beats all those laboured art concept albums or God-fearing gospel house tragedies that people like Jeff Mills or Kenny Larkin have seen fit to release in recent years.
OK, so it follows some of the basic, official guidelines that every Detroit techno artist must adhere to, eg he speaks about his ‘forefathers’, makes references to the 'struggle' he has endured on his 'journey' and, in time-honoured Motor City tradition, he fulfils the quota of calling at least one of his tracks ‘Reflections’.
Apart from that, it’s pretty damn good, deep and melodic without being too disposable and with enough arse-shaking bass and heavy percussion in that organic, tribal Oliver Ho style to make it work on the dance floor. The other album that has impressed me lately has been Crowdpleaser & St. Plomb’s ‘2006’. In my blinding ignorance, I had these dudes down as electroclash types due to a guilt by association link to Mental Groove (turns out they have put out some DJ Rush material too, doh!)  when the reality is that they have managed to mix and match a few decades worth of electronic music, with the result that bleepy techno and dubby grooves sit next to searing industrial-tinged techno and oddball electro. They’ve even got Kate Wax to take the piss out of the Swiss banking system (it’s probably not a bundle of laughs at the best of times) for its willingness to accept the suitcases of money soaked in blood. Good on you. Will post some previews of these tracks over the next day or two, but please go and buy the real (or digital) thing to support the artists…

Tune In…

So it looks like this is turning into a regular Friday post, all the
listening and playing recommendations thrown together in a big long
list. As you can see, there are some links to MP3s to some of the
tracks, but these are for evaluation purposes only - please support
these labels and hopefully keep vinyl alive too by buying the releases
from your local store or from a reputable online shop like Juno…
First onto the decks is Superpitcher’s new single, 'Enzian' on
Speicher. It’s a split release with a dude called Stardiver, but I love
the warped acid segue that Superpitcher drops and, although it has a
dark, almost menacing feeling, the trademark innocent, childlike vocals
make an appearance.
On a different tact is Troy Pierce’s ‘25 Bitches Volume 1’. Pierce has
been in fine form lately with his remixes of Esperanza and Donnacha
Costello, so it’s good to hear him finally putting out his own
material. I gave the Minus crew a bit of a slagging recently for being
a bit too pretentious and arty, but Hawtin still knows a good tune when
he hears it - on 'Bitches', Pierce’s approach is simple but effective,
as live drums and a moody, slinky bassline meet in a FX-heavy,
timestretched space and there are two cool, metallic remixes from
newcomer Berg Nixon, which stutter and hiccup all over the place.
Speaking of sleekness, electronic music doesn’t get much more polished
than when Arne of the Weinbergs is in the area. His new single,
‘Oblivion’, sees him out swoon his Detroit mentors, but even his efforts
are topped by the brittle electro funk that shapes the Duplex remix.
Smart work, guys….
Remaining on the subject of remixes, London band Chikinki, who were
meant to have collaborated with Tiefschwarz at some stage, get taken
apart and turned into a gradually building minimal-trance epic by
Ruede Hagelstein, a remix to rival ‘The Sky Was Pink’ in my book
anyway. Some people I’ve played this to have bitched that parts of the
original vocal have been left in, but surely that’s the point, to use
it as a reference point for the mediocrity that went before it. Anyway,
this subject merits a separate post.
Pier Bucci is one of the most underrated techno producers around at the
moment - sometimes I get the feeling that he’s overshadowed by Luciano
and Villalobos, so hopefully this moody bass remix of Ellen Allien &
Apparat’s ‘Turbo Dreams’ will get him a bit more recognition. There’s
also a surprising, acid trax-style version from Marc Houle, but my
money’s on the softly-spoken Chilean…
There are also new remixes of Cosmic Sandwich’s ‘Man In A Box’ on
My Best Friend and although those who take things way too seriously
will be nodding their heads in approval to Andre Kraml’s version, I
must admit that I have a soft spot for Daso's pulsing groove and tripped out
squelches, no matter how derivative they may seem It’s all a far cry from the reappearance of Losoul, whose ‘What Radio’ two-tracker weighs in at close to half an hour and is all subtle twists and turns rather than force it down your throat aggression. ‘Back Wash Rider’ is a suitably understated, clicky affair, albeit one with a wobbling bassline, but 'Cut So Sweet' shades it for me, with Kremeier dropping a wall of hypnotic, humming bass only midway through. It’s worth the wait though…

Finally, we go back to the early 90s for the final tune. Plus 8 has
somehow unearthed Baby Ford & Eon’s impossible to find ‘Dead Eye’, a
hazy rush of euphoria from electronic music’s early glory days, but
it’s the B-side I’m really interested in: while Tom Midleton has gone
down a pretty cheesy route since Global Communication split up, not
much has been heard of his collaborator, Mark Pritchard, but back in
the early 90s, when he was still working as Link, Pritchard created
'Amenity' one of the most uplifting – in a non-cheesy way - pieces of
synthesised music that I’ve ever heard, and it still sounds timeless.
Wonder if we’ll be able to say the same about the current crop of
electronic music in fifteen years time?

Spirit In My High

OK, enough slagging off Rolando, he's certainly not the worst offender in music...I'm going on a bit of a trip down memory lane at the moment because I recently got my hands on a new copy of Spiritualized's 1992 album, 'Lazer Guided Melodies'. Back in the pre-interenet days, I used to have a casette copy (remember them?) that eventually gave up after hundreds of plays. In the intervening years, I suppose that I lost touch with the band -  I blame my fixation with electronic music - but when the CD landed in my post box (and at the 1992 cost too, thanks, Amazon!) it was like catching up with an old friend you haven't seen in years. Despite a break of over a decade, the connection was quickly re-established and the hazy, wispy vocals, epic chords and pulsing, droning  hooks haven't aged. Actually, they sound as vital as ever, and, perversely, their influence can still be heard, even in electronic music. Nathan Fake's debut album made a connection to bands like Spiritualized, the Valentines and some of the more decent 'shoegazers' (anyone out there remember Ride's debut album?) and on the dance floor, people like Holden and the noisier and abstract end of the glitchy techno practitioners have that warped, hissing, broken feeling. But enough theorising: listening to 'Melodies' over my headphones late at night during the week brought back loads of memories, pretty much all positive ones, of a time when the world seemed like a less cynical place (or am I just getting more cynical?) and, for a brief, flitting period, my universe revolved around a bunch of scruffy blokes in a guitar band who made a gloriously melancholic, hypnotic racket...

Aztec Mystic Pizza

Is it just me or does Rolando look like a portly version of that guy Shane Ward who won X-Factor?

Wag The Blog!

A Dog’s Tale…

I can’t understand why the identity of UK producer Rex The Dog was such a
big mystery, or why he felt the need to maintain his anonymity although he had only put out a handful of decent releases. Some unaffiliated websites were even at pains to maintain their furry friend’s real name, blacking out his eyes in
photos.
Anyway, a quick look through the indispensable Discogs  site reveals to anyone who is interested or has enough time on their hands that Rex was known as Jx in a former life and was responsible for a string of bouncy nu-energy -  anyone remember Blu Peter and the ‘Reactivate’ series? – hits like ‘Son Of A Gun’ in the early to mid-90s.
It seems that the reasoning behind Rex’s desire for anonymity is that he was very young when he made the Jx material and he wants to distance himself from those popper-fuelled bouncy basslines and drum rolls… Or could it be that he is just too cool to recognise his roots, now that he’s releasing on Kompakt and getting remixed by MANDY?
Whatever the explanation, it throws up (not literally) the age-old electronic music issue of anonymity. Nowadays, with the advent of the internet, file sharing, camera phones, rumour-fuelled message boards as well as shameless gossipmongers like myself, it’s practically impossible to keep stumm about anyone’s movements. The cult of reality TV and the instant celebrity -  merely add lip gloss and leave to simmer with 12 other like-minded creatures in a house for a few weeks before serving in every media outlet with a side helping of scandal and a whiff of illicit sex  - means that we’re all living our lives under the microscope, so imagine what it feels like for someone who makes techno, which, let’s face it has a tendency to attract obsessives (present company excluded). Maybe we do need to cultivate that sense of wonder again, that feeling you got – and hopefully still get - when you are handed a faceless, shrink-wrapped record which provides no immediate idea about its creator’s identity, location or name. For that reason, Rex The Dog, Jx, whatever his name, is right to hide behind his animated alter ego…

Chart Attack

Here’s my latest chart, in no particular order. I’ll be playing them down at The Vaults, Dublin, this Sunday night - mail me if you’d like to come along for free!

Five Green Circle: Revenge Of The Nerd (Budenzauber)
Intricate paring of Germanic precision and Detroit futurism from Irish man in Poland, Donal Tierney. One of the most geographically confusing releases available!
Boogie Drama: Dancing In the Darkness (D. Costello remix) (Was Not Was)
Dublin’s finest, Donnacha Costello, turns Boogie Drama’s clamming acid into a paranoid trip into skeletal funk. Troy Pierce has got a new rival…
WeltZwei: Radarius (Sender)
Three years in the planning, this is more polluted than the Ruhr Valley. The term grunge was invented to describe Sender, not Nirvana!
Cio D’Or: Lichtblick (Karmarouge)
Forget the sub-Enyaisms on the B-side and head straight for the title track, where the Karmarouge trance tendencies are let loose over a bassline from hell.
Chikinki: Ride On Take Off (Ruede Hagelstein remix) (Assassinator 13)
Played this at the last Test and there were loads of ‘what the fuck is that?’ comments. Like a wirier ‘Sky Was Pink’ crossed with the pathos of classic Eye Q and only a snippet of the vocal from the original track.
Dan Berkson & James What: The Dig (Poker Flat)
Poker Flat continues to do what it does best - releasing sleek, slick stripped back techno for the dance floor with a healthy side serving of acid weirdness.
Phage & Daniel Dreier; Finger Food (Highgrade)
Noisy, messy and very funky with a hint of Chicago, this emulates the excellent ‘Beeswax’. Never been a fan of Highgrade before, but maybe this is the beginning of a beautiful new relationship.
Esperanza: Esperanza 2 (Esperanza)
Sorry to be so vague about the details, but all I know is that this record is by a Spanish producer. The reason it’s in my chart is the Troy Pierce remix, which disappears down a slinky acid chamber, slipping all the way on shards of fracture percussion.
Mark Henning: Unknown (Einmaleins)
Sorry, have forgotten the name, it’s something like ‘Kartoffelzuppe’, but do these details really matter when Henning turns up the reverb and gets busy in a weird but playful way?
Gummi HZ: Select & Bounce (Mobilee)
Mobilee’s focus turns to London to sign this record. Tougher, less tripped out and more jacking sounds are on offer, like a cross between minimal and Chicago techno.

Glass Is Always Greener...