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Black is back

Konrad Black: what a man. Apart from the fact that he has the same name as a disgraced former media magnate, who was the kind of bad-guy character you’d expect to appear in a Bond movie, he also comes from Canada – a plus in my book -  and has been responsible for some rather brilliant tuneage over the past few years. He may not be as prolific as other producers, but that doesn’t really matter when he’s putting out records like ‘Medusa Smile’ or ‘Draconia’. Actually, what impresses me most about Konrad is the fact that he doesn’t keep churning out different variations on the same tune. ‘Draconia’ was all about sub-sonic bleeps, ‘Medusa’ saw Ghostman get on the mic and ‘Coma Couch Surfing’, his contribution to the first  split EP on M*gd*’s Items & Things label, was a superb floaty, spacey Italo number that outshone the rest of that release. Now Black is back with two remixes: his version of ‘Baby Kate’ lurches along in a Gothic fashion, while his remix of Will Saul and Tam Cooper’s ‘Sequential Circus’ on Simple revists classic acid house but stamps a modernist production touch on the bleeding acid lines. Can’t wait to hear what he does next…

Keep it in the family

I had a great time on Saturday night, playing my first gig of the ’07. Recent changes in my family situation means that I’m not getting out as much as I used to, so I appreciated it even more than usual.  Family - an apt name for a night I played - takes place in Wax, probably one of the few  underground venues in Dublin right now (apart from the Underground, which, the more I think about it, is also pretty, erm, underground). Wax is home to the long-established Electric City night on Thursdays, and Family on Saturdays. It was bloody busy in town on Saturday -  Holden, Koze and Herve AK were all playing different venues and Green Velvet was guesting on Friday -  but  there was still a decent sized crowd down and the dance floor was full all night. Some of the tunes I played included: Redshape: Misc Usage, the new Daze Maxim on Combination, Plasmik on Conaisseur, the first ‘Synaptic’ by Pascal FEOS, Riton’s ‘Hammer of Thor’, the new Starcluster remix of Jupiter Black and to finish with, a remix of Depeche Mode’s ‘Enjoy The Silence’ by Ewan Pearson, but I could be mistaken because my management of covers and records has always been slack to say the least. It was great to get out and play, so thanks to Dave and the rest of the Family for sorting it out, hopefully I’ll play again there again this year. I’ll try to post up a mix of the best moments of the night – without the Depeche Mode remix, in case the music industry giant’s moles are watching and listening – later on in the week here…

Chances of survival

Chances of survival

Maybe I was a little bit premature when I recently predicted the ‘death of the dance album’ in 2007: I’ve just heard that the often-maligned Loco Dice is putting out a full-length album later this year (post DC-10 season no doubt) and if it is a patch on ‘Harissa’, or follows the same abstract path that the Cadenza label that it was released on is embarking with Luciano’s new doublepack, then we’re in for a treat. After all, with Buttrich at the controls, it’ll be hard for Dice to go wrong. Then there is also the matter of M.I.A’s new album: not to be confused with the XL artist of the same name (although it is kind of confusing) M.I.A is one of the main people behind the excellent Sub-Static label. She’s been quiet on the production front over the past few years, but her comeback single, `Safe Night’, was bloody brilliant (and overlooked), merging plaintive female vocals with fractured rhythms and rumbling basslines. It was playable but strangely poppy, not in a shiny, happy Kompakt way, more in a dark and occasionally disturbing manner, a la Depeche Mode on smack. This is a roundabout way of saying that M.I.A has got a new album out on the label in a few months’ time, and if it is anything like ‘Safe Night’ or ‘Slap/Happy’, the split release follow up with Falco Brocksieper on the label, then my predictions of doom and gloom may be on shaky ground…

Tranced Out

I know it gets slated a lot, mainly because of its propensity for self-ridicule - all those drum rolls and glowsticks aren’t easy on the eyes and ears - but I still harbour a soft spot for trance. Not the Tiesto/Van Burren or the cheap and nasty Crasher Kid/Radio DJ 1 variants that have dominated since the late 90s, more the classic Eye-Q sound of the mid-90s. One of the first dance CDs I bought was a compilation by that label and some of the first dance EPs I bought -  back then, they were merely known as ‘rave records’ – were releases on the label like Zyon’s ‘No Fate’, Cygnus X’s ‘The Orange Theme’ and the unforgettable ‘Vernon’s Wonderland’. Fast forward over a decade and the spiritual heirs to the Eye Q legacy have made their presence felt: the Fake/Border Community style espouses a particularly pastoral version of early 90s euphoria and to these ears, the so-called Huntemann/Bodzin/Romboy ‘electro-minimal’ sounds more influenced by Vath’s former label than Aux 88 or The Hague, predicated as it is on sweeping, epic melody lines and even more grandiose break downs. However, when we talk about producers that are directly descended from the ‘golden age of trance’, Patrick Chardronnet and Gui Boratto keep springing to mind. Chardronnet by way of ‘Eve By Day’, a record powered by an unashamedly over the top hook, and a composition that the German producer has not yet equaled. Apart from the superb growl of ‘Rising Evil’, one of last year’s overlooked releases, Boratto has a more organic, wide-eyed sound, evident on ‘Arquipelago’ and on his debut album, ‘Chromophobia’. There are more heavy bass workouts a la ‘Evil’ here, but what really entrances (pardon the pun) are the moments where mellow ambience, sun kissed melodies and warm pianos lines dominate. If this sounds all a bit too 90s Ibiza for your tastes (although Cocoon, the current incarnation of the Eye Q/Harthouse empire does its bit for German/Ibizan trance relations through the night of the same name at Amnesia and releases like David K’s soon to be huge ‘Tender & Sugar’), don’t worry because Boratto’s album also contains his version of pop music: ‘Beautiful Life’, with its sweet female vocals and live, punchy drums (has Boratto been listening to or more cheekily sampling Joy Division on the sly?) has a melancholic sensibility derived as much from indie pop as fey Kompakt shuffle (recently, I slagged Aril Brikha for trancing out in a cheesy way on the label). It might even lead Boratto into the mainstream – if that happens, let’s hope he doesn’t ‘do a Jam & Spoon’ – but in the meantime, he’s keeping trance safe from the Tiestos of this world…

Electro wonderland

In the current climate, this probably isn’t a very popular (or fashionable) topic, but who cares,let’s ask the question anyway: what is it about electro that has seen it endure, albeit as a niche within a niche, for over twenty-five years? Just to clarify: when I talk about electro, I don’t mean the ‘big room’ electro house that has infected electronic music over the past few years, rather I am refering to the sound that originated in European clubs and in US cities like New York and Detroit during the 80s, is still supported in pockets around the world and appears to have a stronger survival plan than a Cold War conspiracy theorist.  DJs/acts like I-F and the resuscitated Robotnick are more popular than ever before and, while some small electro labels have shut down lately, maybe this is more a symptom of the general problems indie dance imprints are faced with than a reflection on electro per se.
Certainly, there are  more than enough electro labels and releases to take their place, Hydra-like. For example, this week, I’ve been listening to Roadking’s penchant for updating European electro on Satamile, the brusque, claustrophobic rhythms of Clatterbox’s new EP on Austrian label Trust, and marvelling at Mandroid’s synth-led fusion of Italo melodies with taut funk on Dominance Electricity. And that’s only for starters: there’s a new remix chapter from Emperor Machine, which travels farther and deeper down the Krautrock/70s disco wormhole, engorging itself on lysergic acid as it travels: Dean Meredith, aka Goat Dance and Jupiter Black offer radically different takes on the ‘Italo/space funk/ whatever silly name you want to invent for it this week’ groove and a new label, Syncom Data, has been launched from the Clone mothership, ostensibly to promote spacey, otherworldly visions of Detroit electro. Even Soma are down with electro – they have a new EP from Octogen, Marco Bernardi’s sci-fi-loving project, due in a few weeks. In my opinion, electro is as broad a church as techno or house, and the reason that it has endured this long is because it has always enjoyed an outsider status. Unwilling to engage with the prevailing winds but at the same time refusing to remain static, its evolution takes place in a location that is blissfully detached from fads and fashions. 
Unfortunately, it has unwittingly become an ugly term, bandied about by the Erick Morillos of this world to sell their lame, third-rate crap. In this regard, I blame the media for spawning the monster that was electroclash and its smaller, uglier sibling, electro house, but that’s fuel for a few more rants. In the meantime, I urge you to disregard the hype, scratch beneath the surface and explore the electro wonderland…

Data transmission

It’s funny the way information and not just music goes around in circles: before Xmas, I posted the full, unabridged version of an answer Herr Hawtin gave me about what he’d got up to in 2006. It seems like the post made its way over to the good people at Minus, who have used the text as part of a Hawtin retrospective on their website. It works really well with the images they’ve chosen and I like the way that they’ve broken the account down month by month. Someone at the label has gone to a good bit of time and effort to do this, and I take the the fact that they read the post in the first place as a big complement…

Death of the dance album?

I hate to sound ominous, but will 2007 be remembered as the year that the dance artist album finally dies off? I know that other crystal ball-like predictions have as yet failed to materialse -  eg the death of vinyl or, my favourite, the now charmingly dated claim that we’d all be entertained by DJs in remote locations thanks to advances in internet broadcasting technology -  but this one seems more accurate. Last year yielded more than its fair share of great electronic albums – if you haven’t done so already, I urge you to check releases by My My, The Knife, Crowdpleaser & St Plomb, Jon Tejada, Arctic Hospital, Anders Ilar, Bodycode, Milosh, Nathan Fake, Alex Smoke, Junior Boys, Trentemoller and Modeselektor -  but the warning signals that 2007 may be a far less rewarding time for the dance album are already there. Usually at the start of the year, reviewers and feature writers are inundated with pre-release material, but this year the only artist albums of note are the second Pantha Du Prince long player (see  one of the recent posts) and Gui Boratto’s album, which I’ll write more about soon. The only other artists putting out albums are 90s acts like 4 Hero and Alex Gopher, and, perhaps more promisingly, electro producers the Blotnik Brothers. Techno and house producers have always struggled to make artist albums: on one hand, the rationale for putting out a collection of 10 dance floor tracks is flawed – why not just put out three EPs? -  and on the other, those who chose a more adventurous approach ended up sounding contrived and lame. Apart from the aforementioned exceptions, the music just doesn’t suit the format, or maybe the increased popularity of digital shops means that an audience whose short attention span keeps getting shorter can pick and mix without having to go through the hassle of listening to fillers? Think about it -  what are your favourite dance albums? Apart from essentials like early Black Dog, Orbital and As One, mine are mainly DJ mixes like I-F’s ‘Mixed Up In The Hague’, Hawtin’s ‘DE9’ releases or Mills at the Liquid Rooms as well as compilations like Warp’s ‘Artificial Intelligence’ series and the ‘Deeper Shade of Techno’ comps.  I know it’s somewhat off topic, but the labels that I’ve talked to are pessimistic about the future of the mix CD, and, unless they have a surefire winner like Booka Shade -  one of the acts releasing an artist album this year - I can’t see many of these people taking risks with a format that seems at best in questionable health…

Dial B for Bliss Out

Back to business then: I know that it’s probably a bit too early for this kind of talk, but what the hell, I might as well say it: Pantha Du Prince’s second album, ‘This Bliss’, is an early contender for album of the year. It’s Hendrik Weber’s second release under this alias, and its title gives a hint at what lies within. Weber has taken modern house and techno structures, has taken stock of Dial’s general dreamy approach and occasionally looked to the past -  in parts, ‘Bliss’ is more jacking than most German productions – and fused the dance floor with, well, how should I say this, the best parts of the 80s noise/dream/shoegazing indie scene. It sounds like a hideous combination, and there’s a load of guff about the album’s philosophy on his website, but thankfully, Weber is more influenced by MBV than Lush. In places, ‘Bliss’ is anything but sedate -  check the ferocious, layered climax of ‘White Out’ for instance – but his search for the perfect ‘ocean of sound’ leads us to the textured ‘Asha’ and onto the symphonic ‘Saturn Strobe’, a piece of music that wouldn’t sound out of place in a cathedral – chilling and austere, but seductive with it. Please hold me to my word on this album in eleven and a half months’ time…

Denham Update

I promised that I would post any updates about US producer Jay Denham’s condition after I heard at the weekend that he had suffered a heart attack. Someone who knows him emailed me privately to tell me that he actually had the heart attack just before Christmas and at this stage is out of hospital and on the mend. Once again, I wish him all the best and hope that he makes a full recovery.

Jay Denham

I was speaking to Derrick May on Friday for a project I’m working on and while we were chatting, news came through that US techno DJ / producer Jay Denham had suffered a heart attack. The details at the time were sketchy, but suffice to say, he has been admitted to hospital in Germany, where he now lives. I checked his MySpace site, but nothing has been posted about his condition yet. As soon as I find out more details, I will post them. I’m really sorry to hear what happened and send all my best wishes to Jay, his family and friends at this difficult time.