Test

Vath-o-vision

Barely a week goes without some hilarious footage of Sven Vath finding its way onto YouTube, and, if you type the phrase ‘papa Sven’ into the site’s search engine it returns over 400,000 results. Surely these aren’t all about Vath and his (after) party antics? For those who don’t have the time or patience to sit through endless clips, this week, it’s the turn of an Austrian blogger Freaksound to entertain us with Sven’s freaky dance routine,  performed in obligatory back hot pants. Hilarious stuff I’m sure you’ll agree, and part of a growing online fascination with the Cocoon boss. This week, I’ve also been checking out the non-ironic Cocoon Styled  blog, which is dedicated to all things Sven-like as well as to DJs, parties and music associated with the Cocoon brand (that word again!). For those that missed out first time round, here’s a link to that hilarious Make Sven Talk site. With a label, a club in Frankfurt, a DJ agency and wild Ibiza parties to his name, surely it’s only a matter of time before someone writes a soap opera or dedicates a feature film to him. Love him or loath him, there’s no doubting Sven’s star quality…

Deep Art

Mmmm, I’m really, really loving Ewan Pearson’s new collaboration with Al Usher as Partial Arts, their first in a while. Trauermusik is out on Kompakt, the first time to my knowledge that Pearson has released original material on the label. Anyway, what I love about ‘Trauermusik’ is its wonderful warmth, the way the strings, woodwind and deep house chords are fused with a more contemporary squelchy electronic bass. It’s not hard to imagine that ‘Trauermusik’ will be the ideal soundtrack to this summer’s smaller dance fests -  it’s the kind of music that lends itself to loafing on the grass (or astroturf) on a sunny day, beer in hand, looking up at the clear skies. I didn’t really ‘get’ Alter Ego’s remix. It’ll probably be really successful, thanks to its ‘Rocker’-like riff, but surely Flugel and Wuttke are capable of better things than a standard grinding bass number? Another release to combine old school house musicality with the click, whirr and shuffle of modern production techniques is Lopazz’s new release for Get Physical, Share My Rhythm. Lopazz hasn’t released anything on the label in nearly three years -  it’s not that he’s very slow in the studio, but rather that he does ‘other’ music to pay the bills and plays in a live band. Anyway, his comeback is full of sweet, uplifting chords and squelchy, bass-heavy rhythm with hints of minimalist edginess. Whether or not 07 will see an explosion of similar ‘deepinal’ tracks is irrelevant -  these comeback records will hopefully transcend classification…

How Low Can You Go?

I’m a bit slow to jump on this particular bandwagon, mainly because the ceiling in my kitchen collapsed thanks to a few misdirected gallons of bath water, but I still managed to spend a good part of yesterday listening to Bowie’s ‘Low’. What, I hear you scream, is a hard-hearted techno cynic doing listening to the back catalogue of a near-superannuated 70s rocker? Well, I have a (well-hidden) sentimental side and I’ve always been a fan of the 60-year-old artiste - and Bowie really is one of the few people in this world whose name warrants the use of an ‘e’ tacked onto that overused term – and, if I had an hour free to spend navelgazing on a psychiatrist’s couch, he or she could argue that three of Bowie’s 70s albums - ‘Hunky Dory’, ‘Heroes’ and the aforementioned ‘Low’ – inadvertently led me to the place that I now occupy.
Released back in 1971, ‘Hunky Dory’ was everything that I loved and still love about pop music. It’s irresistibly catchy without being disposable, it’s full of smart lyrics that appeal on different levels to the innocent and not so innocent, but that don’t prosletyse, intellectualise, or consequently alienate the audience, and the compositions are delivered by a smart, glamourous and most importantly, subversive man who you just knew was going to outdo Marc Bolan as far as nefarious behaviour was concerned (a quick disclaimer here: I’m also a big Bolan fan, but I realise his limitations: he was a pop star in the purest, two-dimensional understanding of that term, whereas Bowie was and sometimes still is multi-dimensional). ‘Heroes’ and ‘Low’ are different matters entirely. Recorded in 1977, as the decade swung toward the 80s, both albums start off with a more utopian, futuristic and perhaps less narcissistic version of Bowie-songcraft – a curious surge of enthusiasm that preceded that most cynical of decades. To these ears at least, ‘Sound & Vision’ and ‘Heroes’ are stripped of ego, devoid of pretense, the sound of a glorious symmetry between classic songwriting and emerging electronic sounds from the continent and in particular Germany, which set a trend that still endures nowadays. Later on, Bowie goes off an increasingly electronic tangent and delivers the charming, ambling ‘V-2 Schneider’ and the shiny ‘Warszawa’, brave moves for a Top of the Pops regular. Of course, he couldn’t have done it on his own - Eno, Fripp, Carlos Alomar and Tony Visconti all worked on ‘Heroes’, with the latter producing ‘Low’ - but would a modern day pop star really make such an audacious move? The answer to this question is a resounding ‘no’ - the most adventurous someone like Robbie Williams gets is to commission Soulwax to remix one of his songs – which brings us rather neatly back to the world of electronic music. New technology suggests that there could be hundreds of new Bowies dotted all over the globe, but the reality is that even with the benefit of these tools, we have to search high and low for something genuinely new, different and daring. When musical individualists like Herbert, Isolee or The Knife make their way through the cracks that sometimes appear amid the layers of conformity, with the exception of the odd Swedish couple, even the tiniest part of Bowie’s iconic visual impact and his alluring starpower is absent. Maybe the only way to emulate The Thin White Duke is by hiring Superpitcher, a man who clearly knows a thing or two about sharp dressing, to act as an image consultant for anonymous acts like Sleeparchive. It mightn’t guarantee that we’d be automatically presented with a new ‘Low’, but I’d still pay good money to experience it in sound and vision…

Time For A Few Surprises

Here’s some listening material to get you through the short winter days: from the depths of a Prussian blizzard, Englishman in Berlin Lee Jones delivers There Comes A Time . It’s a depature of sorts from the My My material, warmer, more melodic, harking back to a conventional house/techno sound, a bit like UR in tripped out spacey techno mode with hints of Larry Heard in well, Larry Heard mode, which is pretty far out most of the time. Aus is shaping up to be one of the more adventurous labels and has commissioned Prins Thomas to do a version . I know most people will probably think ‘oh, here comes another lame-assed space disco track’, but this remix is cut from the same cloth as his recent ‘Fehrara’ record and it’s all about the all-encompassing, almost claustrophonbic bass. Sure, it still grooves and bumps along, but calling this remix disco is about as redundant as calling The Velvet Underground a rock band or Mark E. Smith a singer. Actually, I’d wager that the Velvets would appreciate the S&M-esque whiplash percussion on this version… Aril Brikha and Kompakt don’t exactly sound like a match made in heaven, do they? I would have been surprised if someone said to me that the Swedish deep techno meister was releasing on Mayer’s label, but it’s happened, and what’s most surprising is that Brikha’s Winter is a trance track. It’s not even trance in a ‘nudge nudge, aren’t we being fey and ironic’ Kompakt kind of way, more of a hands in the air Tiesto unironic way, and all that it lacks is a good drum roll to put it into the podium filling category. Maybe I’m being a bit too harsh, but it’s hard to imagine that this is the work of the same artist who released on Transmat and is responsible for ‘Groove La Chord’, but at least he compensates with the moody growling bass and soaring Motor City chords of Berghain . Are these releases, settign the tone for a year full of surprises?

Silver Lining

Happy new year to one and all! Sometimes, I wish I could see into the future - you would clean up at the racecourse - but then every day would be mapped out in advance and would lack spontaneity, like being stuck in Charleroi Airport on a rainy Tuesday for the rest of your life. Not being able to tell what’s going to happen over the next 12 months also allows me to post about tracks that I feel will do well or if they don’t, at least deserve your attention. The first such release of 07 (I never thought I would get to say that!) is on Dutch label Clone and it’s by an LA act, Photocall. Unfortunately, Holland is and probably always will be synonymous with amphetamine-fucked skinhead gabba fans, but the reality is that for such a small country, it is home to world-beating, small-scale operations like Clone, Delsin, Viewlexx, Crème and 100% Pure. I don’t know why Clone aren’t more popular - sure, they put out and distribute a lot of purist stuff, but they also have a knack of mixing pure, underground sounds and structures with a cheeky dose of pop accessibility, and Photocall are their latest and arguably greatest hope in this department. Like all the best tunes, Silver Clouds consists of just a few elements - a crisp rhythm, ‘Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass’-style melodies and the vocals of Terynn Westbrook, presumably put through a vocoder and emerging at the other end to sound somewhat like the female voice on ‘Windowlicker’ -  but it’s a powerful and more importantly infectious combination. Clone have guaranteed its playability (not sure if that’s a real word) by including a Dexter remix. My crystal ball has been way off the mark before, but I would be really surprised if this record does not cross over. Tune in for more predictions this week…