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Out of this world!

So there I was, sitting in the office, killing some time before I go out and I happen to read a story that scientists have discovered a new planet that is similar to our own in terms of size and environment. It suggests that it could be habitable, but the only problem is that it’s 20 light years away. That seems like quite a distance, but maybe in a few decades time, surely we’ll (and I mean people of my age/generation – thanks to advances in science and medicine, we’ll be looking and feeling as vital as ever!) all be visiting it to buy cheap apartments and party it up for the weekend (I can already imagine the conversation: ‘So, vat vas ze Panorama Bar on Earth 2 like at ze veekend?’ ‘Ja, it vas Ok, ze view vas great but ze club lacked some atmosphere’ – groan). Such a discovery always makes me think about humanity and its significance in the grander scheme of things: although we have been described as ‘a virus with shoes’ (Burroughs, I believe), we have nonetheless been responsible for some great achievements in the sphere of art and culture. Outer space and the desire to travel and experience other worlds is a recurring theme in electronic music, and it makes me wonder whether this discovery will lead to a glut of inspired work, or whether it’ll just trigger a ‘we told you our music was a self-fulfilling prophecy’-type reaction. In the interests of inter-planetary harmony, I hope the answer is the former…

The Walls Have Ears

OK, so enough bitching - here’s a list of albums that I’ve listened to lately and what I think of them. They’re easily divided into ‘really like’, ‘like’ and ‘don’t like’ categories so there’s no ambiguity!

Really like
Apparat: ‘Walls’ (Shitkatapult)
Forget ‘Orchestra of Bubbles’, Apparat in solo mode is a thing of untamed beauty (really, it is). Chilling orchestral strings, sombre woodwind, droning guitars and the wonderful vocals of Raz Ohara make this a wonderful piece of mood music.
Jamie Jones: ‘Get Lost’ (Crosstown Rebels)
Mix Cds are as common as muck, and the availability of so many mixes for free online questions their existence. Having said that, Jamie Jones’s selection is a spot on snapshot of  modern underground house and techno -  it’s so good that I can even forgive him for including that annoying Larry Heard tune.
Modeselektor: ‘Boogy Bytes 3’ (Bpitch)
Goofy, daft and a whole load of fun, this mix has the same qualities as Modeselektor’s productions. There was obviously some kind of digital tricknology involved, as there’s a wild Errorsmith/Robag Wruhme/Female/Krause Duo sequence, but that doesn’t matter because this mix is all over the place in the best possible way. It’s also great to hear ‘U-ziq Theme’ by U-ziq once again.
Black Devil Disco Club: ‘In Dub’ [Lo]
Are they really an obscure 70s French disco outfit or just another Aphex / Rephlex fabrication? As the debate rages, ‘In Dub’ delivers some new versions of tracks from ’28 After’ and some ‘new’ material that outdiscos even the most diligent nu Italo freaks.

Like
Aardvarck: ‘Cult Copy’ [Rush Hour]
I loved ‘Cult Copy’ and there’s a load more off beat, widescreen techno on this album – the only complaint is that sometimes Aardvarck’s work goes off on an abstract tangent that renders it unlistenable.
Tobias Thomas: ‘Please Please Please’ [Kompakt]
This mix CD takes ages to get going  - that’s not a bad thing, because the textured, ambient opening from Pantha Du Prince and Adolf Noise is one of the best intros I’ve heard in a mix in a while. What follows is standard Germanic techno fare, stripped back metallic grooves with slivers of bright eyed melody, but to avoid boredom, there’s a great cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ at the end.
Sebo K: ‘Back Up’ [Mobilee]
This is a decent mix CD from the German DJ/producer featuring a deeper than usual take on minimalism and that annoying Larry Heard track yet again. One question though: why do German DJs always have so few tracks on their mixes? Michael Mayer’s ‘Immer’ and ‘Fabric’ mixes only ever feature 12/13 tracks, as did the Mobilee mix by Anja Schneider last year. Are they cash-strapped or lazy? Answers to the usual address please.

Don’t like
Kevin Saunderson: ‘The Detroit Connection’ [Explicit]
Kevin Saunderson is one of the architects of modern electronic music, so what the hell is he doing lashing out dodgy loopy Euro techno on this mix CD? There’s no connection to Detroit, just a third-rate selection.

Eddie Fowlkes: ‘Welcome To My World’ [Submerge]
I wouldn’t want to stay in Eddie Fowlkes’s world for too long: it sounds like he got stuck in the mid-90s and is having trouble getting back to reality. We’re treated to slamming US house that sounds exactly the way it did a decade ago. To paraphrase Blake Baxter: “Eddie Fowlkes: What happened?”

Resident, Evil?

There are only a few websites that cover electronic music comprehensively, so it comes as a shock when one of them presents a story that originated here and which, at first glance, appears to be one of its own. Last Wednesday, I posted that when I was speaking to Arnaud Rebotini from Black Strobe last week, he mentioned that Ivan Smagghe was no longer in the line up. The next day, the same story appeared on Resident Advisor, but it was presented in such a manner that it looked like it was their story. The quotes Rebotini made to me about Smagghe leaving are buried in the third par and originally, there was no mention of this site where the story originated, but RA did at least credit me personally. When I pointed out to Tami Fenwick, RA’s editor in chief, that the story should be credited to this site, she said that RA did not have a policy of linking to other sites in its news section. Fair enough, but at least provide a reference to the online sources where you gather your news from? In the end, RA did add a reference, albeit still  buried in the third par.

Compare RA’s coverage of Smagghe’s departure to that on Filter 27, a US music website, and it’s clear that RA have ‘created’ their own news story, which has now been forwarded onto a load of message boards, purporting to be its own.

No, what really pissed me off was the fact that when I went onto their forum and posted a complaint about their behaviour, they deleted my post! Surely the rationale for an internet forum is that it allows anyone can express their opinions, irrespective of whether you agree or disagree with them? I never delete comment posts from this site, no matter how insulting or abrasive (usually the best way to deal with irate/abusive posters is to take the piss), so I don’t expect the same treatment on other sites.

I understand that RA is probably under pressure to differentiate itself from its competitors -  most of the news stories it posts are generic in that they come from record labels or PRs and anyone involved in the music media will receive them – but taking genuine stories from other sites and dressing them up as their own is somewhat underhand. What’s next, will they start ‘borrowing’ the reviews that I sometimes post here?

Dimming The Strobe

For those who are interested, remember where you read it first: Ivan Smagghe has left Black Strobe. That’s right, the partnership that yielded ‘Innerstrings’, ‘Madonna And Me’ and remixes for The Hacker and Tiefschwarz is no more (their version of ‘Ghost Track’ is how I imagine 4/4 based electro should really sound: belligerent and menacing with the kind of totalitarian goosestep beats that you just don’t get on the common or garden bass grind variety).
I found out because I just did an interview with the wonderfully-named Arnaud Rebotini the other day  – and yes, it is his real name: I assumed he had made it up to sound more, erm, robotic, but he really does come from a long line of Rebotinis (wonder what the family on his mother’s side is called? O’Droidnessy?)  - in advance of Black Strobe’s long-awaited debut album, ‘Burn Your Own Church’ (great title, adventurous musical concept that doesn’t always work) and he confirmed that he and Smagghe had left due to that age-old explanation, ‘musical differences’. Unless someone dies, bands and partnerships always split for this reason, or this is always the ‘official’ reason given. What Rebotini said actually said was:
“He has moved away and is focused on his DJ career. Black Strobe’s changeover to a live sound was difficult for him because he’s a great DJ, but he’s not a musician and he didn’t feel comfortable being on stage. Black Strobe was always about finding an equilibrium and while he brought the dance floor sensibility, maybe my influence was too strong.”
So there you have it: the Strobe is now officially a one-man act as Smagghe disappears into the distance as a new dawn fades. Mad succession of deadlines this week, will return with a more thought-provoking post as soon as I’m free again…

Great Scott

Apart from the new Swordsmen long player, one album that has stood out in the past month has been Gosub’s ‘Watchers from the Black Universe’, released by the fine Citinite label, the imprint that out John Davis ‘Flashcan’ last year. It’s the alter ego of US producer of the suitably futuristic sounding Shad T Scott - a name that seems to have come straight from a Philip K Dick novel - and it’s the first Gosub album in seven long years.  By day, Scott works as a programmer for mainstream names like No Doubt and Alanis Morissette, but he seems to have emerged relatively unscathed from these experiences. In a weird way, his association with pop makes ‘Watchers’ stand out. Sure, it is based on the squelchy bass and 808 shuffle of ‘classic’ Detroit electro - you can hear traces of Scott’s adopted home, Miami, in places too – but there are a few genuinely poppy tracks that don’t sacrifice Scott’s ‘serious’ artistic credentials. There’s the cheesy synths of ‘Laugh Track’ and ‘Mind Travel’, which counterbalances a silly vocal narrative about, you guessed it, space travel - come to think of it, all vocals about space travel are pretty daft  - with beautifully fragile melodies. Look beyond the daft artwork – a picture of a robo/human mutant superimposed onto a shot of our solar system - and you’ve got the best electro album this year, despite some strong releases by Blotnik Brothers and Comtron. So the question on everyone’s lips is: will he get I-F to remix the next Gwen Stefani single?

Minimal talent required

The most important aspect of the so-called digital revolution is not whether to use CDs or Serrato instead of good old-fashioned vinyl, but rather that the means required to make music have never been so readily available, and at such a reasonable price. This means that practically anyone who is computer-literate  - hey, even I’m learning, and that’s saying something! - can start making electronic music on their home PC. However, the one thing that doesn’t come bundled with programmes like Ableton is an ear for what sounds good and what sounds like everything else.
This can take years and years spent hanging around in record stores listening to music, building up a record collection, or if you’re low on funds and have an internet connection, listening to some of the many net stations while you make dinner or iron your socks. Unfortunately, most people who have realised the power of new studio technology have failed to grasp this simple concept: what can be achieved within hours on screen needs to be backed up with good taste.
It has gone over the heads of the countless producers and fledgling labels that churn out monochrome, sub-Minus minimal or identity-less electro house. This kind of music is far too easy to produce for it to have any kind of lasting significance and, as if to prove this point, a well-known techno producer ‘went minimal’ during one afternoon as a joke. He sent it to a few friends who run labels and one of them signed it: the release sold 8,000 copies. Similarly, a producer I know spent an hour or two making what he called ‘a minimal pisstake’. Because he has a lot of experience and knows what sounds right, the track sounds far better than the seemingly unending flood of releases that clog up my inbox and PO Box.  Remember, technology may have become increasingly uncomplicated to use, but it’s there to empower, not to enslave: please use it wisely and don’t follow the pack…

In review…

Here’s some more reviews to keep you occupied and get you over the post-Easter blues…

VARIOUS ARTISTS: ‘13 Years Of…’ [Pomelo]
I love the fact that this Austrian label has chosen to celebrate its thirteenth rather than tenth anniversary. Mind you, having looked at their back catalogue they’re not very prolific, so maybe they were right to wait this long. Alex Cortex launches the celebratory EP  -  which will be followed, I guess, by a compilation, but that may take a few more years - with the droning bass and razor sharp percussion of ‘Freakwave’, Ph03 invokes the spirit of Motor City electro-bass on ‘Long Distance Call’, and best of all, US producer Reade Truth dives to uncharted depths with the spooky vocals and disjointed breaks of ‘Time To Accept’.

MIKE DUNN: ‘So Let It Be House’ [Clone Classics]
Clone have got Dopplereffekt’s ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ lined up for their Classics series, but until that drops, here’s another long lost release. Mike Dunn’s ‘So Let There Be House’ was only released once, in the 80s, and copies have been rarer than a gabba night in Berlin. Props to Serge for tracking this down, and you get a real sense of this track’s history (and influence) when the muffled male voice utters the track’s immortal catch phrase. Sure, Mike Dunn isn’t as well known as Phuture or Larry Heard, but he helped to kick start a sound that has endured for the past 20 years. At times, house music has disappeared down some unimaginative, unrewarding cul de sacs, but this proves that there will always be a place on the dance floor for tweaked to fuck acid lines, jacking rhythms and silly male vocals.

JUSTUS KOHNCKE vs PRINS THOMAS: ‘Remixes’
[Kompakt]
It’s one for the scarf-wearing sensitive types, who will arch their eyebrows in excitement, and the nouveau space hippies, who will raise their heads above the bong at the news: Kompakt have handed over two of Justus Kohncke’s best tunes for Prins Thomas to remix. The Norse producer’s treatment of ‘Elan’ is based on tight, live drums and bass, and only really takes off when the dramatic strings sweep in. It’s a decent enough version, but it can’t compare to his take on ‘Advance’, with a pulsing groove and Kohncke’s mournful chord sequence topped off by a building 303 sequence that makes it sound like a match made in acid heaven.

ADJD: ‘Chronicles of the Urban Dwellers’ [Harthouse]
This is really an album, but I was lucky enough to get it on double-pack vinyl, so for these purposes, it is a single. After a three-year break, Alexi Delano and Jesper Dahlback return to their ADJD side project. I’m pretty happy because I don’t like Delano’s solo releases and Dahlback seems to have been overshadowed lately by his more prolific, but less talented little cousin, John. Given its track record during the 1990s, Harthouse is the ideal place to release ‘Dwellers’ and it quickly descends into the mad 303 freak out of ‘Think You Know Me’ and the heavy drums of ‘Lost In Sequence’. I know it’s probably considered sacrilege by techno’s underground guardians, but Dahlback and Delano have included a nice vocal on the deeper ‘I Want You’ and it could give them a crossover hit.

D’MARC CANTU/X2: ‘No Control/Barely A Track’ [Crème Jak]
Limited to just 200 copies on vinyl, these are the second and third releases in DJ TLR’s new Crème Jak offshoot label. It’s pretty raw and rough music too - the antithesis of polished digital production: maybe the reason why he chose a limited-edition format? - with the distinctive kettle drums and jacking rhythms of old school Chicago supporting walls of filtered electronic noise and dense, droning bass frequencies. They ain’t pretty, but they sure are effective.

Language barriers

If the old cliche holds true that writing about music is like dancing to architecture, then there are lots of buildings with shaky foundations out there. Following on from  Ronan's hilarious 'fair play' post earlier this week, I'm now taking up the baton to deride the hollow, meaningless and downright misleading descriptions and phrases that follow music-related writing about like a long, wet lingering fart. For starters, what do people who run bars and clubs mean when they hang a sign outside their venue advertising that there is a 'live DJ' playing? Is this some kind of rarity? Are they suggesting that most DJs as dead as dodos or have been reduced to a zombie-like state because their job is boring? I suspect that a more mundane explanation holds true: that the venue is excited by the fact that someone is bothering to put together and programme a few hours worth of music spontaneously in situ, rather than just pressing the 'play' button.

Another bugbear of mine is the word 'funky'. If someone describes a piece of music as 'funky', steer clear. It usually means that it is devoid of any redeeming qualities and is as unfunky as possible. Does anyone remember 'funky techno', that monochrome, looped one-note bassline exercise in aggression that was all too prevalent at the start of this decade? There was nothing to it, yet someone decided it had the funk. Funky techno was prevalent before minimal 'exploded' (another redundant phrase: what is really meant is before the media decided minimal was finally trendy enough to write about. What a pity that the desk jockeys didn't hear an explosion round the time of 'Nighttime World' or 'Losing Control'). Now that all of the funky techno producers are making minimal, it can only be a matter of time before we hear some 'funky' minimal?

Worse still is 'funky house', a phrase that I will forever associate with pasty-faced coke and beer-bloated male Brits in Ben Sherman shirts invading Ibiza and closer to home, every venue that has a 'live DJ'.

I have always loved house music, ever since I heard the first hallucinogenic gurgle of 'Acid Trax', but surely 'funky house' is the kind of tyrannical intro, generic filtered groove, breakdown and build-up formula that house music was originally meant as a rallying call against?

Then there's 'dirty' or 'twisted house'. The successors to 'funky house', these phrases signal the point where the music media goes into overdrive: what they mean is that 'dirty' because invariably, the basslines are vaguely distorted, like a malnourished Tiefschwarz studio outtake and 'twisted' because, well, they sound great on (bad) drugs. 'Dirty' and 'twisted' imply that the lifestyle rather than the music is the main concern. Looking back at the wild, early years of techno and house, it's understandable that a lot of daft phrases crept into the lingua franca to describe the collective adrenaline rush. 'Pukka', 'mental', 'on one', the spontaneous cries of 'yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah' from the dance floor - not matter how annoying it sounded when repeated for the 20^th or 30^th time over the course of a night - and my personal favourite, 'maaadoutofit', captured more unpredictable times. Now that we've (supposedly) moved on, 'funky', 'dirty' and 'twisted' sound as exciting as a 'live DJ'...

Vorsprung durch sponsorship?

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a PR company asking if I would like to listen to a series of remixes, called ‘TT Remastered’, and give them some feedback. It’s the kind of email I get sent every day, people acting on behalf of labels looking for feedback on their releases, and irrespective if the reaction is good, bad or indifferent, I always oblige them. Or so I thought. When I clicked on the link provided, I quickly discovered that Audi, the car manufacturer, had commissioned a number of well-known producers  - I’m not going to name them because I’ve deleted the email that lists them and anyway, it’ll come out sooner or later – to remix tracks that they had chosen. I had no idea what TT was - I’m not in that kind of income bracket! – and when I emailed the PR person to say that I wasn’t interested because it was a corporate-sponsored initiative, I got the following reply (verbatim):

“It is a music initiative celebrating the launch of the TT... We are not looking for mentions of Audi - we are trying to get the music heard. The music is sold via itunes and the artists retain all publishing rights. They have all handpicked a track that is iconic to them and covered it for this campaign... So there is nothing overly branded about this... In fact quite
the opposite... We are not asking for branded content - just reviews of the singles... Let me know if this sways you?”

So my question is why would Audi be involved at all if there is no branding? Are they doing this because their chief executive is a closet minimal techno and wants to genuinely support new artists? Hardly. I think this is the most insidious and cynical example yet of corporations trying to ‘get down’ with ‘edgy’ popular culture. On one hand, they’re saying that they don’t want any mention of Audi/TT, but if someone reviews one of the tracks and invariably mentions Audi, they won’t be too pissed off. When I pointed this out to the PR and that I would have a problem reviewing any of the music, I got this reply:

“Oooh you cynic... Yes it is initiated by Audi but that shouldn't detract from the music!”

But of course it detracts from the music: a few years ago, I did some work for a corporate-sponsored music project -  what can I say? the money as great! -  and it was all about ‘owning’ the music they were sponsoring and every event being branded up to the hilt. This excuse about it ‘being all about the music’ is the same line that every corporate sponsor gives to make them sound like they’re on our side.
In more recent years, the corporations have become more subtle about their involvement in music: they’ve tried to give something genuine and lasting - look at Red Bull’s academy  - but they’ve also been far more stealthy in their approach, witness the rise of ‘viral’ online marketing. My feeling is that corporate sponsorship of niche music is a bad thing because it gives a temporary financial boost to small artists, and once big business has conducted its feel-good, credibility exercise, they depart, pulling out all of the support and leaving the small artists high and dry. Anyway, I’d better push on, I’ve got to review Loco Dice’s new ‘TDK Time Warp’ mix CD (sad but true)…