Before it drops next week, Chaz Bundick’s (a.k.a. Toro y Moi) debut LP under his dancefloor-focused Les Sins moniker is now streaming in full. Entitled Michael, the 11-track album finds Bundick toying with various strains of house and disco—with nods to a few other club-ready genres sprinkled throughout—while a soulful glow and funky undertones can be heard across the entire record.
Officially out on November 4 via the producer’s newly founded Company label, Les Sins’ debut LP can be heard in its entirety here, via NPR.
Marking the arrival of his latest effort, the six-track Beloved EP (artwork above), P. Morris has launched an interactive website which pairs users “with a friend, enabling their cameras and offering a chat client to experience Beloved together.” In a press release, the record is said to chronicle “the journey of an individual through the ups and downs of life together with a partner,” and in that spirit, P. Morris has teamed up with designers Ryder Ripps and OKFocus to create a website where users can hear the producer’s new moody, R&B-soaked record in full while connected to another listener via their webcams and a chat client (think of it as a creative reworking of Chat Roulette, tied to a specific EP).
To take part in Beloved‘s interactive experience and listen to the whole EP with a “partner,” head here. Those in search of more traditional means can stream—and purchase—the full effort via Bear Club‘s Bandcamp page, here.
The forthcoming self-titled effort will count 10 tracks to its run, including a pair of cuts (“Who U Love” and “Floating on a Salt Lake”) from his Who U Love 12″, which saw its release via Prins Thomas’ Internasjonal label in April of this year. The Australian artist’s debut LP is said to find Roland Tings further delving into the type of “raw-satin” productions he’s presented on previous outings for 100% Silk and Club Mod, with his “penchant for acid coastlines and nebulous rhythms” heard throughout the record. Set to arrive in early 2015, the artwork and full tracklist for Roland Tings have been included below.
1. Coming Up for Air 2. Who U Love 3. Human Knowledge 4. Observatory 5. Floating on a Salt Lake 6. Endless Race 7. Devotion 8. Cultural Canal 9. Venus 10. Pala
Carl Craig’s Planet E label added a new LP to its catalog this month in the form of an 11-track album from an anonymous production project known as Korrupt Data. The self-titled LP is said to challenge the listener’s “understanding of the world around us” by presenting “dystopian fantasies painted in sound, broadcast from the ether” and further inspired by “the netherworld of corrupted data.” On album cut “Memory Loss,” those aims take shape as a driving techno excursion, one which gains momentum behind a lead analog synth sequence and, eventually, various arrangements of celestial chords and long-winded melodies. Out now via Planet E, the rest of the Korrupt Data LP can be previewed after the jump.
Along with a handful of other producers, Berlin artist Paula Temple (pictured above) was recently enlisted to turn in a remix of soon-to-be-disbanded Swedish duo The Knife. Having released her Deathvox EP via R&S just this week, Temple has been tasked with taking on “Stay Out Here,” a track which originally appeared on The Knife’s excellent Shaking the Habitual album (released last year). In her hands, “Stay Out Here” is transformed into a pounding techno affair packed with a slew of brooding textures and an unrelenting series of dark, percussive hits.
Paula Temple’s new remix can be streamed in full below and is available now as part of the recent Ready To Lose/ Stay Out Here Remixes EP from The Knife’s own Rabid imprint.
The impressive 2014 run of burgeoning Los Angeles talent and recent Bubblin’ Up artist Sage Caswell is set to continue next week when his Good to See You/To Be Continued EP lands via Brooklyn trio Archie Pelago‘s eponymous label. Ahead of its release, Caswell’s upcoming four-track effort is now streaming in full via XLR8R.
Across Good to See You/To Be Continued, Caswell continues to craft dense house constructions, one’s lined with a bevy of soulful textures and pushed forward by propulsive and highly detailed drum programming. Here, the producer can be heard fusing together both light and dark elements of club music, as his tracks are often led by sun-kissed chords and peppered with bright vocal snippets that rest atop deep, burrowing rhythms.
Closed out by an “Archie Pelago Overdub” version of Caswell’s “Buyerside” track, the full Good to See You/To Be Continued EP can be streamed below before it sees an official release via Archie Pelago Music on November 3.
Directly following yesterday’s new mix, Jacques Greene has announced he’ll return to LuckyMe next month with the After Life After Party EP. Along with news of the release—which includes two original cuts plus remixes from Sei A and Suicideyear—Greene has also premiered a video for EP cut “1 4 ME.” As The Fader reports, the five-minute video was directed by Melissa Matos of Montreal design collective Trusst, and explores consumer fetishism via the YouTube trend of “Nike TN dipping,” wherein sneaker fanatics reportedly “destroy the thing they love most” (examples of that here).
“These tracks were born out of experimenting with a bit of self-imposed restraints,” Greene tells The Fader. “Afterlife was a particular sound palette I wanted to stick to and see what would come of it. 1 4 Me was trying to challenge myself to keep an arrangement dead simple. They came out of a period that was actually really prolific for me and I hope to share more soon, but these two stuck together with a playful spirit. Some fun for the end of summer, as we tread into winter.”
LuckyMe will deliver After Life After Party on November 11. Before then, the video for “1 4 Me” can be watched below, where we’ve also included the EP’s tracklist.
1. After Life, After Party 2. 1 4 Me 3. After Life, After Party (Suicideyear Remix) 4. After Life, After Party (Sei A Remix)
Instrumental grime figurehead Slackk (a.k.a. Paul Lynch) has shared a collection of “new/old” tracks as a name-your-price download. As reported by FACT earlier today, Loose Ends assembles 11 unreleased cuts from the UK producer (who co-runs London’s oft-referenced clubnight, Boxed), including material produced under his R&B-leaning Prince Lazio alias. The collection can be downloaded for whatever amount one deems fit here via Bandcamp, and its full tracklist and artwork can be found below.
1. Spanish Holiday When You Were Little 2. Jagged 3. Slow Roast 4. Prince Lazio- Drunk Text 5. Stealth 6. Crow Hill 7. Grapefruit 8. Prince Lazio- Breakfast In Bed 9. Prince Lazio- Suddenly Dub 10. Daughter- Smother (Slackk Remix) 11. Prince Lazio- Forever Gone
French bar/club/label/DJ and production crew La Dame Noir recently issued the 13-track The Long Long Summer compilation, a collection of modern disco cuts from a sampling of the Marseille label’s closest affiliates and like-minded cohorts. Amongst the tracklist could be found “Down & Out in Paris and Manchester,” a particularly spacey outing from, naturally, Manchester’s Pulp Disco & The Outcasts; here the outfit has offered up its “Love Story Mix” of the track for free download. An extended jaunt through slow-motion disco, the production is peppered with miniature sonic details—light guitar strums, subtly tweaked synths, and pensive percussion hits among them—that fill the space between the effort’s steady four-on-the-floor and its lush bassline, all of which comes topped off by a few choice tidbits of airy vocals.
In the rapidly evolving world of electronic music, it’s all but impossible to keep track of every new artist, label, party, and genre. At the same time, certain names will inevitably pop up again and again at the XLR8R office, some of which we’ve only given passing mention to on the site. In an effort to get our readers up to speed with some of the things—both new and old—that we’ve been digging lately, we recently launched a new feature series called ‘Get Familiar,’ which aims to shine a spotlight on subjects we think are worthy of a little more attention.
Italy’s Gang Of Ducks is difficult to pin down in pretty much all regards. More of a loose artistic collective with a record-releasing arm than a straightforward label, the group revels in anonymity (its emails are signed as simply being from “one of the ducks”), has no firm geographical base, and decorates its release covers with mysterious, hand-drawn symbols.
Having issued the murky, hip-hop-based work of Haf Haf, the glistening analog electronics of My Panda Shall Fly, the squalling abstract noise of Sudden Infant, and the crystalline synth excursions of One Circle, the collective also seems to have no definable musical policy. Of course, this has only added to the intrigue, and helps explain why Gang of Ducks is one of the most interesting new imprints to appear in the last year or two.
“We’re a constantly migrating group, never in the same place,” is what one member offers when asked about the collective’s name, but it could just as easily be a summation of its overarching ethos (a further explanation adds, “and we’re always squawking,” in case things were in danger of getting too earnest). “Physically we work between Berlin and Turin,” they continue, “but we like to think of ourselves as an entity mainly operating through the web, in order to keep away from the aesthetics always linked to specific places.”
From those strange record covers to its evocatively grainy music videos, it’s clear that aesthetics are a central concern for Gang of Ducks. The collective confirms that its ranks include artists who are “not only music producers, but people who share great personalities and high artistic awareness in other fields, from video-making to performance to fashion to many other artistic forms.”
With just eight releases (two albums and six EPs) under its belt to date, Gang of Ducks is still very much a developing concern. However, unlike some other similarly shadowy, obtuse operations, there seems to be a fully formed, if somewhat tricky to define, philosophy underpinning the collective’s unpredictable activities. “HandmadeCyberSpiritualPunkSci-Lo-Fi” is the description the group sent along, which is as close as anyone’s likely to get for now. There’s an obvious quirkiness to Gang of Ducks, but there also seems to be a well-planned canniness underneath it all, not to mention a keen ear for very interesting, hard-to-categorize music.
As for the immediate future, two more EPs are planned for 2014: one from Budapest-based Lobster Theremin/Opal Tapes alum S Olbricht, and the other from Italian band DYD, formerly known as DID, who will be operating “under a new name and with a new concept.” Also on the immediate horizon is a homecoming showcase event at this year’s Club to Club festival in Turin, while 2015 will see new releases from established label names Haf Haf and Vaghe Stelle alongside efforts from what the collective describes as other “veterans of the scene and debuting artists.”
“We’ll also be launching a new GOD-zine,” the group concludes, “which we don’t know the name of yet. Fiercely auto-produced issues, each one curated by artists we collaborate with.” As with most things Gang Of Ducks-related, we’ll need to wait and see exactly what this abstract idea ends up meaning, but based on the collective’s behavior to date, it probably won’t lack a curveball or two.
