In its original form, Pixelord‘s “Oasis” production leads off the Russian producer’s recent Polygon Fane EP for Infinite Machine with a bit of back-and-forth, the tune switching off from being led by sprightly melodies to sections which dip down benath low-knocking sub-bass. On his remix, budding Finnish talent Recue fuses together the track’s alternating parts, resulting in a rework that is slightly more brooding as it adds new layers of rattling percussion and laser-sharp synths which appear just slightly burnt at their edges. Ending with a barrage of stumbling drum patterns which become absorbed by a swell of buzzing chords, Recue’s rework is a markedly more dramatic affair than Pixelord’s own version of “Oasis,” but also one which puts a welcome new spin on the former XLR8R podcast contributor’s track.
Though certainly not a newcomer to the world of production, the forthcoming Out of Sync EP from NYC resident Jacques Renault is billed as the first “full EP” of his career, finding the artist delivering a collection of entirely original productions for the first time. Set to land next week via Let’s Play House, Renault’s upcoming four-track outing is now streaming in full exclusively on XLR8R.
On Out of Sync, Renault delivers the kind of vintage-streaked—but not overly nostalgic—house that the Let’s Play House imprint has focused on throughout much of its fast-growing catalog. Leading the effort is “I Like It,” a charging dancefloor tune which tweaks analog synths atop a thick bed of thumping kick drums and rolling snares. The following “Akron” cools things off a bit before Renault again lays into his synths on the hi-NRG-esque “Make Up” (which also serves as the EP’s longest effort, clocking in just past the minute mark), and eventually closes out the proceedings on a more breezy note with the jazzy, loose swung “M.A.N.”
Said to serve as a preview of sorts to Renault’s forthcoming debut long-player—which is expected to arrive somewhere down the road in 2014—Out of Sync can be streamed in full below before the EP sees an official vinyl release on October 27, with a digital release to follow on November 10.
Update: Our temporary exclusive stream of ‘Out of Sync’ has not expired. In its place, clips from the EP have been included below.
UK upstart Bruce has snagged a fair share of attention over the past few months, first with his debut 12″ for Livity Sound sub-label Dnous Ytivil, and shortly after with news of an upcoming EP for Hessle. While this latest three-track effort won’t see an official release until next week, closing cut “My Legs Wouldn’t Go Quick Enough” has been made available to steam. Premiering via Boiler Room Debuts, the abstracted techno excursion can be heard in full below before Bruce’s forthcoming (and as-yet-untitled) EP drops on October 27.
Back in August, Djedjotronic issued his Drum Program EP via the Boysnoize label, and now the seasoned DJ/producer is set to return to the imprint with Interstate 101, a “21-track salute to electro music.” Incorporating a number of his own productions as well as those from The Hacker, Atom TM, Maelstrom, and others, the forthcoming mix album is said to represent—according to Djedjotronic himself—”a road trip through wild electronic territories with a detour into the techno mountains.” Of the tracks included is the Berlin producer’s own “Traffic,” a full-bodied electro track which charges with a pulsing bassline that jumps just out ahead of the production’s snapping drums and regular waves of space-age synth swells. Out on October 27 (in both mixed and unmixed form), Interstate 101 can be previewed after the jump, where we’ve also included the compilation’s complete tracklist.
01. Djedjotronic – Interstate 02. Pip Williams – ASBO Youth 03. Jensen Interceptor – Escape The Underworld 04. Djedjotronic – Traffic 05. Maelstrom – Snow Dance 06. Atom TM – Ich Bin Meine Machine (Boys Noize Remix) 07. Djedjotronic – JunkBox 08. The Hacker – Polonium 210 09. Glass Figure – Triangle Sequence 10. Automat – DNG 11. Tessla286 – Magnetic Field (Hoshina Anniversary Remix) 12. Commuter – TS-19 13. Hoshina Anniversary – Blue 439 14. SCNTST – Water Rave 15. Nehuen – Non Verbal Thinking 16. Mikron – Medika Combine 17. Djedjotronic feat. Miss Kittin – Pleasure & Pain 18. CWS – Backpropagation 19. Defekt – Your Automatik 20. Noob – Sequences 21. Voiron – Bricobrute
Fans of Cooly G (a.k.a. Merissa Campbell) have come to expect certain things from her music at this point—sultry, rippling house, laced with a lot of dubby whispering of sweet nothings—and Wait ‘Til Night, her latest LP, still bears traces of her signature sound. However, the album’s title is no joke. One could swear that Campbell used to be more subtle. A few years ago, her scattered drums would form the backbone to a repeated “missing you,” or some commonplace phrase like that. It was possible to listen to her tracks during the daytime. The content on Wait ‘Til Night, however, sounds wildly out of place anytime before sunset, because the new record finds Campbell constantly pinpointing a very specific eroticism.
Cooly G’s rhythms are as slinky as ever on Wait ‘Til Night, but her sound continues to evolve away from the house motifs on which she first made her name. Soft, drifting Rhodes chords have been replaced with a more digitized, almost new age palette, while the drums, broken as they are, resemble slow R&B production more than anything that could conceivably be mixed into an uptempo set. It’s pretty obvious that isn’t Campbell’s point here anyway—Wait ‘Til Night is something close to an R&B album—but the shift is worth noting. Adding to the effect is the fact that the LP’s track lengths now hover around a radio-friendly three-and-a-half minutes; moreover, Campbell’s lyrics are newly upfront, less suggestions now than demands.
The main danger of writing a “sex record” is that mileage varies given how skilled the narrator is at being sexy. Less is usually more, which is probably how Campbell convinced herself that she could write these tracks in the first place—after all, her earlier work deftly balanced ethereal, romantic vocality with a tough, complex pulse, offering plenty of sex appeal without being over the top. Wait ‘Til Night is so horny, however, that its songs run the risk of blurring together, as Campbell’s lyrics do little to distinguish one track from the next. A sample list: “Got me so deep/you’ve got me weak/I can’t sleep ’cause of you boy,” “do it all day long with you,” “you smelled so good,” “penetrate that,” “touch my body.” Each of the album’s 12 tracks contains at least a few lines in this vein. That said, as stock “sexy” as these lyrics are, Campbell does accentuate them with enough groans and whispers to prevent things from sounding too robotic. Ultimately, though, Wait ‘Til Night remains a tough proposition. Turned down low enough, as dusk falls or late at night, its lustfulness does feel more natural. Cooly G is still present here, but maybe she’s a bit too present to fully elicit the kind of seduction she’s singing about.
Sage Caswell has revealed a new video for “Amber Gloss/Making Out,” one of three original tracks set to appear on his upcoming EP for Brooklyn trio Archie Pelago‘s eponymous imprint. In making the seven-minute short, the LA-based house producer—who we recently profiled as part of our Bubblin’ Up series—partnered with 3-D mapper Brian Randall to create a polychromatic animation. Before Sage Caswell’s Good to See You/To Be Continued EP lands on November 3, the video for “Amber Gloss/Making Out” (which premiered yesterday on FACT) can be watched below.
Earlier this year, the world was introduced to Matom, a collaborative project from Thomas Gandey and Radio Slave (a.k.a. Matt Edwards). The pair started its run in grand fashion, issuing an LP, ‘Love Mistakes,’ via Carl Craig’s Planet E label. (Originally released on vinyl over the summer, the record was given a wider release on CD and digital formats last month.) Clearly created by veteran artists who know their way around the studio, ‘Love Mistakes’ is packed with lengthy explorations that often only lightly reference house while incorporating elements of jazz, new age, and a myriad of smoothly introspective sounds. Given that so much knowledge went into the record, we figured its creators might be willing to share a bit of it with the XLR8R audience, and enlisted Gandey to spell out a few of the artistic and production philosophies that he and Edwards have relied upon over the years.
Finding the ultimate collaboration
They say 10,000 hours can make you an expert… and Matt and I have definitely each put that time in. The other day, Matt shared a photo of his ‘time in the air’ whilst on tour over the last few years, which [totaled] some two months alone on one airline. Matt is a label boss, artist, designer, producer, DJ, and leader in the electronic scene. I don’t fawn over people, but there are few who have earned their stripes in such a majestic way. I also multitask and wear many hats. (You have to be insanely driven in this business to keep going and [stay] at the top of the game.) My skills as a professional musician, producer, DJ, and vocalist have seen me working with people like David Byrne and Jeff Wayne along the way. I enjoy working with other people as much as I enjoy working alone in my studio, but you have to be personable and willing to meet in the middle to collaborate. It’s a lesson in being gracious. Working with Matt is always refreshing, as we think differently but understand each other. We have a mutual admiration for each other’s talents and we’ve worked to enhance and support each other’s skills. Since we first met in Brighton and hung out in my studio a few hundred years ago, we have always worked together in one way or another and we finally got the chance to create our first album under the name Matom. We have started something with longevity where egos are left at the door.
Producing and practicing your craft
We both write ideas fast, and I always capture my first take, as it’s often ‘the one.’ I tend to work totally live on the arrangement page. It’s like painting a canvas, and I find it saves time and creates something unique in the moment; [moreover ,] it’s committed to the cut. Matt can create a groove so quickly that I have to stop him before it morphs seamlessly into another track that’s equally as good; likewise, Matt doesn’t want to sit there for 30 minutes whilst I noodle away on keyboards channeling Chick Corea. If an idea is not working, we scrap it and move on without letting that interrupt the flow. Time is precious, but we still managed to sketch some 40 ideas to get down to the last 10 tracks that made the album. There’s always a new groove to be born and something else that needs to be finished.
A lot of people ask me about finishing tracks (as they have trouble finishing), so I offer this advice. Make the arrangement as early as you can with a defined end and draw a line under the track when it sounds great. Matt has his tips and tricks and secrets and I have mine, but everybody needs a trick in this world. Creating music is a learned craft that gets better until you get lazy with it. How many bands turn into shadows of themselves when they give up and seem to become a cover band of themselves? I see it happen everywhere. You need the spark to inspire you. Matt says to me, ‘You have to be in it to win it.’ It’s something that rings true. If you don’t love it, you won’t succeed long term. We have both been full-time musicians for well over a decade.
There is certainly a science to producing, but when you start to [realize] that the boundaries are limitless, you can get lost in your own mire. We don’t spend much time mixing and engineering, as we have the experience and ears from making hundreds of records and hearing them on various quality club systems to know what sounds right. So we mix as we go on the fly, with a little bit of engineering on the back end of a session and a modicum of plug-ins. You have to know your speakers inside out to do this. We both work quietly to give our ears the best chance for something to sound great outside of the studio, briefly stopping to turn it up and check that everything is there. We don’t enter any loudness wars, as dynamics are as important as a track itself. Too much music is so saturated and overcompressed; it sounds like garbage and should be treated as such. Make something beautiful and timeless, something that you will be proud of in 10 years. We are artists, not a factory line, so be proud of your artistry and don’t follow the pack.
Love Mistakes
Listen
When we made Love Mistakes, Matt played me a lot of new age music, Vangelis, Manuel Gottsching, Klaus Schulze, Wally Badarou, movie soundtracks like Babel and Bladerunner, and we took these as inspiration for the sessions. The incredible music from all over the world is within our grasp; the talent is exceptional and the performers are exquisite. Every day, I am humbled by the skill set of a master musician or virtuoso when I see them perform or stumble across something on the internet. Matt has a phenomenal music collection and every time I am in Berlin, we spend a lot of our time just listening to music, with the ‘listen to’ pile growing ever taller. Most cities Matt goes to, he will find a record store on some corner and search its dusty racks for treasure; when he finds it, he brings it back to Berlin. On my last trip to Buenos Aires, I found a record store that had the most incredible selection of Argentinian psychedelia. I didn’t even know that existed. The other day, Matt sent me a video of Cory Henry playing gospel organ that I can’t stop watching. Danny from Psychemagik sent me some Serbian sleaze-funk on Monday, my girlfriend sends me amazing indie electronica music all the time that I pinch for certain DJ sets, and likewise I send my finds to those I love. I will never find enough music and most of it was already written well before the 1980s reared its colorful head.
Use and record real things
We both captured a lot of field recordings during the making of Love Mistakes: a waterfall in Shibuya, ripened corn fields rustling in France, cicadas in Ibiza at sunset, the U-Bahn in Berlin pulling into the station with that funny phasing noise it does, people enjoying an afternoon in a park during the summer. These ambiences create soundscapes that add so much to a recording. We also used a lot of hardware; to feel and touch something that responds with no latency and gets creative in your hands is key to me. I like the element of chance to create a new sound. It takes me a day to set up my studio to get to the point where I can record a song live in one take, but [after it’s done,] I have simultaneously written and produced something that’s finished and I could go out tomorrow and play live. For Matom, [we used] the Moog voyager, an 808, Nord Leads, hand drums, Fender Rhodes, and a collection of world percussion I’ve amassed from my tours, including a bean pod, seed cases picked up from the the ground, and temple bells and claves from Asia. You can also buy all sorts of amazing rack hardware gear now for very little money. Sound quality hasn’t gotten better in the last 30 years. It’s diminished with digital in-the-box and soon, rack gear will be like analog synths—super collector items that are out of reach for most budgets. I remember buying my Roland SH-101 for £75 and a TB-303 for £200, which I thought was expensive at the time.
Also, I like to use other musicians; for the Matom album, I got a talented guitarist, Paul Sandrone, to play on the sessions. He added so much in a four-hour session and made the tracks sparkle.
Passion
Matom is a passion for us. We’ve worked at this for three years, taking our time, both of us juggling busy schedules, but always coming together. In Bordeaux, we would sit down at my place in in the Southwest of France, eat well, and get into a studio session in our own time. In Berlin, we would go to a concert or an exhibition and afterwards, inspired, we would venture into the studio to sketch some ideas. We have also played various live shows as Matom, [including performances at] the Kantine at Berghain, the Miami Winter Music Conference, and Hansa Studios in Berlin. Live shows take extra focus and a steady nerve to hold it all together; for our next show in Stockholm with the Radiophonic Workshop, we are going a night early to prepare and we’ll be putting in a week of rehearsals beforehand.
Our passion for the experimental comes with maturity in the scene. Before we started this album, we had worked together on some downtempo projects, like when I played keyboards for Matt’s Quiet Village project with Joel Martin. Downtempo and ambient invokes a spiritual lightness of touch when you create it. Like minimal, it gives your head space to think about the space between the notes and the absence of heavy formulaic drums taking up all the frequencies.
I know that tomorrow I will find a new piece of music and be inspired by it. I have tour dates in a new territory next weekend, and Matt’s flying from Australia to Santiago as I write this. However, when we stop traveling, we are [just as happy] in our studios with a blank canvas open. What shall I create today? Shall we start the next Matom Album?
Last month, Dave Huismans shared news of an impending full-length under his 2562 alias, which would break a two-year streak of leftfield techno excursions as A Made Up Sound. Just days before The New Today arrives via the Dutch producer’s own When in Doubt label, the full album has been made available to stream. First presented as a live audiovisual performance at last week’s Amsterdam Dance Event, The New Today reportedly takes its inspiration from “early European synth experiments, new age tapes, musique concrète, krautrock, post-punk, obscure electro-pop, and other largely forgotten and out-of-print music,” and can be heard here courtesy of Resident Advisor.
From the sound of “Snake Snake,” Spanish beatmaker Lost Twin is taking no prisoners on The Mist, his upcoming LP for the fledgling Squaring the Circle imprint. An effort that seems to come together as quickly as it is gone, the two-plus-minute production is built solid, its clutch of disparate samples—repitched harp strums, foggy vocals, and a never-ending cycle of electronic bubbles can be heard throughout—gelling together atop the track’s loose-knocking kicks and snares. Further enhanced by a slippery bassline and ever-increasing synth layers, “Snake Snake” serves an an intriguing preview to The Mist, which will land in vinyl form on November 3, with a digital release slated to follow a week after. In the meantime, “Snake Snake” can be grabbed below while the rest of Lost Twin’s upcoming album can be previewed after the jump.
A1. Conundrum A2. Snake Snake A3. Ego Hunter (feat. Nimio) A4. Acuario De Plantas B1 The Ties B2 Gamelan B3 The Inmost Light B4 Coda (feat. Van Delay)
Longstanding German duo Booka Shade has shared details of a new EP, which will see release via Embassy One/Blaufield next month. Producers Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier have been steadily turning out material for the imprint over the past two years, following a lengthy period of close affiliation with the Berlin-based Get Physical label. This latest effort—entitled Line of Fire—follows from a pair of collaborative EPs released earlier this year, plus a remix collection built around the single “Love Drug” that featured Maya Jane Coles, among others.
Line of Fire arrives at Beatport on November 10, with an iTunes release to follow on December 5. Until then, the premiere of tech-house closing cut “Back to Monza” can be heard in full below, where we’ve also posted the upcoming EP’s tracklist and a fresh batch of Booka Shade tour dates in Europe and the US.
1. Line of Fire – Booka’s Club Mix 2. Right on Track 3. Back to Monza
October 11: Sankeys – Manchester, UK (DJ) October 12: La Rocca, Lier, Belgium (DJ) October 18: Le Cadran, Liege, Belgium (DJ) October 24: Electric Brixton, London, UK October 25: T13, Belfast, Ireland October 26: Samhain Festival, Wiclow, Ireland October 30: The Mid, Chicago, USA (DJ) October 31: Voodoo Festival, New Orleans, USA (DJ)
November 1: El Paso, Texas, USA (DJ) November 2: Whittier Narrows Recreation Park, (HARD Day Of The Dead), LA, USA (DJ) November 3: The Mayan Theater, Los Angeles, USA (DJ) November 6: Stage 48, New York, USA November 7: Music Hall of Williamsburg, New York (BEMF)
