Delroy Edwards has shared another batch of exclusive remixes, edits, and instrumentals for free download via his own L.A. Club Resource label. Slowed Down Funk Vol. III: Pure Evil arrives as the third and so-called “Final Chapter” in Edwards’ mixtape trilogy, following previous installments released in May and August. This latest 20-track collection from the L.I.E.S. fixture—who has also been behind tapes for Reel Torque and Teenage Tapes in the past year—can be previewed below, and all three volumes have been made available to download here. As always, limited-edition cassettes are also on offer over at Gene’s Liquor.
Bonobo has revealed plans to return to longtime label home Ninja Tune with the three-track Flashlight EP before the year is through. The forthcoming record is said to find Bonobo “getting back to what he does best…[with his] hunger for producing new music [being] potently evident” on the new outing.
Ahead of Flashlight‘s release on December 1, Bonobo has shared the effort’s title track, a characteristically hi-fi excursion filled with airy melodies, wistful synths, and bouncy guitar strums. The tune can be heard in full below where the record’s complete tracklist and Bonobo’s upcoming North American tour dates have also been included. (In addition, Shazam users can apparently download “Flashlight” for free by, well, Shazaming the track on their mobile devices.)
01 Flashlight 02 Pelican 03 Return to Air
October 15 Aspen, CO @ Belly Up October 16 Boulder, CO @ Fox Theatre October 17 Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre October 18 Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge October 20 Vancouver, BC @ Celebrities Nightclub October 21 Seattle, WA @ Neumos October 22 Portland, OR @ Branx October 23 San Francisco, CA @ 1015 Folsom October 24 San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom October 25 Los Angeles CA @ KCRW Masquerade Ball (Park Plaza) October 26 San Diego CA @ House Of Blues
Recent Berlin transplant (by way of San Francisco) Avalon Emerson has let loose a full stream of her upcoming EP for the fledgling Spring Theory label, Let Me Love & Steal. The four-track effort will serve as Emerson’s second appearance on Spring Theory, through which she also released her Church of SoMa EP, serving as the label’s inaugural outing earlier this year.
On Let Me Love & Steal, Emerson adds an extra sonic weight to her sample-based constructions, with the record’s title track burrowing beneath thick kicks and heavy chord stabs while “Honest Gangster” places a low-swung shuffle beneath stacked layers of hard-edged synth tones (the “Arpapella” version is a nice addition too). Officially out on October 20, Avalon Emerson’s forthcoming Let Me Love & Steal EP is streaming in full below.
The last time we heard from Wolfey, the Vancouver-based producer was about to issue a meditative self-titled EP for the Hybridity imprint. Now, the burgeoning artist is set to reemerge with a new EP for Montreal’s ASL Singles Club label, an outpost which has quietly assembled a noteworthy catalog with releases already this year from Prison Garde, Heartbeat(s), and Sleepyhead. Wolfey’s five-track Habit EP will soon bring a handful of raw house cuts to the fold, all of which are said to have been “recorded using a few pieces of hardware in live continuous takes.” One such effort is “Bittersweet,” Habit‘s closing cut which again finds Wolfey dealing with meditative vibes while utilizing a more hardware-rooted sound than what we’d previously heard from the Canadian producer. Before Wolfey’s new outing for ASL Singles Club lands on November 18, his recent mix for the label’s mix series is also available to stream and download after the jump.
Winter Sadness – Kool & The Gang [De-Lite] Papa Was A Rolling Stone – The Temptations [Motown] Inner City Blues – Grover Washington Jr. [Kudo] The Ghetto (El Barrio) – George Benson [Verve] Sun Palace – Rude Movements [Passion] Gladys Knight & The Pips – On And On [Buddah] Love Hangover – Diana Ross [Motown] Looking Forward To You – Jack J [Moodhut] Sunrise Market – LNRDCROY [Pacific Rhythm] Bittersweet – Wolfey [ASL Singles Club] Illusion – Tone Control [Tone Control Music] Keep On Movin’ – Soul II Soul [Virgin]
Set to arrive next week, Dauwd‘s second outing for Cologne institution Kompakt is now available to stream in full.
Following behind his Kindlinn EP for the label (which dropped in April of this year) and last year’s excellent Heat Division EP for Ghostly, the Saleh 12″ finds Dauwd again delivering a series of rich productions, each covered in thick layers of intertwining synths and infused with a healthy amount of low-end bump. Before Dauwd’s latest effort drops on October 20, the London producer’s new 12″ for Kompakt can be streamed in its entirety below.
Cherished Amsterdam club, art space, and restaurant Trouw was always planned to be a temporary endeavour, and, as we reported late last year, Trouw will finally close its doors on January 3, 2015. To mark the occasion, the people behind the club have announced the forthcoming release of a commemorative book looking back at Trouw’s six years of operations.
The Trouw Book will contain a wealth of exclusive pictures alongside interviews and anecdotes from Trouw favorites including Optimo and Gerd Janson, as well as resident DJs Tom Trago and Job Jobse. True collectors, meanwhile, will doubtless want to get their hands on The Trouw Box Set, which is limited to 250 units; it will include the book, plus a double-pack vinyl with tribute tracks by its residents, behind-the-scenes photos, an illustrated map of Trouw, and—get this—actual physical remains of the building. Both the book and the box set are scheduled for release in mid-December, and can be pre-ordered here.
Though this year has seen much of Submerse‘s focus placed on his own original productions (the UK artist issued his debut LP, Slow Waves, via Project: Mooncircle back in July), the recent XLR8R podcast contributor has clearly not lost any of his abilities as a remixer in the process. Here, Submerse is tasked with reworking former US, now Japan-based beatmaker Repeat Pattern‘s “Half of Half,” a track which originally appeared on his Counting Backwards EP for Tokyo’s Moph label. As to be expected, in Submerse’s hands the tune is shaped into a hazy mass of textured hip-hop, one lined with sparkling bell samples and kept steady by a spare-but-effective series of deep kicks, sharp snares, and detailed bits of percussion.
In the wake of his fascinating fourth album, August’s In the Wild, New York producer Drew Lustman (a.k.a. FaltyDL) has announced a new EP for Ninja Tune. Named ///III\\, the record includes five new tracks, plus remixes from ?–Ziq, Brrd, and E+E and seems to find Lustman operating with the same sort of broad sound palette that characterized In the Wild. ///III\\ is scheduled for a November 25 release, but before then, a stream of EP track “Do Me (Bruk Mix)” can be found below, along with a full tracklist.
1. Greater Antilles VIP 2. Rolling (?-Ziq Remix) 3. Frontin (Brrd Remix) 4. Do Me (Bruk Mix) 5. Grief (E+E Remix) 6. GA 2 Tape outcome.z130583 7. M ///III\\ 8. P ///III\\
All week long, XLR8R is presenting its annual focus on Labels We Love. Click here to check out the rest of the series.
Without question, 2014 has been a year of extreme ups and downs for Hyperdub, the London-based label headed up by Kode9 (a.k.a. Steve Goodman). On the one hand, the crew has tragically lost two of its most beloved members, footwork pioneer DJ Rashad and innovative MC The Spaceape. At the same time, Hyperdub has spent the bulk of the year celebrating its 10th anniversary, both with a lengthy run of label nights around the globe and an extensive four-part compilation series. Furthermore, the imprint’s futuristic vision, which disregards traditional notions of genre while uniting seemingly disparate strains of bass-heavy soundsystem music from both sides of the Atlantic, has effectively become one of the most influential forces in the electronic sphere. As such, selecting Hyperdub for this year’s Labels We Love was an easy choice to make. We asked Kode9 to help us look back on his label’s legacy by selecting 10 tracks from the Hyperdub catalog—one from each year of its decade-long run—and explaining why they stick out in his memory.
2004 Kode9 & The Spaceape “Sine of the Dub”
A Sunday afternoon in 2002 or something like that. I’m sharing an apartment with Spaceape. We’re bored—I say, “Let’s make a track.” He’s never made music before or written lyrics. I ask him to pick one of his favorite tracks and we’ll do a cover. He dug out his copy of Prince’s Sign of the Times [and] re-versioned the lyrics in his best patois, which I then pitched ’til the voice was pure gravel. I quickly laid down a simple bass pulse and a couple of samples thrown in delay and reverb and that was that. Quickest track we ever made.
2005 Burial “Broken Home”
I had been playing “South London Boroughs” and “Southern Comfort” in my sets since 2002, but really, this beauty was the track that made me want to release Burial’s music.
2006 Kode9 “9 Samurai”
Like with most sample-based tracks, this started with an earworm. I was humming that melody for months before I became conscious of where I’d heard it. I suppose what I had in mind with this track was a more funereal version of Method Man’s “Release ‘Yo Delf.”
2007 The Bug feat. Killa P & Flowdan “Skeng (Kode9 Remix)”
The original is probably the biggest anthem we ever released. The Bug and I spent a couple of weeks in Japan recording taxi drivers and schoolgirls saying the word “skeng” and that ended up as the intro to my remix, with Goth Trad saying “You don’t want to see me get evil” just before the drop.
2008 Samiyam “Return”
Definitely in my top five Hyperdub releases ever. I think I first heard this on a rooftop in Melbourne the day I met Flying Lotus for the first time. I love wavering pitches and generally everything slightly out of tune. I’d never heard a track that limped along in quite the way his drums do at that point. And those synths could even make a robot cry.
2009 Cooly G “Narst”
Easily my favorite Cooly track to DJ with—simple, hooky, and deadly. That grime cello.
2010 Kyle Hall “Kaychunk”
I always tend to prefer broken to linear techno—this track hits that nail directly on the head.
2011 Hype Williams “Bad Mind”
Sent a shiver down my spine first I heard this. Ice cold. There is something very “edge of the abyss” about the deadpan voice reading the poetry in this track and the contrast with the wavering backing track.
2012 Laurel Halo “Light and Space”
I had an out-of-body experience with this amazing track, and in fact, the whole Quarantine album on an amphetamine-charged flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg before the record came out. That’s my favorite time to listen to our releases—before I’ve got my head around something. It sounds at its freshest and there is a singular intimacy (in an era of networked overload) to listening to music which really only exists in a couple of locations and hasn’t yet been mastered and given that sheen.
2013 DJ Rashad “I Dont Give a Fuck”
This statement and track sums up the creative engine at the heart of footwork, which enables these guys to flip samples the ways they do. And when I saw Rashad pacing the streets of London in Ashes57’s video for the track, that just sealed my love for the tune. Those bleeps though—another icy classic.
2014 Fatima Al Qadiri “Shanghai Freeway”
I’ve been opening my sets with this track since I first heard it. I love those big brassy bass licks that Fatima uses and the contrast with the steel drums playing R&B melodies is incredible on a huge system.
Live at Robert Johnson has just announced that South African house perennial Alan Abrahams will be returning to the label with a new release from his well-loved Portable alias.
Abrahams most recently enchanted us back in March when he turned in a warm and wonderful XLR8R podcast, which, as we noted at the time, blended “tribal African grooves with the mechanics of Chicago house and the dark precision of German techno.”
Portable’s new single is called “Surrender,” and it mines delicate, ambient house territories, with the help of guest Lcio. The package also comes complete with dub and acapella versions, and is slated for release on November 17. Ahead of that, snippets from both the original and the dub versions can be heard in the player below.
