Last month, Bay Area-based producer/songwriter Chaz Bundick (a.k.a. Toro y Moi) announced plans to issue his debut LP as Les Sins later in the year via his newly launched Company label. Now, a video for the record’s lead single, “Bother,” has surfaced along with dates for Les Sins’ upcoming North American tour.
The clip for the jacking, funk-laced “Bother” follows the adventures of an inflatable tube man (the kind you see outside many a car dealership and outlet mall) as it waves back and forth in front of barns, pools, houses, behind bushes, on the edges of cliffs, and even uses its long reach to block a basketball hoop. The video for Les Sins’ latest single can be watched below, where the full list of his upcoming tour dates have also been included. Bundick’s debut LP as Les Sins, Michael, is slated to drop on November 2.
October 25 KCRW Masquerade Park Plaza Santa Monica, CA November 12 Fortune Sound Club Vancouver, BC November 13 1015 Folsom San Francisco, CA November 15 Q Nightclub Seattle, WA November 20 Verboten Brooklyn, NY November 21 Hoxton Toronto, ON November 22 Le Belmont Montreal, QC December 03 U Street Music Hall Washington, DC December 04 Bardot Miami Miami, FL December 05 Smart Bar Chicago, IL December 06 Vulcan Gas Company Austin, TX
Hailing from Switzerland, adventurous producer and visual artist Benjamin Kilchhofer (a.k.a. Timoka) is set to deliver his second outing for the fledgling Holger imprint later this month. Serving as our first taste is “Borogoves,” a collage-like track that threads together off-kilter bell melodies, reversed chords, and a series of unconventional vocal chops, underneath which clunking percussion and a steady kick help give the track its rhythmic cohesion. “Borogoves” will be joined by 10 other such electronic assemblages on September 22 when Timoka’s Tulgey mini-LP drops via Holger, a label for which Kilchhofer also (together with type designer Reymund Schröder) serves as the resident cover designer. In the meantime, a grainy preview video for Timoka’s upcoming record can be watched after the jump.
Barnt has announced that he will release his debut full-length later this year via Magazine, the self-described conceptual imprint he co-heads alongside Crato and Jens-Uwe Beyer. The Cologne-based DJ/producer’s upcoming effort, Magazine 13 (artwork above), follows from recent 12″s for Cómeme and Mule Musiq, and a remix of C.P.I. for John Talabot’s Hivern Discs label. (As Resident Advisor reports, another new 12″ entitled Chapell is also in the works for Joy Orbison and Will Bankhead’s Hinge Finger outpost.)
Magazine 13 arrives on November 24 in double-LP, CD, and digital formats, and the album’s full tracklist is on view below. Dates for a European album tour, which launches in Lisbon and finds Barnt logging appearances at Fabric in London, Trouw in Amsterdam, and Panorama Bar in Berlin, have also been included below.
1. Wiggett: So we know that hexog**** 2. 22:25 3. Blame A Hill 4. Cherry Red 5. 0221 51025XX 6. How do I know what solutions x form? 7. 1/1 8. All the alts I’mm holding are hurting.
October 24 Lux – Lisbon October 25 Movement Festival – Turin 01.11 Rex Club – Paris November 07 Tunnel – Milan November 14 Fabric – London November 15 Trouw – Amsterdam November 21 Nitsa – Barcelona November 22 Robert Johnson – Offenbach December 05 Gewölbe – Cologne December 06 Trans Musicales – Rennes December 13 Golden Pudel – Hamburg December 20 Charles Bronson – Halle December 27 Panorama Bar – Berlin
A certain degree of bluntness can be expected from a guy with an artist name like Gut Nose. Hailing from Queens, New York, Andrew Vagabundo makes a variation on what Actress and Moiré have called “b-boy techno,” or what Ron Morelli has called “graffiti techno,” a corroded brand of beat music that sits somewhere between hip-hop and dance music. It’s a cliché about New York, but Vagabundo’s productions do have that city saturation—tough and caked in grit, they evoke images of rats, illicit activity, piss-stained sidewalks, and violence. As XLR8R spoke to him over a slightly shoddy Skype connection, the sound from the streets was palpable—sirens, background commotion, and clips of conversations happening in the street suffused our interview. At one point, he paused mid-sentence to remark, “Hear those sounds!” None of that is especially seedy, but Vagabundo frequently manages to channel this ordinary New York noise into something crazier and more menacing.
Gut Nose (in some iteration) began on Long Island in 2000. Vagabundo’s father bought him a computer, and the sequencing program Orion Pro “appeared in front of his eyes.” He soon found the computer wasn’t “tactile” enough for him, however, and so he purchased a used MPC1000 a year or so later. (He eventually got rid of that particular computer in 2002, though he admits that a computer is “essential for doing multi-tracks, adding VSTs, and EQing.”) The MPC remains his “central hub,” even as he’s collected a table full of hardware in the meantime. The machine, so revered by hip-hop producers in particular, has clearly informed his process; Vagabundo has even worked with local MCs before, but says nothing too impressive has really panned out so far. Still, he says, “I hope I can do something in the future with a vocalist—it doesn’t have to be a rapper, it could be a choir singer or whoever. As long as the vibe is there, that’s what I’m looking for above all else.” Speaking on the Wu-Tang Clan and other East Coast hip-hop (Mobb Deep, Company Flow, and German producer Kareem’s hip-hop tracks are also suitable reference points), Vagabundo says, “The way they make their beats is they go dig in the crates for sounds, sample those sounds, and put a collage together. I always wanted to do that, so I found out how, and then just continued on. It’s like sculpting, sculpting the blade, making it sharp. You start with loops and whatever you know how to do, improve your muscle until you’re pretty strong, and then you say, ‘Oh, I want to push this bar a little bit higher.'”
Over time, Vagabundo has “strengthened” enough to bring Gut Nose into the live setting, using the same set-up he has at home. Given his increasingly frequent appearances in the live arena, he’s even been considering a move to Brooklyn to be closer to the venues he often plays. However, not everything from his studio has made it to the club. Vagabundo reveals that his tracks’ “fatness” comes from a 1980s mixer, one which is so cumbersome that he can’t bring it out into the world. This is probably why his records, including Filthy City, his new album for Styles Upon Styles, have their specific crust, and why Vagabundo is unique from the hordes of live jam dance producers operating today. It’s not that he’s using drastically different gear—just a different lens. Like many of his contemporaries, he employs an Elektron Octatrack, which allows him to efficiently blur his MPC-constructed segments together and give them “a new, completely different sound.”
Filthy City presents two sides of the same grimy coin—one hip-hop and beats-based (“Filthy City”), the other an uptempo set of jittery dance pieces that comes across like an unhinged take on the radio mix show format (“Filthnoid Mixx”). “I planned it to be like, tracks run into each other,” he explains, “like tracks either slam into each other or just evolve into each other, a natural progression into the next one, and I want to do a techno version of that.” The LP represents a very New York environment, but Vagabundo wants to eventually “get a piece of land somewhere, put a trailer on it, and make beats all day.” Yet even as he dreams of escaping, it’s impossible to deny the city’s role in his career. Out of a job after Hurricane Sandy demolished the building he was working in, Vagabundo holed himself up to record a cassette, eaT biskiT. After sending it to a few blogs, he caught the attention of the Styles Upon Styles label, with which he plans to continue working. “It’s all like a chain reaction,” he says. “They say everything in the world, even the little things, happens for a reason. If Hurricane Sandy didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have made that tape. Wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”
Following news that he had signed to Rough Trade earlier this year, Dean Blunt has shared further details of his second solo studio album, Black Metal. Set to arrive on November 4, the release follows from the London and Atlanta-based artist’s debut full-length for Hippos in Tanks, The Redeemer (which dropped in spring of last year), as well as a clutch of material produced with Inga Copeland as Hype Williams. In anticipation of this latest effort, LP cut “50 CENT” has been made available to stream below, where the full tracklist for Black Metal and Blunt’s forthcoming European tour dates can also be found.
1. LUSH 2. 50 CENT 3. BLOW 4. 100 5. HEAVY 6. MOLLY & AQUAFINA 7. FOREVER 8. X 9. PUNK 10. COUNTRY 11. HUSH 12. MERSH 13. GRADE
September 28 – Bristol, UK @ Off The Page October 3 – Barreiro, PT @ Out.Fest October 4 – Madrid, ES @ Villamanuela Festival October 18 – Wroclaw, PL @ Avant Art Festival November 13 – London, UK @ Electrowerkz November 21 – Utrecht, NL @ Le Guess Who? Festival November 22 – Bern, CH @ Saint Ghetto Festival November 23 – Kortrijk, BE @ Sonic City December 7 Olomouc, CZ @ Paf
Danny Daze (a.k.a. Daniel Gomez) has been releasing records since the late ’00s, but during the past year, the Miami producer has taken his craft to another level. Recent months have seen him release music via Jimmy Edgar’s Ultramajic label and Maceo Plex’s Ellum Audio imprint, and just last week, Gomez officially joined the esteemed ranks of Kompakt, serving up the label’s latest Speicher 12″. Simply put, Danny Daze has been busy, especially considering that he’s frequently DJing around the globe and also has a new label of his own in the works. Given that, we weren’t sure if he’d be able to contribute to the XLR8R podcast series, but he somehow found the time to assemble this exclusive mix.
Growing up in South Florida, Gomez has always been inspired by electro, but over the years, he’s also developed an impeccable ear for Detroit techno and machine-driven house. All of these sounds make an appearance on his podcast, which clocks in at more than 70 minutes in length. There’s a classic sensibility to the proceedings, as a number of vintage Motor City cuts have been included in the mix; at the same time, Gomez ensures that things never sound stale by periodically changing up the mood. One moment, he’ll be playing hard-charging, late-night techno, and just a few minutes later, he’ll be serving up an engrossingly trippy piece of dancefloor introspection. That he can do this without losing any sense of cohesiveness is a testament to Gomez’s skill as a DJ, not to mention another reason that this particular podcast is well worth a listen.
01 Ectomorph “The Haunting” (Interdimensional Transmissions) 02 Cliff Lothar “Slow Fuse Burner” 03 The Friend “Re-wet (feat. Shady P)” (Breed) 04 Bok Bok & Tom Trago “Need This (12″ Dub)” (Night Voyage) 05 Juan Atkins & Moritz von Oswald “Mars Garden” (Tresor) 06 Derek Plaslaiko & BMG “The True Story of a Detroit Groove” (Interdimensional Transmissions) 07 Legowelt “Experiential Awakening” (Creme Organization) 08 Danny Daze “Freeze (Unreleased Frozen Mix)” (Kompakt Extra) 09 214 “Omni” (OmniDisc) 10 Danny Daze “Silicon (Ambivalent Remix)” (Ultramajic) 11 Unknown “Lick” (white) 12 Barnt “Under His Name but Also as Sir” (Hinge Finger) 13 Danny Daze & Deroboter “Drowning” (OmniDisc) 14 Martyn “Love of Pleasure (feat. copeland)” (Ninja Tune)Download MP3Download M4A (iTunes enhanced)Subscribe to Podcast (RSS) XLR8R_Podcast_Danny_Daze_2014_09_09
Today sees Andras Fox debut on the Mexican Summer label with his five-track Vibrate on Silent EP. To mark the occasion, the Melbourne-based producer has passed along a new video for EP cut “Pontoon.”
Shot in a grainy fashion reminiscent of decades-old home movies, Fox’s video follows the young talent as he goes through a series of bizarre adventures—at first simply noodling on a MS-20 in the middle of an office complex, before being chased down by a few inept foes, and eventually somehow ending up in the middle of the desert. To top it all off, the clip also features iPhones, keyboards, saxophones, and other instruments shooting off lasers. In the end, the kitschy video is just as disarmingly charming as Fox’s breezy “Pontoon” production which connects the dots between Casio-based electronic pop and G-funk-style beatwork. Fox’s full video for “Pontoon” is premiering below.
“Freed” is the cloudy closing cut from Barcelona producer Mans O‘s new EP, which landed yesterday via the Disboot label (also based in Barcelona). One of four tracks to appear on the Macaya EP, “Freed” begins with a wash of tremolo synths, which graciously give way to an 8-bit bassline and blip-like percussion. From there, the beat coalesces into an opaque affair, its lush pads blending with wordless vocal chants and miniature rhythmic patterns that seem be absorbed by FX around almost every corner. While “Freed” can be download for free below, the rest of Mans O’s new Macaya EP can be previewed after the jump.
Scuba has revealed the closing installment of his Phenix EP trilogy, which, according to the Hotflush boss, explores a moodier, more atmospheric approach to dance music. In keeping with traditional “beginning-middle-end storytelling,” the Berlin-based producer’s forthcoming release follows from the series’ inaugural issue and subsequent Phenix 2 EP, which dropped over the summer. Phenix 3 will reportedly feature everything from exacting techno pulses to astral synths when it arrives via Hotflush on September 22, and both EP clips and a tracklist are on offer below.
Glasgow-based producer Gary Caruth (a.k.a Sad City) has revealed the details of his next release—a return to London record store Phonica’s Special Editions imprint. Set to appear on vinyl in late October, “Introduction to Lisboa” b/w “Sloe” is composed of field recordings made in and around Lisbon, with Caruth going on to explain that he “wanted the music and field recordings to meld at times, to obscure what was conventionally the musical element and what were field recordings, blurring the line between found sound and composition in the creation of a whole other.”
No clips are available to preview as of yet, but the technicolor artwork by London designer Jack Featherstone (above) and tracklisting are included ahead of the release on October 27.
