Graze, the joint project of Adam Marshall and Christian Andersen (a.k.a. XI), will release a new 12″ via New Kanada next month. As we noted in last year’s Bubblin’ Up feature on the duo, Marshall’s solo productions have largely been based in stripped-down, drone-heavy techno; Anderson’s in sub-led garage. As Graze, however—a collaboration that only took up life after both producers relocated from Toronto to Berlin—the pair crafts “upfront dancefloor tracks” billed as chemistry experiments. A press release for the duo’s forthcoming single describes a-side cut “Coax” as the result of “extracting the liquid component of an early Toronto rave tape through supercritical drying,” allowing “the essence to be slowly extracted without causing the solid matrix in the samples to collapse from tape hiss,” while on the flip, the aggressive low-end of “Thundare” is purported to be capable of causing “a catastrophic breakdown in the atmospheric space” when played out at high volume.
“Coax” b/w “Thundare” (artwork below) follows the pair’s debut album and a series of 12″s released via Marshall’s own New Kanada imprint in the past two years, and is set to arrive on October 13.
What is Happiness Is Happening? It’s a question listeners will likely find themselves asking after their first spin of Roman Flügel’s second album, which is as idiosyncratic as one might expect of a producer who has spent nearly 20 years perplexing music hacks with a prolific back catalog of fun, often unclassifiable 12″s. Happiness Is Happening could be called a house record, but only in the loosest sense; the album’s kicks and hats are there to carry the album’s spacious 1980s synth-pop and melodic Krautrock motifs, and as such, it’s an LP geared much more for home listening than for DJs.
This much is borne out by the opening track “Connecting the Ghost.” With its simmering radio static and gently distorted swells of shoegazey guitar chords, the song feels like it’s bracing itself for one of Steve Mason’s world-weary, somnambulant vocals. At the other end of Happiness Is Happening, “All That Matters” again shows traces of Mason’s Beta Band, with downbeat marimbas and bubbling synth notes that sound like they’re being played at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Most of what goes on in between those tunes is an advancement of the musical themes from Flügel’s Dial debut full-length, Fatty Folders, but with an even stronger emphasis on song-like structures and the wordless electronic ballads at that album’s tail end. Aside from “Parade” and “Tense Times,” there’s nothing on Happiness Is Happening that presents itself as “the DJ track” (and there were quite a few—albeit pretty weird ones—on Fatty Folders).
In the album’s press materials, Running Back boss Gerd Janson describes Happiness Is Happening as an album of “songs without a voice,” but repeated listens don’t necessarily prove that this characteristic is an obvious strength. Right at the end of “All That Matters,” there’s a snatch of singing that loops for about 20 seconds or so; Happiness Is Happening would have benefitted from some more of this, especially given the styles of music that Flugel is referencing elsewhere on the LP.
The album isn’t helped by its relatively flat first half, either. “Friendship Song,” “Stuffy,” and “Your War Is Over” are, by themselves, solid b-side records, and good album tracks too. Strung together in the way they are though, the songs feel too similar to each other, as they share many of the same ingredients: lush, bucolic synths, laid over with crystal-clear melodies and a lot of intricate—and interesting—sonic flourishes.
Though Happiness Is Happening occupies the same sort of affecting, pastoral territory as its predecessor, it’s simply not as strong of an effort. The sparse, off-the-cuff grooves of Flügel’s first album are sorely missed here, and it feels telling that “Parades” and “Tense Times,” though not necessarily the album’s best tracks, are its most memorable.
London producer Richard Attley (a.k.a Mickey Pearce) first came to prominence in the late ’00s with a series of UK garage-influenced EPs under the name Shortstuff, releasing on labels like Planet Mu, Ramp, and the currently mothballed Blunted Robots, which he ran alongside Brackles. Now recording and DJing exclusively under his Mickey Pearce alias, Attley regularly appears on Rinse FM and is signed to Loefah’s Swamp 81 imprint, through which he recently released the excellent (and free) beat tape Up West, an effort that underlined his enduring and overriding fascination with percussion. Now, he’s about to follow it up with the Instructions EP, which will feature some of Up West‘s finest selections on vinyl. Ahead of its arrival, we caught up with Attley to talk about condiments, Hershey vs. Cadbury, and Loefah’s yoga routine.
1. Where were you born and raised? I was born in Luton and raised just down the road, in a little town with lots and lots of hairdressers.
2. What are the best and worst things about living in London? The best thing is the variety of foods I can get within 20 minutes of my flat. The worst thing is people who try to get on the tube before others have got off.
3. Would you like to live somewhere else or do you think you’ll be in London for life? I could live in another big city for a bit, but I think I’ll be in London until I’m old. Then I’ll go find somewhere warm to die.
4. Why do you call yourself Mickey Pearce? The original Mickey Pearce is a character from the classic British sitcom Only Fools and Horses. He is a 2 Tone rude boy and a bit of a wrong-un. I always liked the idea of the 21st-century Mickey making grime and playing on pirate radio, and it developed from there.
5. What happened with the Blunted Robots record label that you and Brackles used to run? A few years ago, [Brackles] and I started doing slightly different things musically and the label didn’t fit anymore. Maybe it will return one day.
6. These days, you’re linked up with Loefah’s Swamp 81 crew. What’s something about him that we don’t know? Loefah does yoga every morning. He is entirely self-taught.
7. Percussion always seems to be your overriding musical preoccupation. Why is that? I just get way more into rhythms than anything else. My favorite bit of a track is often the intro, before any of the ‘music’ has begun.
8. Where is the best night out in London right now? That’s a tough one. The pub around the corner from me has a great selection of guest ales.
9. Your forthcoming Instructions EP is composed of tracks from your Up West mixtape. Why did you select the tracks you’ve chosen? We always planned to put full glossy versions of some of the mixtape tracks on vinyl, alongside some of the skits. The tracks that made the cut were a combination of the ones most people played and the bits that sat nicest together.
10. You travel a lot. Where’s the worst place you’ve ever been? I love to go anywhere people will have me. Having said that, London Fields on a sunny day can be horrific.
11. Were you formally trained in music? I can see why you’d think that, but no.
12. What’s your favorite condiment? Dijon mustard.
13. Who does your favorite regular show on Rinse FM? Josey Rebelle.
14. British chocolate or American chocolate? I’ve eaten great American chocolate, but on a basic Hershey vs. Cadbury level, British has it all day long.
15. What was the first record you ever bought? I think the first bit of music I ever bought was a compilation on cassette called 100% Rap—it had stuff like Salt ‘N’ Pepa on it. The first actual vinyl record was by NOFX or someone like that. I didn’t have a turntable at the time but bought it to look cool.
Instructions EP
16. What’s the most exciting thing you’ve received in the mail this year? A t-shirt this kid from Liverpool sent me. It features Wiley’s head, crudely Photoshopped onto the Angel of the North.
17. If your music was an animal, what would it be? An otter.
18. Do you work better during the day or at night? During the day. I used to tell myself I worked best late at night with loads of weed and cups of tea, but I was lying.
19. What one thing would improve the fortunes of England’s national football team? I could talk forever about this, but a couple of genuinely world-class players and a bit less hype would go a long way.
20. What’s the first thing you’ll do after answering these questions? I’m going to make a quiche.
An array of murky images accompany “Operratorr,” the title track from Diskotopia co-head BD1982‘s upcoming EP. A spiraling production lined with effervescent R&B touches, here the tune is accompanied by an array of phone-themed images, with heavily liquified shots of calls in progress joined by flashes of forgotten cellphone models. The full video for “Operratorr” is premiering below before BD1982’s three-track EP of the same title drops on September 15 via Diskotopia.
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For his remix of Ilya Santana‘s (pictured above) new single, “Big Foot,” Argentinian producer Thomass Jackson takes the track even further down the space-disco path. Reinforcing the rhythmic structure of Santana’s original, Jackson spreads “Big Foot” out wide, leaving space for each of the track’s nuanced details—its thick analog basslines, gooey synth melodies, and precise guitar strums—to shine through uninterrupted. A somewhat looser affair in its original form, the rework finds Jackson tighten up the track, its aims more dead set on the dancefloor. Available to download below, the Argentinean producer’s remix is one of five slated to land on Santana’s Big Foot EP, out this month via the Retrospective imprint.
Dave Huismans has shared details of an upcoming 2562 album, The New Today, which will see release via the Dutch producer’s own When in Doubt label. As Resident Advisor reports, the album constitutes the first new material Huismans has released under his 2562 alias since 2012’s Air Jordan EP, although plenty of material from his leftfield techno project A Made Up Sound has surfaced in the years since. This latest effort will reportedly draw 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” when it arrives on October 20 in double LP, CD, and digital formats, and was inspired by a six-week stint in New York last summer.
Huismans is also scheduled to preview the album at this year’s Amsterdam Dance Event on October 16, with a live audio-visual showcase at Pakhuis de Zwijger. Until then, album cut “Utopia” can be heard in full below, where a tracklist can also be found.
01. Arrival 02. Terraforming 03. Cosmic Bounce 04. Vibedoctor 05. Utopia 06. Drumroll 07. Cauldron 08. New Life
Last year, Levon Vincent announced an open call for artists to submit demos in the hope of landing an apprenticeship with the New York-bred house stalwart. Vincent pledged to sponsor a “bootcamp” with the aspiring producers over a three-month period in his adoptive city of Berlin, and yesterday, he revealed the recipients to be Terriers, the Dublin pair of Peter Ward and Ronan Downing. In his message shared via Facebook yesterday, Vincent directed readers toward Terriers’ House No 9 EP, which dropped via hometown label Major Problems last month and can be streamed in full here.
Recorded in 2005, a 100-plus-minute B2B session from Warp affiliate Rustie and Glasgow selector Jackmaster has surfaced. Uploaded to the latter’s SoundCloud, Jackmaster describes the mix as “a rough-but-ready reminder of what we were up to 10 years ago,” adding that the all-vinyl set was recorded in a “somewhat inebriated” state using “a DJM600 and a couple of 1210s.” Jackmaster also explains that “I can’t really remember what most of these tunes are called, so requests for IDs may be in vain,” though the set does come striped with a number of electro-indebted selections and appears to utilize a handful of cuts from the Drexciya and Dopplereffekt discographies.
Said to be the first of a number of archival recordings Jackmaster plans to share via his SoundCloud, the pair’s B2B set can be streamed and downloaded in full below.
London producer and R&S mainstay Lone has shared a new mix. Spanning nine tracks, the 30-minute set moves fluidly from its new-age beginnings (which includes an ambient mix of Lone’s own “Emission Lines” production) to incorporate bits of ’80s funk, and stoney hip-hop. Appearing today via The Fader, Lone’s new mix can be streamed in full below and grabbed for free here. In addition, The Fader’s brief interview with the UK artist can be read here.
1. Susumu Yokota – Saku 2. Lone – Emission Lines (Ambient Mix) 3. Viola Wills – Dare To Dream 4. Joey Bada$$ – Two Lips 5. Blackmoon – Who Got The Props? 6. Lenny White – I’ll See You Soon 7. Smiff N Wessun – Next Shit 8. Clark – Dew On The Mouth 9. Kool Keith – Remember Me?
Roland has introduced the SBX-1, a unit specifically designed to help “computers and electronic instruments communicate and synchronize with each other.” Appearing as part of the company’s AIRA line (which includes the TR-8 drum machine and the TB-3 bass synth), the SBX-1 can communicate with and sync devices using DIN SYNC, MIDI, or USB, and will allow users to choose which connected device should serve as the clock master, or—if one so chooses—the SBX-1 can serve as sync master using its “rock-steady internal clock.” Furthermore, the device can also support CV/Gate signals, which many classic analog devices rely on for their timing and syncing. Roland’s sync box will also offer “hands-on control over timing and groove,” with its Shuffle mode said to add swing to otherwise static patterns.
No official release date has been set for the SBX-1 at this time, though the unit has appeared for pre-order on a few online retailers with a price tag of $499. In the meantime, the complete specs for Roland’s forthcoming sync box can be found here.
