While working on its sophomore record, Korallreven released a limited-edition 12″ single at the beginning of October, featuring remixes by Cooly G, Panda Bear, and featured here, Airbird (a.k.a. Joel Ford of Ford & Lopatin). Beginning with stretched vocal harmonies, “Try Anything Once (Airbird Remix)” takes the lofty, drifting vibes of Korallreven’s original track and binds them to lilting house grooves. As Airbird’s vocal harmonies sustain and rise, the remix ebbs and flows before thrusting into a suddenly vaporous conclusion.
Pioneer has introduced the CDJ-900NXS, a recharged version of its CDJ-900 media players which adds a host of new features. Essentially merging the CDJ-900 with the CDJ-2000 Nexus (Pioneer’s top-of-the-line media players), the CDJ-900NXS boasts a full-color LCD screen, the ability to work with Pioneer’s Rekordbox music storage software, a “master sync” feature that can control up to four decks, and a host of new updates to its looping functions. The walkthrough video below shows off the CDJ-900NXS and its new features (be warned, the initial demo song is one of the worst in recent gear-promo video memory), and the units are expected to hit Europe stores next month before landing in the US in January with an MSRP of $1,699.
Last month, New Jersey DJ/producer Physical Therapy announced that he would inaugurate his new Allergy Season label with a seven-track EP called Non-Drowsy, and that initial offering is now available as a free download. Non-Drowsy is said to be simiar to Physical Therapy’s recent Yes, I’m Ecstatic EP for Brooklyn’s Fifth Wall label, in that it “provides a tour through dance music ideas and moods.” Its music coasts on a sedated high, sluggishly weaving together Plastikman-like minimal techno with messy piano stabs and untamed, wailing vocal samples. Before Non-Drowsy is physically released sometime in February of 2014, the EP can be streamed in the player below and downloaded for free here.
DC-based DJ/producer and Future Times co-founder Maxmillion Dunbar has released the Woo Daps mixtape, a collection of new tracks, album remixes, and one-off collaborations inspired by the sound of his House of Woo LP, released back in February via RVNG. “House Of Woo feels almost like an island to me now,” Dunbar explains in the mix’s accompanying press release, “a planet in the rearview that I was exploring but probably won’t see again, and to dip back into that world was fun.” Whatever the exact reason for its creation, Woo Daps makes for another quality listen from Dunbar, and one which finds the man crafting a mix anchored in the world of cosmic house but streaked with abstract jazz and expanding psychedelic flurries at almost every corner. The full Woo Daps mix can be streamed below and nabbed as a “name-your-price” download via RVNG’s Bandcamp.
01. Coins For The Canopy (Dolo Constellation Dub) + Kangaroo brass 02. For Mozy (OG Ambience) + spare drums 03. For Mozy (Original Electro version) 04. Inca Tags (Trumpet Sludge) + spare drums 05. Inca Tags (Remix feat. Peter Zummo, Co La, Sami Yenigun) 06. Calvin & Hobbes (ECM Mix) 07. Loving The Drift (Ttam Renat Remix) 08. Untitled I 09. Slave To The Vibe (Cathedral 808 Mix) + drum work 10. Untitled II 11. Kangaroo (Live Jam Mix w/ Protect-U, and Aaron Coyes from Peaking Lights) 12. Untitled III
Together as Moderat, Modeselektor (a.k.a. Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian “Charlie” Szary) and Apparat (a.k.a. Sascha Ring) returned with their sophomore collaborative LP, II, earlier this year. Around the time of the release, XLR8R sat down with the Berlin artists to talk about how the trio translated the record to a live setting in our From Studio to Stage feature, but now, a detailed video has surfaced which goes in depth with Modeselektor about the making of II. The 30-plus-minute video from Future Music covers everything from the synths—both software and hardware—that serve as the group’s go-to sound generators to the intricate Logic sessions behind the album’s tracks, covering gems of wisdom about the group’s creative processes as well as their recording and mixing techniques along the way. The full video can be watched using the player below.
Aside from operating his Kaleidoscope label, enigmatic UK producer patten had fallen completely silent since the 2011 release of his impressive GLAQJO XAACSSO LP for No Pain in Pop. However, two weeks after signing to Warp, patten has detailed his first release for the seminal label and shared a stream of its lead track. The EOLIAN INSTATE EP will find the anonymous artist continuing to scatter abstracts of UK garage, techno, and noise over its five tracks, and will arrive on November 26 as a “beautifully detailed, 22-minute, picture-disc vinyl record… limited to just 500 copies worldwide.” Ahead of the release, patten has shared opening track “Aviary,” an acutely hazy and structurally disparate piece of bubbling techno which can be heard below, where the tracklist and artwork for EOLIAN INSTATE can also be found.
Ambient electronic artist Markus Guentner approaches his work from dream-pop, drone, and experimental angles, and on his next release, Shadows of the City (out on November 26 via Moodgadget), the German producer strives to elucidate the slow processes of the natural world through sound. The title track’s glacial pads gradually simmer to a boiling point, where a four-to-the-floor pulse takes control, gliding the celestial layers of chords to new heights. With a pace and sound palette reminiscent of The Field and a shoegaze-inspired approach to production, “Shadows of the City”‘s 12 minutes seem to blow by as one captured moment.
Hemlock label boss Jack Dunning (a.k.a. Untold) has announced that he will return to his imprint next year to release an eight-track LP, sharing one of its tunes in the process. “Sing a Love Song” is an expectedly gritty cut of cyclical techno grooves and wild sonic ephemera, one which lives up to a press release’s description of the album: “It’s unhindered, spontaneous, and completely raw. As perfectly imperfect as a trip like this should be.” The tune precedes the release of Black Light Spiral‘s “brilliantly executed improbabilities” on February 24, and can be streamed in full below.
House veteran MK (a.k.a. Marc Kinchen) is having himself a good November. At the beginning of the month, his remix of Storm Queen’s “Look Right Through” surprisingly hit number one on the UK pop charts (oddly enough, more than three years after the original song was first released). Next week, he’ll be following that up with the reissue of “Always,” his 1992 classic with vocalist Alana, via the Defected label. Of course, Kinchen’s influence has loomed large over the current explosion of ’90s (and ’90s-reminiscent) house and garage sounds, particularly in the UK, so we figured it would be interesting to ask the man himself to put together a list of some of his favorite cuts from that era, with one caveat: he wouldn’t be allowed to select any music that he had a hand in making himself. Though he didn’t follow our instructions to the letter—he slipped in a couple of tunes that actually dropped in the ’80s—his selections do include some undeniable anthems; better yet, they provide a small window into what music (other than his own) got Kinchen excited back in the day.
Mr. Fingers “Can You Feel It”
Okay, if you want to get really technical, this record came out in the ’80s, but its effect on music can still be felt today. Mr. Fingers (a.k.a. Larry Heard) is this amazing producer from Chicago and Tennessee and his sounds combined electronic and techno, with super smooth and soulful strings and synth sounds. It was infectious to me when I first heard it and it still inspires me today.
Black Box “Everybody”
To be honest, I never cared for the intro, but once the vocal kicked in and the hook hit, I loved it. If I had been remixing back then, I think I could have killed this record—that and “Pump Up the Volume.” [Both tracks were] undeniably “house” for pop music.
The Reese Project “The Colour of Love (Reese Deep Mix)”
Not only did Kevin Saunderson produce and write this, but he remixed it too, all under his alias Reese. This mix is so deeeep and so pumping. I never get tired of what he did with the vocals on this.
Funky Green Dogs “Fired Up (Murk’s Original Groove)”
When this song came out, I instantly knew I wanted to meet these guys. Were they brothers? Whatever, this track still kills it on the dancefloor. Truly timeless.
Inner City “Good Life”
If you can look back almost 25 years later and say, “Whoa, this record still sounds great, the vocals are fresh and the melody is still lush,” then I put it in my ‘Best Records Ever’ category. Kevin Saunderson produced and wrote this too. Pure genius.
Over the course of its career—which has included three full-lengths and numerous EPs thus far—Emptyset has repeatedly raised the question of just how far minimal techno can be abstracted before it becomes something else entirely. The interest of the Bristolian duo in exploring sonic space and specificity—which has been apparent since the outfit dropped its first, self-titled album of dense, layered techno in 2009—was solidified on its most recent album, Medium, an LP constructed using source material from and elements composed entirely within a rural mansion in Cotswolds, England. Earlier this year, the pair offered up the Material EP, which explored the sonic environments of a decommissioned nuclear power plant, an underground concrete testing bunker, and a 22-mile medieval mine. Recur operates within this framework, although it eschews an overt focus on particular locations. Instead, it seems to be thematizing something much closer to the pure sonic dynamics of sound itself. As the press release states, Recur “examines the central themes of time, structure, and recursion, through the analysis of scale and the interaction of both formal and fractured sonics.”
This kind of mission statement suggests a highly clinical approach, and in many ways, it’s possible to see the LP as playing out a dynamic tension between, on the one hand, the duo’s clear affinity for punishing, mind-numbing sonic frequencies, and its more academic impulses on the other. Recur opens on a disarmingly spare note with “Origin,” a track that builds up over a series of increasingly hypnotic mechanical oscillations, which have been interspersed with eerie silences. The track establishes both a deep sense of foreboding and a clear interest in dynamic sonic architectures, and these two threads aptly characterize the record as a whole. “Disperse” offers crunched and destroyed dub-techno, and its cyclic, lurching, barely intact rhythm complements ominous glitches and metallic clattering. One quickly becomes savvy to the structural similarities of many of Recur‘s tracks—there is a certain rigidity to the way motifs are sampled and repeated, either decaying or intensifying as they are compressed, mutated, or further fleshed out.
Further highlights include the rich drone of “Lens,” in which hypnotic waves of sound intersect with immersive low end and higher-pitched tones, resulting in something almost serene. “Limit” strays the closest to outright techno on the album with its heavy kicks and shuddering compression, even if the rhythm is oddly lopsided. There’s little denying that Emptyset has a highly developed conceptual framework for its music, and while Recur explores similar territory as the group’s last few releases, there’s a sense that with this album, the duo has further distilled its interest in the interplay between noise, music, and silence. With a healthy willingness to let silence intersect with extreme sonic frequencies, on Recur, Emptyset finds itself pushing both ideas and sonics to their respective limits. However, this commitment to extremity also means that for all of the album’s conceptual nuance, its unrelentingly clinical approach can leave the listener cold.
