Earlier this month, Ghostly and Pictures Musicannounced the joint release of an upcoming remix collection for Dauwd‘s (pictured above) excellent Heat Division EP, featuring reworks from Dauwd himself along with Ostgut Ton affiliate Nick Höppner and DFA co-founder and producer extraordinnaire Tim Goldsworthy. With the Heat Division Remixes EP out today, we can now offer a full stream of Goldsworthy’s extended reworking of “Heat Division.” On his remix, the veteran artist adds a number of airy touches to Dauwd’s bottom-heavy track, but it’s the addition of his own vocals that make “Heat Division” an entirely fresh listen in its reworked format (though, an instrumental version also appears on the EP). In addition to the stream of “Heat Division (Tim Goldsworthy Remix)” below, Dauwd’s own dub of “Silverse” for the collection can also be streamed in full here.
Just last month, Dutch producer Conforce (a.k.a. Boris Bunnik) gave listeners a preview of his third full-length, Kinetic Image, a 10-track album which aims to create “a complete experience that moves away from regimented 4/4 beats and into slower, more surreptitious tempos.” Now, Bunnik has expanded on that preview and made a full stream of the album available to the public. The record finds Conforce working within a murky sonic palette, utilizing a range of moody, distant sounds contrasted by dark, unfurling beats. Kinetic Image, which is out this week via Delsin, can be streamed in full here, courtesty of Resident Advisor.
London duo Simian Mobile Disco recently announced the latest 12″ for its Delicacies label, a collaboration with Romanian producer Cosmin TRG, and has just shared a streaming cut from the upcoming release. “Surströmming,” named after a Swedish herring dish known to be the foulest smelling food in the world, is a warbling slab of techno that heightens its nervous synth layers to simulate that putrid odor. Below, Simian Mobile Disco’s and Cosmin TRG’s new collaborative track can be heard in its entirety before it drops on December 9.
Toronto outfit Azari & III has announced the end of the pair working together, saying via Facebook, “The art project known as Azari & III has done its work, run its course, and is, for all intents and purposes, a momentary blip in time, now forever imprinted on the Universe.” Posted on the Facebook page of Alphonse Lanza (a.k.a. Alixander III), the announcement points to the duo’s recentLost Express EP for Get Physical as “an extinguishing of the flame and a bird into the fire of blissful, eternal oblivion.” One hopes that the individual producers of the outfit—Lanza and Christian Farley (a.k.a. Dinamo Azari)—will continue to pursue new creative outlets in the months to come, but for now, feel free to wax nostalgic with Azari & III’s 2012 XLR8Rpodcast, and remember the house-revivalist duo that was. Those interested in seeing Lanza’s full Facebook post on the split can do so here.
London’s A.G. Cook has been enlisted to deliver a twisted, hilarious, knocking, and sort of crazy remix to close out DJ DJ Booth‘s (yes, that is actually his handle) forthcoming Todd Edwards Falling Down The Stairs EP for Slugabed’s Activia Benz imprint. Reworking the record’s somewhat relaxed “Heaven” track, A.G. Cook spins together an 808-minded effort that pulses at an accelerated pace and is occasionally enhanced by a smooth set of electric piano notes and re-pitched flute samples, but what really sets the track apart is its vocal contribution—a helium-lifted, tongue-in-cheek, stream-of-consciousness quasi-rap that covers everything from cheap drinks, trying on clothes, sending emails, and running through genre names. DJ DJ Booth’s full Todd Edwards Falling Down The Stairs EP will see an official release on November 25.
Detroit tunesmith Deepchord (a.k.a. Rod Modell) released his latest full-length, 20 Electrostatic Soundfields, back in September, and today, the dub-techno mainstay follows up the LP with a brand-new mix. Inspired by experimental music from his younger days, Modell says of his Resident Advisor podcast, “Since rediscovering some of these old favorites, it’s becoming difficult to return to the current glut of mediocre, formulaic grid music.” The full mix is now available to download or stream here, where a brief Q&A with Deepchord can also be found.
Night Slugs co-founder Bok Bok (pictured above) and Voyage Direct label head Tom Trago first crossed paths a few years ago at the behest of Sound Pellegrino boss Teki Latex, aiming to discover “invisible bridges between surprisingly interlocking islands of the great house music archipelago.” That meeting led to the Night Voyage 12″, and now, the two producers have announced they will follow up that release with a new collaborative 12″, entitled Get Me What You Want. The the two new tracks are described as “next level DJ tools,” an unsurprising description considering both producers have their feet firmly planted in the club. The title track is said to be a cross between “Jersey Club and Herbie Hancock,” and is contrasted by b-side “Hole Driller 3,” a darker take that has more in common with the Night Slugs sound. Get Me What You Want‘s artwork and tracklist can be seen ahead of its November 30 release via Night Voyage, below. (via Juno Plus)
Like much of the music Martin “Blackdown” Clark backs via his Keysound label, there is an aspect of the throwback to Logos. The key aspect of the London producer’s sound has been Wiley’s eski beat (and his accompanying, beatless “devil” or “bass” mixes), a decade-old sound characterized by cuttingly luminous synthesizer and inside-out rhythms—tunes that have been gutted other than a hi-hat or a bass pulse (or a laser, or a gun cocking), with the rest of the percussion coming erratically. Eski is still present on Cold Mission, Logos’ debut album, though he has also claimed luminary drum & bass label Metalheadz and drum & bass act 4Hero as influences. He’s even more explicit about his reverence in the record’s press release: “A lot of the album is informed by nostalgia for pirate-radio grime and the sense of loss I feel for that period—2002 felt like a much simpler time.” This much looking backward could kill a lesser artist, but somehow, even after all of his consideration of the past, Logos has managed to craft an incredibly vital LP.
Cold Mission‘s closest contemporary might be Jam City’s Classical Curves album from last year. That record offered a similarly reduced approach, though it was also dotted with steamy boogie and rap inflections; apart from the drum & bass referencing on a track like “Wut It Do” with Mumdance (which also feels close to Baltimore or Jersey club), Logos sticks to a fairly grime-y palette, even sampling vocals from the MCs themselves. But again, the producer usually overcomes his self-imposed trappings. At its best, the album is able to break up grime’s feral, alien intensity with an almost surreally earthy glow. If the “eskimo” aspect of Wiley’s sound was meant to represent stark, Arctic coldness, Cold Mission, like Classical Curves before it, applies global warming.
Some of these environmental aspects are more literal than others: tracks are cozily suffused with tape static, and set amid water, bird, and insect samples. To be sure, Logos’ abstracted rhythms hit as hard as any of his influencers’, and he enhances them with resounding bass hits and hostile zaps. But for much of the album, these pulses are melded with an array of vivid, sometimes soothing synthesizer motifs. For example, its opening stretch, until the blunt “Seawolf,” feels like a sort of ambient grime, with the stunted drums acting as more of a framework than a focal point. “Statis Jam” focuses on hazy, yawning pads, while “Surface Area” balances distorted hits and shattering glass with a gleaming, rising and falling arpeggio. Later on, the dazzling lines on the near-beatless “Atlanta 96 (Limitless Mix)” render a blinking 8-bit cityscape, and are offset by tranquilly chirping crickets. Even the rougher tracks contain traces of this atmosphere: the stabby “Menace” features an elegiac—if tinny—breakdown, nodding to UK hardcore and its implications of togetherness, before returning to its aggressive premise. However, it’s “E3 Night Flight” that serves as the best indicator of Cold Mission‘s implications. Its tubular, twinkling arpeggiations are immaculate, and recall Bee Mask’s serene, orbital sensibilities.
Like Bee Mask, or indeed Bee Mask contemporaries Oneohtrix Point Never and Rene Hell, and using Wiley as his Parmegiani, Logos has located invigorating ground in concrète-style negative space. The UK scene, and Blackdown in particular, seems perpetually anxious about how to move the “hardcore continuum” forward. Where does one turn when all rhythmic possibilities have been executed? They may find a satisfying answer in Logos’ radically sparse assemblages.
A few weeks back, we partnered with multi-talented UK artist Ghostpoet for a remix competition in which XLR8R readers would rework one (or more) of three singles from his recently released Some Say I So I Say Light LP for [PIAS] Recordings, with the winning reimagined versions of each song getting cut to a dubplate by London’s longstanding vinyl mastering and pressing plant The Carvery. We received a ton of solid contenders for each of the tracks (“Meltdown”‘s remixes are here, the remixes for “Dial Tones” are here, and all of the “Cold Win” entries are here), but could only pick three winners.
After scouring through the hundreds of entries, our team of judges landed on Dutch producer Bastard Sugar‘s surreal version of “Dial Tones,” UK artist Thinnen‘s dark and bass-loaded take on “Cold Win,” and the heavily percussive house remix of “Meltdown” by Londoner Joe Ashworth. All three of the tracks will be cut to their own dubplates by The Carvery, and can be streamed in full below.
Since around the middle of this year, Paul Woolford‘s “Untitled” single for Hotflush has been treating DJs and club goers to a top-notch cut of piano-led, big-room house, even going so far as to be dubbed the “track of the summer.” Now, as we move into the close of 2013, label boss Scuba (pictured above) has delivered his remix of the buoyant production. Paul Rose’s new version is decidedly less soulful and hooky, relying more on a driving tech-house groove and spacey sonic ephemera than the effortless bounce of Woolford’s original. “Untitled (Scuba Remix)”—which is set for release as a Beatport exclusive on November 29—can be streamed in full below.
