Jerome Derradji A Bump in Da Raw

Thanks to the popularity of labels like L.I.E.S., live-to-tape, hardware-only jams remain a prevalent commodity. This uncut aesthetic has its roots in various older scenes, from Chicago ghetto house to the “graffiti techno” of New Yorkers Adam X and Frankie Bones, and historically minded producer Jerome Derradji is surely understanding of the sound’s roots. His Still Music label has been re-releasing quite a few small-label raw gems lately, with the Bang The Box! and Kill Yourself Dancing compilations archiving forgotten corners of Chicago’s house scene. A Bump in Da Raw, his latest 12″, is not overtly influenced by those compilations, but its two tracks do show an awareness of motifs that, while trendy now, have always worked.

These are exercises in repetition. “Getloose” leans toward the mid-’90s Chicago sounds of producers like Paul Johnson or Parris Mitchell, but with a bit of added depth—its kicks are more cushioned than those on the average Dance Mania release. The track is highlighted by brief, slightly off-kilter bass and bell patterns and vocal exclamations, while those steady kicks and brush-like open hi-hats maintain a narrow, constant forward motion. The more caustic flip “Raw Bump” might be more palatable for fans of mid-’90s New York, as it is comparatively industrial. Its coarse, distorted rhythm melds with croaking acid stabs, and unstably lumbers toward its conclusion. Neither breaks any new ground, but these studies fit in just fine alongside their influences.

Check Out a New Mix from Dubbel Dutch

Following the release of his impressive Self Help Riddims EP for Mixpak earlier this year, Brooklyn-via-Austin producer Dubbel Dutch has largely flown underneath our radar in 2013. No doubt staying busy, though, the man has just unveiled his new Cloud Club mix, which comes before Dubbel Dutch drops a new EP of the same name next month. Set to return to Mixpak (for whom he recently produced Popcaan’s “Everything Nice” single) with his new record in November, Dubbel Dutch has made a mix which is perhaps intended to reintroduce us all to the many gobal hybrid styles the man dabbles in, pulling almost entirely from his own stash of original tunes, edits, and remixes over the course of the 40-minute set. The New York producer’s 16-track Cloud Club mix can be heard below.

01 Gaffacci X Beek “Cloud9” X “Pulse”
02 Moleskin “Clemency” (Goon Club All Stars)
03 Dubbel Dutch “Look Back” (VIP)
04 Samo Sound Boy “Spirit Tool” (Dubbel Dutch VIP)
05 ???? “Car Trouble”
06 DJ Funeral ????
07 Dubbel Dutch “Left Behind” (Mixpak)
08 Dubbel Dutch “Acid Over Loop”
09 Dubbel Dutch “Dip So” (Mixpak)
10 Dubbel Dutch “Deepa” (Mixpak)
11 Myrryrs “Twerk Team” (DD Hoard Edit)
12 DJ Eastwood “U Ain’t Ready” (Dubbel Dutch Edit)
13 False Witness “El Dip Don” (Dubbel Dutch Remix)
14 Rizzla & Dubbel Dutch “Mi Body”
15 Murlo “Pharaohs” (Dubbel Dutch VIP)
16 Busy Signal “Mek Duppy” (Dubbel Dutch Edit)

KRTS “Bonehead”

Berlin’s Project: Mooncircle label recently announced its latest compilation, Uprising, featuring underexposed talent from the more experimental circles of electronic music. “Bonehead,” by Brooklyn-based artist KRTS (a.k.a. Kurtis Hairston), is a strong contribution to the anthology, and lays a foundation of askew handclaps around which Hairston assembles a deft, organically rich slab of jungle bass. Brimming with textural variety, the piece’s pops, rasps, clacks, gooey bassline, and gurgling marimba tones all work in tandem as a sort of multi-faceted aural shiatsu. Following the Uprising compilation’s release on November 1, Project: Mooncircle will also issue KRTS’ upcoming The Foreigner EP on December 6.

Bonehead

Peter Van Hoesen Life Performance

Techno, the way Peter Van Hoesen does it, falls close to the style’s zero-degree definition, the kind of description one might overhear at a party. It’s meticulous, banging, stripped-down machine music that remains just melodic enough to keep it from being totally abstract, and is altogether too savvy to melt into the tech-house fallow zone. Van Hoesen finds an easy fulcrum point between Robert Hood’s soulful, severe loops and the sheer aggro bum rush that once characterized Low Countries techno. It’s an approach that served the Belgian producer well on his last LP, Perceiver, and it continues to work on Life Performance, a live album whose texture is homogeneous enough to make its already clean-sounding predecessor seem dramatic in comparison.

Life Performance has its share of tension and release, but within the grayscale vocabulary of the live setting. As a studio album, Perceiver could get away with dynamic passages of sound art that are largely missing in the consistent thrust of Life Performance. To some listeners, that may be an obstacle; to others, a boon. Van Hoesen isn’t a particularly difficult producer, but he strives toward a kind of purity that can be hard to pin down, particularly when much of the genre is seemingly engaged in a fidelity arms race between distorted industrial techno and more classical, sci-fi-themed takes.

Even more so than his previous albums, Life Performance is techno as full-body massage. It’s a current that’s intended to rip through bodies rather than be perceived from a slight remove, which means that individual tracks take a backseat to overall thrust. As the album wears on, it feels—not unpleasantly—that this is the kind of techno a 3-D printer would spit out: all the joints are functional and articulated, and yet everything in the machine is made of the same material. We can take this two ways: either Van Hoesen is just that much in control of his materials, or the exigencies of a live set required something more meathead and less heady. That’s not a complaint: “Subjects from the Past” and “Challenger” both sound hungrier than comparable studio selections. Listening to Life Performance is akin to being in a wave pool. The water is warm, and the knocks come at expected intervals, but there’s still a fear of death on the fringe. It’s thrilling in proportion to the uniformity of the surroundings.

Van Hoesen does leave some room for improv, but it’s a bit too low-key to feel like anything’s at stake. Some of the most exciting moments are when, say, a delay suggests it could go off the rails, that the steady flow of blood and lymph could clot into some kind of emergency to be resolved. That sort of catastrophe never arrives, but the gyroscopic stability of Van Hoesen’s live set is admirable on its own terms.

Rae & Christian “1975 (Bearcubs Dub)”

Some may remember the duo Rae & Christian from its time spent in the late ’90s exploring hybrid sounds which combined soul, funk, hip-hop, and downtempo electronics into records like the pair’s well-received debut LP, Northern Sulphuric Soul. Recently, Rae & Christian resurfaced with a new album for Night Time Stories (a freshly launched sub-label of the Late Night Tales series), and while that record may not exactly fit within the XLR8R cannon, this rework of lead single “1975” from budding London tunesmith Bearcubs certainly does. The soul-drenched “dub” remix tucks bits of pot-and-pan percussion and sly vocal twists underneath a steady stream of warm chords and rolling low end, landing it somewhere along the spectrum between Mount Kimbie’s more tender moments and Bondax’s mellower summer escapades.

1975 (Bearcubs Dub)

Physical Therapy Yes, I’m Elastic

Yes, I’m Elastic, the latest EP by New York City’s Daniel Fisher (a.k.a. Physical Therapy), follows on the producer’s deranged sense of fun. Stylistically, Fisher is not particularly in thrall to any recent trends here, though the production does seem vaguely influenced by New York’s 1990s rave scene, as it’s laced with a kind of snarky, volatile energy. In spite of this, these tracks do not have much staying power, but there are a few elements here that might grab adventurous DJs’ ears.

On the opening title track, the producer engineers a swaggering strut, and groaning, tremulous synths move around it. “World on Fire” has a similar sense of menace, with its scraping hi-hats, darting acid lines, and growling undercurrent. But really, this release will be remembered for “I Did,” a track that appears here in three forms, including a remix by J. Tijn. It’s essentially a sinister take on Daft Punk’s “Teachers,” with a pitched-up robot voice intoning, for example, “who killed Juan Atkins… who killed Pépé Bradock… who killed Mathew Jonson…” Evidently, the narrator did. The backdrop is suitably stripped down to accommodate this cheeky monologue; its beat pulses confidently along, while a Detroit-techno synth motif squirms to the fore. The “V2” mix is laced with a high-pitched, dial-tone sort of effect and a tribal, circular rush, while J. Tijn’s version institutes more of a warehouse pummel. On every take, however, the vocal dominates—it’s a fun bit of braggadocio, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the work of its “murder victims.”

Lee Bannon “216”

After learning news of Sacramento producer Lee Bannon‘s signing to Ninja Tune earlier this month (an announcement that also brought with it a free EP), we now get the first tase of his forthcoming LP for the label in “216.” Set to drop on December 9, Bannon’s Alternate / Endings album appears primed to bring an impressive set of dark, twisted beats from the enigmatic producer. “216” leads the charge as a rough-around-the-edges slice of brooding, bass-infused beat work in which solemn piano notes are placed next to a ceaseless barrage of heavy, drum & bass-indebted rhythms. It’s hard to tell if Bannon is trying to get this track to lift off or is deliberately making it crash down, but either way, the California producer sounds like he’s not interested in keeping his tunes earthbound. The tracklist and artwork for the upcoming Alternate / Endings LP can be perused after the jump.

01 Resorectah
02 NW/WB
03 Prime/Decent
04 Shoot Out The Stars And Win
05 Bent/Sequence
06 Phoebe Cates
07 216
08 Perfect/Division
09 Value 10
10 Cold/Melt
11 Readly/Available
12 Eternal/Attack

216

Listen to the Debut Album from Botany

Texan producer Botany (a.k.a. Spencer Stephenson) has been trickling out cuts from his forthcoming debut LP, Lava Diviner (Truestory), for a few months now. Now, the inventive beatmaker has shared a full stream of his album before it’s released on October 29 via Western Vinyl. Stephenson says of the creative period culminating in his conceptual full-length, “I always imagined my first album being like a volcano, with years of pent-up emotion and musical ideas bubbling up to a cathartic release.” The volcanic symbolism is evident in the sheer variety of sonic sources that Botany pulls from—found sounds, field recordings, traditional sampling, and rich instrumentation all rush together in maximalist freedom. His non-album collaboration with Father John Misty (a.k.a. Josh Tillman of Fleet Foxes), “Laughtrack” similarly uses intricate, subtle layering à la Teebs or Gold Panda to achieve asymptotic bliss, where the seams on Stephenson’s world are rendered invisible. The full Lava Diviner (Truestory) stream can be found below, along with the player for “Laughtrack.”

100% Silk Documentary on the Way; Watch the Trailer Now

Serving as the label home to artists such as Ital, Magic Touch, Octo Octa, Bobby Browser, Maria Minerva, and many others, Amanda Brown’s 100% Silk outpost has certainly accomplished quite a bit during its first few years, carving its very own space in the dance-music sphere and mainiting an exceptionally prolific output in the process. Apparently, this fact did not pass over filmmaker Benjamin Shearn, who has put together a new documentary about the label, simply titled Silk. Focused around 100% Silk’s 2012 tour through “the UK, Europe, and beyond” (an excursion which featured Brown’s own LA Vampires outfit along with Ital, Magic Touch, and Maria Minerva), Silk is said to serve as “a chronicle of the performances, cultural environments, and global scenes through which the troupe traveled: a congested, underground Parisian club, a motorcycle showroom in Bristol, an abandoned industrial lot in Moscow, an afterhours Berlin compound, a re-purposed World War II gun tower in Hamburg, as well as massive international festivals such as Distortion in Copenhagen and Sonar in Barcelona.” In addition, director Benjamin Shearn has intercut this story with seven staged dance sequences which are “designed to visually articulate the personal philosophies and emotional aesthetics of the artists, while also exploring the pop-cultural iconography of the music itself.” The film is set to premiere at the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival next month, and its trailer can be watched below. Additional information and further clips from the documentary can be found here.

Virgo Four Readies New EP; Preview It Now

After reissuing its seminal, self-titled full-length from 1989 via Rush Hour in 2010 and re-emerging as a duo shortly thereafter (turning in a XLR8Rpodcast in the process), Chicago outfit Virgo Four has remained relatively active in recent years—even considering its line-up change, which was not fully revealed until a few months ago. Now, five previously unheard Virgo Four tracks are set to appear on the forthcoming E-Series Part One EP, due out in the coming weeks. The record is set to appear on Chiwax, a sublabel of Berlin imprint Rawax which focuses on the sounds of Chicago dance music both old and new. At this point, it is a bit unclear if the five tracks which make up E-Series Part One are in fact entirely new productions or just old tunes resurrected from the vaults, but either way, material from Virgo Four is likely to prove worth paying attention to. No exact release date for the EP has been revealed, but it is expected to drop soon, and in the meantime, a preview of the forthcoming record and its tracklist can be found below. (via Resident Advisor)

01 Just Let Me
02 Ohah
03 Superbass
04 1986
05 Let Me Touch Your Soul

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