Longstanding UK DJ/producer Marcus Intalex (a.k.a. Trevino) will continue his prolific streak which kicked off last year with the release of a new EP next month. Scheluded to appear on August 12 via Craig Richards’ fledging The Nothing Special imprint, the Another Lifetime EP will feature three tracks of the driving, dancefloor-focused house sounds Trevino has built his name on over the years. The record’s artwork and tracklist are included below.
01 Another Lifetime
02 Infrared
03 Revolve
Australian musician/producer and recent Future Classic signee Charles Murdoch is gearing up for the release of his debut EP later this month via the aforementioned label, but ahead of that occasion, the young artist has just shared a video for his wistful “Dekire” track. Set in a hazy, lonely classroom, the surreal clip complements Murdoch’s garage-tinged rhythms with a slew of reversed video effects. Despite being mostly unrealistic, the piece could still be seen as a snapshot of the practically universal teacher-student relationship, which is particularly apparent during the moment when a young pupil resorts to shaking her teacher’s wrist in time with the tune’s lively refrain.
After appearing on NY-based producer Earnest Blount‘s Other Directions EP last year, “Looseleaf Head-Full” has recieved a remix treatment at the hands of another WEDIDIT affiliate, Juj. This one’s a head-nodder—using a simple pattern of slightly stuttered kicks, miniature snares, and gorgeously finite percussion sounds to keep a loose groove moving beneath a seemingly limitless palette of stony keyboards and reworked samples. Juj’s remix is set to appear alongside a pair of others from Broodlings and Benedek when Earnest Blount’s Other Directions Remixes EP drops on July 16 via Teachingmachine.
UK DJ/production outfit The Heatwave has shared a brand-new mix that features exclusively female MC’s working over dancehall, soca, reggae, and club-friendly pop tracks. The Heatwave is no stranger to getting parties started, as they’ve been known to throw massive blowouts featuring the likes of Wiley, General Levy, Skibadee, and more. And the trio’s 68-song (!) set is best summed up by its own description: “[Gyal Power features] non-stop party vibes and positivity from Lady Saw, Sister Nancy, Ms Dynamite, Rihanna, and untold more female Caribbean artists spitting the wickedest lyrics.” The Heatwave’s hour-long mixtape can be streamed below, where its mammoth tracklist can also be found. (via Dummy)
1. Beyonce, Warrior Queen, Stush & Lady Chann – Gyal Power Intro
2. Tanya Stephens – Power Of A Girl
3. Patra – Queen of the Pack
4. Lexie Lee – Woman Run It
5. Crissy D – Big Timer
6. Lady G – Breeze Off
7. Lady Saw – Man A Di Least
8. Ms Thing – Regular
9. Lady Saw – Mr Short Cummings
10. Natalie Storm – Mi Too Good
11. Timberlee – Bubble Like Soup
12. Stush – Bad Gal
13. Adele & Cecile – Rolling In The Heat
14. Alison Hinds – Roll It Gal
15. Destra – Who The Hell Is Kim?
16. Fay Ann Lyons – Heavy T Bumper
17. Cecile & Lady Saw – Loser
18. Macka Diamond – Done Already
19. Natalie Storm – Dip & Fall
20. Spice – Jim Screechie
21. Timberlee & Tosh – Heels
22. Shelly Thunder – Kuff
23. JC Lodge – Telephone Love
24. Lady G – Nuff Respect
25. Warrior Queen – Poison Dart
26. Lady Saw – Bed Noise
27. Natalie Storm – Dem Nuh Know
28. O – Money Pull Up
29. Lady Chann – Eye Too Fast
30. Natasja – Calabria
31. Shystie – Pull It
32. Natalie Storm – Play Di Ting
33. Tifa – Nuh Good
34. Stush – Dollar Sign
35. Buffy – Anything
36. Ms Dynamite – What You Talking About?
37. Tanya Stephens – It’s A Pity
38. Kyla – Do You Mind
39. Etana – August Town
40. Dawn Penn – No No No
41. Lady Ann – Informer
42. Rihanna – Man Down
43. Terri Lyons – Wake It Up
44. Terri Lyons – Ah Feel Tuh
45. Fay Ann Lyons – Consider It Done
46. Lisa Hype – Worst Nightmare
47. RoxXxan – Too Fucking Facety
48. Sheba – No Stylin
49. Gaza Slim – Always
50. Tiana – Pum Pum Fat
51. Sheye – Wicked Inna
52. Macka Diamond – Forty & Fabulous
53. Gaza Slim – Independent Ladies
54. Lea Anna – Sway
55. Brick & Lace – Love Is Wicked
56. Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
57. Tanya Stephens – Touch Me No More
58. Louchie Lou & Michie One – Rich Girl
59. Grace Jones – My Jamaican Guy
60. Lady Saw & Marsha – Son Of A Bitch
61. Sister Nancy – Bam Bam
62. Estelle – Uptown Top Ranking
63. Queen Ifrica – Times Like These
64. Queen Ifrica – Below The Waist
65. Keida – Jamaican Boy
66. Amy Winehouse – Cupid
67. Audrey Hall – One Dance Won’t Do
68. Marcia Griffiths – I Shall Sing
Veteran Philadelphia beat mangler RJD2 has a way of staying busy, and he’s now announced that his next record, called More Is Than Isn’t, will drop via his own RJ’s Electrical Connections label. The 16-track album is said to be mostly an instrumental affair, but will also feature vocal contributions from the likes of Phonte Coleman from Little Brother, Aaron Livingston (who makes up the other half of RJD2’s Icebird project), and Soul Position collaborator Blueprint, among others. Musically speaking, More Is Than Isn’t finds RJD2 renewing his fascination with an array of vintage synth sounds and his ever-present MPC. The LP’s tracklist and artwork can be found below, before it is released on October 8.
01. Suite 1
02. Temperamental (feat. Phonte Coleman)
03. Behold, Numbers!
04. Her Majesty’s Socialist Request
05. A Lot of Night Ahead of You
06. Bathwater (feat. P. Blackk)
07. Milk Tooth
08. Suite 2
09. Winter Isn’t Coming
10. See You Leave (feat. STS and Khari Mateen)
11. Got There, Sugar?
12. Love and Go (feat. Aaron Livingston)
13. Descended From Myth
14. Dirty Hands
15. It All Came To Me In A Dream (feat. Blueprint)
16. Suite 3
Fast-rising Bristol producer Hodge (who also serves as half of the duo Outboxx) has released a new solo EP via Well Rounded. Following closely behind his XLR8R Pick’d collaborative single with Peverelist, the Holographic Prose EP features four new productions which are said to “showcase some of the more unconventional ideas he incorporates into that original, yet essentially house-and-techno-related, direction of [Hodge’s].” Holographic Prose is out today as a limited-edition 12″, but will see a wide digital release on July 29. Preview clips and a tracklist for Hodge’s new record can be peeped below.
01 Holographic Prose
02 Pressure
03 Monster
04 Slowing Behaviour
Though the track has been bouncing around the internet for about month already, “Untitled,” the new piano-led house jam by longstanding DJ/producer Paul Woolford, has just been given a concrete release date. On August 5, Scuba’s Hotflush label will issue the so-called “track of the summer” as half of a 12″ (though it’s currently available as a digital exclusive on Beatport), with the vinyl-only “Overload” cut occupying the b-side. A proper clip of the a-side from Woolford’s upcoming single can be previewed before it’s physically released next month, below.
Much like the other Marcel, the guy who created last week’s XLR8R podcast, Marcel Fengler is a Berlin-based techno artist and a resident DJ at the city’s storied Berghain nightclub. And though he hasn’t quite reached Marcel Dettmann’s level of international acclaim just yet, we have a strong suspicion that the release of Fokus—his debut full-length which just surfaced this week via the Ostgut Ton label—is about to give Fengler’s career a major shot in the arm. Much like his new LP, Fengler’s entry in the XLR8R podcast series finds him stretching beyond techno’s rigid boundaries. The music on offer—which includes a pair of tracks from Fokus—is richly textured, and though techno’s thundering pulse plays a major role in the proceedings, Fengler also finds time to flirt with various house tropes and explore both darkly dubby and brightly melodic passages. Beyond that, the whole thing has been expertly mixed, which comes as little surprise given the man’s impressive pedigree. Between the new album and this podcast, Fengler seems like an artist who will soon be on his way to bigger and better things; whether that comes to pass or not, there’s not denying that Fengler has put together a solid hour of top-shelf sounds.
01 Peter Van Hoesen “Attribute 39 (Donato Dozzy Remix)” (Time2Express)
02 Rolando “Filthy” (Ostgut Ton)
03 Stefan Vincent “Conflate Four” (Balans)
04 Architectural “Looking Ahead” (Semantica)
05 Tobias “Classics” (Naiif)
06 Freddi Fresh & Tim Taylor “Butterfingers” (V5)
07 Anthony “Shake” Shakir “Sonar” (Peacefrog)
08 Benjamin Damage “Delirium Tremens” (50Weapons)
09 Marc Romboy & Ken Ishii “Susei (ROD Remix One)” (Systematic)
10 Floorplan “Eclipse” (M?Plant)
11 Clouds “The Rights of Artificial Life Form” (Turbo)
12 Marcel Fengler “King of Psi” (Ostgut Ton)
13 Unbalance “Rhythm Slave (Steffi Remix)” (Rebalance)
14 Marcel Fengler “Trespass” (Ostgut Ton)
15 Terrence Dixon “Tranquility” (Nice & Nasty)
16 John Heckle “So Far” (Mathematics)
17 Pan Sonic “Pan Finale” (Blast First Petite)
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Producers Aisha Zoe and Rich Main (a.k.a. Az&Tor) have followed up their debut offering, Resend, with another release for MadTech. Consisting of three new originals and two remixes from No Artificial Colours and Polkadot, the duo’s Sit Back EP (artwork above) is a soulful, deep house workout with an emphasis on vocals. And although it’s not included on the record, The Golden Boy‘s remix of EP cut “Carry Mine” maintains a similar vibe, as its creator chops up the original vocals and adds plenty of swing to make for an infectious, peak-time garage number. The Sit Back EP is out now, and clips from the release can be streamed after the jump.
Finding the balance between vocal focus and production force in electronic music has never been an easy task. Even when a talented vocalist and a proven producer come together, nothing is guaranteed. Such is the case with Snow Ghosts, the collaboration between Throwing Snow and Augustus Ghost, whose debut album rarely finds the pair’s efforts adding up to something worth more than the sum of its parts.
A quick glance at the album artwork for A Small Murmuration, along with track titles like “The Hunted,” “Murder Cries,” “Covenant,” and “The World is Gone,” makes it clear that this album is intended to be an extremely serious affair. This, it turns out, is one of the LP’s major downfalls, especially where the record’s lyrical content is concerned. Questionable phrases like “We wander the darkness of the day/To show me where the years have slipped away” and the particularly cringe-worthy refrain, “The hunter becomes the hunted,” are commonplace occurrences. It can be unfair to judge a vocal performance simply by picking out sections of its lyrics, but it’s a vocalist’s responsibility, perhaps above all else, to sell the story they’re presenting. In the case of A Small Murmuration, Augustus Ghost does not accomplish this task. While there is no denying that Ghost’s voice is darkly rich—it’s a deep, soulful gravel that does not struggle to reach a wide range of notes, and does so with a respectable confidence—her delivery seems to overstate the emotions conveyed by the song’s haphazard lyrics and intensely dramatic productions. Furthermore, the gluttonous use of strings throughout the LP isn’t helping to prevent things from straying into melodramatic territory.
All that said, A Small Murmuration is not without its small victories. As Throwing Snow has proven across a number of solo EPs in the past few years, he is a producer that can comfortably shift between various moods and styles, and on a purely sonic level, there are very few bones to be picked with his work here. Songs like “Untangle Me,” “Murder Cries,” and the particularly lush “Secret Garden”—three of the record’s better overall efforts—see Throwing Snow operating in fine form, crafting dense, sophisticated beats that balance a wide range of real-world textures with synthesized layers and minimal melodic touches.
In truth, it’s difficult to simply categorize Snow Ghosts’ debut as a “bad” record. There is a lot of talent between Augustus Ghost and Throwing Snow, but the way in which they have chosen to combine their separate skill sets on A Small Murmuration is not one which yields very many rewards. In the end, the lyrical content and general mood of the pair’s work is void of a necessary subtlety; it’s overwrought with a kind of unsophisticated emotion that makes it hard to relate to the stories the duo wishes to tell with its music. Perhaps an initial EP would have served the pairing better, and allowed for some growth and much-needed perspective as the two artists started exploring this partnership. Instead, Snow Ghosts has arrived with 10 songs straight out the gate, leaving us with a strong first impression and a lingering suspicion that there may not be much fertile ground for Augustus Ghost and Throwing Snow to find together.
