The 2013 edition of the Red Bull Music Academy officially begins at the tail end of this week, kicking off a month-long run of events and lectures that will accompany the two academy sessions taking place during May. With at least one public event in NYC appearing on the RBMA calendar every day from April 28 to May 31, we’ve boiled down the slew of enticing offerings to just the 10 most essential happenings—which was no easy task. Our picks for RBMA’s 2013 session can be found after the jump.

Masters at Work

Masters at Work & Special Guests
Friday, May 3 • Le Bain at The Standard, High Line, 444 W. 13th St, New York, NY
11 p.m. – 4 a.m. • Free, 21+
Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez and “Little” Louie Vega (a.k.a. Masters at Work) have been at this for a long time now—over 20 years, in fact—so it goes without saying that the veteran duo knows how to rock a party. On the first Friday of May, the house pioneers are set deliver a three-hour live set that’s sure to be heavy on soulful vibes and will feature an entire roster of “special guests.” LA’s Suzanne Kraft and Italy’s Jolly Mare are scheduled to provide the opening support.

Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings Exhibition
Friday, May 3 – Sunday, June 2 • 145 W. 32nd St, New York, NY
12 p.m. – 8 p.m. Daily (Closed on Mondays) • $5 Suggested Donation
77 Million Paintings is described as a work that is somewhere “between music and painting.” The audio-visual installation randomly generates combinations of music and visuals to yield images and sonic moments that are essentially the result of an almost infinite amount of possibilities. Like most things attributed to Brian Eno, 77 Million Paintings is likely to at least be a stimulating work of art, if not an entirely immersive one, and considering a $5 suggested donation is all one needs to take a look, it seems foolish to miss out. Eno will also be giving an illustrated talk as part of RBMA on May 6; details on that can be found here.

Brooklyn Flea Record Fair
Saturday, May 4 • Smorgasburg, Kent Avenue at N. 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY
11 a.m. – 6 p.m. • Free, All Ages
In May, RBMA plans to spice up the Brooklyn Flea Record Fair, an NYC insitution for vinyl enthusiasts and those who live to dig. For this special edition of the record fair, labels such as Ghostly, DFA, Modular, Mexican Summer, and more will be selling wax “out-the-trunk style,” while master mixer DJ / rupture and others will be soundtracking the dusty dig. Buying records while listening to records—a simple yet rewarding combination indeed.

Andy Stott

The Bunker w/ Andy Stott, Atom TM, Objekt, and more
Saturday, May 4 • Public Assembly, 70 N. 6th St, Brooklyn, NY
10 p.m. – 6 a.m. • $20, 21+
New York’s long-standing haven for underground techno, The Bunker, will be teaming up with RBMA for a night in Brooklyn with heavy hitters Andy Stott, Objekt, and Atom TM (a.k.a. Uwe Schmidt a.k.a. Señor Coconut) lined up to fill the room with their massive sonic offerings. 100% Silk affiliate Octo Octa is also set to perform live along with a selection of Academy participants.

Four Tet and Special Guests
Wednesday, May 8 • Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St, New York, NY
8 p.m. – 12 a.m. • $5, 18+ (Sold Out)
If there is one thing that ties Four Tet and his special guests for the night of May 8—Jon Hopkins and Koreless—together, it is their shared affinitiy for melodically infused electronic music. The unfortunately already sold-out show is likely to have generous helpings of blissful sweeps, spiraling arpeggios, and glistening bells, on top of the adventurous dance music these three producers are known for crafting.

L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok

Dark Disco w/ Metro Area, Gerd Janson, Bok Bok B2B L-Vis 1990, and More
Friday, May 10 • 88 Palace, 88 E. Broadway, New York, NY
11 p.m. – 4 a.m. • $15 (Advance), $20 (Doors), 21+
RBMA’s Dark Disco night is set to mark the end of its first academy session with a party down in “the basement of one of the best Dim Sum restaurants in the Lower East Side.” To celebrate, an all-star cast of selectors has been enlisted, including reunited disco dons Metro Area (a.k.a. Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani), Running Back label head Gerd Janson, and Night Slugs impresarios Bok Bok and L-Vis 1990 going B2B.

Byte Boogie w/ Mister Saturday Night and Dope Jams
Sunday, May 19 • Secret Venue
9 p.m. – 1 a.m. • Free with Invite, 21+
It’s only right that RBMA hooks up with the Mister Saturday Night crew during its stay in New York. The regular NYC party and, more recently, label run by Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter has been one of the city’s most consistent and visible forces pushing dance music forward, and has long been particularly keen on exploring the blurry lines where various dancefloor sounds meet. Even better, RBMA has also signed up the vinyl connaisseurs from the sadly now-closed Dope Jams record store, making the night an excellent showcase of some of the city’s finest homegrown tastemakers.

Deep Space w/ Giorgio Moroder (DJ Set), T.Williams, Benjamin Damage, François K
Monday, May 20 • Cielo, 18 Little West 12th St, New York, NY
9 p.m. – 3:30 a.m. • $40, 21+ (Sold Out)
Deep Space and RBMA put together quite the stacked bill for this collaborative effort, bringing London’s T. Williams, 50Weapons affiliate Benjamin Damage, and recently reactivated disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder to join Deep Space resident and respected veteran house jock François K for the night. With a line-up as strong as it is diverse, it’s easy to see why this one is already sold out.

Pantha Du Prince and the Bell Laboratory

Pantha Du Prince and the Bell Laboratory
Tuesday, May 28 • West Park Church, 165 W. 86th St, New York, NY
6:30 p.m. – 11 p.m. • $20, All Ages
In RBMA’s final week, the organization is set to bring German producer Hendrik Weber stateside for the premiere US performance of his latest project, Pantha Du Prince and the Bell Laboratory. The six-piece ensemble will summon the depths of their bell-like instruments—including the gigantic carillon—as Weber processes and adds bits of electronics to the entrancing pieces. Plus, all of this will go down in an iconic NYC church—one that was originally built just before the 20th century—which is just about the perfect place one could take in the sounds of Pantha Du Prince’s Bell Laboratory.

RBMA Closing Night w/ L.I.E.S., Kerri Chandler, Mathew Jonson, Mosca, and More
Friday, May 31 • Output, 74 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
8 p.m. – 4 a.m. • $15 (Advance), 21+
Everyone knows that closing-night parties make for the most fun. It doesn’t matter if it’s the closing night of a school play, a work retreat, or—in this case—a month of intensive music workshops and top-notch events; the work is done, the culmination of everyone’s efforts comes to a head, and it’s simply time to let loose. Throw into that mix Ron Morelli and Steve Summers representing the L.I.E.S. crew, Kerri Chandler, Mathew Jonson, Mosca, and the “Red Bull Music Academy All-Stars” and you got yourself a damn fine party to end on. RBMA NYC is clearly planning to go out with a bang.

The full list of RBMA NYC events can be found here.

Excavation, the second album from London-based sound designer and multi-instrumentalist Bobby Krlic (a.k.a The Haxan Cloak), is both a direct continuation of its 2011 predecessor and also its polar opposite. Thematically, where The Haxan Cloak was a descent into darkness, Excavation represents the ascent into light that directly follows it. The differences between the two LPs run further than their mood and themes, however; for this second album, Krlic has flipped his approach to composition and sound design on its head. Where his debut was rooted in the raw, natural tones of classical instrumentation, its follow-up deals in electronic timbres and heavily processed effects. As such, Excavation shares many traits with its predecessor while still sounding like a unique proposition; here, Krlic makes no attempt to repeat the tricks of his debut, and creates a hugely worthy successor to it as a result.

The differences between the two albums are unsurprising, given that Krlic approached the composition of each in completely opposing manners. While the narrative behind the The Haxan Cloak evolved slowly out of Krlic’s musical experiments, Excavation found him building each track with a clear idea of the concept in mind. “With the first album, I didn’t really know what it was about until it was finished,” he explains. “When I was assembling it, this narrative sort of appeared. It was basically about a character’s descent towards death, which is why it ends with that requiem with the choir and things. The new one starts at exactly the position the last one finished, so you could literally put them back-to-back and there’s not a gap. So it’s a continuation of that story really. It’s not anchored to any particular place—I’m not saying it’s heaven or hell or an afterlife—it’s just this person’s journey, their departure from the earth and into another existence.”

This shift in concept manifests itself most obviously in the difference in mood between the two records. While Excavation is still hardly an exercise in easy listening, it feels far less imposing than its predecessor did; where, on The Haxan Cloak, Krlic created a sense of ever-impending doom with thunderous waves of stringed instrumentation, the soundscapes now feel more understated and less urgent. Where last time there was an immediate darkness to each of the tracks, the bulk of the new album is made up of sounds that create a subtler sense of vague unfamiliarity. This shift is achieved by a radical and instantly obvious change in instrumentation. For example, as with “Raven’s Lament,” the first track from his debut, album opener “Consumed” is based around a slow build of tension, yet where last time this was achieved by the recognizable sound of tense orchestral strings, Krlic instead confronts the listener with an abrasive, alien-sounding filtered synth line.

According to Krlic, however, creating these sounds was about more than just trading the strings for synthesizers. “It’s not just about the instrumentation,” he says. “It’s about my role within the project. With the first one, it was more about me being a player and a composer, so while obviously there was a computer involved, I didn’t really want that to affect things too much. I wanted to nail things in one take as much as I could, whereas this record saw me taking more of a sound-designer role.”

To achieve this, Krlic prepared for the album’s creation by decamping to a recording studio in the quaint British town of Snape, in order to build a library of sounds that he would use to piece together Excavation. “I made a massive bank of recordings with loads of orchestral instruments and gongs and timpani things,” he explains. “Then I just took them home and played around with them until some rhythms and textures and stuff started to fall into place. It’s really surprising to people to find out how much of it isn’t actually electronic instruments—there are a lot of field recordings and acoustic recordings that have then been treated electronically and all the sounds have sort of been broken down and rearranged.”

This desire to separate the finished sounds of Excavation from their natural origins is closely linked to theme of ascension that runs through the LP. “With the first one, it’s very much instruments that anchor it to the earth—violins and traditional drums and cello and whatever,” he explains. “With this one, I kind of wanted to flip it on its head and take it somewhere else. I wanted to detach it from everything really.”

While ‘cinematic’ is a term that gets kicked around a lot in relation to ambient and instrumental music, it feels particularly relevant to The Haxan Cloak’s work. Excavation is an album that demands to be consumed in its entirety from start to finish, but it also really comes to life if the listener is willing to invest in the narrative ideas that support it—the contrast in sounds between this LP and Krlic’s debut, and the shift of textures from the menacing immediacy of “Consumed” to the more passive and ethereal nature of 12-minute closing track “The Drop”.

The cinematic nature of the project is no coincidence—Krlic openly admits that his ultimate goal is to produce film soundtracks under the Haxan Cloak moniker. As such, it’s little surprise that visualization plays a key role in his composition process. “A lot of working on the record would involve sitting down and getting into character—imagining what this character’s doing, what he’s thinking about, what he’s seeing,” he explains. “Then taking the sound recordings and filtering them through that lens until it starts to sound like what I would be envisioning in my head.”

He describes this process as something like ‘guided experimentation’—painting with the texture of his recordings and electronic sounds around a visualized framework. “Sometimes I find it helpful, if I’ve got a certain compositional idea in my head, to draw it out,” Krlic explains.”I’ll draw peaks and dips and little symbols to help me imagine what it might sound like.”

Structurally, Excavation flits between shorter tracks that create instant mood-setting tension—such as “Miste,” with its surprising bursts of dehumanised voice, or the industrial “Dieu,” which sounds like Vex’d at its most atmospheric—and longer pieces that unfurl at a slower, meandering pace. At the LP’s heart is a pair of two-part tracks, “Excavation” and “The Mirror Reflecting,” which each reveal their moods slowly over the the course of their 10-plus-minute durations. “They were both written as two massive long pieces, but then I noticed within each of them that there was this big dynamic shift that occurred,” Krlic explains. “It just made sense to me to have them as two parts. I think both parts do exist as one song, but each says very different things. I think they both could exist in their own right as well, so I felt it was an important thing to put a divide in there. The other thing is, I just didn’t want an album that was only five tracks long.”

Ultimately, Excavation feels like a less immediate record than Krlic’s debut. The changes to his compositional approach have had the audible result of creating an album based around gradually evolving textures as opposed to the recognizable orchestral drama of his debut. What it lacks in immediacy, however, is more than compensated for in depth and maturity; it’s an album that seems to only reveal its true nature through patience and repeated listens. Placing this album and its predecessor side-by-side not only cements the notion that Krlic has compositional skills that surpass many of his peers in the UK right now, but also makes it clear that he’s developing and progressing as a musician in positive directions. In short, as sophomore moves go, Excavation is hard to fault.