Combining modern dance and calculated light technology, Nosaj Thing‘s music video for the first single from his forthcoming Home LP, “Eclipse/Blue”, is somewhat of an emotive spectacle. Directed by artist Daito Manabe, the piece features two dancers surrounded by lights that react to their movements. The visual side of “Eclipse/Blue” is powerfully dark, though it matches the feather-light vocals of Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino as the dancers’ movements are highlighted only by Manabe’s brilliantly colorful light projections. In an interview with The Creators Project, Manaba says he was inspired by the song’s title and the concept of a solar eclipse, so the dancers in the video are positioned in the same fashion as an eclipse (“projector—dancer—screen”). The “Eclipse/Blue” single is out now via Innovative Leisure, and will also be released as part of Home on January 22.
Pedro 123 “Coolant VIP”
After just releasing his OH EP, London-based DJ/producer Pedro 123 is back with his latest, the four-track Swap Numbers EP for B.YRSLF. “Coolant VIP” is a fresh version of Pedro 123’s original “Coolant” tune, which came out roughly a year ago. Like many VIP edits, this mix takes the original up a notch, moving from an atmospheric bass number to a two-step banger in this case. Though it retains the smooth, fuzzy synths that kept the vibes mellow on the original production, Pedro 123 unleashes a futuristic UFO-sounding synth once the drop hits, which helps give it a fresh edge. You can preview the rest of the Swap Numbers and check out the video for “Coolant VIP” after the jump.
Marcel Dettmann to Release 12″ via 50Weapons
Modeselektor‘s 50Weapons (which we recently featured as a part of our Labels We Love showcase) will soon have one foot in the grave, as Marcel Dettmann‘s forthcoming “Linux” b/w “Ellipse” will be its 25th release, marking the halfway point to the German bass outpost’s premeditated close. On January 11, Dettmann will return to 50Weapons after the 2011 release of “Deluge” b/w “Duel” (not to mention this year’s quietly unleashed Range EP for Ostgut Ton and the “Landscape” single for Music Man) to bring another pristinely straightforward techno offering to the label. While you wait for the new record, you can listen to a snippet of its a-side below.
Kraftwerk’s Karl Bartos to Release Solo Album
Karl Bartos, who left legendary electronic innovators Kraftwerk back in 1990, is set to release his second solo album, Off the Record, on March 15 via Hamburg label Bureau B. The material on Off the Record draws from sonic sketches Bartos made while a part of Kraftwerk, which were honed into what’s been called “iron crystal music (referring to the Atomium building, a structure built in the shape of an iron crystal cell for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair), vocoder newspeak, robot sounds, digital glitch, techno pop, catchy melodies, electronic avant-garde, roaring silence, futurism, and, of course, those rhythms!” There’s apparently a tour in the works, as well, but for now, you can listen to a snippet taken from Bartos’ LP, as well as check out the album’s tracklist, below. (via The Quietus)
1. Atomium
2. Nachtfahrt
3. International Velvet
4. Without A Trace Of Emotion
5. The Binary Code
6. Musica Ex Machina
7. The Tuning Of The World
8. Instant Bayreuth
9. Vox Humana
10. Rhythmus
11. Silence
12. Hausmusik
Kevin McPhee Readies Single for Brainmath; Hear it Now
One of RAMP‘s handful of imprints, Brainmath is set to drop its first release after a two-year hiatus, a single-track record from burgeoning Canadian artist Kevin McPhee. The producer’s “Who Loves You” tune—which is described as “woozy, R&B-flavoured deep house”—will follow his solid new EP for West Norwood Cassette Library (read our review here) next week, available only as a limited-edition 10″. You can listen to McPhee’s latest tune now in the player below.
Gold and Soil “Where or When (Anenon Remix)”
There’s been some more intermingling over at Anenon‘s Non Projects house, this time with singer/musician Ana Caravelle and artist Ryan York (a.k.a. Asura), who make up the Gold and Soil outfit. Anenon (pictured above) reworks the intro to the pair’s brand-new, self-titled LP, and it bears a number of pleasing resemblances to one of his prior collaborations with Gold and Soil, “Where Have You Been,” namely the organically textured drums and Caravelle’s harp work. To be sure, Aneon’s version of “Where or When” boasts an electronic melody and finds the LA producer elaborating on the original’s chopped-yet-delicate vocals.
Podcast 275: Legowelt
Clearly, Legowelt (a.k.a. Danny Wolfers) is a bit of an eccentric. For more than a decade, the Dutch producer has been turning out various shades of electronic music, utilizing literally dozens of different monikers in the process. The man works at a remarkably prodigious rate, a pace which incredibly only seems to increase with each passing year. Amidst all the releases—not to mention the countless tracks he posts online that never officially see the light of day—Wolfers somehow manages to not only maintain a true clarity of artistic vision, but also an impeccable level of quality. Dabbling in house, electro, techno, disco, ’80s funk, freestyle, and more, Legowelt can always be counted upon to celebrate the wonders of vintage synths and drum machines, yet his music never comes off like a rehash or a simple exercise in nostalgia. His latest outburst is The Paranormal Soul, a full-length for the storied Clone imprint. The album dropped last week, so we figured now would be a good time for Wolfers to work a bit of his weird magic on the XLR8R podcast series. As he often does, Legowelt has loaded the mix with his own productions, many of them unreleased. Yet this is no one-note effort; there’s a continuous thread of rich synth melodies and analog drum patterns, but Wolfers traverses a lot of territory during the course of the nearly 90-minute podcast. Listening provides a unique look into the mind of a real original, along with the chance to hear a lot of choice tunes that might never surface elsewhere.
01 Earthwatch “Computer Hobby”
02 Legowelt “Skyscrapers of Apsylon”
03 Shadow Wolf “Harbor Coldness”
04 MC Mony & Gangsta Gold “Load the Ammo” (Lite Green)
05 Legowelt “Danger in the Air” (Clone)
06 Nacho Patrol “Nubian West Coast” (New Jersey)
07 Legowelt “How I Live”
08 Legowelt “A Greater Understanding of the Universe”
09 Legowelt “Outside of Time”
10 Legowelt “And the Beat Goes On”
11 Legowelt “NYDaze”
12 Trackman Lafonte & Bonquiqui “San Jose”
13 Legowelt “Wayfaring Stranger”
14 Legowelt “Entrance to Avalon”
15 Legowelt “I Only Move for U” (Clone)
16 Legowelt “Creation 5” (Clone)
17 Legowelt “Visions in My Mind” (Unknown to the Unknown)
18 Guicee “Thirteen Rocks and a Bag’o Weed”
19 G-Float 95 “Freebase Holiday”
20 Xosar “Classical Death Core”
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Ages “4:13”
Today, Orange County DJ/producer Ages (a.k.a. Michael Lundy) self-released his new EP as a limited run of 30 cassettes. To mark the occasion, Lundy has shared the atmospheric “4:13,” one of I Left My Heart in Arcata‘s five tracks. Ages’ latest is more of a soundscape than anything else; even though the drums are quite heavy and prominently featured, the tune is far from a typical beat-driven track. It’s a sonic journey propelled by low-fi percussion, topped with dreamy synths, and riddled with distant, melodic whispers. You can preview the rest of Ages’ EP before scoring a copy for yourself here (for a “Name Your Price” download, no less), after the jump.
Marc Houle Readies New EP
Items & Things co-founder and XLR8R podcast contributor Marc Houle will soon release his first record since dropping the Undercover LP back in March, the four-track Zorba EP. The Berlin-based DJ/producer will deliver his latest offering—which is described as “a resolutely fun, unique, and sometimes bizarre EP”—via London club night/label WetYourSelf! sometime in mid-December, but you can check out the record’s artwork and tracklist before then, below.
1. Zorba
2. I Uh You
3. Rainysnake
4. Oo oo
Lee Gamble Dutch Tvashar Plumes
Earlier this year, Lee Gamble released a mini-album titled Diversions 1994-1996, which was composed of samples from a collection of old jungle mixtapes. It was, as he explained in an interview with FACT, an attempt to recreate the hypnagogic, post-club state in which half-remembered melodies and rhythms twirl in your memory. Diversions was a romantic effort, the labor of an artist who has spent many meaningful nights in a club. Gamble’s follow-up, Dutch Tvashar Plumes, is comparatively cynical and dark. It is computer art, informed by dance music, kin to Actress, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Mark Fell.
Granted, Dutch is less expansive than recent works by those artists, or perhaps just less welcoming. Gamble’s computer sounds like it was puckering as it helped him spit out the album’s 10 patchwork tracks. There is a sour, acidic taste throughout. When familiar low-end rhythms appear—and they do so only infrequently—they fail to envelop and comfort the tracks. Everything stings, everything scrapes, and this ensures Dutch is a caustic, uncomfortable listen.
Impressively, Gamble accomplishes this without dipping into any sounds that might be considered “noise.” Instead, he laces Dutch with lots of springy, high frequency sounds; parts of the album seem dedicated to turning Gamble’s hi-pass filter into a weapon. Sampled voices show up—during the final, soupy minutes of “Nowhen Hooks,” for example—but they are heavily obscured. There is so little comfort throughout Dutch; it’s mostly just hot-circuit Tetris and pissy, hissy valves.
Gamble’s commitment to unease is impressive, but it’s difficult to tell what exactly Dutch is working towards. (And it must be working toward something. No one embraces these sounds without some kind of agenda.) Unlike some of his more academically inclined peers (and unlike his previous release), Gamble provides virtually no road map for Dutch. In his press material, Gamble describes his current creative process as, roughly, digital synthesis that leads to “disfigurations and reconfigurations.” The word “disfigurations” is key: Dutch isn’t a treatise on modern dance music so much as a perversion of it, a series of structures and sounds bent to Gamble’s loony will.
This leaves Dutch untethered, though. It will appeal primarily to fans of dance and electronic music, but only those with a desire to see their object of affection whipped a little. Ultimately, Dutch is less vibrant and, well, relevant than dance deconstructions by Actress or Oneohtrix, but it’s also a lot harder to pin down, and there’s a rogue-ish appeal to that.
