Starkey “Time Lapse”

In making his forthcoming Orbits LP, longstanding Philly producer Starkey created more than 30 songs before narrowing the tracklist down to 13, and today, we have one of the many outtakes, an atmospheric production called “Time Lapse.” While much less structured than the other tunes that made the cut, “Time Lapse” reflects Starkey’s sci-fi theme for Orbits with its collection of post-apocalyptic and galactic sounds. A sole opera vocal sullenly pushes the corners of the dark and dissonant space as it’s rattled by low-end crashes. Before the album drops on December 3 via Civil, you can preview more of Starkey’s forthcoming music, as well as check out Orbits‘ artwork and tracklist, after the jump.

1. Renegade Starship
2. Command
3. G V Star (Part 1)
4. G V Star (Part 2)
5. Thugs
6. Lzr
7. Synchronize
8. Dystopia
9. …And Then God Built the Cosmos
10. Crashing Sphere
11. The Shuttle
12. Magnet
13. Distant Star

Time Lapse

Roche Auragan / A Night at the Haç

San Francisco’s Ben Winans (a.k.a. Roche) hasn’t had an official release since 2010’s Degage, a digital-only EP of house abstractions in the style of Marcellus Pittman. Two relatively quiet years later, he’s resurfaced in a major way with a pair of 12″s for Jamal Moss’ Mathematics and Amanda Brown’s 100% Silk. Winans seems to have cleaned up his aesthetic for both, at least as far as DJ friendliness is concerned. The two records, Auragan and A Night at the Haç, respectively, show him drawing on traditional tropes—rousing piano stabs, acid lines, and jacking rhythms abound. Winans does a convincing job at pseudo-classicist house, as his arrangements are clean cut and primed for the mix. However, many tend to be slightly overlong, and their second halves dangle without the right amount of momentum.

Auragan opens with “Sans Quimico,” perhaps the best track on either EP. Its rhythm is a kind of motorway groove—with sporadic percussion rolls that hit like crashing waves—and its mellow propulsion provides a steady backdrop for Winans’ placid arpeggiations and piano patterns. The track is a little redolent of John Daly’s work, transforming of a few basic elements into an extended, trance-like jam. “Lftl Eternal” has a more manic arrangement. Its glassy overlay is considerably more frantic than its drums, and, factoring in a growling bass arpeggio, a sense of turmoil pervades. The concluding title track goes for a deeper house motif, replete with filtered organ, soaring, celestial pads, and a low and smudgy bassline. It may have all the genre’s trimmings, but it begins to drag halfway through and doesn’t really recover.

Winans doesn’t exactly replicate the Haçienda sound on A Night at the Haç, but it is a more party-friendly record than Auragan. The opening title track features the sort of ebullient piano house that seems to appear on every other 100% Silk release. It’s not an especially daring move, but Winans executes it proficiently. The clattering acid jam “Outsider Insider” is the closest the producer gets to the legendary Manchester club of the record’s title, but like its predecessor, it isn’t hugely interesting. Moreover, it’s shockingly long for such a minimal arrangement; clocking in at nine minutes flat, it’s a bit like listening to the same track twice in a row. On the flip, “CG Vision” gives the welcome impression that it’s being made up on the spot—jacking claps, wormy bass, and spacey synths weave in and out of the mix almost at random, and halfway through there’s an odd drop in volume that suggests Winans is regrouping his resources. Under floating padwork, the closing “Psycho Zombie Dreams” is laced with a buzzing bassline and a filtered stab pattern. Although it also clocks in around nine minutes, it’s produced with an urgency lacking in the rest of the EP. Still, Winans is at his best when he’s playing with abstraction, and Auragan better showcases this talent on the whole.

Trainwreck: Alixander III

Alixander III (a.k.a. one half of Toronto’s Azari & III) is quick to say that he’s been put through some bullshit over the years. After getting over his initial shock that XLR8R readers would be so morbid as to want to hear him recount some of the worst moments of his musical career, the fast-talking producer—who just released his debut solo album, The Incline of Western Salivation Pt III—spilled the details on several nightmarish situations he’s found himself in and issued a stern warning: “We don’t fuck around. We’re not pushovers.”

Horrible touring stories? Sure. I could tell tons of horrible stories, but they’re not all about me, so I’d feel bad, outing other people in my organization for their bullshit. There’s the time we were supposed to play in Hong Kong and got stuck in a fucking typhoon. 12 hours on the plane and it ran out of fuel. We had to land in Taipei and go back up and circle Hong Kong for another eight hours, that was some pretty crazy shit.

Oh, but this one is good—there’s the one time where we missed a plane to Australia and ended up getting jacked for 30 grand. That’s a good one. We were getting ready and the head of our record label took our lead singer away and walked him up to some closet he couldn’t escape from and fucking molested him. Meanwhile, he misses the show and they rip us off for 30 grand.

[The promoter was] just like, “You failed to show up. You failed to meet your contract for the full commitment.” They just didn’t understand. They didn’t get that our booking agent, the head of our record label, who’s also someone they know because they’re Australian, just decided to hijack our singer. You know what I mean? All these guys, all these record label guys, they just want to party. They just want to have fun. They just want to get away from their wife and kids when we show up, you know? And they had fun at our expense this time around.

It happens to everybody. You play 150 shows a year. Some of them are just gonna fuck up bad, you know? Sometimes it’s some technical bullshit. Sometimes these agents, these promoters, are just not as understanding as they could be. So we gave them a piece of our mind. We were like, “Okay, if you wanna play that move, play it. But don’t ever come to Toronto or you’ll fucking get shot.” That’s how it fucking is, man. If you come from the streets, you don’t live by the sword, die by the sword, but damn, you know? We don’t fuck around. We’re not pushovers.

If we’re talking Azari & III, we’ve been really lucky to not have a lot of awful things happen to our band. The worst thing is that Australian thing, and that wasn’t our fault, but these record guys just don’t care, even though they’re the agents that brought you over. But let’s not concentrate on the awful things, we’ve been very lucky so far.

Video: Julio Bashmore “Husk”

Bristol-based DJ/producer Julio Bashmore has just unveiled the video for “Husk,” a cut lifted from his third 12″ released via his own Broadwalk label. Since he emerged onto the scene in 2009 with his debut record for Dirtybird, it seems that Bashmore has become one of those producers with the Midas touch, and “Husk” is no exception to his consistently smooth, bass-heavy house music. Directed by Jake Applebee and Spike Morris, the video is a playful complement to the seriously deep grooves, as it features a macho weightlifter, exploding confetti-filled balloons which accent the tune’s drops, and an owl that seems to appear in sync with Bashmore’s high-pitched, cinematic strings.

Check Out Mixes From Jacques Greene and Peverelist

An almost two-hour DJ set from Jacques Greene (pictured above) and a Peverelist jungle mix from the ’90s found their way onto the World Wide Web today. Recorded last month in Madrid, Greene’s mix of “bass music, synth-heavy house, and futuristic R&B” is availible to stream over at RBMA Radio, where listeners are treated to cuts from the likes of Duke Dumont, Four Tet, Koreless, and even Kanye West—not to mention a few of Greene’s originals—over the course of the 120-minute live mix.

Bristol producer and Punch Drunk boss Peverelist recently discovered a jungle mix he had put together sometime back in the ’90s (he’s not exactly sure when), and has uploaded it to YouTube for all to stream. You can check out the 100-minute mix—which FACT surmises could not have been put together any earlier than 1996—below.

Video: Monokle “Holt Found”

Fresh off the recent release of his solid Saints LP, Monokle has just released the video for “Holt Found.” Directed by Natasha Todd, the piece is set in Berlin, and captures the essence of the tune’s trippy and tense vibes. An unknown conflict between a young couple seems to be the focus of the footage, which is interspersed with shots of colored smoke, dyed water, and a woman in body paint taking a bath and dancing as a silhouette.

Listen to Drexciya’s ‘Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller III’

It’s absolutely no secret that XLR8R thoroughly enjoys the string of Drexciya reissues which Rotterdam’s Clone label has been releasing throughout 2012; we’ve written glowing reviews about them, gone Deep Inside their classic tunes, and anxiously awaited each of their release dates. Now, we can feast our ears upon the third installment of the Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller series. Thanks to Resident Advisor, the 14-track offering of seminal, mid-’90s techno is available to stream in full before its release on CD and vinyl in the weeks to come. You can listen to it here.

Derrick May to Release 23-Track Compilation

Detroit techno legend Derrick May has announced the release of a 23-track compilation on its way via his own Transmat imprint. Called Beyond the Dance: Transmat 4, the massive two-disc compilation brings together tunes from both familiar techno veterans like DVS1 and more obscure, underground artists such as Rennie Foster, Greg Gow, and Djinxx. So far, the record is only scheduled to be released on December 5 in Japan, because, as May puts it in a brief interview with Resident Advisor, the DJ/producer feels that Japan is the only place in the world that truly appreciates the music. Nonetheless, you can check out Beyond the Dance‘s artwork and tracklist below.

CD1
01. John Arnold – Sparkle
02. Digital Justice – Theme From: It’s All Gone Pearshaped
03. Choice – Acid Eiffel
04. Louis Haiman – Seedling
05. Psyche – Crackdown (Remix)
06. Double Helix – Silent Company
07. Tony Drake – One
08. Sans Soleil – Moulinex
09. A Scorpion’s Dream – Aqua Dance
10. Silent Phase – Fire (Rewired Mix, excerpt)

CD2
01. Karim Sahraoui/DJINXX – Mr. Teleportation
02. Microworld – Signals
03. Rennie Foster – Floatilla
04. Yotam Avni – Heliotropism (Tons of Piano)
05. Chronophone – Eiffel in Love
06. Kenny Larkin/Dark Comedy – War of the Worlds
07. Greg Gow – The Bridge
08. Zak Khutoretsky/DVS1 – Pressure
09. Deep’a & Biri, Gene – Ocean Swell
10. Craig Sherrad – Sattelite Exstasy (Monty’s Maple City Remix)
11. Stephen Brown – Vocal Slices
12. Karim Sahraoui/DJINXX – Nightflow
13. Derrick May/Rythim Is Rythim – Hand Over Hand

Download a New Song from Nicolas Jaar

Over the weekend, the ceaselessly unpredictable Nicolas Jaar shared a new track via his label’s SoundCloud, credited to himself and one mysterious collaborator operating under the guise of Theatre Roosevelt, which is purported to be the NYC artist channeling the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt. Like most things Jaar, the new tune—”The Ego”—is equal parts strange, beautiful, well-crafted, and utterly enjoyable. Best yet, Jaar and his Clown & Sunset imprint have offered “The Ego” up for free download via the player below.

Jets Drops Four-Part Podcast for FACT

Hot on the heels of its eponymous debut for Leisure System, the powerhouse production duo known as Jets (a.k.a. Jimmy Edgar and Machinedrum) has just dropped a massive podcast for FACT, which boasts a slew of exclusive and unreleased music from both aritsts and their respective projects. The mix was recorded as a four-part session, and boasts almost entirely the music of Jimmy Edgar, Machinedrum, and Jets, as well as a forthcoming Sepalcure tune for Hotflush. Head over to FACT to check out the mix and its full tracklist.

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