Clicks & Whistles “Adventure Tune”

North Carolina producers Jorge Xavier Fernandez and Petey Evans, who make up the duo Clicks & Whistles, are set to release their Serious Bidness EP via Distal’s Embassy label on September 17. In the meantime, they were kind enough to offer us “Adventure Tune,” the final track of the collection. The song could very well serve as a video game theme, with its animated sound effects of characters shouting “jump!” and “hey!” and Gameboy-referencing synth patches, but also offers a massive-yet-soothing bassline with its innumerable layers of cosmic melodies. You can check out the tracklist and artwork for Clicks & Whistle’s new record before it drops next week, after the jump.

A1. Serious Bidness
A2. Hundred Mil
B1. Moment of Truth
B2. Adventure Tune

Adventure Tune

Check Out a New Remix From Four Tet

It’s no secret that we here at XLR8R are massive fans of UK DJ/producer/musician Four Tet. We’ve already sang the praises of his brand-new, XLR8R Pick’d Pink LP, we’ve profiled more or less his entire back catalog in our recent Rewind feature, and now, we’re premiering this fresh remix he crafted for Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich’s Ultraísta band. As is to be expected from the wildly talented artist, loads of percussion and starry synths feature on Four Tet’s version of “Smalltalk,” subtly complimenting the soft vocal coos from singer Laura Bettinson. You can nab “Smalltalk (Four Tet Remix),” along with a remix of the same track from Ghostly DJ/producer Matthew Dear (not to mention all of Ultraísta’s self-titled album), here, and stream it below.

Watch an Interview with Jackmaster and the Numbers Crew

Jackmaster, Spencer, and Goodhand from the excellent Glasgow club night/label Numbers recently sat down with Tiger Beer to talk about their label and some of its collective influences. The label heads touch on records from the likes of James Marcel Stinson, Juan Atkins, and Lil’ Louis, talking about the way each release helped form their musical outlook. The interview precedes the Hidden Depths of Numbers night at London’s Village Underground tomorrow night. (via FACT)

Every “U Peaking”

Enigmatic East Coast artist Every (who you may remember from a track we posted last year) is gearing up to release a new EP via Chicago label Ounce, and has dropped this tune in our laps ahead of that occasion. “U Peaking” is another syrupy cut from the Rhode Island producer, featuring an array of synths and a vivid spectrum of percussion and drum sounds in its effervescent mix. It may not be obvious at first, but Every recorded all of his Drive South EP on a farm in North Carolina. Look for the rest of this record to drop in the weeks ahead.

U Peaking

Zed Bias to Release New 12″

UK garage stalwart Zed Bias (a.k.a. Maddslinky) has announced his latest release, a forthcoming tw-track 12″ for London record hub Digital Soundboy Called “Heavy Water Riddim,” the tune was featured on Digital Soundboy’s Fabriclive.63 mix album, and will be paired with another cut of two-step house, called “Hurting Me.” You can stream “Heavy Water Riddim”—which showcases a percolating rhythm of blunted notes, deep kicks, and a healthy serving of sub-bass—before it drops on September 24, below.

Podcast 264: DJ Stingray’s New Forms Mix

Summer may be rapidly coming to a close, but the global onslaught of high-quality electronic-music festivals continues without respite. This week, attentions are turning toward Vancouver, which is playing host to the annual New Forms Festival, four-day art and music event with a lineup featuring XLR8R favorites such as Actress, Kode9, Canblaster, Kuedo, Teebs, Pilooski, Kevin McPhee, and others too numerous to list. We asked the New Forms organizers if one of the festival artists would like to put together an exclusive mix for the XLR8R podcast series, and we have to admit that we were pretty excited when we were told that Detroit veteran DJ Stingray was up to the task. A master of hard, stripped-down electro and techno, the masked artist—an affiliate of Urban Tribe and Underground Resistance—stays true to form here, blazing through more than 20 tracks of gritty electro breakbeats and drum-machine-driven sounds. With his rapid-fire rhythms and lightning-quick mixes, Stingray has built a podcast that offers an unrelenting, even uncompromising listen, not to mention a tracklist that will undoubtedly work Discogs regulars into a tizzy. It’s dark, minimal, fast, and nearly devoid of melody, but it manages to be completely compelling all the same.

01 The Advent “Dark (Fader) Side” (Kombination Research)
02 Hell & Jonzon “Lifeform” (Disko B)
03 Delinquent Dialect “Minimal Electronic” (Temple Dog)
04 Ultradyne “Fantasy Era” (SCSI AV)
05 Shadow People “Firestarter” (Southern Outpost)
06 Autechre “Dial” (Warp)
07 Dead Silence Syndicate “Edge City Express” (Control Tower UK)
08 Galaxian “Repent” (Trajectory 2020X)
09 E8 “Micropacer 1” (Marguerita)
10 Addison Groove “Work It” (Swamp 81)
11 Tactical Systems “Graviton Force” (Roulette Rekordz)
12 Silicon “Electron Push” (NSC)
13 Transllusion “Cerebral Cortex Malfunction” (Supremat)
14 The Sentinel “Wrong Time” (Southern Outpost)
15 Alden Tyrell “Digger” (Clone)
16 Silicon “0%” (Frustrated Funk)
17 The Advent “Wasper” (Kombination Research)
18 Cosmic Force “Optical Rape” (Clone)
19 Delinquent Dialect “Fear LED” (Temple Dog)
20 Galaxian “Repent” (Trajectory 2020X)
21 Drexciya “Positron Island” (Underground Resistance)

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XLR8R_Podcast_DJ_Stingray_2012_09_11

Pále “Silverstair (Kahwe Refix)”

Manchester-based producer Pále (a.k.a. Leo Marcus) just dropped his “Silverstair” single via Four40, delivering one of that record’s two remixes to mark the occasion. Kahwe‘s version of the song never builds to the same teeth-gritting crescendo as Pále’s original, crafting a more tempered rework instead. The Leeds tunesmith builds a head-nodding pulse and fits the tune with faraway vocal samples that nestle into the shifting percussion—effectively transforming “Silverstair” into a deep house groove. After the jump, you can stream snippets of the rest of Pále’s new record—including a remix from 5kinandbone5—all of which is available now over on Juno.

Silverstair (Kahwe Refix)

Tiga The Picture

Few labels in the last decade have established as commanding of a presence as Crosstown Rebels. Led by outlandish personality Damian Lazarus, the imprint and its disciples have orchestrated a near-dominant takeover of underground tech-house across the globe with their occasionally haunting and always deep and funky sound. Typically, the secret weapon in Crosstown Rebels’ success has been fresh talent. The success of Lazarus signings across the last 99 releases has introduced one scene stealer after another, including, among others, Art Department, Jamie Jones, and Maceo Plex. Bringing on an already established name is a much more seldom occurrence at the Rebels’ camp, which makes this release from Montreal electro-techno luminary Tiga impressive beyond the fact that it’s the label’s centennial single.

It’s also the first original material James Sontag has done as Tiga since ’09’s Ciao!, a fact that is lost on no one involved. Sontag’s been far from dormant during this time and “The Picture” proves just as relevant to the Crosstown Rebels’ sound as anything its new blood is providing, perhaps even more so when one considers the glut of material flowing from the label as of late. “The Picture” is anything but just another release. Adapting to the Lazarus camp’s late-night formula, Sontag tapers his electro bombast to little more than a whisper of metallic cackles that adds a subtle texture to the track’s soft-edged thump. Tiga has a reputation for exuding electro sleaze, so his adoption of lyrics from Prince’s “When Doves Cry” makes for a natural fit, but even with the Purple One’s lyrics in the mix, Sontag has chosen to tone down his sexed-up swagger as well. “The Picture” is much more tame than what Tiga fans are likely used to. When Sontag’s incantation, “Dig if you will a picture/An ocean of violets in bloom,” echoes in his monotone drone, the latter sounds more like “an ocean of violence and doom.” Intended or not, it’s certainly imagery befitting the aesthetic of the black-clad clan Sontag is moonlighting with, and it’s still a potent slice of techno-pop.

With a remix from current Crosstown Rebels’ darling Subb-an (a.k.a. Ashique Subhan), the flipside’s “Pleasure From the Bass” maintains the single’s brooding energy with a retro-tinged tech-house stomper. Keeping true to the original—which surfaced back in 2004—the hotly tipped young gun really just imparts a darker mood. Padded drums, robotic squeals, and a robust analog electro-funk bass riff replace the original’s punk-funk kit drumming and electroclash feel. Leaving Sontag’s hip-house spoken word largely intact, Subb-an one-ups the track’s once simplistic nature, filling in those spaces with a macabre synth line, 303 acid accents, and classic Chicago jacking hand claps. In a lot of ways, this rerub of classic Tiga has stronger dancefloor legs than its more up-to-date counterpart. Of course, not every release on Crosstown Rebels can deserve the praise so often showered upon the label, nor do Tiga’s silence breaker and Subb-an’s remix represent for the pinnacle of its sound, but with the Montreal vet at the controls and the London up-and-comer in his corner, at least “The Picture” and Subb-an’s resurrection of “Pleasure from the Bass” offer a refreshing spin on a sound that, after 100 releases, has become more the norm than the rebellious game changer it once was.

Lorenz System “You Have Taken Everything Part 2”

The UK producer known as Lorenz System (a.k.a. Nathan Spooner, formerly Beacon) just self-released his The Other U EP online as a free download, with a limited vinyl release in the works. “You Have Taken Everything Part 2” gives the sense that its clicking percussion and watery chords are delving into deep space, sounding something like a tune crafted by Floating Points, who—incidentally—also owes his moniker to obscure mathematical references. Spooner’s track has a more purposeful beat than most of the others on his record, which is mostly occupied with patient and pretty sounds. You can grab the rest of Lorenz System’s The Other U EP over on Facebook.

You Have Taken Everything Part 2

Loscil Sketches from New Brighton

Let’s start by not taking Loscil for granted. With his eighth album, Sketches from New Brighton, Scott Morgan is as deeply rooted in his Vancouver surroundings and the music he makes in dialogue with them as ever. He’s also still engaged with the blueprint Oval laid down back on 1994’s glowing “Do While,” which promised a serene new age of glitches manicured into an enveloping, human form. From its first whirr and pop, opener “Khanamoot” paints in those same watercolor oscillations, with melodic fragments flashing up through the icy sounds of processing like thermal gusts. You’ll be safe and calm here, watching the rain from your living room and moving your mug from one surface to another.

But absent a curveball like Endless Falls‘ “The Making of Grief Point,” which drafted Dan Bejar in for an ominous voiceover about the creative process, or the more spacious compositions featured on last year’s classically minded Coast/Range/Arc, Loscil’s latest isn’t exactly newsworthy, although it is another fine entry in his discography. Morgan’s a steadfast ambient producer, and on Sketches, he seems to be revisiting the compact, somnolent feel of Plume, an album from six years ago. There are differences here too, but they feel like tweaks on a formula rather than the progression—modest but significant—just under the surface of his two previous albums, which availed themselves of more emotional content as well as a certain expansive sense of space and silence. This is Loscil at equilibrium.

His consistency may be down to his former sideline as the drummer in Bejar’s Destroyer, which granted him the sort career stability and variety that allowed Loscil to develop with limited outside pressure. While Sketches from New Brighton hews close to Loscil’s established themes, it’s not without hints of novelty. “Hastings Sunrise”‘s filtered Rhodes chords percolate in grim and measured fashion beneath atmospheric scraped cymbals, suggesting Morgan’s found a link between his music and Bohren & der Club of Gore’s lugubrious jazz. Later on in the album, “Collision of the Pacific Gather” reshapes Loscil’s trademark palette into a kind of subliminal techno, like Kangding Ray smothered under a pillow. But these are welcome but fleeting distractions from the album’s lulling undertow rather than moments that grab the listener and introduce new possibilities. It’s another fully realized fusion of organic and inorganic elements, but as with Monolake’s recent output, there isn’t much to recommend it beyond that mastery, its aesthetic wholeness.

Listeners who have spent a significant amount of time with Loscil’s music can expect a frustratingly familiar helping of his trademarked sound that fails to pick up on the tangents he’s been hinting at. On the other hand, initiates may find Sketches from New Brighton to be an apt introduction to Morgan’s sound world.

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