Vienna-based producer and latest addition to the LuckyMe family Cid Rim (pictured above) recently delivered this remix for German producer Sam IRL, which originally appeared on last month’s Slower Bavarian EP on Jazz & Milk. Comparatively, the remix is a futuristic, bass-driven refix of the original “moody deep-house tune,” and has already been played out by the likes of Ben UFO and Jackmaster. Cid Rim—who has a self-titled album of his own coming out on LuckyMe tomorrow—completely reworks “Safety Hertz,” deepening the soundscape with layers of crunchy noise, punchy synth stabs, and whirlwinds of spaced-out sound effects.
Kid Smpl, the Seattle-based beatmaker whose low-end-heavy and atmospheric “Escape Pod” made it onto our Top 20 Downloads of July list, has unveiled a disorientingly psychedelic video for his tune “Pulse.” The clip, which was directed by Altrac Productions‘ Ben Anderson, deviates from the format of many electronic music videos by constructing abstract beauty from natural imagery rather than computer-generated geometric patterns or dystopian cityscape visuals. Anderson makes ample use of mirroring effects to create endless amounts of trippy arrangements that, by the end of the clip, look so surreal that it’s hard to tell whether or not you’re looking at the same landscapes from the video’s beginning.
Although the rain in Asheville, NC put a bit of a damper on last year’s Moogfest (you can read our review here), the lineup this time around bodes well for a successful event this fall. In addition to performances by un-XLR8R-y artists like Killer Mike, Santigold, and Explosions in the Sky, the festival will feature a hefty load of talent from the realm of electronic music. Among those scheduled to play Moogfest 2012 on October 26 and 27 are heavyweights like Richie Hawtin, Carl Craig (pictured above), Mouse on Mars, Squarepusher, Actress, and Prefuse 73, as well as fresh standouts like Blondes and Disclosure. You can grab tickets for the third annual celebration of synth innovator Bob Moog’s life and legacy when they go on sale at noon on August 10, here, and check out the full lineup here.
Although Grand High Priest’s “Mary Mary” was released almost six years ago, the folks at Sheffield’s MoreAboutMusic label have enlisted the likes of Altered Natives, Bok Bok, and Yannah Valdevit (pictured above) to revamp, rework, and resurrect the Chicago house tune for 2012. Although the first two remixes bang as hard as one would expect, Valdevit’s remix may come as a bit of a surprise to those who know her for the lighthearted vocal stylings she’d put out as part of the duo Eddy Meets Yannah. However, she proves herself to be a more than capable remixer; although the original track’s blistering synth lead is left mostly untouched, Valdevit does away with the steady marching beat of the original “Mary, Mary,” replacing it with a syncopated stomp that weaves in and out of the mix and allows Dajae’s soaring, gospel-tinged vocals to stand front and center. You can stream the rest of the EP, which is out today, after the jump.
Two weeks ago, techno/house/drum & bass beatmaker Jon Convex (a.k.a. Damon Kirkham) helmed an intense mix for the XLR8R podcast series, which contained several cuts from his upcoming solo album, Idoru. Today, FACT unveiled a stream of that record, which will see a release next week on the producer’s own Convex Industries imprint. The 10-track LP marks Convex’s first solo effort after producing under the moniker Kid Drama with fellow UK artist Boddika (a.k.a. Alexander Green) as Instra:mental, and can now be heard in full, here.
Slugs. The word could mean unsightly garden pests or lazy dudes, but in the case of London’s Night Slugs imprint, it clearly refers to bullets. Each release on the label is a deadly, precision-crafted thing, whether a swift, blunt grime rhythm or a crisp and carefully sculpted garage riff. A similarly detailed approach is given to Night Slugs’ artwork, under the direction of Bok Bok (a.k.a. Alex Sushon), a DJ/producer and the label’s owner alongside partner L-Vis 1990 (a.k.a. James Connolly). Since the dawn of the Night Slugs label in January 2010, Sushon has designed nearly everything the imprint has put out, from over 20 record sleeves to its iconic logo, a blueprint-like font composed of 3-D building blocks. Somehow, in between making music, hosting shows on Rinse FM, and traveling the globe to DJ, Bok Bok finds time to sit down with his favorite basic tools—a sketchpad and Adobe Illustrator—and knock out the magic. When he’s in London, this means long hours spent working at home in a rambling, three-story house in Camberwell, where he lives with three others (including Night Slugs artist Girl Unit) and a neighborhood cat that can open doors on its own and likes to play analog keyboards.
When we caught up with Bok Bok, he had just finished breakfast and was continuing work on a remix of Parris Mitchell’s “All Night Long,” a dirty Chicago house classic on Dance Mania, that’s being reissued by a Ukranian label. We talked at length about computer-generated environments, grime, simplicity, and the vibes of the virtual world.
XLR8R: What is a typical day when you are at home? Bok Bok: I ?wake up around 11 a.m. at the earliest. Breakfast is usually either eggs and chorizo or a banh mi sandwich. This part is important! Then I get down to work for the rest of the day: emails and taking care of business get done as quickly as possible and then I get down to some music by mid-to-late afternoon and into the night.
Did you start doing graphics before music? I was doing graphics first. It’s definitely something I was staying late after school learning to do for fun. A lot of people at that time were trying to make garage in the music lab on Fruity Loops. I dunno why that wasn’t me, but there you go. I did go to art school but they don’t teach you how to make work there… at least not the one I went to. It’s all “theory,” apparently (but that’s a conversation for another day). You basically get four years to teach yourself as much as possible. I definitely learnt a lot about cohesion, continuity, and how to communicate with an audience in general, though.
Growing up, did have any visual influences that stand out to you now? In music (as well as any other design), I have always loved series. I find them so satisfying: modularity, repetition, having a template. The Penguin Books are an obvious example. I have so many in the house. I’m referring to this kind of series, with the redesign and new modernist template they brought in.
When you started off with Night Slugs, did you have a particular palette or a general aesthetic in mind? Yeah, absolutely. I kept thinking about the Panasonic Glider commercial and the original Tron, too. They’re both such beautiful examples of what you can create with a really limited palette—and even though they’re trying to describe digital environments, they’re both so warm. I’m generally just really interested in early computer art of this kind, depicting a world of wireframes and light-structures.
That’s interesting, given your love of grime music. It seems like another example of something that is simple and often made with limited equipment but really powerful. Exactly, it’s the same thing to me… It’s about how to be really wild and expressive with very few elements.
To what extent do you fetishize the 1980s? [laughs] That’s a great question, because I guess it can be leveled at our team as a whole! I mean, we’re children of the ’80s; for me, the mid ’80s. But I’d like to think it’s more than just fetishization or tapping into an aesthetic. It was an important time because of where technology and pop culture came to a head, you know? In a lot of ways, it’s the last time a lot of things felt truly new and glowed with vibrance.
I’m asking about the ’80s because some of the recent Night Slugs releases, Girl Unit and the Jam City in particular, seem to reflect an interest in an ’80s electro-funk or freestyle sound refracted through a modern prism. Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of that going on lately. We’re all close in age, so I guess that syndrome sort of runs across the whole camp, but I always like to circumvent thinking about time in a normal way. I always joke that in Night Slugs time doesn’t exist, so we can just pluck whatever we want from wherever. I don’t think about being futuristic any more than I think about being retro. It’s all more abstract to me; it’s all arranging structures and shapes until they’re in a really bold formation.
I also wanted to talk about virtual reality in relation to Night Slugs. Girl Unit was once telling me how you guys used to be into Second Life. What interests you about those kind of virtual environments? Second Life is kinda dying, but it’s really interesting for so many reasons, not all of them good. On a really basic level, I like just cruising around and getting vibes from the scenery. People make, like, their own islands and stuff. I think of it as tourism. Kinda like this [Minecraft recreation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House]. I’m into a lot of 3-D representation in general; it just makes me laugh a lot of the time, which is a big part of the appeal. At Christmas time, we tend to get mad high and just fly airplanes on San Andreas into sunsets and stuff. In terms of Night Slugs, the artwork has always definitely always been a place for the music to inhabit. It sort of works to put all the releases together in their own world or worlds.
Do other Night Slugs artists think of their music as being made for virtual environments? It’s interesting because yeah, a lot of the time we do talk about an idea of the location or situation [the music is set in]. It might not be in [the artist’s] head when they’re writing, or maybe it is…
I know you didn’t do the cover of the Jam City Classical Curves album but I think it ties in so well to this idea. I’m glad you think that. The whole art direction of the label is definitely in a new phase. It’s slightly different the way we did the Jam City cover, but I still think it ties in to the aesthetic just as much. It’s the same thing [we ‘ve been doing, but] with a lot more definition because that’s what his vision dictated. He was more focused on a very specific situation for a lot of reasons, some of which he goes into in this interview with Dummy Mag. The cover was done by a genius team called Bowyer, and then Ms. Muzik Channel made the videos. It was an involved project for sure.
For [Girl Unit’s] Club Rez, the rendering was done by Sina Taherkhani, an NYC-based multimedia designer. He does a lot of really cool stuff in 3-D, so we’d give him a really specific spec of exactly what we wanted and he would bring it to life. The music is becoming more high-res, so I feel the art should follow. This will mean more collaborations for sure. I might not be the one drawing the covers, but it will still be me putting together the concept or [me] in collaboration with the artist. The ones where the artist has a really strong input are always the best.
How much input do the artists have on their covers? Jam had an incredibly vivid idea of what he wanted; the ideas that went into the music were so visual, so he had a big hand in his own art direction. Girl Unit was really key to the Club Rez art too, but in the past he has given me a keyword or theme to pursue. L-Vis and Kingdom both always have strong ideas visually as well. Many of us are from a visual-art background, so it makes sense.
Does an artist literally say, “I see a pyramid” or “I want a Mayan temple”? [Girl Unit] might say, “I want something Catholic,” or [Jam City] might say, “Make it set in a grimy red brick,” and then I’ll interpret that in a way that looks like a level in a point-and-click, but I’ll try and make it really fucking spooky, considering it’s just basic pixel shapes. Sometimes those locations in game worlds can have such a vibe, they can give you tingles.
One that really intrigued me was the cover of Kingdom’s Dreama EP. What’s going on there? It’s like an abandoned terrace club in the forest… or not abandoned, but inexplicably empty.
We’ve talked a lot about virtual environments, but do you see any connection between your actual environment in London and the kind of visuals you make? Yeah, but then again I see a connection to a lot of other cities I’ve been to as well. Definitely London to some extent—like, the structure on the cover of my Southside EP is supposed to be this hyperstructure that encloses the city with forest surrounding it (and then the forest is flooded on the remix package). In my mind, that’s in South London. That EP is really heavily grime influenced, so it’s inevitable that it would be set in a London of some sort.
Funny enough, because I’m American and because of the title of the EP… It seems like Chicago?
Yeah! And why does it have a forest? Right. I mean, a lot of cities have a Southside. Also, I can’t say that ambiguity [about what city it is] isn’t intentional. Why the forest? I don’t know… I guess because it’s an alternate time when the city is inside a gigantic Superstudio metabuilding shut off from the outside world, kind of like this.
Sorry if I’m asking you to get too specific. I don’t want you to give up all the mystery but I think it’s so interesting. I’m happy to talk about it! Anyway, these ideas are more in my head and that’s not necessarily what needs to be communicated to the audience. The main thing is I’m hoping the tracks and the artwork augment each other, creating something further, a little mythology.
So I guess we don’t need to talk about the glowing phallus on the Velour cover then. [laughs] That one is pretty unambiguous! Pervy, more like. It’s trouser tent music.
Speaking of pervy, I was kind of surprised at the boobs on the cover of the Cubic Zirconia remix. Definitely the most sexual thing I’ve seen on Night Slugs. Well, the white label series is a law unto itself. That particular one links in to Cubic Zirconia’s single, for which this was a bootleg remix-type package. They weren’t just random boobs! And it’s kind of a booty-oriented record, so I guess it fits. The white-label series is fun now because I can put art on there if I want or leave it blank. Lately, I’ve been having fun putting whatever photocopies are lying around on there, just whatever’s on my desk or in the house. It will usually link in, like photos of Flirta for Helix’s 12″ or basketball shoes for “The Courts.” There’s so much work that goes into the main series that it’s nice to be able to slap whatever onto the white labels.
Do you have any rituals or anything you do when you’re not feeling inspired? I definitely spend a bit of time thinking about an idea passively and one usually emerges. I’m lucky in this way—back when I had a day job in design, you had to think of ideas on the spot constantly. I just take my time thinking about stuff and a bike ride usually really helps; think about what you want to come up with before you start, then ride. Repetitive exercise is really good for ideas. I also take little snaps when I travel, usually in city centers or airports, of cool or terrifying structures.
I have to know what you find a terrifying structure. Like this. It’s horrifying. This is what my nightmares are like: 4-D shit.
?What are some other labels (new or classic) whose aesthetic you really admire? People have asked me this before, and I was stumped. I currently like how Sound Pellegrino has done it—it’s obviously riffing on a style but the typography in particular is beautiful. But overall, I guess record-sleeve design isn’t somewhere I take inspiration from that much. I mean, most of my favorite records look like shit; they have handwritten one-word titles in marker pen or inkjet-printed tracklists in color or they’re white labels that are a bit blue for some reason. But I love how Dance Mania and Trax had that same template pretty much for everything (with slight variations) for, like, 10 years each or thereabouts. That aspect is a big influence, for sure. It’s just so satisfying to stack up their catalog. I want our releases to feel like that.
?What are your graphic design pet peeves/worst clichés? I ?eternally hate the “bad on purpose”-type stuff that is so easy to make. But worst of all is the “vintage filter” Instagram aesthetic! Why are people documenting current events via this filter? Is time over? Are we stuck in a constant nostalgia loop?
Future Classic has made a name for itself in its native Australia as a bastion of electronic music. After all, the label has brought a litany of artists to its temperate environs (including the likes of John Talabot, Mount Kimbie, and Little Dragon) and now, it’s stepping things up by announcing the first official compilation by the Future Classic DJs. The forthcoming release will include originals and remixes from producers such as Soul Clap, Perseus, and Slow Hands (pictured above), who contributes this unique reworking of Aphex Twin’s seminal track “Rhubarb.” For all intents and purposes, “Rhubarbarum” stays mostly true to the timeless melody of its namesake, but Slow Hands makes his own distinctive mark on this interpretation by adding something that Richard D. James originally left out: percussion. The NYC producer crafts a steady, upbeat rhythm out of delicately tapped hi-hats as well as syncopated hand drums and shakers, and adds his own carefully strummed guitar chords into the mix to create a summery, almost Balearic sound. Although “Rhubarbarum” won’t be officially released until the Future Classic DJs mix (and its corresponding unmixed compilation of exclusive tracks, which will be available as a standalone release) drops on August 13, you can peruse the tracklists and artwork for both of those records, as well as the 12″ vinyl sampler, after the jump.
CD1 (Mixed): Slow Hands “Rhabarbarum” Houses “Soak It Up” Jeremy Glenn “New Life (Perseus Future Classic edit)” Flume “Tropical Sun” Poolside “Do You Believe?” Cadillac “Blue Skies (Ray Mang Remix)” Joakim “Labyrinth (Junior Boys Remix)” Softwar “This Time Around Dub” Worst Friends “Short Stopped (Instrumental)” Nitetime “Teddy’s Jam” Flight Facilities “With You feat. Grovesnor (MAM Remix)” Panama “Magic (Midnight Magic Remix)” Pharao Black Magic “Hermes feat. Ghostape” Anna Lunoe & Touch Sensitive “Real Talk” Danny Daze “Zone” Mario & Vidis “Changed (DJ T Remix)” Tigerskin “In Public” Nitetime “Hey! (Soul Clap Remix)” Cadillac “Dreams (Miracles Club Remix)” Gung Ho “Twin Rays (Worst Friends Remix)”
CD2 (Unmixed): Danny Daze “Zone” Mario & Vidis “Changed (DJ T Remix)” Nitetime “Hey! (Soul Clap Remix)” Tigerskin “In Public” Worst Friends “Short Stopped (Instrumental)” Jeremy Glenn “New Life (Perseus Future Classic edit)” Flume “Tropical Sun” Pharao Black Magic “Hermes feat. Ghostape” Slow Hands “Rhabarbarum” Gung Ho “Twin Rays (Worst Friends Remix)” Softwar “This Time Around Dub”
12″ Vinyl Sampler: A1 Danny Daze “Zone” A2 Mario & Vidis “Changed (DJ T Remix)” B1 Jeremy Glenn “New Life (Perseus Future Classic edit)” B2 Nitetime “Hey! (Soul Clap Remix)”
There are no frills on Zoé Zoe‘s Church EP. There are no leftfield curveballs, ambitious bendings of genre, or avant-garde experimentations—and that’s certainly not to the record’s detriment. Rather than attempting to create a daring new sound or spearhead a micro-movement, the elusive Lithuanian producer born Mantas Stonkus has achieved a more modest (but no less demanding) accomplishment: he has crafted an expertly tailored bundle of deep-house tunes on what appears to be his first official release as Zoé Zoe.
His outstanding work has not gone unnoticed. Most notably, the titular track was featured on the recent DJ-Kicks mix by house phenom Maya Jane Coles, where it was placed alongside cuts by venerated artists like Claro Intelecto and Virgo Four. “Church” is a big-room house bomb with a lot of flash and intensity packed into its blazing cord stabs and booming, garage-leaning drums and bass. The cramped mix gives way to a wobbly refrain built around a woozy melody and pitched vocals that sound like they’re being played in reverse, which pits the hard-hitting 130-bpm percussion against moments that seem to be moving in slow motion. In the end, the song’s fierce, charging vigor is matched only by its precision.
Outside of the EP’s centerpiece, Stonkus’ work remains airtight. “Hollow” is a more eerie, quieter take on the sounds he tackled on “Church,” with wavering synths and softer, shuffling garage percussion. The record’s final track, “October,” employs similarly dizzy synth pads and breathy percussion while Markus assembles a tiny melody beneath layers of soaring cords, pulsing kicks, and foggy vocals, but the song’s tempered mood and attention to minute loveliness keeps the proceedings from going stale. It’s a fine example of why the Church EP stands out—not because its sounds are entirely novel, nor because it makes strides down some less-traveled musical paths, but due to its mastery of established sounds and forms. None of Zoé Zoe’s tricks are new, but they are certainly well executed.
Milan-based producer Aquadrop‘s Synthetic Landscapes From Future EP dropped just last week via Seclusiasis. The artist born Aron Airaghi’s penchant for grime, jazz, and funk all shine through on on his new record, and yet Synthetic Landscapes From Future pushes somewhere past the realm of singular genres, sounding more in line with the likes of Rustie, a solid example of which is the synth-driven “Eagle Nebula”. Aquadrop’s tune is a club-ready, electro-tinged production with interludes of extremely uptempo synths and bouncy basslines supported by the banging of the kicks. Hoover samples, 8-bit sound effects, and handclaps are dropped randomly through it all, leaving just about zero negative space in the tightly packed soundscape.
Throughout the week, a whole lot of material gets posted here on XLR8R. And while we know—and love—that some hardcore readers will eagerly pour over every single news story, interview, podcast, video, and MP3 download that appears on the site, we also realize that for most people, it’s impossible to see everything, which means that some quality XLR8R content is likely to get missed in the hustle and bustle of everyone’s daily lives. In the interest of making it easier for everyone to catch up, we’ve created The Lowdown, a weekly wrap-up of the best tidbits from our site.
– Techno heavyweight Shed put together a storming mix for the XLR8R podcast series.
– LA/Montreal duo LOL Boys premiered its video-chat-centric new video for “Changes.”
– We offered up a pair of Urbanears headphones for our weekly contest; don’t worry, it’s not too late to enter!
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