Cute is not a word that is often used to described veteran UK duo Plaid, but this animated clip for “At Last,” a poppy, synth-filled number from the Scintilli LP, is pretty darn adorable. Even as the clip seemingly spins a tale of misery, alienation, and exploitation in the face of widespread industrialization—hopefully we’re not reading too much into this—the perky creatures that populate the video are inexplicably charming. Scintilli is out now on Warp, and the Plaid boys have been busy spreading the word, dropping mixes for both Altered Zones and FACT last week. Hopefully, they’ll also find the time to commission another cute video or two in the months ahead.
Krueger “Nou”
Even though it’s only been around for a year, Belgian imprint Silverback has managed to put out quite a few tracks from artists we like. These releases, from acts like Nguzunguzu, Jim-E Stack, and Jack Dixon, have solidified the label’s reputation as a disseminator of quality bass music. Now, the label is back with Galactica, a new EP from freshly signed Philly-based producer Krueger. As a teaser, Silverback has sent along “Nou,” an insane collage of global rhythms and styles. Stretching through the hard boundaries of genre, the cut is seemingly assembled from bits and pieces of tribal guarachero, dancehall, UK funky, and more. The Galactica EP is out now.
Check Out Derrick Carter’s Oki-Ni Mix
Music and fashion, perhaps more than any other cultural forms, go hand in hand. The fine folks at British clothing retailer Oki-Ni seem to agree, as they’ve been busy mixing the two in their business since the launch of their music store and its associated mix series. Suitably, this month’s mix features stylish Chicagoan Derrick Carter‘s entry, TheHotLunch. An ode to famous Chicago radio station 102.7 WBMX and its weekdays at noon Hot Lunch Mix program, Carter’s mix captures the vibe of ’80s Chicago with an unabashed collection of underground disco classics. Moving from Razormaid edits to Italo disco, the TheHotLunch, which is streaming below, functions as a rootsy compliment to fellow Classic label head Luke Solomon‘s recent Classic is Your Friend mix.
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New Gerd Remix Release to Feature Larry Heard and Deetron
Continuing the label’s project of blurring the lines between classic and contemporary, Royal Oak (the house-leaning offshoot of Clone) has just announced the release of a remix record for Gerd‘s breezy, late-night house cut, “Palm Leaves.” Featuring reworks by Chicago house pioneer Larry Heard (a.k.a. Mr. Fingers, pictured above) and Swiss techno producer Deetron, the release promises to take the original material into new territory. Deetron takes the track and translates it into the realm of melodic techno with a moody bassline and razor sharp digital pads. Larry Heard stays closer to the original’s 4 a.m. vibe by injecting jazzy piano comping and characteristically loose atmospherics. The remixes are slated to drop in late October. In the meantime, check out the tracklisting and some snippets below.
1. Palm Leaves (Larry Heard Vocal Mix)
2. Palm Leaves (Larry Heard Dub Mix)
3. Palm Leaves (Deetron Remix)
4. Palm Leaves (Deetron Dub Mix)
Dave.I.D “SumR (Actress’ AZD RAIN Remix)”
Sometimes, weirdos just gravitate toward one another. Take this remix of Dave.I.D‘s (pictured above) “SumR,” an unusual pop-industrial-hip-hop hybrid that first appeared on the mysterious Londoner’s debut album, Response, which came out over the summer via !K7. Now, months later, fellow London recluse Actress, who also heads up the Werk label, has turned out an “AZD RAIN” remix of the song. Stripping out the original’s hip-hop drum patterns and the vast majority of the vocals, Actress instead relishes in the song’s dark, droney synths and adds in his own lo-fi, rapid-fire percussion, creating something that comes off as a warped homage to no wave and ’80s goth/industrial. Mapping exactly how he arrived at a sound palette shared by the likes of Suicide, Nitzer Ebb, and Front 242 is no easy task, but there’s no quibbling with the pulsing paranoia of the end result. (via Pitchfork)
Scuba Adrenalin
With an impressive and varied discography behind him, Berlin-based producer and Hotflush label boss Paul Rose (a.k.a. Scuba, SCB, and Spectr) has thrown another curve ball with Adrenalin, his latest three-track single. Released under his Scuba alias, it marks an important turning point, both for the producer and for similar artists that come from the UK dubstep milieu. It’s Rose’s most adventurous outing yet—a release that pushes past stylistic lines to construct a fresh form of dance music.
The record comes out of the gate strong with “Adrenalin,” the bombastic a-side. Frankenstein-like, it combines the rushing euphoria of ’90s trance with a contemporary bassline straight out of tech-house. Guiding the combination is a relatively complex four-on-the-floor dominated by synth claps and a hyper-clean production aesthetic. It’s a startling mixture, one made even more so by the song’s unusual structure. Effectively split in two, the track rolls between euphoric highs and deep lows in a way that somehow escapes the predictable logic of the music it’s rooted in. In other words, it’s the kind of song that a lot of people on ecstasy are going to lose their shit to.
Joining “Adrenalin” are “Never” and “Everywhere,” the single’s two stunning and stylistically divergent b-sides. “Never” sees Scuba riffing on the formula of “Adrenalin,” utilizing similar ethereal breakdowns and ultimately making a more complicated track by wiring in a breakbeat and a stuttering bassline vaguely reminiscent of Adonis’ “We’re Rocking Down the House.” It’s a deep cut and currently the sleeper of the bunch with serious early-morning dancefloor appeal.
With its unapologetic late-’80s freestyle nostalgia, “Everywhere” is the strangest cut on the single. Yet, strange doesn’t mean bad, and the song pulls its weight by finding an ideal balance between cheesy and serious. Built on a bassline ripped straight from Newcleus, the track builds into a peak of synth riffage, Anthony and the Camp-like clavs, and the requisite Planet Rock boom-bap. Yet, far from simply being fodder for the retro set, “Everywhere” feels oddly futuristic. The production utilized is spartan and clean; there’s not a blemish, misstep, or overdriven signal to be found anywhere. It’s digital in its precision. The end product comes off sounding like an impressionistic take in the style of Tensnake’s 2010 smash “Coma Cat.”
Icona Pop “Manners (Deniz Kurtel Remix)”
We’re not entirely sure why Deniz Kurtel (pictured above) decided to remix “Manners,”Icona Pop‘s saccharine 2010 single on Kitsuné. Frankly, the original is a pop-culture nightmare, right on down to its clichéd “ba ba ba” chorus and the subsequent Chiddy Bang remix. Given such questionable source material, it’s a credit to Kurtel’s talents that her mix ends up sounding pretty good. She accomplishes this by detuning the vocals, stripping the track of its instrumentation, and rebuilding from zero. Kurtel begins with a dusty Rhodes bassline, adds a loose four-on-the-floor, and finally brings in a percolating synth strung through a rising low-pass filter. The resulting track achieves a dynamic range entirely absent in the original. More importantly, it’s a solid remix that stands on its own as a distinct work. (via Discobelle)
Decibel 2011 Wrap-Up, Part 1
For those of us on the West Coast, Decibel Festival is a big deal. With a deserved reputation for gathering an immense roster—which includes some of the most established names in electronic music along with a generous sampling of burgeoning up-and-comers—the Seattle festival is arguably the most comprehensive gathering of electronic producers, DJs, and artists to take place this close to the Pacific each year. Here’s what Decibel’s first two days had to offer.
Day 1
Kicking off in the middle of the week, the first night of events was spread out across the city, and with only half a plan of attack set in motion, I first found myself immersed in a throng of enthusiastic head nodders at Neumos with their eyes and ears fixed on Shigeto. Moving between a table full of the usual noisemakers—laptop, controller, etc.—and a full drum set, the Michigan native spent his rather long set (well over an hour) equally conjuring up heavy, swirling beats while standing over the glow of his computer and taking moments to delve into startlingly energetic, improvised drum solos that proved the man is much more than a mere button pusher.
AraabMuzik
That same venue hosted more beat-oriented happenings that evening, next bringing East Coast hip-hop producer turned trance-sampling instrumental beatmaker AraabMuzik to the stage. No questions about it, the man is an absolute ace on the MPC, as he punched out beats live at a blistering speed which, if it wasn’t visible enough from one’s place in the crowd, was projected on a massive screen for all to see (although his fingers moved so fast, the projections were at times nothing more than a blur). If anyone at the festival that night had an insatiable craving for stuttering kick drums and skittering hats, AraabMuzik delivered in full and then some.
Asura
As the hour turned later, I went in search of more adventurous sounds at the Dropping Gems showcase, which had compiled a list of impressive up-and-coming West Coasters to woo the crowd on the festival’s opening night. In particular, Los Angeles’ Asura impressed with his set of rich, percussive offerings, piling his own lush, textured productions on top of each other, and occasionally working in a few like-minded pieces, most recognizably dropping a cut from fellow SoCal resident Jonwayne towards the end of his performance.
Zomby
Finally, the official Decibel opening-night party presented one of the festival’s biggest names as its headliner—Zomby. The elusive UK producer has a rather sordid reputation when it comes to live performances—namely, his tendency to not show up for them. So it came with some palpable amazement that the man himself was indeed on stage, in the flesh—well, except for a mask covering his face. It may seem obvious, but Zomby’s tracks make perfect sense in the context of a proper club soundsystem and the precise drums, harrowing bass, and futuristic synths really came alive on Re-Bar‘s larger-than-life speakers, which pushed a plentiful amount of wattage into the audience and inspired intense reactions from the crowd early in the set. Eventually, the track selection moved increasingly towards drum & bass territory for a good 15 to 20 minutes before returning again to the dark, grimey sounds of Zomby’s more recent years. But somehow along the way, the momentum seemed to be lost. Possibly dealing with technical issues throughout the set (his monitors were replaced and tweaked continuously by the venue’s staff), Zomby would disappear from the stage for minutes at a time, returning to fire the next track, look around, and disappear again, confusing most of us on the floor. Truthfully, his tracks are just about good enough to not really care what’s happening on stage, but many festivalgoers were left scratching their heads, possibly for the first time really confronting their idea of what an electronic-music performance actually is.
Day 2
Monolithium
I began the second day of events watching Canadian up-and-comer Monolithium put together an impressive opening set of UK-infused beats. Given the first slot for what would eventually become the Night Slugs showcase (and first real dance party of the festival), Monolithium showed that he knew his way around slippery bass music with a hybrid DJ set/performance that found the producer dropping plenty of futuristic, R&B-flavored tracks, occasionally punching out his own beats, and even coyly working an Aphex Twin tune into the mix.
Amon Tobin
Down the street, a crowd was rumored to be growing larger by the minute, so I rushed to the Paramount Theatre to ensure that I had an opportunity to see Amon Tobin‘s much-buzzed-about multimedia performance, Isam Live. After the crowd (which was quite different than anything else I’d seen at Decibel so far, mostly due to the fact that it was all ages) had taken any and all opportunities to yell in excitement in the moments building up to the performance, the curtain was finally lifted and Tobin’s three-dimensional, multiple-sided structure was revealed as an amazing array of detailed images flawlessly appeared on its surface. With no shortage of intense, hyper-real soundscapes, Isam Live‘s musical offerings moved from one electro-acoustic space to the next with a flair for the dramatic and drawn-out, leaving the visual side of the project to remain the focus with an unbelievably fluid series of video projections. But the stunning visuals were just that—visual—and so I left the multimedia immersion behind to seek out the more rewarding musical endeavors taking place at the Night Slugs showcase.
Kingdom
Girl Unit
When I arrived, the showcase was well under way. Kingdom was the first of the crew to represent the label, and he did so properly, using two CD-Js to put together a sleek, bass-laden mix marked by touches of futuristic R&B and house. His first UK counterpart of the night, Girl Unit, picked up the momentum a bit, focusing on slightly more four-on-the-floor-leaning tracks, although his selections did feature their fair share of tuned percussion, pitched vocals, and stuttering fills. Between the two producers, an ever-growing dance party was beginning to take shape, one which enticed you to dance and move as much as it made you occasionally take a second to marvel at the truly space-age sounds the men were able to put together with complete ease and calm.
Holy Fuck
A momentary break from the future of dance music was needed, and Holy Fuck seemed like the perfect solution, so I headed down the street to The Crocodile. Anchored by an absolutely solid rhythm section (think Liquid Liquid, only replace the percussionist with a cheesy drum machine), the Canadian four-piece built propulsive songs out of what would initially seem to be meandering noise. But once the dual frontmen (both with their own table of blinking electronics and various noise makers) reeled in their sonic abstractions, poignant pieces of dance-worthy indie jams worked the crowd into a frenzy of frantic movement.
Bok Bok
By the time Bok Bok took to the decks back at the Night Slugs showcase, it was clear that any stragglers from other parts of the festival had made their way to the Baltic Room. And, of course, Bok Bok did not disappoint, putting together a set that lifted the energy of the entire crowd with a choice selection of surefire UK-leaning crowd pleasers, and taking the opportunity to delve into the highlights of his imprint’s catalog (you know which ones). Before the night was out, the three Night Slugs affiliates came together for a very special back-to-back-to-back set (pictured at the top of this post), where the only people feeling the tracks more than the crowd were the DJs themselves, who nodded along to each other’s peak-hour selections with an air of mutual approval.
So much has happened, and we’re not even halfway through the five-day festival. Go here for part two of our Decibel coverage.
xxxy “Kerpow” b/w “Down Wit U”
xxxy (a.k.a. Rupert Taylor) has kept himself quite busy in 2011. “Kerpow” b/w “Down Wit U” is his third solo single of the year, and finds the up-and-coming UK producer exploring one of the year’s most popular sonic themes—at least in the bass-music world—the glory of the 808.
Where his last single, “Open Your Eyes” b/w “You Gotta Do You,” found Taylor dabbling in the vintage end of the bass-music continuum and exploring a bit of old-school electro, there’s nothing as immediately retro on these latest offerings. “Kerpow” in particular is an upfront slice of contemporary bass music, almost to a fault. All the standard elements are in place: an off-kilter drum pattern, a thunderous bass drop, tweaked vocal snippets, and a whole lot of 808 drum sounds. Make no mistake, it’s an edgy, effective creation, one that could be favorably compared to music being turned out by folks like Untold, Boddika, and Dark Sky. The only real drawback is that it perhaps sounds a little too much like those producers, as if xxxy is following a recipe—a delicious recipe, albeit one that’s not truly his own.
More inventive is the record’s other track, “Down Wit U,” which is carried along by a funky and slightly distorted synth melody that hints at rave eras gone by without blatantly aping them. The percussion is once again heavy on the 808 sounds, as the primary drum pattern is akin to an updated take on Cybotron, albeit with a punchy, speaker-rattling low end. What begins as a mid-tempo number slowly swells before blossoming into a real stormer. It’s not subtle, but it’s very well done.
Even after an incredibly prolific year, it’s evident that xxxy is still finding his voice as an artist. In the meantime, his style continues to shift as he tries on new sounds and experiments with his style. It’s not always successful, but when the end results sound like “Kerpow” and “Down Wit U,” it’s difficult to register that vehement of a complaint.
Video Premiere: Martyn “Viper”
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Just over a week away from the release of Washington, DC-based tunesmith Martyn‘s highly anticipated sophomore album, Ghost People, here is its first music video, an animated piece for the beatless, hard-edged “Viper.” The surreal bit of CGI comes from director Konx-om-Pax, who presents the viewer with a colorful alien world that’s part 2001, part Nickelodeon, and part early-’90s computer game. Keep your eyes peeled for Martyn’s Ghost People to arrive on October 10 via Brainfeeder.
