Toronto house revivalists Azari & III, who we featured late last year in this piece, have just announced that their new self-titled album is streaming via Modular’s SoundCloud. Check it all out after the jump.
Swedish ambient-techno auteur Axel Willner is set to release his third album as The Field this October via Kompakt. Appropriately titled Looping State of Mind, Willner’s new LP will feature seven presumably lengthy tracks that were recorded both in the producer’s home studio in Berlin and at the label’s Dumbo Studios in Cologne, Germany. The Field says of his forthcoming LP, “Some of the ideas stretching back to the debut are still there [in the music], but we’ve just made a real attempt to grow the sound.” Before it’s released on October 24, you can check out the artwork and tracklist for Looping State of Mind below.
01 Is This Power
02 It’s Up There
03 Burned Out
04 Arpeggiated Love
05 Looping State Of Mind
06 Then It’s White
07 Sweet Slow Baby
The San Francisco-based label run by bass aficionado Salva, Frite Nite, has a compilation prepped to drop on October 4, which will feature a load of exclusive tunes from the likes of Distal, Eprom, DJG, Sepalcure, Salva, NastyNasty, Starkey, Ghosts on Tape, and more. Surreal Estate was compiled and mixed by Bay Area DJ/producer Ana Sia, and is touted as a “collection of tribal-influenced, spacey dance grooves, progressive footwork, modern electro-funk, and UK-centric dubstep rhythms.” The compilation will arrive as both a mixed and unmixed digital download, an unmixed six-track 12″, and a mixed CD. You can check out the album cover and tracklist for Surreal Estate below.
1. Sepalcure – Deep City Insects
2. Comma – Vacancy
3. XI – Whiteout
4. Kuru & UFO! – Aoki
5. DJG – Rites
6. Distal – Mamanimal
7. Starkey & Epcot – Surreal Estate
8. Eprom – Twerkul8
9. B. Bravo & Teeko – Drop It!
10. Quitter – Street Codes
11. NastyNasty – Suffocating
12. Cosmic Revenge – Frostbite
13. Ghosts on Tape – Video Void
14. Salva – Policy
15. S0n!ka – Down Time
16. Danny Corn – Curiophilia
17. Wheez-ie – As I Watch It Unravel
Strange things that French people like: Jerry Lewis, McDonald’s, and… ’70s album-oriented rock? Maybe that last one isn’t so surprising, but if it wasn’t a truism before, it definitely will be soon with the release of Justice‘s new LP, Audio, Video, Disco. Following on the heels of controversial single “Civilization” (which we didn’t exacly love), the new LP promises more of the same and then some. Audio, Video, Disco comes out October 25, but in the meantime, check out the complete tracklisting below. Impatient rubberneckers can get their fix via this interview Justice did with Pitchfork, which features such quotes as, “We are constantly influenced by millions of things, and it’s true that sometimes we would finish something and think it sounded very much like the Eagles.”
1 Horsepower
2 Civilization
3 Ohio
4 Canon (Primo)
5 Canon
6 On’n’on
7 Brianvision
8 Parade
9 Newlands
10 Helix
11 Audio, Video, Disco
This has been quite the week for Detroit house/techno veteran Omar-S and his timeless tunes. First we find out he’s dropping a new EP, then we get a free download of his collaborative track with Theo Parrish, and now there’s word that he’ll be dropping a full-length in a matter of days. The producer will release the haughtily titled It Can Be Done, But Only I Can Do It LP on August 15 through his own FXHE label, which will feature 12 tunes comprised of both unheard and previously released music. You can check out the full tracklist and what is supposedly the album artwork for Omar-S’s LP below. Previews of the music can be heard here.
01. Solely Supported
02. Supported Solely
03. Look Hear Watch
04. I Come Over
05. Ganymeade
06. You Wish
07. Over You Too
08. It Can Be Done, But Only I Can Do It
09. Nite’s Over Compton
10. Here’s Your Trance, Now Dance
11. Skynet 2 B
12. Bobien Larkin
Is nouveau tech-house just electroclash writ large? This is but one of the many questions that the music of Class B Band (a.k.a. Beatmaster G and Bea Tricks, pictured above) initially provokes. Fresh on the scene, Wagon Repair recently released the group’s debut LP, Movie T, an effort which combined the sound palette of Visionquest with the detached swagger of Miss Kittin. Now, the duo is back with the Strange Wolves EP, a brand-new release scheduled to hit next week on My Favorite Robot Records. On offer from that record is “Chords & Knives (Darabi Remix),” which sees the duo applying its detached, techy aesthetic to the rhythms of nu-disco. Built on the bleak drone of slowly descending square wave pads, “Chords & Knives (Darabi Remix)” is as sharp in its atmospherics as its title implies.
Last month, Night Slugs co-founder L-Vis 1990 announced the details of Neon Dreams, his debut full-length. The album, created entirely on vintage hardware and promising to revisit a host of classic dancefloor sounds, won’t be released until October 3, but the first single, “Lost in Love,” has been shared with the internet masses. The song will be released as an official single on September 26 via PMR Records, and will include both “Neon Dreams” and “Nightslugs Allstars” remixes. Give the song a listen below; it’s somewhat of a surprise, as “Lost in Love” is a smooth and silky synth jam led by the undeniably pop vocals of Jaevon McCarthy.
Maybe it comes with the territory of R&S being revived, but there’s definitely been a recent resurgence in the popularity of Belgian new beat. Long held to be one of the cheesier off-shoots of dance music, the genre is beginning to once again see its place in the sun, partially thanks to groups like San Francisco-based trio Total Accomplishment. Comprised of Bay Area artists Scott Arford, Holly Herndon, and Mat Dryhurst, Total Accomplishment mixes and matches from a pool of abrasive sources: new beat, Den Haag electro, and acid. The outfit’s first single, “Pig Fat,” is scheduled for release in the fall, but in the meantime, the group sent over this slick slice of electro-bump called “You’re Alone (Red Lodge Oakland Mix).” Built on a bedrock of creepy arpeggiated synthesizers and percussive vocals, “You’re Alone” finds Total Accomplishment crafting a kind of catchy and novel nu-new beat—it’s still cheesy, but also strangely contemporary.
We’re pretty sure Gwen Stefani is just about at the top of our list of names we never expected to see on XLR8R (right next to, like, Skrillex), but leave it to UK beat experimentalist Lapalux (pictured above) to change all that—for the better, might we add. The Pictures Music cohort and man behind the wonderfully screwed R&B of Many Faces Out of Focus shared this soulful bootleg of a remix for the pop diva’s 2004 single “Luxurious” just the other day, effectively giving Stefani a valid and good-sounding reason to land in our music feed. We expect she’s elated.
In an especially unfortunate turn of events, the SonyDADC warehouse, which stores the physical products for PIAS distribution, was burned down last night during the riots in London. A large number of record labels both large and small have been affected by the loss, including Warp, Domino, Rough Trade, Def Jux, FatCat, Thrill Jockey, All-City, Vice, 2020 Vision, Brownswood, and many, many others. Thankfully, there were no injuries during the fire, but this could potentially be a devastating blow for the smaller labels without the luxury of insurance. Head over to the Guardian for more information, and to find the full list of the labels affected by the fire, here.
