Last month, Amsterdam’s Rush Hour label/distributor put out four records of fresh and re-released techno and house tunes. The releases include Rick Wilhite’s Vibes New & Rare Music Part D, four tracks taken from Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir’s Frictionalism compilation and thrown onto a 12″, the fifth installment of Rush Hour’s House of Trax series, which includes songs from Gwendolyn and and Z-Factor, and a white-label 12″ for Dexter’s Junofest EP. In addition to the physical music, Rush Hour cohorts Tom Trago (pictured above) and Cool Chris recently performed a live DJ set for HVW8 when they were down in LA, and you can check out that mix of exclusive edits and psyched-out dancefloor goodies here.
It’s always a tricky proposition when well-respected DJs decide to make a foray into production after years of simply spinning records for throngs of appreciative clubbers. After all, selecting tunes is a much different proposition than making them. NY’s Eamon Harkin is one such case, as the Northern Ireland native has been lighting up Big Apple dancefloors for years and throws well-respected parties such as Sunday Best and Mister Saturday Night. Apart from his success behind the decks, Harkin has increasingly been stepping up his production efforts, both as a solo artist and as one-half of Harkin & Raney, a partnership with Brooklyn’s Steve Raney (a.k.a. Oneauff). Next week, the duo is releasing the Word to the Wise EP on The Rapture‘s Throne of Blood label and, if the title track is any indication, the boys have cooked up a delicious aural brew that happily invokes classic house while employing techno precision and just a touch of disco bump.
Minus acolyte and DJ Magda was recently featured on Resident Advisor with a quick Q&A—which covers topics like her upcoming debut album and DJ techniques—and a solid podcast she’s calling “a fun summer mix.” And the simple description is apt, as upbeat, outdoor-party-friendly tracks from the likes of Lindstrom, Black Devil Disco Club, Tussle, and ESG are evenly distributed among classic club-ready favorites from across the board of danceable genres, and mixed in Magda’s tastefully simple manner. Check out her interview and DJ set here.
Two Detroit natives and hip-hop veterans, MC Invincible and producer Waajeed, have joined forces on a fresh, new single, called “Detroit Summer.” The collaborative work is a sequel to the duo’s previous effort, “Detroit Winter,” and will be released by Emergence, Invincible’s own label, on 7″ and digital download prior to Invincible & Waajeed’s forthcoming full-length record dropping in 2011. “Detroit Summer” will come with the b-side, entitled “Emergence,” when it’s released August 10. You can stream the a-side in the player below.
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The Wagon Repair artist stable isn’t the first place one would expect to find Jules Chaz. The label is home to techno dudes (and dudettes) like Mathew Jonson, Seth Troxler, and Dinky, to name a few, yet the Canadian imprint is still about to release the debut album from this one-time jazz percussionist and Cobblestone Jazz affiliate from Victoria, British Columbia. As it turns out, Toppings is the first-ever instrumental hip-hop album to be released on Wagon Repair, and it shares a lot more sonically with like-minded West Coast beatmakers several hundred miles to the south in Los Angeles than it does with the music being turned out by his Canadian techno brethren. “Blak Lodge” gets extra bonus points for its liberal sampling of the Twin Peaks theme, as Chaz expertly slices up those somber tones over some just-bumping-enough beats and a smattering of tweaky psychedelic synths.
“My DJing has changed a lot from when I was younger. I don’t play as much… sorry! I’m playing football on the PlayStation,” slurs the anonymous Actress as he tries to give an interview while simultaneously punting a digital ball across a digital field from his home in South London. The producer, DJ, and label manager grew up in Wolverhampton, a small city in the West Midlands region, where he did, consequently, play football as a teenager before sustaining an injury that cut his athletic career dramatically short. Since then, he’s decided to give 100% of his attention to his other passion—electronic music—and this choice has worked out smashingly.
So named to toy with notions of gender, as well as the performative aspects of being a musician, Actress has remixed the likes of Joy Orbison, Alex Smoke, and Tom Trago, and maintains a reputation for playing varied DJ sets that encompass techno, house, hip-hop, boogie—whatever a particular night calls for. He currently runs Werk Discs, which has released records by a distinctly fresh crop of producers including Starkey, Lukid, and Disrupt, as well as his own debut LP, 2008’s Hazyville. Werk also released Zomby’s instant classic, Where Were You in ’92?, which led to the mysterious beatsmith remixing Actress’ “Paint, Straw and Bubbles” 12-inch as well as some one-off collaborations between the two, like “Nothing,” a dubsteppy fog of a track drowning in heavy drum claps.
While Hazyville exhibited a cohesive sound and was a moody, forward-thinking take on techno, Actress’ latest record, Splazsh, is an exercise in exponential edits. “It’s called Splazsh because, if you’ve got a brush with paint on it and you throw it at the canvas, it’s just going to fragment and sparkle and spray—and that’s kind of how I saw the tracks,” he explains.
To craft the album, Actress says he was constantly altering sounds in real time. “Always Human” takes bits of a Human League song and reconfigures them into an entirely new creation, a happy, bumping house tune with crunchy hits and unintelligible vocals. Other tracks, like the otherworldly, epically jackin’ “Hubble,” “tend to evolve from one point—maybe a sample that, at the end of it, is no longer there,” he describes. “And I’m not quite sure exactly how. It’s kind of gotten to the point [where] it’s just melted and smelted down.”
To amp up for some live sets this summer—for which he’s figuring out how to balance material from both albums—Actress’ PlayStation has been helpful. “Things like this are training for me because it just sharpens how you press keys on a MIDI keyboard, it sharpens how you play notes, it sharpens how you see sound in terms of movement and 3D.” he says. He’s also been reading books on visual artists Claude Monet, Francis Bacon, and Henri Matisse, gaining inspiration for future tunes. “Hopefully you’ve fed the mind enough to come with something fresh and relevant to what’s going on in contemporary music,” he muses. If Splazsh is any indication, Actress won’t have any problems in that department.
We were already excited about Jimmy Edgar‘s forthcoming album, XXX, but after hearing this Machinedrum remix of first single “Hot, Raw, Sex,” we can go ahead and upgrade our status to ‘positively giddy.’ The original version is perfect for cooly surveying the club and scoping the dancefloor, but the remix offers something a little more manic and fun. The NY-based producer does import the silky ’80s funk vibes and shimmering synths from Edgar’s original, but he employs them alongside a nimbly skittering house beat and a wonky, darting bassline.
The Hot, Raw, Sex single is available now. XXX will be released digitally on July 27 and physically on September 14.
Shadowy London-based producer Klaus has finally announced the release of Tusk his debut EP on R&S. Klaus has definitely taken his time, considering the titular track first appeared on Mount Kimbie‘s XLR8Rpodcast last September, and since then his few releases have been remixes for the duo. With Tusk, Klaus sets out on his own with four darkly atmospheric electronic explorations. The EP drops August 15, but in the meantime check below for a streaming preview of all four tracks.
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American techno maven Matthew Dear is getting ready to release his third full-length, Black City, and while the press materials make reference to the album’s “imaginary metropolis peopled by desperate cases, lovelorn souls, and amoral motives,” few people really know what the music actually sounds like. “Soil to Seed” is the first track to be unveiled, and it only offers a limited preview, as the song barely cracks the two-minute mark. Sure, it’s ostensibly techno, but Dear seems to have continued his drift toward organic sounds—the drums and guitars certainly sound real, and his voice sounds like an actual human being. It’s definitely not a rager, but Dear seems to reserve those tendencies for his Audion alias anyways. One might say that “Soil to Seed” is more of a tease than a proper taste, but it’s got us interested enough to give Black City a thorough listen.
Jesu is one of the few outfits that can justifiably lay claim to both metal and shoegaze simultaneously, which certainly speaks volumes about the versatility put forth by bandleader Justin K. Broadrick. Prior to Jesu, the multi-faceted UK musician had been a part of the metal scene for years, and now, we find him working solo and busily producing under a new moniker, Pale Sketcher. Taken from the new project’s forthcoming debut album, Jesu: Pale Sketches Demixed, “Plans That Fade (Faded Dub)” is a tranquilly brooding composition focused on thick washes of filtered synths, subtle bass rumblings, and a slow-paced drum-machine beat. Broadrick’s reverberated voice floats in, around, and throughout the ominous track, and showcases a falsetto croon most wouldn’t initially expect from a veteran metalhead.
Jesu: Pale Sketches Demixed will be released August 24.
