Although Kap Bambino‘s reputation as a shit-hot live act is well established, Blacklist, the Bordeaux duo’s third album, doesn’t quite capture the group’s on-stage magic. In the club, Orion Bouvier’s beefy, fuzzed-out electro provides the perfect soundtrack to Caroline Martial’s wild yelps and stage-diving antics, a dynamic successfully captured on some of this album’s noisier numbers (“Red Sign,” “Acid Eyes,” “Blacklist”) when the band cranks the mayhem to 11 and sounds something like Missing Persons gone digital hardcore. But Blacklist suffers from heavy-handed (over)production and too often wades into more overt pop territory (“Dead Lazers,” “Rezozero”), effectively neutering the band’s punky spark and resulting in run-of-the-mill, nth-generation new wave.
Deutschland’s bass-toting, world-beat-loving, party-starting production trio, Schlachthofbronx, just announced the beginning of a remix competition for their latest single, “Ayoba.” Releasing label Man Recordings has opened the doors for any and all interested in giving the dancefloor banger their own personal slant, with only a few simple instructions. First, download the track stems here, then make your own version, and upload the finished product here with the title “Ayoba (Your Remix Name).” Winners will be selected by Man Recordings, and the first-place winner will get their remix featured on the Ayoba Remix EP alongside a slew of producers the likes of Top Billin’, Phon.O, and Beataucue. The deadline for remix submissions is February 12.
Polish-born, Berlin-based sound artist Sebastian Meissner is in the midst of a hyper-creative multiple-personality crisis. Only rarely has he been himself for the past decade, choosing names like aUTOkoNTRasT, Bizz Circuits, Random Inc, Random Industries, Autopoieses (with Ekkehard Ehlers) and, most notably, Klimek for his various noise and ambient experiments on Mille Plateaux, Kompakt, and Anticipate Recordings.
His newest release as Klimek, Movies is Magic (Anticipate), might be the one to bring all the voices and pictures in his head together. Its 10 tracks flow into one gorgeous, disturbing, villainous, and cinematic sound of blissful confusion. Highlights are many: the shimmery “Exploding Unbearable Desires,” the sustained tension and release of “Abyss of Anxiety (Unfolding the Magic),” and the self-immolation and blind love of “Greed, Mutation, Betrayal” are but three, all designed to make your heart stop and head spin.
We found Meissner at home, just back from a festival in Krakow, working all night and early morning on additional tracks for the vinyl version of Movies is Magic.
XLR8R: What are your your first memories of associating what you saw on the movie screen with sound?? Sebastian Meissner: I think it was seeing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also the beauty and mysticism of Popol Vuh’s compositions for Werner Herzog movies, and the combination of pop and classical music themes in An American Werewolf in London.
Your pieces in Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series are like mini film soundtracks. Was this intentional? ?Immediately after [Kompakt co-founder] Wolfgang Voigt heard my first two tracks—”Milk” and “Honey”—he told me about his own music’s associations to road movies [like] Paris, Texas and Dead Man. I thought I could adapt the idea of doing music for imaginary movies. The references to soundtracks within my work kept on multiplying, and I felt the urge to carry this topic to extremes… This album is the ultimate statement I can make about the connection of sound and cinema, and a good point to start working on something new.
??Slavoj Žižek, Brian Wilson, and Van Dyke Parks are a direct influence on Movies is Magic. How does philosophy and pop culture combine to inspire your productions? ?This connection is the very core of what this album is all about. On the one hand, it’s how passionately [Slovenian philosopher] Žižek isolates the psychological aspects in movies [“music is always potentially a threat,” he says in the documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema]. On the other side, Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson’s track “Movies is Magic” points out the ambivalent aspect of cinema. The dark side of Hollywood… David Lynch’s Inland Empire, James Ellroy—these all influence my work.
??So, movies is magic, and real life is tragic?? In the album there is a picture of a cinema inside of an Italian mental asylum. What better way to emphasize the meaning of this phrase when you connect the image to the title song by Brian Wilson, somebody who spent a significant part of his life dealing with his inner demons?
Your track titles foreshadow provocative, edgy listening but the overall effect is calming, like recalling a vivid dream. Do you see your work this way?? For an instrumental sound artist, track titles are a way to communicate explicitly with your audience. They should draw attention to the fact that there is something much more inside those tracks. But the reviews of the album I read so far weren’t so uniform about the “calming” aspect!
Little information is available about Polargeist other than it’s the musical output of two guys from Germany. Here, the a-side from their first 12″ is remixed by fellow Deutschlander Tensnake. He takes out the warbling low-end and buzzy synths of “Home From the Can,” and transforms the whole mess into a smooth and funky disco-influenced house number—complete with a playful sax hook. Given the noisy source material, Tensnake’s version isn’t the most obvious direction for a remix, but it nonetheless provides a pleasantly mellow counterpoint to Polargeist’s original.
Be it dirty, sampled breaks or shimmery, electronic loops, the mark of a great hip-hop producer usually lies more in the bang-and-slap than notable melodies. Yet Brian Lindgren (a.k.a. Mux Mool) has no need to worry, as the Brooklyn producer is strong in both categories. His new single, “Lady Linda,” makes use of all his talents as it oscillates focus between a few Boards of Canada-esque synthlines and a shuffling beat that could make FlyLo jealous. The track precedes Mux Mool’s forthcoming Viking Funeral EP and his debut full-length for Ghostly, entitled Skulltaste.
By now, any electronic music aficionado with a pulse has heard of UK funky. Punctuated by shuffling garage beats, tropical-flavored percussion, and R&B flair, the music is the latest in a long line of post-garage urban sounds emanating from the British Isles. One of the scene’s figureheads is Marcus Nasty, founding member of legendary grime collective N.A.S.T.Y. Crew, who took notice of this new crop of producers—most of them coming from grime—making this new mutant house strain and quickly began promoting the sound on Rinse FM. Now he’s unveiling Rinse: 10, an overstuffed compilation of funky house snippets, many of them exclusive and unreleased. While Nasty’s mixing isn’t always on point, Rinse: 10 is a fun, bubblin’ mix that’s more than adequate as a funky primer and contains choice selections from fellow scene heavyweights like Roska, Geeneus, Lil Silva, Crazy Cousinz, Fuzzy Logic, and Ill Blu.
Almost a decade after forming in their home town of Durham, North Carolina, MCs Phonte and Rapper Big Pooh (collectively known as Little Brother) have announced that their upcoming fourth album, LeftBack, will also be their last record together. LeftBack was initially conceived as an EP, but has since been transformed into a full-length release. On the change, Phonte said, “I didn’t want our last record to be a bunch of second-rate material. I wanted to walk away from Little Brother knowing that I gave our fans all that I had to give, and said everything I wanted to say. With LeftBack, I’ve done that.” Contributions to the new release include production from Khrysis, Symbolyc One, and Zo!, as well as guest vocals from Chaundon, Yahzarah, Jozeemo, and more. LeftBack is out April 20 on Hall of Justus.
XLR8R‘s Patrick Sisson, writer of last year’s Vapour Trails: Revisiting Shoegaze piece, informs us via an email from guitarist/vocalist Stephen Patman that the UK’s Chapterhouse is set to reunite for a US tour this spring. Patman told Sisson that nearly all the original lineup will be intact, save for former bass player Russell Barrett, who can’t take part. Greg Moore will be filling his position.
Chapterhouse played a reunion gig in London last November, and have another one slated for March 18 there, with shows planned for Japan in April and the US in May. We’ll post those dates as soon as we get them, but in the meantime, please enjoy a few of our Chapterhouse favorites:
Of all the new producers to pop out of the London underground, we must admit that there’s an especially warm place in XLR8R‘s collective heart for Cooly G. Not only do her dark and techy beats sound like no one else’s, but her sexy vocals subtly turn up the heat while maintaining a totally cool vibe. Plain and simple, we love the girl, which is why we’ve been hounding the UK’s funky queen to put together an XLR8R podcast ever since she graced the cover of our magazine last fall. Now, after months of anticipation, Cooly G has delivered with a slow-burning mix that’s so fresh, the playlist is littered with unknown artists, white-label tracks, and songs simply known as “exclusive.” Even better, the mix features live percussion provided by her pal Dezy Da Bongo Man.
And for those who simply can’t get enough Cooly G—count us as solidly in that camp—you’ll be happy to know that the XLR8R podcast only represents the first half of this massive mix. If you want to get part two, you’ll need to follow Cooly G on Twitter, where she’ll be releasing the remainder of this DJ session in the very near future.
01 Cooly G “Intro” 02 Cooly G/DVA “Ol’ Dirty” 03 DJ Gregory “Traffic” 04 T Williams “Hardcash” 05 Zander Hardy (exclusive) 06 Ben Westbeech & T. Williams (exclusive) 07 Martyn “Megadrive” 08 Artist Unknown “Glow” 09 O.B “ER” 10 Artist Unknown “Get Slapped Up” 11 Artist Unknown “Gain” 12 Artist Unknown “Dougsanna” 13 DJ Gregory “Work Me” 14 Sami Sanchez “Air Raid” 15 MA1 “Samurai Remix” 16 Wbeeza “Deep Underground” 17 Bowly (exclusive) 18 Major Notes “Friend of Mine Dub”
When the Unsound Festival kicks off in New York next week, many people will flock to see heavy hitters like Carl Craig and Vladislav Delay or buzzworthy up-and-comers like Untold. Yet the festival curators have taken special care to invite all sorts of artists to participate, and the man traveling the farthest to perform is none other than Belarusian dub-techno producer Pavel Ambiont. Although his name may not ring out quite yet, the analog pulse of “Error Asking Thread to Dub” is proof that you can never can be sure exactly who is going to blow your mind at festivals like this one. Ambiont will be performing on February 13 as part of the Bass Mutations showcase alongside Untold, 2562, TRG, Pole, and FaltyDL—not a bad introduction to the United States.
