Greg Davis Mutually Arising

Vermont’s Greg Davis further ditches his rep as a twee laptop-folkie and crafts deceptively simple synth dirges to sneak into your subconscious. On the first track, “Cosmic Mudra,” he takes a grinding chord and builds it for nearly half an hour, from near-silence to searing, cathedral mass-awakening blare. The following “Hall of Pure Bliss” achieves what so many minimalists have painstakingly chased for decades, as the track is little more than a chord that gently rises and falls down in pitch for 22 minutes, melting the listener’s cortex to near-narcotic effect. In times when so much abstract electronic music seems exhausted and lost about where to go next, Davis is already moving into the next decade.

A Place to Bury Strangers Explodes Heads

Brooklyn-based A Place to Bury Strangers will continue its sonic assault on the world this fall with the release of a second full-length and a massive North American tour. Exploding Head, arriving from Mute on October 6, is the result of the band attempting to create “the craziest, most fucked-up recording ever,” and with shades of heavier My Bloody Valentine and Steve Albini projects sneaking into the group’s sound, it’s fair to say that they have succeeded. Coming from a slew of successful dates at Coachella, SXSW, and the Siren Festival at New York’s Coney Island, the lauded trio is spending the rest of the summer touring Europe, then continuing on to the U.S. and Canada in early October. With Jay Ackerman’s rack of custom-made guitar pedals, Jay Space’s machine-gun drumming, and Jono MOFO’s rollicking bass, it is certain that one of the loudest groups in the world will continue to blow out the power wherever they go.

Exploding Head comes out October 6, 2009, on Mute.

Fall Tour Dates:

10/4/09 Philadelphia, PA Johnny Brenda’s^
10/5/09 Washington, DC Rock and Roll Hotel^
10/6/09 Chapel Hill, NC Local 506^
10/7/09 Atlanta, GA Drunken Unicorn^
10/8/09 Tallahassee, FL Club Downunder^
10/9/09 New Orleans, LA One Eyed Jacks^
10/10/09 Dallas, TX Club Dada^
10/11/09 Austin, TX The Mohawk^
10/13/09 Tucson, AZ Plush^
10/15/09 San Diego, CA Casbah^
10/16/09 Los Angeles, CA Echo^
10/17/09 San Francisco, CA The Independent*
10/18/09 Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge*
10/19/09 Seattle, WA Crocodile Café*
10/20/09 Vancouver, BC Biltmore Cabaret*
10/22/09 Salt Lake City, UT Urban Lounge*
10/23/09 Denver, CO Larimer Lounge*
10/25/09 St. Louis, MO Firebird*
10/26/09 Chicago, IL Double Door&
10/27/09 Toronto, ON The Mod Club&
10/28/09 Montreal, QC Il Motore&
10/29/09 New York, NYC Bowery Ballroom&
10/30/09 Cambridge, MA Middle East Upstairs&

^with Darker My Love & All the Saints
&with Dead Confederate & All the Saints
*with All the Saints

A First Look at Propellerhead’s Record

Initially announced back in mid-May, and currently knee-deep in beta testing for its scheduled ship date of 09/09/09, Propellerhead’s Record) software (Mac/Windows, $299 for new users/$149 Reason users) promises to be the recording software for artists, not engineers. And in the software’s introductory video (all tutorials can be found here) they identify the number one obstacle that every songwriter has to overcome: a guyliner-sporting singer with a scarf so douchey it makes it impossible for him to keep his pitch. On a more constructive note, the five-and-a-half-minute video also provides an overview of the program’s integrated Line 6 POD pre/amp and cab tonal simulations (easy to patch and insert on any direct bass/guitar signal), the comp and advanced time-stretch capabilities (a.k.a. the singer solution), and the 64-bit mixing desk modeled after the SSL 9000k for flexible routing, wide-open dynamics and warm analog-styled EQ, easily routable effects, MIDI sequencing/Remote control surface compatibility, full automation, and master-bus compression intended to give that punch recognized leaping from radios worldwide. Exports will support any bit depth/resolution WAV/AIFF, plus Propellerhead’s native REX. You can also bounce channel stems for external software, as well as ReWire Record to another host. So what about plug-ins, you might ask? Well, here is where Propellerhead has gotten tricky. No CPU-intensive VST or AU instruments allowed in this low-optimized environment. Instead, Propellerhead aims to rack up (pun intended) a record number (yes, another pun) of Reason customers, as those looking to integrate soft synths and additional effects alongside their channel strips can look to price incentives (see website for unfolding details).

Return of the Rub-A-Dub Style Trailer

The majority of the population would cite Bob Marley as the original harbinger of the reggae movement. But filmmaker and director of Beck’s “Loser” music video Steve Hanft might have you think otherwise with his documentary, Return of the Rub-A-Dub Style, which features interviews and live footage of real roots-reggae legends and soundsystem pioneers Ranking Joe, Sister Nancy, U-Roy, Brigadier Jerry, Ranking Trevor, Welton Irie, Sugar Minott, Philip Fraser, and Triston Palma. The film showcases the performers at Los Angeles’ Dub Club in Echo Park, some playing their first Californian shows there. In addition to the film, the retail DVD version of Return of the Rub-A-Dub Style comes correct with an accompanying compilation of original tracks recorded in L.A. at Kingsize Studio and in Kingston at Mixing Lab by artists featured in the documentary as well as other reggae veterans and some locals who regularly perform at Dub Club. The whole package is available August 4th, but those looking to get irie right now need look no further than the boom-boom trailer below.

Vladislav Delay “Melankolia (Edit)”

Tummaa, the forthcoming album from Finnish composer Sasu Ripatti’s Vladislav Delay moniker, opens with the esoteric sounds of “Melankolia”. The amorphous song twists and turns from within its clattering, reverberated self — a disjointed piano refrain offering the track’s only solace of melody before drifting back into the slow pulse of the composition.

Melankolia (Edit)

Moritz von Oswald Trio Vertical Ascent

Any release combining the talents of dub-ambient-house titans Vladislav Delay, Max Loderbauer (NSI, Sun Electric), and Basic Channel/Chain Reaction/Rhythm & Sound’s Moritz von Oswald, one of the chief architects of the sub-bass sub-genre, automatically comes with impossibly high expectations. Ravers and clubbers might find the four tracks (each called “Patterns”) on Vertical Ascent unsuitable as party jams, despite the trio’s dedication to repetitive percussive detail. Fans of Jan Jelinek’s techno-jazz-funk group experiments might also find this music, though rooted in some of the same Euro prog-rock innovations of the 1970s and 1980s, a bit tepid for their tastes. The value of this project, then, is best seen as a search for how to move electro-acoustic studio production into new levels of sophistication without sacrificing any of the fun that got us all hooked in the first place.

Kid606 “Monsters (Doshy Remix)”

Doshy, the Berlin-bassed Tigerbass producer, just about one-ups the source material from Kid606’s Shout at the Döner track, “Monsters,” on Kid’s latest Dancehall of the Dead remix EP. Bringing to mind a vintage Switch production, Doshy’s remix is a crackling, high-energy jam that vibrates with just about all the wobbly bass one could shake a glow stick at.

05 Monsters (Doshy Remix)

Various Artists Moments of a Crisis

Celebrating a half-decade of releases from artists like Simian Mobile Disco, Yuksek, and Bot’Ox, to name a few, Italo-loving DJ/producer Cosmo Vitelli’s I’m a Cliché imprint has assembled its first compilation. Moments of a Crisis, a double-disc offering from the French label, is half self-proclaimed classics (Disc One is called Overtime), and half exclusive tracks on Disc Two, entitled Holidays. Songs like Simian Mobile Disco’s “The Mighty Atom” and Entertainment’s “U1988” are fine examples of the disco-friendly tech-house that I’m a Cliché provides a home for, while the Holidays disc showcases the label’s more rock-influenced edge on “Grease” by It’s a Fine Line and The Fear’s “JMH (Mark Broom Edit).” Moments of a Crisis is an essential collection for just about anyone who recognizes even a single name in the compilation’s liner notes—given that Simian Mobile Disco is involved, that’s just about everybody.

Vladislav Delay to Return With Tummaa

Finnish electronic musician, known to his friends and family as Sasu Ripatti and to a portion of the music world as Luomo, Vladislav Delay has readied his first album under this pseudonym since 2007’s Whistleblower. The new release, titled Tummaa, arrives September 8 on U.K. label Leaf. According to the press release, “The new album marks a significant shift in emphasis in this acclaimed musician’s work, reflecting a renewed interest in jazz and acoustic performance.” Explaining the album’s genesis, it continues, “Created during the winter while Ripatti and his family were living on a remote island in the Baltic Sea within the Arctic Circle, he explains that ‘Tummaa means dark or darkness, which reflects the music on the album somehow’.” We’re not judging an album by its locale, but that does sound pretty awesome. The tracklisting follows.

1. Melankolia
2. Kuula (Kiltos)
3. Mustelmia
4. Musta Planeetta
5. Tolve
6. Tummaa
7. Tunnellvisio

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