Axel Willner (a.k.a. The Field) has never been one to leave us hanging, and this track—off his latest for Kompakt, titled Yesterday & Today, is the proof in the pudding. During its eight-and-a half minute run, Willner whips together a dancefloor anthem comprised of upbeat house, looped female vocals, and disco percussion. We’re still hungry for more, so we await the new album’s release with anticipation.
Yesterday & Today is out May 25.
Last December, word surfaced that The Knife was penning an opera supposedly inspired by Charles Darwin. Tomorrow, in a Year, it seems, is a reality, as the Swedish brother/sister duo has a confirmed premiere date of September 2, 2009, at Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Theatre.
Subsequent performances will take place on September 4 and 5, and then the show goes on the road, though not far beyond the borders of Denmark. But with Planningtorock and Mount Sims cited as musical collaborators and Danish theater group Hotel Pro Forma on board, this might be an event worth the money the plane trip will cost. Karin Dreijer’s Fever Ray website has information on tickets to each performance.
Tomorrow, in a Year:
09/02 Copenhagen, Denmark – Royal Danish Theatre
09/04 Copenhagen, Denmark – Royal Danish Theatre
09/05 Copenhagen, Denmark – Royal Danish Theatre
09/10 Geneva, Switzerland – Festival de Genéve
09/11 Geneva, Switzerland – Festival de Genéve
10/15 Dresden, Germany – European Center for the Arts
10/16 Dresden, Germany – European Center for the Arts
11/27 Århus, Denmark – Concert Hall
Bright synths meet wobbly beats and basslines on this track, which is from B. Bravo‘s Analog Starship EP. The Bay Area-based producer sounds as though he took a music-making seminar taught by Flying Lotus, Eliot Lipp, and the rest of the wobble-hop crew.
Analog Starship is out now.
Photo by Dulce Paz.
More future blapp is coming out of the Bay Area, this time from S.F.-based producer DNAE Beats. His latest promo mix, There’s a Wormhole in My Bathroom, will drop shortly, but in the meantime, he’s prepped this exclusive mashup of tracks off the new release. Worms being creatures who live in deep, dark places, it’s appropriate that the mix is packed end-to-end with bass-heavy dubstep and hip-hop tracks custom-made for all things low-end.
There’s a Wormhole in My Bathroom
01 Introduction
02 Scrapper Music Feat. Eddie K
03 Razur Kut
04 En U Dub
05 Bubba Kush Dub
06 Dim Sum Blap Feat. Slotr
07 Subsurface Feat. Slotr
08 Budha Belly Dub
09 Citrus Deezl Dub
10 Polymath
11 Racoon Rain Dance
12 Unknown Dub
13 Shivastep
14 Stellark Blap Feat. Slotr
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Baltimore-based Ear Pwr isn’t exactly a new band, but the duo has been turning an awful lot of heads and ears of late with talk (and leakage) of their forthcoming new album, Super Animal Brothers III. When they aren’t making music or striking acrobatic poses (above), Devin Booze and Sarah Reynolds like to haul a few synths and a megaphone from club to club and play their distinct disco-meets-electro dance jams.
The pair announced a lengthy North American tour that will kick off at the beginning of May, just a few days before the new album’s release. Fellow Baltimore resident Adventure will join them for several dates that end in their hometown.
Super Animal Brothers III is out May 19 via Carpark.
Dates:
05/02 Brooklyn, NY – Union Docs
05/13 Chapel Hill, NC – The Nightlight
05/17 Baltimore, MD – The Zodiac *
05/19 Brooklyn, NY – Death By Audio *
05/22 Washington, D.C. – Comet Ping Pong *
05/23 Philadelphia, PA – Pilam *
05/24 New York, NY – Cake Shop *
05/25 Providence, RI – Min Pin 4 Ever
05/26 Boston, MA – Church of Boston
05/27 Kittery, ME – Buoy Gallery
05/28 Montreal, QC – Zoo Bizarre
05/29 Toronto, ONT – Primary Color Presents
05/30 Detroit, MI – Division Street Boutique
05/31 Chicago, IL – Ronny’s
06/01 Milwaukee, WI – Cactus Club
06/03 Kansas City, MO – The Pistol Social Club
06/04 Denver, CO – Rhinoceropolis
06/06 Seattle, WA – Healthy Times Fun Club
06/07 Olympia, WA – Northern
06/10 Portland, OR – Holocene *
06/12 San Francisco, CA – Hemlock Tavern *
06/13 San Jose, CA – Nickel City Arcade *
06/14 Los Angeles, CA – Space 15 Twenty (Daytime show 1pm) *
06/14 Los Angeles, CA – BBQ at Art and Mayhem (Afternoon show 4 – 10 p.m.) *
06/15 Los Angeles, CA – Pehrspace *
06/16 Irvine, CA – Acrobatics Every Day *
06/19 Austin, TX – Beauty Bar *
06/20 Dallas, TX – The Handsome Kitten *
06/21 Houston, TX – Mango’s Cafe *
06/22 New Orleans, LA – Saturn Bar *
06/23 Little Rock, AK – Rad Hizzy *
06/24 Knoxville, TN – Pilot Light*
06/25 Asheville, NC – Mo Daddy’s *
06/26 Atlanta, GA – 529*
06/27 Durham, NC – The Pin Hook *
06/28 Greenville, NC – Spazz Haus *
06/29 Charlottesville, VA – Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar *
06/30 Baltimore, MD – The Zodiac *
* = w/ Adventure
Bluff, Element, Scoobs, and Six are back as Custom Made, and they have another mixtape to hand to the masses. Street Cinema Vol 6: The Lost Weekend, is made up of tracks recorded during the band’s studio sessions for albums like 2007’s Truth Be Told and last year’s Original Dynasty. There’s no fluff—lyrically or musically—here. The L.A.-based crew keeps the beats tight and the lyrics sharp and serious on this track.
You Can Have What You Want is a daydream of a record—a hazy mix of L.A.’s early-’70s singer-songwriters and the Creation Records catalog, its 10 tracks held aloft by swaths of dusty organ and Jason Quever’s shimmering, reverb-drenched tenor. Papercuts’ third LP is very much a product of its influences—Grizzly Bear and Vetiver’s Andy Cabic are thanked in the liner notes, and Alex Scally of Beach House (with whom Papercuts have toured) helped out with the arrangements. Nevertheless, Quever carves out some room for himself away from the dream-pop masses. With a couple listens, the queasy melodies lurking around the edges of “The Machine Will Tell Us So” and “Dead Love” may never leave you alone.
What, Balkan electro-pop isn’t on your dance radar? It should be—a quick spin around Café Svetlana reveals 17 hip-shaking, perspiration-inducing tracks by Macedonian producer Ahilea Durcovski. While this scene has found a home in Vienna, its music is multi-ethnic, with strong Greek, Turkish, Serbian, Croatian, and assorted Slavic flavors found in this rousing collection. What sounds like a bass clarinet leads a mad waltz called “Out of Town,” a pumping accordion and howling vocals by Bella Wagner (“You connect your whole body full of vodka to the beat,” she tells us in the raspy spoken word intro) breathe fire into “Spiritus Tango,” and an electrified fiddle and more clarinets rock the hell out of “Coffee and Tumbula.” Opa!
The skyrocketing career of the tiny rapper dubbed Rye Rye started with a phone message. It was 2006, and Ryeisha Berrain was 16 years old. Understand, being an urban teenager in Baltimore means going to clubs as early as you can get a fake ID—places like the labyrinthine Club Choices that stay open all night thumping to Baltimore club and hip-hop mixes from local names like DJ Big L or the late DJ K-Swift.
Baltimore’s a small city, and it becomes a tight community. You see it on the dancefloors, the hierarchies, the associations—it becomes a web. So it’s no surprise that Rye Rye, then just another girl at the club (albeit the sort of vivacious dancer that kinda makes you feel like a klutz just being in the same city with her) was two degrees of separation from club producer Blaqstarr. “My sister knew him,” she says by phone from her Baltimore home. “One day I was writing a song just for fun, and she was on the phone with him and he asked if [I] was around. I dunno, I guess because of the sound of my voice. So, I left a song on his answering machine.”
The song was the second verse of the infectious party track “Shake It to the Ground,” what’s become one of the most exported—and remixed—Baltimore club tracks since the genre kicked off as a bastard child of Chicago house and East Coast rap in the late ’80s. From hipster DJ crates in Oregon to Berlin dance clubs to Baltimore warehouses, “Shake It to the Ground” became an introduction to Baltimore club for a whole mess of people.
Within a year, Blaqstarr had gone on to produce tracks on M.I.A.’s star-making Kala and Rye Rye was asked to tour with the Sri Lankan firebrand. Rye Rye was still 17, touring overseas for months at a time and returning home to Baltimore to continue school and life as a teenager. “It’s weird,” she says, “especially when I was in school. I would be gone for, like, months at a time and be back again startin’ school. When I got back, everybody was, like, singing my songs, tryin’ to imitate my voice. My voice is so different, so it ain’t right.”
This spring, Rye Rye became one of very few Baltimore rappers to release a major-label album, via a licensing deal between Universal and M.I.A.’s NEET label. Rappers in the city get signed all the time, but rarely does anything come of it—rappers that have fought through the ranks for decades haven’t made it this far. But, boosted by producers like Blaqstarr, Sinden, and Diplo, both Baltimore and its club music are even more en vogue in 2009. And Rye Rye has the unique ability to keep up a flow to match the style’s amphetamine breakbeats. “When I was eight years old, [Baltimore club is] what we used to dance [to],” she says. “And from then on like it was always [my] kind of music.”
Leipzig, Germany-based Kassem Mosse—whose work has drawn comparisons to the likes of Theo Parrish and Basic Channel—is well familiar with ambient techno territory, and he’s given us this untitled track from his back catalog to gear fans up for his Workshop 08 release. This number should sooth even the most frazzled nervous systems, and if you’re planning to host a chill-out room anytime soon, add it to the playlist.
