XLR8R Weekly Top Ten: Merzbow, Fog, Numbers

WileyPlaytime Is OverBig Dada
Now that Spank Rock signed to Downtown Records, grime pioneer Wiley has stepped up for Big Dada with an amazing, classic grime record for that ass. Produced by Wiley himself (with some help from JME), Playtime Is Over will rumble spleens anywhere, provided there are speakers. With tracks like “Flyboy,” “Baby Girl,” and “Gangsters,” it’s clear that playtime is, actually, over.

FogDithererLex
Fog is one of those bands that plays really effected (sometimes digital) rock, but can remix the hell out of a track when faced with a computer. Taking cues from metal, shoegaze, and indie-pop, this trio composes post-rock effortlessly and with magnificent production. If you dig glitches, classic rock, massive riffs, or orchestral wailing, it would be a sad mistake not to cuddle up to this baby.

Prinzhorn Dance SchoolS/TDFA/Astralwerks
This UK-based duo could best be described as drum & bass (no, not in the way you’re thinking). Tobin Prinz and Suzi Horn pound out bluesy rock rooted in lo-fi bass and minimal drumming. But instead of imitating The White Stripes, the duo’s more akin to The Rapture circa Out Of the Races. There’s no surprise that this is James Murphy-approved, but it’s a bold move for DFA, and bold moves aren’t too shabby.

MerzbowZophorus Blosssoming Noise
Noise is not dead, contrary to what the non-believers say. Our boy Merzbow just bent frequencies that may not have been discovered on Zophorus. Instead of using seal noises and other weird sound matter of prior releases, Masami Akita’s newest baby comes in the form of evil, droning metal. There are no blastbeats or Slayer-esque breakdowns, just one Japanese animal-right activist and his disturbed vision.

Fox N’ Wolf “Youth Alcoholic (Folk ‘Booty Crunk’ Theorem Edit)” Fox N’ Wolf
Often mistaken for electro-clash, Sweden-based Fox N’ Wolf is now going to be mistaken for the bassiest of booty-house groups. Dominated by rough kicks, sporadic samples, and high-pitched vocals, this version of “Youth Alcoholic” is worth any horrible 24-hour hangover.

Mr. OizoTransexual EPEd Banger
This here is one feisty little 12”. From the title track’s throbbing laser synths and sex-ridden female vocals (wait is this electro-clash?) to heavily chopped disco edits, this EP has a few of us pumping our arms at our computer screens like Pedro Winter on his ninth red bull.

Green MenThe FogMoodMusic
This new single from XLR8R columnist Nick Chacona and Freestyle Man is so refreshing that at first it was a bit off-putting. The track begins with business as usual–dark, droney house. Then a slap bassline arrives that’s dirty, campy, and just plain bizarre. The future is bright for these Green Men.

Various Normoton Gold Normoton
Commemorating its 25th release, Germany’s Normoton label releases its first comp. Compiled by label owner Klaus Burkhard, and including tracks from Strassmann, Phon.o, and Uphill Racer, this disc is as dark as it is diverse–ambient, electro, Kraut-pop, melodic minimal techno all appear–and it tastes great.

NumbersNow You Are ThisKill Rock Stars
San Francisco’s Numbers are probably into Sonic Youth, and their latest LP might be the best homage to Thurston and Kim since Autolux’s Future Perfect. Now Now You Are This’ fuzzy guitar riffs and distorted synth melodies aren’t just burning and propulsive, they’re also strangely emotive. We like strangely emotive.

Young Marble GiantsColossal Youth and Collected WorksDomino
The one benefit of YMG recording only one LP is that the bonus reissue material includes pretty much every cut the trio ever laid down: EP’s, singles, even a Peel session. This three-disc collection is a lo-fi, stripped down, post-punk history lesson.

Gear Alert: The AmpliTube Jimi Hendrix

With EQ racks that rival Hollywood studios and sample collections spanning classical instruments to analog synths, IK Media has been a good friend to many-a-producer with its software applications. Now the plug-in giant is throwing rockers a bone with the AmpliTube Jimi Hendrix experience.

Recreating Hendrix’s effect rig and amp setup, AmpliTube features four separate amp heads, seven different cabinet sounds, nine stomp pedals, four separate rack effects, and a tuner. Bedroom musicians and old-timers engaged in the technology revolution have just experienced Christmas a little early this year.

With the ability to hook up any hardware synth or MIDI instrument to a wah, fuzz, and tremolo pedal with a distorted amp powering the gamut, unique sounds are guaranteed.

Of course your metal bro or local Guitar Center manager may snicker at you, but for only $249.00, you’ll be able to sound like Hendrix, man.

The AmpliTube Jimi Hendrix is available from IK Multimedia.

Amy Grill Debuts New Electronic Music Documentary

Whether it’s Modeselektor prepping for Sonar, journalists fighting to give the music its due credit, Wighnomy Brothers coming to terms with their success, or promoters cracking under the weight of emotional strife, Speaking In Code, a new documentary bent on showing all the gritty details of daily life in the music biz, thrives on the people who create, play, write about, and promote electronic music. Boston-based director Amy Grill has been working on this film for over two years, and in preparation for its release, she sat down with XLR8R to give us a taste of what she’s learned.

Watch the Trailer

Why did you choose to make an underground electronic music documentary?
I shy away from making grand statements about Speaking In Code and its purpose. A lot of documentaries have tried to justify the importance of electronic music to the cultural masses. I’m just trying to tell a good, funny, and fascinating story about people who have chosen electronic music as a lifestyle. Along the way, we might break a few stereotypes in America about electronic music.

After two years of shooting, what would you say bonds DJs and producers together?
Each of the Speaking In Code characters (DJs, producers, promoters, and journalists) have their own story–the robot builder who loves to dance, rambunctious bad-boy producers who love their moms, the techno evangelist, the inventor/electronic-music genius, the jet-setting journalist. Each character values the importance of independent music and media, and most of them see right through mass media’s conceits.

What’s completely fascinating is the astonishing difference between the reception (or lack of reception) of electronic music in America, and the very rich electronic-music culture in Europe. You see those differences very clearly in Speaking In Code, through the personal experiences of people living different electronic-music-centered lifestyles.

How do you think the electronic music subculture has changed since the days of rave?
You don’t as see as many crazy rave pants these days. The Internet and new technology have changed a lot of things. While I can’t tackle all these issues in Speaking In Code (it is not a survey film of the history of electronic music), through the characters you’ll hear and see some of the changes for yourself.

Where do you see electronic music’s future headed?
There is no clear universal answer to the future of electronic music, because there are so many [genres]. Straight techno will probably never have a mass appeal in America, but I think as interest in electronic music grows here in America, more people will come out for shows. There is a network of aging, out-of-touch bookers and promoters, and they have a stranglehold on the cultural capital. Hopefully they’ll wake up and realize that they can’t book sad old rock acts and epic trance forever. Electronic music in Europe is a thriving community. With the Internet, digital distribution, social networks, and viral marketing, I’m not sure “underground” exists in the same way it used to.

Daily Download: Dirty On Purpose “Car No Driver (Cassettes Won’t Listen Remix)”

Cassettes Won’t Listen has returned with more gentle electro madness remixing Brooklyn-based indie-pop sensation Dirty On Purpose. Unlike CWL’s electro-hip-hop instrumentals, “Car No Driver” is an all-ages romp through pop’s possibilities. 

Download this song as an MP3, or preview a week’s worth of tracks at the XLR8R Podcast. Subscribe using iTunes, or with an RSS reader of your choice.

Tim Maia Nobody Can Live Forever: The Existential Soul of Tim Maia

There’s no shortage of excess in the roster of the world’s great soul singers, and Brazilian singer Tim Maia is no exception: In his 55 years on earth, the singer, at his height in the ’70s, survived drug use, a UFO cult, and five marriages. Of course, such a messed-up personal life can be an excellent foundation for good music, and in this sense Maia excelled as well. Though this collection includes English music, his rich, honey-smooth voice sounds best when he sings in his native Portuguese, layered against thick basslines and psych guitars. Even if you speak Portuguese, the depth in his voice makes the meaning of the words a moot point.

Aesop Rock None Shall Pass

Def Jux’s surreal street poet has gotten married and recorded a Swoosh-sponsored exercise soundtrack since his last full-length, so perhaps it’s not surprising that None Shall Pass loosely focuses on maturity. Adulthood’s arrival hasn’t made Aesop Rock go soft, though Blockhead’s production here is looser and more jazz-inflected. Instead Aesop comes nostalgic, with tales of bored youth, isolation, and drug-spoiled relationships. He still unwinds his knotty lyrics, slacking off paid-by-the-syllable wordplay for a more stretched-out delivery with more dramatic effect. He rarely sounds as hurried (and exciting) as he did on his magnum opus Labor Days, but he’s closer than he has been in years.

Various Artists Nothing much: A Best of Minus

There’s been a bit of a backlash against Minus Records’ strain of austere techno among clubbers of my acquaintance and internet chatterers. As the foremost proponent of stripped-down 4/4 electronic music, Richie Hawtin’s venerable company serves as an obvious touchstone whipping boy for both supporters and haters. Arising as a Plus 8 subsidiary in 1998 (coinciding with the release of Plastikman’s Consumed opus), Minus admittedly has peddled a decidedly furrowed-brow brand of often cerebral, un-anthemic techno, as evidenced by the bulk of the Minimize To Maximize and min2MAX compilations.

That being said, the 11-track CD Nothing Much (which includes a bonus disc, Something More, mixed by Troy Pierce) finds the recent Berlin transplant label expanding its roster and introducing a bit of whimsy (see Ambivalent’s “R U OK?” with its cheeky tale of a drug experience gone awry) while maintaining the kind of rigorous control that has rarely been equaled in electronic-music history.

Detractors may find the music here somewhat monochromatic, but listen closely and you’ll detect subtle variations on a theme. Producers like Niederflur, Loco Dice, Mathew Jonson, and Hawtin Plastikman himself all work within fairly narrow parameters, but their repertoire of sounds is distinctive and consistently stimulating. As with many excellent labels (Perlon, Raster-Noton, Orac, Wagon Repair, Cadenza), Minus projects what could be classified as a trademark sound, yet the selections here aren’t so much reiterations as they are complementary pieces in a compelling mosaic. Jonson’s “Decompression” is a foreboding, majestic stomp with nuanced acidic synth motifs; Loco Dice’s “Seeing Through Shadows” hisses, plinks, and burbles with a sprightliness that’s uncharacteristic of past Minus releases; Magda’s “48 Hour Crack In Your Bass” follows Ricardo Villalobos down the K hole with a grinding and not unpleasurable inevitability-it’s a helluva mind-and-body trip. Pierce’s smoothly blended Something More bonus mix elaborates on Minus’ remarkably cohesive aesthetic.

The 25 tracks here will definitely keep high-IQ’ed clubbers moving while engaging more sedentary heads with textural and percussive embellishments that suggest several hours of productive R&D in the lab. However, if you’re looking for pretty melodies and wailing divas to prompt you to get your motherfuckin’ hands reflexively waving in the air, Minus won’t really be able to accommodate you (although Gaiser vs. Heartthrob’s damned saucy “Nasty Girl” could provoke something more lascivious than arm-waving).

On the other hand, Minus’ roster-including I.A. Bericochea, Gaiser, JPLS, False (a.k.a. Matthew Dear), Berg Nixon (a.k.a. Ryan Crosson), Marc Houle, and Run Stop Restore-will give you nourishing brain food while keeping your pulse elevated. Think of Minus as the Criterion Collection of techno labels: Its products are built to edify and endure over the long haul. Minimal’s peak hype moment may have passed, but Minus never really cared about the hoopla and hack bandwagon-riders, anyway. It just keeps on clickin’ and twitchin’ through advanced neural pathways in its own distinctive way, upgrading to its own exacting specs with ears cocked toward posterity rather than popularity. This franchise has legs.

The Week in Music, June 22

Ian Williams hates The Strokes, and that’s completely understandable. This week he stated that the band members are “the children of the heads of supermodel agencies who formed a rock band and thought they deserved respect because of that.” Williams also compares the band to Duran Duran and hair metal, but mysteriously declines to address its punk credibility.

Speaking of shit-talking, the Cure is releasing a follow-up to what was allegedly its swan song, the 2004 self-titled album. The band is also touring, and while that’s all fine and well, someone really needs to help Robert Smith out a bit. Picture the human equivalent of a dead, bloated dog, and then add all the typical goth accoutrement. Jesus, if someone else won’t do it I will. Robert, that looks cute on 20-year-old girls, but it’s disgusting when you’re nearing 50–which you are, I checked.

Canada.com ran an article discussing whether or not there are environmental advantages to using digital music files rather than CDs, in which the do-gooders at Greenpeace pointed out that digital music actually increases the number of blank discs manufactured and purchased, and that it also requires an entirely new interface, like mp3 players, to use the files. Shame be upon you, e-wasters, and doubly so if you’ve ever bought anything by The Strokes at the iTunes store.

On a more serious note, UK club Gatecrasher–one of the forces behind the huge trance boom in the mid-to-late nineties–burned down this week. As stated on the company’s website: “unfortunately the venue has been completely burned out and will have to demolished, but rest assured we will return bigger, brighter, better, and louder! Gatecrasher, it will always be with you!” Sorry about the building, but we’re pretty sure we don’t want Gatecrasher to always be with us, unless it releases at least one compilation that doesn’t make us want to throw ourselves out a twentieth-story window fifteen seconds into the mix.

The Week In Music, June 15

The Week In Music, June 8

Sublight Records To Shut Down

Another record label closes its doors. As stated in an email from the label:

“We are sorry to announce that 2007 is the last year of Sublight Records. We have had the pleasure of putting out great music by amazing artists spanning over 50 releases in only 4 short years. Over the course of 2007 we will be selling off our remaining stock. We would like to thank the listeners, artists and friends who have supported us over the years. Our CDs will remain available for sale on our mailorder until 2008, so get them while you can.”

No further information has yet to come through our inboxes, though you can bet IDM and breakcore fans around North America are seriously bumming now. The Winnipeg-based label has released work by Venetian Snares, Richard Devine, Doormouse, Bong-Ra, and others.

Label Site

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