Podcast 798: Glenn Astro

You’ll find the music of Glenn Astro, a German DJ-producer, on labels including Ninja Tune (where he released a collaborative album with Max Graef in 2016), Money $ex Records (which he ran between 2015 and 2018), and Denmark’s Tartelet Records, which is where he released Homespun, his latest solo album in 2020.

Sonically, Astro doesn’t stick to any particular genre; rather, he fuses house and broken beats with jazz and disco, filling each of his tracks with rich, spacious grooves. On 2018’s Turquoise Tortoise, with Hodini, he pivoted into more downtempo electronica and future soul, with thick kicks and warbling basslines. He grew up in Essen, where he would listen to hip-hop, house, soul, jazz, and disco, and began DJing at the age of 13. Today, he runs the labels Termina and Hypno Discs, platforms for his wildest bass adventures and club experiments.

Later this week, Astro will release Nothing Is Real, a compilation of his own original productions from a cast of fictional artists, on which he celebrates the thrill of discovery which came as standard as he listened to new entries in series’ like DJ Kicks. He’s decided to celebrate the album with his much-anticipated XLR8R podcast, which he recorded last month in Berlin. Across its one-hour run-time, it moves between head-nodding downtempo, techno, broken beat, and various chill-out delights—a sure-fire mix to brighten up your day, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.

01. What have you been up to recently?
I recently became a dad, so that’s an amazing new journey, which keeps me busy. Otherwise, I am working on as much new music as possible, aside from working a part-time day job.

02. What have you been listening to?
Apart from Rosalia’s Motomami, you mean? Although I’m not really a club person, I’ve been listening to a lot of electronic music lately, but I guess it’s more on the unconventional side of things. It’s hard to pinpoint. Lots of rap records, too. Also there’s this album called Jerusalem by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou that was released by Mississippi Records recently, which is just absolutely wonderful. The record features recordings she did in the ’70s.

03. Where and when did you record this mix?
On a rainy Saturday afternoon In my studio, roughly two weeks ago.

04. What setup did you use?
Two turntables, a mixer, and a laptop.

05. How did you go about choosing the tracks you’ve included?
There’s no refined system behind it. A lot of the included tracks are recent purchases, a few tracks are rediscoveries I haven’t heard in a while, and there’s a few digital exclusives thrown in for good measure. My aim was to keep it somewhat…”clubby.”

06. Where do you imagine it being listened to?
During dinner preparations, commuting from or to work. Perhaps for a spontaneous living room dance, while doing homework, or hanging out on your couch, bed, floor, or sofa. There are loads of applications you can combine it with! I don’t want to be overly cynical but we’re all in some way or another stuck in this neoliberal treadmill of doing things we don’t really want to do but have to do daily, in order to get by, so I hope this might ease the stress a tiny bit for a little while for someone out there.

08. What’s next on your horizon?
I’m an indecisive person, so usually it’s something that pops into my head on the spur of the moment!

XLR8R Subscribers can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R subscriber, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. Optic Eye “Crystal Moon” (Mystic Stones)
02. Drush “Birds & Bass” (Fast Castle)
03. Brain Liquor “Blame It On” (Tartelet)
04. F.B. Illwig “Take It Off” (Moonwalk X)
05. Missy Elliott “Get Ur Freak On” (Gavsborg edit) (Unreleased)
06. Nutcase & Papachubba feat. Petah “U Do” (Best Effort)
07. Technosis “Change Positions” (Butter Notes)
08. SG Rilla Mane “My Cadillac” (Wah Wah Wino)
09. Skepta “Man” (Yung Bingles & Lil Chimpz Rebax) (YBLC001)
10. RDG “The Hand Above” (Sentry Records)
11. Lag “Rokenrol” (Beot Remix) (Coincidence Records)
12. Binary Digit “Acid King Charles Spaniel” (WéMè Records)
13. Michael J. Blood “Eazun” (Blood)
14. Greyhouse “New Beats The House” (Remix) (Hotsound USA Productions)
15. Sounds of Life “Currents” (React/Artcore)
16. Yushh “Look Mum No Hands” (Wisdom Teeth)
17. Fracture “Blaze” (feat. Bryan Gee) (Astrophonica)

Convextion is Back as E.R.P.

Gerard Hanson, otherwise known as Convextion, is back with a new EP as E.R.P. on om:nia.

Hanson is one of the most mysterious characters in electronic dance music, who has been releasing minimalist, futuristic tracks intermittently since 1995. While his works form the blueprint for so many, it’s impossible to anticipate when they will appear.

E.R.P is the alias he uses for his dark, electro-edged techno.

“I’m still a fan of the faceless techno days, however obsolete that is,” he told XLR8R over email. “I use my music to say what I can’t with words.”

In 2019, Hanson released “Drawing Machine,” a drum & bass cut made when he was listening to lots of Photek and Source Direct, via XLR8R+. He released Exomoon, an album as E.R.P., that same year.

Tracklisting

01. V / Eight
02. Equiponderance
03. Engine Vibration
04. Enfield

Rotating Assembly EP is scheduled for May 23 release. Meanwhile, you can stream clips below and pre-order here.

Blawan Moves Away from the Club on Second XL Recordings EP

Blawan (a.k.a Jamie Roberts) will release a new EP on XL Recordings.

The five-track record is Roberts’ second release on XL Recordings, following Woke Up Right Handed.

We’re told that Dismantled into Juice “encapsulates the multifaceted sounds that Roberts has been fastidiously perfecting across the last decade.”

After hearing the powerful vocals of rising singer Monstera Black, who features on the release, Roberts set about making a record that moved him deeper into the studio “to perfect the abstract sounds he’s always wanted to explore.”

Across five tracks, he flickers between instrumentals and vocal-led songs that see him transcend the “techno” box he has so often been put in.

Bringing in distorted drum rhythms, piercing synths, and original vocal cuts, the release is Roberts’ “most riveting and genre-bending music to date,” we’re told.

Tracklisting

01. Toast
02. Panic
03. You Can Build Me feat. Monstera Black
04. Body Ramen
05. Dismantled Into Juice feat. Monstera Black

Dismantled Into Juice EP is scheduled for May 17 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Toast” in full via the player below and pre-order here.

Photo: Kasia Zacharko

Minor Science Next on AD 93

Minor Science will release a new EP on AD 93.

064, a two-tracker of beats, bass, and pitched-up samples, arrives three years on from Minor Science’s debut album, Second Language.

Inspired by several years of hard hustle, its two tracks—”Workahol” and “Casheine”—mash up hardcore, electro, and booty bass “to offer (over)stimulation for crisis-era dancefloors,” we’re told.

Minor Science is the alias of Angus Finlayson, who has previously released three EPs on AD 93, formerly known as Whities, plus his album—a kaleidoscope of tempos and intensities that fizzes with detail and is euphoric in places but frequently blue in mood.

Tracklisting

01. Workahol
02. Casheine

064 EP will be released on May 5. Meanwhile, you can stream “Workahol” in full via the player here.

Yoyaku’s Chapelle XIV Music Imprint Welcomes André Baum as Beyondré

Chapelle XIV Music—a collaboration between Yoyaku and art gallery Chapelle XIV—will welcome singer, songwriter, and musician André Baum as Beyondré.

Berlin Blue is Baum’s first release as Beyondré since 2014’s Beyondré Is Born EP. It was produced across three cities, two lockdowns, and one heartbreak, making this a musical endeavour that “reflects a journey of growth, both in self and sound,” Baum tells XLR8R.

Baum, who is from New York but bases himself himself in Berlin, channels personal experiences and years of electronic experimentation into seven eccentric pop-leaning productions.

Chapelle XIV Music describes the release as a “trip through self-discovery in dark times.”

As one-half of electronic duo People People, Baum released his first 12″ on Lamache‘s Discobar in 2020.
In February, he released a collaborative EP with Chris Korda on Foom.

Tracklisting

01. What You Need
02. Runaway
03. Uncomfort
04. What We Are
05. Too Soon
06. The Time Has Come
07. The Breeze

Berlin Blue LP is scheduled for June 9 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Runaway” in full below and pre-order here.

Caterina Barbieri Reveals the ‘Sister Album’ to 2019’s ‘Ecstatic Computation’

Caterina Barbieri will release a new album in June.

Baribieri wrote Myuthafoo in 2019 at the same time as Ecstatic Computation, which she released on Editions Mego in March. She regards it as a sister album.

Both albums are based on creative sequencing processes that playfully unravel Barbieri’s deep-rooted interest in time, space, memory, and emotion. Barbieri had been touring excessively at the time, and her process began to shift in response to that nomadic energy. Using the Orthogonal ER-101 modular sequencer, Barbieri manually programmed patterns into the device and fed them into her arsenal of noise generators, trialling different combinations at each show.

Barbieri has spent the best part of a decade breaking apart the rigid structures of electronic music. In 2017, she released Patterns of Consciousness, a fusion of minimalism and trance-inducing synth experimentation, on Important Records.

Tracklisting

01. Memory Leak
02. Math of You
03. Myuthafoo
04. Alphabet Of Light
05. Sufyosowirl
06. Swirls Of You

Myuthafoo LP is scheduled for June 16 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Math of You” in full below and pre-order here.

Photo: Camille Blake

Podcast 797: EVA808

Hailing from Iceland but now residing in Sweden, Eva Jóhannsdóttir, better known as EVA808, has been a staple of the bass music scene for some years, having started making grime and dubstep around 2011. It’s not easy to categorize the music she’s released under one umbrella, but much of it sits close to dubstep, although often with more driving, attention-grabbing beats. It also tends to be jagged and broken, with obscure samples and rhythms. In 2020, she released her debut album, Sultry Venom, gliding through style and mood and flirting between the boundaries of genre.

Next month, Jóhannsdóttir will release ÖÐRUVÍSI—her “most personal and autobiographical work to date,” we’re told, which will launch her own new label, GLER. Across 20 tracks, she tells a story of “being different,” while retaining a dark, brooding, and bass-heavy sonic tone.

In celebration of the album, Jóhannsdóttir has delivered an XLR8R podcast, on which she takes a sharp step away from the club. Instead of beats and bass, expect 60 minutes of melancholic piano, Icelandic punk, ’60s psychedelic rock, and soul—featuring Sigur Rós, Jóhann Jóhannsson, HudMo, and more. It’s an imaginary movie score for the moment, if you will.

“It’s definitely more of a mix to listen to while taking a drive, going on a walk, or laying down to reflect,” Jóhannsdóttir tells XLR8R. “People go to the clubs to hear club music so listening to something completely different when you’re at home makes sense.”

01. What have you been up to recently?
Recently I’ve been working on a lot of new music that I’m excited about. It’s a great feeling when things just flow naturally!

02. What have you been listening to?
I’ve been listening to a lot of old Icelandic music that I never had the chance to hear before. I have Tidal on my studio computer and there’s been so much cool stuff uploaded there from like the ’60s and ’70s, and it sounds amazing. The labels that bought all the rights obviously got all the original master tapes!

03. Your new album is on the way. What can you tell us about it?
I’ve been working on this album for the last three years but I’ve wanted to make it for even longer than that. I never really had the resources to get it wrapped up in the manner it needed. Now, though, I finally have like an actual studio because I’ve put a lot of work into it. The ÖÐRUVÍSI album is the first full project I have wrapped up in there. It’s an album about realizing you’re different from a very young age and being painfully aware of it. Making this album was my way of putting into sound memories and feelings I couldn’t really express otherwise; it’s basically a movie soundtrack in my own weird way!

04. Where and when did you record this mix?
I did this mix in my little studio this past weekend.

05. How did you go about choosing the tracks you’ve included?
The tracks in the mix are a mix of film soundtracks I’ve loved since forever with some I’ve found more recently, but there’s a bunch of other stuff too. It’s really varied as I listen to so much different music. I kind of thought of this mix as if I were to score a movie but I couldn’t use any of my own music. There’s everything from melancholy piano stuff, to old Icelandic punk, ’60s psychedelic rock, soul, and everything in between. My live sets are of course one hundred percent my own productions or bootlegs, so I thought it would be fun to do a whole mix where I couldn’t include any of my tracks.

06. What’s next on your horizon?
I’m working hard on my new label, GLER, which is my platform for my upcoming projects, so if you don’t wanna miss anything you should follow thisisgler on Instagram.

XLR8R Subscribers can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R subscriber, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. Jóhann Jóhannsson “The Voice Box” (Back Lot Music)
02. Claude Bolling “Strange Magic” (Disc’AZ)
03. Melanie Safka “Mr Tambourine Man” (Buddah Records)
04. Eddie Kendricks “My People Hold On” (Tamla)
05. Antonio Pinto “Mr. President” (Rambling Records)
06. Antonio Pinto “Lord of War” (Lakeshore Records)
07. Gus Gus “Detention” (Underwater Records)
08. Trúbrot “Án Þín” (Parlophone Odeon)
09. Ólafur Arnalds “Saman” (Mercury KX)
10. Nigel Westlake “If I Had Words” (Varèse Sarabande)
11. George Bruns “Cats Love Theme” (Walt Disney Records)
12. Mark Pritchard “Sad Alron” (Warp Records)
13. Emiliana Torrini “Gollums Song” (Reprise Records)
14. Sigur Rós “Flugufrelsarinn” (Smekkleysa)
15. Manfred Mann “One Way Glass” (Vertigo)
16. Max Romeo “Smile Out a Style” (Island Records)
17. The Maytals “Your Troubles Are Over” (Trojan Records)
18. Dead Players “Call Us Now” (High Focus Records)
19. HudMo “Solstice lzo” (Warp Records)
20. Minnie Ripperton “Adventures in Paradise” (Epic)
21. James Newton Howard “The Venture Departs” (Decca)
22. Dúkkulísurnar “Að Vera” (Alda Music)
23. Melanie “Johnny Boy” (Buddah Records)

Experiment Intrinsic Returns to Bulgaria with Rhadoo, Margaret Dygas, Laylla Dane, and More

Experiment Intrinsic will return to Bulgaria this year, with a lineup featuring Margaret Dygas, e/tape, Laylla Dane, Rhadoo, and more.

Experiment Intrinsic, which began in London in 2014, promises purpose-driven listening environments, careful curation, and high-quality production. In 2017, the project expanded to France before debuting in Bulgaria last year.

The Bulgaria edition is situated at the backdrop of the Balkan mountains near the village of Valevtsi, with a capacity of only 300 people. Beginning on the Summer Solstice—on Wednesday, June 21—the event intends to refresh, reconnect, and inspire. It’ll feature many options across music (ambient, experimental, etc.), plus workshops (yoga, sound healing, etc.) and mountain trekking.

One aspect of the programming allows artists who usually play in a club setting the opportunity to explore other styles in a safe and attentive space.

Scheduled to play this year’s event—running June 20 to June 26 (with an extended after-party running in the Rila mountains until June 30—are Rhadoo, Margaret Dygas, Vera, Laylla Dane, plus many more XLR8R favorites. You can read more about the event here, where you can also secure tickets.

King Krule Unveils Fourth Album on XL Recordings

Archy Marshall will release Space Heavy, the fourth studio album under his King Krule alias.

Written from 2020 to 2022, between London and Liverpool, Space Heavy comes 10 years on from Marshall’s debut album (2013’s 6 Feet Beneath The Moon) and presents King Krule at his most articulate,” we’re told, “using his years of experience to create a dynamic body of work that reveals something new with every listen.”

During the commute between the two places he called home, Marshall found himself fascinated by the notion of “the space between”—the space “haunted by dreams of love, touching a narrative of lost connection, losing people and situations to the guillotine of the universe.”

Once written by Marshall, the music was developed by frequent collaborator and producer Dilip Harris and long-time band mates Ignacio Salvadores, George Bass, James Wilson, and Jack Towell.

The album’s first single, “Seaforth,” arrives with a music video directed by Jocelyn Anquetil.

Tracklisting

01. Flimsier
02. Pink Shell
03. Seaforth
04. That Is My Life, That Is Yours
05. Tortoise Of Independency
06. Empty Stomach Space Cadet
07. Flimsy
08. Hamburgerphobia
09. From The Swamp
10. Seagirl
11. Our Vacuum
12. Space Heavy
13. When Vanishing
14. If Only It Was Warmth
15. Wednesday Overcast

Space Heavy LP is scheduled for June 9 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Seaforth” in full below and pre-order here.

Photo: Frank Lebon

Anthony Naples Returns with Fifth Album

Anthony Naples will soon release his fifth album, orbs.

Since his debut EP in 2012, Naples has helped to keep a steady flow of music coming. With the exception of 2019’s Fog FM, he’s used the album format as a chance to break from the solid structures of house and techno, exploring new and often formless territories.

They’re also normally founded on the rushes of inspiration from pivotal moments in life. Take Me With You, from 2018, was an after-hours ode dedicated to the fuzzy mornings with friends, and Chameleon, released in 2021, was an imaginary studio session with various versions of self.

orbs, which lands on ANS, a division of Naples’ Incienso label dedicated to his own productions, is a “moody portal of shoegazed and slow motion songs suspended in thin air,” we’re told.

The album doesn’t reassemble the Naples sound from the ground up, “so much as enhances and expands its scope in all directions.” Across 10 new tracks, “samples and instruments meld together into new languorous and liquid forms that with or without the beat of drums, shift with the gentle movements of time.”

Tracklisting

01. Moto Verse
02. Orb Two
03. Morph
04. Silas
05. Gem
06. Ackee
07. Scars
08. Strobe
09. Tito
10. Unknow

orbs is scheduled for June 2 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Silas” in full below and pre-order here.

Photo: Jenny Slattery

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