Lusine Remixed

Jeff McIlwain (a.k.a. Lusine) already impressed us with 2004’s Serial Hodgepodge full-length and a series of 12”s. His sound has been meticulously crafted to equally emphasize the precise quirk of IDM and the dancing compulsion of techno, but now the time has come for a remix album.

Robag Wruhme, Apparat, and several other high profile artists have tackled an assortment of particularly representative tracks that provide each artist the raw material to move in different directions, while producing a record that comes together on its own.


Podgelism is out March 20, 2007 on Ghostly.

Tracklisting
1. Drip (Apparat remix)
2. Make It Easy (John Tejada remix)
3. Flat (Lusine remix)
4. Flat For You (Matthew Dear remix)
5. Still Frame (Lusine remix) – THE FOLLOWING TRACK IS AVAILABLE FOR
6 Auto Pilot (Deru remix)
7. Flat (Cepia remix)
8. The Stop (Robag Wruhme remix)
9. Everything Under the Sun (Lawrence remix)
10. Flat (Dimbiman feat. Cabanne remix)
11. Falling In (Lusine remix)
12. Video: “Still Frame” by Doug Seay

The XLR8R Office Top Ten Album Picks, March 19

Lesbian Power Hor Holy Mountain
Although it’s far from a typical XLR8R Top Ten entry, Lesbian has made the cut. Power Hor is a four song journey into the hellish side of psychedelia, with layer upon layer of guitar distortion, prog-scales, and traditional metal drumming. Featuring cover art from Sunn 0)))’s Stephen O’Malley, Power Hor has us scared for our lives.

MilenasongSeven Sisters Monika Enterprise
Gudrun Gut’s Monika Enterprise imprint has outdone itself again. Milenasong is Sabrina Milena, a Berlin-based songstress with a voice from heaven and a passion for eerie, acoustic experimentation. Like Joanna Newsom jamming with Sol Invictus, Milenasong is folk-nouveau for the disenchanted.

Phat KatCarte BlancheLook
Detroit couldn’t be in a better position with Phat Kat in peak mode. With several tracks produced by the late J Dilla, Black Milk, and Nick Speed, Carte Blache is a grimey, electro-infused hip-hop enterprise. One should not sleep on this up-and-coming Detroit mainstay.

VariousBuzzin’ Fly Vol. 4: Ben WattBuzzin’ Fly
As one-half of downtempo pop legends Everything But the Girl and owner of the Buzzin’ Fly imprint, Ben Watt knows his shit. On Volume 4, Watt expands upon his house mixes with dark tracks from Abyss, The Green Men, and Justin Martin, amongst tons of other incredible producers. This is easily the best mix yet from Ben and friends. It’s so lush it actually kind of hurts.

CexSketchi Temporary Residence
White boy party rap isn’t dead yet–or is it? Chicago’s Cex has gone beyond his days as an emotional party-rap experimenter, moving toward a drone-powered dubstep sound that will shake any audience’s organs. Move over Skream, Cex has come for your life.

Scissors For Lefty Underhanded RomanceEenie Meenie
It’s hard to admit it, but sometimes we have to give it up to those acts that play pop music that demands dancing. San Francisco’s Scissors For Lefty do just that. Like Ace Frehley’s solo recordings and Blonde Redhead’s energy of earlier, noisier work, Underhanded Romance is pop that transcends anything comparable to the term cheesy.

Zeb Stop the Earth, I Want to Get Off!Wonderwheel
If you like Liquid Liquid, Thievery Corporation, or King Tubby, Zeb is your man. Dude creates some extremely funky, latin tinged post-punk that’s got us psyched. One listen to the track “Afro Disco,” and you’ll know what we mean.

Jasper TXA DarknessLidar
As the title indicates, Jasper TX’s follow up to 2005’s I’ll Be Long Gone Before My Light Reaches You, is, well, dark. Featuring cinematic guitar ambience, pretty piano accompaniments, and weird-ass field recordings, A Darkness shreds without actually shredding at all.

The Death of a PartyThe Rise and Fall of Scarlet CityDouble Negative
After a lengthy tour with Canada’s Metric, The Death of a Party are showing their goth-meets-Gang of Four wings on their debut for Double Negative. Between the jangling guitars, sassed-out vocals, and catchy bass hooks, there’s no way this will get out of your head.

Black MothSuper RainbowDandelion GumGraveface
Dandelion Gum is a concept album about witches who make candy in the forest. Whoa. But seriously, Black Moth Super Rainbow makes fuzzy, Air-esq rock songs unlike anything out right now. This rural Pennsylvania quintet fuses electro, synth pop, and San Francisco psychedelia circa ’68 for one weird ass foray into the magnificent Top Ten.

Recent Office Top Ten Album Picks
March 12
March 5
February 26
February 19

CocoRosie The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn

Picking the individual contributions of Sierra and Bianca Casady out on CocoRosie’s third record is a little too easy. The controlled, theater-ready voice-the one that seemingly tiptoes up the horn of a Victrola-is Sierra’s. The marble-mouthed chatter, fighting off laughter at every turn? That’s Bianca. But this complimentary quality is at the core of everything CocoRosie does. With Adventures, these Brooklynites have created a record that trades in both gravity and flat-out fun; a good example being the lei-adorned rave-up “Japan,” whose lightheartedness feels free-wheeling and tossed off, until darkness descends and opera vocals swoop in.

Various Artists DJ N-Type: Dubstep Allstars Vol. 5

Reviewing this 38-track mix of bleak, urban, jaggedly rhythmic music on a sunny SoCal day induces some wicked cognitive dissonance. Suffice it to say, the fifth edition of Tempa’s indispensable Dubstep Allstars series is the antithesis of the archetypal, easygoing West Coast vibe. DJ N-Type keeps the mood claustrophobically nocturnal and menacingly stark with incessant waves of rude bass pressure and rib-cracking snares and kicks, as dubstep fixtures like Benga, Skream, and Loefah spark friction against cuts by lesser-knowns Coki, Magnetic Man, and Tes La Rock. No matter where you hear Dubstep Allstars, though, you will be thrust ears-first into an East London vortex of sinister low frequencies and beats that do GBH. Hertz so good.

Cyrus From the Shadows

Cyrus has been on dubstep selectors’ radars since the early days of the genre’s second wave, but if you wanted to hear the goods, you usually had to find them on Joe Nice’s mixes. Tectonic’s first artist LP is all half-tempo cuts, very little melody, dry drums, almost no vocal samples, and all very claustrophobic. “Indian Stomp” rises above the rest with its playful clatter, but overall the album lacks the spark of dubstep’s recent output. For a label that’s been as adventurous as Tectonic, these tracks often don’t rise above DJ tools.

Throbbing Gristle Part Two: The Endless Not

It’s been nearly 30 years since Throbbing Gristle released an album of new material-and, damn, has it been worth the wait. Genesis, Sleazy, Chris, and Cosey reignite the post-industrial flame with Part Two: The Endless Not. While Part Two relies far less on the harsh analog clipping of TG’s The Third and Final Report or the synth-driven, dark new age of 20 Jazz Funk Greats, it’s no less disturbing. They whip up annihilating noise, melodic piano scores, and provocative lyrics. Tracks like “Almost a Kiss” play like an over-produced Coil ballad (complete with gentle xylophone melodies, a dissonant, subsonic bassline, and Sleazy’s desperate howling, screeching, and whimpering), while “The Worm Waits Its Turn” transforms IDM textures and percussion into a fucked up nu-jazz cacophony. Evidently Part Two is the final incarnation of TG-so pray that the Jay-Zs of experimental music make a quick return.

Debruit To Nartik Kef

Clearly coming from the same school as TTC, Four Tet, Funkstorung, and other ADHD-addled cut-and-paste merchants, Debruit’s stuttering crunk-funk-electro-hop brings with it something infinitely exciting and surprisingly new. Perhaps it’s the producer’s clear appreciation (and plundering) of 20th century classical music, or the classy worldwide appeal achieved by the featured MCs from Spain, France, and the U.S., but whatever the case, the only complaint here is that at 34 minutes, there’s not enough To Nartik Kef to go around.

Distance My Demons

With My Demons, Distance has created a powerful album that will fully appeal to the dubstep scene while reaching beyond its boundaries, a record that remains vibrant in mood and saturated with personality. His “Traffic” b/w “Cyclops” single of 2006 laid out a balanced blueprint for the album, and both tracks are included here. Tunes like “Ska” and “Confined” sound similar to the bombastic “Traffic,” where wild synths bruk out, tearing across jerking rhythms like a raging fire. “Tuning” and “My Demons,” like “Cyclops,” take the opposite route-they’re deep reflecting pools that hypnotize, drawing you close so that phantoms can tug at your aural consciousness. While the whole effect is closer to Kode 9 or Boxcutter than Digital Mystikz or Skream, at the end of the day this is a unique creation, another feather in Planet Mu’s cap, and a truly masterful piece of work.

Touane Figura

Italian DJ and producer Marco Tonni started out as a teenage rocker before moving on to electronics, and he apparently still dabbles in a range of music: His second album, Figura, is supposedly inspired by jazz, the tracks representing an imaginary girl’s “emotional mirror.” But there’s little jazz feel to the minimal techno here, with no melodic lines anchoring the experimentation. Best to ignore the bombastic concept, then, and dive into the sparse layers he builds atop often-squelchy beats, softened with hazy edges. Though the album can feel self-indulgent, a few tracks, such as “She Let Some Light In,” stand out. Not a wildfire, maybe, but some heat nonetheless.

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