It doesn‘t sound promising: young bedroom producer combines a few instruments and a laptop, adopts a one-word pseudonym, and drops a debut disc of 15 mostly instrumental tunes. Surprise! Max Braverman, the lone soul behind Skopic, takes those 15 tracks and journeys deep into the dingy basements and forgotten corners of electronic music, twisting sounds both original and familiar into addictive new shapes. The self-titled album opens with “Allow Me,” which starts with a Rhodes-streaked jazz shuffle that sounds like Amon Tobin in low gear, before turning on the old-school hip-hop afterburners then wrapping a violin around DSP. Skopic gets a huge, enveloping sound out of even his darker, more threatening tunes, dropping lo-fi spoken voice samples into the mix to contrast with his Jack Dangers-level skill. Braverman‘s bedroom odyssey takes us from the corpse of big beat to neo-blaxsploitation turntablism to widescreen weirdo dancefloors and more-the scope alone of Skopic is pleasantly surprising.
Rhythm Maker Every Now And Again
Directing the label back towards dance-oriented late night music; Stefan Schwander (a.k.a. Repeat Orchestra, Rhythm Maker) enlists a well-tuned Hammond B3 and a slew of emotional chord pads on these smooth tracks. Like a true pianist, he styles the melodies into structured progressions while the percussion gives the music an organic touch.
Pascal Feos I Can Feel That
Pascal FEOS introduces his peak-time techno imprint with remixes from a few of the world‘s heaviest hitters. The label is a platform for sultry yet pounding groove-style techno, as illustrated by Speedy J‘s in your face remix and Tony Rohr‘s fascinating festival of clicks. Diverse and dancefloor compatible.
Actual Jakshun Sequential Circus
Originally released on Incomplet, these rare tracks were hibernating until Minus gave them a new home. Almost all of the sounds used on this release were produced using a Sequential Circuits Studio 440, fusing drum programming, sequencing, and sampling into one machine. Although the effort is innovative at best, this blend of rim shots and clap snaps is a bit outdated by today‘s technology standards. Minimize to maximize?
Evil Nine Pearlshot
Evil Nine and Marine Parade deliver again-here‘s a slammin‘ hip-hop-flavored break with a grinding bassline and hooky raps. Still uptempo enough to toss into most crates, Marine Parade continues to push the envelope and break out of the box with this genre-crossing thumper. Put this in your case now.
JDS Jump Around
I love these guys and this record kicks serious ass. JDS doesn‘t f – – k around and they don‘t make any apologies for their brand of hard, grinding, in-your-face acid-flavored breaks. If your crowd likes real beats and real music, your dancefloor will be instantly filled when you drop this one.
Koma & Bones Amplify
Koma & Bones bring their hardfunk sensibilities and rock the floor with the guitar-flavored anthem “Amplify.” “Amplify” features a slammin‘ riff and a serious feedback build that will have everyone jumping on the dancefloor. Sound cheesy? It‘s not. K & B pull it off with style.
Run_Return Metro North
Run_Return‘s dance club-worthy post-rock vacillates between textured electro nocturnes and a sitcom theme triumphalism as life affirming as Beethoven‘s Fifth. The Oakland trio trades off duties on all instruments: vibraphone, retro keyboards, and agile drumming, plus flanged banjo and skittering guitar. There‘s an odd tendency here to pair instruments with their synthetic counterparts-cellos against keyboard strings, handclaps against synth handclaps and, most admirably, the cut-up interplay between programmed beats and live drumming, as when a live drum break appears, deux ex machina, in the middle of a drum machine-backed song.
Various Artists ReBoot
The lack of social awareness in electronic music has long been a weak point of the genre. Not that activism isn‘t present in the scene, but it‘s rarely been marketed as such. Enter reBoot, a collaboration between SF‘s Om records and NextAid. Co-founded by activist Lauren Segal, the LA-based organization‘s mission is to inspire grassroots AIDS awareness within the global dance community and further sustainable development programs to help the millions of children orphaned by the deadly virus, the overwhelming majority of whom are in Africa. It‘s not only a good cause, it‘s a good record, whose tone is set early on with Thievery Corporation‘s “Truth and Rights,” a rebellious slice of righteous, bubbly ragga dub featuring Sleepy Wonder. The rest of the album contains above-average tracks from Om‘s usual suspects (Kaskade, Marques Wyatt with Gina Rene, Mark Farina, and Afro-Mystik), as well as strong cuts from Louie Vega, Jeremy Sole‘s Musaics featuring Garth Trinidad, and Miguel Migs. reBoot makes it easy to get up, get into it, and get involved.
Mayhemystic Outbreaks
As Outbreaks‘ opening track suggests, “Something is Happening” in San Francisco-namely, organic funk/jazz grooves, conscious lyrics, metaphysical poets, transcendent soul singers, nimble-fingered turntablists, and improv-minded instrumentalists. Guaranteed to expand your worldview while affirming your spirituality, this second effort by the Wide Hive collective‘s amalgamated group of iconoclasts, featuring vocalists Azeem (AlphaZeta) and Omega (Blackalicious, Afro-Mystik), proves almost as sublime as the first one. You‘d have to be Donald Rumsfeld not to feel the message of “Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom, and Justice” or Laura Bush not to vibe with the anti-oil dub excursion “Black Gold” (which spotlights chant/sing master Tony Moses). Outbreaks might be more a listen-all-the-way-through joint than a case of two hot singles and 10 mediocre tracks, but it‘s time (mostly) well spent.
