As Minit, Australian expats in Berlin Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly have been making spectral drone music for some time. After a few years out of earshot, they have emerged with a gorgeous work in Now Right Here. The 20-minute title track opener is the album’s centerpiece. Building slowly, it gains a steady momentum, transforming French-horn tones into an immense, infinite drone that can only be described as ecstatic. The remaining album continues its interest in sustained tones and effervescent textures. And despite what may on the surface seem like very little in the way of action, it in fact reveals itself to be an immensely rewarding work.
Dubloner Devious Turnip EP
Ken Gibson, best known as Eight Frozen Modules, least known as The Premature Wig, serves up some of the most inventive, enjoyable tech-house heard this side of Cologne. What the titles “Blurry Udder” and “Wrapper Turnip” have to do with anything is anyone’s guess. But there isn’t a dud in the bunch.
Tim Hecker Mirages
Tim Hecker enjoys tossing his listeners into the open sea with only their hypothermic hallucinations to keep them company. He typically chisels a pristine din out of soot-clogged guitar distortion and symphonics that litter from the heavens. Mirages is rather conservative, resembling a B-side collection of his two earlier albums, but the drifting cadence and metallic timbres that color its information-pollution blues all keep things engrossing. The opener, Acephale,” first erupts into a teeth-gnashing guitar solo before nodding off into an absinthe stupor, while the highlights, “Neither More or Less” and “Celestina” are both brooding stroboscope soundtracks. Stay asleep, Tim.
Otto Von Schirach Global Speaker Fisting
Leave it alone and let nature dispose of it. But life won’t be easier if noisecore toastmaster-general Otto Von Schirach is left undead to roam the earth, would it? Global is a spectacular bastardization of gangsta posturing and LP5-era Autechre’s Yellow # 5-sweetened discord. Such delinquency can pique nostalgia for the “laptop-punk” Class of ’01, but it now feels quaint. Yet Otto is still an agile entertainer with the bloated liver to prove it. “G4 Scramblin” pits muggers eyeing Steve Jobs’ latest model, while “Goat Sperm” is splattergore-metal on par with Mr. Bungle. Otto’s beat-crunching provides garlic-pill ecstasy in “Shine Yogurt” and “Iron Blood Saw.” Just quarantine Global and you’ll be safe.
Jimmy Edgar Bounce, Make, Model
What will be the butcher’s bill of metrosexualized hip-hop after all the credit card and child-support debts are tallied up? Jimmy Edgar embodies that genre with pedicured and indoor-tanned style over substance. His excursions as Kristuit Salu and Morris Nightingale brilliantly explored microwave-damaged glitch-hop, but Bounce is just too safe. Edgar takes Playboy Channel groove-jazz and stutters each melody and beat to create an autistic bump ‘n’ grind. The results have a glaring coolness with cologne-ad synths and harmonies that fetishize unisex bodysuits. This music verges on clichÈ, but it’s faboulous what a dab of mousse and facial cream can hide.
Gold Chains & Sue Cie When The World Was Our Friend
Gold Chains’ hop may be a little less pronounced after hooking up with Sue Cie, but the results are still undeniably hip. Topher La Fata’s b-boy leanings were never that overt but, aside from vocals on a couple of tracks, they’re all but removed from When The World Was Our Friend. Instead, the pair’s disparate influences have led to a discordant disco middleground that proves a perfect partner for Chains’ muted musings-Berlin’s Vladislav Delay also pitched in during the mix down. “Better Together,” the sub-bass-fest and impassioned opening track, is the standout.
Daara J Boomerang
While the Bronx claims birthrights to rap, Faada Freddy of Senegal-based Daara J cites tasso-the West African oral tradition-as precursor to anything flowing from the States. He’s right, but this doesn’t stop his outfit from taking the tightest American production techniques and layering in aerobatic feats of French, Wolof, English and Spanish. The result is booty-shaking beats with heady mind messages as the trio unmasks dirty politics and social corruption with acute, appreciable dexterity. The heavy thump of the ragga-tinged “Exodus” is enough to set anyone on a new journey.
Troubleman Time Out Of Mind
Mark Pritchard has beats. Figuring out what to do with them, though, sometimes challenges the UK producer. The grooves spread across Time Out of Mind-a collection spanning four years-range from downright nasty to monotonously downtrodden. When he lays down the funk-jazz (as in the killer opener “Have A Good Time”) or allows more breathing room in his rhythms (“Roll On” featuring the gorgeous vocals of Eska) the man is at top game. When he drops into caf»-lite bossa breaks, it goes nowhere. A nearly beautiful album too stuck in melancholic repetitiveness to matter.
Justus Kàhncke Sofort
Justus Kàhncke’s “Sofort” is the A-side, but the Koze track, “Brutalga Square,” is what makes this record. It starts off in a slow manner, but after a few bars of repetitiveness (essential for the average DJ), it leads us to a grander surprise. Here, we find that patience is a virtue, as it slowly builds into very driving electro. The perfect track to get the crowd in motion.
Diebstahl Walk Idiot Walk
Diebstahl hits the brown star, seriously. As I’m living in Germany now, I can give you some language lessons. Diesbstahl means to steal from somebody, and guess whose soul they stole? It’s The Hives. They are top balls in my view, so whatever foolish person decides to make a bootleg of them can do no wrong.
