This French label, based in Montrozier, delivers a mixed bag of serene electronic frolic and abstract experimentalism designed to complement your collection of Warp and Morr Music discs. The 17-tracker gently commences with Pimmon’s shoegazing ambient wash, like falling asleep on a secluded beach at sunset. It’s followed by playfully adorable glitch tunes from Designer and Gel, before EU dives deep into Orb-y atmospherics. Sybarite, dDamage and Marumari deliver laid-back rhythms touching on blip-hop and mellow IDM, before the album evolves through dreamy, beatless drone from Yellow6, Velma and Ramon Carda and closes with sweet guitar-laden pop from Ma Ch»rie For Painting, Thousand & Bramier and Girls in Hawaii.
Headset Spacesettings
Plug Research founder Allen Avanessian was striving for a groundbreaking, all-out collaboration with a hodgepodge of his artists-what resulted is a collection of gimmicky leftfield hip-hop ditties and glitch-heavy jazz. Avanessian and Jimmy Tamborello (Dntel, The Postal Service) produced most of these gritty, slow-paced rhythms and melodies collaborating with players like John Tejada, Daedelus and Thomas Fehlmann. Though the names are respectable and the sound is trendy, the beats are ultimately lifeless, and they center all the attention on guest MCs like Beans, Lady Dragon and Subtitle. Headset presents cold fusion indie hip-hop for intellectuals that want to be down.
El-P Collecting The Kid
In an effort to tide us over until the release of his next full-length, El-P throws us a bone with this mish-mash of unreleased tracks. The mostly instrumental collection seems a little hastily thrown together, but contains plenty of the heavy beats and moody themes that are El’s trademark. Two rapper-less tracks stand out: a revamped “Leaving This Place” from Mr. Lif’s album is fully realized, and a discarded Cannibal Ox track called “Feel Like A Ghost” is a dreamy and soulful slice of minimalism. Elsewhere, El-P dabbles in sexy electro (“Constellation Remix”), jazz (“Intrigue in The House of India”), and psych-rock (“Oxycontin” featuring Camu Tao). But while Collecting the Kid may satiate some fans, it’s no replacement for his next master work.
Terrestre Secondary Inspection
A former member of Mexico’s Nortec Collective, Fernando Corona’s music is markedly moodier than that of his Tijuana-bred counterparts. Corona typically records as Murcof, but this album marks his solo debut under the Terrestre tag. The strident horn riffs and jubilant bounce typical of the Nortec sound have been replaced by a darker fusion of skeletal techno structures, minimal dub aesthetics and a barely noticeable tinge of Tejano and other Latin music. Corona’s sense of dramatic tension is his strongest point though, therefore it comes as no surprise the producers of Amores Perros recently asked him to soundtrack their newest film, Nicotina.
Kelpe Sea Inside Body
It’s often cited that water makes up 60% of the human body, with organs such as the brain clocking in at over 75% liquid. Kelpe’s Sea Inside Body is an ode to our aqueous nature that shares a melodic simplicity with Plaid and Boards of Canada. The album is all warbling synths and amniotic ambiance interposed with quirky sampling. It’s excellent, marred only by the addition of nonsensical samples of British females prattling on about painfully mundane matters. The bio mentions that Kelpe lifted many of the samples from his day job as a video editor, but they distract from the narrative of the album rather than add to it.
Unit I Came Here to Tell You How It’s Going to Begin
The world has changed dramatically in the five years since Unit released his debut, The Narcoleptic Symphony, but Cristian Fleming’s sonic forays are as cryptic as ever. Microscopic scrapings of noise coalesce from chaos into whorls of rhythm; it’s the aural equivalent of running a magnet over a scattered handful of iron shavings while watching them fuse into a single entity. These granular symphonies, complemented by sweeping synth melodies, call to mind vintage Vangelis or Aphex Twin. While his approach is not as revolutionary as it was at the turn of the millennium, few producers manage to operate in both a macro and micro sense as effectively as Unit does.
Christian J & Dylan Rhymes Party People
Seriously tough breakbeat from two of the scene’s most solid producers. With a Leftfield-style synth loop that you never get bored of, and drums as hard as Mike Tyson’s mum, you can’t help being pulled along by this monster track! There’s a tasty hip-hop sample thrown in to top it all off, making this one of the best crowd reactors of the moment.
Nu Boy Nu Funk Stroll
Nu Boy is a new pseudonym for Glen from Future Funk Squad, and this one’s a deep breaks groover that would fit into any time of the night. With a Future Funk Squad remix on one side and the original on the flip, this should cater for most tastes in breaks. Big rolling funk percussion with a quality techy edge. Solid!
D. Ramirez Slave (Meat Katie & D. Ramirez Rmx)
Originally released on D.Ramirez’s own label a couple of years ago, this track has been picked up by Meat Katie’s Lot49. Deep and throbbing hypnotic breaks with a serious techy edge-very squelchy, very fat and guaranteed to rock any dancefloor. I know! I’ve seen what it does!
Tussle Kling Klang
Imagine the scene: the Blue Man Group battles the cast of Stomp in a black-lit warehouse while King Tubby broadcasts the mayhem through a transistor radio equipped with a Volkswagen-sized subwoofer. Tussle takes a slice of reedy, early ’80s post-punk and mellows it with dub’s heavy-lidded throb and cavernous reverb. A drum circle’s worth of fluttering percussion-rim shots, hand claps, snare hits, cow bell-keeps the push-pull from tearing down the middle. This LP doesn’t stray from the funky precedent previously established by the San Francisco four-piece; rather, it provides a deeply hypnotizing, fully-developed extension of it.
