Fenetik is the downtempo offshoot of highly vaunted house label Soma, and Sidewinder is otherwise known as Alan Bryden, one of Fenetik’s earliest artist signings. Seeing how this debut was nearly five years in the making, avid trainspotters might better recognize the name from appearances on compilations by labels like Naked Music, Universal Jazz and Guidance. On most of the album, squelchy synths and elastic basslines quiver on top of occasionally soporific horn solos. Sidewinder’s finest moments are on songs where the funk is placed at the forefront-but unfortunately some of these tracks veer dangerously towards that dodgiest of downtempo sub-genres: “dad jazz,” something your 50-year-old father would nod along approvingly to.
Kabuki Feat. kabuki Watkiss After the Fire
Love the kind of swinging, almost 6/8 beat to this track. The production on the original is easygoing and fairly sparse, which gives it a very mellow atmosphere. The vocals have a dustiness to them that I like, but “After the fire comes the rain” is slightly cheesy as a lyric. The remix is a dubbier, more atmospheric affair that drifts along a bit. On the whole, it’s a very chilled and listenable tune.
Various The Four Flavors EP
Really nice EP. Sounds like it could have been on Mo’ Wax a few years ago. Especially like the main mix of Cordovan’s “Magma,” which has a kind of a Carl Craig-when-he-does-slower-stuff vibe to it. Good breakbeat with atmospherics sprinkled over the top. The bassline sounds quite random at first, but it pulls the whole thing together. The remixes of the two original tracks are quality too, with the remix of “Magma” bringing enough weirdness to the party to go round.
Nettle Firecamp Stories Remixes
Brooklyn’s The Agriculture reaps a serious harvest with this remix album from Nettle, a duo comprised of DD and DJ/rupture. Rupture leaves behind his schizo plundering, but the impeccable taste remains intact: these Firecamp Stories remixes are intense and highly inventive reworkings that run the spectrum of granularity from Brooklyn pavement grit to North African dune shifts to acrid Spanish wind. “More Fire”‘s belly-swivels of techno dub are fleshed out immediately afterwards by Joseph Nothing’s searing and symphonic desert-epic romance. An extremely well-executed adventure that sidesteps well-trod Muslimgauze terrain with immaculate shifts in texture.
Ayro Electronic Lovefunk
With a title sounding every bit like his own little genre, Jeremy Ellis springs forth with a fiery blend of broken beats, r&b, pop and jazz styles. Motown and Transmat influences are definitely present, making for a neat encapsulation of all things Detroit, but Ellis’s music also measures up against that of another petite writer/arranger/producer/performer out of Minneapolis. Electronic Lovefunk comes off as a synthesized whole, due in large part to its seamless structure: Ellis has amazingly interpolated the beats between the big vocal numbers on the album, making for an excellent mix and mind-blowing listening experience. This is to say nothing of his perfect paring of simple, heartfelt love songs wih complicated rhythms. This combination is so right, and the grooves so tight, you may not notice the decades of musicianship coming through in his solos.
Listener Whispermoon
ATL’s full of hip-hop, but Listener differentiates himself from the rest of the Georgia contenders with his debut, Whispermoon,. Gritty, dirty, raw and minimal beats cleave to a weighty sound somewhat reminiscent of Illios in its production excellence and sometimes not-so-excellent lyrics. While Listener bares his all in a poetic onslaught of insightful words, his vocal stream can be somewhat forced, tripping unnaturally through an otherwise smooth flow.
Williams Love Crisis
Ah, novelty, wherefore art thou? William Threlfall has moved beyond the usual lackluster and well-traveled 4/4 margins with Love Crisis. Threlfall builds his sound with micro-sampling instead of culling full loops, a production style that thankfully tends toward polyrythmic complexity. Cowbells and big band instrumentation augment hi-hat hand claps while the beats ride on an undertow of strapping bass. Meanwhile, cut-up slippity-slappity soul is fed through the sonic sieve. Rolling melodics are interspersed throughout, creating (gasp!) novelty within the soul-house sound.
Scissorkicks Wild
Breakbeat’s hardest working bastard puts the smack down on the party on this one, peppering “Wild”‘s charging bassline and funktacular beat with radioactive keyboard riffs and what sounds like vocal samples from between-song banter at a KISS concert! Nice! The flip’s stealthy “Black Hole Tube” takes you underground in the same classic electro-grime spirit as Elite Force’s “Bombing the Subway.” All aboard! “
Distraction Diversion
Danny McMillan’s label comes with a slab of pure, calmly jammin’, dubby breakbeat shit like you kids used to make. Distraction piles a tightly minimal ragga chant vocal sample over occasional chords and drum fills and loads of stoned electronic effects, which get slathered onto a dead-funky beat. The flip does it house style, but it doesn’t compare to the a-side. Get this bastard.
Kraftwerk Tour De France Soundtracks
Kraftwerk are surrounded by more myths than the Bible and the Odyssey combined, which makes it difficult to approach the group as if one had never heard of them or their music. Such is the wholly original sound of this album, that if heard without prior knowledge of Kraftwerk, one could imagine these tracks as a radical new movement in the history of electronic music. Even the reworkings of “Tour De France” are so thorough and shot through with tingling, dawn-treader synth chords that the piece sounds entirely novel. The album never loses its forward momentum, and could teach a lot of younger artists what electronics can do. This could have been a bloated, embarrassing, middle-aged record. Instead, it’s the beginning of an open quest.
