Kpt.michi.gan’s second album feels like you’re sneaking into an abandoned house, left half-constructed, all flaking and crumbling drywall, haphazard piles of shredded lumber, sparely lit by a single flashlight beam. Player Player features some intensely minimal, yet strangely scattered microelectronics that put cracked, fragmented shards of rather loud noise on display. Kpt. doesn’t shy away from evocations of machinery, like with the shallow jackhammering of “Weg 3,” but the intriguingly hard emptiness of the album turns suddenly on its head with the final track, “Hey Brother,” a pretty, mild indietronic pop number complete with twee male vocals.
Fiona Renshaw Love In a Bubble
With a hot-asphalt delivery that sounds like she could be the offspring of Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker, Fiona Renshaw spins tales of mourned love and unrequited desire that range from quiet lament to palpable anger. “Through the Day” stands out, as Renshaw’s cloudy river of a voice is offset by plaintive, soulful synth lines in one of the few tracks that don’t follow a strictly acoustic blueprint (is this what broken folk sounds like?). Johnny Cole’s production wisely stays out of her way, with strings and oboe providing effective counterpoint, throwing a mosaic of shadows, and only occasionally (as on “Kiss Me”) becoming too overwrought.
Various Turntables On the Hudson Vol. 4
Renowned for its combination of funk beats, live Afro-percussion, and a wicked vibe, Turntables On The Hudson has long brightened New York’s dance scene. Founders Nickodemus and Mariano represent the vibe on the fourth TOTH compilation, eschewing the Eastern influence of earlier releases for a conceptual trip through NYC’s boroughs. From Spanish Harlem to Brooklyn and back, a quality selection of previously unreleased tracks and remixes from the TOTH crew is collected. Beginning with an old school hip-hop vibe and moving through Afrobeat and Puerto Rican influences, the mix features artists like Baby Mammoth, Plastic Buddha, Antibalas, and Nickodemus & Osiris.
Bergheim 34 It’s not For You, As It Is to Us
When is a band not a band? Bergheim 34 challenges the listener to answer that question as its four members-MS20 XXL, Steffen Neuert, Andrew Pekler (a.k.a. Sad Rockets) and Ann Vortisch-release a rich collaborative work that rarely saw any of them in the same room during production. Instead, the quartet relies on an iterative process of trading files and hard drives. The result is a brilliant m?lange of Herbert-esque blips and witty orchestration, with Vortisch’s cool voice grounding productions that channel Art of Noise and ’80s video games. Despite the amount of human input, there’s a refreshing notion of gremlins at work here.
Alex Cortex Inward CTRL
Listening to Inward CTRL is like ordering tapas. With 24 untitled tracks averaging about three minutes apiece, the first full-length on Ann Aimee is strangely fulfilling. Bit-hop percolates from track three, an artfully incomplete bassline supports track five-Germany’s Alex Cortex has a delicacy for each of us. The temptation with his format would be to push the abstract, but for the most part, Cortex assumes there is a dancefloor under his feet. His ability to match euphoria with restraint makes Inward CTRL irresistible.
Strand Messages
Outside of the great celebrated triumvirate of Atkins, Saunderson and May, Detroit has dozens of journeymen waiting to be discovered. The trio called Strand is no exception. Eschewing the formulaic approach, their first full-length album is full of intricacies and quirks, but remains a very smooth production. “Vamp” is an excellent example, swinging a nerdy, harpsichord-like sound and ’80s bass around in modern staccato construct. It’s evidence that the new wave influence is still working itself out in fascinating ways. Messages is a microcosm of everything that’s right with Detroit techno.
Stewart Walker Live Extracts
Stewart Walker’s departure from his usual isolation-induced compositions may be a function of his recent Discord collaboration with Geoff White. While Walker’s past releases have resounded with a divergence from others, Live Extracts finds him working within his older, tech-derived frameworks in new ways. Walker lets loose: the truly live sound of the album lends more to booty-whomp than a desire to pore over the meaning of the conceptual title. A tendency towards polyrhythmic overlays streams an amorphous eventfulness through each beat sequence. Walker now bears the mark of collaboration, while remaining just as sacrosanct in his creation.
Various End050
Mr. C’s Subterrain night at The End nightclub in London has been credited with the birth of the tech-house genre. The superclub has invariably done as much for tech-addled fiends as End Recordings, which celebrates its 50th release with End050. The compilation is a smattering of artists represented by the label to date, such as Tigerhook Corp, Killer Loop, Tone Theory, Layo & Bushwhacka!, and Circulation. As a retrospective, End050 looks back over the eight years since End Recordings’ inception, and brings a sense of resolution.
Stringz Bring the Drama
Another bootleg of this old classic. While there’s a lot of these going around at the moment, they’re all pretty damn fine! A few new touches in the breakdown and overall chunky fatness added to the proceedings make for a totally working piece that’ll have peeps jumping all over.
dave Brennan Drink Deep (James Zabiela Mix)
A typically deep offering from the End, remixed superbly by James Zabiela. Starting off all housey with gentle piano stabs, this track drops into a real controlled growler of a bassline. It’s all sprinkled with some kind of off-kilter, otherworldly noises that really work, before JZ brings the gentle piano back in, with added atmospheric pads subtly tugging away in the background. Classy.
