Imagine Mani as the soundtrack to a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film about Amelie’s long-lost schizo sister. Artistic glitch action ripples over petite bits of cut-up instrumental sound like the flicker of Jeunet’s cinematography, with surreal, abstract rhythms and melodies randomly popping out of the crackling ether. Three super-minimal piano tracks provide brief moments of stillness in the album’s kinetic disorder. Producer Julien Loquet enlists the little-girl voice of Chloe Delaume, who personifies the album’s folky timbre and classical madness. The work here is emotionally unnerving, but in sweet French ways that are more mysterious and heartrending than sinister.
Various Artists Watch How the People Them Dancing-Unity Sounds from the London Dancehall, 1986-1989
Everything gone computerized! This era’s when UK sounds like Saxon, Coxone and set in focus Unity invaded the dancehall scene with sick likkle metronome tunes. Man and man ah voice some wikkid styles, most of which are attributed to the murdered murderers Tenor Saw and Nitty Gritty. Even the comp title’s taken from those fallen heroes’ hits, “Ring The Alarm” and “Sweet Reggae Music.” You will hear original styles from cats that blew to become Freestylers’ Navigator and Ragga Twins. After the chune dem play, you can draw for the version and flash yu ownah lyrics. Beaver Kangol and whistle not included.
Luciano Serve Jah
Now out of the voice of the one called Luciano comes a musical thing all courtesy of Black Scorpio studio. This anticipated release from the Manchester Messenjah is pure classic. “I Will Survive” is liveness, featuring an unccredited Sizzla sound-alike a’ sing say. Only other guest is the Prophet on “Hail King Selassie.” Murderation, bredren. See right now, it’s all about strictly God-hearted lyrics churned out like cornmeal dumplin’ over recognizable riddim tracks. Overall, it’s far from 1995’s Where There Is Life, and there’s some outdated ‘chunes included here. He could’ve got a Grammy, but him nah serve no idol.
P’taah Staring at the Sun
P’taah is producer Chris Brann’s collective, often dubbed “nu jazz,” but informed by a deeply ingrained tradition. On the one hand Brann respects tradition, composing soulful house as Ananda Project adhering to 120 BPM, double the heartbeat and intrinsically inspiring. But with P’taah, he seeks to break his own mold, while still following a lineage of compositional clarity that links Erik Satie to funk-jazz fusion to Norwegian experimental expansions. P’taah’s earliest output was expressive but felt more encumbered by its agenda. Staring at the Sun is a more accomplished yet unfettered filter of the universal frequencies Brann’s P’taah debut Compressed Light let shine.
Otto Von Schirach Chopped Zombie Fungus
Over the past few years “glitch” has come into its own, weaning from the teat of academia. No doubt glitch is still a navel-gazing breast man, but now an eye’s turned to the bootay, at least via Cuban-American producer Otto Von Schirach. Recording ricocheting rhythm for Schematic, Von Schirach mixes IDM with Miami bass-bred electro and ghetto-tech with gabba in his crispy crystal-packed bowl of baked Chopped Zombie Fungus. He’s still plenty glitch, though, as in: Is there a synaptic glitch? Is everything firing a bit off? There are rhythms to make crowds go mental, but the impression here is that Schirach’s the one gone mad. Thankfully, he leans away from self-indulgent Tigerbeat6 style frequency farts, feet planted firmly even if his head’s way up and out there. Release the tit and kiss your ass goodbye.
Clue To Kalo Come Here When You Sleepwalk
Many songs suggest or inspire movement-only a select few have movements. The songs on the Mush Records debut of Australian Mark Mitchell-who works as Clue To Kalo-breathe, blink, shift and shudder in a gauzy weave of dewy casiotone melodies and laptop morphs. Sleepwalk is a charming digital diary of sunny, soft-focus cascades over loose knots of drum patterns, sometimes aggressive yearning, sometimes timid, never fey. A momentary departure from Mush’s ambitious hip-hop abstractica, Clue To Kalo would actually seem more suited to Morr Music or Plug Research, akin to Múm, Ms. John Soda, Pulse Programming and DNTEL, increasingly accessible to indie pop fans. Regardless of where Clue To Kalo sits, Mitchell’s music won’t stay still long, propelled as it is by fluid, optimistic, nervous energy and circulated by/to listeners of taste.
Various Artists Too Hot for Solid Steel
Is Too Hot For Solid Steel the ultimate mash-up, or the ultimate DJ-culture political statement? It would be easy to argue both points, but there’s something much more gleeful going on here.
On a basic level, Too Hot is a fine example of mash-up-that curiously broad music genre where bits of a recognizable nostalgic pop song are mixed with an equally recognizable dance beat to form an ironic concoction; i.e. a Nirvana hit mixed over a Run DMC drum sample.
Crafted by the deft hands of DJs On Strike’s Johnny Kawasaki and DJ Suspence, Too Hot bears all the marks of protean mash-up masters Coldcut and DJ Food-for whose Solid Steel radio show it was originally produced-including quizzical cuts from TV shows, pop and R&B anthems of yore, and a gazillion other sound samples. All this fodder is, ostensibly, collated through rough sequencing and a little turntable magic to produce a sound-collage you simultaneously recognize but don’t recognize. A funky ’70s break collides with Phil Collins’s “Tonight,” then glances off Berlin’s Top Gun love anthem “Take My Breath Away,” only to run head-on into the front grill of Bryan Adams’s sap-fest, “I Do It For You.” And that’s in just under a minute.
Too Hot‘s easily on par with LA-UK collective Mash Up Sound System (who recently released D.I.M, a gem of a gabbercore compilation) or the original perpetrators of the genre, Planet
Taylor Deupree and Kenneth Kirschner Post_Piano
A newcomer to recorded music, Kenneth Kirschner’s actually been working with experimental piano and electronics as long as college friend and collaborator Taylor Deupree (that is, for over a decade), and this is a captivating debut. Post_Piano functions on three levels: the first is a singular, rather noisy sample of a piano note, provided here in .aiff and MP3 formats; the second is a series of full-tonal-range compositions Kirschner composed from that sample (also in MP3); and third is Taylor Deupree’s digital experimentation with those compositions (actual CD tracks). So as Deupree’s Oval-ish treatments provide inspiration, you can use the .aiff file to craft your own versions. Beautiful music, and so much to do with it.
Shuttle358 Understanding Wildlife
What’s left for a microsound experimentalist with ambient tendencies? Thankfully, more of the same: producer Dan Abrams’s third Shuttle358 album, Understanding Wildlife, brims with the same longish bell tones that define all his work, but avoids emphasizing the absence of sound as he did on his Frame and eponymous Stream releases, on which he used field recordings made by The Quiet American. Instead, the album starts with a bouquet of colorless tones on “Finch,” then quickly moves into legato pulse rhythms in “Plastination” and a quaint balance of bass-signal and lulling treble melody on “I’m Not Afraid.” Understanding Wildlife suggests that measured progression is one of Dan Abrams’s greatest pleasures.
Warmdesk Guero Variations
The story goes that Guero Variations arose from William Selman’s captivation with a recording by composer Helmut Lachenmann, in which all the sounds were captured from a piano by means other than playing it. Think John Cage versus Matthew Herbert, with Selman knocking striking, and otherwise drumming up sound from a piano without touching the ivories. Should sound weird, right? Only if weird is synthy click-house like SND or MRI. “Guero (Recon),” “Guero (Spleen),” and pretty much everything else could have landed Warmdesk a deal with Force Tracks. Cool angular funk without a sad piano sound in sight, but this is altogether bouncier than anything else from Deluxe.
