Twenty-two-year-old Diego Hostettler can build his tracks like his Kanzleramt protégé, Switzerland’s hard techno/house superstar Alexander Kowalski. But it’s lack of stylistic maturity makes Instant Reality only marginally more than an afterthought compared to Kowalski. It’s the surgical cleanliness of Diego’s source material-they’re the same synth notes, the same arpeggios, the same breakneck techno rhythms. But Instant Reality lacks the scratchy, rough-around-the-edges quality that makes Kowalski’s pounding Progress LP sound truly battle-tested. Why the comparison? Because Diego Hostettler is only 22, and it’s clear that Instant Reality is most likely just a stepping-stone to a truly wicked new techno.
Ogurusu Norihide Modern
Seemingly aware of the countless failed mergers between acoustic and electronic music, Norihide’s response is a much-needed erosion of both sounds into their most elementary shapes. Perhaps he effortlessly combs a sparse, skeletal beat through a few equally faint and finely sketched notes from a piano. Or maybe his most spectral ambience flutters through soft and paced folk guitars. Constantly fading away, but always with an air of absolute certainty, the eight untitled works appearing on Modern blur the line between analog and digital so well that the two become, without doubt, one.
Various Artists Swearhead Presents: Volume 1
Once upon a time in a city called London, a shoe company named Swear decided to compile a CD of songs that people in their store frequently inquired about and distribute it, free of charge, to all of their customers. It’s a cool idea-you’ve certainly got to appreciate music to entertain such an endeavor. And the compilation is even better: top-notch downtempo acts like the Sofa Surfers slip between underground hip-hop talent like Subchronicles, lesser-known worldbeat producers Hipnotica, and melancholic, strangely moving pieces like “Increasing The Gravity” by Beyond Dawn, which sounds like rock music in a restless, wandering sort of mood.
Eastenders Orientation
Sexy tabla and sarod bleed into electronica-inspired studio effects on Eastenders’ Orientation-a beveled reflection of Euriental diaspora. Overly-saturated tracks like Digital Jockey’s “Ach ware ich ein zug, so fuhre ich in dein herz!” (whose schmaltzy synths are redolent of Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedie” for piano) are complemented by more distilled arrangements like Orient Expressions’ “Istanbul 1:26 am,” in which a swank bongo dialogues with a jazzy saxophone. With breakneck percussion and snake-charmer harmonies, this compilation could be the soundtrack for a chic Jezebel joint, or an experimental blaxploitation film.
Systemwide Live at the Festival International De Jazz De Montreal
Studio experimentation and roots reggae don’t always make a tasteful melange, but Systemwide manages to straddle the line between live music and mixing board. The band’s leisurely instrumentals and geist resonances are an anodyne for any dub-head weary of cocktail hour downtempo and club-style fluff. In Live at the Festival International de Jazz Montreal Systemwide re-captures the populist spirit of dub with “Burning Dub,” a languorous adaptation of The Wailer’s “Burning and Looting,” and “Ripe Up,” a paean to marijuana. Blending African percussion with syncopated melodica, Systemwide oscillates between energetic drum & bass and chilled one-drop beats.
The Last Poets This is Madness
Before hip-hop’s gestation in the boroughs of New York, The Last Poets fused bongo beats and spoken word, building fervor for people whose voices were/are muzzled in popular culture. After releasing their first album in 1970, the poets garnered “griot” status, and began collaborating with the Black Panthers. Their dithyrambic verses prefigured the gritty, firebrand raps of KRS-One and Public Enemy. Laced with such classics as “Gashman,” “When the Revolution Comes,” and “This is Madness,” new two-CD box set will appeal to armchair poetry buffs and rabble-rousers alike.
Cunninlynguists Southernunderground
The word “ruthless” might be common coin in descriptions of Southern underground rap, which is known for pungent, whiskey-sluiced rhymes and gravelly beats. While Cunninlynguists exalt the swampy sounds of their homeland, their second LP lapses into more groove-driven boom-bap overlaid with strings, blues contralto samples and melancholy piano. Rhymes oscillate from buoyant MC prattle about Cadillac grilles-as in their infectious homage track for “The South”-to angst-riddled soliloquies about the creeping hand of war. But for the occasional clich?-like the gauche yee-haw from “DJ Billy Bob”-Cunninlynguists have a peppery wit and a knack for double entendre.
Supernatural The Lost Freestyle Files
It’s all about winning combinations: armed with mental stamina and a formidable gift o’ gab, Supernatural can cut down just about any opponent and cipher as though he’d written the lyrics ahead of time. Fans have been waiting for this premiere MC’s freestyle files since 1994, the year Supernatural was slated to drop an improvisational album recorded in one straight take. For reasons unexplained, Supernatural retreated into relative obscurity, and didn’t unleash The Lost Freestyle Files until now. Like a hip-hop Shakespeare, Supernatural traces the history of his legendary battles, from duels with Craig G and Juice to his more recent amicable collaborations with Jurassic 5 and Iriscience of Dilated Peoples. Flaunting his indomitable verbal prowess, Supernatural spits rhymes about everything under the sun-from blunts’D cards and cell phones to beleaguered rival MCs.
Gavouna Warm Industry EP
Greek Athanasios Argianas studied visual art until he fell in with a student of Xenakis and Berio. On Warm Industry, he’s made dusty piano and analog synth vignettes that sound like Boards of Canada remixing Erik Satie and Morton Subotnick at GRM. Somehow anciently modern, and perhaps even peerless.
Jaga Jazzist Animal Chin EP
Culling three songs from the Norwegian nine-piece post-jazz collective’s excellent Smalltown Supersound debut, with two exclusive tracks and two remixes (courtesy drummer Martin Horntveth and field-recording fetishist Kim Hiorthoy), this EP goes down chilly like tropical cocktails in a ski chalet with John Barry, Deodato, Stevie Wonder and Tortoise. A crisp Alpine mindfuck.
