With members of the Stuttgart-based four-piece Rework hailing from both France and Hungary, you should expect something a little different. With Germany’s Playhouse label involved, it’s pretty much guaranteed; it hasn’t landed it’s reputation as one of house music’s most consistent and innovative imprint overnight. Rework’s debut, Fall Right Now, merges the standouts from three previous EPs with all new works, and their amalgam of effervescent electronic grooves and spiky song writing still bears intriguing fruit.
I’m Not a Gun Everything At Once
He’s a slippery character, that John Tejada. Just when you think you’ve got a hold on where he’s coming from-along comes another project, or alias, and he wriggles free. Everything At Once, sees the prolific producer pair up with guitarist and bassist Takeshi Nishimoto-with heavily folk-accented electronica the end result. Perhaps ironically, on an album dominated by subtlety and soft swathes of sound, the urgent “Make Sense And Loose”-where the guitar is underpinned by sharp beats and distorted bass growls-proves a standout, and a possible hit on the more adventurous dancefloor.
Stateless The Art of No State
The Stateless project from Sweden’s Andreas Saag picks up where Swell Session, his housier project for Hollow Records, left off, with a collection of lush, jazzy house and R&B. It’s not a surprise to find this on Freerange-Stateless’s glossy production and slight ’80s tinge fit right in with Jimpster’s most recent work. Nu-jazz-phobes might at first be put off by the ultra-lush production, fattened up with swollen synths, horns and Elsa Hedberg’s swooning vocals. But there’s a surprising amount of subtlety and depth here, in addition to some bonafide hooks, so sink into this like you would a feather duvet.
Susumu Yokota Over Head
Susumu Yokota is a little bipolar. On productions for his Skintone imprint (licensed by the Leaf Label), Sublime, Exceptional and even Harthouse, he’s alternated between dance music and pure ambiance, exploring house, techno, disco and broken beat on the one hand, and deep, beatless sonorities on the other. Over Head sees Yokota’s twin selves finally meeting up. The album’s 10 tracks splice bells, traditional drums, mountain-spring-clear tones, and eerie, faraway voices into a careful churn propelled by techno’s pulse and destabilized by broken beat’s Brazilian swing. Like Four Tet for the dance floor, Over Head is possibly Yokota’s best effort yet-and one of 2003’s strongest releases.
Corker/Conboy In Light Of That Learnt Later
Adrien Corker and Paul Conboy, often recording as Soul Circuit, have recorded numerous film and video soundtracks, so perhaps it’s not surprising that their full-length debut for Vertical Form is rich with cinematic overtones. Long passages of acoustic guitar or vibraphone spool out as carefully as film from a reel, chiming pedal tones hang orange dusk on the horizon, slow crackles and halftones hide forgotten histories behind their incidental nature. A departure for Vertical Form, Light carries echoes of Tortoise, Morricone and even Talk Talk, but it’s hardly just another remake. Slip into a world where the screen never goes dark.
DJ Scud Ambush
Breakbeat completists of the world, rejoice! Ambush! collects the best of hardcore mentalist DJ Scud’s overdriven dancehall/jungle/breakbeat mayhem, originally released across a slew of 7″s and 12″s from labels like Ambush, Full Watts and Klangkrieg. Ambush-South London’s Toby Reynolds-fuses unrefined rave bombast, raw ragga violence, and ruffneck jungle into a lumbering beast that’s as sexy as it is ragged. Call it “breakcore” if you wish-but really, DJ Scud’s bullet-riddled riddims are less the product of a new subgenre than a manifestation of a supergenre, subsuming all elements of the hardcore continuum into a form that is neither retro nor futuristic, but simply immediate, gripping, and ultra-fucking-now.
Greens Keepers Present the Ziggy Franklen Radio Show
If you thought you knew what to expect from Derrick Carter’s Classic Music label, think again. Sure, Chicago’s Greens Keepers turn out tunes as lush, sassy and polished as labelmates Rob Mello and Tiefschwarz, but the Chi-town twosome draws on Dixieland pianos and country-fried guitar, as well as more traditional jack-tracks smacks. Still, they avoid any gimmicky taint by keeping their funk full and feisty. From slap-bass with keening falsetto to flamenco featherings to jugband thump, Greens Keepers-who also aren’t afraid of a little Rhodes-touched soul-have come up with one of the most distinctly down-home house records ever.
Unagi Unagi
Wow, for once a music journalist proves he can hold his own when creating the same music he criticizes. The startlingly good debut album from San Francisco’s Unagi (a.k.a. Brolin Winning, who writes about hip-hop) is the kind of album you want to crank up extra loud on a sunny spring or summer day, nodding your head along to the warm, soulful hip-hop beats while enjoying the company of friends and Northern California’s finest herb. The genius of Unagi is its simplicity, created entirely via samples and loops from a wide assortment of 1970s-era r&b and soul music, and live drum-machine playing onto a beat-up four-track recorder. All the songs are short and to the point, leaving the listener wanting more. Precisely.
Massive Attack 100th Window
Back in the 1990s, a new Massive Attack album was an event. Now, the release of 100th Window feels more like a cool cocktail party. A lot has changed: founding member Mushroom is long gone, and the husky-voiced Daddy Gee is on sabbatical, leaving 3D (Robert Del Naja-the white guy) in charge. The result is a dark, brooding sort of record reflecting the current world climate, featuring Sinead O’ Connor on three tracks moaning of impending doom, as well as Horace Andy on two, including an especially spooky vocal turn on the driving, muted dub-thunder of “Everywhen”-one of the album’s best tracks. But for all its grandeur and mystical Middle Eastern influences, there’s something too polished about 100th Window-there’s virtually no trace of its hip-hop and soul roots, instead leaning toward a clean electronic production. Good album, yes. Groundbreaking, no.
RF Interno
The debut solo album from Berkeley, CA-based Ryan Francesconi works as a soundtrack for pensive, pondering times, that lets the mind drift from rigidity and schedules. A lofty, deeply atmospheric ambient musical work, Interno combines an assortment of electronic textures with classical and acoustic instrumentation such as the cello, violin, flute, clarinet, horns and guitar, and brandishes Balkan music as a major influence. It’s a soothing, contemplative yet exploratory effort-especially surprising considering Francesconi’s career as a computer programmer and application developer. He even wrote much of the software he uses to compose his music. Interno is an impressive start.
