ObliqSound’s got this patently predictable thing going on-collecting erstwhile world music or adult contemporary/jazz artists together on a single label under the premise of crafting a no “genres” vibe-and it’s mildly interesting. Only mildly more interesting is this soup-sandwich remix project based on The ObliqSound Sampler, where Chris Brann of Ananda Project and Wamdue Kids fame, Grand Central funk popsters Riton, and less-notable names put their tweak on the original material (Aw Heath, don’t you think at least Wai Wan’s afrofuturist mix of Flugelschlag passes muster?-Ed). Remixes is wildly dry in its attempt to evoke a gestalt musical sensation, where d & b-lite and queasy house are the best things to be had.
D. Diggler Sounds Fiction
In the poorly translated press release for Andreas Mügge’s third D.Diggler album, the claim is made that “D.Diggler is redefining the rather too often heard terms ‘minimal dub techhouse’-and gives it a new meaning.” Whatever. The back of the jewel case notes Mügge is now booked through Sven Vath’s Cocoon empire, so it’s more plausible that the reason behind Sounds Fiction‘s überclub tranceyness is that the once-lone-man-with-a-clue in the German tech house scene has gone corporate. Mügge can still knock the floor-bangers out (c.f. “Acid Blain” and “The Radiator” for exceptional punishment), but it ain’t the dense software sound that made D.Diggler so important (sigh).
Various Artists Mas Confusion
Music Aus Strom, which achieved cult status via Funkstrung’s stewardship in the late ’90s, awakes from its dormancy with this extremely coherent (if slightly dated) first compilation. It’s the kind of thing you’d have expected two years ago in the heyday of pre-glitch melodic IDM, but that’s not to say it’s not wonderful. A former Austinite, Lusine ICL’s Jeff McIlwain continues to dazzle with rich bass and charming echoed melodies on Risa,” while recent Austin transplants Stars As Eyes delve into uncharacteristically melancholic bass and Ae-ish effected synth on “Black Achievement.” On loan from Neo Ouija and DUB are Xela, Autophonic and Funckarma, who round out the choice material on MAS Confusion, apparently a taster of things to come.”
Alexander Kowalski, Diego Hostettler, Dennis Desantis Reasons
And just like that, trance is important again! For the last two years or so, Germany’s Alexander Kowalski has been carefully pumping out singles and an album, Progress, that flow straight into the brackish waters of trance and techno polluted by the SashaVanOakenweeds of this world. Now he partners with househeads Diego Hostettler and Dennis DeSantis for an album made entirely with Propellerhead’s Reason 2.0 software-and it works. From the blistering pace of “Hybrid Minds” (featuring Heiko Laux) to the rapacious “Optometry” to “Int A,” it’s all about those long trance/techno builds that meant so much four or five years ago, when artists like Omid Nourizadeh (16B), Speedy J and Underworld were laying a soulful techno/trance blueprint through soft melodic components over climactic percussion sequences. Reasons therefore borders on timelessness.
Venetian Snares Winter in the Belly of a Snake
If Aaron Funk was a politician, his promise of three full-lengths by the year’s end might have been as empty as a lot of our wallets. But as an obsessive producer, Funk came through and marked the conclusion to his triptych with a vitriolic departure from both the funky hypergrooves of his spring release, Higgins, and the spaciously glitched-out summertime collection, 2370894. Here, maturation’s the word, with bowed and pizzicato strings modestly braced in the backseat of well-controlled percussive maneuverings, rich basslines and atmospherics breezing over pin-pricking clicks, a minimal cover of The Misfits’ “She,” and build-ups that break down with such gnashing restlessness that they’ll give you nightmares for a week.
Various Artists Japanese Avant-Garde
Ken Burns has his Jazz. Then there’s the For Dummies series. And we’d need another Alexandria library just to hold the plight of “Intro To”s and readers published daily. But listening to Sub Rosa’s microcosmic sampling of the supernova that is Japan’s avant-garde, one finds no gaps in a massive history that includes Merzbow’s noise, So Takahashi’s digitized ambient planes, Yoshio Machida’s computer-age homage to classical Japanese composition and Sachiko M’s experimental minimalism. Free improvisation and heavily controlled processing meet in tracks like Otomo Yoshide’s post-noise critique, and the gorgeously illuminated carousel of Yoshihiro Hanno’s Mutliphonic Ensemble brings a much lighter sound. With its filmmaker interviews and liner notes by David Toop, this is a cultural crossroads worth a thousand Guide Tos.
Masami Akita & Russell Haswell Satanstornade
Putting aside its catalog number of 666, this record is still the closest any living person has ever come to hell. But it’s a far screech from noise and pays heed to neither the physical, improvised style of the ’80s nor the late-’90s digital mash-up. Rather, Satanstornade is more a complete understanding of texture and sound than anything else. Recorded in 1999, and the result of a then-four-year-old collaboration between two of our most thorough surveyors of aurality, the album is a vindictive ear-fuck that plays off of silence and thick layering as much as it force-feeds erotic pressures. With these four tracks, Akita and Haswell have found a darkness that even Dante Alighieri couldn’t have imagined.
Hrvatski Swarm & Dither
All the greats deserve a retrospective at some point, and Keith Fullerton Whitman just got his. It comes in the form of this aural gallery stuffed with tracks composed between 1994 and 2002 that even includes some of his early and rather obscure field recordings. Plus, it features his classic deathcore-ragga-gabber slam, “Vastep DSP.” And as the album progresses, the producer’s versatility becomes apparent in the contrast of tracks like the bleeping Gameboy fiesta, “Marbles,” and a cover of the Stones’ “Paint it Black,” a bubbled amalgam of hissing, crackling computers, instrumentation and voice. Melding Squarepusher and Kid606 into a delicate post-jungle card tower, this record (Whitman’s first full-length since his debut three years ago) is well worth the wait.
Various Artists Movern Callar O.S.T.
Mirroring the mixtape left for Samantha Morton (Scottish film Morvern Callar‘s protagonist) by her boyfriend just before he commits suicide, the soundtrack to Morvern Callar is obviously more than your usual promotion filler. And, more than just an interesting, seldom-used method to develop an absent character, this integral soundtrack to the very talented Brit Lynne Ramsay’s most recent film-which delivers clubland its first and long-overdue smart and credible dramatization-is one of the best pop soundtracks I’ve ever heard. A partial roll call: Can, Lee Perry, Boards of Canada, Lee Hazlewood, Broadcast, Ween, plus rarities from Aphex Twin, Velvet Underground and Holger Czukay. A bona fide pop soundtrack that strays from the middle-at long last!
Lucky Pierre Hypnogogia
Evidently Arab Strap main guy Aidan Moffat is something of an insomniac. And because he can’t stomach “chill out” records, he went and made himself his own album to sleep by. Ironically, if we are to believe the myth behind the music, you’d be hard-pressed to get any shut-eye to this. It’s too good. Borrowing strings from both his own Arab Strap songs and Baroque symphonies, and underpinning them with feathered Casio rhythms, Hypnogogia tugs you into a forested maze of memory and melancholy that suggests Gas remixing Godspeed!, or Kid Loco remixing Art of Noise. Undoubtedly one of the most singular, gorgeous albums of the year, Hypnogogia is many things. Anything but a sleeper.
