Joey Negro Preps First Album in More Than 20 years

Dave Lee (a.k.a. Joey Negro) will soon release Produced With Love, his first LP in over 20 years.

Lee has been an extremely influential figure in electronic music for over three decades and is a major proponent of soulful, disco-tinged, vocal records. Throughout the ’90s and ’00s right up until today, he has produced an astonishing number of records and remixes under various names and for some of the world’s biggest artists across both underground and pop music.

Rather than rely on sampling older records, the overwhelming majority of music is newly recorded—a real rarity when it comes to modern disco and indicative of the level of detail involved in the project. The album also features vocal contributions from disco and R&B originals like Melba Moore and Linda Clifford, as well as Diane Charlemagne, the UK singer who died in 2015.

“Unfortunately between starting and finishing the project the supremely talented Diane Charlemagne, the singer/songwriter who I co-wrote many songs with over last 10 years, very sadly passed away,” Lee says. “We had a great working relationship, which was both fun and honest. Most of my final collaborations with Diane, “Overnight Sensation,” “Prove That You’re Feeling Me,” and the partly re-written remake of “Must Be The Music,” are on this album.”

Tracklisting

01. Prove That You’re Feeling Me feat. Diane Charlemagne
02. Free Bass feat. Julian Crampton
03. Won’t Let Go feat. Linda Clifford
04. Dancing Into The Stars feat. Horse Meat Disco and Angela Johnson
05. It’s More Fun To Compute
06. Must Be The Music (The Original Disco Version) feat. Diane Charlemagne
07. Stomp Your Feet
08. Anyway feat. Melba Moore
09. Distorting Space Time
10. Overnight Sensation feat. Diane Charlemagne
11. I Realise feat. Sacha Williamson

Produced With Love is scheduled for June 30 release on Z Records, with “Won’t Let Go” feat. Linda Clifford streamable in full below.

Podcast 488: Goldie

Now, Goldie is another contributor to our podcast series who needs little introduction—another artist with whom almost any fan of underground electronic music, or even popular culture as a whole, will likely be familiar. As our 2013 feature said, the British DJ-producer is “a drum & bass icon who has done more than any other to put a face and a personality to a genre of music that grew out of chopping and grafting sped-up hip-hop, funk, and soul breaks.” He is, in every sense, a musical pioneer who has revolutionized various sub-genres on more than one occasion—one of the first personalities in British dance music, and a living legend, if you’ll excuse me the cliché on this occasion.

Goldie, real name Clifford Joseph Price, made his name in the 1980s during which he made a living as a graffiti artist, earning commissions from local UK councils. He didn’t actually get into the rave scene until much later—not until he connected with Marc Mac and Dego of the Reinforced label with the help of ex-girlfriend DJ Kemistry. For much of 1992 and 1993 Reinforced was Goldie’s musical home: under his Rufige Kru alias, he released a string of EPs on the label before opening Metalheadz, his own imprint, through which he subsequently put out a number of classic drum & bass records by himself and a legion of other leading jungle artists.

And it was never going to stop there. Over the course of a distinguished career, Goldie has transcended musical culture: his acting credits include a role in 1999’s James Bond film “The World Is Not Enough”, Guy Ritchie’s “Snatch,” and the BBC soap opera “EastEnders,” in addition to a lengthy line of other television appearances. In 1996, the spotlight was on him once again after a relationship with Björk was called off following a well-documented engagement.

His musical gifts, however, remain far from questioned. Though not all releases have particularly well received—his 2008 material springs to mind—he has compiled a rich and lengthy discography to which only a limited few artists can parallel. The latest of these is set to land on June 16 via Metalheadz and Cooking Vinyl Records. Titled The Journey Man, the 16-tracker is the first Goldie LP in nearly nine years and was recorded over a three month period he spent in Asia last summer. Celebrating the release, and showing off just some of material that lies within, Goldie offered to compile this week’s XLR8R podcast.

Tracklisting

01. Goldie “Prism” (Metalheadz / Cooking Vinyl)
02. Artificial Intelligence “Fallen” (feat. Dawn Wall) (Metalheadz)
03. Calibre “Archive” (Metalheadz)
04. Artificial Intelligence “Justify” (Philth Tangent remix) (Metalheadz)
05. Lenzman “Just Can’t Take” (feat. DRS) (Metalheadz)
06. Ivy Lab & Hydro “Make It Clear” (feat. Frank Carter III & Lucy Annika) (Metalheadz)
07. Dub Phizix “Rotate” (Metalheadz)
08. Lenzman “Golden Age” (feat. Steo) (Metalheadz)
09. Rufige_Kru “Sometime_Sad_Day” (Metalheadz)
10. Mako, DLR, Villem & Ant TC1 “Hungry For Atmosphere” (Metalheadz)
11. Lenzman “Empty Promise” (Metalheadz)
12. Doc Scott “Far Away” (2015 Remaster) (Metalheadz)
13. Lenzman & FD “Joanie’s Theme” (Metalheadz)
14. Goldie vs Ulterior Motive “I Adore You” (Total Science remix) (Metalheadz / Cooking Vinyl)

AKWIUS ‘Space’

AKWIUS is a Minneapolis-based DJ-producer. He became interested in making music through hip-hop culture and having buddies around that needed beats to rap over. Then, over time it has become a mission to upgrade and travel much deeper into the possibilities of emotion and the sound system. The current focus is to enforce vibes that may be enjoyed by everyone, are still deep enough for the serious heads, and experimental enough for the future.

Today, he’s offered up “Space,” as a free download, an ambient chill-out tune, built from a mix of guitar loops and electronics. The track title has a bit of a double meaning, referring to both travel through the final frontier and also the space between people whether it be a physical, emotional or time-based distance.

;Space

Porter Ricks, Donato Dozzy, Ø [Phase], and Silent Servant Remix Rødhåd

Photo: Jill Bettendorff

Rødhåd‘s Dystopian label will soon release Rødhåd Remixed, a four-track EP featuring remixes from Porter Ricks, Ø [Phase], Silent Servant, and Donato Dozzy.

The EP sees these four techno artists rework Rødhåd cuts from 2015. The originals, which also came out Dystopian, were initially split across two EPs: “Im Glanz Des Mondes” and “Kinder Der Ringwelt” landed on Kinder Der Ringwelt, while “Vivarium” and “Lookitthat” appeared on Söhne Der Erde.

Tracklisting

01. Im Glanz Des Mondes (Ø [Phase] Remix)
02. Vivarium (Porter Ricks Remix)
03. Lookitthat (Silent Servant Remix)
04. Kinder Der Ringwelt (Donato Dozzy Remix)

Rødhåd Remixed is scheduled for May 22 release, with clips streamable below.

Steve Rachmad to Release First Album as Sterac Electronics

Steve Rachmad is set to release his first album as Sterac Electronics, titled Things To Think About.

Rachmad first rose to prominence in the late 1990s, spearheading a surge in Dutch techno that was heavily inspired by the futurist intent and machine soul of Detroit. Since then, he has continued to successfully explore a wide range of dancefloor-centric electronic styles under a wide array of aliases.

It’s a while, though, since the public has been treated to a dose of Sterac Electronics material. He first established the alias at the turn of the millennium, primarily as an outlet for hardware-driven electro music shot through with funk and soul. A handful of 12” singles were released on Music Man and Interpersonal XP, before Rachmad began focusing on other projects. When inspiration struck, he returned to the project, jamming out tracks using a mighty collection of vintage synthesizers and drum machines.

Recently, Rachmad and Tom Trago decided to revisit the Sterac Electronics archive, discovering a “killer collection of cuts” created at different points over the course of the last 15 years.

Now, nine of those hardware jams have been gathered together for the first time on Things To Think About, “a warm, rich, and evocative collection of electro-fuelled workouts that giddily pay tribute to the music of Rachmad’s youth,” the label explains.

Things To Think About will be released as a limited-edition double album, preceded by a 12” single featuring another track from the vaults. Meanwhile, “Tuning Into Frequencies” can be streamed in full below in advance of the June 10 release.

Album Tracklisting

01. Altruistic Behaviour
02. Game Changers
03. Tuning Into Frequencies
04. Original Pattern
05. Metatron
06. Next Destination
07. Beyond My Wishes
08. Visualize to Materialize

Single Tracklisting

A. Archetype
B. Metatron

Luke Vibert Luke Vibert Presents Garave Vol. 1

Yes, familiarity can breed contempt. On the other hand, there’s something called the mere-exposure effect, a psychological phenomenon in which people tend develop a preference for a person, place, thing or sound through repeated exposure. There’s something hugely reassuring, even addictive, about the familiar—and music producers, among others, have been employing that phenomenon to their advantage since…well, forever, but even more so since samplers came on the scene, making it easy to cut and paste a dizzying array of recognizable snippets and loops into their creations. Collagists like Double Dee & Steinski, MARRS, the KLF; any house producer who’s ever looked to a disco diva to fill a gap in a track; pretty much every hip-hop beatsmith who’s ever lived—the list of sample-happy music makers is near-endless. But within the dance-music realm, sampling has only rarely attained the level of pure giddy fun as it does on the latest release on the Hypercolour label, the goofy, hugely appealing Luke Vibert Presents Garave Vol. 1.

The veteran Vibert is something of club-music polymath, having explored jungle, IDM, instrumental hip-hop, acid, disco-tinged house, drill & bass and other assorted oddities over the years. Here he focuses on those heady rave years—when the ’80s flowed into the ’90s, the electronic-dance music landscape was still a freeform territory and, perhaps, a few pills were consumed here and there. It’s a wide aural territory to explore, and Vibert has a blast with riffing on the range of source material, which he’s carefully assembled into a kaleidoscopic series of dense, revved-up house and garage cuts. Even if you weren’t around for the original rave days, his borrowed bits and pieces—synth pads, chord patterns, drum loops and, most of all, a vast array of vocal samples lifted from clubland’s memory bank—will be familiar to anyone who’s spent any time with modern dance music.

Head-spinning from the start, Garave Vol. 1.’s template is set with lead track “Future.” A throat-clearing “where you at” snippet, various samples referencing the song’s title, and that ever-familiar “here we go again” snippet—laced over staccato keyboard stabs, a Reese-style low end and plenty more—are collaged in somewhat hyperkinetic fashion. (Hyperkinetic is a term that could apply to most of these numbers.) “Heard It All B4” boasts a whistling synth reminiscent of Djaimin’s 1992 Strictly Rhythm classic “Give You,” with time-tested “house music” and “we rock the house” nuggets layered over its 808 State–esque synth wash and skippy rhythm; the jazzy keyboard riffs and driving bassline of “Stop Gap,” meanwhile, are punctuated by an array of “can’t stop”/”don’t stop” exhortations. “Feel the Riddim,” with its chugging beat and blocky chords, has the feel of a particularly energetic, long-lost classic from Todd Terry, a producer who should be considered one of this type of music’s founding fathers.

And so it goes, track after track of nostalgia-inducing pastiche that, though a bit self-referential—they’re almost dance tracks about dance tracks—somehow sound fresh. They’re effective both as exercises in the power of memory and as compelling club cuts in their own right, not to mention as the basis of a possible name-that-sample party game. Garave Vol. 1. may not be his most serious-minded record ever, but it’s certainly a massively entertaining addition to his discography. It’s an idealized, dreamland-rave epiphany—one that’s embedded in our collective consciousness, if only in the haziest recesses of our minds.

Almeeva ‘Clense’

Multi-instrumentalist Gregory Hoeppfner (a.k.a. Almeeva) released his latest EP, Unset, last month on French label Infiné. Unset is Almeeva’s fifth EP and third on Infiné and follows last year’s 4 Bells, an EP XLR8R featured here that also found its way into our Top 10 Downloads of July last year.

On Unset, Almeeva furthers his pop-influenced synth-heavy sound with five emotive cuts of varying intensity. From the abrasive, analog sounds of the opening cut, “Clense,” to the hazy ambience of “Arches,” a cut that touches on shoegaze’s cloudy potency, Unset is a wide-reaching journey into Almeeva’s sonic world and, arguably, most accomplished work to date.

In support of the release, which you can grab here, the label has passed over “Clense” as one of today’s XLR8R downloads, available via WeTransfer below.

Clense

Premiere: Hear a Track from Jonas Kopp’s Expansive New Album

On May 5, Tresor will release Argentinian DJ and producer Jonas Kopp‘s sophomore album, Photon Belt.

Photon Belt follows Jonas’ debut album, Beyond the Hypnosis, which was released in 2014 on Tresor, with a collection of mind-bending cuts dedicated to a cosmic phenomenon our solar system experiences every 11,000 years. Kopp explores this concept via a mesmerizing 10-track journey that places his stunning sound design front and center. It’s an ambitious outing that Kopp pulls off with understated finesse and style.

Photon Belt will drop later this week and ahead of that, you can stream LP cut “Bridge To The Stars” in full via the player below.

Photon Belt can be pre-ordered here.

Raumskaya ‘Ice And Stones’

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Pixelord‘s Hyperboloid imprint will release Raumskaya‘s debut album, Core.

The album follows Raumskaya’s brilliant soundtrack to Sea, a contemporary dance production in Moscow—the soundtrack was released earlier this year on Terminal Dream. Moving slightly away from the footwork inspired sounds of some of his previous outings, Core features a wide-ranging collection of cuts that touch on everything from vintage hardcore to new, cutting-edge bass styles such as wave music.

In support of the LP’s release, Hyperboloid and Raumskaya have offered up “Ice And Stones” as one of today’s XLR8R downloads. Over its five-and-a-half-minute run time, the track melds stunning, twisting synth lines with a fathoms deep kick and galloping percussion, a track perfectly suited for the dark recesses of a club.

You can pick up “Ice And Stones” via WeTransfer below, with Core available via Hyperboloid.

Ice and Stones

DeWalta, Mike Shannon, and Spacetravel Remix Omni A.M. for Cure Music

Cure Music‘s next release comes in the shape of a reissue of American tech-house duo Omni A.M. featuring remixes from DeWalta & Shannon and Spacetravel.

Coming up in Chicago, Omni A.M. relocated to New York where they refined their uncompromising style of psychedelic dance music. “Smurfette’s Big Night,” ridiculous title and all, appeared on the group’s 2000 EP, New York Sessions—the first in a string of critically acclaimed underground classics recorded in their brief but prolific time in the city.

This rare and much-coveted track has finally been remastered and released with new remixes by Spacetravel and DeWalta & Shannon.

Tracklisting

A. Smurfette’s Big Night (Original Mix)
B1. Smurfette’s Big Night (DeWalta & Shannon Remix)
B2. Smurfette’s Big Night (Spacetravel Remix)

Smurfette’s Big Night EP is scheduled for early June release, with clips streamable below.

For more information on Omni A.M., read our feature here.

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