Deep Space Orchestra is the collaborative project of Chris Barker and Si Murray, a team of sophisticated music lovers that are currently based out of the UK. Since breaking on to the scene in 2011, the duo has released successful productions on labels such as Delusions of Grandeur, Quintessentials, and Instruments of Rapture. In 2015, the pair started contributing regularly to the highly eclectic KMAH station radio shows, and completed their debut album entitled Memory, which is due for release on their home-base label, Use of Weapons. Never wanting to sound like a one-trick pony, Deep Space Orchestra conjured up an original mood with its new album, and are now offering up a free download ahead of its album release schedule. “Dream States” is a bass led track that combines a visceral lust for rhythm with a soothing and warm foundation that also has its phasers set to stun. You can pick up a copy of Deep Space Orchestra’s Memory LP when it drops on Use of Weapons on September 28.
Growing up in Queens in the pre-Internet ’90s, cross-pollination between sub-cultures was unavoidable, according to Billy Werner; he cites how punks, skaters, ravers, and hip hop heads all seemed to end up dancing at the pioneering NYC techno night NASA, the gathering famously depicted in the cult classic Kids. It’s with that same wide variety of influences that Werner has donned many musical hats over the years: singing for hardcore band Hot Cross, releasing disco-house records as Billy W on labels such as Nordic Trax and Marcos Cabral’s Hamilton Dance Records—and recently, making gritty techno under the alias M/R. Werner debuted the M/R moniker last year with an excellent 12” on Philly-based label Great Circles, eventually catching the ears of longtime friend and L.I.E.S. boss Ron Morelli, who included it in his best of 2014 list.
Prior to any techno debauchery, Morelli and Werner shared numerous bills in New York’s punk-hardcore scene, later sharing the DJ booth on Avenue A in the East Village to play disco and boogie sounds. “I’d been sending Ron stuff over the years, and my M/R stuff may have been a little unexpected for him, but I think the Great Circles release really clicked with him,” Werner remarked. After giving Morelli first crack at new material early in 2015, this 12-inch the result, with three of the new tracks and one older getting signed to the release.
The record’s first cut, “Let That Shit Breathe”, is a dark slice of brooding techno with a menacing kick drum pumping; soon. haunting synths saunter in and add some wavy spook. “Just Say No” follows and slows the pace, shifting away from straight 4-4 in favor of a broken-beat laced with rolling swatches of cut-up drums, psychedelic samples and left-field atmospherics to create a heady arresting vibe.
On the flip is the head-nodding “Slinky Kids,” with a scratchy, modulating synth riff in the fore and slow-beat drums providing the backbone for the groove to wander in and out amid bright sonic flourishes. “Coconut Jar” closes out the release similarly to how it started: Dark, nasty four-to-the-floor techno and booming drums give way to a devious synth line laid on top.
All of Werner’s influences come through on this EP, with its four tracks bringing different styles and sonic qualities to the table. Werner’s affinity for kick drums and distorted, over-driven synths harkens back to his punk DIY days with Morelli, but those influences turn out to be a mere vehicle for a true songwriter’s acumen, one that creates grooves that won’t leave your head. Already tipped as one to watch, definitely stay on the lookout for more M/R material in the near future.
Returning for the second year in a row on November 20 and 21, Time Warp US has announced its 2015 lineup.
Arguably the most enticing addition to the Phase One announcement, which includes Luciano, Chris Liebing, Joseph Capriati and Seth Troxler back-to-back with Jamie Jones, is the inclusion of minimal mastermind Ricardo Villalobos, who returns to the US for the first time since 2011.
Time Warp US will take place across two floors at the Bedford Armory in Brooklyn, with Time Warp’s “Cave 2.0” setup—which you can check out below along with last year’s after-movie—being shipped over from Germany for the event.
Throughout the week, a whole lot of material gets posted here on XLR8R. And while we know—and love—that some hardcore readers will eagerly pour over every single news story, interview, podcast, video, and MP3 download that appears on the site, we also realize that for most people, it’s impossible to see everything. In the interest of making it easier for everyone to catch up, every Friday we present The Lowdown, a weekly wrap-up of the top post from our site. An expanded version of the The Lowdown is also available via our weekly email newsletter.
Helena Hauff doesn’t really fit the mold of the modern-day electronic musician. She continues to reside in Hamburg and actively avoids the limelight; she doesn’t self-promote or even attempt to communicate with her ever-expanding fan-base; you can’t even find her on Facebook, never mind Twitter.
Longevity, consistency, and quality don’t always go hand-in-hand—but for the U.K.’s Colin McBean, that seemingly comes effortlessly. His career dates back to the early ’90s; among other claims to fame, he was the partner of Cisco Ferreira in the British techno outfit the Advent.
The spoken-word intro that leads off Invite the Light, the latest full-length missive from Dâm-Funk, comes with a proclamation: “If we invite the light, it will surely come to us,” a processed, distorted voice informs us; “if we invite the funk, it will never let us down.”
Novation’s Launchpad—which has now expanded to Pro, Mini, and app versions—has been a staple in the Ableton world (and the rest of the DAW world, for that matter) for many years now.
For over a decade now, Decibel Festival has turned Seattle into an electronic music hotspot for one-week out of the year, showcasing some of the most reputable names in the scene at various locations around the city. Acts being featured this year include Marcel Dettmann, Bonobo, Daniel Avery, Dauwd, Nicolas Jaar, John Tejada, DJ Tennis, Lusine, and The Black Madonna, just to name a few.
The nighttime program of the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) is now finalised. Between October 14-18, more than 2,000 artists will be appearing at over 340 events across the 100 clubs and spaces that are participating with ADE.
The inaugural edition of Canada’s Bacchanale Festival began on September 6 with Lil Louis and September 16 with Pearson Sound, while its main events take place this weekend at Montreal’s Old Port featuring live sets by Octave One, Phuture and Vril, and dj sets by Omar S, Answer Code Request, and others.
The title of Merrisa “Cooly G” Campbell’s newest EP, ArmzHouse, is an appropriate one. The release is full of weapons for the club, one that likes its house music the same way it likes pretzels—twisted. This is the first release from the Hyperdub heroine since her last year’s solid Wait ‘Til Night LP, representing a further example of how Campbell is shedding the vocal hooks and keeping the focus on rhythmic balance—and it’s one of her most straightforward and more engaging releases yet. Referencing the past, present and purple-laden future, Armzhouse has a ton of momentum behind every intricately-placed kick and snare.
The opener, “Trippin B,” is somewhat of a throwback in tone, but not in formula; it takes elements of classic late-’80s house, incorporates bassline elements from cuts we know and love—and then splices them, breaking apart the connection between the past and present by adding a synth line that’s curiously enticing. The next cut, “Booboo”, adds some signature Cooly vocal bits and pitch-downed sampling, keeping things fervent and formidable in its structure; the result feels like a filtered reverse-funky house track. Which may sound unusual—but one listen and you’ll understand. “Waybay” (featuring Marc Perrineau) follows up by playing it safe and simple, not meandering far from the mischievous house path that it’s on. “Flange City” follows a similar path but falls somewhat flat in its execution; it’s a track with interesting elements, yet possessing a narrative that’s not entirely cohesive..
The finale comes via a mercurial magnet of a tune, “Horrors in the Dance”, which tosses elements of grime and funky together on a canvas and makes something spectacularly weird and wonky (in a good way). The tune has a nice callback to previous Cooly G cuts, with her signature kisses stamp kicking off the cut before moving in a direction that we’re familiar with, and finally going every which way to pack a wallop. That’s what ArmzHouse represents, in a way: Campbell is traversing different courses, finagling what works under the Cooly G guise. It’s not perfect, the release has moments that are gratifying and spellbinding. Wherever Cooly G chooses to go next certainly, she’ll will have our attention—callbacks, kisses and all.
Brooklyn-based producer Ryan Rashee (a.k.a. LebLaze) follows collaborations with Prefuse 73 and super-collective Risil—which features members of Hella, Tortoise, Battles and School of Seven Bells—and releases on Asthmatic Kitty and Prefuse’s Eastern Developments imprint with When Doves Fly, a bumping, nine-track beat tape on Geographic North. The nine tracks on When Doves Fly present a varied output, with raw, hip-hop instrumentals sitting side-by-side with more experimental synth-laden numbers. In support of the release, Rashee has offered up gritty b-side cut “Lexus,” a short and sweet beat-driven outing with a chunky rawness and an infectious head-nodding vibe. When Doves Fly is out now on limited edition cassette tape, as well as digital, over at Geographic North’s website, with “Lexus” available as a free download below.
The willingness to step into the unknown has been one of the keys to mankind’s progress. Whether it’s the compulsion of humanity’s ancestors to leave the place of their birth to seek fertile lands, or the desire of a theoretical physicist to delve deep intro the intricacies of the universe, the urge to go beyond what is known is essential to the act of discovery. That’s as true of the artistic realm as is of any other, and it’s been a driving force in the career of Berlin’s Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Born in Berlin in 1934, Roedelius was, for a short spell, a child actor; later, in the ’60s, he toiled as a physical therapist. But then, he made the leap into uncharted territory: In the final months of that decade, he, Dieter Moebius and Conrad Schnitzler (of Tangerine Dream, among other claims to fame) formed Kluster, a wildly progressive, experimental outfit—considered one of the early progenitors of what became known as Krautrock—incorporating rudimentary electronics alongside more traditional instrumentation. By 1971, Schnitzler had left; Roedelius and Moebius carried on as Cluster, often collaborating with the likes of studio wizard Conny Plank (and later, Brian Eno) while continually pushing their sometimes jarring, sometimes atmospheric, always fascinating sonic explorations over a series of groundbreaking albums.
“We were learning from point zero,” Roedelius recalls of those years. “We created something that wasn’t around before.” But his forays into aural experimentation were just beginning. In 1971, he and Moebius moved deep into the idyllic Lower Saxony countryside, along the Weser River, where they were joined by fellow Krautrocker Michael Rother of the band NEU!. The three, after a short period of musical trial and error, formed Harmonia, a group that proved to be at least as influential as Cluster. Both precise and romantic, the band’s music had a an idealized, dreamlike feel—one that leaned more heavily on synthetic sounds more than Cluster’s recordings ever did—that was pastoral and intimate, yet full of joy and optimism. Their studio albums, including 1974’s Musik Von Harmoniaand the following year’s Deluxe, are considered touchstones of electronic music to this day; Eno famously praised Harmonia as “the world’s most important rock group.” (Not bad for a band that eschewed 99 percent of rock music’s trappings.)
After recording what was eventually known as the Tracks and Traces album in 1976—which went unreleased until 1997—Harmonia disbanded. Rother is still playing, but sadly, Moebius passed away this past July—Roedelius, however, is seemingly as active as ever. Working both solo and in conjunction with others, his penchant for experimentation still runs strong—and as if to prove the point, his latest release is a collaborative work with Gotan Project’s Christoph H. Müller called Imagori. Released on the Grönland label, it’s an album-length set that’s rich, warm and occasionally dense, with Roedelius’s rippling piano work weaving its way through Müller’s electronic backing. And on October 21, Grönland is putting out the sprawling Harmonia box vinyl set Complete Works, with Musik von Harmonia, Deluxe, Tracks and Traces, Live 1974, and Documents 1975 (previously unreleased recordings from Hamburg gigs along with a pair of studio tracks) accompanied by a 36-page booklet, a poster, pop-up artwork, and a download code for the full set in digital form. In the midst of all this activity, XLR8R caught up with Roedelius via Skype; on the eve of his 81st birthday (October 26, in case you are wondering), he was funny, charming, and seems to have lost none of the joy that a career spent exploring can bring.
What was the genesis of Imagori? How did you first meet up with Christoph Müller? I was working in Paris with some designers on a project called Grateful Vanity. They created two sound sculptures, and they wanted to present it in a special way at this big art center near Paris, so they invited Christoph to come and join me for an improvisational set. We liked what we did so much that we decided to do something else together afterwards.
Müller isn’t exactly a kid—but he does come from a different generation of artist. And you’ve certainly collaborated a lot in the past; much of your career consists of these ever-morphing partnerships. Do you enjoy working in collaboration, and specifically working with younger people? It’s always been collaboration; Cluster was certainly a collaboration, for instance, and much of what I’ve done since then has been as well. And much of it has been with younger people. Not many people are as old as I am! [laughs] So I guess it’s a bit out of necessity. But I do enjoy working with younger artists.
Your music, especially your work with Cluster and Harmonia, undoubtedly had a lot of influence on many of those younger artists. Yes, and I think that’s because what we were doing was so authentic. We were learning from point zero; we created something that wasn’t around before; it was musical actualism, in a way. We were doing things step by step, and had to learn how to do it in a relevant way—relevant to people’s ears. It took a long time to do do it; after Cluster began, I think we needed about three years before we became aware that what we did was becoming something that people really liked.
“We always liked what we were doing—we had our concept, we were developing our own tone language, and we were happy with that from the start.”
That must have been quite a fulfilling realization. It was, even more so because we came from such different professions, none of which were music. Moebius was from graphic design, Schnitzler was someone who worked with metal, and I was a physical therapist. It was a strange base for what we ended up doing afterwards. But we always liked what we were doing—we had our concept, we were developing our own tone language, and we were happy with that from the start. That was a challenging and interesting time—creating something out of a moment, however we were able to do. And I think people could get the feeling that we were having fun doing it.
You really do get a sense of playfulness when you listen to the music. Do you think that because you were starting from a naïve musical viewpoint, that allowed you to develop your music—to create that tone language—in the way that you did? Yes, and that’s the big difference—because we did it from our own impetus and not someone else’s, we were able to do what we did. We had no plan about what would come out. After time, we became more and more aware of what we were doing, and really liked what we were doing—and at some point, people all over the globe liked it.
You sound a bit surprised at that. I am. I still am. [laughs]
Going back to Imagori, how did the album’s songs take form? I had some stuff which was not yet elaborated, and I really though that there should be somebody who could work with it as a base for their own ideas. Christoph was the right person for it; he really like the stuff, and he really was excited to be working with it. He had some time between working with Gotan Project and working with Plaza Francia, and he really got into it. And I think you can see how much he liked it in the result! I like it very much; it’s very different from music that I am usually involved with. And I think it’s different than his music as well.
It’s nice to see your old friend Brian Eno on this album’s “About Tape.” Yes, it is! It was Christoph’s idea hat we use the words from an interview Eno had done. I was in London, and I met up with Brian and told him, “We did a piece with your text on it!” “Oh, you did?” [laughs] He didn’t even listen to it; he just agreed in the first moment that it was okay.
What did those original sketches that you gave to Müller consist of? What I gave to him were just these very old things done on very old equipment. There was a lot of things done on piano, and a lot of it was on old synthesizers. It was actually quite diverse.
Do you have plans to continue to work with Müller? We do. We have already played live together a few times, trying to recreate some of this material but in a different way—to revitalize it. We were remixing our own remixes, in a way.
I’m guessing that you get a kick out of remix culture. It’s a great culture—I love it. So many good and astonishing projects have come out of it.
“It was a very vibrant time—everything was new, everything was interesting, and everyone around us was deeply into what was going on.”
Besides Imagori, you also have Harmonia’s box set, Complete Works, coming out soon. Going back to Eno for a minute, he was quoted as saying that Harmonia was the “world’s most important rock group.” That’s quite a declaration. Yes. [laughs] David [Bowie] and Brian really like what we were doing. It was around the same time that they were doing Low and Heroes, and we each were influenced by the other. It was a very vibrant time—everything was new, everything was interesting, and everyone around us was deeply into what was going on. Harmonia’s work was quite deep in a way, I think.
And it was hugely influential; you can draw a pretty direct line between what was going on in Berlin and its surroundings back then, and so much great music that came after. Were you guys aware that you were doing important work at the time? Not really. We just did it. We made [Cluster’s] Zuckerzeit and Sowiesoso at around the same time. We were in a special situation, in the middle of Germany beside the river, and we had to work a lot. We had to go to the forest to cut the wood; we had to grow our own garden. We were really going back to our roots, away from noise and the psychology of the city, and that’s part of what dictated the way that we worked. It was like living in paradise, and that shows up in the music.
It is quite a utopian sound, and that might be why it holds up so well. I think so. And I hope that this release will get a lot of people to hear it again, or maybe for the first time. And I think Grönland did a great job with this. It’s such a gift for us—and I think it’s a gift for the world, as well. I hope that this brings us a new type of audience…a new generation. I know that a lot of young musicians really like the music, and refer to us as influences.
You worked with Conny Plank on the Deluxe album, and he was also a big part of Cluster’s sound. What was he like? He was a great guy, and a good, good friend of ours. He was so much more than a sound engineer; he had huge artistic abilities, and had so much input into everything. He wasn’t just a sound engineer—he was a great musician as well. He was on so many important productions, more than I ever was. For a long period of our lives when we were very poor artists, he gave us homes, he fed us…he was hugely important.
He’s one of those guys who was sort of in the center of everything, to the point where modern music may have developed far differently if he hadn’t been around. Yeah, that is for sure. He was the nucleus of so much.
“There is no split between my music and my private live. Work, family, life…it’s all one.”
The name Harmonia fits your music so well. Was it meant to describe the sort or music that you were making? Well, it was really about the situation in which we were living, in this beautiful place, which was somehow harmonious. Michael Rother is still living there.
Really? Dieter Moebius also was still there, but now he’s not with us anymore. But Michael is still there. You should go there someday!
You left there quite a while ago, and are now living in Austria, right? I’ve been in Austria since 1978. My wife is Austrian, but the real reason that I left that beautiful utopia is that the nuclear plant upriver broke—and nobody told anybody. Some kids died. Our first child, our daughter, had just come to birth, and when we did find out about what happened, we immediately moved away. And since my wife is Austrian, we moved to Austria—which was really a good step. Getting somewhere new was good, but being in Austria really helped me a lot in so many ways. I got pensions from the state, from institutions, from private people…I wouldn’t have been what most of what I’ve done since ’78 if I had not been in Austria.
Well, thank you, Austria! Yes, thank you very much, Austria! The kind of support that they give to artists is very important to the Austrian spiritual culture.
When your Sinfonia Contempora No. 1 came out in 1999, you stated “”Since the beginning of my career nothing was more important to me than to find my own musical language. I have, so I believe, eventually found it.” Do you still feel that way, or is it an ongoing process? I found it. I know that what I am doing is me. There is no split between my music and my private live. Work, family, life…it’s all one. I wouldn’t have been able to keep doing what I do if I hadn’t have discovered what it is that I am doing. And I think that the ancestors took the first steps to what I am doing now: Cantors, preachers, teachers and the others have all prepared the way that I am going.
Imagoriis out now;Complete Workscomes out October 21. Roedelius will be celebrating his upcoming birthday at the Semibreve festival on October 30 with an exclusive performance with guests André Gonçalves, José Alberto Gomes, Rui Dias and visual artist Maria Mónica.
On October 30, UK label Erased Tapes will release a collection of music from composers & producers Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds entitled Collaborative Works.
The special 2-CD set will compile the artists’ three previous EPs—Stare (2012), Life Story Love And Glory (2015), and, most recently, LOON (2015)—along with seven new, previously unreleased works Nils & Ólafur composed while in the studio filming their short documentary, TRANCE FRENDZ—a film that chronicles their friendship and creative process.
One of the newest pieces streaming from the collection is “Four”, taken from the LOON sessions, an ambient journey steeped in melancholic tones recorded straight to 2-track 1/2-inch tape.
LOON will be available individually as a 12″ on October 2 via Erased Tapes Shop. The previous 12″s are available now via Erased Tapes Shop & Arnaldsfrahm.com.
For more info on their collaborative process and TRANCE FRENDZ, Nils & Ólafur had this to say:
“The music on this CD is a collection of our studio collaborations from recent years. We would meet in Reykjavik or Berlin with the intention to share some days off work, hiking, swimming or eating pizza. That is great for a couple days, but after a while we would always end up back in the studio, fiddling with synths or pianos. This collection of recordings cannot be an album. It will remain a collage of our studio experiments of the past. It simply is convenient to have them all together here, so you don’t need to look out for some limited 10” somewhere or deal with a nerdy record dealer in Japan to track down this one 7 ̋ which will turn out to sound pretty rough anyways… consider them as moments in space and time where we shared the same room for some days to come down and enjoy making music.
After deciding to release the studio collaborations, we planned to do a video session of us performing an improvised duet to promote the release. On the 28th of July 2015 we met up at Durton Studio in Berlin and invited Alexander Schneider and his camera to document it.
But instead of ending the session after the first take we continued improvising throughout the night, ending up with several new pieces written and recorded in eight hours with no overdubs and no edits. We felt there was something special in these songs as they arrived so quickly and unexpectedly, remembering that our friendship and collaboration originally started with live improvisation on stage. At the end of the night we had all this music that sounded unfamiliar even to us, loudly asking to be included in this collection.”
Tracklisting:
CD1
01. Four 02. Three 03. Wide Open 04. w 05. m 06. a1 07. a2 08. b1 09. Life Story 10. Love And Glory
2015 marks the 15th anniversary of Mathias Tanzmann‘s Moon Harbour Recordings, a label which has been at the forefront of house and techno since its inception in 2000.
The diverse and ever-evolving label has released a multitude of dancefloor destroying records from artists such as Luna City Express, Sable Sheep, Adam Port, Re.You, Ekkohaus, wAFF, and DJ T., creating a family-like vibe which the label head reflects on: “I was still pretty young when we started the label in 2000, so we have all grown up together for 15 years now. Moon Harbour is like my child. I am happy many artists joined the family or became good friends and that the label has become a home for all of us.”
To celebrate its 15 years, Moon Harbour is embarking on a world tour, as well as an anniversary compilation with exclusive tracks by Moon Harbour artists and friends, along with rereleases of the most successful tracks from the last 15 years.
Lrusse—Behling from Bristol duo Behling & Simpson—will drop his latest EP, Ynyslas, on Monologues Records on September 28.
Making increasing strides into solo territory, Behling drops three chunky, groove-led cuts under his Lrusse moniker. Kicking off with its bass-heavy, sunshine-tinged title cut, the EP moves through the gritty and sprawling “Cut Through,” before ending on the broken beat moody bomb that is “Plus One,” with all three cuts beautifully showcasing Lrusse’s deft production skills and a first-class variation of moods and ideas.
Ynyslas will be the sixth release for Monologues Records, which was launched by Ben Gomori in January this year with the label podcast, which features artists mixing an hour of their own tracks, with guest such as Peter Kruder, Till Von Sein, Melon, Uffe, Patrice Baumel, and Jori Hulkkonen all providing stellar mixes. Ahead of the EP’s official release, you can stream “Cut Through” in full below; with a preorder option available here.
