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30 June 2009
Weekly mp3 #63: Moon Unit - Connections (Ewan Pearson Slo NRG Dub)
Again, get it from Spinner.
Swung, appropriately "slo" tech track. Rolling toms, a softly squelching sawtooth bassline, huge pulsing chords that remind me of contemporary Kraftwerk. As with most Ewan Pearson tracks, it's as slowly developing as a tech-house number requires, but is certainly far from a bunch of loops. Lots of nice little dynamics - breakdowns, build ups, sudden stabs to punctuate the mix - and then about 5 minutes in we head off into a new section. The bassline gets tighter, more insistent, and a great riff comes in on top. Nice shift in tone. The Kraftwerky chords come back, but it certainly feels like we're in new territory.
I can't remember when it became OK to have harmonic and melodic progression again in the austere world of techno, but I, for one, welcome our new contrapuntal overlords.
I don't know the original and it appears to be Moon Unit's one and only single, but a bit of snooping on Discogs.com suggests they're the German duo Mogg and Naudascher.
Not that I know their music, anyway! This is another case of grabbing the tune because of the remixer. Ewan Pearson is a British producer, who I'd say is most well known for his remixes. I was really into the mixes of Kelley Pollar he did with Al Usher, thoroughly recommend them. He does the mix on one of the stand-out tracks on the latest Junior Boys album. Never checked out his album (EP?) 'Piecework', but guess I should. Anyone heard it?Labels: music, weekly mp3
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23 June 2009
Weekly mp3 #62: Rumpistol - Plutonium2
This is on 5 Little Treasures From The North.
The EP is a collection of tracks from artists on Danish label Rump Recordings hosted by German net label Yuki Yaki. Soft electric piano chords are mirrored by reversed guitar. Lots of crackle and fizz in the high end makes it feel like a radio slightly off station (in the best way). To add a bit of edge to the ultra-mellow, some overblown sax creaks and squawks on top of the mix. Everything falls away and comes back with all manner of bright and buzzing synth textures and we're done in under 3 minutes. It's rool noice.
Rest of the comp is worth a go, especially Acustic (member of System / People Press Play / Future 3).
Rumpistol is a solo act from Copenhagen.
I guess he runs Rump Recordings, since he's released all his albums through them and due to the name similarity, etc.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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16 June 2009
Weekly mp3 #61: Pariah - Detroit Falls
Another download from RCRDLBL
.Big male soul vocal gets abruptly chopped and diced over downtempo, clap-laden beats. Massive stabs. Lots of chopping and changing between the sliced vox and spacious breaks. Should appeal to anyone who enjoyed that Hudson Mohawke track or El Guincho remixing Kuroma, also either of the two (?) fans of J Dilla reading this. ;)
Pariah are a UK trio that have been going since '97, but I have to admit this is the first I've heard from them. They must've been drum'n'bass, judging from their discogs page
. Turning down a deal on LTJ Bukem's label cos you're too busy seems a bit craaaaazy.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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09 June 2009
Weekly mp3 #60: Dudley Perkins - Funky Dudley
Been a while since I linked to a tune on Better Propaganda.
A mid-tempo sorta funk, sorta hip-hop track. There's a fairly slow, thudding beat with some heavy sub bass, a swung clavinet lick and some snippets of horns jutting out from time to time. Quiet, tinny soul vocal samples layer up from time to time for texture. Dudley's basically channelling George Clinton all over the track, half-rapping half-singing about the history of funk in his life. "How'd you get so funky, Dudley?" he apparently asks ... himself in the refrain. :)
I think Dudley Perkins
is from the West Coast of the US, but not sure where exactly. I first heard him rapping as Declaime over some Madlib beats (as he is again here), Madlib being a thoroughly overrated and often very boring American hip-hop producer. Still, this is a good beat. Likewise, Declaime is quite an awful MC, but under his own name Perkins has done some good tracks...Labels: music, weekly mp3
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02 June 2009
Weekly mp3 #59: Ghostface - The Sun (feat. Raekwon, Slick Rick & RZA)
The Wu-Tang Corp site has a page with masses of free downloads
including this track. I resisted the madness that is Old Dirty Bastard & Macy Gray covering Don't Go Breaking My Heart - laughing at ODB's incoherent rambling felt much too much like gallows humour given how he died - in favour of a slightly tamer oddity.Basically, a bunch of New York MCs swoon over how GODDAMN FANTASTIC THE SUN IS, over a looped sample that sounds like some cheery woodwind and pizzicatto strings that may have once been the opener of some 60s soul tune like Just My Imagination or Betcha By Golly Wow.
"As God is my witness / It's the scriptures in pictures / It's scrumptious, sunkissed, nutritious" gushes Ghostface Killah. This is the man who brought us lines like "Remember when I long-dicked you and broke one of your ovaries?"
"You my favourite / I wish we had three more of you / I adore you" raves Chef Raekwon, after recounting how cute is nephew is looking out the window to check out the sun. He's not really known for being particularly filthy, but, hey, this is still fairly out of character.
Guest, non-Wu-Tang MC Slick Rick (he who wrote 80s numbers like Treat Her Like A Prostitute
) reveals "A theory I've clung to deep within / Is that souls have to go through the sun to reach heaven / [...] It's a peep-hole which leads to the firmament above us."RZA just burbles a bit, but that's what producers-turned-MCs tend to do.
Not really sure what I think of the track, but I find it sufficiently odd that I've kept coming back to it. Maybe I started out on the wrong foot and it'll seem nothing out of the ordinary to everyone else. But still... WTF, etc.
I'm going to take a punt that anyone who'll bother checking this out already knows the Wu-Tang Clan and knows that Ghostface, Raekwon and RZA are founding members. Slick Rick's probably best remembered for La-Di-Da-Di and Children's Story in the 80s, but being in jail for many years certainly hindered his ability to release more hits.
Labels: music, weekly mp3
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26 May 2009
Weekly mp3 #58: Miike Snow - Animal
This is another one from Spinner, and has been getting an absolutely thrashing on a bunch of the usual places I link to, due to there being a seemingly never ending stream of free remixes... If you're busy being an RSS-fiend on any blogs or whatever you probably know all about this.Jabby guitar snippets bang out offbeats in a somehow not-at-all reggae fashion. Regular kick drums drop in, suggesting something dancey, and then a somewhat shouty, but kinda pop guy starts singing loud in the mix. Lots of vocal harmonies. Funny synths that remind me of The Cars. Twinkly xylophone melodies. Acoustic snare drum fills suggest a marching band. Well, a bit. The chorus hook is ridiculously catchy, and I've spent the last few months rewinding this one to hear it multiple times running, which is not something I often do.
"I change shapes just to hide in this place / But I'm still / I'm still / An animal"
Yeah.
Miike Snow
are a trio from the States and so far as I know this is their first single. Being savvy they've made it free. No doubt they named themselves after the movie director who did Audition, etc. Kind of smacks of thinking they're pretty cool to me, but whatever, doesn't distract from the song.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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19 May 2009
Weekly mp3 #57: Tosca - Springer
Been a while since I linked to something on RCRDLBL.Mellow opening electric piano chords. Downtempo metronome kick drum doofs along, brushed snares all jazzy-jazzying on top. A bass guitar lays out a bassline. Tinky palm mute guitar action and some gentle harmonics. More layers of clean guitar come along from time to time, sorta semi-Albatross, filling spaces when there isn't a tranquil Hill Street Blues Theme synth echoing about. Things build up a bit with some more elements, but mainly it's about cruising in the one mode.
This is not what Tosca
used to be like - they were part of that Viennese downbeat thing with bods like Kruder & Dormeister (indeed the latter is in Tosca) - but here it sounds like they've jumped right on the (slightly uneasy) easy listening, slow-mo beardy disco sound. Mudd, Lexx, Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas, and labelmates Quiet Village (sometimes). As with all of these there's something that suggests Pink Floyd instrumentals more than it suggests dancefloor action.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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12 May 2009
Weekly mp3 #56: Duckett - Stock Up On Antibiotics
A bit of softish ambientish technoish stuff from Mind Net the free sublabel of UK techno label Mind Tours.A soft repeating riff almost sounds like guitar .. or Boards of Canada. I dunno what's going on. Scratchy textures cruise about and all of a sudden a surprisingly fast kick drum pattern cranks up the forward momentum. Little shakers and percussive bits come sneaking in and out. Somehow it adds up to almost a samba feel on a track that's otherwise super washed out and spacious. Half-way through the track actually changes (oh shit!) and it's pretty exciting. Gosh.
No idea who Duckett is, although his discogs entry
suggests he's released a few tracks on other UK-based tech-ish labels. The rest of the free EP this tracks from is a bit more generic and very much of its time (2005).Labels: music, weekly mp3
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05 May 2009
Weekly mp3 #55: Hudson Mohawke - Polkadot Blues
Another bit of wheat separated from the chaff on XLR8R's website.Glitchy, helium party beats. Pitched-up synth stabs. Cheery melodies played on vocal samples like they did in the 80s, or would have had "they" been really drunk and/or 4-year olds. Or both. The track manages to keep from keeling over thanks to the instant-summer chords and bassline.
This seemed to fit with last week's contribution - a fairly similar mix of hip-hop and otherwise influences and that vein of syncopation that suggests the creators like feeling a bit sea-sick. Also, Hudson Mohawke
is another young producer I kind of resisted checking out properly because there was so much hype surrounding him. He's from Scotland. Saw him play at a great party in Auckland last year (thanks Dave ) and he pulled out a bunch of 80s soul amid the fairly noisy, chaotic electronic sounds. Makes a lot of sense of the mood of the above mp3 I reckon - formally quite nuts, but mood-wise pretty cheerful and approachable.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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28 April 2009
Weekly mp3 #54: Kuroma - In New York, Everything Is Tropical (El Guincho Mix)
Weekly mp3 #53: Kuroma - In New York Everything Is Tropical (El Guincho Mix)This fine track comes to you courtesy of Mountain Dew.
(Haha, what?) Yeah, they've started a web label thing. The El Guincho mix is the second one down if the crap interface is not helping.This really is ridiculously tropical sounding, if you include having some kind of weird fever with accompanying hallucinations as part and parcel with being in the tropics. What was a fairly straight (and fairly shit) 60s-ish poppy song is mixed into a swung thing that sounds like layers of digitally-generated analogues of marimbas (ahaha). Pizzicatto synth plucks jab away at the top end. The beat suggests all that post-Dilla instrumental hip-hop stuff, but the instrumentation is really bright and cheery. Vocals from the original are reduced to fragments, repitched, slurring, and reversing as required.
Someone somewhere made some reference to a psychedelic Spongebob Squarepants and I can see why.
I have no idea who Kuroma is / are or why he / they took the Japanese word for "car" as a name, and am really not interested. It's the substantial distance from the original that gives this mix any chance to be good, I reckon. El Guincho
is yet another one-man production outfit, Pablo Díaz-Reixa. He's from Spain. He played my town recently and I didn't bother to go because he seemed young and trendy. Gah, if only I was joking. Gah, classic example of the DJ = producer conflation I complained about a while back.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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21 April 2009
Weekly mp3 #53: Will Gresson + Luke Munn - Six Oh Seven
Luke hosts this on his band The Ribbon's Soundcloud account and it's also available via the Audio Foundation website. Another ambient cruiser. The track starts with some distant, hollow noise and develops through a series of bell tones, quietly building pads and towards the end of six minutes and seven seconds there are some woobly synth tones making things downright melodic. The end.
Luke Munn
and Will Gresson are two Aucklanders. Don't know anything about Will but know bits about Luke via the mailing list attached to the Audio Foundation, bods committed to "innovative audio culture" in New Zealand. So far as I can tell "innovative audio" means replacing the genre constraints of e.g. rock or dance music with another set of genre constraints, but whatever... my snarkiness is really limited to the attitude around the music and some of the AF list members. I like enough of the music discussed on the list to stay subscribed.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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14 April 2009
Weekly mp3 #52: Mobius Band - Friends Like These (and another whole EP of goodies)
Well, I guess week 52 means I've done this for a year. Or maybe next week will be a year, like how 2001 is the first year of the 3rd millenium... Crazy maths!Anyway, this week's mp3 is from the Mobius Band's own website.
Major pop hooks and quirky production. The verses are all crashing drum machines and weird bendy synth chords, with a guy singing in a slightly country rock vibe, then the cheery straightahead chorus reminds me of nothing so much as Nik Kershaw stuff like 'I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me'. Then we're back into syncopated drum machine land.
I've found Mobius Band a bit patchy over the years, but have been enjoying this tune a lot for the last year and a half or so. I've already linked you to the band's site above. They're an American 3 piece and have put out a few albums. If you liked this tune, I'd recommend checking out the free release they put out on Valentine's Day, Empire of Love.
It's a bunch of covers, ranging from Gram Parsons to Kanye West. I'll certainly be checking out their next release...Labels: music, weekly mp3
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07 April 2009
Weekly mp3 #51: The Phoenix Foundation - Going Fishing
Spinner hosts this number.Country-rock stylings, high-drama organ melody and a man singing a chirpy melody. The guitars go FRANG for the chorus. Boy-boy harmonies. Big nods to Grandaddy all over the shop.
I doubt any of my buddies in NZ reading this blog need any introduction to The Phoenix Foundation,
from my hometown of Wellington. Others may have already heard my remix of the same song. That'll do for now.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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31 March 2009
Weekly mp3 #50: Plat - Aftur
Another one from BetterPropaganda.Low-key electronic beats are laced with scrapey, dry guitar sounds. The track bips and bobs about. No vox. More guitars. Feels like something might be lurking around the corner or the whole thing might explode, but, nah, it just cruises along.
It looks like the official web presence of this Icelandic duo has long gone, as has their label's website. So all I can really say is, yeah, this is a duo from Iceland. They released one album, which this track appeared on. I never investigated further than this one, so dunno how the rest sounds.
Labels: music, weekly mp3
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24 March 2009
Weekly mp3 #49: Stephen Vitiello and Pauline Oliveros - Minutes after Frogs
This track is part of a massive repository of free music called Tu M'P3.Initial crackles say this is going to be some bog-standard, impenetrable microsound / glitch mallarky. Then the accordion kicks in. Drawn out notes pass over the electronic textures and quietly develop. Towards the end what sounds like some deliberately lo-fi shuffling and microphone ambience builds up and then it's all done. Very simple arrangement for an electronic piece, but really good.
I don't know much about American composer and visual artist Stephen Vitiello,
but associate him in my head with microsound / ambient noise type artists. He has another solo track on Tu M'P3, which is also really good. Pauline Oliveros
is much more well-known, chiefly for developing and spreading the word of "deep listening". Admittedly I don't really know what deep listening is, but in her hands it seems to be an excuse to bust out some delicious drones. Her Deep Listening Band did some great recordings in massive empty underground water tanks, using the reverb of the recording environment to deliberately swamp their acoustic instruments. Also her accordion looks huge. Does she play a bass accordion? Is she just really tiny? What the hell's going on?
The idea behind the Tu M'P3 site was writing soundtracks for images. Italian sound artists Tu M'
gave pictures to people they liked and then made the pics and MP3s available online. It ran from 2002-2005 and there's so much decent stuff there that it was hard to pick one MP3 to write about. It's a bit of a catalogue of contemporary electronic music producers. Guess I can always post more in later weeks...Labels: music, weekly mp3
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17 March 2009
Weekly mp3 #48: Amplifier Machine - Her Mouth Is An Outlaw
Last one from the local CDs I picked up while in Melbourne. Pretentious, no-fun review site The Silent Ballet have put this track on one of their mixes. Um, but don't let that put you off. :pThis beatless track sounds like 2 guitars - one scratching out a low repeating riff, one making a shimmery mess - and a violin providing a mix of textural scraping sounds and deep sustained notes. It ebbs and flows over the course of a good 9 minutes, with the textures shifting, but the harmonic content basically staying the same. An uncharitable summary would be a Mogwai track that never kicks in? All for the better, I say. Bloody post-cock.
The three-piece
released their debut album with this as the title track, first in 2007 through some Arts Victoria grant, then last year through US awesomeness label 12k. Labels: music, weekly mp3
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10 March 2009
Weekly mp3 #47: ii - Oho
Carrying on my theme of music I picked up in Melbourne, this is one you can download from XLR8R magazine's site.Low rattling noises are dwarfed by a loop of what could be guitar or violin or both, before big, live-sounding drums take centre stage and bell melodies and bits come in. Bass guitar starts chugging along before you know it. It's something like Tortoise before they got too huge (soundwise, not popularity). It's a good track, but I think one of the less distinctive on the album.
Perpetually lowercase ii
(pronounced like "eye eye" or "aye aye ") are a duo from Melbourne. Apparently they play live, and are mostly improvised, but not sure how they'd pull off half the stuff they've ended up with on their lovely album, Landlakes.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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03 March 2009
Weekly mp3 #46: Francis Plagne - Wings 6ft Leather Briefcase
Another Melburnian, this one with a free MP3 sitting on the Mistletone record label site.Ramshackle lo-fi pop song based around seemingly random strings of lyrics such as the title (and opening line). He reminds me of Jon Brion (he of Eternal Sunshine soundtrack / Kanye West co-production fame), but less "properly" produced. Beatles-y piano bits, multi-tracked backing vox, acoustic guitar, but not an obvious retro throwback.
Francis Plagne
is, as I said, a Melburnian and this song off his second album was done when he was only 19. So screw that guy. :P (Just jokes. Honest.) The album is a mix of this kind of music with really odd sounding lo-fi / noisy electro-acoustic bits. You know the business, burbly tones meet what basically sounds like someone running around recording the noises of scraping, buffing, hitting random objects. I like it a lot.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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24 February 2009
Weekly mp3 #45: Faux Pas - Rose's Lament
I've scheduled this to appear while I'm on holiday in Melbourne, since it's music that was made there. One of several good tunes from a free release on the artist's site from late 2008.'Heart of Glass' drum machine bips and surging (backwards?) vocal snippets move into a bit of a doof doof beat, but still accompanied by acoustic guitar, before a breakdown which makes me think of 60s acoustic pop stuff and in come the flutes, double-tracked with a nasal synth. Blam, back into the beat and on we go. Little arpeggios speed up and slow down. So dense. So much stuff in there. But so chipper and tuneful along the way. Nom nom nom.
This tune started life as a remix of 'Rose Rose' by Inquiet. You can check out different working versions of his remixing process on Faux Pas' blog.
Turns out Faux Pas is one Australian called Tim Shiel. He's obviously operating in the electronic domain, but I guess what he does is more sampladelic or what have you - there's a huge number of not-electronic sound sources compared to things that sound like synths or drum machines or whatever. Sounds like he plays the guitar, or at least that instrument shows up lots. He enthuses about Paul McCartney. Hm. The liner notes for the Waterfalls EP, which the above tune is off, have credits for strings and banjo samples.
The free MP3s on the store page
sound really good too, plus there are more remixes he's done over on XLR8R. The Pikelet one's particularly mint, as we kiwis say. (Um, that means good.)Labels: music, weekly mp3
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17 February 2009
Weekly mp3 #44: Morgan Geist - Detroit (feat. Jeremy Greenspan)
Download.com's music bit makes this tune available to us for free. How nice. Chipper synth chords sparkle away, then in comes Jeremy, the voice of the Junior Boys,
singing about the lights of Detroit. Melodic synth bass comes in and sparkly.. well, Detroit chords, before a four-to-the-floor kick finally drops in and we start cruising down some American highway in my head. The track keeps switching about with nice little chord changes and new melodic parts while the beat keeps on chugging.I recommended the album this is from in my round up of 2008. This definitely isn't my fave track on the album, but it is indicative, so if it didn't put you to sleep, check out more...
New Jersey producer Morgan Geist
is someone I picked up on as part of the bloopy UK response to techno. Warp records, etc. B12, Black Dog, Plaid, etc. May sound weird, but his earliest releases were on British label Clear alongside bods like Plaid and Matthew Herbert. So yeah, geeky electronica of the mid-90s, I suppose. Somewhere along the way he dug back another decade earlier and became a kind of doyen of 80s disco and electro weirdness... He got more well-known through his act Metro Area, who pull out the fairly 80s-sounding disco moves really, really well, and through his label Environ which has put out lots of goodies, including Kelley Polar.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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10 February 2009
Weekly mp3 #43: The Books - It Never Changes To Stop
Great tune off their 2005 album, still available via betterPropaganda.
Starts with acoustic guitar and banjo before the lurching, multitracked cello party begins. OK, maybe not a party. It's cruisy. In comes the classic The Books trick of throwing in confusing, context-free speech. In this case a stressed, voice-cracking man goes on and on, telling everyone "no moving, look up here, eyes closed". The cello goes off in new directions, a woman talks about how a man believed he could stop if he wanted to. End of track.
The thing I love most about The Books
is how they cut their own path without being all "woo, look at me, I'm experimental!" Both technically and content-wise, there seems to be no regard (either way) for fashion or progress, but they come out with something distinct and intriguing. This same lack of self-consciousness comes through in the mix of acoustic and electronic means to achieve what they're doing. Some tracks are all choppy and very explicitly edited electronically, others like this presumably got recorded in a similar way but sound like they could be done live very easily. No echoes, no reverbs, no contemporary pop or dance references in their sound... Yay for being focused. I also love that while they're not earnest - often sound like they're chucking in stuff for jokes and the way they edit speech to be nonsensical is great - they still seem really sincere. I mean, they sound like they're doing stuff very deliberately and care how it's going to come together. It's cool. I don't think my own music sounds anything like theirs, but I find them really inspirational nonetheless.
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03 February 2009
Weekly mp3 #42: Dafluke - New Strut
Pheek's label Archipel kicked off as a free-for-download netlabel and has quietly shifted its model towards a freemium style thing where you have to wait 3 or 4 months to get MP3s for free, and can get better quality files if you're willing to pay... or even vinyl and CDs if you're really wild and crazy. Anyway, this track dates back to the free-for-download, rep-building, hypens-between-every-word days.
I linked to another free release of theirs a while back. I have to say I prefer this EP by quite a margin, so am not sure why I held off on it in favour of the Ten & Tracer one...I dunno how to describe this really. It's house tempo, instrumental electronic stuff. Drum machine beats are more a backbeat than a house thing, with clacky percussion. Bendy guitar notes drop in over gated synth chords (What's gated? Think 'Age of Love' or Justin Timberlake's 'My Love' - reportedly the latter takes the gating pattern from the former). There's a slightly restless feeling with bits and pieces popping in and out of the mix, but the main elements are so cruisy it's not at all jarring.
Dafluke
is the nom de boom (sorry) of Canadian designer Lucas Granito. Heaps of DJ mixes and live sets on his site. Unlike lots of tech-y tunes his tracks tend to change at least once each. :) I bought one of his other singles, but have to admit this free EP is better. Although he did do a great track where he thoroughly butchered a Tweet acapella until (I guess he hoped) it was unrecognisable.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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27 January 2009
Weekly mp3 #41: Gang Gang Dance - Princes (feat. Tinchy Stryder)
Pretty demented (but also pretty damn hype) moment from RCRDLBL.Overall response the first time I heard this: what the hell is going on? An uptempo rhythm on a drum kit starts things off, clattering toms, in comes a pretty descending piano line... then London MC Tinchy Stryder comes out of nowhere "Oh shit, Gang Gang" ... then the monster electronic beats and heavy bass drop and everything kind of explodes into a frenetic dance track with Tinchy Stryder doing his thing... then Gang Gang Dance's mental vocalist comes in, sounding a bit like Yoko Ono or maybe... dare I say it... Bjork if she was more annoying. Then there's high, 80s metal guitar bits that amke me think of King Crimson circa 'Red'.
Check out the other track on RCRDLBL
too, I thrashed both of them last year... and had big hopes for the album they were off. Unfounded hopes, it seems, but hopes nonetheless. Gang Gang Dance
are some kind of New York art band, signed to Warp Records, and seem to see no dividing line between rock and dance music. No, not Battles. :p I found their first album nigh on unlistenable, but it was still kind of exciting in its madness... I'd hoped the followup was going to rock my socks off... sadly it was still a bit too weird in the wrong ways for me.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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20 January 2009
Weekly mp3 #40: J*Davey - No More
XLR8R offered this song up as part of their ongoing roll of MP3s. A slow jam about fucking. "Leave some footprints on the walls" Nice shuffle to the beats, the singer sounds somewhere between Erykah Badu and the super-squeaky (but awesome) Yummy Bingham. The bass and accompanying synths are ridiculously syrupy. The breakdown rises above the usual pull-the-bass-out cliches by replacing the synth-soup with hummed and sung versions of the same... It's awesome! The track as a whole rises above the ridiculous number of J Dilla influenced beats by actually bothering to be a song, and a good one at that.
The American singer/producer duo J*Davey
are apparently well-hyped in blog land. They released a couple of EPs last year and have at least 3 songs floating around for free.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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13 January 2009
Weekly mp3 #39: So Inagawa - Batai (Tom Ellis Remix)
trimsound offer up various free releases, including So Inagawa's EP 'Bake'.Bouncy tech-house track with dirty, descending bass, funny scratches and tiny snips of vocals.
Japanese producer So Inagawa
has written lots of tech stuff. I'm not particularly into his stuff, so I guess it's the remix treatment from Welshman Tom Ellis that makes the difference here. Tom's one of the founders of the trimsound label. I dunno why I mention their nationalities, as if it leaves any mark on the character of their music! Ah well...Labels: music, weekly mp3
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06 January 2009
Weekly mp3 #38: Blaktroniks - Look Back
The label that released this, Tokyo Dawn Records, shut up shop a few years back, although they are officially back now. Anyway, luckily the P2P EP is still available via a massive repository of free stuff, Scene.org. I still like the EP a lot, which is a good sign given I downloaded it 5 years ago (OK, probably 4 is closer, but, hey, it's 2009 now!).On this track a heavy, downtempo hip-hop beat jiggles about, with some electric piano stabs and distant synth squelches rubbing up against a meaty synth bassline. Ravey synth strings slurp in and out when it switches up a notch, adding a bit of friction. While it sounds like a hip-hop instrumental and it'd be easy enough to imagine vocals in the mix without things getting cluttered, the elements here are definitely enough to keep me entertained.
I haven't quite got to grips on whether Blaktroniks
is a one-man operation now or what... I know their roots are Detroit, but they're now based in Oakland. I used to chat with one guy over email back around the time this EP was released, because he was on the idm-making mailing list. Was a funny place for both of us, really, but he was emphatic that although he rapped and stuff he was keen to have Blaktoniks viewed outside the context of just hip-hop...Labels: music, weekly mp3
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30 December 2008
Weekly mp3 #37: Jodi Cave - Flotsam and Jetsam
Last of these for the year - and last Malty Media
show on tonight too. Here's something rocking for your New Year's Eve celebrations... OK, not at all. :PThis is another artist I'd assumed I'd posted about long ago. He was definitely in the top of my mind when I started doing this. Anyway, I stumbled upon this particular track in two places - Fat Cat Records demo archive
and Frozen Elephants Music put this on their first net release, the compilation The Map Is Not The Territory. Both spots are worth a browse.A long instrumental piece, starting out with chattering guitar harmonics and sounds of scuffed and scraped surfaces, sweeping about your ears. Slowly develops into something a bit louder and rolls out on a wave of distortion.
Jodi Cave
is a British producer doing his thing in an essentially electro-acoustic vein, but his penchant for friendly tones and guitar harmonics makes his music more accessible than academic electro-acoustic composers tend to be. He's released two CDs so far, both of which I'd recommend. He also has a free EP on Term, the (net-)sub-label of the rather good 12k.As an aside, people using "electro-acoustic" to describe pretty electronica with some acoustic instruments may be a nice example of folk etymology in action, but ... get your own term!
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23 December 2008
Weekly mp3 #36: Paper - Underground
Get this tune on Paper's Virb page
...Lovely Kraut rock throwback stuff... bone dry drums, bass and muted electric guitar lay out a groovy but still very much rock-feeling rhythm, while spiraling 'Fly Like An Eagle' keyboards echo about... shimmering layers of guitars build up as fragments of lyrics pop up all over the stereo field. The mood hints at menace before heading into super nice-nice land for a one-chord coda. ;)
Paper are a husband and wife duo, two members of another rather nice band Landing,
who get compared to Low quite a bit. It's all slightly unambitious feeling, but part of that might be superimposing assumptions based on what biographical stuff I know. I imagine this couple from a small town in the USA jamming when their baby's bedded down, stumbling upon some of the sounds they love from old records and trying to emulate that kind of feeling again. Still, I really like the album. "But it's not that I hate [this band]: I love it very much, but I love it against my better judgement" - Werner Herzog (originally talking about the Amazonian jungle, but near enough)
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16 December 2008
weekly mp3 #35: Owusu & Hannibal - What It's About
Another tune I love offered up by the almost-as-ugly-as-myspace RCRDLBL. I guess I shouldn't complain about the site too much, because I do find new music I like via their RSS feed.My fave tune on DJ Dixon's
excellent contribution to the Body Language mix series. It's a mid-tempo soul-y number that starts off with a descending falsetto vocal line that makes me 'Iko Iko' but keeps switching into 80s Michael Jackson territory. Rolling, tom-driven beat, dense vocal harmonies, crazy ESL lyrics that sound all the more dirty when a) sung so sweetly and b) being hard to understand ("we danced French for far too long"!?). Goes all inexplicably gospel at the end, with more inexplicable lyrics.Owusu & Hannibal
are basically a Danish soul duo who do some fairly tweaked shit. Their album is much weirder than a lot of that "nu [adjective]" smoothness. Mr. Owusu also added a touch of joy to the last Metro Area release, on the glorious 'Read My Mind'. Num num num.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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09 December 2008
weekly mp3 #34: Entsound - Dormancy
The Mood Gadget label site has links to one track off each of their release, including one from Entsound's Growth EP.Probably no surprise from either the name or where you're reading this that this is an instrumental, ambient track. Gets pretty tricky to describe most in any terms that sound anything beyond generic - like saying of a rock song "starts with just a guitar, then bass and drums join in, quite fast, then the arrangement quietens down while a man sings, then the guitars come back in for a chorus" etc. But, yes, this starts with a sustained note and builds from there, with very subtle hints at rhythm in the background courtesy of some kind of shaker sound, creating the aural equivalent of squinting. After a few minutes waves come in and somehow (I promise) that doesn't sound even remotely cheesy. Maybe it's cos they sound like they're coming in via a shortwave radio?
Mr Reid Dunn, aka Entsounds, seems a bit low on the internet radar, so here's a link to his discogs entry.
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02 December 2008
weekly mp3 #33: Animals on Wheels - More Of The Same
Andrew Coleman / Animals on Wheels has offered up this track over on his own website.Semi-improvised acoustic guitar and piano wanderings with some sudden bursts of electronic noise to break up the rustic (maybe rusty? no less ridiculous an adjective..) loveliness.
Andrew Coleman's been making music under this alias and his own name forever and ever. His site's really nice and I found his musings on what the hell to do about releasing music nowadays
strangely familiar... sometimes I feel like only musicians are buying each others' stuff these days. :) Which may be fine for those of us who are hobbyists.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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25 November 2008
Weekly mp3 #32: Kampion - Routes
Mexican net label Filtro provides access to this week's daftness. Staccato slices of what sounds like mambo sprinkled liberally over some heavily baked hip-hop beats. About half-way through the beats pick up pace and it all gets a bit more jigg(l)y than you might first expect. Dancehall moments? Kind of.
Kampion
is producer Guillermo Guevára and one half of Duopandamix. They have a funny sequencer toy on their site. I picked up a couple of their albums cheap from Amie Street, but I think his solo stuff is more up my alley.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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18 November 2008
Weekly mp3 #31: Mount Eerie - Wooly Mammoth's Absence
This tune can be nabbed from The Internet Archive along with six others from some tour-only EP that Mount Eerie decided to make available for free.Unadorned acoustic guitars strum away in either ear and then Phil Elverum's stupidly distinctive vocals come in. Confusing lyrics. Multi-tracked muffled vox provide backup, while brushed drums mix with layers of tapping, slapping, clapping... fapping? No. It's a really pleasant and accessible song, made weirder by the guy's voice and the grubby production. Basically completely typical Mount Eerie material if you've heard any of their stuff.
Phil Elverum's
probably one of the most popular peeps I've listed on this blog so far. At time of writing this EP's been downloaded 50,535 times and last.fm lists a combined listenership of over 200,000 people for his projects Mount Eerie 
and the Microphones. His popularity intrigues me, because he can't keep a tune very well, his lyrics are completely obtuse and his production is bizarre - murky and raw-sounding, while often adorned with electronic treatments and sounds. I guess he does write songs (not instrumentals), is an American (more than anywhere else, the USA seems to thrive on "indie"), and has an individual sound (which is not necessarily a factor in popularity, I guess).Labels: music, weekly mp3
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11 November 2008
Weekly mp3 #30: Drumlake - Spectral Archway
The track with the teeth-clenchingest title in the world can be downloaded from the fairly defunct-looking net label Monohm (have to navigate the frames to find release number 10) or listen first over at the Internet Archive. We're back to the hyperactive drones after all that turgid, depressing party music. Shimmery, swirling clouds of high-frequency stuff roll about over a sturdy bass of base. (All of which are belong to us?) Does clicking sounds pass by in stereo. Nothing much happens over the course of five and a half minutes. Yay! Should appeal to anyone who has heard of and enjoyed Pub or maybe Gas.
No idea who or what Drumlake is. The rest of the Monohm label's releases seem to be one guy from Austria,
so it wouldn't surprise me if it's him again, splintering his output under different aliases according to whoever he's been trying to rip off in his bedroom. Sorry, that's totally uncharitable, it's just so much net label output seems to be imitators working out their obsessions with the (commercially-released) innovators. Kids: try this at home!My wife has always liked this EP, so I figured I'd link to it on her birthday. :)
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04 November 2008
Weekly mp3 #29: The Metservice - Nose Shit
This was a chance download a few years ago that's proven to be less throwaway and more stickaround. Got it from his myspace, but you can get it from his virb page if you don't want to sign up to somewhere crazy. It's weird scuzzy rock - lo-fi digital sound, choppy editing, changes in tempo, fairly nonsensical lyrics.
I got a thing for Mr Bush
I like the way he works the people
I like the sound of his trumpets [falsetto vocal trumpet impersonation]
I like his sense of commitment
Leonardo Da Vinci's AC invented the computer and seven kinds of wheat.
(Have to admit I don't even know what an AC is!?)
Yeah.
Not much info about The Metservice. The guy's a Kiwi and is living outside NZ. If it's not a weird state of mistaken identity, from my time mucking about on NZMusic.com
before the wheels fell off, I'd say this guy was in Christchurch bands Solid Gold Hell and The Pedalling Machine Gunner, and now may or may not be in Australia or China.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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28 October 2008
Weekly mp3 #28: The Presets - This Boy's In Love (LifeLike Remix)
This is another free download over at RCRDLBL.com which I've been thrashing.Ridiculously anthemic stadium house* track - a totally contemporary-sounding refinement of the genre rules as laid-out in the 90s, with the kind of repeat-one-note-a-bar basslines and chintzy chords that Italo-disco thrived on in the 80s. Nice contrasts between the verses and choruses, mood-wise - semi-shouted, moody vocals verge on Nitzer Ebb type industrial fare before launching into the stratosphere with a bit of keening disco falsetto.
The Presets
are a couple of Strayns (um, Australians) from the very trendy Modular label (home to shit ol' Ladyhawke). They're classically-trained and were already established in an instrumental jazzy / post-rock / quiet band called Prop When they were starting up this dance-rock kinda thing. Mind you, LifeLike is the star here, really. He's a French producer, who had his first big track in 2002 but really blew up with 2005's Discopolis. He's almost obscenely single-minded, just mining a very narrow vein like he's trying to get this one damn track to come out right. Frankly, I'm pretty happy to listen to all the attempts, however similar they are.* If I may borrow from the KLF.
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21 October 2008
weekly mp3 #27: The Conet Project - tcp d1 3 counting control irdial
And now for something completely different. You can download this mysterious MP3 (and all 4 discs of The Conet Project, should you choose!) from the Irdial Discs label page. The d1 means it's off disc 1, if that's not obvious.The Conet Project was a bunch of recordings of short wave numbers stations. If you don't know about numbers stations you're in for a bit of a trip - they're as good as any kind of tangible evidence of the ongoing activities of intelligence communities as you'll find, but they're sufficiently enigmatic that you can impose whatever paranoid fantasy you like on them. Then there's the actual character of short wave radio sound. This one is particularly sonically nice, I reckon - not too noisy, with a woman reading a repetitive series of numbers in English and the trademark impact of amplitude modulation on the pitch of her voice. Elsewhere bits sound like cut and pasted loops.
Check out the 79-page PDF file
for a ridiculous amount of information about this project, each of the recordings and numbers stations more generally.There's a nice one of a woman repeating "yankee hotel foxtrot", which put me instantly in mind of Wilco's album of that name, and, lo, Wikipedia tells me
that's where they got the title.To have something put you in mind of something else is one of English's weirdest idioms, btw.
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14 October 2008
Weekly mp3 #26: Thomas Fehlmann - Lindt
Get this tune from Download.comSparkly, cheery beats from one of my favourites ever ever ever.
Fehlmann
has done stuff with The Orb, Sun Electric, and some great solo releases on interesting labels like Kompakt, Plug Research and R&S. He was a in a Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) band in the 80s with Holger Hiller and Moritz Von Oswald (Maurizio, Basic Channel, Rhythm & Sound). Yay for him.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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07 October 2008
Weekly mp3 #25: Schneider TM featuring Kpt Michigan - The Light 3000
Can't believe I haven't lined this one up before now, it's one I've definitely pestered people about in real life on many occasions... Schneider TM makes the tune available on a pop up page on his own site. More than a couple of years old now, this is a cover of The Smiths' 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out', done up as melancholy electronica. Vocoders, synthetic beats, surges of cracking distortion and heaps of editing. Seems like a fairly unlikely approach, but it's wonderful.
I'm assuming Erlend Øye's cover of the same song on his DJ Kicks album is inspired by this one, as he was working with Schneider TM around the same time.
Unusually, the "featuring" credit here is not the singer, kptmichigan
being a producer of fairly abrasive, instrumental electronic music. I guess the distortion and some of the vocal processing were his ideas. I don't know whether it's the collaboration or the original composition that lifts the quality of 'The Light 3000', but I certainly think it's better than either of the artists' usual output.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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30 September 2008
Weekly mp3 #24: Blue Vitriol - Breeder
I severely doubt there has ever been a greater label name than Jahtari. Hen's teeth! It's ridiculous. Alongside their virtual 7" singles, they've offered up a couple of EPs, including the source of this track, Blue Vitriol's They Went To Titan. Ridiculously low-bit beats give a squelchy Nintendo sound to the rhythm. Nice contrast to the hefty bass, piano skank and melodica melodies. Crap loads of dub fx, as you might expect from a label called Jahtari. Ripper.
Blue Vitriol
are a duo from the Bay Area in the US. I've been in email correspondence with Josh for years through various mailing lists and so on. We have a pretty similar take on a lot of things, music-wise.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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23 September 2008
Weekly mp3 #23: Solo Andata - A Ballet Of Hands
Couldn't think of anything special for my birthday, so here's a tune which is hopefully not about mutual masturbation. ;) You can download "A Ballet Of Hands" from Hefty Records. This is the second tune I've featured from that label, weekly mp3 #14 back in July was on Hefty too.A bunch of acoustic instruments, here - piano, acoustic guitar, subdued sax and occasional roaming double bass - with minor electronic treatments and some very quiet percussive elements that are basically an electronic version of brushed jazz drumming. The moments of distortion never really cause distress. Man. So mellow. If you're in the right mood, it's a thing of great beauty. Wrong mood and you'll fall asleep.
Solo Andata
are a duo who collaborate over the internet - one member's in London, UK and the other's in Perth, Australia. I bought the album this is off, the weirdly titled Fyris Swan, and it's fully worthwhile.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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16 September 2008
Weekly mp3 #22: Starchy Arch - Alright
This tune comes to us courtesy of Rappers I Know. The site features a whole lot of stuff by rappers the site's author knows. Who would've guessed?This is a big dumb party rap, one of a million tunes about partying and getting drunk. The ridiculously named Starchy Arch has a mighty drawl which is ace and sits nicely over a heavy beat with a nice vocal sample (Aretha? Sounds really familiar, anyway). The track's not world-shaking, but it's heaps of fun, which is all this kind of tune's about.
Not sure how much music Houston MC Starchy Arch
has put out, as this is the only tune of his I've heard. When I was living in Japan I downloaded the whole damn Rappers I Know site and sifted through it. Despite some fairly high-cred names on the production side of things (e.g. Nicolay) this is by far my favourite tune on the site.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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09 September 2008
Weekly mp3 #21: Unit 21 - September, 10th
Figure this is timely given the track title. The ancient techno netlabel Thinner released Unit 21's September-October EP in 2006. Thanks heaps to some dick for bringing it to my attention.My one word sum up of 'September, 10th' would be "pulsing". It's something like what I'd always expected to hear happening after tracks by people like Porter Ricks and Gas back in the mid-90s. A sort of rainy-day techno? The bassline is just a mechanical buzz and the spaces between the kick drums are filled up with swelling clouds of loosely harmonic stuff. The dub-techno standard of scattered record crackle shifts between roles of providing texture and rhythm. Short, relatively untouched flute passages roam about on top of the beats. Something in the back of my mind says "Blade Runner soundtrack". It's a great atmos, a single-beat pulse that throbs away with no particular feeling of bars or phrases. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1...
In some ways it seems strangely late for this to show up in 2006, given the tricks at play all seem pretty played out, but it's great. The atmosphere and textures remind me a lot of Burial, but obviously kicking off from the (more well-trodden) Teutonic techno starting point.
Unit 21 is a Russian guy called Stanislav Vdovin. Try and say his surname 10 times fast. He's hot enough to have a Virb page.
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02 September 2008
Weekly mp3 #20: Tunng - Woodcat
These oddballs share at least one MP3 from each of their albums on their website and this is my fave of what’s on offer.Rhythmic, acoustic guitar, picking out arpeggios with lots of major chords. Folky, in other words. Very English-sounding man singing disturbing lyrics about transforming into animals to a friendly melody. Clicking, kitchen sink percussion. Mellotron flutes. Rhythmic, clicking edits.
I'll look for a man to turn me into a hare
Just like they did when you did what you did
And the court came around and the verdict flew out
And the rats ran about and the change trickled down
And they left your brown body gentle and shivering
Back in the clearing with the deer in the evening
And I'll come and find you; small sleek and silent
And we'll live like lovers in an old wooden rhyme
And we're in for a lovely time
Right then.
Tunng are a British band centred around a duo of the guy who sings and plays acoustic guitar in a folk-y way and the guy who makes bleepy noises and does glitchy electronic production tricks. The songs often contrast happy or at the least peaceful sounding melodies with lyrics that have a real air of disquiet about them. Apparently when they play live there are heaps of members and they use all kinds of quirky things for percussion.
As with several other artists I've written about in my weekly mp3 posts, I downloaded this MP3 and thought it was so good I wanted to hear more... only to find out this is by far my favourite song of theirs.
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26 August 2008
Weekly mp3 #19: Matias Aguayo - Minimal (DJ Koze Radio Edit)
Good time party tune! Another one from RCRDLBL ... I admit the site kinda makes me throw up a little each time I look at the coolness on display. Found some good tunes there, regardless.First up, it's yacht disco. Don't be mislead by the title, the tune is a diss of "minimal", i.e. minimal techno. Matias Aguayo sounds more assured than I'm used to - somehow less annoying than I usually find him - and Koze's remix does big nods to 80s Ballearic stuff (um, Chris Rea, dare I say it?). Mudd or Phoenix would be fair reference points for contemporary stuff. The vox mix up Spanish "mas sensual, indeed) and English to add to the Mediterranean party feel.
Matias Aguayo is a producer and singer signed to über-chic German techno label Kompakt.
He was in Closer Musik and did another solo album for Kompakt too. Koze's also released some insane stuff for Kompakt. I like him a lot more than Aguayo usually, but the combination works awesomely, I reckon.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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19 August 2008
weekly mp3 #18: Ten and Tracer - Kunstenaar
The largely excellent label Archipel gives us this week's tune as part of the ridiculously named, free EP L-Msaria B-Lglass. Gah. If it's a nod to Autechre-style titling nonsense it's not to be encouraged. Mind you, at least Autechre's titles suggest some kind of playfulness. Just seems funny to have song titles you can't say.Kunstenaar is soft and fuzzy textural electronic stuff. Archipel is almost all techno and the choice of sounds and rhythms points that way. Tiny percussion sounds are scattered around rounded, bass drums knocking out a largely regular doof doof doof doof on every beat. An off-beat skank and a bassline that's not only longer than one bar but changes at various times (my gosh!) suggest more of a reggae feel, though.
When I first heard American producer Ten and Tracer
his music was more trad "IDM", fitting in with the sound of the heavyweights on Warp Records and wherever else. This EP puts him more in the territory of Jan Jelinek, Murcof, et al - bods making stuff which shows an interest in techy house stuff, but which is really still focused primarily on texture and home listening. That still fits the uncomfortable remit of "intelligent dance music", if you take that tag at face value, i.e. bourgeois music that uses the sounds of dance music but doesn't want you to get sweaty, boozed or your freak on.Haha, watch my neuroses about the way my own music could be criticised played out in blog-space! ;) In fairness to Mr Canupp, his "about" page suggests he doesn't take himself too seriously. :)
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12 August 2008
Weekly mp3 #17: The Dolls - Martini Never Dries
The band offer up this tune on their website.Loungey slow jam, all wandering piano and murmury female vox, with a nice touch of menace in the wobbling synth bass and beats.
Here's the blurb about the band from their site:
*The doll number 1: Vladislav Delay (Finland). Natural-born drummer. Acclaimed artist and producer with wide range of output. The studio doll.
*The doll number 2: Ars Electronica-winner Antye Greie aka AGF (Germany). Singer and producer who in addition to her acclaimed solo works has already worked with Craig Armstong on numerous occasions. We call Antye the art doll.
*The doll number 3: Golden Globe-winner Craig Armstrong (Scotland). Composer who has worked with everyone and everything from MOULIN ROUGE and RAY soundtracks to writing chart-topping hits for artists and acts such as Massive Attack, U2 and Madonna. You could say he's the film doll.
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05 August 2008
Weekly mp3 #16: Daniel Maze - How's The Serenity?
This is the title track from the How’s The Serenity? EP, which can be downloaded from the Test Tube net label.Starts off with nose(-out-of-joint) flutes, acoustic guitar, and rain sticks, with synthesized swells. Should be ridiculously cloying, but things get interrupted. The EP is experiments with tape, apparently, and when some synth + mellotron flute type lushness swamps the intro noises it springs up with that pause-button-being-released tape zhwoing. It’s a thing of awesomeness. And as abruptly as the sound arrives it squelches to a halt, everything falling back to the quiet residue of the sounds from the intro. This approach repeats unpredictably. I love it. Beautiful contrast between the pretty, fluid harmonic content and the way Mr Maze messes with it. Yum.
Daniel Maze
is a Canadian who so far has released only net releases. Quite a few of them. Some have beats, but not usually. Some are really glitchy and distorted, but not usually. This EP is my favourite.Post-rock fans will probably find a lot of interest on Test Tube. I like some of their releases a fair bit.
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29 July 2008
Weekly mp3 #15: Sonmi451 - Vladivostok
Download this tune, or all of The Quiet EP, from Monotonik.Soft, chiming chords, muffled clicking beats, and echoing voices yabbering away intermittently in Japanese and English. Something along the lines of Shuttle 358, Biosphere or maybe the quietest moments of Electric Birds.
Sonmi451
is a Belgian guy, named after a robot from the David Mitchell novel Cloud Atlas. He’s done a bunch of albums and the above netlabel release reissues material from an older, out of print CD.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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22 July 2008
Weekly mp3 #14: Some Water And Sun - Gloomy Town
Download the song from Better Propaganda.A very simple soul vocal meets blippy electronica instrumentation. Percussion and slow-mo beats carry a repeating vocal hook sung by a Japanese guy in English. The instrumentation and treatments are very indicative of John Hughes's later output, really. The bassline reminds me of Herbie Hancock's 'Chameleon' (I think it's the dotted-quaver, ascending semitone thing) with added squelch.
I don't know much about the singer, but, yeah, John Hughes. John Hughes III. Hefty Records
label boss. Indie rocker turned post-rock solo act turned glitch+Black American music traditions producer. I imagine being the son of the guy who directed The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and all that leaves you in a weird position PR-wise. It's not like John & Julian Lennon or whoever. There's not really a definable audience overlap to milk, you're obviously doing something completely different, working in a different medium, etc. etc. but, man, dad's really famous, so you'll at least pique people's interest if you mention the connection... I guess the best angle is to hook up members of Tortoise to write the soundtrack for your dad's next movie. Then release soundtrack on your label and, yay, you have some relevant connection for journos to go on about.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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15 July 2008
Weekly mp3 #13: Songs: Ohia - The Lioness
Download 'The Lioness' from the label's website. Completely different from the last couple of weeks, this one. Liking immaculately chiselled electronic production doesn't preclude appreciating the exact opposite...My wife has called this crash-your-car music, but I have a soft spot for a certain kind of gloomy slow rock stuff. The vagely country bits, I guess - Mark Kozelek / Red House Painters, stuff like that. Lyrics like "I want to feel my heart break, if it must break, in your jaws / want you to lick my blood off your paws". This one's not Steve Albini-produced, but has a similar aesthetic to the Songs:Ohia tracks that are. That is, it avoids contemporary standards for sheen and polish in studio recording, and leaves heaps of space for some decent dynamics. Works really well.
Songs:Ohia was essentially Jason Molina's project. He's more recently been recording as Magnolia Electric Co.
This tune is another one of those cases where I heard this song and thought "Shit, got to hear more of this!", then heard more of this and went "Ah. Shit." Molina does have other really good songs, but just not much that suits my tastes. Again I find myself pondering what the X factor is, but I won't go on about that again... Just go read Equus to understand my dilemma. ;) Heh, that's probably about as cheerful as this song!Labels: music, weekly mp3
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08 July 2008
Weekly mp3 #12: Dabrye - Smoking The Edge
Download 'Smoking The Edge' from Epitonic.Dabrye
is probably my favourite producer of this century. Heh. It’ll get harder to make such crazy-sounding statements as time goes by, I guess. I'm also probably more deeply influenced by music from the last century, but, still, I love the direction he pushed a sound that I was already in love with. It’s easy enough to trace his influences, especially as he (Tadd Mullinix) does things in a bunch of styles under different names, so when it’s Dabrye time he’s clearly rounding up a particular set of genre tropes and working with them.This is the first track I ever heard from Dabrye and still one of his better ones. A jagged, wordless robot voice acts as the main riff, swung against the super-crisp drums. It's got a hip-hop feel but Tadd's background in techno is blatant. There's some great staggering drum fills and tweaks but to a large extent you know exactly what's coming from the first 20 seconds. The key with this kind of approach is making the elements sufficiently awesome that you want to hear the same thing over and over again. :) He also knows to keep the track short. Good call.
Since this track came along Dabrye's sound has got grubbier and hazier, and there's been a big surge in people doing things in a similar territory. Things start to get interchangeable to those who aren't already into the sound... I swear most would think it was all one producer if you made a mix from tracks by Dabrye, Flying Lotus (who is getting big post his Warp signing), Lukid, Take, Caural, and other artists on compilations like The Sound of LA and Beat Dimensions. Chuck in some appropriate J Dilla instrumentals to show the common starting point...
So I think I've past saturation point for this kind of sound - while there are undoubtedly good things still going on, after however many albums of similar sounding stuff the pay-off feels pretty diminished. Still, Dabrye. You could nitpick aspects of his sound that make him stand out, but what separates the good from the bad is not something you can neatly map against formal elements... Maybe it comes back to the emotivist assertion that "I like it" is the same as "It's good".
Anyway...
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01 July 2008
Weekly mp3 # 11: Lukas Nystrand & Karl Johansson – Untitled R&B Instrumental
The net label Ageema Music Club mainly seems to be a vanity press for one guy, Lukas Nystrand, with a couple of friends in tow. I could’ve linked to a bunch of different things here, cos there are plenty of good pickings, from Lukiss’s Gameboy-in-dub stylings, through the J Dilla-gone-glitchy / Avalanches territory of Glenny #417, to Julien Love's punky dub-disco tracks.I’ll be cheeky and link directly to the MP3
, because the page is a bit hard to navigate. It’s on We Shall Not Be Moved from 2005.The track title should give you a good idea of what you’re in for, but given that R&B extends over the past 40 years and most recently seems to include stadium trance (looking in your direction, Timbaland!
), I’ll make some notes anyway. It’s downbeat and grubby, and sounds to me like they digested what ?uestlove unimaginatively called the “dirty sound” the Soulquarians were reaching for on D’Angelo’s Voodoo and Common’s Like Water For Chocolate. It’s grubbier than that, though, much more of a 4-track home recording vibe. Live bass guitar, by the sounds of it, wonky keys, programmed strings and beats. Always been a fan of those oomf and clap beats and this kind of slightly awkward, staggering rhythmic feel. Overall, the track has the kind of vibe I always hope to hear from Madlib, but, frankly, he’s about the most over-hyped producer working today. Ridiculously inconsistent anyway.
No idea who Lukas Nystrand & Karl Johansson actually are, other than that Lukas seems to be a designer by trade and they’re presumably both Swedish.
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24 June 2008
weekly mp3 #10: Antiguo Autómata Mexicano - Broken In Your Room Again
This track is part of a Background Records sampler on the now defunct Minlove site. Well, it may come back some time, but it's been out of action since 2006, so maybe not.I have fairly minimal love for "minimal" where it's a stand-in for "techno" now that that term is relatively uncool. 'Broken In Your Room Again's not really so techno, it's lead by the bassline more than the beat and spiralling arpeggios and echoing layers of percussion don't exactly cry out "dancefloor fodder". It is electronic music of the right kind of tempo, I guess. Anyway, I like it.
Antiguo Autómata Mexicano is one guy, Ángel Sánchez Borges. He released a really good album last year called Kraut Slut, which opened with a track called 'Rother, Dinger, You and Me', so the guy is demonstrating his kraut rock love fairly unequivocably. I reckon that shows through in 'Broken In Your Room Again' too.
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19 June 2008
Weekly mp3 #9 take 2: Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha - Love Will Tear Us Apart
OK, since Tuesday’s effort failed, here’s another attempt. You can download a ridiculously lo-fi MP3 from the band's website.A cover of Joy Division's most famous song. Tuvan throat singing, acoustic guitar. Odd.
This is the only contemporary music I've heard from Tuva, a chunk of Russia that borders Mongolia and which Taiwan claims is part of its China. Throat singing is all about singing two tones at once, by controlled resonance of the nasal cavity. The main tone is brutally low, and the overtone is a whistle that pretty much doesn't sound like it comes from an animal. If anyone knows Massive Attack's 'Karmacoma', the melody in the chorus is actually a throat singer, not a synth.
The information on the band's site makes the situation in Tuva sound pretty bleak. Probably because it is.
I played this at the last Malty Media night.
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17 June 2008
weekly mp3 #9: anders dahl - kärrsilja - metal bowls, electronics, bouzouki
This week's offering is a change of pace in two ways - it's not a song (or anything to do with "pop music" in any sense) and it's from a "net audio" release, i.e. it's from a free MP3 release that's not attached to some commercial release available in a physical format.EDIT 18/06/08: Sorry, turns out Komplott have redesigned their site, and this release is no longer available.
This track is part of an EP called Kärrsilja, flockblomstriga 2
. The EP was released in 2004 by the Swedish "contemporary music" label Komplott, which does both free MP3 and commercial CD releases.Anders Dahl
makes what could be called electro-acoustic music (if you believe that doesn't have to be made by academics), noise (if you believe that doesn't have to be loud or noisy) or free improv (if you don't care about whether he's really improvising!). The ridiculously prosaic subtitle of "metal bowls, electronics, bouzouki" tells you exactly what you're in for. I'm guessing Dahl improvised three or four tracks from these sources, layered them up and did very little additional treatments. Maybe he played along with what he had previously recorded and responded to those tracks. Maybe not. :) Likewise, it's a bit of a moot point as to whether he can play the one traditional instrument in the mix, the bouzouki, because he largely plucks out occasional harmonics.As may be clear from my description, I can certainly understand how this kind of music can seem artless, frustrating, or plain fruitless to someone listening to it. As with most music, I'm at a loss to say why this particular collection of sounds rocks my world. Formally, I like the restraint in the use of sources, and I like the timbres of those sources individually and in combination. But it's always difficult for me to pin point anything more than that.
Friends have asked in the past whether I derive some kind of intellectual enjoyment out of this kind of thing, but I don't think that's the case any more than with any other kinds of music... There's really not that much to think about here, is there? :)
It's been 4 years now since I first downloaded this EP and I still come back for repeat listens. Not sure it would work for everyone, but I've found the best listening conditions for this kind of thing are first thing in the morning on a sunny day when I have some time to relax.
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10 June 2008
weekly mp3 #8: david byrne & brian eno - regiment
My favourite track from 1981's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts was made available for download when the album was reissued in 2006. Lots has been said and written about it, but if you haven't heard of it around the time Eno was producing Talking Heads he and that band's frontman wrote an album together. It's usually described as instrumental, which is somewhat ironic given it's built around the premise of writing instrumentation around pre-existing vocal recordings. I suspect in this case "instrumental" = "David Byrne does not sing on this record". :p'Regiment' is the album's most blatant funk moment, which may be in spite of having Bill Laswell guesting on bass. Never liked that guy. I'm much more excited by the soaring guitar laid down by one of Eno's more frequent collaborators, Robert Fripp. It's a slightly edgier sound than the Frippertronic vibes of Bowie's '"Heroes"', but that gives you a general idea of the sound... It's pretty great.
The vocalist, says Wikipedia, is Dunya Yusin, a "Lebanese mountain singer". I thought she sang songs, not mountains, but she sounds amazing anyway. Crikey.
If you have the urge, Byrne and Eno have offered up all the tracks from the original multi-track recordings of a couple of songs, which you can download
and remix. As they point out, it's in-keeping with the spirit of the original... although I have to say I think it'd probably be more in-keeping with the spirit of the original if you could release the results under your own name and get royalties off them. ;)Labels: music, weekly mp3
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03 June 2008
weekly mp3 #7: the deadly deaths - see the world
Some New Zealand stuff this week, specifically from the much maligned (fairly, in my experience!) city of Hamilton. You can get four free tracks by The Deadly Deaths from their virb page.Their songs are fairly samey, but I find 'See The World' the most catchy. Key words, I guess, are "pared back". The appeal for me is definitely in how simple the track is, both in terms of what's being played and its arrangement. Sometimes I love subtlety and detail, but that sense that a band is doing exactly what's needed to make something work is pretty enticing too...
Not much more to say about this one.
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27 May 2008
Weekly MP3 #6: Peter, Björn and John - Young Folks
This week's song is available to download from Better Propaganda, which is a relatively unannoying free downloads site.Whistling intro! Druggy-sounding boy/girl duet! ESL lyrics! Spector-ish 60s throwback vibes! Exclamation marks! I've been listening to this song for a couple of years and haven't got bored of it, which is as good a sign as any that it's worth sharing.
I don't know think it makes a large amount of sense, but 'Young Folks' reminds me a lot of a couple of tunes from the 60s - Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot's 'Bonnie & Clyde' and Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood's 'Some Velvet Morning'. It doesn't really sound that much like either of them (especially not the latter), but in generic terms they're all 60s-sounding duets between two kinda lazy, slightly druggy sounding vocalists, one male the other female. In this case the song is actually only 2 years old and was written in Sweden, but never mind.
The guest singer actually reminds me most of Hope Sandoval (of Mazzy Star), which, again, is a bit more about the vibe than anything quantifiable...
I checked out the album this song is from and was fairly uniformly unimpressed. None of it had the big sound, and the absence of the guest singer showed up how annoying the guy's singing is. :)
When I was living in Tokyo this song and its cute retro cartoon video
seemed to win hearts, so you could hear this blaring away on the massive video screens above the big Hachiko crossing in Shibuya 7 days a week for a while. I have no idea whether it was much of a "hit" anywhere...Labels: music, weekly mp3
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20 May 2008
Weekly MP3 #5: Barbara Morgenstern / Mapstation / Paul Wirkus
OK, my incredible plan of supplying a legally available MP3 from each of my fave albums of last year is turning out to be extra special... my assumption that these days lots of people made available at least one full track from any given new release seems to be all wrong.I'd also expected the electronica nerds to be the ones most relaxed about this kind of thing. However, two of my enduring favourites of 2007 were quiet electronic affairs - Sart by Norwegian duo Pjusk
and All The Birds Were Anarchists by the Austrian/German "supergroup" (heh) September Collective - and I can find no free downloads from either album. There's streaming stuff and what have you, but that's it.Last on my album list was Woolfy's If You Know What's Good For Ya!! and aside from the fact that doesn't seem to have got a physical release yet (apparently Rong's distribution fell over) I can't find free MP3s from that one either... As per usual, there're some streaming tracks (including my fave, 'Odyssey') on his myspace...
So this is the end of that briefly lived theme, but I've found a means to wrap that up while marking the more free-form approach I'll probably take in coming weeks. It turns out all 3 members of September Collective do have free songs online...
From left to right:
Mapstation - Tapes
Stefan Schneider is the reason I came across September Collective in the first place. As well as his solo guff as Mapstation he's a founding member of two other bands I really like(d?), Kreidler and To Rococo Rot. His music may be considered boring, repetitive, monotonous... or subtle, trance-like and meditative. I like it a lot. His last Mapstation album was one of my faves of 2006 - at that point I hadn't really expected an ambient album to come along and grab me as much as it did.
Barbara Morgenstern - Aus Heiterem Himmel
Morgenstern's also collaborated with another member of To Rococo Rot, Robert Lippok. Her solo work is songs, for the main part, whereas I'm assuming her part in September Collective is mainly pianist...
Paul Wirkus - Blask
His approach seems to involve a giant table of boxes, cables and wires, which certainly has appeal quite distinct from that of the soft environment of laptop performance. There's a certain organic quality to September collective that I've romantically decided is due to Paul's involvement.
I like this track until the vocals come in. Hm. Maybe you'll like it more and be ever so grateful that I shared something I didn't even particularly like! Ah well.
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13 May 2008
Weekly MP3 #4: People Press Play - Hanging On
Man, scoured the internet for a free LCD Soundsystem MP3 and came up with nothing. Dumb. Anyway, figure anyone who wanted to hear last year's Sound of Silver has managed to by now.No luck with the less popular Lukid
either...So, third try, People Press Play. This song is available to stream or download on their Myspace.
This band's self-title album dredged up a lot of memories of music I really loved about 15 years ago - fairly shoegazey stuff with female vox (Curve, Slowdive, Lush, and, yeah, My Bloody Valentine) - but mixed with elements of dance music and electronica from the intervening period. 'Hanging On' is fairly representative of the album, but, to be honest, isn't a highlight. I like the vocal melody, and the beatbox-ish percussion which always has me wondering if I'm hearing a human or a machine...
Three out of four members
of People Press Play have been making music together for 12 years, first as Future 3 and more recently as System, and I've always liked what they've got up to, from earlier trip-hop type gear through the skittery glitchiness of the late 90s to their solo stuff as Dub Tractor, Acustic and Opiate (c.f. some of the backing track's on Björk's Vespertine). I wasn't familiar with the vocalist before, but I've read that she has certainly been releasing music prior to this collaboration.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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06 May 2008
Weekly MP3 #3: Group Five - Distant Stations
This track's from my mate Andy's second release, Distant Stations, which you can freely download from last.fm.The EP's title track is pretty indicative of Group Five's "sparse scuffy abstract-hip-hop instrumental stuff." I was thinking about linking to the "my rhythm section is melting!" scratch-collage of 'East India Company', but this is the one that's become an enduring favourite. The sparseness and repetition in some Group Five tracks can generate a degree of intensity, but in this case I find the atmosphere really relaxed. The bending stand-up bass part is nice and languid, and the piano bits are really, uh, widescreen. :) Expansive.
Group Five
is the recording moniker of Andrew Loughnan, a friend, some-time collaborator, and co-label owner of Angry Rabbit (haha, sounds so flash when it's really just a few friends!). He notes on his site that someone once compared his style to a faeces-flinging monkey, and I'll have to accept responsibility for that.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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29 April 2008
Weekly MP3 #2: Fennesz - Winter
OK, one week in and I've failed to find a legit, free MP3 off one of my faves of last year (Fennesz & Sakamoto's Cendre). Not ideal. So in lieu of that, here's something by one of the artists.Fennesz's 'Winter' is from a free MP3 compilation called Warm & Scratchy that Adult Swim (yes, the cartoon channel) released last year. You can get it from MP3.com
. Most of the comp is pretty average and roughly falls in the category of indie rock - bands like Broken Social Scene, The Liars, TV On The Radio, etc. but I think this one's a goody.'Winter' is fairly typical of Fennesz's material post-Endless Summer. It's a crackly, slightly fractured instrumental piece based on Fennesz's guitar work doing a bit of a fan dance behind dense computer processing. The tendency towards white noise is almost unimaginable and the brutally piercing high-end crackles are gone in favour of ... well, it's ambient music, isn't it?
Christian Fennesz
is an Austrian guitarist who has become something of a darling in contemporary electronic circles. He wins awards from the electro-acoustic academy (e.g. IRCAM's Ars Electronica Prix ) and is loved by people who like more mainstream electronic stuff too. His first release was a 7" called Plays, which had unrecognisable instrumental covers of classics by The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones. Pretty ideal way to secure your place in arty, post-industrial circles - two pieces of jarring, abrasive noise that at least nod to the rock canon but can be read as either paying tribute or pissing on it from a great height. And on 7"! Oh boy!All mocking aside, I do find his music by and large pretty engaging and exciting stuff. He's getting increasingly quiet and slushy, which leaves me periodically wondering if he's buffed off too much of what I liked initially.
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22 April 2008
Weekly MP3 #1: Dntel - The Distance
I decided to do something like the Friday music posts on Look Out, He’s Got A Knife but for whatever reason am going with only legally available stuff. Thought I’d start with some tracks from my favourite albums of last year. Right, action...This song and the title track from Dumb Luck are available for download from Better Propaganda
.'The Distance' is a boy / girl country song based around a curious, deceptively detailed electronic arrangement. I was going to write deceptively rad, but I think its radness is up front from the opening moment. It's a pity to hear the song out of context, because it's preceded by an even more country song (with vox by Jenny Lewis
of Rilo Kiley ) that ends in such a way that this tune initially sounds like some kind of coda.The vocals on this one are by Arthur & Yu
, who I dutifully checked out (they toured while I was living in Tokyo) but found fairly boring in their natural habitat. It's the contrast of the style of song with its setting that I like so much, when it's back to a bit of guitar and a tambourine I lose interest...Dntel himself is a guy called Jimmy Tamborello
. Dumb Luck is his second album (bar a collection of demos) and a switch to Sub Pop from one of my fave labels, Plug Research . Jimmy's band The Postal Service provided Sub Pop with their biggest seller since signing Nirvana in the 90s, so I guess the label was eager to jump on his next solo effort.One thing that I guess makes me love Dntel is that what he's doing is the kind of territory I ordinarily find fairly barren. The musically conservative, smug world of contemporary US indie meets the cosy, all-vitality-subsumed world of 90s UK electronica. Ain't no party like a bourgeois party!
In Dntel's case the music remains fairly outside the gestures of either the soft and easy-listening end of pop electronica (some things on Morr Music
for example) or microsound / clicks & cuts type stuff (I'm thinking of things like Gel: / Dorine Muraille or So or some of the things on 12K and its Happy sublabel). It is pretty big and lush sounding in a lot of ways, but often involving elements wandering a bit out of time or pitch, with lots of keening tones, distant clatters and scuffs, and even (gasp) genuine surprises.Labels: music, weekly mp3
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