Originally posted by Sykonee
Only an "adequate" description? Oh dear, I gotta' step up my game. :p
There is no bigger honour than saving me some word count okay.
quote:
Also, is it just me, or is Audiokonstrukte style-biting Above & Beyond?
Yeah that cover art eh. Difference is this one has the fancy pastel colors making it far more hip and happening.
Bierheld
Ok, Now that I've gotten a working system again - (no more HDD's for me, ever. Sick of 'em. Giving SSD's a shot now) - it's time for some more stuff. Here we go:
Bazarov - Limerence 09 EP
Discogs: not present
Genre: deephouse
Year: 2014
Recommended: eh
Youtube Sample: no dice
This one. I have no idea who this/these guy(s)/gal(s) is/are as my regular sources seem to draw a blank. This Bavarov certainly seems to be rather obsessed with American music culture, Untitled in particular has a muffled sounding vocal that just can’t shut up about it. The EP has this Inner city blues thing to it, starting off with a rather unremarkable take on it with the opener but quickly moving on to more loopy, pulsating vibes. What it all results in is a somewhat bizarre and clunky affair, but kind of fun nonetheless mostly due to the tracks in the middle of it. The Last one is a bit tiring.
Well then. I have to say, although there was enough promise audible in the angelsphere LP to warrant a backtrack on the guy I wasn’t quite expecting to stumble across what as far as I’m concerned is one of the all-time great techno albums. I just can’t stop listening to the damn thing.
Now, A thing to know about me is that I almost exclusively listen to whatever happens to float around in my little bubble, so if there was ever some great hype around this guy it’s completely possible for me to have missed it especially in 2012 when my head-up-the-ass level was reaching an all-time height, so if there are any people around that are screaming at me right now I’ll hold my hands up. That said I can’t seem to dig up much fuss about this guy, so I’m assuming there really wasn’t. Which is explainable, since this really isn’t the sort of release that would pick up much of such. It’s almost completely derivative after all, Audiokonstrukte being a guy who’s frame of reference was drawn during the late nineties techno boom, a period I think many here hold dear.
Dancefloors will certainly shrug at it, this not being a very energetic album, and then there’s the fact that it was released on a Lithuanian label that’s been in business for only four years now. All in all there’s plenty of reasons for this to have gone by relatively unnoticed, which would excuse me for my ignorance at least.
Now, having spent far too many words on that pickle, let’s talk about the music. What is it? It’s smooth, futuristic techno with a dubby aesthetic. That’s about it. So why is this good? Well, there’s just a complete absence of things that are wrong with it. It is like the perfect mixture of the hypnotic song structures and jazz-like complexity of nineties techno with the warmth and obsessive texturization of modern dubtechno. There is no filler, yes album-flow and with that I’m out of words for it. It’s a beautiful thing.
If there’s anything else to comment on it’s that they seem to have taken another step forward in production quality judging by the recent LP I covered, although I can’t say that this is lacking anything in that department. It also isn’t as crisp and edgy as you’d perhaps expect from a techno record but that’s also some of the charm.
With this and Emmerichk’s album my stance on the retro-focused music hype has relaxed considerably I have to say. Time for less “Look at these craaaaazzzy nineties sounds” and more “I just want to tell a story in my mother’s tongue”, or something. Well you get the idea.
Oh, and it’s a free release as well. Not like that means much anymore with the streaming services of today, but still a nice thought. You can get a zip file from the label’s site.
The trick to selling a compilation, of course, is to put all your best in the first few trackslots so samplehunters like me take note and decide to get the whole thing based on those first impressions.
This is certainly what happened here. The real highlights, Logarythm’s In The Realm Of Senses and Jakub Mildner’s The Planet's Last Dance both show up in the first four slots and offer a wildly entertaining cocktail of disco-infused electronica. Expecting more of the same, I was rather distressed to find out that the bulk of this record is composed of a seemingly endless stream of ‘dancefloor techno for the clubs’. Interesting perhaps if you really like techno flavors that were more popular earlier this millennium, and to be fair I would not complain at all if some of this stuff found its way to more of the dancefloors of today. There is good here, don’t get me wrong. As a listening experience though it was almost demoralizingly bland for me.
Sailing - Musica Puro del Mar
Discogs: not answering my calls
Genre: waves seagulls acoustic instruments
Year: 2014
Recommended: err
Youtube Sample (oops it’s the whole thing!): http://youtu.be/fj9KN9Tvq-c
This is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. An all-out assault of super cheesy Balearic chillout music. I decided to brave the whole thing. It was time to diversify my listening habits some more anyway, does a person good every once in a while.
Initially I cringed at every eye watering piano loop. Ugh, I thought we were past that now. I suppose this sort of music has been in decline over the past decade or so which is hardly surprising as it is very much a one trick pony when you look at it on the larger scale.
So what did I get from it? Well I can’t deny that the music has some enchanting properties. When I got to the halfway-point it started to get a grip on me and towards the end I was actually thoroughly enjoying it. Would I ever listen to it again? Hell no. But it served it’s purpose as an oddity I suppose. Maybe give it a look but make sure you know what you’re getting into here.
Oh and there’s a DJ mix on there too. Although I can hardly imagine it being too different an experience from the full album considering it all tends to blend together for me anyway, then again what do I know right. Fat chance of me trying it out though. The guy was nice enough to put it on youtube though, link's up above for anyone wanting to check it out.
Sykonee
The Sailing link goes to the Reset, Vol. 2 instead. Also...
You seem rather shocked though, are you alright? It was only a small mistake, give me a break
Sykonee
quote:
Originally posted by Bierheld
Whoops, fixed some other stuff as well now.
You seem rather shocked though, are you alright? It was only a small mistake, give me a break
More for the fact such a CD exists, much less you'd somehow stumble upon it. It looks like the sort of throwaway you'd find sitting at the counter of a herbal medicine shop. Not a good one either, but a tacky Barcelona knock-off in San Jose.
Bierheld
Oh, well. I come across like this on a regular basis to be honest.
I dig through backwater weblabel compilations these days like, you don't even know. It's like crack to me. Sometimes I find some absolute gems, but even when I don't I'm always guaranteed a curious, sometimes baffling experience. Just what you need to bring yourself back down to earth every once in a while you know.
Bierheld
Just noticed, expand the video description on the YT video if you need another laugh. "Armin Van Buuren! Remember 'sail' folks? This is just like that, honest!"
Bierheld
Okay, the busy holiday times have thankfully ended now. Here's some of the things I've been listening to over the period:
How about this one then. Took a look at another lucidflow record, I mean the two tracks from the klartraum record that I said were best seem to have made it onto their latest label comp so they’re clearly reading my reviews right?
Now, with techhouse being what it is there has been no shortage of people trying to incorporate some more worldy ethnic sounds to the genres palette. The main attraction here is one of those attempts and it’s called kolmanskop. It’s a work that has much in common with the EP from Gorge Soera I looked at a while ago, and also the klartraum EP has leanings towards this sound which is further evidenced by how they show up as remixers here.
Unfortunately he doesn’t quite make it happen with this record. My main point of critique towards the original track here is one that I’ve leveled at one of Klartraums tracks as well a few weeks ago, being that they spend a lot of effort shoehorning in lots of exotic sounds and then forget to do anything interesting with them. They’re just sort of there, coming and going as several second long loops overladen with effects that push them into the background. It works as texturisation, but doesn’t do much in terms of supporting a structure or progression. And that’s the main problem here, because when you get rid of that there just isn’t much left to hold on to, only that endlessly plodding percussion loop that doesn’t seem to evolve at all throughout the track’s 11 minute runtime.
So the main dish was a disappointment then, what about the other tracks? Well the opener as well as the follow-up are both exceedingly generic techhousers. I have no feelings about them, went in the one ear and out the other. Spacewalk is, again, a loopy minimalistic techhouse plodder with vague impressions of spacefaring themes and samples spliced in throughout it’s runtime which is approaching 14 minutes this time. Doesn’t get much sillier then that.
The klartraum remix is not bad, but overall this EP is a disappointment. I mean they were definitely trying here and It’s certainly not horrible to listen to or anything, but sometimes that whiff of wasted potential makes it even harder to bear then something that failed simply for lack of merit.
Kolmanskop is a track that should have been much more then it is, like it should have been something that put lucidflow on the map. It certainly has all the elements in place and the promise is apparent right from the start. If he could only have worked on the percussion a bit more, given the other elements some more room and had them progress the track along with them, maybe even include some longer breakdowns here and there. Then you’d have had a monster of a track.
As it is though, it’s a bit of mess that’s dumped onto an EP with some valueless leftovers that will soon be forgotten by all. (By which I mean me of course, nothing else matters here after all)
So this album kicked up a bit of dust. Personally I only knew him from one track called The Revelation Of Frances Green (yes, he used to actually name his tracks!), a very compelling piece of minimal ambient released all the way back in 2006. Our paths seem to cross again 8 years later thanks to it showing up on some major end-year top some number lists. Not that I pay much attention to those (too cool for that right?), but I was curious enough to learn some more about the guy.
Judging by this record, he seems to be another one of those “Give techno back to the machines” purists. And Yes, I know this is advertised as being house, and although that’s understandable from a historical perspective I think I’m going to have to draw a line here because It just doesn’t play like any house album that I’ve heard over the past few decades. Deep house is a convenient compromise but I still don’t care much for dragging that horse any further into the mud. 100% cold hardware techno this record as far as I’m concerned, and 110% autistic at that. Look I know what the appeal is supposed to be, there’s something to be said for limited means instilling a greater creative drive in artists. Still I don’t see why a lack of passion on his end when working with the endless possibilities in sound synthesis we have today is supposed to be my problem, so the real reason for this album sounding like you’re listening to it through a tin can with a hemp string attached to it still eludes me.
Having said that though, he certainly doesn’t shy away from working those old machines for all they’re worth, taking the music in ever more eventful directions as the album moves along and that’s all sorts of wonderful. It makes it really hard to stop listening to, you just never know what crazy thing is going to happen next. Excitement for the whole family.
So it leaves a good impression, does it do enough to warrant a recommendation though? Well it depends, there’s certainly plenty of people who speak in support of it. I can’t deny it’s a welcome exposition and how much value it has is going to greatly depend on what you want your music to sound like. It’s certainly worth at least one listen for the musical value alone.
It’s definitely novel, but I can’t say it’s brilliant. It’s not like the Luke Wyatt album I reviewed a while ago which has so much overwhelming musical complexity and impossibly compelling soundscapes you don’t even realize you’re listening to quaint old sounds anymore, It’s not about the sound itself it’s about what you do with it, I understand that principle. Despite this I’m just not that grabbed by this album, I haven’t really been wanting to give it a revisit and when I did it I rarely ever manage to get through the whole thing again. I just like the ideas more than the execution I guess.
Antonio Rizzo - Flowers
Discogs: nothing
Genre: techno (I think?)
Year: 2014
Recommended: what?
Youtube Sample: no
You know, as much as I like to complain about the trends in techno land It’s hard for me not to appreciate the fact that it’s in an absolute golden age and has been for a while now. There’s just so many people producing it there’s always someone else to be found who’s exactly on your level and gives no s about releasing something that’s basically a label manager’s worst nightmare. And thus it has remained my most listened to dancemusic genre even after having (mostly) taken leave of the actual club scene around it for some years now. Antonio Rizzo certainly seems to be one of those guys who fancies himself a bit of an innovator in the scene. And I am all ears for it. (It also seems like I'm the only one, but there you go)
The EP is about lengthy, stylized, abstract and difficult to consume dance music with little utilitarian purpose. There’s a few deceptive things here, despite there only being 5 tracks the “E.P.” runs for well over 80 minutes in length and In general plays out more like an ambient album then a techno one. The drums do chug along throughout but are very much subdued to the very low and very high ends of the spectrum giving the drone leads ample opportunity to breath and carry the tracks along . Unlike the garbled mess of Mosse this was assembled with proper craftsmanship and a very high standard in production. It does not necessarily make it easy for you to like it, as it’s clearly an audio geek’s wet dream you’re going to need some proper listening gear to get the mid heavy music to even display correctly and there’s definitely some abrasively high-hitting hats and jarring offbeat percussion here and there that might scare away some folks who are sensitive to it. But yeah that’s just what you get with these artsy types, they need you to feel their pain sometimes. It’s totally worth it regardless.
So, I took another foray into the realm of chillout music here. A rather big contrast from the sailing comp I looked at last time. Where that was like staring at paintings in an old nautical museum, this one is more like a modern art exhibit. Very much about clean, minimalistic compositions and abstract sound design. While definitely a lot nicer to listen to, it also feels like it loses something in the process, mainly the engagement factor. It’s just got a very high non-music level attached to it, more about the sounds than anything else. Tracks rarely go anywhere on their own and some of them flow by without ever really grabbing your attention. It’s something to put on more so then something to actually listen to.
Is that a bad thing though? No, It’s a wonderful little album. And I was perfectly content to let it run on in the background, occasionally being drawn from whatever else I was doing and admiring some of the soundscapes this serves at you. It’s just a bit bloated and prone to meander, which is par for the course in this genre of music.
It’s also another cold tear records release so again you can download the MP3’s for free from their webpage if you want to, which I do have to commend them for. Especially considering all the they seem to get for not doing physical releases which still baffles me. There’s nothing stopping you from burning it yourself and printing out a cover for it, it’s functionally the same thing cold tear would be doing right? Saves them money and effort they should be spending on putting more music out there.
Bierheld
Okay, so it’s been a while I guess. A combination of factors really. The main one having to do with motivation of course, I don’t know how Sykonee manages to do what he does on a daily basis but I certainly can’t keep up with that kind of writing vigor. But what played as well was my continued infatuation with the audiokonstrukte album, that album just seemed custom made to fit all my needs and I had to put some serious effort in to find something that caught my interest again. I felt it was affecting my reviews as well, so extra credit to Antonio Rizzo for being one of the few that managed to impress me anyway and a mea culpa for the Kristian K record which probably got a much harsher treatment then it deserved. Not for Kassem Mosse though, because that guy. Yeah!
In all seriousness though, I knew I had to get over it somehow. This resulted in me not listening to any new music for like a month, after which I slowly got back into the swing of things by listening to experimental music. In this period I saw many things and had many new experiences, but I just kept drawing a blank when trying to write about them. The issues I had should become apparent in the few reviews I did write about them.
So yeah this is just going to be a dump of saved up reviews that were done over the last few months, which are mostly me complaining about not having anything to write about. Normal service will be resumed afterwards. I also fixed the Discogs issue by reverting to Amazon in case there’s no equivalent entry on the former.
It’s always hard for me to judge EP’s like this. I mean yes, It’s dark ambient, so you know, dark synths warped sounds and samples displaying all sorts doom and gloom. It’s a heard one heard them all kind of deal, and otherwise it’s non music through and through so what is there left to talk about? It’s a cheap form of music too, it’s not exactly hard to make a scary sounding drone since they’re inherently quite spooky anyway.
So how do you make one that is good then? Well it’s going to be a subtle affair, but the main thing as always is structure; the more I listen to music the more I’ve come to the conclusion that this is almost the sole differential between good and bland. This one does a very good job at it, at least for the first ~half. Everything about it feels right, how it slowly unravels the darkness in ouverture and then hits a haunting peak during the latter part of the title track with subtle cries of agony hidden inside the ever wailing background synths only to calm back down with the gorgeous soothing piano tones of P-Elegy. Had it stopped right there it would have been perfect but it chooses to slowly stumble back into the flaming depths with superfluid after which it slumbers back down again with instability, upsetting the balance a bit.
It might just be my limited tolerance for the stuff, but I’d rather have had an even more elaborate peak and then have it end at the comedown right after, makes more narrative sense to me. That being said it’s still a very worthy record regardless, so don’t let me turn you off from it if you want some of this.
Crown Hill Repeater – The Patient Sessions, Volume 1
Yeah I don’t know about this one man, I’ve been driven to lots of experimental music lately but I’m finding it so damn hard to say anything about them. It’s so hard to describe what you’re supposed to get from them because it’s become like a longstanding incestuous cult-scene where everything is a wink-and-nudge to some other work, so you have to like “get it”, which makes it all a rather snobby affair. It also has this ever present desire to ravel in its defects making it even harder to explain what you’re supposed to like about it.
In the end it’s just a bunch of sounds in some order, there are beats but if you were hoping for any consistent or sensible beat patterns, well.. anyway. The point is you should know by now whether this is going to be for you.
Still, I guess I’ll attempt to describe it. It’s offbeat to the letter, the beats are offbeat, the mood is offbeat. It does the whole franctic-beats-with-ambience-that-is-calming-but-also-weirdly-disturbing thing. It’s pretty powerful.. pretty weird… you know….
See the problem here now? All I can really give is my subjective impression, and for this it is a mildly positive one. Despite the broken beat patterns there is enough continuity in other elements of the songs to make them sound reasonably smooth regardless, which is an achievement in itself and from a purely musical standpoint it’s a highly engaging little journey. Production is a bit rough, I presume that was the intent considering the metal leanings that are present here but I think it would have benefited from a smoother finish. Might have given it some more impact.
Here’s another something I randomly stumbled across and it’s a pretty odd release if you ask me. So what is this exactly? It’s a release, of somewhere between EP and LP format, yes, but genre-wise? Discogs, our favorite mass parroting platform, calls him a ‘progressive techno’ artist. Which I find unfortunate. Surely there’s something better to be found?
It’s definitely on the techno side of the spectrum, it has that relentless focus and tribalistic pump to it, but it’s really too warm and flamboyant to fall under that moniker’s ever so melancholic ways. It’s trancey in a way, but isn’t as much about the melody. Techtrance then? It certainly plays like it, but again that just doesn’t feel right. You know in the past this is the sort of stuff we’d just call ‘dance music’. As in the sort of breed Eurodance falls under. It’s not trying to be anything in particular, it just grabs things from across the board and tries to mix things up a little. Sorta like progressive right? Oh!
Well whatever, point is that this is a vastly enjoyable record. At times even brilliant. Full of smooth, effortlessly flowing and warm production values that are bound to hit home with the guard of listeners that likes their EDM to sound as late nineties as possible.
Here’s another one of those damn cutesy albums. A style of music with a lot of potential I feel, but difficult to execute without falling into simplistic stupidity or abrasiveness. This one does it right in some aspects, tracks are tightly packed and very complex in structure and timing. From what I gather it came out of an art school assignment regarding the implementation of geometric structures in music, pertaining specifically to Euclidean geometry in this case as the title suggests. It definitely has its moments, lots of them in fact. Production is wonderfully crisp and full of charm. But ehm.. yeah…
This thing is all over the place folks, It consists of two separate parts, the latter one apparently intended as a soundtrack for some silent films you never get to see or know the title of. The tracks are just so short and disjointed you have no chance of making any sense out of this album’s flow. You have to look at this from a very different perspective, each track is its own little puzzle here, they all have similar outcomes but are put together very differently and it’s often hard to figure out where the one ends and the other one begins for some reason. Which would normally indicate a good flow, but then again a metric ton of gravel and manure being poured into your bedroom can also be described as having a good flow but that doesn’t mean you have to appreciate what’s happening there.
So what’s the verdict then? I don’t know, I’m not even sure on whether I can call this music. I quite like it I guess, but I’m a lunatic. And stupid too. You shouldn’t be asking me really, I just write some about it and move on. Works for me.
I’ve not had much luck with compilations as of late, as you might have noticed from my ramblings here. Such is often the case with these things though. It’s kind of a broken concept in the first place when you think about it. it’s basically a label saying: “Look at all this stuff we have! Come on, you know you want to!”. It certainly seems like a good deal, but a more cautious customer would want to scratch his ears a bit, ‘cause if any of these things were worth anything in the first place you’d think they would have gotten their own separate releases instead right? Granted this isn’t always the case, but even so it’s too excessive in scale and scope and the mish-mashy nature of the tracks - both in style and quality - works to inhibit it from being a good listening experience by default. It’s an all-you-can-eat proposition but that’s not actually how you want to eat. Well it shouldn’t be anyway.
So what does a compilation have to do to be good then? Damned if I know. But what I can do is have a look at how one from a young London imprint called womblabel has chosen to tackle this issue, because they are trying. It certainly sounds like it anyway.
I say that because they seem to do a lot of things right here. It’s both diverse and consistent, the latter part being particularly impressive considering they certainly didn’t shy away from employing small-time producers from all across the multiverse. So you get a bit of ambient, some dubby breakbeats here and there, even a housy shuffle every now and then. But it all comes with solid, consistent mastering and pretty good pacing as well, although it’s not that hard to pace an album when there isn’t much in the way of pace to begin with.. But hey, it helps. So.. anyway. What’s that? Oh, I suppose I should talk about the music as well right.
The good thing is, with all these small-time producers you really get the idea that every song was someone’s little project, their baby. They all seem so well thought out and a lot of effort is put into making the songs progress and stand out. Barring one or two exceptions there really isn’t a song on here that I don’t like in terms of concept or execution, which is a strong achievement for a compilation. Production quality-wise I am missing a bit of edge here though, it all sounds fairly conventional.
I've been giving this one a fair few listens over the past months, mainly because I couldn’t seem to form a good opinion on it. It’s hard to grasp in a way. You can even say it’s forgettable, which is rather bluntly put but it is what I experienced. Looking back it probably has a lot to do with the way it sounds and how it was produced, It’s all very floaty stuff and it has that distinctly modern sterility to it. The lack of mass and abrasiveness means it just doesn’t stick very well. After listening to it a couple times over however it started to reveal itself to me.
So what is it? Well it starts of like techno album, sort of, but really he just doesn’t seem to care much for sticking to the concept, slowly descending in pace while splicing in a hefty stretch of elegant, almost meditative ambient. It’s an unexpected treat, sounds a bit fillerish at first but you quickly find out that it serves as the backbone for the entire album. It's not really about portraying any particular genre or pattern, it's more about drifting away to dreamy soundscapes. A host of currently trendy breakbeat styles pass the fray but none of them last for very long or take precedent in any way.
So it covers lot of ground, but does that affect the structure? Kind of, but not really. It does go all over the place but the music is so laid-back and it’s all presented in such a leisurely style that it really doesn’t matter that much. The one inclusion I find questionable here is mondquelle, which I think is supposed to be this crazy stripped down dancefloor banger that sounds completely out of place in its assigned slot. There was no need to break up the ambient there anyway which just continues straight after as if nothing happened. It’s a very short inclusion though, and he makes up for it later with Generated, which features distorted digitized speech with buckets of reverb and it’s completely mental, I love it.
So yeah, I do also recommend you skip the intro by the way because it’s painfully loud and has no musical value, but other than that this is pretty fantastic.
It’s quite the typical offering you’d expect from the ever hip and happening Boisnoize Records, but this just comes to show why they’re doing so well. They marry the sounds of today with the ideas of yesteryear, and in doing so they still remain a hit with the kids. Speaking of which, You know this guy is only like 22 years old as well? I can only imagine what the future has in store for us if he keeps going the way he is now. Good .
Junior Loves & Scientific Dreamz Of U – The Dreamcode
Here’s something that I was basically sold on the moment I lay my eyes on it. All I could do is dive straight into it and pray that this wasn’t just another amateuristically performed psychedelic rock reincarnation. And you know what. It kind of is, but hear me out here.
So it starts of innocent enough with some light moody guitar work, which is very enjoyable by the way. But it then quickly descends into deep dark industrialism, and then goes deeper and darker still. This I all fine so long as the tunes are enjoyable, but then Sylvio hits and you find yourself trapped in an agonizing and claustrophobic environment, carrying the cumulative weight of a hundred years of depression. And it hurts.
Don’t turn it off though, because before long you will hit the appropriately titled conclusion. And things start to look up. And then you hit KiKiKi, and it starts to look wonderful. And before you know it you’ll have hit the Scientific Dreamz Of U portion (I’m guessing they’re the same person/group), which means that out of nowhere you get treated to the most sublime driving techno and you don’t want it to ever end. But it does, with a callback to the very first track of the album. And that’s when I knew I really loved this damn album. Yes it hurts you but then it heals you too, and does so in a spectacular fashion.
I’m not saying this is the perfect album for everyone forever. The beginning plummet ís harsh and could have definitely been handled better without losing any of its impact. Production values aren’t bad but obviously a far cry from what more modern EDM will give you. Really you have to be quite the nutter to indulge in something like this, I don’t think I can even recommend it. It’s not like you can just skip the first half either since it’s an integral part of the experience which won’t be as good without it. And since an important part of it is specifically designed not to be enjoyed by anyone, I’m left with quite the conundrum.
So how about this then: If you’re a normal person that just want some music I’ll refer you to one of the million progressive trance topics above and below this here thread (they were there back when I wrote this, so shut up) If you want something that consumes the mind, pierces the soul and has heaps of character, look no further than the birdy over here. It's a celebration of psychedelic music and everything it's supposed to do to you.
Paradox Lost
Sorry if I forego the canonized formatting, but I'm just gonna drop this is a great new ambient techno LP right here. Hard to recommend ambient techno without people weighing it against Ultimae's output, but even so, I think this measures up nicely:
Right. Since Beatport and microsoft have conspired against me, the first by forcing me into using their dysfunctional new interface earlier this year and the latter by having me upgrade to an unfinished operating system that refuses to play samples on beatport completely and utterly, whereas before it at least worked... with one specific browser... after reloading every page 5 ing times.
Sooooo... a good time to reflect on some of the stuff I've been listening to up until then I say. Let's make this happen.
I'm going to cover them one at a time for now though. Originally I avoided this strategy because I don't want to be too spammy with my humble little undertaking here. But this at least allows me to actually put some effort into them, went a bit overboard with this one but it is an inspiring record. Should have been called "the Venetian" is you ask me:
wAgAwAgA – Mrepsican
Year: 2008 (With a remastered release in 2010, which is reviewed here)
Recommended: Well yes.
Youtube Sample: https://youtu.be/tZ09nzcxquE
So, let’s talk about this guy for a moment. I'm usually not someone who likes to focus much on these things, because at the end of the day what I've found is that music, although certainly the product of individuals/groups on the small scale, only starts to gain it’s true culture-defining force when entering the public domain wherein it gets build upon to become something that transcends what any one individual could have planned for or have any control over. We see this happening all the time and it explains why the timeframe in which artists can make a real impact is so small. The nature of modern popular music is an infinite succession of hops between artists that are in their ‘prime’. It's all disposable folks.
And even when you're dealing with artists who aren't trying to set the world on fire, most just aren't worth getting into. With this guy it’s a bit different though. Because this guy is talented, crazily so, and it oozes through pretty much everything he puts his hands on so I think a bit of research is warranted.
Now I'm not going to look up interviews or any of that sort, I'm not that interested, but from what I gather he’s just some guy from somewhere in the English backcountry who probably has some repressed aspirations to really shake things up in the clubbing world but can’t really bring himself to leave the studio for any meaningful period of time. Although he clearly has a long history with breakbeat music in general, the timeframe in which this was released means this is a product of the dubstep scene, which I have a love hate relationship with. I don’t like what they’re doing, but I like the mentality they display, they don’t give a about conventions and that’s exactly the sort of environment you need for true musical innovation to occur even though it will fail many times in the process. And as much as we like to ridicule them their impact on the IDM and industrial scenes for instance was significant, it’s the only reason I even come across stuff like this.
Which brings me to this, his debut album. It has been (very modestly) described as an attempt to “brain up the dubstep scene”, so it’s almost a contra-contrarian manifestation. Which is my favorite kind anyway. It doesn't follow dubstep rules any more then EDM traditionalism. It’s a completely self-supported piece of breakbeat music which covers influences from many musical genres, not just centered around psychedelic, world beat and grimy dub or dancehall music as most modern dubstep is but also including tons of crafty nu-funk and acid jazz. No precarious wobbles or noisy electro to be found here though.
So this is bound to be a thoroughly unpopular album, since it pulls from so many scenes and does it in such a balanced and unrestricted way he’s going to end up not pleasing anyone except those that are completely free of any rigid scene mentality.
Then there’s the way he produces things: Rather than just dropping in samples to whatever happens to be the popular musical paradigm they’re aiming for (*cough* Khristian K *cough*), he actually seems to understand the music he’s borrowing from and as such is able to produce new variants of it himself and merge them together in a completely organic fashion. It all sounds like it’s supposed to be there and that’s when you know you’re dealing with a real musician, if the complete effortlessness in which he is able to craft the structures and compositions to carry songs of any length or any conceivable place in the album didn't tip you off before that.
The main question for me here doing this review, is whether this is a good place to start the already bewildering amount of music he’s released since then. In a way it is one of his more down to earth productions, it doesn't quite represent his true ability in creating intelligent music but no single album could do that without wildly overreaching a sensible scope. It should do enough to deliver the message though, and with guys like this you have to count your prayers whenever they release something that is anywhere near your field of interest, because he’s gone pretty far out there since.
This one is thoroughly grounded in conventional breakbeat paradigms however and you can hear the chains rattle at times, not in the least during the cut he added in the remastered edition. The tune the original ended on (talking about calm east here, not the actual outro) was admittedly one of the weakest on the album, so in response he appended a mind-bending construction called Eroisystoneshift7, where he spends nearly 21 minutes combining the foundations of the album with a storming acid workout reaching all sorts of violent extremes and I wonder if all that was really necessary. It is masterfully composed though and all in good fun. Not a lucky accident either because he later went on to do an entire album of the stuff. It’s called Acid Highway, look it up if you want your socks blown off, but for now let’s go back to the matter at hand here.
So, to conclude: All you need to understand about this guy is that he’s a perfect storm of artistic qualities. Able to produce pretty much anything with supreme confidence, but wise enough not to overdo thing on the conceptual front. He pick a style and maximizes it, twisting and bending it’s components as far as they will go and then moves on. Class.
This isn't my favourite album of his, not by a long shot. Mainly because It’s not really breaking any new ground. It is as solid as they get though and his ever immaculate songwriting abilities are mesmerizing to listen to. If there is one thing that lets this album down it’s just overall production quality, I mean it is 8 years old now and it sounds as good as it needs to, yet I've heard crisper breakbeats and I'm also comparing it to what he’s putting out nowadays and based on those I’d say he’s one of the best in the world in that aspect. It didn't really come across with this one though.
