September 11, 2007
With all the dismantling of worker-benefits here at girlpants, evil cigar-chomping mogul Ben came in and told me I had to write something, then laughed until his belly shook. Have you ever seen a corpulent CEO try and fit into girlpants? Strangely sublime.
So, onwards.
Autumn Shade, aside from being the best-worst fictitious Jade Tree emo band name EVER (debut album title: Falling For You), is the cri de coeur of Jes Lenee, lapsed piano prodigy and lovely goth-waif songbird.
While Niina would probably be all over this album like black on nails, it’s a little ponderous for my taste. The first (full) song kills, however. With a brisk acoustic gait under wintry piano, ‘Shade’s ghost-child voice mourns and moans with impressive range. Basically, this is what Chris Issac’s Wicked Games would sound like had it been written by someone with miles to go before they sleep. “Home, I don’t want to go home. But I’m not going back, even if it kills me.” I can relate.
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“Carsten Jost actually co-runs the Dial label with Lawrence. To be honest, I wasn’t all that wise to this sound a few years ago but by all reports he was a pretty big deal back then and released a bunch of really great tracks. Up until now he’s been on semi-retirement and focusing on running the label, but now he’s back! This is the other track on the Dial split EP (#15 was the A side and this is the B).
Buttrich had a great 2006, so I was looking forward to this release. The original track was a little disappointing, but this Serafin remix more than makes up for that! Serafin is another guy who I really admire because his productions are just so well done technically. Listen closely to the sounds used on this track: how complex the hi hat is, or how the first hook and synth very loosely wrap themself around the bassline in a way that’s almost out of sync. The track sounds like it’s going to collapse on itself but it stays together. And this is only the first 4 minutes of a 12 minute tune!
I think it’s safe to say that Seph is still on fire. While he’s still delivering the deep dark Argentinean techno, on this track we can find a little more funk than his previous work. There’s a few reasons for this, firstly the structure isn’t as rigid and this results in a looser, more elastic feel. Also, the effects/samples used are more stretched out and textured and the deep bass appears to be along to party rather than just creep everyone out.
From Karaoke To Stardom have pretty much come from out of nowhere with 2 EPs in the space of 2 months, and every track is stellar. On this track they deliver a tasty slab of slow burning nasty techno. Everything about this track is stretched out, tense and sinister. Long drawn out static and eerie sounds fill the mix which are underscored by a deep bassline and bubbling echoed minimal pings. I’ve mentioned how there’s been many examples of tracks being stripped of reverb and made “dryer” but nothing could be further from the truth here. Everything about this track is wet and drippy.
Everyone is waiting for the M_nus bubble to burst. There’s been some people saying they are overrated and perhaps a couple of their releases are. It’s like when Warp were on top of their game, anything they released would get more attention because it was on Warp, while there were some better IDM releases on smaller labels that would go virtually unnoticed. Personally I’m not sure either way, but one thing I do know is that a majority of their releases are freaking amazing and the new Tractle EP is a good example of that. All of the 4 tracks are top notch and could have been placed in this top 20. As appears to be the early 2007 trend, this release is quite hard and not really that minimal, which is significant because M_nus has been the major player in the minimal sound for quite a while now.
Half Hawaii are my tip for best group of 2007. This EP is amazing and the short clips of their next EP sound even better. Plus, they have an album due later in the year. They are a new group, but the 2 members (Bruno Ponsato and Pantytec’s Sammy Dee) have been around for a while now and have already built a good reputation for themselves. While expectations amongst fans would have been high, I doubt anyone expected something this fabulous. This is the freshest sounding track on the list as it’s really stripped back and minimal but also really warm which is very different to the typical cold/deep minimal which is so popular right now.
This is probably the most uniformly loved track so far in 07. I haven’t heard anyone say a bad thing about it yet and for good reason. The beats are comprised of various forms of live percussive sounds and glitched out digital beats which are given just the right texture to blend well with each other. This combination delivers both technical precision and raw funkiness to the mix which is a lethal combination if the right balance is reached as it is here. Herein lies the secret to “Cluster Fuck”’s appeal: by utilising both organic and non-organic sounds in the same track it manages to bring both warm funkiness and cold mechanic moods, which are 2 of the best routes to take a track. But rarely (if ever) do you hear both these paths taken in the same track.
I really don’t know what else to say about Ricardo. He’s probably the most important guy in electronic music at the moment and he’s a genius. But enough about him and more about the track. This is Ricardo in loose funky mode. He’s taken the percussion and the vocals (i.e. the only good elements) of the original and shaped them into the Ricardo format then just rides it out for 15 minutes of funked out minimal goodness. In some ways it’s a similar approach to his “Sinner In Me” remix from last year with its deceptively complex percussion, smoothed out bass then halfway through the introduction of a second funky bassline to get you moving. The main difference is this track is bouncier, brighter and less minimal which is possibly a reaction to Beck’s brighter vocals. It’s interesting how on both the Depeche Mode and Beck remixes Ricardo has chosen to isolate the vocals and make them more of a feature of the track than the original did. This isn’t really something that is done very often in a remix but in this case it works brilliantly. Actually, this remix has made me appreciate Beck’s vocal performance more.
Read the recent ‘This Month In Techno’ column at Pitchfork and you’ll see another example of someone jumping on the Klock bandwagon. This sound right here is where techno is going. It’s minimal yet it’s big and beefy too. But it’s also using minimal’s love of technology to push it up that extra level. So you could say the phrase “the best of both worlds” applies here.
“Quite a few bootleg remixes come out every year and most of them sound fairly cheap and generic, with little regard or respect given to the source material. So when I saw this one (a remix of The Cure’s “Lullaby”), I really wasn’t all that optimistic. I can picture it now: rising, string-drenched crescendos and horribly cheesy use of the guitar riff. Come to think of it, I’m surprised there hasn’t been an awfully cheesy trance cover made already, as it virtually writes itself.
There’s a lot of buzz around this guy right now, probably because he’s only 18 years old and has put out two very good EPs already. This one is from his 1UP EP and I really could have chosen any of its four tracks as they are all very impressive, but I’m going with this one.
Here we have a very busy track. Often these sort of tunes grate after the novelty of all the production bells & whistles wear off, but not when they are well executed (i.e., when Cabanne is involved). We didn’t hear much from Cabanne in 2006, but he’s one of my favourite producers. He really seems to have a handle on how to throw as much as he can into a track without it becoming too much. As you can imagine, this ability is essential when it comes to minimal production and Cabanne is one of the best in the business.
I’d say Sleeparchive has the most distinctive sound in techno right now. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of minimal could quite easily trainspot one of his tunes. BIG bass, stabs of distortion/glitch, Stuttered effects, and a really icy precision that gives it a very mechanic sound. There’s also heavy nods towards old detroit, Basic Channel and Pansonic. The fact that he hasn’t really changed his approach in 2-3 years should mean his sound is getting stale but he always seems to make subtle upgrades to the Sleeparchive sound.
Despite the talk of a return to the classic techno sound, there’s still plenty of deep dark minimal being released. Here we see deep and dark blended with tougher techno. This is one of the reasons I love techno so much. In the space of 2-3 months the scene has undergone a pretty significant shift. If this came out in mid-2006, I doubt many would have gotten into it, but in early 2007 it’s got a big buzz behind it.
Fans of Efdemin and Dial will probably be as surprised by this track as i was. The name “Efdemin” brings blissed out melodic techno to mind so when I saw this on a split EP with Casten Jost I was anticipating more of the same. So who would have expected some classic booty shaking house?
The Swiss producers have been making some noise in minimal house recently, but here Benelli appears to be more interested in Argentinean deep minimal and Swedish tech-house. I love the old school techno vibe on this tune. The acid synth takes me back to the days of warehouses packed with 10,000 ravers off their skull on god knows what shuffling madly on talcum-powdered floors.
Two of the biggest-hyped releases of 2007 so far have been the remixes of Vonstroke’s “Who’s Afraid Of Detroit?” and Heartthrob’s “Baby Kate,” but I’ve found both quite disappointing, which is a shame because both sounded ripe for the remix treatment. So when the Mouth To Mouth remix EP dropped last week I wasn’t so sure what to expect. But both Heartthrob cuts are brilliant! They both rock on different levels but this is the one i like the best.
Still not sure about Bodzin, but this track is HUGE. One of those anthems that’s sure to work like a charm at the clubs. This is mostly because it follows the “Bay Of Figs” formula of taking a hook then reverbing the crap out of it before it’s engulfed the track and your brain. It’s definitely not the most sophisticated track on here and probably not one that will age all that well, but for the moment it’s just really damn fun. Maybe the most rocking track on the list, actually. So rather than diss it as generic I suggest you enjoy some ear candy at its finest.
Dr. Dog are from Philly and they’ve put out several albums prior to this one, but I have to admit this is the first I’ve heard. The band members have been in all sorts of other bands, ranging from punk to indie to other 50s/60s-influenced pop bands. One of the guys is a trained jazz guitarist. They’ve toured with M. Ward and My Morning Jacket and even Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the Strokes. They had a song on the soundtrack for Fast Food Nation.
To close the week I’m bringing in a couple of guys from a territory that knows a lot about winter. Dag Rosenqvist and Rutger Zuydervelt are both veterans of the worldwide ambient scene, Rosenqvist being the guy behind Jasper TX and Zuydervelt of Machinefabriek. Together, they’ve created an album whose glacial tones are reflected in its stark, self-explanatory name: Vintermusik. The most impressive thing about this collaboration, to me, is the sonic depth it possesses. The duo’s songs have a habit of building achingly slowly until they reach a rumbling stasis, forever on the edge of overflowing the cups of your headphones. Haphazard guitar strumming drifts up out of the depths of the white noise, its faint signal growing stronger at an infinitesimal rate. This is, essentially, the sound of watching ice form.
