This week at Juno Download, there was the usual slew of excellent new releases, with what was aptly described as “horizontal techno at its finest” from Italian duo
Dadub on Stroboscopic Artefacts our pick of the week's wavs. What impresses about these guys is their sheer knowledge of sound sculpture and how it works; they have worked on the Dadub project for years, but rather than rush out music so as to gain recognition, they’ve taken their time to develop the project's output to a fully-formed level. Hats off.
Elsewhere we were yet again left surprised and impressed by the curatorial eye of London label Unknown To The Unknown, who asked library music and soundtrack specialist
Jonny Trunk to remix Capracara's house jam "House Of Dolls". Trunk left only an echo of the original's melody and added some acoustic samples to glue the remix together. Propelled by nothing other than a simple kick drum, it's what you might imagine a music concrete version of house music to sound like.
Amanda Brown was at her industrious best once again, releasing no less than three albums and/or EPs across her Not Not Fun and 100% Silk stable; our pick of the bunch was the
Mother Rhythm Earth Memory album from three-piece production outfit Cuticle, whose sub-aquatic brand of house - albeit one that's initially slowed down to a sticky crawl by water pressure – is infinitely charming. Almost as prolific were Daniel Lopatin and Joel Ford, whose Software imprint dropped two new cuts this week; be sure to check the
debut release from L.A. based producer Napolian and in particular the track “New World”, which sounds roughly like like Roule-era Thomas Bangalter played at 33rpm. In other words, very trippy and very good. Other noteworthy digital releases this week came from Canadian
future pop don Jacques Greene,
Bullion’s return to R&S 2.0, the excellent
Bintus EP and
Shigeto’s album for Ghostly International.