SECURE SHOPPING
Moodymann’s Mahogani imprint has announced the impending release of Andrés III, the third in a series of long players from Detroit beatsmith Andrés aka DJ Dez.
This week sees the release of the excellent Brownswood Electr*c Volume 2 compilation, a 14 track aural feast released on Gilles Peterson’s imprint that explores the more obscure corners of the beat-driven universe. This second collection – curated by Peterson’s right hand man Alex Stephenson (pictured above test driving left hand man status) - follows a similar format to the first instalment, digging up tracks from a willfully eclectic range of little-known producers. As you can imagine, highlights are plentiful, from the off-kilter liquid D&B of Frederic Robinson and Synkro & Indigo’s deep future dubstep to the dewy-eyed wonk of DJ Dials and Starkey-ish Aeed. To celebrate the compilation’s release we called up Gilles and Alex to discuss their favourite records of the moment.
DFA lynchpin Juan Maclean will indulge his DJ friendly side with the first of a series of new releases under the new name Peach Melba – a project with New York based vocalist Amy Douglas aimed at remaining faithful to the distinct aesthetic and conceptual ideals of early Chicago House music.
Roland’s Cakewalk have announced the imminent arrival of their eagerly anticipated update to the legendary Z3ta+ soft synth plug-in for July 2011.
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Vakula has a seemingly bottomless pit of creativity to call on which is matched only by the amount of labels that are more than willing to accommodate it on a twelve inch. Thrillingly, if you checked his recent podcast for us you’ll know that there’s a veritable raft of productions which are still to see the light of day (If you didn’t check it what’s wrong with you?)
The Ukrainian producer’s label hopping endeavours see him at the helm for the launch of the newly minted Shevchenko label. Named in honour of the Ukrainian cultural icon Taras (as opposed to the free scoring forward Andrei) and rumoured to be closely affiliated with the Firecracker imprint upon which Vakula first came to our attention, it’s a stellar first release that gives further credence to the growing opinion here at Juno Plus that Vakula can do no wrong.
“Mama Said Go Slow” is typical Vakula, twisting through various analogue passages across the course of the vinyl, the few constants being the gloopy subaqueous rhythms that occupy the nether regions along with what might just be a sample from one of Mohamed Al Fayed’s favourite musicians and the hissing oscillations of percussion.
The flipside sees Vakula indulge in some smudged out beatdown business on “Deaf World (Dub)” which draws you on a kaleidoscopic journey to the lower echelons of hypnotic, fluttering house music. Obvious sonic references to Detroit pervade the track but it’s indelibly marked with the graceful Eastern European touch of Vakula. It proves to be a subtler yet equally potent example of the producer’s lack of interest in traditional house music structures. Hopefully Vakula will continue to release music of this standard long after we run out of superlatives.
Tony Poland
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As previously reported, Flying Lotus let loose with the news that his Brainfeeder imprint would be releasing Ghost People, the highly anticipated second album from Martyn, in October. A taste of what to expect arrives via the double A Side single Masks /Vipers.
US producer Levon Vincent returns to the production fold this week, with the imminent release of the Man Or Mistress 12″ on his own Novel Sound imprint.
Fresh from the news that Spectral will be releasing a rather tasty remix of Mark E by Scandolearic deity Prins Thomas comes details of a new Merc release from the Midlands based producer which includes revisions from both Dixon and Tensnake.
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Given his love for blurring the lines between vintage Chicago jack, shiny Paradise Garage style proto-house and original electro-pop, it was probably only a matter of time before fast-rising producer Murphy Jax made an appearance on Tiga’s Turbo label. So far, the accurately-named Jax has impressed with two stand-out releases; a superb retro-house collaboration with Mike Dunn on Clone’s Jack for Daze offshoot (“It’s The Music”) and the bubbling Masters Of Meta Space EP on My Favourite Robot – a collection of star-gazing space disco jackers with a thrilling electro-pop bent. It says something about Jax’s talents that this third EP raises the bar again after two previously impeccable releases. Without a shadow of a doubt, We Dance is his best release to date. So far, at least – he has more 12” singles ready to drop imminently.
Like his previous output, We Dance comes loaded with raw analogue funk, endorphin-releasing synth chords and dancefloor-baiting acid tweakery – all wrapped up in the German’s trademark retro-futurist production. It’s a sound that unashamedly looks to dance music’s past – most notably New York and Chicago in the mid 1980s – but never sounds anything less than 100 per cent current.
The EP is itself is something of an epic at seven tracks deep, but it rarely drags – thanks in no small part to a hot-to-trot mix of near-perfect original material and on-point remixes. Of the original material, it’s the title track itself that most impresses. A near-perfect fusion of touchy-feely early 80s Italo-influenced synth pop (think the Pet Shop Boys Please album) and dubbed-out Chicago jack, it’s pop-house perfection. There are two unfeasibly heavy remixes, too, from Populette (radio-friendly rave-jack) and Freak Seven (growling, percussive darkroom acid).
Elsewhere, there’s plenty more to get excited about, not least the foreboding electronic growl of “8BitEpos” and the anthemic space disco-jack of “Suburban Path”. There’s also the small matter of “Time To Bump”, an emotion-rich builder that fixes snappy 808 beats and 303 tweaks to a grandiose synth wash seemingly inspired by “West End Girls”. That gets a fittingly bumpin’, bass-heavy rework from Matt Walsh and Zhao that offers the perfect finale to a near-perfect release.
Matt Anniss
US analogue knob twiddling institution Moog have announced the imminent release of their all new effects unit, the Moog MF108M Moogerfooger Cluster Flux, which in their own words represents “the ultimate Moogerfooger for flange, chorus and vibrato”.
Daniel Lopatin, Laurel Halo and more feature on new FRKWYS
by Juno Plus on 29.06.2011 at 10:29am
The seventh edition of RVNG’s essential FRKWYS series sees a collaboration between synth botherers David Borden, James Ferraro, Samuel Godin, Laurel Halo and Daniel Lopatin.
Reloop return with another tidy little box of high precision German engineering. The two deck, Traktor optimized Mixage Interface Edition controller is essentially a streamlined version of the existing Digital Jockey series, although it is largely based on the same fundamental building blocks and aimed towards domestic or studio use.
London based trio Dark Sky are the latest act to join Modeselektor’s 50 Weapons stable, with a four track EP due out in July.
UK producer Nebraska will further ensconce himself in the Rush Hour family with an album, entitled Displacement, due for release on the Dutch label in the next month.
I met Phil South at the Williamsburg townhouse he shares with his wife and two young children shortly after he had dropped the boys off at school, which, one might gather, is his favorite part of the day. Soon afterwards he gets to work in his capacious basement home office. Despite being one of the masterminds behind NYC’s legendary underground party, No Ordinary Monkey, and the creator of Golf Channel Recordings, a label that’s put out original works, edits, and remixes by the likes of Justin Vandervolgen, Mark E and DJ Nature, South’s daytime is domestically stable and placid. (On this particular day, some workmen were over, finishing up the installation of a new irrigation system for the backyard garden; half of the basement was a neatly-organized kids playroom; and the living room had shelves stocked with books, immaculate photographs lined the walls, a large flat-screen TV sat in a corner, and cushy couches nestled up against the windows.) I sat down with South to get some insight into how the English expat manages to juggle it all and where his life of DJing, party promoting and record label running all originated.
Fachwerk boss Mike Dehnert will follow up his recent Framework album with and EP due shortly on Clone’s Basement Series.
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There’s much to love about Jamal Moss and his Mathematics imprint. A man who never aspires to be in the know or the now, Moss has cultivated a sound laced with a gritty, unforgiving DIY feel. It’s a refreshingly experimental approach towards house and techno – fields of music burdened by an abundance of producers satisfied with mere pastiche and paying homage to genre forefathers. His own productions as Hieroglyphic Being often result in the fascinating contradiction of dancefloor music that is simply too lo-fi and raw for dancefloor use. This however forms just one element of the label’s multi-faceted aesthetic, with clean and polished releases fitting snugly alongside the more esoteric excursions.
Mysterious Intrigue by Polish producer Kuba Sojka is one of the more accessible additions to the Mathematics stable, an album that touches on the full spectrum of house music, from smoky jazz infused numbers to piano driven instrumentals, peak time vocal cuts and ample helpings of 303. The centrepiece of glacially paced opener “Stupid Lover” is the sultry Jill Scott style vocal, augmented by crisp kicks and bubbling melodies. Gorgeous instrumentation – piano refrains, guitar licks, soaring strings and a shaker/clap combo – dovetail gently throughout “Here Comes The Sunshine”, rounding off the A-Side.
Title track “Mysterious Intrigue” sways gently with jazzy keys, while on “Magical Trumpeter” we see Sojka going deep for the first time, with the brass offset by moody low frequencies. The second 12″ opens with “Do Not Be Afraid”, a deftly arranged piano house banger replete with smooth vocal stylings, before the fuzzy atmospherics on “Awakening Silesia” give perhaps the only indication of the young producer’s IDM-dabbling alter ego Psi-Acoustic. Rather than trailing off, the final three tracks showcase Sojka’s love of acid: the rasping snares of “Voyager 1” and metallic thump of “Metropolis” serve as ample warning for the unexpectedly epic finale – “I Can’t Stop” – perhaps the best example of contemporary acid since FunkinEven’s “Heart Pound”.
Aaron Coultate
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Given the lack of glamour and fanfare that has surrounded Mark E’s career to date, it’s only natural that in the array of interviews that have preceded the release of Stone Breaker, the focus has been on the Birmingham based producer’s opinion of disco edits and his relationship to them. It’s become an increasingly distant relationship since those early releases for Jiscomusic and Running Back, and the Merc boss – real name Mark Evetts – has been quite insistent in proclaiming he makes house music.
Close followers of his productions will not be surprised to hear that the core of the nine tracks that make up the album were produced amidst a fruitful period last year which saw Evetts reveal an industrially tinged sound via a number of releases and remixes. In hindsight, his release for the Soft Rocks affiliated imprint Vibrations in particular, proved to be an auspicious portent as to how Stone Breaker would sound.
The heavily pressurised grooves and thick viscous atmospherics that seeped through Escape clearly laid down the template for how Evetts would fill Stone Breaker. By his own concession, this is less a concise album shaped journey and more a collection of tracks primed for various moments on the dancefloor that are worthy of more than a mere twelve inch release. And as such there are plenty of “chug chug bump bump” moments, such as opening gambit “Archway” with a thick, concrete like motorik thump that dominates the swirls of oscilatting keys and indecipherable vocals that swim around the nether regions. Contrasting and complementing these grinding rhythms are tracks such as “The Day”, a blues ridden bump driven by the most pensive of female vocal warbles, or the blaring head nod swagger of “Black Country Saga” which is surely primed for an inevitable Odd Future embellished blend.
It’s likely your affections for this album set will be focused on the colossal album centre piece “Got To Get Me There”. Clocking in at ten minutes, the ease with which the track slowly grows out of the primal robotnik techno beat that characterises the opening three minutes doesn’t hit you upon first listen. Thus when those keys creep in, drenched in soul, it’s an enlightening experience which demands repeat play. There are certain tracks you hear in a personal environment and then spend the rest of your days seeking out a chance to hear it engulf your senses on a speaker rig the size of the Appalachians; “Got To Get Me There” is one of those.
Tony Poland
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If you ignore his vowel-free stage name, it would appear that there is little to connect Ben Thomas to recent developments in electronic music. Thomas’s debut earlier this year on Rush Hour’s Direct Current sub-label and now this follow-up have nothing in common with mnml or the new school jack of the Chicago paeans. Thomas does appear to inhabit a different world, one populated by half-heard melodies and dreamy textures, as if the soul of Detroit techno were to be re-imagined by a Gothic novelist.
However on closer inspection it’s clear that Thomas does not live in a vacuum and is indeed in touch with current sounds. Despite his interest in the more ethereal end of techno’s mood spectrum, most of the tracks on 141 have a surprisingly modern(ist) feeling. “One Sea” for example, sounds like John Roberts pushed to the outer limits of abstraction, its dreamy chords underscored by the mournful pitter-patter of broken, fragile beats.
“We Are The Weather” meanwhile is a beautifully atmospheric piece, but is powered by a robust bass. “Inout” also shows that Thomas is deeply interested in both the recent past and the present as break beats halfway between drum’n’bass and techno tempos are fused with the kind of spooky techno melodies that Convextion specialises in. BNJMN has mapped out his own enclave in the techno continuum - to join him, just dial 141.
Richard Brophy
Field Day’s annual descent onto the green climes of East London’s Victoria Park is approaching steadily – naturally we wouldn’t want our readers to miss out and the organisers have kindly offered up a free pair of tickets.
