Smallville has long maintained a low key approach to releasing music, even when a critically adored album (Move D & Benjamin Brunn’s Songs From the Beehive) and gargantuan 12″ (STL’s Silent State, our top track of 2009) propelled the Hamburg-based label into the uncomfortable position of being the label for reduced house music. Not carried away with big names, one of Smallville’s charms has been their equal treatment of established producers as well as newcomers. Following a solid label compilation released last fall comes their eighteenth record from the team of newcomer and Smallville Paris clerk Jacques Bon and relative newcomer Christopher Rau.
Author Archive: Chris Miller
Erik & Fiedel, Nous Sommes MMM
April 1, 2010 – 10:01 PM
Every once in a while a record comes along that changes things entirely. OK, perhaps MMM’s Donna, first released in 1997, didn’t quite change electronic music as we know it, but it was a deliciously raucous slice of near-perfect raved-up techno. Erik (Errorsmith) and Fiedel are hardly a prolific duo, releasing only their fourth record, Nous Sommes MMM, two years after their third and a full 13 years after Donna. What they lack in quantity of tunes they most assuredly make up for in the quality of their productions, which will all but transform any club environment into a dusty old warehouse located on the outskirts of town.
Donnacha Costello, Before We Say Goodbye
April 1, 2010 – 10:01 AM
Travel seems to always conjure mixed feelings. We travel with friends and loved ones on holiday but we also travel for work/commute. The ease and relative affordability of flight means we’re sometimes quite a ways from home, while anything less than a thirty minute commute is a luxury most don’t have. As a much loved producer, Donnacha Costello, then, finds himself in an odd relationship with travel, often on the road due to a mixture of work and pleasure. On, Before We Say Goodbye, his fourth album and first since 2003’s Isol on Rastor-Noton, Donnacha mulls over his time spent at the gate and on the train, expressing these thoughts through a small collection of analog gear (only four instruments in total).
Marcel Dettmann, Dettmann Remixed
March 31, 2010 – 10:01 PM
Expectations greatly inform our record buying habits. What do you expect from Marcel Dettmann? If previous releases are to be believed it’s stripped down, no nonsense techno. What about from his friends Norman Nodge and the either incognito or actually-a-newcomer Wincent Kunth? More or less the same thing, and that is exactly what’s on display here with four remixes of Dettmann material which didn’t make the album.
Oni Ayhun, OAR004
March 18, 2010 – 10:01 PM
Sometimes you just need to let shit get out of hand. Oni Ayhun seems to understand this perfectly as nearly everything on his fourth record dives right off the deep end. The text accompanying the record on his site discusses both acid and music, but laden with chemical formulas and instructions it’s difficult to decipher. Even the record’s center label is a skewed picture of which might be clearer had I held on to my Avatar 3D glasses. Needless to say, those looking for a return to the melodic stylings of OAR003 should immediately accept that any traces of melody here are accidental: incidents arising unexpectedly from mixing “alkaline component(s), one or more acid salts, and an inert starch.”
LWE Podcast 46: Donnacha Costello
March 15, 2010 – 12:01 AM
LWE caught up with Costello for a quick chat a bit about the album as a format and his love for old gear while he provided LWE with its 46th exclusive podcast, a trip through his early influences and favorite records.
Falty DL, All In The Place
March 11, 2010 – 11:01 AM
The music of New York based producer Drew Lustman, best known as Falty DL, could lazily be described as dubstep, in part because his records have found homes on Planet Mu and Ramp Recordings, two labels that have pushed a sound which could also be imprecisely termed dubstep. So does his appearance on Rush Hour, an old house standby, mean he’s gone and made a house record? No, the All In The Place EP still contains his characteristically fragmented two-step seen through a kaleidoscope of sounds.
Various Artists, Laid006
March 3, 2010 – 11:01 AM
In only a handful of months the still fresh Laid imprint has made quite a name for itself. Despite being born in the shadow of its older brother label, Dial, Laid has quickly established its own area of expertise, pummeling record buyers with five solid singles of dance floor-primed house music while Dial vascilates between floor friendly and leftfield sounds. The sixth record to don a lux Laid sleeve is the first showcasing multiple artists’ originals, for which they’ve collected some of the freshest names around for a survey of the current state of deep house on both sides of the Atlantic. Hamburger Christopher Rau and New Yorker-cum-Berliner John Roberts are both members of the extended Dial family while New Yorker Fred P. has earned well deserved heaps of praise for his work as Black Jazz Consortium. It’s perhaps no surprise that Laid006 is about as solid a record as you can get, throwing three distinctive and in vogue sounds on one wax slab.
Little White Earbuds Interviews Levon Vincent
February 26, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Although Levon Vincent has seen his profile rise dramatically over the past 18 months he’s anything but a newcomer. Having spent nearly a decade making house music after many years studying music generally, Vincent’s recent fame can be seen only as welcome payoff to someone who has spent his fair share of time in the trenches. Enmeshed in the much-discussed revitalization of New York house with his own imprints, Novel Sound and Deconstruct Music (with Anthony Parasole), alongside Jus-Ed’s Underground Quality stable, he blends his influences into a thick, rich soup of raw house music that finds him wearing his heart on his sleeve. LWE caught up with Vincent in Paris before his appearance at Rex Club kicking off a month of touring around Europe to discuss everything from Thriller and Discreet Music, the newest musical instrument in his arsenal, and the struggles of being a vinyl proponent in America.
SCB, SCB001
February 23, 2010 – 11:01 AM
It’s almost silly that Paul Rose would go make a house/techno alias (somewhat) different from his well-established one. Lately Scuba’s productions would be more readily categorized as techno than dubstep anyway, even though his wide range of tempos and blend of styles comes out genre-less anyway. After the sublimely subterranean debut of the SCB moniker remixing his own “Hard Boiled,” the SCB project developed further with one of the mixes of 2009: the 37th mix in the mnml ssgs mix series. Kicking off a new series of catalog numbers on Hotflush, Scuba now looks to firmly plant the SCB flag with the succinctly titled SCB001.
Reagenz, Playtime
February 11, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Improvisation. In house? Sure, DJs do it every night. Move D did it before with Benjamin Brunn on Songs From The Beehive, creating sketches beforehand but recording everything in more or less real time. Plenty of parallels exist between that record and Playtime but none are quite so telling as this. To be frank, I don’t know if the recording of Playtime was actually in real time or improvised, but this is a release whose unfolding seems so natural and human it seems unlikely that it’s the work of automation. Many complain about the lack of musicianship in house and techno, and Playtime serves, in part, as a solid response to such silly claims.
BBH: Robert Hood, Stereotype EP
February 3, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Robert Hood’s burst of activity in 2009 was composed half of new releases and half of reissues. After reissuing the classic Minimal Nation Hood fired off a couple new jams (including the wicked “Superman”) before continuing the reissues with The Pace/Wandering Endlessly. Which leads us to M.PM number 5, the legendary Stereotype EP first released in 1998. Last year we noted the strength of 2009’s reissues, and Hood’s were a big part of that.
Peter Van Hoesen, Variable Parts EP
January 28, 2010 – 11:01 PM
Free. In whatever digital format you like. Possibilities like these make me question the very purpose of reviewing such a release. “Is this record good enough for me to shell out the money to buy it?” LWE generally hope to provide such answers. But here you’re being treated by Peter Van Hoesen to three reworks of his tunes, as well as a new one, for no cost at all. So whether I’m telling you if this release is worth your time, giving Van Hoesen a thumbs up or simply sharing my thoughts on a new record, you, dear reader, should be picking this one up and making your own judgments even if I determined it were terrible. But being the work of Van Hoesen, it most certainly is not.
Martyn, Fabric 50
January 20, 2010 – 11:01 AM
We all know about the current state of mix CDs. Fabric, however, stands strong in the face of adversity with milestone release number 50. Fabric has cemented its position as one of the mix CD series of all time, not only for its longevity but for containing classics like editions 13 (Michael Mayer), 36 (Ricardo Villalobos) and 39 (Robert Hood), just to name a few. How the London club would celebrate release number 50 was a source of much speculation, and their choice of Martyn was both an inspired and daring one. Shaking up the rigid 4/4 that has defined pretty much every Fabric CD, Martyn’s dubstep sensibilities and love for techno breathe fresh air into a series that has struggled to maintain its cutting edge cachet.
Levon Vincent, Double Jointed Sex Freak
January 13, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Dance music enthusiasts of all kinds were treated to a wide variety of tracks from Levon Vincent last year: minimalist peak-time anthems (“Solemn Days”), vocorded house jams (“I Owe You Everything”) and dub-techno freak-outs (“Games Dub”). With his newest release on his own Novel Sound, the wonderfully titled Double Jointed Sex Freak, I find myself returning to an increasingly common question for each LV release: What the hell is this? With the help of his muse Rebecca (“a true athlete”) Levon has managed to out freak himself, taking the varied sounds of his breakout year and throwing them into one big messy pile of dance-music bliss. Other producers might provoke skepticism by claiming, “It is the best record I have ever made — my proudest moment!” m, Levon’s enthusiasm rings true; and even compared with his top notch back catalog, it’s hard to argue Double Jointed Sex Freak is anything less than the work of a man realizing his full potential.
Planetary Assault Systems, Remixes
January 11, 2010 – 11:01 PM
If Luke Slater’s Temporary Suspension reminded us anything, it’s that the rough techno waves being made by your Dettmanns and Levons are not without precedent, and that techno veterans are keen to be still be part of the sound they, in many ways, defined. For every Delta Funktionen or Frozen Border looking to offer their new take on techno there’s a Regis, Robert Hood or James Ruskin picking up the 909 again and getting back to work. Ostgut Ton chose Hood and Kenny Larkin to remix Ben Klock; and so, in a sort of antisymmetry, they choose some of the most influential producers of the past couple years to remix one of the 90’s more influential figures.
Frozen Border, Frozen Border 04
January 4, 2010 – 11:01 PM
As its sub-label, Horizontal Ground, is quickly defining its own brand of stripped back, DBX-style techno, Frozen Border continues on its own trajectory north, getting colder and more restrained with each release. While its counterpart seems to have developed a coded number system to “identify” the artist behind each release, no such identifications are available for Frozen Border, and thus each release can only be contextualized in terms of previous installments. Whereas Volume 3 seemed like the summit point towards which the first two were headed, the fourth issue in the Frozen Border series diverges from its predecessors in sound but not in temperature.
LWE’s Top 5 EPs of 2009
December 9, 2009 – 12:01 AM
When we make our year end lists we divide our favorite music into two categories: albums and singles. But the definition of an album is constantly shifting as evinced when Shackleton declared Three EPs was not an album but rather, well, three EPs. While many will still slot the release into their albums list, it got me thinking. Between singles and albums lists we miss a crucial group, especially for electronic music: the 12″ EP. More than a single but not quite an LP, the 12″ allows producers to execute their vision over the course of around 20 minutes. For me, these records contained some 2009’s best music.
LWE Interviews Hard Wax
December 4, 2009 – 1:01 PM
In anticipation of Hard Wax’s 20th anniversary (an occasion marked by a show of truly epic proportions, see flyer inside), LWE talked with Torsten Pröfrock, one of Hard Wax’s buyers and a renowned if tight-lipped producer, about the changes Hard Wax has seen over 20 years, the shop’s larger impact, and a tip for getting space on its hallowed shelves.