[Ostgut Ton] (buy vinyl) (buy CD) (buy mp3s)

Consider Rene Pawlowitz. Under one name or another, he’s produced some of the most innovative genre music of the last decade. Instantly recognizable sonically yet wholly committed to and camouflaged by whatever style he chooses to inhabit, Pawlowitz balances reverence to dance music with a fierce individualism. As he showed on his classical techno treatise, the Shedding The Past LP as Shed, he can simultaneously innovate while sliding seamlessly into a genre’s continuum. His other musical projects — Wax for house, STP and Panamax for dubstep-esque beats, and Equalised and Deuce (with Marcel Dettmann) for Berghain-ready techno — only confirm his deftness with form. Able to act as both a student and leader in his field, he’s so far been the best, or at least most generous, sort of genius: rather than reinvent the wheel, he puts his own indelible squeak on it.

Pawlowitz’s commitment to working within the confines of genre has been anything but a crutch for him. But I’d imagine a producer of his stature might be curious what “Shed music” might sound like, not just how “Shed making house” or “Shed making dub” sounds. Thus, on his latest full length, The Traveller for Ostgut Ton, he’s more or less pulled the floor out from under his productions. Where past Pawlowitz records have fit beautifully into a straight line, the fourteen tracks on The Traveller tie the filament in knots or scramble it in nearly inscrutable code. Whichever metaphor you prefer, you’re likely to spend your first dozen listens just untangling this music. But should you decide to make that commitment, you’ll be amply rewarded.

The Traveller is that rare difficult electronic album that’s neither headphone-friendly nor abrasive. Your first mistake upon hearing this ultimately strange music would be to switch off your speakers for a closer listen. A much better strategy would be turning them up. From the early metallic slam of “Keep Time” to the laser experiments of “No Way!” and “HDRTM,” Pawlowitz pushes air as forcefully as he ever has. He does it by coaxing as accurate and direct sounds out of his machines as any producer is likely to. Beyond hints of delay and reverb and extreme fine-tuning, I sense very little engineering ornamentation on these drum machines and synthesizers. That clean, to-the-point, nearly pure sound Pawlowitz has been pushing for the last year (use the STP remix of Wax’s “Dub Shed” as your reference point) comes fully into bloom here, oddly sounding both exquisitely handcrafted and itinerantly devoid of nuance.

Yet for all these direct sounds, the compositions they bring to life feel intentionally stunted. Musical ideas begin but don’t resolve, or resolve without ever really beginning. The set’s longest number, “The Bot,” hardly goes anywhere at all. When tracks do develop, they follow mutant logic. “44A (Hard Wax Forever!),” for example, begins sweetly and softly, its synthetic bells shimmering on a wide plain, before thick, grinding drums and heavy dub pads send all that gorgeousness fleeing. This pacing extends to the album itself, letting fast numbers bump up against dirges, and placing ambient interludes where they’re likely to build more tension instead of opening up the air vents. Still, the album does divide roughly in half, with a more formless and exploratory beginning that ends with “Mayday” and an energetic, nearly thrilling ending starting with “No Way!” But it’s obvious Pawlowitz wasn’t looking to create a standard, linear album narrative. One almost wonders if he spent hours paging through M.C. Escher image searches before going into the studio every day.

The Traveller quickly got me asking more questions about our own listening habits than about Pawlowitz’s intentions. Is it producers who cling to genre, or do listeners? We use all the music we’ve ever heard as a filter for all the new stuff that’s coming in, so when we hear music basically unfettered by all the usual reference points, it’s bound to be a bit jarring. Only at “Leave Things,” the album’s beautiful jungle-referencing closer, is it immediately apparent (from a compositional standpoint) we’re even listening to a dance album. But is there not something moving — physically and, on occasion, emotionally — about the thirteen tracks that precede it? I think we’ve caught Shed in the process of truly shedding the past this time, and his confidence and continued excellence in the studio bode well for wherever he’s headed. We’re likely to be debating this beguiling roadmap until he gets there.

[Hyperdub] (buy vinyl) (buy mp3s)

So often in dance music, a producer either falls into the melodic genius or rhythmic genius category. I’m not saying she’s Sasu Ripatti or anything, but Merrisa Campbell — the woman known to the world as Cooly G –does melody and rhythm so well, she deserves recognition for both. She hasn’t released all that much music, but the tracks she’s let loose via bass powerhouse Hyperdub subtly pack more melodic eccentricity, rhythmic electricity, and general musical sophistication into four minutes than many of her peers do into six or seven (or eight, if you’re Roska). There has, undoubtedly, been some hype. (Boomkat naming “Weekend Fly” the track of 2009 mere weeks after its release, anyone?) But if you can move beyond the hyperbole, you’re very likely to find Cooly G a treasure, wherever your dance music values and allegiances lie.

Her latest for Hyperdub, “Up In My Head/Phat Si,” is also her greatest. Like last year’s “Narst/Love Dub” 12″, Campbell offers two moods across two sides. “Up In My Head” begins on a gorgeously melodic note, and its sweetly synthetic strings remain the track’s focal point throughout. But it also boasts a stabbing, borderline hyperactive low-end that keeps the track club-friendly. On the flip, “Phat Si” appears suspiciously tool-like, but Campbell — with her paws apparently rubber-cemented to the controls — keeps her beat active, asymmetrical, and in constant flux. The result is both effortlessly floor-destroying and surprisingly musical. Which is, of course, the crux of why I love Cooly G: with the flick of her wrist, it seems, she goes well beyond the call of duty, doing as much work on one 12″ a year as many producers might hope to do in five. “Up In My Head/Phat Si” is one of the standout 12″s of the summer, and whether you need to believe the hype or get the hell over it, just make sure you snag yourself a copy.

LWE’s Curator’s Cuts podcast series features our reviewing staff mixing together recent favorites and providing explanations for their selections. LWE staff writer Jordan Rothlein mixed together Curator’s Cuts 10. We will post the tracklist later in the week, as each curator discloses and describes the tracklist as part of the podcast.

Download: Curator’s Cuts 10: Jordan Rothlein (113:14)

01. Animal Collective, “College” [Paw Tracks]
02. Moritz Von Oswald Trio, “Nothing 1″ [Honest Jon's Records]
03. Anton Zap, “Pain (Love and Distance Mix)” [Underground Quality]
04. Peter Grummich, “Mountain” [Prog City Deep Trax]
05. Abacus, “We Cookin’ Now” [Guidance Recordings]
06. Cooly G, “Phat Si” [Hyperdub]
07. Shackleton, “The Branch Is Weak” [Skull Disco]
08. Sepalcure, “Feeling That I Know So Well” [LWE exclusive]
09. Julien Jabre, “Delivrance” (Moody Mix) [Basic Recordings]
10. Databoy78, “Thursday” (Lexx Remix) [Running Back]
11. Cloudmaster Weed, “Com On N Join Us” [Soiree]
{Mic Break: Edward Larry Gordon, “All Pervading” [Universal Sound]}
12. Matthew Dear, “Little People (Black City)” [Ghostly International]
13. Tiyiselani Vomaseve, “Na Xaniseka” [Honest Jon's Records]
14. Kode9 ft. The Spaceape, “You Don’t Wash” [!K7]
15. Walt J, “Reborn” (DJ Qu’s Journey Towards Birth Remix) [Petite]
16. Steve Poindexter, “Work That Mutha Fucka” (Original) [Muzique]
17. Oni Ayhun, “OAR004 A” [Oni Ayhun Records]
18. Martyn, “Hear Me” (Zomby Mix) [3024]
19. Peverelist, “Funktion” (Shed Remix) [Tectonic]
20. Digital Mystikz, “Mountain Dread March” [DMZ]
21. Mike Dunn, “So Let It Be House” [Clone Classic Cuts]
22. Shed, “HDRTM” [Ostgut Ton]
{Mic Break: Oneohtrix Point Never, “Pelham Island Road” [Editions Mego]}

[Irma CasaDiPrimordine] (buy vinyl)

Some tracks reveal their genius slowly and subtly. Soft House Company’s 1990 anthem “What You Need…” is certainly not one of those tracks, but that doesn’t make it any less rich than more difficult pieces of music. Deep house, “What You Need…” is not, but its sweetness is never saccharine. “What You Need…” and its remix-ish B-side “… A Little Piano” boast a bouncy and instantly addictive piano riff (which Victor Simonelli co-opted for his much bigger Nu Groove smash, Groove Committee’s “I Want You To Know”), cut-up vocals that hit you like Pop Rocks, and big disco string vamps, all brilliantly packaged in a jaunty rhythm that feels like it could have come from nowhere but New York.

On the surface, then, it’s strange that “What You Need…” actually hails from Bologna, Italy, where the Irma CasaDiPrimordine label (Discogs reveals it took its name, “First Class House,” from the former brothel where its offices were housed) was quietly funneling secret weapons into DJ bags both local and international. Italy has long been doing New York dance music one better, or at least one weirder (see Danielle Baldelli, whose disco selections at Rome’s Baia degli Angeli in the late 1970s make most of the Manhattan stuff sound positively square), so its paternity makes sense in light of its quirky brashness. Nevertheless, Soft House Company — a brief collaboration between Irma stalwarts Claudio “Moz-Art” Rispoli and Francesco Montefiori — purportedly conjured something of a diamond in the rough, a lonely house classic in an ocean of embarrassing and/or forgettable and/or entirely preposterous Italian house records.

We’re lucky that people like Danny Krivit, perhaps New York’s most accomplished still-living house DJ, heard “What You Need…” and have kept it alive, because it’s never sounded better. As much as producers like Headhunter (as Addison Groove) and Ramadanman look to Chicago for rhythmic inspiration, it’s New York house that literally gave these guys their sliced-up, soulful voices. And Italy be damned, “What You Need…” is as New York as the Shelter, or suspiciously tasty $1 pizza, or waiting until your taxi is in motion before mentioning the B-word (Brooklyn) to your disgruntled cabbie. Like so many humble transplants, it arrived with big dreams; like far too few of them, it actually made good.

[Hotflush] (buy vinyl) (buy CD) (buy mp3s)

Journeying through Brooklyn from southern Bed-Stuy to the oil-spill end of Greenpoint, the B48 bus shuttles me often from my apartment in Clinton Hill to my best dude-friends’ flat off Lorimer Street in Williamsburg. The richness of the scenery makes up for whatever obvious beauty this route lacks. Ancient brownstones give way to mid-century housing projects. It skims the jammed BQE briefly before penetrating South Williamsburg, where hipsters and Hasidim squabble over the former’s existential right to bike lanes, and Satmar kids chase each other up fortress-like blocks and whisper on stoops. I pass car repair shops with signs mostly in Spanish, un-wrenched fire hydrants serving alternately as ad-hoc car washes and water parks, failed luxury condo schemes dressed in plywood and street art and mere vandalism. By the time I pull the cord to request my stop, I’ve cut about as jarring and complicated and weirdly beautiful a slice of urban life as one’s likely to find anywhere.

I mention the B48 because without it, I’m not sure I would have fully understood Mount Kimbie. I’d found the duo’s two Hotflush EPs oddly underwhelming for the praise practically everyone else heaped upon them, and of the five remixes that appeared this spring, only Instra:mental’s take on “At Least” had really held my attention. Even on the ass-graced cover for Crooks & Lovers, their debut full-length, it didn’t look like Kai Campos and Dominic Maker were putting their best foot forward, exactly. I do a lot of my music-listening on earbuds while in transit — hardly ideal, but New York commutes are long, days here marvels of time management — and I’ve gotten pretty used to having my head on the dance floor while my body waits in a crumbling G-train station. But as Crooks & Lovers began soundtracking my trips up to Williamsburg, first as a professional obligation but soon as a pleasure, everything about these guys started falling into place.

Crooks & Lovers isn’t pitched at 4 a.m. bassbins; it’s the sound of watching a complicated world pass by your bus window on a drizzly Wednesday afternoon, mediated by a couple of creative minds not too self-serious to giggle about big butts. Like the labyrinthine neighborhoods the B48 diligently circumnavigates thrice hourly, it follows its own messy logic. The tracks are generally short, existing for maybe a block or two before dead-ending or merging into another. The same could be said for the album itself, which clocks in at a scant 35 minutes. But after a listen or two, they cease to feel unfinished, instead joining the broader fabric of the neighborhood. Tracks like “Before I Move Off” and “Field” cram as many ideas and colors into three or four minutes as Hotflush honcho Scuba might into six or seven, yet you hardly feel them rushing from point A to point B. Mount Kimbie don’t concern themselves much with genres or tempos: they sound as content to trudge along well below house tempos (“Adriatic,” “Ode to Bear”) as they do in dubstep territory (“Would Know”). This casualness also extends to their sound design, probably a big part of my early hesitancy about these guys. In the context of an album with little interest in dance floor movement, Mount Kimbie’s preference for tiny sounds — spindly drum programming, steely guitars straight off a Books album, cheap digital reverb (a major feature of “Before I Move Off”) — makes them feel that much more tangible. If you’re going to make music in your dingy apartment, Crooks & Lovers seems to be saying, why not make music for other kids living in dingy little apartments?

This isn’t to say that this music isn’t deliberately and elegantly composed, or that it couldn’t make one hell of a smash. In the wake of this album, the buzz surrounding Mount Kimbie has become something of a din, even in circles Hotflush’s mystique might usually be lost on. It just doesn’t sound like it’s bending over backwards to impress us. Crooks & Lovers is a quirky little electronic album from a group whose beauty sneaks up on you, and whose poetry maybe isn’t readily apparent on your first bus ride. Like the bowels of Brooklyn, it might never make perfect sense, but that never stops you from looking on intently and curiously from your window seat.

[DMZ] (buy vinyl)

Dance music feeds off forward movement. You see it one way in galloping drum patterns and advancing tempos, another in the race to expand genres and forge altogether new aesthetics as quickly as possible. It’s why many of us fell in love with this music in the first place, even if we weren’t spending every free weekend moment in a club or at a party: this music, more than a lot of other contemporary musics, is going somewhere, and keeping up leaves you with one hell of a runner’s high.

Following dubstep feels a bit like running the steeplechase at world-record pace with no training. And like The Canterbury Tales, dubstep has been as much about the journey as where we’ve ended up. It’s as if sub-bass, the scene’s now-mostly-optional primary trait and talking point, was merely the first vessel a particularly wild strain of musical energy got hold of. Since Horsepower Productions and El-B first summoned this demon nearly a decade go, its grubby hands have grabbed everything from house, techno, and drum & bass to Britney Spears, not only expanding its own definition but leaving thumbprints on the genres it took from. I often think about traveling back in time to Croydon’s Big Apple Records, where clerks like Skream peddled dubstep’s earliest transmissions, with a crate full of Ramadanman dubs just to see where they’d get filed (not to mention the look on everyone’s faces when they came on over the system).

Typically, a conservative approach to dubstep in the face of all this style-swapping and Internet-heated genre growth has resulted in rather brutish music, all garishly raved-up bass lines wobbling lunch money out of your pockets, played by DJs inevitably wearing this t-shirt. Mala, however, has kept dubstep true to its roots without being a meathead about it, and it’s made him into a kind of Baal Shem Tov for devout bassheads worldwide. He and the DJs and producers in his orbit have continually refined dubstep — studied it, labored over it, lived it, all the while worshipping it — rather than let it evolve and integrate, creating a near-pure strain of the stuff (despite the slow-mo virus recently penetrating its cell membrane). Listening to a Deep Medi or DMZ record feels a bit like reading dubstep in Aramaic — a rewarding experience (and likely a scholarly one, considering how much they fetch on collectors’ markets), even if half the fun of dubstep circa 2010 is how corrupted the accepted translation has become.

Mala, producing sans Coki as Digital Mystikz, has cast what could be the purest dubstep of the last few years — if not the purest dubstep imaginable at this point — in the form of Return II Space. Like another seminal dubstep full-length, Mala attempts to downplay its album-ness, yielding only six relatively brief tracks over three 12″s that each bear their own catalog number. Regardless, it’s epic, a result of ass-kicklingly astounding production. Mala begins his set on a rainy day with “Unexpected,” the kind of fast-paced yet sensitive roller that jump-started Martyn’s career some years back. It’s a perfect setup for “Pop Pop Epic,” which manages aggression without becoming “aggro.” It finds this sweet spot not through grinding or growling but through repetition: as much as its bass line — conjuring a highly unlikely New Order/Goth-Trad collabo — owes its power to sound, it overpowers you through hypnosis, like so much headfuck techno.

“Mountain Dread March,” the set’s only 33-rpm side, finds Mala at his most wandering, contemplative, and nearly melody-devoid. His drums here have a rippingly raw quality I’d usually associate with something Steve Albini produced, yet the track has a sensitive touch that’s purely Deep Medi. “Eyez,” with its skyscraper-sized, serrated bass line, sounds like it was produced with re-appropriated logging tools, though Mala brilliantly dresses your wounds in sweetly ambient synths. The spacey and contemplative “Livin’ Different” bridges the gap between the rest of the set and “Return II Space,” its magnificent finale. The track combines the moods of the previous five cuts for something resembling the ultimate Mala brainmelt. Heavy doesn’t do the thing justice: you come out of it feeling like a tenderized piece of meat. But it also fails to convey the breadth of what’s happening inside, from tiny Jamaican melodies to stuttering drums and photon blasts.

At the risk of sounding cute, I must note that if you’re only planning to buy one physical record this year, Return II Space should be the one. DMZ have pulled out all the MP3-killing stops here: the three slabs of wax feature the Platonic ideal of mastering (never too loud, never ragged in the highs) and are noticeably heavier than your typical dance 12″. And they’re housed in a subdued yet luxurious gatefold. (A few lucky souls even snagged picture discs.) While the tracks themselves are impeccable, I just can’t imagine listening to this set on my iPod: the textures are too subtle, the arrangements are too expansive, and the booms are too earth-shattering for compression. What is dubstep but the last great genre for vinyl? And what is Return II Space but dubstep’s first timeless release in quite awhile, a set you won’t want to lose to a hard drive crash? Let everyone else in this game make music for 2010. Mala’s thrown down for the great beyond.

[Aus Music] (buy vinyl) (buy mp3s)

“When it all comes together and your [sic] grooving over a beat that came out of nowhere,” Laurie Osborne told Sonic Router last year, “that’s the best feeling ever! I find that hard to get on my own.” Anyone who’s followed the man known as Appleblim since his and Shackleton’s legendary Skull Disco label closed up shop in 2008 probably figured as much. Osborne’s greatest solo contribution to dance music in the last few years has been Apple Pips, where he has routinely A&R’d some of the most interesting, genre-bending tunes on the circuit. But perhaps working with so many brilliant bedroom producers has made him skittish about his own knob-twiddling chops. He’s shared the production credit with someone else on every release since 2007, when “Vansan” graced the A-side of Soundboy’s Ashes Get Chopped Out And Snorted. The downside of this genius-spreading is that I have no idea what he sounds like anymore; the upside is that no matter how obscure the other half of the marquee may be, I feel pretty confident I’m in store for some quality music.

Osborne’s policy of compulsory collaboration has been especially fruitful, if not career-making, for Alec Storey. As Appleblim & Al Tourettes (or Al Tourettes & Appleblim, as they’re billed this time out), they’ve turned in standout remixes for Phonica Record’s debut release and Planetary Assault Systems. “Lipsmacker,” for Aus Music, is the duo’s first 12″ of wholly original music. Though it maintains Appleblim’s reputation for musical sophistication and stylistic ineffability, “Lipsmaker” is not one of the strongest examples of this or any of his collaborations. It’s mostly a matter of the sounds themselves. Appleblim collaborations don’t typically fear tech-house, but the title embraces the aesthetic’s least interesting attributes with discomfiting enthusiasm, especially for a duo whose sound usually veers closer to straight techno. Micro-percussion (replete with flaccid kick-drum), teensy vocal samples, and digital effects abound, amounting to something about as inviting as a just-cleaned (albeit snazzily designed) public restroom. It does the job, but I’m not sure I want to spend anymore time in there than I have to. “Mr. Swishy” thankfully evokes vintage Al Tourettes & Appleblim: the kick once again finds its full strength and penchant for being nowhere you’d expect, and the synth programming — sassy in the bass bass and off-kilter in the mid-range, with a razor-sharp dulcimer holding things down up top — is rather magical. Aus labelhead Will Saul sticks to the UK for remixes. Linkwood seriously smooths up “Mr. Swishy” in his vaguely vintage deep house style, and Deadboy of the Numbers crew offers a digital-only 2-step rework of “Lipsmacker” that doesn’t do much to redeem the flawed original. Appleblim buy-on-sighters — a guy this good likely amasses many of them — will find plenty to love in “Mr. Swishy,” but the set as a whole falls short of essential. Let’s hope he’s got better and more distinctive work in the pipeline.

[Honest Jon's] (buy vinyl) (buy CD) (buy mp3s)

Records blow me away for all sorts of reasons. Typically, the effect has something to do with its greatness — the sheer quality of the production, the producer’s mastery and execution of a particular genre (or awesome disregard for its conventions), the immaculateness of its composition, etc. But “quality” occasionally has very little to do with why I’m taken by records. Many of my favorites tend to defy ideas I thought I had about music. As I play such 12″s or LPs for the first time, I find myself scrambling to find my grounding as a critic — some precedent for what I’m hearing, some source of comparison, even something as tiny as a common tempo or synthesizer. This exasperation eventually leads to a kind of acceptance: it reaffirms that music is way, way bigger than I am and will always be a good fifty miles ahead of where I think it is. I lean back, crank up the volume, and let a sweet, sweet sonic ass kicking commence.

This was, in a nutshell, what happened when I first made contact with Shangaan music, as envisioned by self-described musical juggernaut Nozinja. He took a traditional style and both digitized it and, in the process, accentuated its rhythmic intricacies and compositional complexity. The Limpopo-based head of Nozinja Music Productions recently had his greatest hits from 2006-2009 lovingly compiled by a couple of record store-owning Marks — Ainley, of Honest Jon’s in London, and Ernestus, of Berlin’s Hard Wax — on Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music From South Africa, and the music contained therein seems destined to cause unrest amongst their usual clients. South Africa has a relatively high-profile history with house, and Shangaan certainly feels like dance music. But by exceeding drum-and-bass tempos by a good fifteen beats per minute, not to mention eschewing the usual (or at least this critic’s) definition of high production values, Shangaan has very little to do with the dance music most of us in house and techno come in contact with. This is admittedly a naïve and perhaps narrow, Western-centric viewpoint, and I’ll make no claims to be an ethnomusicologist or apologies for not being a student of (South) African music. I can come at Shangaan Electro only as someone who follows dance music releases obsessively, and from this vantage, I’m making one of the oddest yet most enthusiastic recommendations I’ve made as a music writer.

Shangaan Electro is essential, though there’s a solid chance you’ll chuck this thing out the window moments after the needle drops, and that’s entirely understandable: track after track packed sardine-like with heinous organ presets — think Fever Ray, had Karin Dreijer Andersson and her collaborators tossed their sample bank in a pressure cooker — may prove insurmountable for a wide swath of dance fans. (A cellist friend of mine who’s studied world music somewhat extensively, usually enthusiastic about what I play her, thought this some kind of cruel joke, and I’m convinced this record will finally send my long-suffering roommate packing.) But for me, these twelve tracks are wonders of intricacy and juxtaposition, and they positively slam across four Dubplates & Mastering-cut sides. Where dubstep and techno find weight in sub-bass and repetition, respectively, Shangaan’s heft derives from so many forceful lines converging and narrowly escaping collision. It’s as if Nozinja’s strongman programming is all that’s keeping these superheated musical particles from spinning completely out of control. Listen to Shangaan Electro, and “Footcrab” and its trendy ilk sound quaint, if not positively slow-mo.

This music makes for an exhausting listen (and judging by the videos on Honest Jon’s web page devoted to the compilation, an astoundingly athletic dance), yet the vocal stylings of the Nozinja’s stable of artists soften the gut-punch considerably. The singers, from the Tshetsha Boys on “Nwampfundla (Pfundla’s Daughter)” to Tiyiselani Vomaseve on “Naxaniseka (I’m Suffering)” and Zinja Hlungwani on “N’wagezani, My Love (Gezani’s Daughter, My Love),” sound exhausted and weighed down, yet strong and resolved. “Shangaan music is about love. It’s about a wife and a husband,” Nozinja writes in the liner notes, and indeed, the deeply personal feel of the songs and the beauty of the singers’ delivery feels like it hails from a different planet than the instrumentals. I’m not sure the end result is pretty, exactly, but it’s strangely powerful and fly-on-the-wall intimate.

To those quick to dismiss Shangaan Electro, I’d recommend spending more time with the music than you think possible: as I’ve played nonstop at my house, I’ve heard cultural and stylistic barriers crumble and some truly invigorating music emerge. With the exception of the house-friendly “Vanghoma” from Tiyiselani Vomaseve, these tracks probably won’t work their way into any house, techno, or even future-bass DJ sets, but they’re potent reminders that dance music happens well beyond the scope of even its most dedicated students and can still defy our expectations of what electronic production makes possible. During the hottest summer in recent memory, Shangaan Electro certainly won’t help anyone sweat less, but I can’t think of a record sweeter, wilder, and more mindblowing to spend it jamming to.

[Ostgut Ton] (buy CD) (buy mp3s)

What makes a mix great? It’s a question I ask myself every time I sink my teeth into a new Ostgut Ton compilation. They’re one of the last labels putting out a relevant commercial mix series, and they’ve kept up the CD mix’s luster on the backs of their world class residents. But the fact that so few mixes appear in physical form anymore certainly doesn’t translate into less competition. We’ve never had access to more of them, and as Chris Miller can attest, many of the free, downloadable ones are as good, if not better, than the store-bought variety. What makes a great mix hasn’t changed. But if you’re planning to charge for the thing, it had better be pretty goddamn great.

And that’s basically the only qualm I have with Ben Klock’s Berghain 04. It’s sexy, tough, and quite fantastic, undoubtedly among the best in the Ostgut series. But it’s not mindblowing, nor is it head and shoulders above much of what’s on offer from Fact, RA or us week in and week out. There’s very little, aside from the physical copy you’ll stick into the CD slot on your laptop and then file away into the abyss, that sets Berghain 04 apart from many of the podcasts you subscribe to. (Marcel Dettmann’s recent Fact mix, worlds better than the commercially released Berghain 02, provides a particularly devastating example of this.) On a dollars-and-cents level, I suppose it’d be hard to give the thing more than a soft recommend. And isn’t there something almost maddening about paying a guy with Klock’s reputation not to utterly destroy your synapses?

But when I listen very carefully, I find something very different about the tone and intentions of this mix, and I think it’s one of the reasons this mix is essential, and the series it comes from still potently relevant. All art, to a certain extent, raises an artist’s profile (and in a scene where DJ gigs often pay the bills for producers, there’s an element of this in practically every release). But unlike a mix you get for free, this mix isn’t for promotional use only. It doesn’t accompany an interview or herald a big festival appearance or celebrate an anniversary for a website; it’s a musical statement. Ostgut has always been about placing techno and house above the fray, and that’s precisely where Berghain 04 is simmering. Ben Klock has given us a commercial-free statement on techno executed artfully.

All DJs leave their stamp on a mix, but Berghain 04 finds its selector working very much behind the scenes. After some opening ambiance from Newworldaquarium alias 154, Klock pushes through three deep techno tracks — DVS1’s “Pressure,” Junior Boys’ “Work (Marcel Dettmann Remix)” (RELEASE THIS GODDAMN MASTERPIECE, SOMEBODY!), and Martyn’s exclusive “Mini Luv” — with the smoothest, most hands-offish mixing imaginable. With the lightest tap, he’s put techno into motion. Until an STL locked groove and Levon Vincent’s somewhat raucous “The Long Life” shake listeners out of a deep trance, the mix almost has the quality of a Donato Dozzy set: the music itself recedes into the background, leaving you with a beat and a feeling that feels too natural to be sneaking into your body through your ears. Klock’s near-mystical ability to harness energy from his tracks without the alchemy of huge mixes continues, extending even to some of Berghain 04’s hardest sections (Kevin Gorman’s “7am Stepper” into Klock’s own “Compression Session 1″; James Ruskin’s “Graphic” through Rolando’s “Junie”). It also lets him handle classic material like Tyree’s “Nuthin Wrong” less jarringly than Marcel Dettmann did on Berghain 02. Instead of lathering these tracks in his DJ style, he inhabits them like a particularly subtle marinade. There’s great confidence in this sort of DJing, and it makes this mix particularly compelling. But it also feels a touch staid. I’ve listened to this mix perhaps dozens of times, and depending on my mood, “hypnotic” can morph quickly into “stagnant.” When a mix isn’t filled to the brim with the exuberance of big-personality DJing, its thread gets pretty hard to find.

But perhaps I’m too used to hearing DJs mixing to impress. We’re in a scene rife with young talent looking to spread their own word, and not many of them have the luxury of not blowing our minds. As long as the Berghain remains open and relevant and mythical, Ben Klock has as much job security as anyone in techno. He doesn’t have to grab us by their ears and sonically beg us to pay close attention to him; he can take a different path toward greatness. Berghain 04 asks that you meet if halfway, and despite the entrance fee, you absolutely should.

It’s a funny thing about albums: despite having the odds stacked harrowingly against them, they’re still being made. Across all contemporary genres, the mp3 has chipped away at the album as a cohesive unit, as iTunes and its ilk have allowed listeners to snag the one or two cuts they want without having to fork over for all ten or twelve. As a lifelong record obsessive, I see the deluding of the album as an affront to an art form. But as a pragmatist and a dance music fan, I see a silver lining. Traditionally, albums by dance music producers kind of royally suck: they’re typically too long, too scatterbrained, and too indulgent to justify buying or recommending. What DJ or fan hasn’t wished he could cop the one or two quality dance floor cuts and leave all the noodly home-listening tracks at the shop?

So in the last six months, why have I, in my capacity as a dance music writer, been pitching reviews of dance albums week in and week out? I think it’s because I’ve noticed something funny happening with dance music albums. I still hear plenty of albums that should have been singles, but I’m hearing more and more that actually deserve 80 of my minutes. The best of them aren’t the work of producers who think themselves brilliant enough to conquer new tempos and aesthetics; rather, they’re the result of producers honing their craft and digging deeper. After listening to one of these albums, you know its producer better than you did before, and you get the sense that its producer knows himself a bit better as well. Here are five of my favorite full-lengths from the first six months of 2010. (Due to the exceedingly strong field, my list is hardly definitive. And to make my process easier I disqualified from this list two long-form releases — Tin Man’s Scared and Tevo Howard’s Crystal Republic — as it’s unclear whether they’re truly albums. Both deserve mention for being as excellent as any of what I’ve listed below.)

Actress, Splazsh [Honest Jon's Records] (buy)
Like Burial, Actress productions sounds found rather than made. And what’s so brilliant about Splazsh is how immersive, inventive, and colorful Actress has made the alternate universe where all this music comes from. It’s a place both futuristic and vaguely nostalgic, where house, techno, and bass are just shades of the same photons. Sinking your teeth into this song cycle feels a bit like using the Subtle Knife from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy to peel open a window into an overlapping dimension: something here is deliciously off about this place, but once you climb into the sunshine, you realize you’re still on solid ground.

Aybee, Ancient Tones [Further Records] (buy)
By far the biggest news story in America this year — the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — was the result of an oil company drilling deeper than anyone had ever drilled before. Aybee went quite a few miles below the surface on this spring’s Ancient Tones as well, but aside from blowing up a bunch of people’s brains on this cassette-only top kill, I see no sign of a catastrophe. Mr. Deepblak’s grandest statement to date, moving from ambient sludge-house to jazzy late night techno. At least as trippy as the tubeworms chilling beneath the Gulf spill, this record must be heard to be believed. Careful not to get the bends on your way up.

Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma [Warp Records] (buy)
FlyLo’s kind of been the Velvet Underground of British bass circles: every teenager who heard Los Angeles after a couple spliffs, it seems, eventually put out a record on Hyperdub. The scion of LA’s woozy beatsmiths has finally made an album as astounding as half the people he inspired. Though its mood vacillates between high and hungover, Cosmogramma possesses a kind of mystical focus, finding harmony between musical complexity with general insanity. Surprising for a producer who always sounds like he’s using more footnotes than a David Foster Wallace novel, I’m finally following Flying Lotus’s thought, and what sweet logic he’s working with.

Peter Van Hoesen, Entropic City [Time To Express] (buy)
It’s been awhile since I heard a techno album that properly resembles Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; scrappily intriguing, bare-bones, and more than a bit violent, the genre in general seems to have taken a marked turn toward Reservoir Dogs. But Entropic City takes me there. Stately yet forceful, mechanical yet gorgeous, heavy on the low-end but compositionally lithe, PvH’s first masterwork (among what will hopefully be many) casts underground sounds with the detail and brashness of far bigger budgets. I get the sense that this attention to craft, not to mention the Hose’s flair for storytelling, will keep this future vision tantalizing for years to come.

Scuba, Triangulation [Hotflush Recordings] (buy)
Paul Rose likes wearing a couple of hats at once: his Hotflush imprint sports a sub-label for each conceivable iteration of its sound, and he’ll be pitting two of his aliases against each other in a back-to-back set at this year’s Labyrinth festival. Frankly, I find this all kind of silly in light of Triangulation, where Rose managed to pull off everything that’s happening in bass music right now in a single, unified set of tracks. On paper, the record does everything shitty dance records do — excursions into more esoteric tempos, emo guitars, etc. — but wins the day by refusing to succumb to mediocrity. Rose doesn’t just love Roska and dBridge; he can roll with those guys, all while sounding like Scuba. It’s the most accomplished and accessible LP on this list, and I’m somewhat befuddled as to why it hasn’t crossed over yet.