Out of his comfort zone but totally unfazed by his surroundingsNew Life marks a new beginning for Claro Intelecto.
Author Archive: Richard Brophy
Fred P., On This Vibe
June 7, 2010 – 10:01 PM
While Fred is one lynchpins of the resurgent New York house sound, On This Vibe — fittingly on Esperanza, a Spanish label — goes back in time to classics like Sueno Latino’s eponymous hit or the “ambient house” of 808 State for inspiration.
Matt O’Brien, Remixes From The Periphery
May 19, 2010 – 10:01 PM
Matt O’Brien’s Remixes From the Periphery brings together some of the past and present leading lights of techno and house, which in many ways neatly sum up O’Brien’s approach to music-making.
Redshape, Red Pack
May 4, 2010 – 10:01 AM
To these ears at least, Redshape’s debut album was one of the best techno long players of ‘09, so the appearance of Red Pack so soon afterwords is a pleasant surprise. While not intended as a follow-up to The Dance Paradox, this double pack performs an equally important function, neatly encapsulating the disparate dance floor styles that now fall under the masked one’s widening palette.
Morphosis, Musafir
April 19, 2010 – 10:01 PM
Rabih Beaini, better known as Morphosis, is the head of the impossibly but irresistibly erratic Morphine label and was responsible for one of my favorite releases of recent years, the moody, reverberations of Dark Myths of Phoenicia Part 2. Given that he also records more freeform music as Ra.H and began his public engagement with electronic music with his own radio show 20 years ago in his native Lebanon, it is no surprise that Beaini’s latest missive doesn’t follow a formula.
Jason Fine, Future Thought Remixed
April 2, 2010 – 10:01 AM
When I saw that Ben Klock had been commissioned to remix Jason Fine, my gut reaction was to flinch in discomfort. After all, the Berghain resident’s music isn’t really known for its sense of romance or emotion, and here he was reworking a track from of the most seductively introspective electronic music albums of recent years.
Matt O’Brien/Peter Van Hoesen & Donato Dozzy, Into the Red/Talis
March 16, 2010 – 10:01 PM
The Belgian label Curle Recordings continues its impressive release schedule with a pan-European heavyweight techno line-up. Representing the UK is the refreshingly unorthodox Matt O’Brien. Favouring a quality over quantity approach that has not yet projected him into the limelight, O’Brien’s selectiveness is nonetheless admirable. Last year, he delivered two of 2009’s best remixes — the eerie take on The Subliminal Kid on his Offkey Industries imprint, and the insane bell chiming cacophony-led reshape of Roberto Bosco on Mowar — along with the excellent From the Periphery EP. While “Into the Red” marks a fresh departure for O’Brien, it sees him maintain the same high standards.
Rennie Foster, More Songs for Homeless Housers
March 2, 2010 – 11:01 PM
Here’s a salutary tale for anyone starting up a label and seeking to gain some coverage through the blanket mail-out approach: under no circumstances call your label something that could be mistaken for spam email. This fate almost befell this release by Rennie Foster on the unwieldy sounding Greta Cottage Workshop label. My email program, struggling to decide whether it was yet another ad for penis enlargement or nicotine patches — I really hope that there’s not a subliminal message in there for me — decided to consign it to my spam folder and I only noticed the release during a ritual clean out. Thankfully it wasn’t lost in the ether because More Songs for Homeless Housers shines a fresh light on the talents of Canadian producer Rennie Foster.
BBH: Circuit Breaker, The End (1991-1996)
February 17, 2010 – 11:01 AM
He may be a media-savvy new technology evangelist these days, but back in the mid 90’s Richie Hawtin was the kind of sketchily dark character you would think twice about leaving your kids with. The Canadian producer was known during that period for the gloriously haunting ambient techno of FUSE — which occasionally and unforgettably on “Substance Abuse” veered into the kind of deranged acid that this installment of BBH focuses on — and the complex poly-rhythms and LSD-referencing menace of his Plastikman project. Yet despite the rumors of acid tabs embossed onto copies of his debut Plastikman album, Sheet One, there was a far more belligerent side to his character: Circuit Breaker. This double pack, released in 1996, charts the laying to rest of the Probe Records sub-label, an outlet that had allowed Hawtin to explore this grungier, edgier identity.