[Foul & Sunk]

My initial thought after listening to Fresh & Low’s Little ‘i’ EP was something along the lines of, “Appealing, but it doesn’t exactly break new ground.” The next day, my visit to Discogs resulted in a strange mix of embarrassment and vindication. I’d never heard of Fresh & Low before. It doesn’t feel nice to be oblivious of a project that’s been running for over a decade and spawned some two dozen records. I also learned that Little ‘i’ first saw daylight in ’97, the charmingly-titled Foul & Sunk having acquired the record for reissue this year. In some small way, my ignorance means this vinyl-only reissue is not in vain. Of course, people no longer sell wax for the money. The objective here is twofold: improve the record’s availability for fans (original copies are around €53 on Discogs) and make the rest of us aware that it even exists.

I don’t feel too guilty. If Fresh & Low — once a trio, now a solo act — were actually that special, I’d probably have heard of them. Listening to Little ‘i’ reinforces this sentiment. The tracks have aged well, but there’s certainly no feeling that I’m being acquainted with lost classics. “New Life” starts off far more concerned with mood than with establishing any particular motif. That’s not a strange aim in itself, but the complex jazz noodling in the last minute makes one wonder why they held off so long. The rest of the track is set around woody percussion and sustained backing chords. Volleys of steely plucks -– almost dub techno in timbre -– shift the intensity up and down at will. “No Going Back” shares the same confident outlook, a big kick and jacking percussion underpinning an ardent vocal sample. This one also has a slightly catchier riff, at least before we reach the second half and the rapturous vocal becomes the focus. The similarities don’t end there, though: there are again jazzy wanderings towards the end.

The other two tracks — “Seven Miles Up” and “Dream” -– are more composed. The first plays out around super-high piano and microscopic chimes, which race up the scale at such speed as to form a single note. This elegance is offset by a single vacillating tone. I use the word “tone” because it’s so overtly electronic, as opposed to the record’s otherwise soft palette. Holding each pitch for two bars or so, this theremin-like sound shifts to its next destination abruptly; an interesting element but one people could easily label as tacky. In “Dream,” a brittle percussive skeleton first upholds bunches of globular synth notes, again jazz-influenced, as is the deep house tradition. It’s like “New Life” in reverse, quickly transitioning into a thumping kick and offering little melodically from then on. Apart from this last track, I’m glad to have been made aware of Little ‘i’. But then again, I’m not entirely bothered it didn’t happen sooner.

[Mosaic]

It’s hard to truly gauge the impact Michael Peter and Martin Retschitzegger have had on techno. Their Central label was an indispensable fixture of the scene in the mid to late ’90s, which they used to present themselves under a varying array of pseudonyms, such as The Memory Foundation, Ratio, Skinless Brothers, Die Rhythmiker and Hi-Lo. Their steely dub techno was without doubt cut from the same cloth as that of the Chain Reaction/Maurizio camp, but there was always something different about the work of the Viennese duo. They also appeared regularly on Jeremiah’s Grow! label as Glory B or with Christian Mahringer as The Last Disco Superstars and DJ Cartman, where their output was noticeably more house and disco based. Though they chose to mainly release on those two labels, they did occasionally branch out, with their Greenflash EP from 1998 coming out on Steve O’Sullivan’s Mosaic imprint (also producing a couple of stunning 12″s for M-Plant too). Released during their most prolific period, the four track Greenflash EP offers examples of some of their best work, each track a stand out piece of heavy dub techno.

Infused with a swinging, broken drum beat, “Basic Color” sways with intensity, chords clambering over each other to reach some vanishing horizon. The oddly-timed, off beat drums were something of a theme for the duo around this time; it added an easily identifiable signature to their tracks and also provided a fresh outlook on the sometimes rigid 4/4 timing structure. The aptly titled “Low Profile” lives up to its name by keeping its head down and working out a straight forward groove via restraint over all of its parameters. The obligatory chord stabs are largely left unadulterated, with the only space really being projected through the snares. Despite its pared back nature, the relentless, rolling “Low Profile” still shines among the other more obvious tracks. “Valve Version” works a filtered sample over obese, bottom end melodies, slowly adding complimentary, decaying chord stabs to the mix. In order to reduce some of the pressure from the speaker wrecking bass, they lace a light, chiming melody on the high end, which balances out the track with a refined consideration. “Un-Theme” strains with the weight of a chord melody trying to push through heavy layers of compression, always straining against an oppressive force, never quite managing to surface but making plenty of impact from the murky depths. One of the things about The Memory Foundation is that rather than stick to the reverb-heavy dub techno of their Chain Reaction contemporaries, they made everything much tighter, preferring to constrict the spatial movement of their tracks to a confined space, which always added a more intense sense of movement to what they did. Although their 2009 Reptiles in Exile EP on Yore showed they were still packing some heat, it will be hard for the Memory Foundation to live up to their earlier work, the Greenflash EP just being one example of their impressive back catalog.

[Irma CasaDiPrimordine]

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.

[Peacefrog]

A couple months ago LWE’s Jordan Rothlein, while reviewing the latest Sound Signature record, painted a picture of house heads letting out a massive “Ohhhhh, dude” at the mere mention of Theo Parrish’s name. I would submit that Parrish’s European counterpart is none other than Newworldaquarium, to whom praise and t-shirt endorsements flow almost unimpeded. And the “Ohhhh, dude”s flow freely here as well, but in this case as natural, knee-jerk reactions to Peteri’s submerged and hypnotic grooves. With records for Delsin and related labels (M>O>S, his own NWAQ and APE) he’s carved out his own slowed-down corner of house music that few can replicate. While record shopping in Paris I stumbled upon Newworldaquarium’s Heavy Metal EP, released on Peacefrog in 2003, and snatched it without hesitation, something one should always do when confronted with a record by Jochem Peteri.

Title track “Heavy Metal” takes the criticisms of Peteri’s work (“nothing happens”) to the extreme. Indeed, very few changes mark its surface, but those well versed in the NWAQ discography wont be surprised by a recent Slices interview where Peteri claimed he doesn’t care about “things happening.” He’s more concerned with creating environments, and “Heavy Metal’”s is a hazy, barren land where the stillness of the desert is felt in the tune’s relative inaction. While hardly his best work, it is a clear statement of intent that shows us his music is best enjoyed when you simply immerse yourself in it. On the flipside we’re treated to some more danceable grooves via “The Magnificent.” Bleached, whirring synth bursts sit atop grooving percussion and growling bass rasps. Very little in terms of variation but it doesn’t need much; for my money, its one of Peteri’s best tunes. The record closes out with “A Better Tomorrow,” which pulls back on the intensity and ends things on a twisting, dubbed out note. Newcomers to Newworldaquarium might do better to check some of his more popular records first (“Trespassers” springs pretty immediately to mind), but NWAQ obsessives tend to seek out as many bits of his material as possible, and Heavy Metal is one that could have easily flown under radars.

[Guidance Recordings]

It’s hard to imagine a deep house record causing as much commotion as this one did back in 1996. The newly formed Guidance Recordings had one release under its belt but it was this one from Projekt: PM, also known as Edgar Sinio, which caught people’s attention and put them on the Chicago house map. “When The Voices Come” had people talking when it took what seemed like disparate elements and combined them to form an arresting piece of music that sounded extremely original. Sure, there were prior house tracks that had featured flute melodies — Bobby Konders’ “Expressions” (Flute Mix) and Last Rhythm’s “Last Rhythm” for example — but how many merged them with silky vocoder vocals? It was a cross-genre pollination that worked wonders especially when paired with delayed organ chords and a thick bass line ripple. And during the last two minutes when the vocal is left to carry the melodic duties on its own, the effected words echo with a somberness, sounding like a ghost lost in Sinio’s machines.

The remaining tracks on this release are done in a similar style with “Don’t You Forget” standing out for its rubbery snare delay and a series of synth funk squalls while “Take You Higher” features subtle female vocals and a throbbing 303 bass line. They are equally melodic and funky, but nowhere near as daring and stunning as “When The Voices Come.” Sinio only went on to release one more 12″ the following year. I’m surprised When The Voices Come is still widely available on Discogs and at bargain bin prices. When it was released then writer Tim Haslett basked in the glorious beauty of this record but also pondered rhetorically, “What are you supposed to do with a record this good?” 14 years later apparently that question still hasn’t been answered.

[M-Plant]

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.

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So what does Stereotype sound like? To be blunt, it sounds like Robert Hood. Of course, that’s not a bad thing; this EP likely served as (and still is) one of Hood’s defining records, which should give you a hint to its quality. A1 a textbook example of the loopy, repetitive and funky techno Hood is synonymous with, pairing a near perfect kick drum with analog squelches and percussion shifting slightly but often. Flip the record over and the B side struts in with more finely tuned minimalism and plucked strings, my favorite of Stereotype and possibly Hood’s oeuvre as a whole. B2 skips along with rhythmic high-frequency bleeps and slicing hi-hats to keep the momentum pushing forward. Hood’s philosophy is one of clinical perfection, using the fewest possible sources and arranging them to maximum effect. Stereotype obeys this in full, and inspired subsequent generations of producers with its manifesto that perfecting one bar of techno is better than focusing on any sort of breakdown.

[Bureau B]

Here’s a proposition, possibly reductive, probably true: the German duo Cluster (Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius) were the only Krautrock act to make the usual artistic trajectory, from incipient experimentalism to more approachable, populist moves, without trading in one iota of their humour or their peculiar genius. Can and Tangerine Dream lost it; Faust and Ash Ra Tempel watered down most of their ideas (Faust’s “Krautrock” and Manuel Gottsching’s E2-E4 notwithstanding); Amon Duul II aren’t worth mentioning; perhaps only the other great Krautrock duo NEU!, of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, made it to the late 1970s with their aesthetics intact. Tracing Cluster’s history is a grand thing to do. Starting as Kluster, with third member Conrad Schnitzler, they released several albums of hard-nailed, formless analogue electronics, Klopfzeichen (Schwann, 1970), Zwei-Osterei (Schwann, 1971) and Eruption (1971), which were as vast and cold as the Arctic tundra, forbidding and steely in their gravity. After losing Schnitzler, the first two duo Cluster albums, 71 (Phillips, 1971) and Cluster II (Brain, 1972), explored similar terrain — an improvised meta-music that satellites out from the big bang of late ’60s counter-cultural disruption, where academic electronic music and the freedoms of rock at its most structurally footloose met on even terrain.

By 1974, however, Moebius and Roedelius had built their own studio in Forst, taken on NEU!’s Michael Rother as producer, and recorded the fizzy, treacly, toybox tunes of Zuckerzeit (Brain, 1974 — my favourite of their albums). After two albums with Rother as Harmonia, Musik Von Harmonia (Brain, 1974), with its brilliant pop-art cover, and Deluxe (Brain, 1975), and the fourth Cluster record Sowiesoso (Sky, 1976), their most playful and reflective album yet, borne of the bucolics and quietude of their country studio environment, Moebius and Roedelius visited the studio of Krautrock producer-extraordinaire Conny Plank in 1977 to collaborate with ex-Roxy Music member Brian Eno on two albums. (Though there is a Harmonia and Eno collaboration from 1976, Tracks And Traces, that has recently been circulating again.) It’s no surprise Eno that should find succour in Cluster’s music. Its combination of melodic ticklishness, proto-ambient whimsy and chugging motorik rhythm, all built in the shadow of the spirit of the Velvet Underground, is remarkably close to Eno’s first few solo albums — indeed, in his Krautrocksampler book Julian Cope reports that Eno’s encounters with Zuckerzeit influenced the driftwood and flotsam of his own Another Green World, the reflective instrumental puddles that he dotted between that album’s pop songs. Their meeting was, shall we say, in the stars.

Listening back to Cluster & Eno for the first time in many years, I’m surprised at how melancholic and regally paced it is, how it’s almost morbidly slow and glacial at times. This is another side of Cluster, hinted at by the wistfulness of some of Zuckerzeit and Sowiesoso, but given free reign thanks to Eno’s presence. There’s also a gracefulness at the heart of the trio’s compositions — if compositions is the right word: they sound carved from quizzical, tempered improvisations, setting a few simple systems or processes in action to see where they take the performers. And even when it’s placid and mournful, as on “Wehrmut,” Cluster & Eno possesses an emotional generosity that its more austere counterparts never grasped. Parts of Cluster & Eno are led by the insistent throb of the trio’s keyboards, around which a small palette of sounds organises itself — ruminative, exploratory piano that teases manifold variation from gentle sprays of notes, guitar that springs and bubbles like it’s strung with slinkys, magnetic keyboard drones, gentle bass drops. They pull the sitar and thumb piano out for “One,” their faux-Eastern collaboration with Okko Bekker and Asmus Tietchens, the latter of whom provides liner notes for these Bureau B reissues. But everything unfolds so unassumingly that the thunderous serenity that pulses at the heart of Cluster & Eno makes true the front cover’s ingenious photograph of a lone microphone standing in an evening-sky country landscape, as if the mic is capturing the electric humming of the full moon.

After The Heat, from 1978, is more active, more driven, less meandering — on “Tzima N’arki,” guest bass player, Can’s Holger Czukay, propels the piece with a metronomic throb over which Eno’s vocals move backward, while Cluster regularly catch their pointillist piano and electronic asides in dub-wise delay. It’s remarkably prescient – you can hear here the systems pop of To Rococo Rot and the chug of Stereolab. Eno sings on a few songs, a favour repaid by Cluster’s appearance on “By This River,” from Eno’s contemporaneous Before And After Science songs album (at this stage, Eno was playing tag team between songs and ambience). And Roedelius’ piano is centre stage on “Luftschloss” and “The Shade,” the lightness and simplicity of both his composition and his touch recalling Eno’s description of his writing “[seeming] to come from some long and secret musical tradition — like the meditations of Sufi poets, or the haikus of Zen monks… One senses that under their calm and unruffled surfaces there are deep and complex currents.” Both Cluster & Eno and After The Heat are lovely records — quizzical and moody in equal measures. You can hear echoes of their stateliness in Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series and in recent records by Klimek and Ezekiel Honig, and their ability to convey complex sensations with the simplest of gestures — an off-hand melody, a sliver of texture, or the ticking of a drum machine alone in a studio — is of a piece with the suggestiveness of the best techno. And it’s not so much that they sound “modern,” as their production and occasional naivety firmly place them in the ’70s, rather the timelessness of their delivery makes their emotional tenor so enduring, so endless. Play twice before listening — and then absorb slowly.