Tag Archive: benjamin brunn

Benjamin Brunn, A Sun Life

A Sun Life, Brunn’s second album of 2012, takes a much looser and simpler approach to concept — if it even has one, that is.

Various Artists, Twentyfour Ways

Smallville’s Twentyfour Ways largely finds its cohort avoiding the pitfalls of following too close to their sources of inspiration. Christopher Rau, Smallpeople, C-Beams and Benjamin Brunn feature.

Little White Earbuds August Charts 2011

01. Massimiliano Pagliara, “A Wrong Chance” (Tuff City Kids Remix) [Live At Robert Johnson]
02. Recast, “Consensual” [Third Ear Recordings]
03. Archie Pelago, “Rude Panecea” [Slime Recordings]
04. Benjamin Brunn, “I Took Her Out For a 707” [Ashes]
05. El Kid, “112” [Immerse Records]
06. Nebraska, “The Cruives”
[Rush Hour Recordings]
07. Martyn, “Masks” [Brainfeeder]
08. Cavalier, “Uzunyayla (Hallucinatory Narcosis)” [Drumpoet Community]
09. Lukid, “My Teeth In Your Neck” [GLUM]
10. Perseus Traxx, “Misspent Emotions”
[Boe Recordings]

Area, Absence

Few things grab my attention like a Benjamin Brunn credit on the sleeve, and it’s particularly nice when they fit as neatly as the one here. Area is an alternate guise for Canadian-born, Chicago-reared DJ/producer m50. I’m not sure what the exact distinction is, but this particular EP — for François K’s Wave Music — traffics in forms of abstracted melodic house not distant from Brunn’s esteemed body of work. Assured opener “LLPOD” has a tense dance floor utility and an almost jazzy swing, but what makes it memorable are the sputters, drips and steam jets animating the background, reminding of the atmospheric eddies of Brunn’s “Raymond.” Its abstracted dub grooves also put me in mind of, for example, Anders Ilar’s “Organza.” Little details similarly animate “Respons,” a simple techno builder that works small wonders with a robotic tintinnabulation bubbling brightly at the track’s surface.

Various Artists, Dérive Vol. 1

One of my very favorite records of last year was the fifth transmission from Workshop, anchored by an incredible standalone Benjamin Brunn track and earning its keep with complementary stunners from Da Halz and Rising Sun (names then unknown to me). So I felt a little quickening of the heart as I scanned the tracklist of this, the first release from the new Diamonds & Pearls-distributed Dérive Schallplatten. This record, too, is headed by an outstanding Brunn track, and offers the mystique of a pair of new names in Achim Maerz and Christopher Rau. The comparisons more or less end there, but this Hamburg-centric platter is nevertheless an exciting, sonically eclectic collection.

Move D & Benjamin Brunn, New Horizon

[Smallville Records] Six months since the release of Move D and Benjamin Brunn’s acclaimed full length, a few more dollops have dripped from the beehive. On “New Horizon,” our duo get a bit more mileage out of the syrupy palette that characterized Songs From the Beehive, but replace the drowsy rhythms with peppier booms and […]

Various Artists, Workshop 05

[Workshop] Since 2006, Workshop has released a new EP every six months or so. Sold and distributed by Hard Wax, each EP consists of three untitled tracks, sometimes all by the same artist and sometimes by a varied group. The quality of these releases has been consistently solid: Kassem Mosse’s “Workshop 03” had a stark […]