[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.

When I saw Mala and Skream tag team at Dub War’s fifth birthday party in New York recently, I was struck by how absurd it is that a style that half a decade ago sounded like the height of dance music futurism now plays like a throwback. (Don’t even get me started on how Skream, a guy about six months younger than I, is already a golden oldie. I have a general policy of no existential crises before breakfast.) I think it’s fair to say that since 2005, dubstep has had more ideas than practically any other subgenre. And the debut 12″ from Brooklyn duo Sepalcure, the latest signing to the always-forward Hotflush Recordings, feels like it’s bursting with all of them. The fact that Sepalcure, with their lithe yet woozy beats and watercolor renderings of classic house, played a live set at Dub War just one month before Skream’s and Mala’s subs-rattling dread is another bit of evidence of dubstep’s constant flux. That Sepalcure could turn out such relevant and future-forward music on their first time out bodes very well.

A collaboration between Percussion Lab founder Praveen Sharma and glitch producer Machinedrum (given name Travis Stewart), Sepalcure simultaneously evokes Joy Orbison on codeine and FaldyDL on adderall: despite recasting floor-ready steppers as a series of late-era Van Goghs, the four tracks on “Love Pressure” sound deeply considered and exceptionally focused. On the title cut and its somewhat wilder A-side partner “Down,” Sepalcure achieve this through energetic yet precise and forceful bass lines that keep a wealth of colorfully textured synthesizers from either evaporating or bounding away. Of the two tracks, the title cut — with its cleverly deep vocal bits and subtle organic percussion — wins the day; while still pretty fantastic, “Down” doesn’t so much bring new ideas to dubstep’s table as re-jigger all of the ones we’ve been hearing for the last year.

On the B, the vibe takes a distinct (and appropriate, for two Brooklyn dudes) turn towards house. “Every Day of My Life” follows the same template as both A-sides but nudges the tempo down considerably. The Logic-sampling “The Warning,” though, feels like an entirely different animal. Trading last year’s purple synths for sweeping, scratchy, shoegazey strings, Sepalcure make both the sample and dubstep entirely their own. It’s a gorgeous finish to a very strong 12″ and another buzz-worthy win for Hotflush, a label that’s been surprisingly quiet this year when label head Scuba isn’t on production duties. With a bounty of new material rumored to be on the way in the coming months, Sepalcure are poised to throw a lot of new ideas at dubstep. We should listen very closely.

[DFA] (buy CD) (buy mp3s)

There was a moment in the middle of the last decade when it looked like James Murphy might table being an indie rock star and focus on being the world’s ultimate dance music juggernaut. Both his 2006 LCD Soundsystem project 45:33 and his 2007 FabricLive compilation with LCD drummer Pat Mahoney quickly emerged as disco classics — with no “nu-” qualification necessary. And as important as it was for the Pitchfork set, LCD Soundsystem’s second album, Sound of Silver, felt great in the way that so much of the decade’s best dance music sounded great: Rather than spewing out the sum total of his rather massive backlog of influences, Murphy internalized them and emerged from the studio with an inarguably contemporary dance sound. Throughout all of this, his label, DFA, was evolving from a hothouse of handclap-laden no-wave revivalism to a major player in house and disco. His cred in the indie rock scene seemed more like overflow from the wealth of it he was amassing in the clubs, at least judging by the top of his CV.

When the details of Murphy’s next LCD Soundsystem album began emerging some months ago, I wondered if he’d actually continue his high-profile dialogue with the dance music scene. Because despite all the Special Disco Version DJ sets and essential 45:33 remix 12″s, there’s a part of the music world that doesn’t care at all (or at least not all that much) about any of these overtures. The dance act LCD Soundsystem also enjoys life as the indie rock act LCD Soundsystem, and plenty of people who wouldn’t dream of dropping $20 to get into the Bunker (let alone download a Beats in Space episode) love the shit out of him. Dance music fans are unbelievably fickle, and craft is often lost in the shuffle of what feels like billions of new releases every week. If you make an album that leaves a hardcore contingent scratching and shrugging its collective head and shoulders, have you really sustained that great of a loss?

Sound of Silver proved you could have it both ways (see “Someone Great,” one of the decade’s great indie rock jams that was also one of the decade’s best dance pop tunes); This Is Happening proves that the situation may have been untenable. The latest LCD Soundsystem album is, objectively speaking, good, though certainly not a bona fide classic like its predecessor. But when I listen to it as a DJ, or just as a guy who roots for dance music most of the time, I hear Murphy disengaging. Part of the problem is that his influences don’t sound nearly as cloaked this time out. When I hear “Drunk Girls, “All I Want,” and “I Can Change,” I hear a whole lot of pre-ambient Brian Eno (and the records Eno produced for David Bowie) but not nearly enough James Murphy. He might be one of the only guys around with the production budget and know-how necessary to reproduce those textures, but this glammed-up side of LCD Soundsystem feels cheap and put-on, and it honestly sounds like a bit of a detour. Two of the more recognizably dance-minded LCD cuts on offer, “One Touch” (which owes a debt, somewhat surprisingly, to Leave Luck to Heaven-era Matthew Dear) and “Pow Pow,” would not have been highlights of the last album, but they suffice for dance floor fare here. As I listen through to this album, I can’t ignore the appeal of all the warm, room-sized synthesizers and driving ‘70s rhythms, but as someone who appreciated a particular strain in James Murphy’s music, I find it all much less appealing than I’d like.

It’s hardly scientific proof, but a conversation I had recently about LCD Soundsystem with a dance-disinterested friend made me wonder if it was precisely that strain that brought Murphy an audience that doesn’t know Trax from Tresor. My friend commented that LCD songs bring a kind of heartfelt feeling to electronics she just doesn’t get from most of what’s in my record bag, not realizing that longing and loneliness and uncertainty powered New York dance floors in the ‘70s as much as spiked punch and Quaaludes. It’s a part of dance music’s DNA that music history has (until recently) pretty much trampled over, and James Murphy’s done quite a lot to amplify that quality for those out of the loop. It’s not surprising, then, that “Dance Yrself Clean” — a lengthy, surprisingly quiet burner as difficult to pin down emotionally as stylistically — has emerged as practically everyone’s favorite regardless of musical allegiances. Short on obvious reference points and subtly funky as hell, it’s so obviously the best track on the album that I almost can’t imagine slotting it first. “Dance Yrself Clean,” like all the best LCD Soundsystem material, exists on a continuum of great dance music without really retracing anyone’s steps. And it might just be enough to keep the music world Murphy crossed over from salivating for more.