LWE’s Curator’s Cuts podcast series features our reviewing staff mixing together recent favorites and providing explanations for their selections. For this edition LWE contributor Momo Araki compiled Curator’s Cuts 17. We will post the tracklist later in the week, as the curator discloses and describes the tracklist as part of the podcast.

Tracklist:

01. Basic Channel, “Radiance III” [Basic Channel]
02. Spectrum, “Walking & Falling”/”Over & Over” [Mind Expansion]
03. 19.26.1.18.5, “Untitled” [Horizontal Ground]
04. Harold Budd, “The Oak of the Golden Dreams” [New World Records]
05. Melchior Productions Ltd., “The Hypnotist” [Perlon]
06. Marcus Mixx, “Without Makeup” (Ron Hardy Mix) [Let's Pet Puppies]
07. Pom Pom, “Untitled” [Pom Pom]
08. Skymark, “Hopeless” [Modern Sun]
09. Almunia, “Dos Estrellas” [Claremont 56]
10. Galaxy Toobin’, “Thing Are Looking Up” (Lee Douglas Remix)
[Crème Organization]
11. Monoton, “π 3.141592653589793″ [Oral]
12. Virgo Four, “Take Me Higher” [Trax]
13. SND, “Untitled” [Raser-Noton]
14. Ekkehard Ehlers, “Plays John Cassavetes” [Staubgold]
15. River Ocean ft. India, “Love & Happiness (Yemaya Y Ochùn)” (12″ Club Mix)
[Strictly Rhythm]
16. Pearson Sound, “Rod Lee Refix” [Night Slugs]
17. Carter Bros., “Full Disco Jacket” (Nebraska’s Old School Mix)
[Rush Hour Recordings]
18. Blawan, “Getting Me Down” [white]
19. Hyetal, “Diamond Islands” (Boddika Remix) [Black Acre]
20. Julio Bashmore, “Ribble to Amazon” [3024]
21. Q. Lazzarus, “Goodbye Horses” [Bulletproof]
22. Blackman, “Beat That Bitch With A Bat”
[Rush Hour Recordings, Trax Records]
23. Shed, “Kinky Dudes” [Soloaction]
24. Harold Budd, “The Oak of the Golden Dreams” [New World Records]
25. Phuture, “Your Only Friend” [Trax Records]
26. Kerri Chandler, “Downtown” (Dark Mix) [Downtown 161]
27. Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark, “She’s Leaving” [Dindisc]
{airbreak: Kraftwerk, “Klingklang” [Philips]}

Curator’s Cuts 17: Momo Araki (105:16)

In this interview we chat with Uwe Schmidt about his recent work and his observations on the challenges surrounding contemporary music. The prolific musician’s discography and list of aliases are but a trace of his sundry activities that juggle multiple processes and concepts. Schmidt started making acid house and techno in Frankfurt in the 1980s under a number of aliases including Atom Heart. As the years went on, he navigated various forms of electronic music through his recordings for Pete Namlook’s FAX label and his own Rather Interesting. Relocating to Santiago in 1997, Schmidt has since incorporated into his repertoire a number of projects fusing electronics with Latin instrumentation and rhythm, most notably as Señor Coconut. His generous responses to our questions and the insightful observations he makes indicate a grizzled mind and creative force who remains thoroughly engaged with the changing structures that are radically reshaping music today. (Schmidt is playing two shows at Unsound Festival NYC this week, click here for more info.)

Seemingly like a backlash against minimal techno, there is now a widespread revisitation of various forms of “classic” electronic dance music. It deals with building consensus on what are electronic dance music’s histories, their conventions, their characters, their hallmarks, their sounds, then repeating or celebrating them, much like in a neo-classical manner. How do you feel about this?

Uwe Schmidt: My problem with what’s still called “electronic music” today, and which sadly only means “dance music,” is the fact that it appears to be and is marketed as “progressive” music, while truth is that it has not developed in any significant form for the last 20 years or so. The “no-progress” in itself is not a bad thing, I just think that label, which “electronic dance music” is carrying, is misleading and wrong. What I miss is this type of music coming to its true essence instead of promoting it under a false pretext. “Electronic dance music” is as “new” or “progressive” as my TV set. I think it is necessary to strip that label “progressive/innovative” off that type of music in order to be able to re-initiate a process of real musical progress. The so-called “minimal techno,” in my opinion, is just the tip of the ridiculous iceberg. The name “minimal techno” itself I never fully understood and somehow see it as practical joke of some sort. I mean, “acid” in 1988 was already minimal techno. Most electronic dance music I have heard in clubs for the last 20-25 years already WAS minimal techno. I honestly don’t get it, how one can seriously label contemporary music that way — AGAIN — and somehow think that it describes anything different from what there was. Maybe you can help me out?

Going back and forth between different historical types of electronic dance music, as you described, is certainly a step forward, in the sense that it is recognized as a stagnated musical style with more or less clearly defined borders. Back in 1994 I asked for such, as I would call it a frank definition of electronic dance music, simply because I found it wrong to see reactionary people dressed in “innovative” clothes. It reminded me strongly of the entire “authenticity” discourse of rock music, for example, which is equally wrong, misleading and altogether covers the music itself in an unnecessary mist of meaning and false truth. To see that very same thing happening to electronic music at the beginning of the ’90s I found quite shocking, I have to say, and I decided that I did not want to become a part of that. To me it felt and still feels ridiculous to act as a supercool, innovative electronic music dance act on a silver stage, on a party sponsored by a supercool, innovative cell phone company, knowing that I’m selling well-established, out of date musical code.

Celebrating electronic dance music, as you said, in a neo-classical manner, is of course, historically speaking, a logical step that has been overdue, yet had to happen at some stage. To me that is a good sign, since we can hopefully close the book pretty soon and finally work on some real progress.

One of your most recent releases, Music is Better Than Pussy, is a critique of the (un-)creative process of making dance music. To what extent are you deploying dance music tropes in irony or earnestness?

I wouldn’t say that this particular album was a critique. It does contain SOME critical lyrics, true, yet, the entire process of making that album was mainly born out of the interest to produce those tracks. Let’s say the lyrics, the criticism, the humor, etc. are just some flavors that spice up the album — such as the title of course. Talking about the criticism which had to do with “earnestness” to a certain degree, it had to do with looking at what’s going on within the scene of so-called “electronic dance music.” Quite some time ago, as a part of some self-analysis process, I looked around myself, at the people/colleagues/contacts around me, the scene I somehow found myself in, and I realized one important thing: that the reasons of WHY certain people make certain music are what differentiates them from each other.

Sadly I found myself surrounded by way too many “musicians” making music for reasons other than an interest in music itself. Not always, listening to the “product” this becomes clear of course, yet as soon as one has to deal with “the scene” it becomes more than evident who is doing what for which reason. To my regret, I realized that I had just nothing to do with the vast majority of my drifting companions, and some lyrics on Music is Better Than Pussy talk about that. In other words, “making music” can be triggered by a huge variety of reasons: making music unfortunately is just one of them, and sadly, the one that represents a minority of musicians. As the years passed I got more and more conscious and ultimately allergic to a certain type of human being music makers and more and more isolated myself from the scene I tend to be allocated in. This, in itself, does not have to do much with “earnestness” as good rock and roll doesn’t have much to do with “authenticity,” but to me it’s rather a question of personal hygiene. Bad people make bad music.

In what ways do you think musicians can express themselves in, as you say in Liedgut, the delirium of present times (“im rauschen der gegenwart”)? What struggles are they facing? What contemporary themes do you and others deal with, or not deal with?

I think that one of the biggest problems electronic music, or, rather, music itself is confronted with nowadays is just the “delirium of present times.” What I miss so much are personal signatures. Personality is made unrecognizable underneath that layer of “present times.” It’s actually a lot of work and requires a lot of determination, energy and strength to position YOURSELF on top of those layers, or at least find a well-defined spot within the chaos. Unfortunately, most music I hear today is either made by people that long for acceptance by the present times, or by people who are totally unaware of how generic they actually are. This itself would not be a problem if we were talking about jazz, rock, or any other historic musical style, but especially within “electronic music,” once [considered] a label of progress, innovation, craft and personality, I find the generic hard to take.

Photo by Dieter Wuschanski

It’s always been of importance, to any artist, to transform your times into YOUR times. More and more so this has become an almost impossible task. Quoting Gary Clail, who said in one of his recent interviews something like “We all are edits.” I really love that phrase, because it explains so well our current state, as well as the current difficulty: to become aware of the edits and finally to start re-editing yourself!

You mentioned that music and art have been thrown into a system of free economics. When music was first recorded, economics was characterized by mass production and industrialization. When music became portable and critical appropriation (remix, sampling, etc.) was a dominant artistic mode, economics was characterized by services. Up until several years ago, one could say economics was about transforming debt into securities, but then the system of financialization collapsed. How do you view music in light of this most recent economic development?

I think that music itself is changing, just in the very same way it changed from the pre-recording to the recording age. That may be hard to understand and even harder to explain. It’s not only the musical language that is changing, but what music is, how it sounds, where it appears, how it makes us feel, and so on. All that is being transformed right now. Mainly this has to do with the fact that music is still strongly linked to the economic system, which in itself is in crisis, and most probably won’t make it much longer if the fundamental structures of it aren’t changed.

As a second observation, one can say that the process of how music is progressing through time can be described as new ideas flowing into the mainstream from the rims of the creative pool. “The rims,” the outskirts, the minorities come up with new ideas hence they are the innovators (in most cases), while those ideas are picked up and transformed into the cultural mainstream where popularization is taking place. With the new conditions of music industry, one can say that the rims are getting smaller and smaller day by day. The interesting question to me is, from which source the mainstream will be nourished in the future with no or very little innovation to be sucked in from the borders. We are no doubt standing at the very beginning of an era where this is happening and still don’t know which results this will bring for music in general.

One way we can measure the music industry is by how records are selling. If we look at a recent chart, we can see that the music industry is doing terribly. Material formats of music are being outmoded, but immaterial formats like downloading, streaming services, and subscription-based services can barely provide artists with compensation. Per unit of time, recorded music is worth less than it once did by about a factor of three hundred. No matter if it’s mainstream or underground, the costs of producing music (from recording and manufacturing to distribution and marketing, etc.), are changing. How do you as an artist, and perhaps just as importantly a person who runs a record label, work within these constraints?

A couple of years ago, I would say from 2003 onwards, when participating in panels and discussion groups, I realized that for the first time we the artists asked questions like, “What is the future of music industry?” Frankly, for many decades an artist would have been the last one to be asked such question. I realized that had to do with the proper cluelessness of the music industry itself. Now, since years have passed and the overall situation has become more and more dramatic, one was confronted with, let’s call it “the practical issues” of such decline of music industry. Instead of lamenting the decline, which is a common human tendency, I decided to try to turn it into my favor. Most importantly to me, it has to be seen that the relationship between the composition itself, the recording, the reproduction and the sound carrier needs to be redefined under the decline of economics, which up until today defined those parameters.

In other words, economics, the so-called “music business” decided which musical code/language/style, was recorded how/where/if at all and according to which sound carrier how and where it was consumed and reproduced. We the artists gladly adopted the formats such as the 7-inch, 12-inch, EP, album and finally the CD and made them the defining borders of our musical composition. Now, instead of lamenting the no-sales of albums, I received a tremendous feeling of freedom, when I realized that from now on my musical code was no longer related to any format whatsoever! I CAN produce an album, but I don’t have to. It CAN have 20 minutes or six hours — it’s from now on entirely up to me. That said, I think almost everybody is currently drifting around a fuzzy realm once called “market,” trying to inject it with sense and a user’s manual. I personally find that very entertaining and it has certainly inspired me musically.

A second issue has to do with your previous questions. The crisis, to my delight, has been and still is putting a lot of pressure on every artist. This has led to a process of purification, if I may call it that. More and more “ex-musicians” have abandoned music since they realized how little money can actually be made by making it. On the other hand, those who are in it for the money now have to clearly go the commercial route, which means they no longer can mix between the credible folks Even though making a living from music hasn’t become easier, making music has become so much more fun!

What role do you believe physical formats of music have today? Can physical formats take new forms? Since this is an electronic dance music site, please feel free to elaborate on or avoid the well-discussed implications they have for DJ culture, etc.

Though I am not an economist, I believe to have understood that every market after a period of expansion shrinks down to its “natural” size. Every now and then that size is so small that the market disappears or transforms into something else. When looking at formats such as cassette tapes or vinyl, the very same is true. In some countries for example, cassette tapes are still a huge market. In other countries 12-inches that contain certain types of music are still an important format for a certain group of consumers, and so on. The CD, for example, does have a strong link to a specific type of music and is necessary for that music to be listened to. What is happening right now is that in the turmoil of economic re-definition, physical and non-physical formats have to find their places and sizes within that structure. All this is in the making, I think, and we have not come to a stable situation yet.

That physical formats are taking new forms is already happening, I think. All kinds of mixed formats — books with USB sticks, CDs AND download codes, hard discs, etc. are being invented and tested. The final place of the physical format has to do with which type of music is related to which type of consumer who belongs to which sociological sub-group. We can see that music has expanded into almost any corner of our society, from cell phones to websites, elevators, malls, and so on. In all those corners music functions as a texture, like a color or a smell which people need in order to socialize “in the right place.” For the majority of corners in which we socialize physical sound carriers are no longer needed, and the existing ones are moved into the corners they belong to.

Photo by Dieter Wuschanski

As recordings are valued less due to their reproduceability, musicians rely more on the value of their performances, because they are unique, experiential and less prone to reproduction. Someone can record an Atom™ live set and post it as an mp3 to the web, but it’s hardly the same as experiencing you perform in person. How do you value performances versus recordings?

I have always considered them entirely different experiences and therefor, as Atom™ for example, never tried to play a recording, nor tried to reproduce the complexity of a recording at a live concert. The performance and the recording are entirely different as experiences themselves and in my opinion are necessary in order to understand the work of an artist. I would most certainly not like to see my activities reduced to just one of the two. However, live performances are only possible by producing a repertoire. A repertoire does not necessarily need to be recorded, though in most cases producing a repertoire can be seen as a process similar to “producing a recording.” Musicians are in a studio/rehearsal space together and compose new material. The compositions are either just recorded live or indeed recorded, so final “live versions” can be produced from those. Live performances require a lot of “unseen/unheard” work before they actually become reality. Established artists do have that repertoire, while artists which are just starting to establish themselves are trapped in a situation where they need to have a repertoire/name/record deal to play gigs, while at the same time need to have played gigs in order to get a record deal/produce a repertoire. No gigs, no deal, no deal, and no gigs! So the interlinking between the recording and the live performance, in my opinion, is fairly underrated.

The technological tools of our time, with the Internet being the dominant, promise new complexities and theories of music. Yet you find the opposite and are puzzled by it; at a moment of freedom, we create less diversity. Could it be that we’re at a stage where we’re still mining all of the information made recently available to us on the net, and as soon as its absorbed, something explosive will happen? This is to say, can we start to use what you call decadence as fuel for creativity?

I guess you are well aware of the irony that lies within that situation you described! In another interview I recently stated that technologically speaking, music now days can/could take ANY shape at all. The making of music and the possibilities we are holding in our hands are pretty incredible! Just as with images, sound can be entirely modified down to the pixel. Now, interestingly the hippest thing seems to be “minimal techno.” How can that be? How is it possible that in times where technologically merely everything is possible, the variety of music and most importantly, the interest in exploring those possibilities is so little. It’s a complex problem and I don’t have the answer, to be honest.

There are many factors which determine a musical “product.” Most importantly the market and the economics which sadly define whether something is “possible” or not. There are very few artists which are able to produce without economics in mind. I guess it all comes down to personal decision making here. But if you want to make some money, the easy way is the generic formula. Further, there is technology itself which is just another of the above mentioned “layers” that bury the artist under an incredible burden of possibilities and options.

Years ago for example, I realized that I had been dragged away by the stream of upgrades, updates and new possibilities. It took me a while to understand that I had lost control of my very tools themselves (which are of course part of the economic system too, therefore need to be renewed faster and faster). As an “electronic music” composer, one is strongly tied to the technological tools that are provided by the system. Due to the huge amount of tools available, each single one of them offering huge amounts of possibilities itself, and the rapid fluctuation of platforms and tools, one hardly ever gets to know the very same tools in fact. In other words, most musicians are using the surface of the tools, the presets and the pre-defined logical paths. The problem is complete when, because of economic reasons, a production has to be done fast and therefore never allows the tools to be fully explored.

As for the second half of your question, and your theory of “explosion,” I would like to contrast it with a theory F. Jean Baudrillard, who more than 20 years ago stated that we are heading towards an implosion, not towards an explosion. Back then, when I read Baudrillard’s words, I was fascinated by them yet could not imagine how an implosion would feel like. Unfortunately, today I perfectly understand what he meant and feel very attracted to such theory. Let’s say, little innovation in times of huge expansion of knowledge and possibilities, makes total sense when looking at it as an implosion.

You’ll be performing at the Unsound Festival in New York with Pink Elln, aka Tobias Freund. Your collaboration started 18 years ago with the release of Elektronikkaa 1&2 / Electronique. What do you and he consider to be important about your work together? Are there any constants that run throughout these 18 years? Has anything remained the same, and what has changed?

This may be explained perfectly well by a short story. To start with, Tobias and myself have worked very, very little in studios together. Even though he is the engineer who mixed my very first album back in 1989, we never really “made music” together in a studio. Somehow we ended up playing live concerts at a very early stage, in 1992. Sometime around 1995 we stopped playing together since each one of us was taking different paths. Almost 10 years later, at the MUTEK Chile festival in Valparaiso, we decided to play a show together. We did not even rehearse that show, but just brought our equipment to the stage, hooked it up and simply played the show which lasted almost two hours. Standing on stage with him, I realized that we actually hadn’t rehearsed, just very briefly outlined the show verbally while the rest was improvisation. During the entire show we never spoke a word on stage, gave orders or anything. It was just “playing together,” and after not having played together for 10 years. So to me, Tobias is one of the very, very few people I have shared a stage with, with whom I can do something like that. It’s perfect musical communication on stage, which most importantly is great fun with him.

Finally, what’s on the horizon for Uwe Schmidt?

For Uwe Schmidt, like for anyone else, it’s the light!

[Oral]

In 2003 and 2006, two early-80s minimal electronic records resurfaced on the Montréal-based label Oral Records. The long out-of-print, limited-release Monotonprodukt albums are the work of Konrad Becker, a multidisciplinary artist who now writes and conducts research about media. While Becker is currently busy doing work for the Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0, Public Netbase, World-Information.Org, and the Global-Security-Alliance.Com project, he was once, as if in another life, the inspired mind behind Monoton, an art project he started in 1979.

Perhaps more than anything Monoton is similar to the rigid formal exercises of Asmus Tietchens’ absolute music, except Becker takes a more direct cue from mathematical structures, which surprisingly results in a less clinical sound. Indeed, Konrad Becker wrote (presumably to Oral label-owner Eric Mattson) that “Monoton on a quest for the spirit in the machine investigated the representation of a numeric structure on resonance field level; numerical systems and mathematical nature constants as values and proportions for bionic sound…” One of my favorite tracks off the new release Applied Psycho-Acoustic Meta-Mathematics, “π 3.141592653589793,” which sounds like DAF yoked to a house beat and dates back to 1981, is a case in point. The mathematical patterns are obviously at work in the harmonic sequences of “Squared Roots” and “Periodic Primes,” but then Monoton runs off in a completely different direction with the deranged “Wizard-64.” Available as two 10″s or a CD compilation, the new batch of hitherto unreleased Monoton furthers the mythology of Becker as a prescient guru to contemporary electronic music, whether dance or drone.

Remarkably, the more his music sees the light of day, the more it is revealed how much ground Becker was covering in the early 80s. Monoton very much evokes the sounds of his contemporaries, the minimal electronic of Sky Records, composers like Conrad Schnitzler and Tod Dockstadter, and many a hybrid post-punk/Krautrock/prog band. What distinguishes Becker from them is how uncannily his work anticipated future trends in electronic music; so many of the tropes we associate with current electronics can be found in his music. History has it that minimal techno began with Robert Hood, but “Batacuda79,” which appears as a bonus track on the Blau, Monotonprodukt 02 26y++ reissue, makes the case such ideas were explored almost fifteen years earlier and remained long dormant. In my opinion, “Batacuda79″ could have been to minimal what E2-E4 is to Detroit techno, house and trance. There is an unexpected similarity here to Villalobos, Basic Channel, and Black Dice as there is a contextual one to Suicide and Throbbing Gristle.

Monoton, more so than coldwave and minimal wave, is further testimony to the fact that a less-is-more, dub-influenced approach to electronic beats was in gestation long before the nineties. To conceive of the minimalist techno aesthetic as a branch in the chronological tree with Cybotron at its root is to discount the existence of Becker’s work. This is to believe in the myth that the provenance of minimalist techno lies solely in the Detroit techno and acid house that preceded it, and therefore minimalist techno should be evaluated as a photocopy of a photocopy. So why then didn’t a track like “Batacuda79″ exert a strong influence on electronic dance music like Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4?

The answer is Becker never released it back in 1980 because he felt the equipment he was using at the time was sonically inadequate to realize his artistic intentions. He waited 27 years for audio technology to reach a point of advancement that satisfied him. He resolutely did not believe a retro sound was necessarily purer and better than a modern one; what mattered was the appropriateness of the sound to his vision. It’s almost criminal “Batacuda79″ was hibernating in Becker’s archives until its recent remastering. It could have been a marginal revolution of sorts, changing the scape of electronic dance music today had it been pressed almost thirty years ago.

[Perlon]

Baby Ford once said, “Voices on tracks have always been part of the sound, but that’s all it is, part of a whole sound.” “Gravy Train” and Soul Capsule’s “Waiting 4 A Way,” a track Baby Ford co-produced with Thomas Melchior in 2007, help us to understand this relationship of parts to wholes when it comes to vocals and instrumentation. There are similarities between the voices on “Gravy Train” and “Waiting 4 A Way,” both in execution and concept. Linguistically, they share a sexual “come on” croon, they’re worked with effects in equal measure, and both have been released as a cappellas. This last commonality suggests a logic where the voices are no longer just parts of a whole sound, but have become a whole sound in and of themselves.

There’s a transparency to the a cappella in dance music. By themselves, they stand starkly naked, existing under the microscope for their potential to be remixed. Not only are their durability and mutability assessed for instances of appropriation, but their fitness to the original works considered. You wonder if the track lived up to the a cappela’s potential; you make a comparison between extant and ideal circumstances. As parsed details, a cappelas function as invitations to deconstruct the multi-tracks into their components and understand how the gears make the clocks tick. At first I thought “Gravy Train” sounded too similar to “Waiting 4 A Way,” but that was missing the point. In realizing the voices are being held constant, it became easier to note the records’ differences: the percussion of “Waiting 4 A Way” having more to do with Melchior’s style than Baby Fords’, the bounce of Baby Ford’s organs in “Gravy Train” — a signature of his since “Noddy” on BFORD 9. The parts and their microscopic details are built up into a dense sound that defines these records and the maxim that a sum can be greater than its parts.

“Waiting 4 A Way” is a crown jewel for both Soul Capsule and Perlon, and as much as “Gravy Train” catches its vibe it’s just not as revelatory. Fortunately, there’s some sense of urgency from Baby Ford to break new ground on the B-side, “No Day.” The track’s got several things going for it: Larry Heard-like keys for one, but perhaps the main thing is it’s quite nearly a song — that is, there’s an implicit musical relationship to the oratory. But there isn’t a voice on “No Day,” only the micro sounds that suggest a cappela. The “scat” on “No Day” sounds rooted in the twee of Aspect Music. It’s mildly cheesy, but you get a sense Baby Ford clearly had some fun with this one, and that there’s a story being told here. I started off this review with a quote from Baby Ford, and I’ll close with a quote by Thomas Melchior/Baby Ford, which is actually a remix of a famous “a cappella” by T.S. Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploring and when we come to an end of all exploring we shall return to where we started and know the place for the first time.” For Baby Ford, his most recent 12″ seems like a transition point, both a return to BFORD 9 and Aspect Music, and a progression of a sound nascent in Basking in The Breaklights and culminating in “Waiting 4 A Way.” However, “No Day” is also a point of departure from this progression, and if the quote holds true, hopefully Baby Ford will one day return to “Waiting 4 A Way” where something new and revelatory happened.

[Anstam]

Anstam are apparently a pair of brothers from Germany who seem to value anonymity and quality control, infrequently releasing the austere records bearing their name. “Aeto” and “Brom,” their first two 12″s, are notable for industrial atmospheres featuring beats familiar to fans of Warp, Skam, Rephlex, etc. However, Anstam’s music isn’t wholly encompassed by a 90s sound, as they’ve been likened to contemporaries like Distance and Vex’d. The similarities are cosmetic though, as the records aren’t specifically operating within the constraints of dance-oriented music. Nonetheless, they do tap into nostalgia of bygone electronica and encourage sound system brutality. These approaches run their course in what might be called an England story (though not necessarily of that Soul Jazz compilation), and with the dubstep iteration of the hardcore continuum exploring a certain sparseness, it seems only natural that someone would reintegrate the spirit of earlier UK electronic music within this new context.

By no means is it Star Trek, but “Cree” rings of futuristic music from just outside our doorways. This is in spite of its sound palette belonging to a decidedly older era of electronic music. Anstam is, in short, a new kind of old, though the exercise in cataloging and referencing past music is really only half the story. Rather, the indirectness of its approach of sampling, not so much of sounds themselves, but the cognitions and responses we attribute to these sounds is what defines the energy here. Anstam works with hallmarks of industrial, but its context may very well be in the dancehall tradition. The potential of Anstam’s music lies in its promise of connecting synapses between genres; it follows the tradition of reciprocity between rock and dance music. Decades ago, European electronic dance music drew inspiration from bands like Front 242 and Cabaret Voltaire; and New Order and Psychic TV dabbled in acid house. The energy was palpable. Today, there is DFA, but what else? In dubstep there are MCs, and if Anstam were to enlist one, perhaps there could be no finer candidate than Blixa Bargeld and his electric drill. For an outsider to teach us to meditate on bass weight would be both unexpected and new. I welcome the edginess in Anstam that is lacking in a lot of dance music today.

[Workshop]

“Workshop 07″ marks Even Tuell’s first solo EP for Workshop (profiled last year on this site) and known for its left-of-center output. From what we’ve heard in his mix for LWE and his own Airbag Craftworks compilations, Paul-David Rollmann seems to have just as much of a penchant for balm as he does for the sparse beats released on Musik Krause and Broque. In comparison to standout tracks like “Pretty Bonita” and his contribution to “Workshop 04″, “Workshop07″ comes as a disappointment. On the A-side, a Detroit shout out is looped ad-infinitum and becomes more distracting with each passing minute. The mid-range is saturated to the detriment of any clarity in the lows, which end up buried in the mix. While the track has a nice melody, the lack of dynamics and the clichéd sample leave the strongest impression.

B1 is a take on spooky electro like the kind Alexander Robotnick explored in the early 80s when he stretched the synth out to the dark side. The saving grace of this release, B2, may find itself in everyone’s Halloween crate this year. It sounds like Goblin ditched their guitars for drum machines, recorded another Dario Argento horror soundtrack, and got it cut at Dubplates & Mastering. If Scientist failed to rid Channel One of the evil curse of the vampires and Rod Modell remained Rod Modell, we’d have a rough approximation of the nekrotechno going on here. Hopefully we can continue to depend on Workshop to release more of these flat-out weird tunes.

[Raster-Noton]

Is Raster-Noton loosening up? 2007 foreshadowed their potential foray into techno with Signal’s Robotron and Frank Bretschneider’s Rhythm. The dream was realized last year with Byetone’s Death of a Typographer and “Plastic Star” 12″, in addition to the Gas book/CD. These motley releases are something of a face lift for a label heralded for its austere approach to sound and electronics. To have thought Uwe Schmidt would be a part of the no tone brand seemed far-fetched, given how his boisterous excursions into electronic Latin music wore on the patience of many, and the most exciting Schmidt release this decade may not have been anything on Rather Interesting, but the Nuclear Jazz reissue on Nonplace. Despite the lull, Schmidt is undeniably prolific, and his debut for Raster-Noton reminds us of his many talents.

Atom™’s Liedgut is the comeback release marking Schmidt’s escape from the doldrums. The album consists of five pieces, chopped into 20 tracks. It’s a gorgeously popped out/droned out affair, but unlike a Fennesz record, which can get bogged down in digital dust and non-committal meanderings, Liedgut has the guts to not just flirt with genre tropes, but confidently invoke their pathos to enable a progression from bossa nova to clicks & cuts and classical to Kraftwerk (Florian Schneider happens to make an appearance on this record). This is what Uwe Schmidt is legendary for, ingeniously marrying (and/or disastrously juxtaposing) the traditional with the electronic.

As always, Schmidt’s extreme attention-to-detail is evident in how he processes vocoder vocals on “Wellen und Felder II,” playing each verse off the last over time-lapsed drones akin to Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers’ Heroin. This game in sonic texture is important to AtomTM in constructing song structures, and serves as the materials with which he composes the form of Liedgut. As the Raster-Noton site explains, it is “an analogue expression of the romantic dualism,” defined scientifically on the one hand, but seeking philosophic/poetic ideas on the other. Above all, it’s an accessible album. Last weekend, I played it for my girlfriend’s dad, and he remarked, “It’s amazing… music and machines.” These are unlikely praises from an avid collector of Stax vaults and jump blues, and it spoke to how the furthest audience for Raster-Noton can connect with precise, abstract electronic music so long as it isn’t afraid to breathe human air.

Liedgut‘s headiest moments sound like a hybrid of Flanger and Alva Noto’s Trans-series: syncopated, slick, and flecked with the right amount of effects. While it’s nothing groundbreaking for Schmidt considering what he’s churned out as DOS Tracks, the grooves on Liedgut are tighter and more detailed than his previous funk reductions. Think of a high quality micro-house breakdown, something from your favorite Perlon record, then pretend the DJ decides to screwface you and rewind the track rather than let the beat drop. That feeling of calculated restraint, where the producer works meticulously to put you in a certain headspace only to yank you right out of it, is what Atom™ exercises on “Interferenz I” and “Im Rauschen der Gegenwart I.” If dance escapism were your goal Schmidt could be your guide, but on Liedgut he’s hardly concerned with where he could take the beat, and relies more on the inherent potential of beat-based music as one of many devices to layer, meld, and juxtapose the conventions of different music.

Liedgut essentially flips our perception of Raster-Noton on its head. Heretofore, R-N practically opposed invoking pathos. It was always more concerned with the logical, and the records, while usually fascinating, had a spectral quality to them, inhibiting “humanness” for the sake of process and concept. Liedgut is a clinically-produced record, but never before has the label released an album communicating the personality and identity of an individual producer so convincingly. For this reason, Liedgut is a truly refreshing project for both producer and label.

[Vidab Records]

Oliver Deutschmann and Stephan Hill are the producers behind Gowentgone and the Vidab label. As noted on their website, Vidab was founded by the pair as “a platform to express their idea of timeless club music.” On the “Under the Bridge EP,” Gowentgone seem to be wrestling with two interpretations of timelessness: one being a historical standing, attributed to knowledge and appreciation of our predecessors’ accomplishments, and the second, a mental space we enter in the midst of a track unraveling its charms.

In opener “Love and Respect,” Gowentgone loop a man’s voice orating, “His love for love and his love for women and family / Give him some respect, you know / Recording some new love music,” over a classic Detroit sound. Whenever contemporary producers use devices referring to the house music ethos, as in the case above, one wonders whether it’s just another ritual in consecrating club music’s past. When done cheaply, these exercises end up reifying the work of a bygone era, elevating it to an overly protected, artificial state, while the work in question –- what is being produced in our time –- ends up being a dud. The spoken word in “Love and Respect” helps cite Deutschmann and Hill’s reverence to Motown, but what does it say about their time and place in electronic club music? On one hand, Gowentgone’s high level of craft attests to their inclusion amongst Berlin’s techno elite: the spoken word becomes abstracted through being looped and sequenced with hiccups and cut-up voices; jettisoning its semiotic baggage, the words create a wormhole, drawing you deeper into the music. And while Gowentgone demonstrate the strength that comes from tradition, they show a weakness that comes from lack of fresh thought. Deutschmann and Hill make brilliant Detroit-inspired club music. But don’t we want to know what their music has to say about Berlin in the 21st century?

Gowentgone’s talents lie in how they braise an elemental beat with drone and reverb, combining and recombining groove and effects. In “Point Blank,” it becomes hard to tell where a cymbal splash ends and a drone begins. The finished articles result in hypnotic listening, which some might say evoke a feeling of timelessness. Ultimately, Gowentgone’s crutch is the language chosen to frame their musical ambitions (“new love music,” “timeless”), language connoting an obligation to not only look back historically, but to face the unknown and unexplored. One test of timeless house/techno is when we can hear the best work of our time and the best work of twenty years ago with the same ears. I think the next step for Gowentgone is to show us their potential to push a sound forward, as they’ve already expressed their appreciation of the past so eloquently. Until then, the jury is still out on whether this is indeed some “new love music.”