[KDJ]

Kenny Dixon Jr., or Moodymann, has earned his capital A Detroit Auteur title. He’s been essential to the scene and sound for the past fifteen years. If deep-house fetish was the biggest meme of European techno in 2008, then it was appropriate that Moodymann exported his own crackle, providing necessary remixes for Jose James and Sascha Dive. Not willing to waste the attention, Moodymann finished out the year with a record of his own material. Det.Riot. ’67 is more uncompromising than his last two singles — “I’d Rather Be Lonely” and “Technologystolemyvinyle” –- which are both initially pleasant, but when they find their loops, they blossom. For his latest, Moodymann pushes his eccentricities further outward and inward.

As a platform for his long awaited (a la “after all these years”) simmering anthem “Freeki Mutha F cker” and littered with a garden variety of blaxploitation samples, Det.Riot ’67 has checked off a couple requisites for a concept EP. For “Freeki Mutha F cker,” Moodymann gets as dirty and raw as he wants. It’s a call-and-response track, if you consider the only worthy response as “oh daddy.” It’s also deeply minimal, held together by a mere schizoid bass line and stoned monologue. “Freeki MF” is tracky but never feels that way -– only when Moodymann sardonically jokes about the track’s hook do I realize it doesn’t really have one. The track is also demented enough to find Moodymann diving head-first into a strange avant-soul-electronic realm inhabited in equal parts by Erykah Badu and Theo Parrish.

And there’s no small amount of soul signifiers on Det.Riot ’67. Some hit harder than others –- the cooing and acid guitars on “Heaven” sound as bloated and flat as you could imagine. But give me the lo-fi pop of drums and skittering hook on “Hello 2morrow” and I’ll take all odes to astrology and block party chants that go along with it. It’s just unfortunate Moodymann tries so hard to build the record into a concept. All of the blaxploitation and stock audio samples on “Det.Riot ’67″ are pretty heavily wrought, and in the end, feel trite. But they’re a small price to pay for a record that’s more than Moodymann’s de facto one sided single.

[Ramp Recordings]

Zomby sees himself as part of the undead but with a taste for skunk weed instead of flesh. He is a resolutely anonymous producer whose publicity photo has few clues into his identity: he wears white gloves and a mask of the all-seeing eye of providence. Zomby’s been banned from dubstep forums, infamous for missing gigs and has no small legion of fans who’ll call him a cock while still admiring his tunes. And 2008 was big for Zomby tunes. Starting with “Mush,” his 8-bit mourn of a debut for Hyperdub, Zomby has since dropped two wonky bombs with his “Liquid Dancehall” single and debut album, Where Were U in ’92? As much as electronic music likes to micro-manage it’s sub-genres, Zomby diversifies his portfolio as much as possible. Witness the range on his upcoming self-titled EP — shotgun burbles of “Aquafresh” rub next to the woeful Burial sighs of “Test Me for a Reason.”

“The Lie” was Zomby’s second single for Ramp Recordings in 2008, and unsurprisingly, it sounds nothing like his first. Instead of fluorescent melodies, “The Lie” is built around a cement-rubbed drone, roughed up and buzzing. Drums might pop and explode like other half-step producers (a la Skream) but there’s none of the cool functionalism — the pummeling is all inward. Taking a Ricky L. sample that oscillates between teen angst and Jah anomy (“I was born in a system / that doesn’t give a fuck about me”), the vocals are treated with a sheen of delay and rebuilt around a series of clipped hiccups and hyahs. There’s something uncanny about how the track operates: it circles around like a vulture, picking apart the vocal sample until there’s nothing left. The L.V. remix, then, is wise to focus on the drums, adding large waves of delay which rock the track like a ship. The single is rounded out nicely by “Dripping Like Water,” which is built on a staircase bass line, melodica and the wheeze of an old record talking about water. A series of compelling contrasts, “The Lie” continues Zomby’s skunk-fueled trudge across aesthetics and offers perhaps his most affecting single of 2008.

01. Gas, Nah und Fern [Kompakt] (buy)
It was only appropriate that Wolfgang Voigt would eventually start a label, Kompakt, whose intention was to keep every release in print. Before Nah und Fern, it bordered between difficult and near impossible to track down all of Voigt’s Gas albums. And considering their stature, it was difficult to imagine how they could have gotten lost to the wayside (RIP Mille Plateaux). But remastered and fully realized in a single package, Nah und Fern might be one of the biggest revelations of 2008. The ingredients to Gas — the drones, the de-tuned classical music, the gentle tap of a kick — don’t sound like much as ambient building blocks; their modesty is easy to get lost in. From the raw start of the self-titled through the nerve-wracked finale of Pop, there’s a unity and development between the four records. Voigt is never willing to repeat himself, but each track sounds like a compelling variation on the same template. My favorite variation is the last track on Königsforst. It’s probably different from yours.

02. Basic Channel, BCD-2 [Basic Channel] (buy)
In a year steeped in the resurgence of dub-techno, Basic Channel’s second CD compilation couldn’t have come out at a better time. Eschewing the dubbed out seascapes found on their debut compilation, BCD-2 cherry-picks Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald’s full-speed-ahead techno releases. It’s a welcome wrinkle to the Basic Channel mythology where “faceless techno bollocks” always seemed to de-emphasize the techno part for the appreciation of Basic Channel’s faceless aesthetic. BCD-2 contains so many of Basic Channel’s highlights — the onslaught of “Enforcement,” the prickles of “Octagon,” and the momentum of “Phylyps Track II/III” — that it’s hard not to be simply thankful for the care in transferring this work to CD. It almost makes you not miss the original’s vinyl crackle.

03. Pole, 1 2 3 [~scape] (buy)
There’s a tendency to talk about Pole’s work as aural illusions. Stefan Betke’s scrapes, pops and crackles refashion the inadvertent effects of technology into purposeful affects of depth. As much as Pole defined the glitch movement when he first released the monochromatic-trilogy of 1, 2, and 3, this collection of his seminal releases never sounds as dated as you’d expect in 2008. It might be how far Betke dubbed his techno or how many creases he imprinted onto the Basic Channel blueprint. If Basic Channel emphasized vinyl’s warm texture with their compositions, Betke ripped those sounds apart for the digital age. And if the intervening decade has proven anything, it is that Pole’s innovations were too big to forget.

04. Various Artists, FXHE: Collected [FXHE Records] (buy)
Soundhack, Soundkit EP [Soundhack] (buy)
First things first: FXHE: Collected and the reissue of Soundhack’s “Soundkit EP” are necessary deals with the devil. FXHE: Collected comes with a sub-title “Vinyl classics now digital” and “Soundkit EP” originally came from Hard Wax, whose first foray into CDs had “Buy Vinyl!” emblazoned on it. But after another difficult year for distributors (RIP Neuton, among others), 2008 might be the year when even vinyl-only labels were forced to recognize the importance of the digital format. Thankfully, FXHE: Collected is a fine introduction to the label and owner, Alex (Omar-S)mith. Beginning with FXHE’s 2008 highlights “Psychotic Photosynthesis” and “The Further You Look – The Less You’ll See,” the compilation touches upon past glories like “Day” and “The Grand Son of Detroit Techno.” “Soundkit EP” sounds just as fresh; Soundhack’s (aka Frank Timm) avant-glitch-dance music might have anticipated The Field’s melody drenched loops (“Scraper”), but the funk foundations of “Double Hammer” and “Funkyrule” hit the hardest. The two releases also show off what’s changed in the digital landscape — both are distributed as ‘Beatport Exclusives.’

05. Quiet Village, Silent Movie [Studio !K7] (buy)
Quiet Village is a conceptual music project from the duo of Matt Edwards and Joel Martin. They began by releasing their singles on Whatever We Want, which for all practical purposes, doubles as contemporary art factor, peddling pieces of vinyl scarce and in demand enough to command large sums of money almost instantly upon release. Because Quiet Village is conceptual, they do “live shows” where they play the CD of Silent Movie with an accompanying montage of cult movies. Because Quiet Village is conceptual, they release “compilations” where they re-edit old songs and claim the new songs as their own. You might not know it, but Silent Movie reissues lost gems from artists like Alan Parsons, Trade Mark, and Giorgio Moroder, all re-edited and finely honed. In other words, Silent Movie is a schlocky, bad taste update on Endtroducing. And with the popularizing of re-edits, which has seen their role shift from “for friends only” to “thousands of clamoring fans,” Silent Movie might be the best example of how ownership is playing out in 2008, with artists trying to cover their legal bases and claiming they “wrote” all their re-edits.

[International Records Recordings]

Michaela Dippel (aka Ada) likes to say she was raised by pink ponies, fashioned herself as pseudo-vampire, and had a blond pup named Fizzmann. If you pay close attention, these are all selling points for her music. Ada is part of Areal, a label which dabbles in large amounts of distorted fuzz, songs that double as dance tracks and a surreal PR department. From her first single “Blindhouse,” Ada has stood out as the label’s devout populist. Her tracks are hyper-saturated with melodies, full of synths that alternate as down-pillows or stun-guns. Paired with her singing voice, it’s easy to interpret Ada as Areal’s softer, warmer (and *ahem* feminine) side. But Ada’s disinterest in hiding her music in Areal’s characteristic faux-grit makes her records age better than most of her label peers’.

Ada’s latest single arrives on Areal’s new sub-label International Records Recordings. IRR might be the most banal name in techno, but the label’s output from John Daly and DJ Koze has been anything but ordinary. Ada’s contribution is just as bizarre, despite a B-side, “Kink-a-Jou,” which is just pleasant enough — the track’s drums shimmy as the melody dissipates into the mist. The standout, though is “Forty Winks.” The A-side is broken into three parts, each less dance-worthy than the last. Pared down to a muffled breakbeat, organ drone and a plaintive guitar, “Forty Winks” is decidedly quiet. It stumbles completely away from Ada’s melody-drenched sweet-spot and in the process becomes more sensitive and affecting. Stretched around a confetti of guitar strums, “Forty Winks”‘ tone is a sleepwalk’s mixture of tugged heart-strings and placidity. The hackneyed phrase “Forty Winks” might suggest a track to nap to, but “Forty Winks” is the first worthy soundtrack to Ada’s pink ponies and vampire daydreams.

[FXHE Records]

There’s a tendency to describe Alex O. Smith, the owner of FXHE Records who is better known as Omar-S, as “enigmatic” or “mysterious,” but the latter is not something that Smith has spent much time cultivating. Smith is a prankster, with a strong tendency to, in his own words, “fuck with people.” So you could call him enigmatic for including juvenile messages on his records, as well as selling Omar-S ice cube trays on his web store. It’s hard to say how much Smith’s zany antics — like a this picture of him signing vinyl next to a revolver — have transferred onto the success of his music. He’s had a good five-year run of mostly “buy on sight” releases, but still hasn’t gained much more than a cult following.

But 2008 is shaping up to be a good year for Smith. It feels like Omar-S, the personality, is taking a back seat to Omar-S the musician. “Psychotic Photosynthesis” is a near-masterpiece, a track that see-saws, psyche-licks, hypnotizes and eventually interlocks it all back together. “The Further You Look – The Less You See” is a worthy follow-up, but has been mostly ignored. Which is unfortunate; Smith likes to talk about his sound as Motown-gone-minimal, and “TFYLTLYS” hits that raw note perfectly. It’s built around a gummed-up and rippling riff on “black cow” melody. With each interweaving part, the melody becomes more dizzying and butterflies outward. Named after the Temptations’ song, “The Further You Look – The Less You See” has the same pleading (and melancholic) tone. It’s pretty damn affecting for a minimal Detroit track and one definitely worth seeking out.

[Smalltown Supersound]

Hans-Peter Lindstrøm can do wrong when he puts his mind to it. That was my second thought when I heard about his new album, Where You Go I Go Too and its epic 29-minute title track. My first reaction, like most people, was either “perfect” or “how perfect,” depending on how glib I was feeling that day. Here’s why: Lindstrøm builds Rube Goldberg-like compositions from the smallest kernels without blushing at his own impulses. His disregard for self-consciousness might be one of the biggest reasons why he’s the poster boy for a sub-genre of disco that uses hippie stereotypes for prefixes — beardo and cosmic are the standards, but I’m still holding out for granola and free-love-disco. So when Lindstrøm talks about going through the history of electronic music in 29 minutes, I’m of two minds: one cringes and the other finds the audacity endearing.

And that’s the essential problem with trying to pin down Lindstrøm — he might be innocent of irony, but certainly not of history. In fact, for WYGIGT, Lindstrom stitches influences on his sleeve. Sure, his work has always leaned on disco touchstones like Giorgio Moroder and Cerrone. But recently he’s added the high-brow minimalism of Steve Reich, the introductory moves of Manuel Göttsching. All are good places to build epics from small blocks, but the best surprises of Lindstrøm’s electronic journey fall on the wrong side of the taste divide. They are cheesy, bloated and irresistible. His melodies zing like Jan Hammer rocking his keytar, or drift off like a new-aged Tangerine Dream soundscape in the middle of WYGIGT‘s title track. Lindstrøm sounds unafraid to imbibe the sounds of electronic artists already dismissed.

WYGIGT might be one epic track, in three parts and just a hair under an hour. As Lindstrøm’s first proper album, it also sounds deliberately “big picture” — calling one track “Grand Ideas” might’ve been a start but every moment on WYGIGT sounds fixated on the grandiose. Huge handclaps, swiveling background sirens, pulses, Vangelis-sighs, builds and fades that last for minutes. The album is constantly supported by tightly wound synths, but they only accentuate the scale that WYGIGT tries to maintain throughout. There are no signs of exhaustion in the music, but the accumulative effect of WYGIGT can be exhausting; moments like the introduction of the sleaze melody on “The Long Way Home” give the wide-screen a little levity, relief.

While WYGIGT might be audacious, it succeeds because of the details. The pre-programmed and live instrumentation hang nicely together with a seam between the two appearing in the right light (ie. a quick fade up on drums to kick start a swath of sequencers, chimes tickling around motorik churn). The album’s small twists, like how the title track can rebuild itself with both tighter and looser melodies than the previous 21-minutes, is what makes WYGIGT worth revisiting.

[Dial]

“Hesitate” is in the running for the most ironic title of the year. As John Roberts’ debut on the frequently great label Dial, the single begins with a hiccup of a listless groove that quickly fades as a facile tribute to the title — there are few actual hesitations on “Hesitate.” Roberts can afford to lean heavily on the merits of his music, offering a low-key biography that reads like a friendly cliché (e.g. another producer from New York turned Berlin) and interviews that do little to either justify or dispel how assured his debut sounds. Although technically Roberts traffics in the sounds of house -– minor-chord stabs, warm smudges of bass, splatters of hand claps –- he never seems fixated on the feeling, the groove. Instead, “Hesitate” bursts with little moments of rearrangement, where changes aren’t dramatic but manage to re-orient the flow of the track under your nose.

A-side “Hesitate” might be the best introduction for Roberts, showing off his ability to juggle a variety of sounds. Sometimes the track feels like a thicket with little melodies weaving throughout, etching out an abundant groove. What comes across as dense on first listen can be picked apart in nice details –- for instance, a call and response between a full-bodied bass drum and its phantom limbs. But it never feels cluttered; Roberts knows when to pivot the track when it veers on becoming overwhelming. “Promises” follows a different track, placing a parade of askew instruments -– a seething piano, rawhide bullwhip, sizzle — against the house blueprint. Coming across a little like Horror, Inc., “Promises” might pilfer a couple tricks from Marc Leclair, but also introduces bizarro Gershwin piano lines and a full head of steam into the mix. “Sweat Me” rounds out the single with one long trickle of the piano and a lulling down-tempo send-off. With “Hesitate,” John Roberts covers no small ground and reveals one of the most stylistically cohesive debuts of the year.

[REKIDS]

Taking after the piano-driven house of Still Going and Osborne, Runaway’s “Brooklyn Club Jam” starts with the same impetus but makes sure to contort itself. First released on Runaway’s Myspace page, the track was surprising almost to a fault; as a stream of an unreleased track, “Brooklyn Club Jam” sounded like it could (and more importantly, should) help the catalog of a number of labels. Months later, “Brooklyn Club Jam” has ended up on the REKIDS imprint, home of pummeling wide-screen epics and it doesn’t sound a bit out of place. For a group like Runaway, with a wurst-sized edit and single to their name, the journey from Myspace to REKIDS should’ve been improbable. But Runaway includes Jacques Renault, a member of DFA’s roster and one of the hardest-working DJs in New York, crowned best DJ of 2007 by NYC night-life guide Paper Magazine. As you could imagine, the success of “Brooklyn Club Jam” sounds less flash-panned than finely honed.

The first thing you notice about “Brooklyn Club Jam” is how dry the drums sound, how the hi-hat fizzes, and how the rest of the track sounds soaked from a humid night. Not settling for instant melody like Osborne’s “Outta Sight,” Runaway takes the shimmer of the piano and cuts it into shards. Piano lines might still shine through but always refract when they reach the surface. The piano turns out to be a red herring after it peaks halfway through, letting the track dive back into an 909-churn. The balance of “Brooklyn Club Jam” is the best part of the track -– it never pigeonholes itself as dark, tribal, or uplifting house when it touches upon each sound. The L.S.B. remix streamlines the tease, introducing a meaty bassline, firm hi-hat and drum breakdown for the piano to play around. It’s a fine re-branding, but sounds far less nimble. Toby Tobias’ remix takes the alternative approach. He carves out the heart of the original – drums, piano, all but a shard of the melody — and finds how many angles he can hear a round of handclaps on top of the remains. It’s an idea, but the track never finds a structure to cling to.