reagenz
Reagenz, Playtime
Improvisation. In house? Sure, DJs do it every night. Move D did it before with Benjamin Brunn on Songs From The Beehive, creating sketches beforehand but recording everything in more or less real time. Plenty of parallels exist between that record and Playtime but none are quite so telling as this. To be frank, I don’t know if the recording of Playtime was actually in real time or improvised, but this is a release whose unfolding seems so natural and human it seems unlikely that it’s the work of automation. Many complain about the lack of musicianship in house and techno, and Playtime serves, in part, as a solid response to such silly claims.
Little White Earbuds January Charts 2010
01. Azari & III, “Reckless (With Your Love)”
[Permanent Vacation] (buy)
02. Reagenz ft. Fred P., “Keep Building” [Workshop] (buy)
03. Pangaea, “Why” [Hessle Audio] (buy)
04. TJ Kong & Modular K, “Venusberg”
[Four:Twenty Recordings] (buy)
05. Hot Chip, “One Life Stand” (Carl Craig PCP Remix)
[EMI] (buy)
06. Roni Nachum, “Guest Service Shalom”
[Fine Art Recordings] (buy)
07. André Lodemann, “Still Dreaming”
[Freerange Records] (buy)
08. Anthony “Shake” Shakir, “Arise”
[Rush Hour Recordings] (buy)
09. EQD, “Equalized003-B” [Equalized] (buy)
10. Brandt Brauer Frick, “Button” [The Gym] (buy)
LWE’s Top 5 Downloads (From the Second Half of) 2009
Here at the end of 2009, we find ourselves on the cusp of a terrifying new decade. With Obama-shaped ecstasy pills, slippers made out of bread, and people saying “twitter” more than any other word in the English language, the road ahead grows increasingly strange and menacing. Then you’ve got assholes like Chris Anderson at Wired ranting about the power of “Free” and how it’s ultimately a good thing that newspapers only last a few more months, because the information just wants to be Free and there’s nothing we can do about that. Anderson’s ramblings may be reckless and ill-informed, but no one can deny he’s onto something — to point to an easy example, we are, after all, still waist-deep in an endless torrent of free house and techno mixes that shows no sign of abating. Due to an unfortunate dearth of free-time (and a work computer that has no soundcard), I unintentionally shied away from the regulars this quarter (The Bunker, mnml ssgs, ROOF.FM, Bodytonic) and surely missed some great mixes because of it. But thanks to social networking media and some particularly juicy Soundcloud accounts, I managed to find a handful of mixes that still haven’t worn thin after dozens of listens. So, while it would be unwise to claim these are the all-out best mixes of the quarter, here are five mixes you can play death once the media empires crumble and some kind of Cormac McCarthy-esque scenario ensues.