You’ll read a lot about how house music and in particular vocal tracks, lift you up, carry you along with a feeling, make you moist around the tear ducts. For me, most of that carries about as much weight as hearing kids in California harp on about P.L.U.R. back in the mid 90’s while they sucked on pacifiers and sported gargantuan, street sweeping baggy jeans. But I have to be honest that there are a select few vocal house tunes that can, to this day, send a shiver up my spine and have me dabbing at the corners of my eyes. Roland Clark’s South Street Player alias only graced two releases, but throughout his entire career that has spanned over twenty years this Strictly Rhythm release under that name is undoubtedly the highlight.
review
Mike Monday, Yoppul
March 9, 2010 – 11:01 PM
For the past decade the oft underrated U.K. producer Mike Monday has been busy dropping inspired remixes and tracks which range from understated to bleeding obvious. For those who know his style, the phrase “house music with a splash of humour” tends to ring pretty true. His tracks are all wonk and weirdness twinned with rudely competent production which befits an Oxford music production graduate. And as he’s found his releases on a number of labels of note, from Freerange, Simple, Buzzin Fly and even Om, it’s apparent that label owners are rather partial to his idiosyncratic take on house. This time it’s the Get Physical crew who buy into the Mike Monday experience with Yoppul on their Get Digital imprint. Once again it’s rather impressive, if not as memorable as his releases on Playtime.
Aufgang, Barock Remixes
March 9, 2010 – 11:01 AM
What kind of music would people like Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Robert Johnson, or Johann Sebastian Bach be making if they were alive today? Would they have stuck to their roots and continued to play the music they were famous for and helped make famous? Or would they have updated their existing systems and ideas, used the latest technology and reflected their newer influences? It’s highly likely they would choose the latter (if you can look past the sheer logistical impossibilities of Bach especially surviving for so long). A group like Aufgang may well present us with the closest approximation of what someone like Bach may have sounded like some three hundred years after his time. The combination of Francesco Tristano, Rami Khalifé — both classically trained pianists from the prestigious Julliard school — and Aymeric Westrich, a formidable percussionist in his own right, lends itself to an interesting new take on both classical and electronic music. Taken from their self-titled debut album, “Barock” is reinterpreted by Wareika, Mondkopf and Robert Hood who all personalize the track and take it in whole new directions.
FCL, Vocals For Everyone
March 8, 2010 – 11:01 PM
East Flanders was a veritable gold mine of house fundamentals in 2009, thanks to the underestimated work of the young We Play House Recordings. With an aesthetic as direct and to-the-point as the label’s chosen name, the line has typically favored retro synthetic palettes and low-slung earworm grooves. And though all of their records have been worth a look, when you start tallying last year’s out-and-out stunners — San Soda’s “Dorsnee,” Dynamodyse’s “Gare du Nord,” Reggie Dokes’ “Dancefloor Spectacle,” Russ Gabriel’s “Le Voyeur,” Ramon Tapia & Maxim Lany’s “Highway,” to name names — you can’t help but wonder how they’ve kept such a modest profile. WPH starts the new year with an in-house affair, a quartet of 90’s throwbacks from the team-up of label founder Red D and the producer behind roughly half the label’s output, San Soda. And yes, as the title suggests, you may sing along to them.
Maayan Nidam, Don’t Know Why/Feels Like
March 4, 2010 – 11:01 PM
When I first sampled the little sips of this 12-inch on the Hardwax website a couple months ago, I immediately felt that tingly warmth in my chest that seems to indicate something worth investigating. After the release of her debut album Night Long last year, Maayan Nidam left me wondering: what next? She seemed to have shed the Miss Fitz moniker for all but remixes, and in stepping into her own name she had moved, too, into a new era of emotional, mature, and even contemplative dance music. While her productions past were always composed with taste and precision, the artful formulation of the full-length upgraded her brand of dry-but-funky minimalism to an intoxicated, swaying jazzy wonderland.
Lindstrøm & Christabelle, Real Life Is No Cool
March 4, 2010 – 11:01 AM
At this point in Hans-Peter Lindstrøm’s musical career, audiences know he can go the distance. The Norwegian producer first cruised over the ramparts of Oslo’s relatively small music scene and into DJs’ crates on the backs of lengthy, interstellar disco grooves made for heaving dance floors. Collaborating with compatriot Prins Thomas on their self-titled and II albums, the pair refined extended jam sessions into still sizable explorations of the spaces between funk, prog, and Kraut rock at Balearic tempos. And then there was Lindstrøm’s 2008 opus, Where You Go I Go Too, whose three elongated movements streamlined into one epic excursion through the hyper-colorful depths of his creative vision, rendered with a grandiosity redolent of Vangelis. Going long has its drawbacks as well, like relegating Lindstrøm to niche markets too narrow for such a multi-talented musician. The dilemma he faces, then, is showing he can be concise while maintaining the appealing traits teased out of his lengthier tracks. With long-time collaborator Christabelle by his side, Lindstrøm tackles that challenge on their new full-length, Real Life Is No Cool.
Martin Landsky, Werkschau EP
March 3, 2010 – 11:01 PM
“Life moves pretty fast,” were the worldly words of wisdom from Ferris Bueller. In terms of electronic music, trends move pretty fast and depending on the style they are crafted in it’s easy for tracks to sound dated after a period of time. Martin Landsky is putting his tracks to this test with a forthcoming LP aptly titled Werkschau (retrospective). As a teaser we have the Werkschau EP featuring two early tracks from the Naked EP from 2000, and a reworking of one of his most popular tracks “1000 Miles” from more recent years, updated here under the name “2000 Miles.” Choosing to remake a track he only released three and half years ago is an odd choice.
Various Artists, Laid006
March 3, 2010 – 11:01 AM
In only a handful of months the still fresh Laid imprint has made quite a name for itself. Despite being born in the shadow of its older brother label, Dial, Laid has quickly established its own area of expertise, pummeling record buyers with five solid singles of dance floor-primed house music while Dial vascilates between floor friendly and leftfield sounds. The sixth record to don a lux Laid sleeve is the first showcasing multiple artists’ originals, for which they’ve collected some of the freshest names around for a survey of the current state of deep house on both sides of the Atlantic. Hamburger Christopher Rau and New Yorker-cum-Berliner John Roberts are both members of the extended Dial family while New Yorker Fred P. has earned well deserved heaps of praise for his work as Black Jazz Consortium. It’s perhaps no surprise that Laid006 is about as solid a record as you can get, throwing three distinctive and in vogue sounds on one wax slab.
Rennie Foster, More Songs for Homeless Housers
March 2, 2010 – 11:01 PM
Here’s a salutary tale for anyone starting up a label and seeking to gain some coverage through the blanket mail-out approach: under no circumstances call your label something that could be mistaken for spam email. This fate almost befell this release by Rennie Foster on the unwieldy sounding Greta Cottage Workshop label. My email program, struggling to decide whether it was yet another ad for penis enlargement or nicotine patches — I really hope that there’s not a subliminal message in there for me — decided to consign it to my spam folder and I only noticed the release during a ritual clean out. Thankfully it wasn’t lost in the ether because More Songs for Homeless Housers shines a fresh light on the talents of Canadian producer Rennie Foster.
Anthony “Shake” Shakir, Arise
March 2, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Whether out of self-censorship or plain old yacht rock ignorance, almost none of the press surrounding Anthony “Shake” Shakir’s Frictionalism 1994-2009 has mentioned that “Arise,” one of the retrospective’s standout inclusions, is basically just a beefed-up edit of the closing drum break from Steely Dan’s “Aja.” That’s right, techno brethren: Shake just made you listen to Steely Dan. Featuring the percussion acrobatics of legendary session drummer Steve Gadd (who, rock ‘n roll lore has it, pulled off his contribution to the eight-minute track in a single take), the title cut from the band’s 1977 album has always felt like something more than a guilty pleasure, a soft rock epic with enough funk and stoney strangeness to win over even the Dan’s most humorless anti-fans. And on a 1998’s …Waiting For Russell 12″ for his Frictional imprint, he officially brought Walter Becker’s and Donald Fagen’’s irony machine — perhaps the smoothest conceptual art project of all time — into the fold of his myriad influences.
Clement Meyer, Midnight Madness EP
March 1, 2010 – 11:01 PM
Clement Meyer is somewhat of the youthful upstart. Emerging back in 2007 through Get The Curse, his influential electronic music blog focused on dirty house and electro, he’s seen his stock rise quicker than eco-energy. First earning a residency at hipster Parisian haunt Social Club, he’s since become an associate (and eventual co-owner) of Fondation Records with Danton Eeprom, lined up residencies at East London’s T Bar, and released the double A side Get The Curse on Seinan Music with apparent partner in crime Olibusta. Now he’s launched the Get the Curse Records imprint and begun its tenor with his own Midnight Madness EP. It’s not that this type of rise is unusual in the slightest, with cats such as Fredski from Tartlet Records, or fellow Social Club resident and infamous blogger for Fluokids, Casper C rising in a similar fashion. However, unlike some of his contemporaries, Clement’s music has a maturity that seems to reflect more than his age.
Terror Danjah, Acid
February 25, 2010 – 11:01 PM
Terror Danjah and Hyperdub seem like a neat fit. One of grime’s finest and most innovative beatmakers was given a fitting retrospective on Planet Mu in 2009, and here he delivers his debut on Kode 9’s equally innovative label. For those that listened to Gremlinz (The Instrumentals 2003-2009) or any of Danjah’s After Shock productions, you’ll know what to expect. Mr Danjah crafts gold out of the detritus of electronic music. Rave sirens, the trademarked Gremlin sample, and piano house riffs are recontextualised into a broken carnival of beats that are recognizably his own.
Pawel, Pawel
February 25, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Among the trio of friends — Lawrence, Carsten Jost, Pawel — who founded the Dial label in Hamburg 10 years ago, the latter, Paul Kominek has probably kept the lowest profile, despite being the more senior in terms of release history. Recording as Turner for the defunct Ladomat 2000 since 1998, he received remixes from the likes of Robert Hood, Isolée and Freaks, as well as recording four albums worth of curate’s eggs: Lukin Orgel, Disappearing Brother, A Pack Of Lies and 2005’s Slow Abuse. While Turner albums are characterised by often effete vocals and a home-listening aesthetic, Pawel is the first long-player recorded by Kominek for his dance floor alias.
Cherry, World Waits EP
February 24, 2010 – 11:01 PM
As Cherry, Teruyuki Kurihara’s debut EP for the Four:Twenty imprint may not have scored much of a blip on the techno radar when it was released mid-way through last year, but his follow up effort, the World Waits EP, should register some more deserving attention for the Tokyo producer. Keenly focussed on the emotive layering of melody, Cherry nevertheless fuels his tracks with plenty of kinetic groove. “When the Truth Is” tracks chiming, Detroit infused techno through wandering pathways of euphony, passed through bursts of steamy noise and rough shod wooden percussion. The relentless high notes figure in to the track like Robert Hood style minimalism played out in long form, though each element is scuffed up around the edges, taking the shine off that distinctive Hood chrome plated feel. Kurihara’s hard whiplash claps slam the opening track into overdrive and bounce off the wistful melodies, giving them more onus, not allowing them to succumb to their own precious beauty.
Joy Orbison, The Shrew Would Have Cushioned The Blow
February 24, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Being the recipient of the unholy amounts of hype the English press loves to dish out must be oddly flattering and scary as hell at the same time. Joy Orbison may well have felt both of those things when his debut release midway through 2009 was hailed as nothing short of sheer musical brilliance. It would be enough praise to potentially leave some producers forever trying to scale the heights of a bar set way too high for them from the outset. Joy Orbison, however, has shown that not only was he worthy of the attention he received (maybe save for quite so many superlatives) but he has more than enough chops to back up a blinding start with a well of equally impressive releases to follow. His remixes of Jose James’ “Blackmagic” and Four Tet’s “Love Cry” both showed that the producer could mine a wealth of melodies and crucial dance floor pressure, whilst his “J.Doe/BRKLN CLLN” twelve proved beyond doubt the original success of “Hyph Mngo/Wet Look” was more of a comma rather than an exclamation point in his career. “The Shrew Would Have Cushioned The Blow” then follows the familiar pathway of warm melodies and R’n’B vocal swatches that have thus far defined Joy Orbison tracks, though both of these elements are underpinned by an almost faultless production style propelling these fairly standard tropes towards the upper echelons of the genre.
Jellphonic ft. Zacky Force Funk, 100 Snakes
February 23, 2010 – 11:01 PM
When does east become west? I mean who’s to say Auckland isn’t west, rather than east, of L.A.? Listening to the New Zealand-based Jellphonic aka St. Liquor-ish’s 1000 Snakes EP on the brand new Clone Limited (I know, another Clone sub-label), it soon becomes clear he’s not an artist that bothers with such arbitrary geographical distinctions. This is the wheezy west coast sound taken to its illogical antipodean extreme, a synth(etic) ass wallop of electric boogie-woogie that constantly threatens to collapse under the various anxieties of influence the record operates under.
SCB, SCB001
February 23, 2010 – 11:01 AM
It’s almost silly that Paul Rose would go make a house/techno alias (somewhat) different from his well-established one. Lately Scuba’s productions would be more readily categorized as techno than dubstep anyway, even though his wide range of tempos and blend of styles comes out genre-less anyway. After the sublimely subterranean debut of the SCB moniker remixing his own “Hard Boiled,” the SCB project developed further with one of the mixes of 2009: the 37th mix in the mnml ssgs mix series. Kicking off a new series of catalog numbers on Hotflush, Scuba now looks to firmly plant the SCB flag with the succinctly titled SCB001.
Manaboo, Unhuh
February 22, 2010 – 11:01 PM
It’s getting to be full-time work keeping tabs on Brendon Moeller these days. Spread over his assorted monikers, he issued at least eight records of new material in 2009. Cohort Shigeru Tanabu has conducted himself a bit more discretely, though he did notch a soaring, string-laden peak time record with Wave Music early last year, and followed it with the loose “Jazzin'” for Apt. International. Originally a guitarist, he’s also made numerous contributions to Moeller’s Beat Pharmacy records, but Manaboo presumably brings the duo’s collaboration to full interactive fruition, the label press release emphasizing an engagement of their shared enthusiasm for jazz. Don’t let track titles like “Blutrane” mislead you, though; techno and house are the crucial touchstones here.
LWE Does Unsound Festival New York
February 19, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Since 2003, the Unsound Festival has been about bringing the disparate impulses inherent in electronic music under one roof — a music event urging you to scratch your chin one minute and dance your ass off the next. Presenting itself like a film festival but booked like a forward-thinking summertime weekender, Unsound has consistently showcased brilliant and challenging new sounds without ripping them from their underground trappings. Any music festival as likely to feature Sunn 0))) as Zomby is sure to pique my interest, but by nature of it happening in Krakow, Poland, its ridiculously open bookings stood quite a bit out of my reach. New York City — its population overeducated, overstimulated, and relatively accepting of high-end dance music thanks in no small part to Beyond Booking’s forward-thinking Bunker parties — always seemed like the perfect candidate for something like Unsound, and for a week in February 2010, my fair city got it. And not even a knock-off, either! The Unsound Festival New York brought a truly impressive and deliciously diverse line-up of electronic musicians — asking you to ponder, get down, or do both at once — to underground venues across Manhattan and Brooklyn. And I was lucky enough to trudge through New York’s famous February weather to witness the festival on Little White Earbuds’s behalf. (Very big ups are due to Gamall Awad of Backspin Promotions for making this possible.)
Santiago Salazar, Your Club Went Hollywood
February 18, 2010 – 11:01 PM
If you have a penchant for dance music, are over 21 and living in any moderately sized US city there is almost no avoiding nightclubs. They serve as the most likely environs to experience a DJ but often times they are venues ill suited for the music. Be it shitty sound systems, poor layouts or staff with attitude to spare, a bad club can ruin a great DJ’s performance, but more importantly they counteract the whole reason for going out in the first place. Santiago Salazar’s debut 12″ for Wallshaker Music takes the modern club owner to task for those very sins and more.