It’s hard to resist beginning any discussion of an Ostgut Ton release — be it a single, album, or mix compilation — without discussing the room from which its artist ostensibly drew his or her inspiration. Berghain, with its veritable pipe organ of Funktion One stacks pushing sweaty air into lofty post-industrial buttresses, is particularly susceptible to this line of thinking. As evidenced by the sandpaper highs and sucker-punch lows adopted by just about anyone who’s been at (or looking to get their records to) the club’s helm, Berghain begs producers to push its acoustic buttons in extremely particular ways.
review
Ation, Lovers Dub
February 17, 2010 – 11:01 PM
The power of the sample simply cannot be ignored within the realms of electronic music. It is essentially how house music as we know it came to be; playing around by re-editing other records, reshaping older ideas, reinterpreting axioms of the strains that came before. Opinion can be ruthlessly divided amongst critics, fans and producers alike over just how much should be sampled, whether it should be done at all or how much credit should be given to the original. There now exist within electronic music countless versions based around the same samples to the point where they are seen as standards. First Choice’s cover of Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” has long been a house music standard, and the allure of those sultry, smoky tones still inspire today. Ation’s “Lovers Dub” on Scuba’s Abucs off-shoot enterprise pays its own homage to the track with a brilliantly deep, stripped back, steppers riddim that uses large portions of the vocal.
BBH: Circuit Breaker, The End (1991-1996)
February 17, 2010 – 11:01 AM
He may be a media-savvy new technology evangelist these days, but back in the mid 90’s Richie Hawtin was the kind of sketchily dark character you would think twice about leaving your kids with. The Canadian producer was known during that period for the gloriously haunting ambient techno of FUSE — which occasionally and unforgettably on “Substance Abuse” veered into the kind of deranged acid that this installment of BBH focuses on — and the complex poly-rhythms and LSD-referencing menace of his Plastikman project. Yet despite the rumors of acid tabs embossed onto copies of his debut Plastikman album, Sheet One, there was a far more belligerent side to his character: Circuit Breaker. This double pack, released in 1996, charts the laying to rest of the Probe Records sub-label, an outlet that had allowed Hawtin to explore this grungier, edgier identity.
Nico Purman, Rhapsodies
February 16, 2010 – 11:01 PM
When evaluating music it’s not uncommon for music critics such as myself to overemphasize innovative sounds and structures and overlook the artists who work well inside the dimensions of established forms. Novel thrills get rarer with each year of new releases, with each new software edition, so by setting the bar inordinately high we discount some still worthy releases that are a bit more familiar, especially within dance music. Yet you would be hard pressed to find a full dance floor that expects aural alchemy from its DJs, or a DJ who resists all but the most revelatory records — it’s just not how things work away from our computers. Rhapsodies, a late 2009 release from Argentinian producer Nico Purman was my latest reminder of where my head should be at. Although he’s best known for his tenebrous tech-house on Modelisme, Curle Recordings and Vakant, this record finds Purman unexpectedly tossing his hat into deep and ethnic house rings. His outsider’s perspective lends a lot to these well worn paths, making this one of his most enjoyable EPs.
Steffi ft. Elif Biçer, Kill Me
February 16, 2010 – 11:01 AM
One of Ostgut Ton’s greatest strengths has always been the canny A&R work involved in each release. Their ear for talent is nearly unmatched in contemporary house and techno, having provided big breaks for Marcel Dettmann, Ben Klock, Tama Sumo and Marcel Fengler, and hosted career milestones by Shed, Prosumer & Murat Tepeli, and Cassy. Yet there is no sign of Ostgut Ton resting on their laurels or their reputation as the label arm of Berlin’s most highly regarded clubs. The imprint’s first release of 2010 is also Panorama Bar resident Steffi’s debut solo single, one so skillfully and confidently produced it all but insures everyone involved will reap rewards for their efforts.
Putsch ’79, Samasavel
February 15, 2010 – 11:01 PM
It can’t be much fun being cloaked in solid darkness 24 hours a day for months on end, but then the prospect of experiencing equally tedious endless daylight can’t exactly be appealing either. But so it is for Sami Liuski and Pauli Jylhankangas who, based in the northern climes of Finland, put up with the dual aspects of luminosity and murk for long stretches of time. Perhaps to counter the the interminable winters or rather to celebrate the wonder of boundless sunshine they create warm, ebullient electro/disco sounding like it’s been beamed in directly from the early ’80’s.
Joshua Iz, Vizual Rydims #2
February 11, 2010 – 11:01 PM
Back in 2000 at the apogee of Classic Records and Music For Freaks, DJs and producers such as DJ Sneak, Justin Harris and of course Derick Carter were de rigour. The entire Chi-Town bent on boompty bass lines and a serious penchant for fun sounds, be it the unfortunately too short lived Charleston house sound exemplified by Greens Keepers’ “What’s Your Man Got To Do With Gan” (and check the Igloo Records and G-Swing imprints) to bells, whistles, meows and barks blew up dance floors and headphones. On the flip side there were the deeper house sounds of Chicago with Iz & Diz’s enduring “Mouth” on Classic and “If You Love It, Dub It” on Silver Network. That’s probably how you know Iz; these days he’s all about his new imprint Vizual Records, using it as a vehicle to release music across the gamut of electronic music from Jamaican dub to Detroit techno. As with many contemporary solo artist led imprints, all the initial releases have been by Iz himself, but they’ve not lacked diversity. After an honorary bow to boompty on the first Vizual Rydims release, he decided to take a slightly deeper, Detroit lean while attempting to retain a hint of breeze from the windy city.
Reagenz, Playtime
February 11, 2010 – 11:01 AM
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.
Wbeeza, City Shuffle EP
February 10, 2010 – 11:01 PM
City Shuffle is the second EP by Warren Brown, better known as Wbeeza, to proudly declare “THIS IS THE HOUSE SOUND OF LONDON” on its sleeve. Oh, that it were true. London’s clubs are currently soundtracked by Phonica-approved, nutrient-deprived, pseudo-deep house, but anyhow, let’s leave the negativity (or truthspeak) to Dope Jams, and accentuate the positive. This is the third EP for Third Ear by the young, Bermondsey, South London resident, and shows his sound maturing from the rough style of the New Skank or Heavy Stuff EPs. “Maturing” in music critic language usually translates to some variant on “dull,” “bland” or “smoother,” but while Wbeeza’s new stuff is certainly more polished, there’s enough bite here to avoid it being lumped in with the aforementioned dross.
Pangaea, Pangaea EP
February 10, 2010 – 11:01 AM
One could argue that dubstep traditionally thrives on massiveness: those seemingly infinite bass lines wobbling up from the deep like tsunamis, those scythe-like snares ripping the fabric of the track at each half-step. But in the years since Skull Disco cut its singular path out of wamp-wamp-stomp, producers have become far more willing to manipulate eardrums on a much finer scale. The world’s subwoofers may continue to suffer abuse, but their previously bored tweeter brothers and sisters have found their work on weekend evenings getting a bit more technical. Kevin McAuley, the young Leeds-based producer, DJ, and Hessle Audio co-founder better known as Pangaea, comes from this school of bass music thought, and his soul-soaked singles for Hessle Audio, Hotflush, and — perhaps most memorably — his as-of-this-writing one-off Memories white label have tweezed ecstasy out of a more whispery sound pallet. His burgeoning discography, however, has yet to feature anything as distinctive and defining as what’s on offer over the four sides of his self-titled Hessle Audio doublepack.
Kuedo, Starfox EP
February 9, 2010 – 11:01 PM
With production partner Roly Porter, Jamie Vex’d released a respectable number of sides for the likes of Planet Mu and Subtext, though for the past year or so he has been going solo. Under his own steam he has also been moving away from the DMZ-styled low end rumblers and in to more experimental territory, highlighted by last year’s In System Travel EP and this new work under the name Kuedo.
A Made Up Sound, Sun Touch
February 9, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Throw a stone anywhere in house and techno and you’ll hit a production alias. Plenty of producers release music under a couple of different names, but only a handful have been able to embody each persona so fully that none of them feels like a side project. Rene Pawlowitz, whose aliases have gone so far as to remix each other, is one of those producers. Dave Huismans, the Dutch bass juggernaut whose A Made Up Sound project Pawlowitz championed on his Subsolo imprint, has proven himself to be another. The softer side of 2562, AMOS lets balmy house syrup flow over chapped dubstep knuckles, and the combination has made for some of Huismans’s juiciest and most effective material. So it’s no wonder there’s a lot riding on AMOS’s latest self-released sides, especially for anyone who heard his house-flecked “Rework/Closer” 12″ last year and still has goosebumps. Hardly the house coming-out party you might have expected (if anything, his 2562 full-length Unbalance pretty well accomplished that), “Sun Touch” instead finds the flecks of wiggly, pale house that distinguish Huismans’s personae burrowing even deeper into the spaces between all that jagged steppin’. It’s another stand-out AMUS record, but he’s hardly just showing off.
Mr. Raoul K, Mystic Things
February 8, 2010 – 11:01 PM
We love to drag geography into discussions of dance music, and with Mr. Raoul K, it’s hard not to. Turned onto to electronic dance music after moving from the Ivory Coast to Hamburg, his reputation as a producer is founded on a growing catalog of euphoric and rather continental club tracks that swirl with traditional African elements. African motifs are hardly anomalous in dance music, but they’ve held an uncommonly prominent role in this particular producer’s discography, and not just the rhythms, either. From the balafon twinkling through last year’s excellent “Wind of Goree” for Mule Musiq to the shudders of kora heard on 2008’s “Le Cercle Peul,” Raoul’s keen interest in working with live recordings of African acoustic instruments is probably the first you notice when you hear his music — at least it was, anyway.
Greg Wilson, Credit to the Edit 2
February 4, 2010 – 11:01 PM
There’s something about the name Greg Wilson that tends to inspire awe in even the most hardened of musos: His legendary turns DJing and creating re-edits from reel to reel tapes through to spreading the sounds of electro-funk throughout Manchester via his 1983 residency at The Haçienda. That’s combined with his abandonment of DJing at his pinnacle to concentrate on producing the likes of the once timely Ruthless Rap Assassins and Yello. As one would expect, he made a rather loud return to the fray in early ’00s during the heady days of nu-disco, dropping the killer LP, Credit to The Edit, on Tirk. Consisting of hand cut edits a la 1983, one saw a number of tracks which harked back to the ’70s and ’80s. Cuts such as Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You,” “I Can’t Turn The Boogie Loose” by the Controllers and “Rockers Revenge” all made an appearance, complete with the excellent, seams ‘n all cuts and bounces. The LP was such as classic that after speaking to one of the Tirk chaps, apparently it’s still shifting units today. CTTE 2, however, is something of a different breed — as if Wilson’s been fully updated with the contemporary technology and his forays back onto the dance floor have provided him with some new inspiration.
nsi., Eitherway
February 4, 2010 – 11:01 AM
More and more, the recordings of Max Loderbauer and Tobias Freund’s Non Standard Institute seem to parallel the ineffable and absorbing audio artifacts they namecheck from time to time — records like Cluster’s Großes Wasser, Pharaoh Sanders’ Thembi, or This Heat’s This Heat. Like those records, their latest EP sounds as though conceived through exploratory tinker-now, edit-later studio sessions where the ultimate goal isn’t necessarily a new record. All the same, their latest eccentric collection of fascinating, too-brief compositional sketches is a richly satisfying listen. Cut from the same cloth as the track LWE hosted as a free mp3 this month, you could imagine Eitherway as something like last year’s RA-podcasted Mutek set, but parsed into discrete vignettes.
Lopazz & Zarook, Studiorevox Taperecordings
February 3, 2010 – 11:01 PM
Former Output Records labelmate, Get Physical cohort and all round badboy Lopazz aka Stefan Eichinger and Italic records chap Eddie Zarook get back together after a slew of remixes to drop this sample ridden double A-side. And if you’ve not heard their wonky remix of Gus Gus’ “Add This Song,” I advise you do so — it jacks like a iron fist in a padded glove against a brick, sweat covered wall. They do it again here, and the producers’ respective styles complement each other perfectly with Lopazz’s somewhat warm in tone, house-fused vocal stylings together with Mr Zarook’s stripped back, near minimal techno leanings.
BBH: Robert Hood, Stereotype EP
February 3, 2010 – 11:01 AM
Robert Hood’s burst of activity in 2009 was composed half of new releases and half of reissues. After reissuing the classic Minimal Nation Hood fired off a couple new jams (including the wicked “Superman”) before continuing the reissues with The Pace/Wandering Endlessly. Which leads us to M.PM number 5, the legendary Stereotype EP first released in 1998. Last year we noted the strength of 2009’s reissues, and Hood’s were a big part of that.
Mike Dehnert, MD2
February 2, 2010 – 11:01 PM
Limited to 150 copies and containing scant information, Mike Dehnert’s latest release (and the first record on MD2) could hardly be seen as an attempt to build on his recent high-profile work for Clone. Like the unassuming presentation, the Berlin producer also delivers music that, coming after a succession of grandiose re-approximations of chord-heavy classic techno, is more understated and less, well, epic.
André Lodemann, Still Dreaming
February 2, 2010 – 11:01 AM
You get the sense that André Lodemann’s ears aren’t made from the same stuff that yours are. Producing since 2004 but really picking up speed in 2009 with his self-released output on Best Works, Lodemann has a way of rendering strange, tiny melodies into much catchier, dreamier, bigger components than they might fundamentally be. His definition of a hook, not to mention his sense of pacing and melodic development, might not be yours, but his level of execution — from a technical standpoint, dude’s biting at Martin Buttrich’s heels — and sheer earnestness go a long way towards selling you on such wacky deep house logic. Derided as cheesy by some, Lodemann rivals Reggie Dokes as one of house’s most idiosyncratically appealing voices. The aptly named “Still Dreaming” for Freerange, perhaps his highest-profile release since the Wanna Feel EP on Simple in 2008, brings to the big room those mystical, meandering melodies Lodemann spent 2009 perfecting. He’s made one of the more distinctive European house anthems in recent memory.