It seems reasonable after 20 plus prolific years spent producing music that Roman Flügel’s recent output has slowed to a trickle. This isn’t to say the many monikered producer has been resting on his laurels — the excellent “Neues Testament” EP under the long dormant Roman IV guise puts paid to that notion — but the venerable producer just doesn’t need 10 to 15 releases per year to retain top billing. Yet you can hardly blame Flügel’s fans for hoping another few morsels meet his quality control standards and end up on wax. Surprisingly, Tiga’s Turbo label (rather than old reliable Playhouse) provides a home for his first original material of 2009 — the varied “Stricher EP.”
review
Shonky, Chocotox EP
July 20, 2009 – 11:30 PM
When choosing a name for your production alter ego it can be fun to take the piss. The playfulness of a good moniker is suited to a music as carefree as its characters, perhaps nowhere more so than within the world of electronic music. 2 Phat Cunts was a one-time pseudonym adopted by BT and Sasha for a late nineties breakbeat collab called “Ride,” while Mancunians Ben Davis, Dick Johnson and Kiwi house DJ Soane flew under the Troughman banner (it referred to a certain eccentric who liked to lay in wait in the city’s club urinals for someone to water him) for the track “La Sourcier.” French DJ and producer Shonky has been active for about four years, so carrying on the personality of one who is “of slightly dubious quality or performance” is somewhat of a brave move, especially if some of your output lives up to your namesake.
Brock Van Wey, White Clouds Drift On and On
July 17, 2009 – 10:59 AM
With a faultless series of releases focused on ambient and dubby techno textures, Brock Van Wey — perhaps better known as Bvdub, has rapidly become an indispensable fixture of the deeper side of electronica. His latest long player is broken into two parts, with kindred spirit Intrusion offering interpretations of the six tracks in reverse order for the second part of the album. The album’s inspiration is hinted at in the liner notes which feature a poem by Chinese poet Wang Wei, the last line of which is adopted by Van Wey for the album title.
Bsmnt City Anymle Kontrol & Kyle Hall, The Perfekt Sin
July 16, 2009 – 10:01 PM
You’ll find Kyle Hall’s records filed under “house,” but the music of this protégé of Rick Wilhite, Mike Huckaby, and Omar S has just as much to do with funk, jazz, hip-hop, and R&B. An unkempt braid of diverse influences and bright-eyed talent, this record — Hall’s second release for his own Wild Oats imprint and his fifth overall — resists categorizations as pat as “deep house.”
RV featuring Los Updates/Reboot, Baile/Caminando
July 16, 2009 – 10:20 AM
Ricardo Villalobos’s best productions, the records of his I will play for my children to help explain why daddy can’t remember large swaths of his early twenties, might be behind him. But whenever I’ll tune into a bootleg or Youtube video from a Ricardo festival set (W has left the White House, sir; now will you please book some US gigs?), I can’t help but imagine him seconding Lil Wayne’s rueful boast on the burden of singularity: “We are not the same/ I am a Martian.” Everyone’s favorite floppy-haired, German-Chilean pure sound advocate has traversed stoned aural landscapes where few ears have dared venture before, and it’s only through the labyrinthine logic of his magnum DJ sets that three-quarters of his record bag makes any sense. I thus greet each new platter from Sei Es Drum, Villalobos’s quasi-white label platform on which he tosses the public some of his sets’ most typically-Ricardo material, with the excitement of owning a souvenir from this man’s space voyage and the trepidation of knowing it will bring me no closer to ultimate hallucinogenic-bongo knowledge.
N/A, Variance Edits
July 15, 2009 – 11:16 PM
Where is the original version of “Variance”? What about “Variance II”? Who is N/A (or is the artist’s name just “not available”)? Thing is, the original artist’s name doesn’t really matter; the only name that does is Sandwell District. They’ve always had a penchant for facelessness, and with the recent release of the “Variance Edits” over two pieces of vinyl they’ve gone a step further into anonymity. But you always know where you stand with Sandwell District, and here they give you exactly what you ordered: “True. Techno. Music.”
BBH: Monoton, Blau, Monotonprodukt 02 26y++ & Eight Lost Tracks
July 15, 2009 – 10:29 AM
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.
Willie Graff & Tuccillo, Atracktion EP
July 14, 2009 – 10:59 PM
Born in Ibiza, the world’s tropical dance music oasis, Willie Graff has always held the kick drum close to his heart. Securing his first DJing residency at age 14, Graff went on to become Pacha’s youngest resident before moving to New York and taking the reins at Cielo. With techno and house running through his veins, Graff’s 2005 transition into producing proved remarkably smooth, enlisting a constant stream of collaborators (including Jerome Sydenham, DJ Pippi and Tuccillo) as he refined a jacking style of tech-house. With each new 12″ for liebe*detail, Wave Music, Drumpoet Community and Freerange, Graff and Tuccilo (his most frequent partner) have opted for slower, more house-oriented sounds. The “Atracktion EP,” their new release for Circus Company, finds the duo at their most methodical and mellow.
Rndm, Third Hand Smoke
July 14, 2009 – 10:09 AM
I first heard of Dial’s plan to start a deep house sub-label called Laid about two years ago. It sounded like a great idea; a way to bring in a fresh sound in what was then still a minimal-soaked dance music world. Finally in 2009 Dial’s younger brother was born with the first two records from Laid. Of course, a lot happens in two years of dance music history. Laid’s opening salvo comes after deep house has been “revived,” this time with the minimal bandwagon in tow, their vacuousness made only more obvious by all the a cappellas professing “soul.” After a wonderful inauguration by Detriot’s own Rick Wade, Oliver Kargl, best known as Rndm, continues to steer Laid into the deep end.
Current Value & Rodell, Sparse Land EP
July 13, 2009 – 9:34 PM
Much is made of tempo as it relates to time feel in the world of drum & bass and dubstep. When producers of the former try their hand at the latter, it sometimes lacks the genuine feel so essential to a good composition. With Sparse Land, Tim Hielscher (aka Current Value) and Dean Rodell deliver mixed results on an EP that combines the two genres with a touch of hard techno. This very combination is the idea behind Subtrakt, the Austrian label co-owned by Rodell.
Moritz Von Oswald Trio, Vertical Ascent
July 12, 2009 – 9:15 PM
“Live” is a tricky word in electronic music. Live sets, even by favorite producers, are too often disappointing. In reducing performance to a traditional recital mode, selections are limited to the artist in question’s own tracks, a sense of flow can get lost in the shuffle, and worst of all, the performer is frequently seen doing little more than staring at a computer screen, occasionally clicking. The effects of this approach — not naming any names, but I’ve heard laptop sets which featured a sound uncannily reminiscent of the “you’ve got mail” tone — can be frustrating at best, depressing at worst. Part of what’s exciting about electronic dance music is the spontaneous flux, the dispersed authorship, the paradoxical live-ness of a great DJ set. So what’s the point of “live” performance, anyway?
Spatial, Infra002 EP
July 8, 2009 – 9:51 PM
We humans typically deal with space in terms of the three dimensions most readily apparent to our senses– length, width, and height. If theoretical physicists like Brian Greene and Lisa Randal — whose respective bestsellers The Elegant Universe and Warped Passages helped usher the wacky nomenclature of superstring theory into the late night stoner blather of an entire generation — are to be believed, the universe might actually require something like eleven to function properly. You can’t really blame the sizable demographic of dubsteppers, each competing tooth and nail to get their bass jams out of a DJs distended record bag before the other dude’s, for ignoring the extra dimensions we remain more or less oblivious to in favor of amping up the big three. Aptly-named twostepper Spatial, however, has not forgotten those knotted-up pockets wherein only the most esoteric matter tingles.
Adam Marshall, Vespers EP
July 7, 2009 – 11:48 PM
If Adam Marshall’s latest EP, “Vespers,” is to be interpreted as an evensong, it should be played in a house of worship most fitting its utilitarian nature: a night club, warehouse or anywhere a thick bass bin beckons. The Christian iconography depicted on the record’s inner label art speak to the EP’s titular concept but the two tracks featured here will most assuredly not be getting air time in any Sunday school classes. After DJing and producing from a Toronto base for nearly 2 decades it seems that a re-location to (surprise, surprise) Berlin has brought new attention his way. Last year’s “Chord Tracking” turned heads with its punchy, inspired tech-house and as evidenced by his LWE Podcast (precise mixing and a taste for house and techno that runs wide and far), the man knows a thing or two about what will work for the dance floor.
Peter Van Hoesen, Face of Smoke/Continued Care
July 6, 2009 – 11:54 PM
Midway through 2009, we’re no longer debating whether or not Peter Van Hoesen rates a divider card; we’ve moved on to narrowing down favorites for the year-end lists. With the year’s first three records sounding even more assured than the stuff that had everyone blubbering last year, Brussels’ techno mainstay isn’t just a promising up-and-comer anymore; he’s very much arrived. Dude’s even got a nickname in circulation courtesy of mnml ssgs, “The Hose,” although I think his last name actually rhymes with “boozin’.” The Komisch label managed to secure one of the latest of the the Hose’s stunners for its inaugural release, a record that doesn’t reprise the brooding, no-fuss techno of “Attribute One,” but is just as breathtaking.
$tinkworx & Kinoeye, MKB / Mean Old World
July 5, 2009 – 9:45 PM
William Burnett is an unlikely Williamsburg renaissance man, but with the litany of pies in which he has fingers it’s hard to argue. When he isn’t releasing albums under the nom de plume Grackle, collaborating with Eliot Lipp as Galaxy Toobin’ Gang or recording ghetto house as Smackulator, he’s also known to be DJing sick dance music eclecticism on the Short Bus Radio program. And now Burnett has managed to cram one more achievement onto his resume by starting W.T. Records. For the first release he hasn’t held back, roping in North Carolina based $tinkworx and Kinoeye (a new alias for Datahata) for an auspicious split 12″ debut. But according to Burnett these tracks were the whole inspiration for W.T. Records’s inception in the first place. After hearing them posted online he hung onto the MP3s and later noticed they were never released, prompting him to take matters into his own hands.
Ada, Adaptations Mixtape #1
July 3, 2009 – 3:46 PM
Back in 2004, Ada’s Blondie was the go-to album to persuade your girlfriend or boyfriend that techno really was “okay.” Borrowing from pop-house veterans Everything But The Girl (via a cover of “Each and Everyone”) and indie-rockers Yeah Yeah Yeahs (“Maps”), Michaela Dippel broke out of the Cologne techno ghetto to achieve crossover critical, if not commercial, success. That’s not to say that she left behind her Rhineland roots — every one of Ada’s solo releases has been on a hometown label; and with frequent remixes from the cream of the Kompakt label, it was inevitable that one day she would release on the venerable imprint. Her music is a perfect fit for Kompakt with it’s emphasis on somehow euphoric and melancholic melodies, pastel-coloured but chunky bass-lines and cute pop-culture references. It’s a move that should ensure her the wider audience she deserves, and, as the title intimates, Adaptations Mixtape #1 is intended as an introduction from a trusted friend, but it’s a shame it’s such a collection of warmed-over odds and ends.
Isolée, Albacares
July 3, 2009 – 9:39 AM
Based on some of the stuff you read these days, you might think it was settled and agreed that we chalk up “October Nightingale” as a misstep in Rajko Müller’s respected career. Myself, I think it’s among the year’s highlights. Surely, plunging into the depths of “A Nightingale” was one of my spring’s richest pleasures. All this is rather beside the point, though, as 2009’s second Isolée record is something else entirely.
Black Jazz Consortium, Structure
July 2, 2009 – 10:57 AM
As “deep house” overtook “minimal” these past couple years as dance music’s catch-phrase du jour, a certain formula has become apparent. Slow down the tempo, loop a bass line, throw some jazzy pads on top, and add an intermittent sample of an African-American male voice saying “yeah.” Though there are some great tracks fitting the stereotype, it is hard not to crave some greater inventiveness. Fortunately, Fred P, a.k.a. Black Jazz Consortium, brings precisely this to his production work, of which 11 remarkable examples are collected on Structure. Throughout this CD, rhythms are complex, instrumental elements shift and alter themselves, and tracks otherwise develop over their durations.
Peace Division, Eh Oh Um
July 1, 2009 – 10:02 PM
Just as hardware stores supply builders with lumber and nails, British duo Peace Division made a career of peddling reliable if largely unremarkable minimal house grooves to reinforce DJs’ sets. Their understated repertoire has hardly changed in the nearly 15 years spent releasing for Low Pressing, NRK Sound Division, Crosstown Rebels and Tsuba (among others), adjusting slightly with the times to meet DJs needs: Their turn of the century beats were often up-tempo, chunky and a bit tribal, only to reduce during the minimal years and plump up again as “deep” became the operative word. This year the pair decided to hang up the Peace Division moniker for good to pursue solo endeavors, with one last single, “Eh Oh Um,” as their curtain call. Yet in spite of their unshakable consistency, one might expect the duo to go out with a bang, or at least out of the ordinary. Don’t get your hopes up.
BBH: Dark Comedy, Plankton/Clavia’s North
July 1, 2009 – 10:13 AM
One of the spearheads of Detroit’s second wave of techno producers, Kenny Larkin has been responsible for some of the most spine tingling moments in the history of techno. It’s a fact that’s often overlooked, but his stunning discography leaves no doubt this is the case. With time spent repairing computers for the Air Force and an intended career in stand up comedy, Larkin’s entry into the Detroit scene was slightly delayed, though perhaps time spent examining the inner mechanics of machines helped with his productions. Before the release of this stone cold classic in 1997 he had already unleashed the brilliant Azimuth album, a string of singles, and under the Dark Comedy moniker the techno epic “War Of The Worlds.” With the issue of “Plankton,” backed with the equally mesmerizing “Clavia’s North” (on limited clear vinyl no less) Larkin’s reputation as a master craftsman of electronic communication reached a new high.