Label: Quarterstick Format: CD Spanning most of the musical history of Calexico, a band highly reminiscent of duo Joey Burns and John Covertino‘s previous bands Giant Sand and especially Friends Of Dean Martinez, this EP combines unreleased tracks with remixes of previously-released material, some European B-sides, and three CDROM videos to make an almost definitive collection of Calexico’s southwestern-Texas-Arizona-tinged music, all on one compact CD. While the majority […]
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Label: Domino (Europe)/Thrill Jockey (North America) Format: 12″,CDS Some high-energy silliness from the Mouse On Mars folk, running straight at Garage with a wild yelp and a cheesy grin before folding it up into bouncy breaks and a full-mouthed wade through distorted vocals, better tasted on the full-length mix. Smartly insane, as is the electronic detritus swept up by the trio and Herbert, AKA Dr Rockit into “DJ […]
Label: MDZ Format: 12″ “Charme 75″, taken from Oh.‘s Upper Disker album, finds the gang in Housey mode, chuckling their abundant collection of analogue synths along to a slippery Funk-based track which does the dancefloor thing in spades. Warmth is the key here, and the knowledge that this is the result of live interaction between people and not just machines adds further to the pleasures of the basic […]
Label: Synaesthesia Format: 3″ CD A rolling quilt of crackles and scour tumbles over the sadness of things – that low series of tones which augur an undesired reflection. How many tones and clicks does it take to raise a feeling, a memory, a thing of resonance? The cover: cross on headstone with eyes, eclipsing the sun. The sounds stretch from within, like rambling daylight… Backwards tones shoot […]
Label: Enraptured Format: 10″ The title track of Radio 9‘s debut EP does exactly what it says; it’s Motorik as you could want, with the signature metronomic autobahn-riding groove copped from the big NEU! book of Dinger-drumming topped off by a throbbing bassline courtesy of Leon Muraglia and the beguiling synthesizer sweeps and swatches courtesy of Zoe Kemp. Since the former is the head honcho at London’s very […]
Label: Leaf Format: 12″ Soundclash time, as Kieran Hebden and Stefan Betke go tape-head to tape-head in their Four Tet and Pole aspects, each recording a track and letting the other plug away until some kind of remix level is reached. The original tracks are put onto the EP as well, so it’s all making for the split single for the Nineties – scratch that, Twentifirst Century… Pole’s […]
Label: Thrill Jockey Format: CDS,12″ Four songs of love as seen through the Continuous Cash-FlowTM filter of Mr. Bobby Conn, Chicago, hell, the world‘s most curious of crooners and estimable heir to the Seventies legacy of Funk-Soul-Rock singer-songwriter troubadour anti-messiahs. In other words, a star. There are two new songs from Mr. C. himself – “Free Love”, an epic, near-histrionic bass-slapping time-signature mangler and possessor of a typically […]
Label: EMI/Electrola Format: 12″,CDS Smoothness… There is nothing inherently wrong with this. It would be easy to bring the metaphor of the “well-oiled machine” into play in considering these four pieces. Is the situation of the metaphor the dominant theme in the existence of Kraftwerk? Even in the days of the Kosmische, there was this notion of reaching the cosmic, voyaging into outer space through inner space, and […]
Label: MDZ Format: 10″ Taken from Oh.‘s recent Ecu album, “39,6” give no clues to its title in the curlicues of almost wistful synth trails, horizontal bass and crystal drum licks which make for a serenely cruising little ditty of a modest, soothing sort. The Sofa Surfers‘ mix offers up the slo-Funk to the main keyboard riff, dubbing up a collage of spreading fragments and taking the vibe […]
Label: Force Inc. Format: 12″ The title track is something of a typical Techno Animal bass monster, with their characteristic funky breakbeats assuming the usual clattery position in relation to a rather pleasingly warbly bassline, shot through with some relatively restrained splatters of synthy knob-twiddling. As its Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick at the controls, naturally everything tends to get taken into the extremes of dub delay and […]
Label: Go Beat Format: 12″,CDS Appearing in four differing takes from the album version, “Of” is a slippery little track in its “Version” form, with various sound-science vocal samples drifting across its fairly straight-ahead riff with accompanying synth squeals, blips and fallout to tingle the spine and drop down into the realms of pitch-bent fun. The “Remix” gets more jazzy in the bass department, with the drums dropped […]
Label: Output Format: 12″,CDS Opening with an astrological description of someone with their aspect in Mars, “Glasshead” soon makes it like the groovy number to be expected from Four Tet‘s post-Trip Rock excursions in the last year or so, only here magnified, intensified and refined. Sonorous virtualised brass, real-world breakbeats and the strangely fashionable glass-chimes make for a propulsive undercarriage, circled by progressively wayward sax honks, nut-string stroke […]
Label: Guided Missile Format: 7″ The seven inch single, that ancient hallowed artifact: Conduit of commerce, copper coin of pop song, object of reverence and disposable frisbee. Once in a very rare while one will come along to download into your daytime consciousness and unconscious reverie: A hook, a lyric and a skilfully-turned bassline, a drumming of the fingers on public transport or a bout of air guitar […]
Label: Warp Format: 12″,CDS A curiously accessible mire of vocal samples splutter and waft from and electronic soup from almost the first moment of “Windowlicker”, before Richard James applies some customarily deep-fried production to what could otherwise have been a languorous bass and kickdrum smoocher. Instead, linearity gets a darned good rogering, the various melodic lines pulped, smeared and bloated at the still-strange knobs and faders of one […]
Label: MDZ Format: 12″ Oh my, 29 and then some minutes of one song. Well. They are thorough. “Gelbphase” in all five versions is a nice little sample of what the Oh. boys can do, complete with evidence of their love of the analogue and a healthy influence of 1970s video games. Oh’s own remix-Elektronauten, and the Metamatic Remix are not unlike a ear blast stroll through a […]
Label: Kranky (CD)/Constellation (Vinyl) Format: CDS,12″ Perhaps the criminally overused expression “intense” can be used with justification, just this once, to describe the sound of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The mysterious Canadian nine-piece roll out another of those accelerative weighty soundscapes that we’d always hoped Glenn Branca would produce. Discipline and a telepathic, egoless sense of control push the multilayered epic “Moya” into peaks and troughs similar in […]
Label: 13th Moon Format: 12″ Taking one of the best tracks from Nocturnal Emissions and sticking it through the electronic mangle, Mr. & Mrs. Fiend embark on a high-octane blast through all the electro, techno, breakbeat and goddam’ rock machinations possible at once, topped off by Nik’s unchanged vocal style – demented. The amphetamine groove ASF have been on for most of their career seems somehow to be […]
Label: Domino Format: CDS,12″ Exhibiting a kind of Bristolian faux-gangsterism with sampler firmly in cheek, Matt Elliott is definitely getting more proficient with the drum & bass these days. Still spooky and atmospheric, the use of choral samples on the title track recalls the early unsettling soundscapes of Current 93 but with a beat – which is a pretty damn good idea too. Religious art is probably best […]