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 […]
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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Label: KiffSM/PIAS Format: 12″, CDS Taking the only track from Kreidler‘s Appearance And The Park album to feature vocals, Mute‘s Daniel Miller adopts his Sunroof persona in collaboration with Gareth Jones to reconfigure the track in decidedly Eighties style – all arpeggiating FM keyboards and synth stylings – to initially […]
Label: Warp Format: CDS, 12″ Plone have a nice ear for the uses of old technology, turning in three deceptively simple songs (which happens also to neatly provide the title for track two) , equal parts Pram and retro elevator music. “Plock” is a shimmery analogue bossanova featuring that most […]
Label: Mute Format: CDS, 12″ How to make a remix EP, 1998-style: take a track from your last album (Control Data, in this case). Process in a variety of styles by Ultraviolence (Gabba, twice), No-U Turn (Drum & Bass) and, last but not least (apart from the original mix, naturally), […]
Label: Output Format: CDS, 2×12″ The first non-compilation solo release from Fridge’s Kieran Hebden is a one-track single (cunningly presented in DJ-friendly style as two one-sided 12-inches) whose title reflects its length – even if the CD does register various lengths on different players. Smoothly slipping from motorik breakbeats to […]
Label: Go Beat Format: CDS,12″ Having set up their own studio with all the creative freedom that allows, Fridge seem to be heading outwards further from their alleged post-Rock roots into the realms of cluttered Electronica, and as with Kieran Hebden‘s side project Four Tet their HipHop, jazz and even […]
Label: Fat Cat Format: 12″ Supremely mellow, fascinatingly layered micro-dubs from a country (Germany) teeming with super-proficient Electronica. Ripples, pulses, flows and then grows. Crackles, lo-fi sound sources and bass bleeps celeverly arranged to produce an all-suffusing glow of satisfying serenity, without descent into Ambient earwash. Why don’t record players […]