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Co La – ‘Deaf Christian’.

4 April 2013

news

There’s an incredible texture and tangibility to offbeat Baltimore producer Co La (aka Matt Papich’s) unique sound and this latest creation for ‘Deaf Christian’, directed by Andrew Strasser, captures that sense completely. Following February’s ‘Melter’s Delight‘, this is the second video to be released in anticipation of the follow up to 2011’s Daydream Repeater on NNA Tapes, Moody Coup, due for release on Daniel Lopatin’s Brooklyn-based label, Software, May 6.

Featuring what appears to be the man himself in monstrous distortion eating, crushing and accessorising with some very supple looking fruit, the video plays apt sidekick to the scattered, though strangely thrilling soundtrack of cut-up vocal scatting and unruly rhythms. The fourth wall comes crashing down midway, when you hear Papich being directed from behind the camera, addling another level to Co La’s creative mode of lucid self-awareness. **

Standish/ Carlyon – ‘Nono/Yoyo’.

3 April 2013

news

Aurora Halal‘s video work featured during the performance by Hieroglyphic Being and Ital collaboration, Interplanetary Prophets, at last year’s Unsound Festival and, for lack of a programme of visual artists showing that night, her aesthetic was still conspicuously her own. Featuring the blown out, hyper-coloured psychedelia of a still proudly lo-fi tradition, she’s also made the video for Standish/Carlyon‘s cosmic dub croon ‘Nono/Yoyo’, out on their upcoming album debut Deleted Scenes, through felte May 13.

With Halal being the mind behind the gaudy VHS ware of artists like Ital, Maxmillion Dunbar and even indie-soul outfit Friends, and the two members of Standish/Carlyon from now-defunct Australian band The Devastations, there’s little doubt director and music makers alike are well worth attention. **

A tribute album for Yasunori Mitsuda.

1 April 2013

news

Sometimes it takes time for people to gain the widespread recognition they deserve. Gaining credit where credit’s due, Japansese video game composer Yasunori Mitsuda is being honoured by electronic artists like Ryan Hemsworth, KeyboardKid206 and Friendzone in a compilation, aptly titled MITSUDA, coming out on Lefse Records Tuesday, April 2.

Organised by composer and producer Julian Wass after using a sample of Xenogears game soundtrack for Main Attrakionz and Danny Brown track ‘Cloud Skatin‘, the album contains reinterpretations and re-imaginings of those soundscapes that shaped our virtual worlds.**

Cristian Vogel launches net label.

29 March 2013

news

When we interviewed Cristian Vogel back in June last year, he told us he approached his music in a progressive, scientific way. That’s how Vogel managed to move with the times so freely, in a career spanning 20 years. From having a regrettable midi port tattoo, to a crowd-funded album The Inertials, out on Shitkatapult, now, his own net label, Station 137 through official.fm deals with experimental music he rates.

Probably best known for his work as one half Super_Collider with electronic/RnB anomaly Jamie Lidell, Vogel is a prolific DJ and producer and with the internet at his disposal, there’s no telling what he’ll do next. See the Station 137 website for more information.**

Kingdom – ‘Bank Head feat. Kelela’.

28 March 2013

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Sometimes the art work of the Fade to Mind aesthetic threatens to overshadow the work of its artist, almost. As part of that LA/ New York based world of excellent electronica melting RnB, dub and pop into an exquisitely contemporary sound for the body, it’s artists like Kingdom whose output is frustratingly sporadic. But it makes the music all the more thrilling when it does finally drop. So, following the New York producer’s 2011 Dreama EP and an intermittent record of dub reworks, VIP Edition, a new EP titled Vertical XL is due for release on Tuesday, May 28.

Adding to the new music credentials is that Kingdom actually runs the Night Slugs sister-label and is responsible for putting out a stable of excellent outfits, from Fatima Al Qadiri to Nguzunguzu and ‘Blank Head’ featuring vocals from LA-based RnB artist Kelela is no exception. See the EP track list below.**

TRACK LIST:

1. Bank Head (feat. Kelela)
2. Zip Line
3. Corpse
4. OG Master
5. Viper Lash
6. Takedown Notice
7. Viper XL

Butterclock – ‘Holograms’.

27 March 2013

news

We’re still giddy over Rick Ross cover and Butterclock / oOoOO collaboration ‘Hustlin’, so the only thing that could be more exciting is the former French-born, Berlin-based artist’s upcoming EP First Prom, out on FANTASY Music, April 15.

Dropping her latest taster, after January’s ‘Don’t,’ produced by Chris Dexter Greenspan himself, ‘Holograms’ features an always haunting vocal over the surreal dream pop escapism that Laura Clock has become known for. See the First Prom track listing below.**

TRACKLISTING
1. Crystal Eyes
2. Don’t
3. Holograms
4. Milky Words
5. Sorry Love

Slava – ‘Werk’.

26 March 2013

news

Visual artist, producer and programmer, Slava has a record, Raw Solutions, coming out on OPN’s Brooklyn-based label Software next month, Monday April 22, and has dropped a tech-conscious video to match his music and his lifestyle. Featuring the artist himself doing his drunken duty on a keyboard, interspersed with all other types of sporty actions in the hyperreality of his imaginings, ‘Werk’ follows last month’s ‘On It‘ with an equally unreal exploration into cyberspace and our physical role within it.

The Russian-born, New York-based DJ started in Chicago around footwork and now explores music across genres and within its rawest potential. Raw Solutions was largely recorded on hardware, while his fascination with Britney Spears and the perversions of popular culture come through in the reconfigured, repeated and manipulated sounds of some ever resilient human vocal folds. See the Software website for more information.**

DJ Sprinkles – ‘Where Dancefloors Stood Still’.

15 March 2013

news

Sadly, we missed DJ Sprinkles’ performance at this year’s CTM Festival but we did manage to catch her thoughts as Terre Thaemlitz in conversation with Electronic Beats editor Max Dax. And, while she might think music is “a petri dish of all that I hate about society” it hasn’t changed the fact that she still produces it. Adding to the irony is this latest LP release, Where Dancefloors Stood Still, out now on Mule Musiq, coming as a protest against Japan’s controversial new “fuzoku” laws, effectively banning dancing after 1am.

As a Japanese citizen, these troubling changes affect Thaemlitz directly but you wouldn’t guess it from the typically ambient rhythms of these smooth deep house tracks featuring the likes of Ron Trent and Fingers Inc. But music is for rejoicing, not griping and certainly not forbidding. If you know anything about Terre Thaemlitz, you’ll know she has an uneasy relationship with download culture, so we could only find a preview listen of the record at Boomkat here.**

oOoOO – ‘FoRLorN DuB’.

13 March 2013

news

Not content to quarry the eerie depths of rap and RnB, Drag producer oOoOO (aka Christopher Dexter Greenspan) is moving in on the mega machismo of reggae and dub. This characteristically slowed-down and distorted track, drolly titled ‘FoRLorN DuB’, recently dropped on the San Francisco producers’ YouTube account, not long after French associate, Butterclock released ‘Don’t‘, which he co-produced.

Having released his EP Our Loving is Hurting Us on Tri Angle about this time last year, things have gone somewhat quiet on the oOoOO front but, with that, a crackling record and a faintly harrowing melody fades out to nothing. A bowel dropping bass rhythm heralding the return of this Drag artist’s own private dystopia.**

A Hawk and a Hacksaw album coming soon.

12 March 2013

news

There’s no doubting US duo A Hawk and a Hacksaw‘s excellent musical breeding. Accordionist Jeremy Barnes is a past member of cult group Neutral Milk Hotel and both he and violinist Heather Trost worked on Balkan folk artist Zachary Condon (aka Beirut’s) 2006 album Gulag Orkestar. Like the aforementioned Santa Fe native, they too hail from New Mexico, while working with those Eastern influences centered around the Black Sea. So it’s not really any surprise that their sixth album, produced by John Dieterich of Deerhoof, has the title You Have Already Gone To The Other World: Music Inspired By Paradjanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors coming out on their own L.M. Dupli-cation label on April 2.

As the name implies, this is music inspired by the Georgian-born Armenian film director, Sergei Paradjanov, and his film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. A director working in socialist realism across the USSR (namely, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia) he, like A Hawk and a Hacksaw was the product of a unifying world order. But where Paradjanov’s was Soviet Russia, there’s is a result of the wonders of globalisation in a Westernised Eastern folk sound that paddles through a Black Sea of accordion, fiddle and rousing staccato rhythm.**

The Knife – ‘A Tooth For An Eye’.

8 March 2013

news

It’s no secret that feminism is a mode of thinking that is extremely close to Swedish electronic duo The Knife‘s heart. So what better day to drop another single and video from their highly anticipated album Shaking the Habitual, out on their own Rabid record label, April 8, than International Women’s Day?

Another brilliantly primal call to arms, buttressed by incredible rhythms, ‘A Tooth For An Eye’ follows their provocatively deviant ‘Full of Fire’ video, directed by feminist director Marit Östberg. But rather than featuring a diverse array of women in every non-conformist guise they could think of, ‘A Tooth For An Eye’ complements the glitchy synth bounce with all sorts of bodies dancing led by a fierce young girl in braids.**

Brandt Brauer Frick’s ‘Miami’ reviewed.

7 March 2013

reviews

This isn’t the Miami of beige shorts and Hawaiian t-shirts. It’s the imaginary dystopia that one envisions after the end of days that is in fact lingering just below the surface of reality. Brandt Brauer Frick are the Berlin three-piece of free jazz musicians experimenting with acoustic techno arrangements since their 2010 debut Make Me Real, begun with the meticulous mimickry of ‘Bop’ and perfected with ‘Pretend’ featuring Emika on 2011’s Mr. Machine. At that point the heads behind it, Daniel Brandt, Jan Brauer and Paul Frick, had brought the archaic instrumental oddities of a marimba, timpani, tuba and more to a lavish ensemble numbering 10, creating something only electronics could manage. But with their latest release Miami, out on !K7, March 11, they’ve stripped back to a three piece, included several interloping vocals accompaniments and loosened up the compositions to allow for the simmering sense of doom that all bodily electronica harbours.

Continue reading Brandt Brauer Frick’s ‘Miami’ reviewed.

Zebra Katz – ‘Y I Do’.

6 March 2013

news

Dean Blunt – ‘X-tasy’.

6 March 2013

news

Dean Blunt just loves to push those buttons. If he isn’t destroying ear drums with a high frequency pitch change at the German debut of The Narcissist -a play-slash-live music performance presented at this year’s CTM Festival -then he’s releasing ‘X-tasy’ as an obtuse comment on racial profiling in modern media accompanied by a wikipedia link to the Spike Lee-coined ‘Magical Negro’ trope. Incidentally, it’s that very signal, turning from barely perceptible bass through to skull-crushing treble over four monotonous minutes, that Blunt played in Berlin already and it’s apparently a harbinger to his upcoming album The Redeemer, out on Hippos in Tanks and World Music Group, May 1.

The implications of such a ‘track’ are plentiful. Perhaps pointing most explicitly to the contemporary obsession with RnB culture, by mainstream pop and the underground alike, as some kind of exploitative mechanism. Especially, when accompanied by a video of a ripped African-American, D’Angelo miming his highly-explicit ‘Untitled (How Does It Feel)’ in super-slow motion.

Make of it what you will and listen through actual speakers.**

James Ferraro – ‘Blood Flow’.

5 March 2013

news

It would appear that NYC/LA artist James Ferraro is moving away from his reputation as musician-as-cultural-critic as fast as he got there in the first place. ‘Blood Flow’, the latest track to drop from his upcoming Cold mix tape, due March 25, picks up where last year’s Sushi left off. An extramusical conceptual bearing and not-so-easy-listening compositions give way to a more sensory experience of insistent break beats over a coarse modern RnB moan and synthesised ambience.

Since his noisy The Skaters days, Ferraro has become the symbol of an expanding culture of hyper-aware performers, exploring not only music but the mechanisms behind it, mainly centered around Capitalism. But since the acute underground success of 2011 release Far Side Virtual, Ferraro’s oeuvre can be seen shifting from its peak at masculist marketing, with his recent side-project, Bodyguard, to a more abstract form of sonic exploration. See the countdown to Cold here.**

James Ferraro's Cold mix tape artwork. — James Ferraro’s *Cold* mix tape artwork.

Total Control ‘Sweaty’ video.

4 March 2013

news

Following up their album debut Henge Beat, where Total Control married their punk and hardcore roots with fresh forays into analogue synths and primitive techno, the Australian band has delved further into the existential fog of its subject matter with this video featuring a new track ‘Sweaty’. And rather than using the monotone growl of frontman Daniel Stewart, this one has the slanted vocal of Al Montfort to keep it company as it careers through the raw noise darkness.

As we’ve mentioned earlier, TC members Mikey Young and James Vinciguerra have spliced off into a new electronic project Lace Curtain, while they and the rest of Total Control are embarking on tour of the US in May. For those unlucky enough to be located on the other side of the Atlantic, there’s a digital compilation of all their early 7-inches available on their band camp.**

M.I.A. mix for Kenzo.

4 March 2013

news

As that elusive fourth album from the UK-born rabble-rouser lingers on in obscurity (the latest release date for Matangi is set for April 15) M.I.A., aka Mathangi Arulpragasam, has dropped a mix for fashion label KENZO‘s Paris Show. At eight minutes long, it features the controversial singer’s eclectic taste for South Asian sounds, as well as some original material and a production polish that was lacking in her Diplo days, evidently found post-Madonna.

M.I.A.’s is a welcome addition to the label’s run of interesting sounds from the underground, with equally globally-minded Nguzunguzu contributing a mix for their Fall/Winter show last year. Funnily enough, the LA electronic duo have also worked with Arulpragasam in the past, producing her 2011 Vicki Leekx mix tape, while female half Asma Maroof did a stint as the rising agit-pop stars touring DJ. See the dazzling artwork and hear the new mix here.**

Scout Niblett announces new album.

3 March 2013

news

Scout Niblett might not exactly fit the aqnb mission of progressive music but her commitment to her unique style, rooted in grunge and indie rock must be commended. Especially, when it’s as strange and as harrowing as anyone alone with an electric guitar, an abundance of eccentricities and consciously clumsy drumming skills, can be.

This next album, It’s Up To Emma, out May 20 on Drag City, will be her sixth since her early days as Emma Louise Niblett in Nottingham and promises to be another emotional journey through insecurity and self-evaluation. There’s no word on any preview sounds as yet but there is the promise of a few interesting collaborations and her brilliant TLC cover ‘No Scrubs‘ on the track listing. See below.**

TRACK LISTING

Gun
Can’t Fool Me Now
My Man
Second Chance Dreams
Woman and Man
All Night Long
No Scrubs
Could This Possibly Be?
What Can I Do?

Sun Araw releasing music from Jamaica.

2 March 2013

news

When Cameron Stallones (aka Sun Araw) and M. Geddes Gengras set out to Jamaica to record with roots icons The Congos, they couldn’t have foreseen how far that relationship would take them. Now, following their 2012 release as RVNG Intl‘s FRKWYS VOL. 9: Icon Give Thank, they’ve carried on working together as production unit, Duppy Gun, along with the fishing village Forum. Featured below is farmer vocalist I Jahbar performing over their most recent instrumental 12″ release, ‘Spy’, available now through Stones Throw Records.

Stallones told us in an interview last year:

“In Jamaica the whole spirit is different. Time behaves differently, it reacts differently; it expands and contracts in ways that give you space, that we don’t allow ourselves to have in the western world. Those guys are in touch.“

So when you consider just how much of a positive impact these experiences have had on Sun Araw’s world view, we can only hope releases such as this one will do that same for others.**