Sonic Router

SONIC ROUTER HAS MOVED

2011-04-05T09:03:00.003+01:00

We're no longer updating this blogspot page.

You can find us at: www.sonicrouter.com

This page will stand as an archive but ALL it's content can be found neatly categorized on the new site.

Please adjust your bookmarks.

<3
Team SR.

SR Mix #76: Outboxx [Immerse]

2011-04-04T17:59:00.004+01:00

Bristol’s Immerse Records were one of the first people to really support this site, with their label boss Kidkut providing one of our first mixes and with their output. Having released a texturally brilliant album by Kontext called Dissociate, along with a steady stream of great 12”s last year (from people like XI, Arkist, Late, Simon/off and Cloak & Dagger) their first release of 2011 comes from Outboxx, a pairing of Bristolian producers pushing a decidedly more house tempoed groove.

Jacob Martin (who also produces as Hodge - his excellent ‘Conjecture’ is out now digitally through Pollen) and Matt Lambert’s debut 12” under the moniker, ‘Kate Libby’s’ b/w ‘Bertie’s Groove,’ feels live, as if it was somewhat improvised during a particularly fruitful session. ‘Bertie’s Groove’ is overly infectious, the lush chord and bass progression splintering off into shards of pure sunshine, whilst ‘Kate Libby’s’ is more stripped back, powered by the constant shuffle of the handclap. Outboxx’s is purist house music; a little ponderous, produced with a sheen and built with a steady injection of musicality – something that doesn’t surprise when the duo’s partnership is broken down into specific roles.

With news of their second single being signed to Well Rounded’s house music offshoot, Well Rounded Housing Project, we caught up with the guys to peddle our snapshot Q&A and grab our 76th Sonic Router Mix - an extended session though likeminded grooves.

SR: Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info? Whats the Ouboxx project all about?

Jake: It’s just us jamming, having some fun and making some music!

It’s more straight up house music. Is that something you’ve always been interested in? Are you influenced by certain producers or tracks?

Jake: Yeah we are. Loads of them. We’re generally influenced by music that sounds kinda raw and crackly… lots of 80s funk, garage and house music...

You are a duo. How does the partnership work in the studio?

Matt : I’m on the keys...

Jake: I’m on the computer making the beats, the partnership works well – it’s fun. We basically just jam...

I know you producer other stuff under different names but how did you first get into making this kind of music? What was it that infected you to do so?

Jake : When we make music we don’t really have an idea or direction at first, just jam for a while and see what happens. We both are really into a wide range of music and what we are making is a result of that.

Matt : I’ve played keys for more than 10 years on and off and been in a few funk bands and am interested to keep up that side of things as well but I’m getting more and more into electronic/dance music by the day. I’m influenced by people like Benji B, Gilles Peterson – People that generally play good music.

What’s your production set up like?

Jake: The set up is Matt’s Nord, some AKG mics, a R-09hr and Cubase. The hand held recorder is really important as it enables us to use field recordings; the voice in Kate Libby’s is a recording of shouting at a fireworks display. The keys on the tracks are all audio, no midi, we generally try and just get one takes from Matt to give the music a natural feel.

You’re Bristol based. The city has a shining reputation for dubstep/bass music in general, how is the house scene down there? Is it something you go out to a lot?

Jake: It seems the genres are really blending in Bristol, currently when going out you end up hearing a mix of genres which is what we love. There’s always something exciting going on in Bristol, for example this weekend we went down and saw 2562 play in the Idle Hands record store which was amazing, such a great, intimate atmosphere.

Immerse has often represented more of a dancefloor edge, but with releases like the Kontext album, it put itself into slower, more introspective territories. What’s it like to have your first tune out with them?

Jake: Its real cool, Adam Kidkut is a great guy and its nice putting out our first tune through friends in Bristol…. that just kinda makes sense to us. Immerse has some really exciting stuff emerging from less established producers, definitely a label to watch.

And the follow up is on the Well Rounded Housing Project. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Jake: The follow up is two tunes rooted in house music but also a slower hip hop track (‘Brighten My Day’) with Naomi Jeremy which kinda rounds off the release nicely for us. Its great being able to put out what we want with no restrictions on style, Donga is real open minded like that.

Anything else forthcoming?
Jake: Not as of yet, we have a few tunes that we have only just finished so time will tell I guess...

Tell us a little bit about the mix you’ve put together for us…

Jake: The mix is just tunes we are loving at the moment, it ran over an hour and it could have gone on for a lot longer. The mix starts out with some of the slower hip hop stuff we are really feeling and moves into house music. The Behling & Simpson and Portrait guys are ones to watch out for, loving their music... the new Appleblim & October Schmorgasbord release is a killer collaboration. Oh and had to put in the Andy Mac and Kidkut + Arkist tracks. Big big tunes!

Any words of wisdom, for our readers?

Matt : Jakes alright really.

Jake : Don’t try and take a photo with Matt. Ever.

::

DOWNLOAD: Outboxx – Sonic Router Mix #76

Tracklist:

Outboxx - Brighten my day (forthcoming Well Rounded Housing Project)
Sesped - Bastards (forthcoming Pollen)
Deft - Blade Runner Blues (unreleased)
Rob Hindle - Buenos Aires 2am read by Jonathan Tafler (LateNightTales)
Grooveman Spot - Going On (Jazzy Sport)
Portrait - Moving on (forthcoming Well Rounded Housing Project)
Anthony Shakir - Detroit State (Space Dimension Controller Remix) (Rush Hour)
Outboxx - Kate Libby (Immerse)
Chez Damier - Soul Minimal (Mojuba)
Outboxx - Bertie's Groove (Immerse)
Behling and simpson - Politics (unreleased)
Kidkut + Arkist - One Year Later (forthcoming Hot Flush
October & Appleblim - NY Fizzzzzz (forthcoming Smorgasbord)
Kowton - She Don't Jack (Idle Hands)
Andy Mac - Asteroid (forthcoming Punch Drunk)
Gerry Read - Untitled (forthcoming Fourth Wave)
Bakey Ustl - A Tender Place (Unthank)
Vessel - Glitter (unreleased)
Mean Poppa Lean - Personality (Leon remix) (forthcoming Well Rounded Housing Project)
Outboxx -Falling Apart ft Naomi Jeremy (unreleased)
Domu - Save it ft Face (Tru Thoughts)

RECOMMENDED: Mono/Poly – Manifestations EP [Brainfeeder]

2011-04-04T14:19:00.002+01:00

Manifestations is the debut release for the Californian producer, Mono/Poly, on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label. Long hinted at, it follows a slew of varying releases from artists like Jeremiah Jae, Taylor McFerrin and Austin Peralta, the EP marks something of a return for Brainfeeder to those clunky, unpredictable hip hop instrumentals FlyLo specialises in with tracks like ‘Forest Dark’ severely bringing the crush.

The first thing Mono/Poly’s released since his Paramatma album was released on USB by Tastefull Licks, Manifestations accentuates on the themes that made that album and tracks like the Fat City backed ‘Oil Fields’ or ‘Red & Yellow Toys’ so essential. Adept at both hazy synthesized sunsets, and facemelting bass growls he’s a producer for whom subtlety plays a bit part on tracks like ‘Punch The Troll In The Neck’ - which hits in a similarly scruffy way to the work of Free The Robots - but then he’s all about the interplaying nuances on tracks like the enigmatic ‘Glow.’

When we spoke to him back in November 2009, Mono/Poly admitted that his music is “everything from hip hop, drum & bass, fusion, dubstep, electro and more” and it’s a sentiment that this EP only further illustrates. ‘Glow’ for example, stutters through synth progressions, framed by clipped hip hop drums before an almighty bass line, freewheels out of nowhere, nailing the track to the low end frequencies and a track like ‘Needs Deodorant’ blazes keynote electrified boogie and the kind of scything bass synths Skream employs, simultaneously.

Put simply Mono/Poly makes you realise that a lot of other peoples beats are either unimaginative or well... just a bit shit; and Manifestations, in all its super compressed glory, is a great synopsis of his work - one part a colourful, textural explosion and one part brown tone, thunderous-bass-drop club music.

Words: Oli Marlow // Out: Now

COMPETITION: Win Instra:mental Albums & Launch Party Tickets

2011-04-04T11:20:00.006+01:00

This Saturday Instra:mental launch their debut album, the long awaited Resolution 653 at a secret location in London. Joined by Detroit's own Urban Tribe leader DJ Stingray, Instra:mental's Autonomic compatriot and Exit Records boss man dBridge and Workshop's Kassem Mosse the night will unite the diverse strains of Instra:mental's musical universe in one club.

To celebrate, the promoters, Black Atlantic, have armed us with three copies of the album and 3 pairs of tickets to giveaway. To be in the running email us with the answer to the below question by Thursday.

Q: Instra:mental's label is called what?

a) NoFuss~
b) NonPus$
c) NonPlus+

Please Note: Winners will be announced on Thursday and notified by email. Please ensure you can attend the event upon entry, the venue will be announced on the FB event shortly.

DOWNLOAD: V/A - Truancy One

2011-04-01T11:20:00.008+01:00

Free compilations are a blessed thing, though they’re often an awkward balance to get right. Aligning something new and fresh with the genuinely impressive can be hard, and it’s not really been done that well since the first Echodub compilation, Anechoic Chamber, came out back in late 2008. And whilst that compilation was an exploration in the deeper, oceanic side of where techno and dubstep were brutally and lavishly mating with gusto, it explored the possibilities that pairing offered perfectly. In an age when you could very feasibly download a compilation’s worth of material in an hour from Hype Machine, its reassuring to know people are still working on creating well thought out collections.

The Truants blog are a bunch of such culprits. As an independent magazine focusing on electronic and rap music, started in early 2010 by two writers based in Amsterdam, they’ve achieved an impressive archive of editorial in a short time; and as a select group of tastemakers they’ve just released their first ‘pay what you want’ compilation, Truancy One, of which the proceeds go to the Libya & Region Appeal. Featuring 14 artists from all across the globe – established producers like Teeth, NGUZUNGUZU sit next to blossoming beat makers like Brey, Brenmar and Mele who in turn compliment new names like Glass Actors, Square Mode and Tanka - it embodies their musical ethos as a blog that writes consistently about DJs a producers from all over the world.

In an attempt to shed a bit of light on the quality of the music, which focuses more on house influenced grooves, we caught up with Immy Soraya from Truants...

SR: What made you want to put together a free compilation? What are you gaining from it?

IS: The idea of releasing a compilation has been running in the back of our minds for a couple of months but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that we started approaching the artists on Truancy One. We initially wanted to release it through a couple of digital retailers but figured a free release would be a good move. You could say it was a fairly impulsive project, but I think it’s a good thing to not hold back tracks from the audience especially since it’s so easy to release tracks digitally nowadays.

What I personally gain from it is getting the name of my platform Truants and its new label Truancy Records out there, and it makes me incredibly happy to read positive feedback on the compilation too. We offered an option to donate to the Red Cross Libya & Region Appeal and seeing the donations slowly but surely come in is extremely good for my karma, haha.

What does it represent?

The entire vibe of the compilation embodies our ethos as a platform, in the sense that it represents good music from both familiar artists and up and coming ones that people should look out for. The reason why we chose to put out a compilation rather than giving away single tracks is because we feel that this way, it stays with our readers for a longer time as it carries more weight and impact.

How did you pick the artists?

Most artists are involved with our platform in a way and we’ve approached musicians that we admired specifically for the project too. Some were suggested by producers we were already working with, and a couple of them ended up in my inbox one way or another.

What are your personal highlights?

The opening track ‘Steady Moving’ by the Montréal duo Grown Folk is a big one for me personally. Amazing vibe! I’m really stoked with ‘Some’ by the Helsinki producer Teeth too - his EP ‘Shawty’ is dropping on 502 Recordings soon - it sounds amazing on a big sound system. A special shout-out to Brey, aka Die Barbie Musik Kollektiv as well, who literally dedicated his contribution to us by naming it ‘Tru4ncy,’ a bit of a dark and grime-y tune with amazing percussion. I’ve listened to these three most times probably but I love all the fourteen tracks on there, really. We only put tracks on there we truly loved so I approve of them all, and I’m extremely grateful towards everyone who participated.

Are there plans to do more?

Definitely! We wanted to wait and see how the reception would be for the first edition but the feedback is overwhelming! If we can work it out and if our engineer doesn’t end up hating us, we’ll try to release a free compilation every other month. In the periods between the compilations we’ll be putting out actual releases by artists we’ve featured and will be featuring, but these will be properly released so we’re not turning the label into a giveaway central.

::

DOWNLOAD/DONATE: V/A – Truancy One

Truancy One – Full Tracklisting:

1. Grown Folk – Steady Moving
2. Teeth – Some
3. NGUZUNGUZU – Story Riddim
4. Darling Farah – Varsity
5. Brenmar – Boy U Got Me
6. Glass Actor – What I Couldn’t Do
7. LOL Boys & Teki Latex – Modern
8. Chaos In The CBD – Ima Do It Right
9. Melé – Pyrex Vision
10. Tanka – Short Sighted
11. Femme En Fourure – Femdom
12. ITFW – Surgeon
13. Square Mode – One Way
14. Brey – Tru4ncy

SR Mix #75: Konx-om-Pax [Display Copy]

2011-03-31T13:32:00.004+01:00

Twenty six year old Glaswegian digital artist and sonic experimenter Tom Scholefield has been slowly rising in stature over the last couple of years. With mixes across a multitude of blogs and DJ sets in increasing demand it's hard to look across his rapidly diversifying body of work and pin him down to any one specialist artform – but it's under the banner of his audio-visual label, Display Copy, that he is most productive. As an artist he has been called upon to produce some high profile commissions including the hallucinogenic neon paint splashed video for Hudson Mohawke's 'Joy Fantastic,' the cover for Oneohtrix Point Never's Rifts album, as well as further OPN art, a Laurel Halo video, Mogwai posters and he has also worked with labels such as Optimo, Warp and DFA. You may well recognise his work if you’ve followed the recent releases on Numbers and the labels the crew ran beforehand, but in short, Scholefield’s is no small portfolio.

Optimo Tracks, the first record released on Display Copy was written for an AV installation at legendary club night Optimo Espacio in 2009 – the CD featured three tracks that flip between walls of screeching metal, analogue noise and sleek Detroit machine pulse with a remix from No-Fun-Acid impresario Carlos Giffoni sewing up the carnage left at the end. The second release on the label is Tom's debut full length album titled Light In Extension – a direct translation of his artist name Konx-om-Pax, a moniker taken from the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries. The tracks across the record draw a line like the vapour trail of an ascending rocket, piercing out of a collapsing constellation of abstracted industrial noise, techno and hypnagogic acid and into a space realigned across his own transformative vision of what transcendental noise can be.

To illustrate his influences, Tom made us a mix - number 75 in our ongoing series - that incorporates past and future signposts along his musical trip...

SR: First of all I want to ask about your name, Konx-om-Pax – is it from the Alistair Crowley book?

KOP: No, it isn't. People always seem to think that but it's from Giacinto Scelsi, an avant garde composer, it's the name of one of his songs. I didn't hear about it until people started telling me. It means Light In Extension, that's where I got the name from because I thought it related quite nicely with the visual aspect.

There's a relationship between the textures of the tracks on Light In Extension and the visual aesthetic of the artworks Tom produces – a nostalgic futurism...

Yeah, that's sort of it – BBC Radiophonic, Board of Canada influenced fuzziness to it. I listen to a lot of techno, when I make stuff I'm engineering it to sound good live, and simple. That's from years of playing techno and listening to what club music sounds like, so when I'm making weird fucked up synth stuff I'm still engineering it in the same way you would a House record. How it sounds loud on as PA

Did you start out making noise music?

I started out making really really hard Jeff Mills-y techno when I was about 15, on a Yamaha DJX keyboard. Really purposeful hard as fuck loopy techno. It sounded really bad and then I learnt more about production and stuff, moved away from more traditional music and got into noise based stuff later on.

On the mix there's a thread between the tracks that ties them together, a sense of formlessness to it, an amorphousness which is a counterpoint to the more structured techno...

They are two really clear things in my head and I understood when you said formless, I like the really loose and unformulaic – no rigid bar structure or tempo, music that doesn't have a repetitive structure. Really weird compared to more traditional dance music. There's definitely quite a strong link between most of the tracks in the mix.

There’s a noisiness and a trance-y, meditative aspect running through to the last track... a kind of religious, ritualistic trance music...

That sounds like something out of Blade Runner doesn't it? I found that last track on a really cool blog; it was tagged with the genre 'Ceremony'. I like that there was a genre called Ceremony.

And my mate Team Brick, I saw him in Bristol, came to the Mogwai show and hung out and gave me and Dominic from Mogwai a tonne of CDRs that he'd been making; a couple of noise ones a couple of really fucked up electro ones, and that track was off one of his electro albums that kinda sounded like a noise producer trying to copy the Analogue AFX series. Interested to hear a noise producer trying to make dance music, it doesn't sound quite right and that's why I liked it.

There's a dirtiness and darkness to one end of drum and bass that is very noisy, is that a kind of dance music you ever got into, or has it been purely techno?

You know that drum and bass track on Moving Shadow,? Dom & Roland 'Can't Punish Me'. I bought that on vinyl when that came out when I was about 16, and the bassline in that was by far the gnarliest bass noise I'd ever heard. And later on it kind of sounds like a sort of Japanese noise bassline or a Throbbing Gristle synth noise or something like that - just really nasty. It's funny how those noises then developed into dubstep and stuff like that, but it was just a real noisy resonance, the resonance was also quite high up, an acidy bassy sub sort of thing. Probably one of my favourite basslines ever, I think.

How did you come to work with Oneohtrix Point Never, and Carlos Giffoni?

Dan sent me a message on MySpace a couple of years ago after he saw one of my bits of work and asked me to design his Rifts artwork. That was quite an interesting working relationship because he's probably got one of the most overactive, visual, crazy, out-there imaginations I've ever met – it was this never ending gmail chat about ideas. I would say something and he would give me paragraphs of the most in depth code like language to describe what he wanted me to do. I was having to decipher this really personal language that he has to describe whatever the fuck he's going on about. But I got it because it we eventually came to something that he liked, though it probably took a couple of months to get that Rifts artwork to something he was liking.

I just got to know Carlos through that; we hung out in New York and he took us to this Venezuelan restaurant and ordered some really cool food, gave me some really really really strong weed, I don't think I've ever been that high in public just a pure grass joint before going out. Fucked me up properly, it was a good night. He kept it in the fridge and went “do you want that”, I smoked about half of it then was in another dimension for the rest of the night going round New York, it was cool.

I wasn't going to ask you anything like this, but since we're here on the topic - do drugs play any kind of a part in your music and art?

Not necessarily, I think every couple of months I use a joint to help me out, that's about it... maybe one spliff, creatively, if I seem to get stuck on something. All it does is remove me from the stress so I can take a step back and look at stuff. I could probably list all the things I've made when I've been stoned and they're all generally the funnest most colourful things I've ever come up with. But I mean, I don't rely on it, or I don't condone it, or encourage anybody to do it. I've had a few interesting psychedelic experiences in my life, but I think that influences the visual side of things more than the music stuff.

Are the inspirations for your art and music drawn from the same influences?

Yeah, everything comes from the same bracket, sort of 60s to mid 80's diy avant garde, handmade animation sort of stuff from Europe and America. Piotr Kamler.

Do you consider your work as having any nostalgic elements, with all the hypnagogic stuff around Oneohtrix, the American synth-age sounds, or is it a continuation of your current existence?

I think everything I do is relating towards creating a wee world of my own where I feel safe, and that's probably not nostalgias... I don't know, it's kind of difficult to describe 'what does nostalgia mean,' but I'm trying to create a world that I sit in and trying to seduce other people into that world where everything is a bit safe and nicer. I don't like living in this period of time now with everything that's going on, I much preferred it when I was littler and wasn't aware of all the bad things in the world. I don't know if that makes me sound like a hippy...

That's a fairly common sentiment, people feeling more comfortable in their childhoods...

Well, when you've got people like David Cameron running the country I don't want to be part of that. I'd rather just be able to put my mind somewhere else and not have to think about that.

Is that what you use music and art for, as a form of escapism?

Yeah, I think so. Escapism, and partly the reason why I do all these mixtapes and put up the tracklistings is just so other people and maybe get into it and realise there's more music out there than the newest UK dubplate that these blogs are going on about. There's tonnes of music that's been made in the 40's and 50's and 60's that's just as interesting. I think the fascination of the new really pisses me off, and how people discuss and compete against each other in having the newest music and how that equates to being the best. I like new music but I don't like how it is automatically assumed that because it is brand new it means it's good and there's just so much out there that's been made a long time ago that's just as interesting. It's kind of automatic: if it's new it must be good and only four people own it. It's not a competition.

Everything is like a never ending announcement, like we're stuck in an internet train station with fuck all info about all that is happening but there's no real criticism. I think I just need to get off the internet for a wee while and get back in to the studio; it's making me go a bit mad.

The momentum of the new and the lack of criticism doesn't give people much of a chance to put anything into a greater context. If there were more analysis going on there'd be more reference to older works and people would have the chance to slow down and discover more of the older music...

There's a really great interview with James Stinson (Drexciya) talking about how he makes things and how he was quite adamant that when he is making stuff he cuts himself from everything – obviously no internet, no going to clubs, no radio, just involving himself in his own little universe to make stuff and I think that's one of the best bits of advice you could get if you want to make something proper. You've just got to ignore everyone else and get on with it and I think I'm probably headed into that world at the moment, stopped going out as much and trying to just ignore all this noise that's buzzing about and getting on with making music and working on the film.

So what projects are you working on at the moment?

I'm just beginning to storyboard my first short film, an abstract piece influenced by stuff by a polish animator called Piotr Kamler and stuff by the Brothers Quay.

I'm going to be working with another Glasgow character animator and it's going to be really surrealistic and psychedelic. I'm going to be soundtracking it. I'm going to aim to be able to have it as almost like an installation piece, with people working with ambi-sonic sound, producing it. So it's like a step up from the 5.1 – this is all early days. Set up a guerrilla cinema system with an ambi-sonic sound generator so the sounds will be travelling through space in 3D. It will be really intense I think.

Have you done much sound installation in the past?

The only think I've done recently was at the Tramway as part of the Nurse with Wound event, I made a projection installation piece, there was sound to it a well but it was more of a passive, almost background element to it, it was really just to soundtrack the cafe space it wasn't intrusive in any way.

Piotr Kamler has done an amazing thing with Bernard Parmegiani, an Italian composer: Une Mission Ephémère is probably the coolest thing I've ever seen. I think that's a big influence on the animation film stuff I'll be doing, a surrealist non-space with abstract stories and characters I think.

This year I'm supposed to be doing more stuff with Oneohtrix. I was chatting to him about doing something on the Software label, but I don't know. Doing some music video promo work for - this is early days yet – for Hyperdub and a promo for Domino. Can't say what bands yet, just music video projects for two different labels. I quite like that I'll be working with a rock band and working with a dub thing – both visually very similar but at different ends of the music spectrum.

Psychedelia is the joining force between most of these things.

Is that what you tend to look for?

I think that's why people ask me to do stuff.

Because they're after that Hypercolour?

I think that's generally the common thread between everything... or they just want it to be a bit weird.

::

DOWNLOAD: Konx-om-Pax – Sonic Router Mix #75

Tracklist:

1. Konx-om-Pax - 7th Dimension (Rustie Remix)
2. Team Brick - Track 3 (Klad Heist)
3. The Human League - Disco Disaster
4. Alexander Robotnick - Ar Stack 2
5. Konx-om-Pax - II
6. Bernard Parmegiani - Échos/mélopée
7. Carl Craig - Sound On Sound
8. Konx-om-Pax - Chevy Chase Mega Looper
9. James Ferraro - Untitled (Clear)
10. SPK - Stammheim Torturkammer
11. Synergy - Terminal Hotel
12. Oneohtrix Point Never - Gates of Sanct Vacui
13. Konx-om-Pax - Glacier Mountain Descent
14. Madhya - Thème Solennel de la Rédemption

Words: Meatbreak

DOWNLOAD: Boddika - Warehouse

2011-03-28T13:24:00.004+01:00

Hotflush are giving away a track taken from their forthcoming Back & 4th compilation; a 20 track, 2CD compilation of old and new material, chronicalling the rise of the label on one CD whilst looking to the future with the other. Back & 4th includes exclusive tracks by people like Sepalcure, FaltyDL, Boxcutter, Sigha, Roska and more and its released on 4th April.

The track in question is by Boddika, and its called 'Warehouse.' Boddika of course is the solo alias of Al Bleek, one half of the Instra:mental duo, co-owner of Non Plus+ and one of the most prominent producers over the first few months of 2011. Hitting a raw electro style square on the head the Boddika releases on [nakedlunch] and Swamp 81 are hard, and consistently playable, a trait they share with this track.

DOWNLOAD: Boddika - Warehouse

RECOMMENDED: Dorian Concept – Her Tears Taste Like Pears [Ninja Tune]

2011-03-28T13:09:00.003+01:00

Rightfully lumped in the whole ‘beats’ movement that exploded around LA and the release of Flying Lotus debut album Los Angeles album, Austrian producer Dorian Concept has since moved on. His ‘Trilingual Dance Sexperience’ 12” on the Affine label, upped the tempo, along with the quota for facemelting synthesizer workouts and since then he’s stood out during his live performances, unleashing new material live on the mini KORG (using anything and everything to hand – a shoe or his face are two memorable examples). Her Tears Taste Like Pears then, is his first outing for Ninja Tune - a label whose continual metamorphosis now includes Slugabed, an SR favourite whose recently signed to the label - and it really highlights Concept’s knack for caterwauling lead lines.

‘Thankyou For All Time Forever’ sets the tone for the 4 track EP perfectly. With the bassline permeating the found sound suddenly it’s the lay up for the title track’s alley-oop slam dunk. As the eponymous track rises and bubbles its evolutions dissipate, with the kick drum’s punch nailing the whole thing to the dancefloor. ‘My Face Needs Food’ travels that rude boy techno route we’ve come to expect from Wigflex staple the Hizatron, the kick drums toying with their route notes as the synths drape their melodies over the top, pirouetting down through the laser tones into ‘Toe Games Made Her Giggle.’ ‘Toe Games...’ centres itself around two things, the swell of the keyboards and the gallop of the drums, playing out like a high pitched sprint to the finish of the EP.

Her Tears... is a solid example of the kind of genius Dorian Concept, himself something of a child piano prodigy, is capable of; it’s frenetic, but grounded by the harmonics and chord structures. Whilst other producers might hone in on the beat, rigorously pushing the shuffle or reaching for the pound to get their point across, Concept does what he does best, layering harmonious synth after synth to jaw dropping effect.

Words: Oli Marlow // Out: Today

RADIO: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm: Xpldr Session - 27.03.2011

2011-03-28T12:05:00.006+01:00

Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm: Xpldr Session
Hosted by James Balf.
Catch Sonic Router on Hivemind.fm every 2nd and 4th Sunday between 10pm-12am.

STREAM: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm: Xpldr Session - 27.03.2011

Direct Download (Right Click/Save As)

Tracklist:

Hype Williams – Untitled [Hippos In Tanks]
RP Boo – Eraser [Planet Mu]
DJ Roc – Fuck Dat [Planet Mu]
DJ Roc – One Blood [Planet Mu]
DJ Spinn – Fall Back [Planet Mu]
DJ Rashad – Rashad [Planet Mu]
DJ Spinn – Studio [Planet Mu]
Hype Williams – Warlock [Hippos In Tanks]
DJ Elmoe – Where My Ghost At? [Planet Mu]
DJ Nate – Footwerk Homicide [Planet Mu]
Darq E Freaker – Rhythm & Slags [Oil Gang]
Waifer – Gunman Skank [Earth 616]
General L.O.K. – Gama [Total Package]
Intsra:mental – When I Dip [Non Plus+]
Optimum – DS10 [Hum & Buzz]
Addison Groove – Sexual [Swamp 81]
DJ Rampage — Deep Inside (Ramaz Re-edit) [Night Slugs White]
Jacques Greene – Another Girl [LuckyMe]
Bee Mask – Canzoni dal Laboratorio del Silenzio Cosmico [Spectrum Spools]
Burial – Stolen Dog [Hyperdub]
FaltyDL – Hard [Swamp 81]
Sugar Minott – Devil Is At Large [Dug Out]
Ital Rockers – Ital’s Anthem [Basic]
Blawan – Bohla [R&S]
Steve Poindexter – Computer Madness [Muzique]
Blawan – Lavender [R&S]
Joy O – Jels [Hotflush]
.19.454.18.5.25.5.18 – hg06# A [Horizontal Ground]
Thomas Bangalter – Outrun [Roulé]
Lil Silva – Pulse Vs. Flex [White]
Champion – Lose Control [forthcoming Hardrive]
Slackk – Synthetics [Forfront]
Head High – It’s A Love Thing (Piano Invasion) [Power House]
Altered Natives – In My House [Eye4Eye]
T.Williams – Peoples Choice [PTN]
Ossie – Terantular [Lightworks]
Portable – The Ghetto Escapes [Karat]
House Faze – Come… With… Me… [Final Cut]
Jus-Ed – I’m Coming (Levon Vincent Remix) [Underground Quality]
Lowtec – Looser [Non Plus+]
Hype Williams – Mitsubishi [Hippos In Tanks]
Jus-Ed – Let’s Groove [Underground Quality]
Burial + Four Tet + Thom Yorke – Ego [Text]
Round Two – New Day [Mean Street]
Burial – Street Halo [Hyperdub]
Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley – Jack My Body (Home Made Version) [DJ International]
Omar-S – Strider’s World [FXHE]
Luv Jam – Mature Oak [Phonica]

RECOMMENDED: Hype Williams – One Nation [Hippos In Tanks]

2011-03-25T11:17:00.003Z

After hearing the vaguely mysterious Berlin/London duo’s album, 'Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Reel,' from last year on I couldn’t quite see what all the fuss was about. Maybe it was the auto-tuned crying baby or Pokemon samples that put me off a bit, but all the blatant use of samples just didn’t work for me. The ideas were good but it never really sounded like it worked that well, plus plenty of other people (labels like Not Not Fun, Editions Mego, Olde English Spelling Bee) have been doing this hazy, spaced out, slow motion, genre clusterfuck thing well enough for Hype Williams not to hit home too much. So when their latest album One Nation arrived on the Hippos In Tanks imprint, the fact that i bonded to the content took me by surprise.

There are four tracks in particular that make One Nation. The first is the opener ‘Ital’ and it’s screwed, smeared atmospheres, pulsing warm bass lines and those dissonant synth sounds that morph in speed and texture like they’re being played on a broken tape deck. It’s a key sound to the album that appears again and again and puts it head and shoulders above previous material. The sample baiting has been addressed here too, with the duo making them less obvious; notably the only time a sample is really prominent is with with the spoken word stoner wisdom on the second standout, ‘Untitled;’ the contortion of the melodies is tantalizing and when the bass drops through them the muffled euphoria really comes.

The hyperactive hi-hat workouts on ‘Warlord’ offer a quicker, more serious, junglist edge - whether or not it’s a juke influence at work here remains to be seen but the tempo fits, as do the drum machine cow bell flourishes. ‘Mitsubishi’ feels like a warped take on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works all slow, shape shifting house complete with child like lead lines. The production, or seeming lack of it, means that it doesn’t really punch like house music does, but it’s a hazy take on the sound but it works a treat amongst the static of the other tracks.

The brilliantly titled ‘Your Girl Smells Chung When She Wears Dior’ has a sunny shimmer, complete with hip-hop drums it plays out like an opening to a movie fucked purposely into new shapes. The hazy glow of ‘William, Shotgun Sprayer’ sounds like your favourite summer jingle being played on the last dregs of battery life through your walkman whilst while ‘Jah’ is the most intense noise exploration on the album, giving off a anxiety soaked train ride through a dystopian city sort of vibe. The album soon melts back into that sweet hazy bliss though when ‘Break4Love’ enters the equation and Hype Williams let its widescreen mellowness, sink in.

Primitive in its processes, One Nation is almost blissful, but completely blazed out; the most mature approach to date from an act whose ramshackle experiments in sound are on everyone’s – including Hyperdub boss Kode 9, who has confirmed they’ll be releasing an album on his label at some point in the future– lips right now. Much like the work of Actress, the production techniques may sound like you’re listening to the album through someone else’s iPod on a noisy tube train, but inherently, therein lies some of its out of body charm.

Words: James Balf // Out: Now

SR Mix #74: Zeppy Zep [Fortified Audio]

2011-03-23T16:22:00.006Z

To be fair to Zeppy Zep, this mix/post/textual fellatio should have happened a long time ago, but whatever; things get in the way and needs must. It still doesn’t detract from the quality of his music and it’s nice to have our initial rush of interest cemented with more great music. - Ed

First popping out in a mix from Manc beardo xxxy, Zeppy Zep’s production moniker, is characteristic of the personality contained in his music - it’s just as animated, fully dosed up on high octane dancefloor workouts. Tracks like ‘Marillion’ emulate the snare work of the afore mentioned chromosomed one, hitting in a typically splashy way, glitching into frams over weird concoctions of reverbed chords, but it was the awkward drum fumble of ‘Rebis’ that first sent us into a headspin. Built around a true earworm of a leadline it flips through beat progressions ending up in a 4x4 strut that pounds over the descending vocal snatches with authority. It’s a bonafide show stealer and the tune that opened the door for us to a handful of original productions and his remix of former SR mixer The Phantom’s ‘Night Game.’

Long since the third producer in our Polish club music Bermuda triangle, he’s channeling the energy and rush of a sweaty dancefloor straight into his melodies and he’s just confirmed his debut solo release on Fortified Audio. Along with fellow countrymen The Phantom and Sentel he brings something fast and fresh to his releases, not afraid to ‘do a Canblaster’ and drop straight out of a rigid house kick sequence and run headlong into something completely different 8 bars later. It’s refreshing and duly exciting to dwell on the prospect of new music from him, so we pinned him down through his weeping, alcohol-soaked familiar, grabbed an updated version of his Sonic Router mix and shot him some questions designed to give him the platform to introduce his music properly.

SR: Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info?

Zeppy Zep: Hi, my name is Michal and I'm from Cracow, Poland. I'm 21. Sometimes I make tunes and play parties.

Outside of music who are you? What do you do on the daily?

I do some graphic design, I should be in an art school by now, but things went out and I am not. Procrastinating. Playing Quake on dm17.

How did you first get into making music? What was it that infected you to do so?

I think I always wanted to make music, but this need kind of exploded right after primary school. I remember I bought Prodigy's Fat of the Land and Chemical Brothers Come With Us on a cassette. Damn, those beats sounded so fine I just wanted to do something like that. I knew my schoolmate was making hip hop beats and he told me about Fruity Loops. Then I saw a music magazine, with a CD attached, I remember Fruity Loops 4.0 had just been released so they've put a Demo version on a CD. I bought a magazine and boom, I was making music.

First it was hip hop beats, and then they slowly turned into more electronic stuff. My dad is a musicologist and he can play nearly every instrument, we had a piano at home but I barely played on that thing, I never took any lessons either.

What’s your production set up like? What’s your favourite bit of kit in the studio?

Funny thing is, it's still FL Studio. Yes, I tried Ableton and Logic but always ended up returning to FL Studio, it feels like home there. Nowadays, multiple display-pro-tools-uberproducers laugh at this but I don’t care, I love this piece of software. I got a MIDI controller but I don't use it, it’s kind of a shame that I play better on qwerty keys than on normal piano. I am planning to buy some superb monitors, right now I use typical computer speakers but I know them so well it's enough to make a fair-sounding tune.

Favourite bit of kit goes to Soundgoodizer, for this ridiculous name.

Where do you take inspiration from when making music? I mean it’s easy to hear the funky influence... something that Poland is getting something of a rep for at the moment. What’s the scene like in your native Poland?

The most boring thing is to look for inspiration in the same genre as the track you're trying to make. You should teach yourself to discover the great little things in places you'd never think of exploring. For example, I got this hardstyle sample pack and some sounds are just awesome. I am also a fan of early NFS games soundtracks lol.

Speaking of funky - yes, it had its big time in Poland but seems like the things are changing now, some people play more house, some others more of that "future" stuff. People are very open minded, we have plenty of awesome events going on, even in Warsaw which used to be a more fidget house oriented place. And of course brostep is getting dangerously bigger…

Zeppy Zep - Rebis

Are there any producers you rate that the world should know about?

Hoodmode, I saw his soundcloud lately - niceness. Lokiboi is a talented beast. Sentel are getting stronger every second. Also, from Poland - Vanatoski and Intreau.

We’ve heard a few production bits from you that’ve blown us away, ‘Menace’ in particular, plus there’s your remixes of people like The Phantom too. Does it differ for you, the way you approach remixes to normal productions?

Remixes have deadlines haha. I don't know, I feel that my The Phantom and Tom Encore remixes are polished just as I wanted them to be. I heard that you can somehow focus better on someone else’s track than on your own, but I don't think it’s true.

Have you got any releases have you got in the pipeline? I saw a bit about a 12” coming on Fortified Audio, can you tell us a bit more about what’s coming up?

Yes, ‘Menace,’ ‘Rebis’ and ‘Marillion’ are coming out on Fortified Audio but as slightly different versions. I did those tunes some time ago and want them to sound a little bit more fresh. Also my Tom Encore remix is out now on Concrete Cut.

Tell us a little bit about the mix you’ve put together for us…

There are some dubs from Superisk and Lokiboi plus Hoodmode’s ‘Everything’ - that guy I told you above. Two Blawan tunes, he's killing it right now, I cannot wait for ‘Getting Me Down’ to be released. There’s Jamie XX - so obvious but so damn good - some acid sounds - everyone already knows that 2011 will be year of tb-303 references right? The outro is John Roberts, with this sweet piano breakdown, really soft stuff.

Any words of wisdom, for our readers?

When in elevator, press floor number and close button at once - it won't stop on other floors.

::

DOWNLOAD: Zeppy Zep – Sonic Router Mix #74

Tracklist:

1. Tom Encore - Spellbound (Zeppy Zep Remix) (Concrete Cut)
2. Gil Scott-Heron And Jamie XX - I'm New Here (XL)
3. Objekt - The Goose that Got Away (Objekt)
4. Superisk - Life is Live (Dub)
5. Ben Westbeech - Falling (Dark Sky Remix) (Strictly Rhythm)
6. Hoodmode - Everything (Dub)
7. The Hundred In The Hands - Pigeons (Blawan's bare bones Remix) (Warp)
8. Lokiboi - Marina Faib (Dub)
9. M.I.A. - It Takes A Muscle (Pearson Sound Refix) (XL)
10. Damon Wild - Aqua (Synewave)
11. Hackman - Made Up My Mind (PTN)
12. Martyn & Mike Slott - All Nights (All City)
13. Mount Kimbie - Mayor (Hotflush)
14. Hardrive - Deep Inside (ZYX Music)
15. Beat Pharmacy - Piece of Mind (Ramadanman Refix) (Deep Space Media)
16. Joy O - Jels (Hotflush)
17. Blawan - Kaz (R&S Records)
18. John Roberts - Ever Or Not (Dial)

PRE-ORDER: Subeena – Wrong For Me/Space Of Flow/End Of Reason [Opit]

2011-03-22T11:03:00.003Z

With a retrospective album, ’23,’ out last week, the latest platter from Opit boss lady Subeena lands on her fledging label. Harbouring three tracks it shows a different side to the producer who worked with Jamie Woon on ‘Solidify,’ with a trio that jumps from spaced out ballads to brooding tech-house and jackin’ acid. The looped strung melodies on ‘Wrong For Me’ are luscious and warm, sounding a little like Addison Groove’s latest sample excursion on the A side of his forthcoming 3024 12”, giving Subeena’s mid range heavy vocals the pillow to fall back on as the scattergun snares pit er pat into being. It’s an odd pairing - the two melody lines fight for life atop the fizzing bitcrushed hi hats – but once the final revolution of drums comes into effect you can see where the track was all the time building to.

‘Space of Flow’ draws on a blend of UK flavours, pairing that UK funky flutter with a hard tech-house kick drum and surging saw waves. The snares add some rudeness but overall it’s kind of restrained given the brashness of the components. Full of brooding and slow melodic tension it has an uneasy air, but benefits wholly from the harmonic progression and drum detail. ‘End of Reason’ bumps like a bastard hybrid of funky and Chicago house, playing of that muted bass tone that Egyptrixx harnessed so well on his debut full length ‘Bible Eyes.’ Squiggling with acid (a vibe that, along with Blawan, Subeena looks to be bringing back this year) it’s not a million miles away from something you might hear from Altered Natives - it’s got that same knowing swagger to it.

It’s hard to place Subeena with the styles presented on this 12”, and that’s something that after a few listens you can tell she’s aiming for. With a more militant discography sitting in the wings it’s fascinating to hear her using her voice as a new element and with a multitude of styles at her fingertips it’ll be interesting to hear where she goes next.

Words: James Balf & Oli Marlow // Out: 29th March 2011

RECOMMENDED: Becoming Real – Closer/Antarctic City [Cold World Industries]

2011-03-21T16:09:00.001Z

Toby Ridler’s combination of stark glacial melodic spikes and rolling drum play are indicative of someone who’s embroiled in their own world. Sure, ‘Closer’ – the A side of the first release on his freshly minted Cold World Industries label - shares a sample pack with Addison Groove and Pearson Sound, but is the cerebral swirl sitting behind the relative simplicity of the repetitive lead line that sets him apart from other producers. Like his last release, the Not Even backed Spectre EP, ‘Closer’ is more like grime - playing out like a hypermelodic devil mix that’s been peppered by an over enthusiastic finger drummer – and that rawness displayed is probably the most interesting thing about the Becoming Real project.

You could call it Eski influenced. You could call it juke influenced, but Ridler’s work stands apart - the over-riding elements at play here are the tapestries that the ice cold synthesizers weave in your mind. Like the densely layered work of El-P on Cannibal Ox’s game changing The Cold Vein album, ‘Antarctic City’ is more of a tumble down production, almost regimented by the kick drums and jarring snare drums that sit back from the headroom of the mix just enough to make you really concentrate on them. Its beguiling; almost anti dancefloor but completely pro trance (in terms of the faraway mindstate kind of spiritual trance), smothered in stark layers and snatched vocals, shifting up a gear into something danceable with a proper snare at around the 3 minute mark.

Jam City’s refix of ‘Closer’ re-positions the track for the darkest of dancefloors, with the Night Slug keeping the menace of the original but transporting the focus of it to the bassline whilst he ups the snare quota a million percent. That threat and sense of brooding is perfectly translated into a Jam City-house-tempo-roller. It’s the flag in the summit of Becoming Real’s third EP, a stark and brash marriage that’s tortured itself purely for its own benefit.

Words: Oli Marlow // Out: Now

BUY: Various Artists – Nihon Kizuna

2011-03-18T16:40:00.007Z

It’s harrowing to comprehend the state of the Pacific right now. Whilst millions of people’s lives have been irreversibly affected by last Friday's earthquake, its aftershocks and the tsunami it prompted, the Western world continues on the same, slightly altered axis. And whilst good intentions and well wishes make for great social network status updates, it takes a certain kind of person to pull their finger out and do something. Something that might actually make the average internet user donate to the Japanese Red Cross - an organisation that can directly help the Japanese population in this time of media hysteria.

What follows is information on Nihon Kizuna, a project and compilation cultivated by sometime journo Laurent Fintoni, who arrived in Tokyo the day before the earth’s surface ripped open, and his associates...

“Following the earthquake and tsunami which devastated the northern coast and prefectures of Japan on Friday March 11th 2011, a small group of Tokyo-based artists (from Japan, Ukraine and France) and one visiting London-based journalist (from Italy) decided to pull their efforts and contacts together to do the only thing they could to help the country and its people – sell music to raise awareness of the devastation that hit the area and raise money for its people and the relief effort.

The motivation behind Nihon Kizuna was simple: in face of the feeling of helplessness many felt here in Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami this compilation seemed like the best way to express our support and love for the country and its people. Amid widespread scaremongering and panic from the foreign media it felt only right to stand tall alongside the people of Japan who have always welcomed foreign artists and musicians with open arms and hearts.”

Over 40 internationally renowned artists have contributed to the Nihon Kizuna compilation, which was reportedly put together in just 5 days, including people like Kode9, Kuedo, Illum Sphere, Rudi Zygadlo, Om Unit and a slew more who you’ll have read about if you’ve followed our writing over the past 2 years.

It costs £10, or whatever you are willing to pay for it, and the full list of artists who have contributed music is below.

BUY: Various Artists – Nihon Kizuna / 日本絆

Tracklist:

Kode 9 (UK) – 9 Samurai (Hyperdub Records) **
Don Leisure (UK) – Trio of Desserts *
Kuedo (UK) – Zap (Planet Mu) *
Himuro Yoshiteru (JP) – Missing Links *
Onra (FR) – High Hopes (All City Records) **
Tatsuki (JP) – Mirror In Bologna (Original Cultures) *
Om Unit (UK) – Lavender (All City Records) **
Danny Drive Thru (UK) – Prescience (Fat City Records) *
Slugabed (UK) – Rockin U (Ninja Tune) *
Ken One (JP) – Mindrain (Raid System) *
Paul White (UK) – Grimy Light (One Handed Music) **
Darkhouse Family (UK) – Lemon Drizzle (Fat City Records) *
Illum Sphere (UK) – Sweat The Descent (Hoya:Hoya / Tectonic) **
A Taut Line (UK/JP) – Azul (Dyskotopia) *
Fink (UK) – See It All (Ninja Tune) *
Mus.sck (US) – Happiness Is The Best Face Lift (Car Crash Set/Daly City) *
Rudi Zygadlo (UK) – Perdu (Planet Mu) *
Broken Haze (JP) – Move Forward (Raid System) *
BD1982 (US/JP) – Aluminium Riddim (Seclusiasis/Diskotopia) *
Nightwave (UK) – Hokusai Dream *
The Electric ft. Yarah Bravo (UK) – Beautiful (Memory9 remix) (Organically Grown Sounds) **
Ernest Gonzales (US) – Beneath The Surface (FoF/Exponential) *
Jono McCleery (UK) – Garden (Ninja Tune) **
Ido Tavori (UK) – Haunted Top Hats *
Jay Scarlett – The Rising Sun (Ampsoul) *
Paper Tiger (UK) – Lunar Notes (Jus Like Music) *
Kid Kanevil (UK) – One For Tokyo (One World Records / Ninja Tune) *
Takuma Kanaiwa (US) – Senpo World (Concrete Sound System) *
B-Ju (GE) – Philly Run (Mux Mool remix) (Error Broadcast) **
Primus Luta & Lonesome D (US) – Lockdown (Concrete Sound System) *
2phast (IT) – JapaN *
Doshy (DE) – Space Attack (Robox Neotech) **
Sesped (VE) – Too High To Drive (Jus Like Music) *
Yosi Horikawa (JP) – Passion (Eklektik Records) *
Audace (FR/JP) – Indestructible Soul (Inductive) *
Scrimshire ft. Inga Lill Aker (UK) – Warm Sound (Wah Wah 45s) **
Kan Sano (JP) – Bless (Circulations) *
Elliott Yorke (UK) – Wormhole Squirm (Five Easy Pieces) *
Daisuke Tanabe (JP) – Artificial Sweetener (Circulations) **
Super Smoky Soul ft. Guilty Simpson (JP/US) – Knockout Kings (Circulations) **
Emika (UK) – Count Backwards (Ninja Tune) *
Eccy (JP) – EFH (Slye/Milk) *
Throwing Snow (UK) – The Luck Without (A Future Without) *
XLII (UA/JP) – Standuptall Nippon (Raid System) *
Pete Sasqwax (UK) – Aggro A Go Go *
Virtual Boy (US/FR) – Thrust (Turnsteak remix) *
F.A.M.E (US) – Real Surreal (F.A.M.E/4OneFunk) *
re:ill (JP) – We Are Possible (Circulations) *
The Qemists (UK) – Stompbox (Ninja Tune) **
Kper (IT/FR) – Chotto *

*exclusive to compilation
** previously released

P.S. "Tokyo is not glowing green or empty, contrary to what you may have read in the press" according to Fintoni who is currently still out there.

RECOMMENDED: Koreless – 4D/MTI [Pictures Music]

2011-03-18T13:54:00.000Z

Glasgow-based Welshman Koreless is the latest name to pop out from Pictures Music’s always interesting roster of post-genre bass music, and it would be an understatement to say there’s a considerable hype brewing around the young producer. Maybe for good reason; his debut single for Pictures is the kind of coolheaded first salvo that barely conceals its ‘look how exciting I am factor’ through spare, focused atmosphere. Or maybe the lack thereof - one might say these tunes are core-less; and that person would be very sorry for that pun. Regardless, the two tunes here don’t consist of much - mainly staccato chords, pillows of sub-bass and tumbling vocal samples - and the atmosphere is intimidatingly austere.

Now, I’m the last person who wants to read juke and footwork into everything, but it’s difficult not to hear it in the jumpy pulse of these tunes, particularly ‘MTI.’ It and ‘4D’ are fascinating hybrids, but utterly transparent in their construction (really, you can see right through them). Yet Koreless betrays an ingenious sense of seamless fusion so insidious that it’s barely even detectable, but deeply ingrained in the coarse fabric of this music. ‘4D’ slips and trips on a precariously balanced and diced bass riff (hence the juke reference), but the vocal that struggles to stay afloat on the brittle organ tones. It’s relentlessly chopped and cycled, like it wandered off from some old garage tune and lost its way. ‘MTI’ taps a similar vein but in slightly more maximal fashion, floating on a cloud of filtered fuzz but retaining the same basic construction of fragile melodies and gasping vocals.

It might be tempting to dismiss something like this as trend-hopping or shallow appropriation, but you’d be missing the point entirely: there’s something organic and tight about Koreless’ music, an inchoate ideology forming that’s just as reduced and efficient as his music.

Words: Andrew Ryce // Out: Monday 21st March 2011

SR Mix #73: Ossie [Lightworks]

2011-03-17T17:20:00.006Z

Following yesterday’s bumbling and unintentional twitter debate on the deployment of tracklists for online mixes the latest contributor to our ongoing mix series hasn’t given us one. Now, that doesn’t make us hate him, it doesn’t make us think he’s being intentionally difficult nor piss us off in any respect – he may have just not realised we usually include them – but it does stoke a level of interest in listening to the whole thing in its entirety.

Ossie is a producer that’s been bubbling under for a while now, making moves on the UK funky underground with his own decidedly warped take on the house sound of now. Turning his hand from tribal jams like ‘Ossie Baba’ to R&B refixes that heat up a dancefloor he’s just released the enchanting earworming ‘Tarantula’ on the freshly minted Lightworks imprint. It’s his biggest success to date, all hip shaking percussive manoeuvres, deep pulsing synth stabs and then there’s that mulitlimbed lead line that creeps and lurks in the most resplendent corners of your room late at night. Packaged with the tougher ‘Creepy Crawlies’ and a Funkineven remix of the A side on the flip, it marks both the dawn of a new imprint and the realisation of Ossie’s music – something that, judging by our quick exchange, has evidently been a long time coming.

With more releases on the horizon, including a 12” release forthcoming on Kode9’s Hyperdub incubator, we caught up with him to learn us a few things about him, his links to Live FM (and one of Joy O’s favourite selectors) Petchy and his future endeavours. Plus he turns in the latest instalment in our ongoing mix series, #73, a 90 min mix which features plenty of his own material set amongst some of his favourite house records.

Sonic Router: What do you do on the daily and where are you from?

Ossie: Born and bred in East Ham (East London). I’m in my final year of uni, studying music technology. When I get home its straight onto the decks or logic; so it’s music all around really.

What first got you into production and what’s your set-up like? Have you got a favourite bit of kit and how do you approach working in the studio?

At an early age I was intrigued at how tunes were made. I took a production course in the summer when I was 11 and that’s when I first saw Cubasis VST. I remember going with my mum to Stratford Computer Fair and buying a crack version of Cubasis and I guess that’s where it all started. Throughout secondary school and college I was making beats in my spare time, though then it was mainly R&B and hip hop.

Set-up wise I’ve got a Macbook Pro, PowerMac G5, Logic Pro 8,Yamaha, MG16/6FX, M-audio Axiom 49, 2 Novation Launchpads and a MicroKorg.

My Macbook pro is one thing I couldn’t go without. Once that’s in front of me everything just flows. I never have a plan when producing. I just creatively mess about.

How would you describe your sound?

A fusion of everything really, I use a lot of percussion and synths, which gives a vintage but current feel. I try and have stories or mood in my tunes especially when producing house, and having produced R&B previously helps with build-ups and structuring.

I sample now and then hence the spontaneous remixes I put up on my Soundcloud, but most times I try and emulate the sounds used from the tracks I’m feeling at the time. I think I’d be a sample freak like Kanye if it didn’t cost so much.

You take influence from all over: We hear American vibes, UK vibes, Deep, Hype, African house, any house. You bring it in and make it your own, give us a clue how those strings got drawn together…

I go through phases when I’m listening and making music. I am never listening to one genre and this is what’s heard in my production. For example at the time I made ‘Ossie Baba’ I was listening to Fela Kuti, Tony Allen, Roy Ayers, Marvin Gaye you name it. I don’t just listen to house so in my music you hear everything which I hope will be my advantage as there’s something for everyone. When I started making house I was listening to a lot of Bugz in the Attic, 4hero and Vikter Duplaix and at the same time UK funky was just on the horizon so I just brought all influences together.

I guess cheeky refix’s come into that somehow: we’ve heard your take on the odd R&B legend or pop freak in our time lurking on the radio waves/soundcloud… I guess that’s another big part of your sound? How do you channel that into something more Ossie…

Yeah I’ve been making remixes from day. Once again it’s because I listen to such a variety of music. When producing my versions I make sure from the start that it sounds as far from the original track as possible while still keeping the best bits - if that makes sense? That way if compared to other remixes of the same track it stands out as Ossie.

Tell us about Live FM and Petchy? You’ve mixed with him we’re all feeling it, that energy is infectious…

Petchy is my friend’s brother so I’ve always been around him since school days. Petchy was at Live FM when I had started to make house and I was swinging him tunes to get a reaction. I gave him ‘Tarantula’ after I made it, the buzz really started from then and it just escalated. That mix you heard with us back to back was the first mix I recorded. I started DJing in October and I fast tracked myself to DJ in time for the release.

Seeing ‘Tarantula’ on a 12” is pretty sweet since it’s been making moves on the UK Funky scene for a bit now. How’d that track even come into existence? Can you tell us a bit about that release, what’s the inspiration/sound for the tracks?

To be honest I don’t remember much of making it because I made it so long ago now, but what I do remember is l was experimenting with sounds. I have this method I use sometimes when I’m producing, when I open up Logic the first sound I hear I use. So instead of sieving through for ages looking for a particular sound I do it that way to be spontaneous. It cuts production time and brings together certain sounds I wouldn’t normally put together. I did the same thing for ‘Creepy Crawlies’ because time was of the essence and I needed to make the B-side asap.

Talk to us about the state of funky right now and where you fit in with it today… What music are you feeling at the moment, any producers you think the world should know about?

The state of funky is healthy and I love the fact that it’s very tribal orientated, which allows me to go crazy with my drum patterns. Hard House Banton, Fuzzy Logic and Roska do it for me. I think they’re the cream of the crop when it comes to producers in the scene right now and I’m sure the world already knows about them. If you don’t where have you been?

After this Lightworks 12” arrives what have you got in store for us? Any more releases you can chat about on the horizon…

I've got a release scheduled for May coming out on Hyperdub, the tracks called ‘Set the Tone.’ I made it about three years ago even before ‘Tarantula.’ I just had it sitting in my hard drive for a while. I haven't got anything planned after that; I'm waiting for these releases to come out and for uni to finish before I do anything else.

Tell us about the mix you’ve turned in for us...

It’s mainly all the tunes I’m feeling at the moment, a few refix’s and remixes from me. Exclusive wise the B-side to ‘Set The Tone’ is in there. It’s called ‘Power of Love.’ Apart from that it’s just a bit of everything, typically Ossie.

Have you got any words of wisdom for our readers?

Perfect your craft!

::

DOWNLOAD: Ossie – Sonic Router Mix #73

No tracklist given.

Words: James Balf & Oli Marlow

READ: Trap Magazine #003

2011-03-16T11:18:00.004Z

The third edition of bass music magazine Trap - the one that this site's editor scribes features for - is back from the printers and out now. Featuring an SR penned article on Pearson Sound's club night, Acetate, you can catch one in your local store/venue shortly (check facebook.com/trapmagazine for a list of stockists).

Other great features in this issue include P Money, Icicle and Breakage, and luckily, in this age of optimum digitalisation you can preview the issue via the widget below.

Seek a physical copy out though, the paper quality really is awesome.

COMPETITION: Win FABRICLIVE 56: Ramadanman/Pearson Sound & Album Launch Tickets

2011-03-15T16:26:00.010Z

David Kennedy has always been a name to follow ever since tracks like ‘Offal’ and ‘Blimey’ started to surface under the Ramadanman moniker on labels like Soul Jazz and his own co-run Hessle Audio imprint in 2008. Since then his ascension to becoming one of the most eloquent and spatially aware producers on the – for lack of a better catch all term – bass music scene has been quick and decidedly fruitful.

Any followers of our prose here will no doubt be versed in his use of powerful basslines, field recordings and his love affair with his recently acquired classic drum machine sample pack. In the tail end of last year, he really grew to prominence unleashing anthems like ‘Work Them’ on Swamp 81’ and ‘Glut’ on Untold’s Hemlock imprint; but when you consider both the fact that he released 8 singles last year (under his Pearson Sound guise - the one he’ll be using henceforth - as well as as Ramadanman) and the quality of each of them it really doesn’t come as a surprise that he’s gracing clubs the world over every weekend.

“It’s ridiculous really but hey… it’s just making the most of it,” he tells us of his constant travelling over a crackling phone line. “Especially as I’m young and energetic, I can take it a bit more than some people who’ll perhaps get bitter [laughs]. I can quite easily function on no sleep whereas I know some people for whom doing an all nighter would throw them for a week or whatever. I seem to be able to handle it at the moment…”

“I had a lot of stuff out last year so it’s gonna bit a bit quieter inevitably,” he muses when the snatched conversation turns to forthcoming material for the early part of 2011; “but I’ve got a Maurice Donovan 12 inch - the Chicago House legend is making a comeback for 2011 - that’s coming on Sssssss or whatever it’s called. Then there’s a little white label which is coming on Night Slugs in probably a month or two…”

All of this is of course in addition to his contribution to his instalment in the fabric mix series, FABRICLIVE 56, which is due out next week. It’s an impeccable mix, drawing on Kennedy’s hard drive packed with exclusive blends and unreleased productions as much as it does his current DJ sets. It’s a mix that cements his raised profile and continuing residency at the London nightclub perfectly.

In honour of his launch party for the CD, happening at fabric this Friday which features a Room One lineup to rival any club (the full Hessle Audio trio + Joy Orbison, Mala b2b Pinch, Julio Bashmore and Midland) we’ve been given 2 copies of FABRICLIVE 56 and 2 pairs of tickets to the rave itself to giveaway. More info on the event itself is available here.

To be in the running to win these prizes just email us the answer to the following question by the end of play on Thursday.

Q: David Kennedy’s club night, which he runs up in Leeds, is called what?

Please note: winners will be notified by email.

UPDATE: You can stream 30 mins of FABRICLIVE 56 thanks to The FADER.

RECOMMENDED: Slackk – Synthetic / Hervey Jenkins - Steelo [Forefront]

2011-03-14T15:35:00.001Z

Putting out your debut label release is a big statement. Colouring in your imprint’s grandiose mission statement with just two cuts is a tough ask, but the Hull based Forefront guys seem to have straddled that quandary with ease on their first single - a split between the fractured personalities of Slackk and Hervey Jenkins.

Slackk, the obsessive figure behind the essential grime archive and resource, Grimetapes, has been turning his attention further towards UK funky of late, brining that grimey edge to his own productions - you may have caught on to his Wiley loving Eski-house experiments via his last 12” on the formidable Numbers or checked his beats all over the radio from Dusk & Blackdown and beyond… ‘Synthetic’ sees Slackk at his bumpin’ best, channelling the house aesthetic through his grimy lens. Rumbling echo drenched drums boom and bubble, whilst bleepy synth motifs twist with an urgent tension against some addictive shuffling hi-hats and bongo rhythms, that’ll definitely get you shaking a leg.

The flip comes courtesy of a mysterious garage don from way back when, Hervey Jenkins. He’s the kind of guy who’d give Chicago house legend Maurice Donovan and NY’s very own Frankie Solar a run for their money in a dance off, powering through the voguing until they were all down to their string vests. ‘Steelo’ is a sweaty slice of R&B chopped and flexed into a tough garage number that’ll have you skipping across the dance floor, champagne in one hand with fixed gun fingers on the other.

Words: James Balf // Out: Now via Rubadub

RADIO: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm: Editor's Choice 13.03.2011

2011-03-14T11:49:00.006Z

Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm: Editor's Choice
Hosted by Oli Marlow.
2nd Sunday of every month // 10pm – 12am.

STREAM: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm: Editor's Choice 13.03.2011

Tracklist:

1. Charlie Sheen x Twin Peaks Theme (mlr blend)
2. Donnel Jones - You Know Whats Up (Nino Remix) [FREE DL]
3. Beatbully feat. Slow Hand Motem - Expecting Company [forthcoming Dodpop]
4. Coco Bryce - Wobble Trouble [Fremdtunes]
5. Chairman Kato - Fuck This [unreleased]
6. Crackazat - Bouncer Pounce [forthcoming Beyond Jazz]
7. Gerry Read - Last Time [forthcoming Dark Arx]
8. Cosmin TRG - Izolat [50 Weapons]
9. Ceramic - The Message [forthcoming EYE 4 EYE]
10. Lokiboi vs. Ratchatcher - Untitled [unreleased]
11. Joy O - Wade In [Hotflush]
12. Blawan - Lavender [R&S]
13. Actress - Gershwin [Nonplus+]
14. Photek - 101 (Boddika Remix) [forthcoming Phoek Productions]
15. Missy Elliot - Get Ur Freak On (Doorly Bootleg) [FREE DL]
16. Logos - Atlanta 96 [Unreleased]
17. Kid Simpl - Ghostsuit [forthcoming CarCrashSet]
18. Hodge - Conjecture [forthcoming Pollen]
19. Mista Men - Melancholy Dreams of Plastic Trees [unreleased]
20. Om Unit - Prawn Cocktail [forthcoming Civil Music]
21. Hyetal - Diamond Islands (Boddika Remix) [forthcoming Black Acre]
22. Jacques Greene - Holdin On (Braiden Remix) [forthcoming Lucky Me]
23. Blawan - Bohla [R&S]
24. Canblaster - Clockworks [Nightshifters]
25. Hot City - Going Down [forthcoming Moshi Moshi]
26. Artifact - Dusty Grave [unreleased]
27. Misery Peat - The Hyde [forthcoming EYE 4 EYE]
28. NKC - Marie [forthcoming Awkward Movements]
29. Zoltan - Better Places [forthcoming Granholme]
30. Sentel - Shut Your Eyes [unreleased]
31. Low-Tec - You Don't Know My Name [Super]
32. How To Dress Well - Ready For The World (xxxy Remix) [Tri Angle]
33. SBTRKT - Living Like I Do [forthcoming Young Turks]
34. Knowing Looks - WNCL004 MASHED [FREE DL]
35. Artifact - You Could Be [unreleased]
36. Kasrave vs Joy Orbison - Untightled [FREE DL]
37. Arkist - Fill Your Coffee [forthcoming Apple Pips]
38. Tom Encore - DSCHRD [forthcoming Concrete Cut]
39. Graphics - Wiping The Eye [forthcoming Granholme]
40. Aleks Zen - High Life [forthcoming Berkane Sol]
41. King Geedorah - Krazy World [Big Dada]

Direct Download (Right Click/Save As)

RECOMMENDED: Beatbully - Kosmik Regn [Dødpop]

2011-03-11T16:49:00.001Z

As bleak as the world can look sometimes, music has an unabashed and effective power to change and alter a state or thought process. A lot of our inner pains and outer squabbles seem inconsequential given the recent turmoil of international events, which is why I reached for Beatbully’s Kosmik Regn between my extended binges on BBC News 24 today. It’s like regular SR co-founder Jimi The Xploder says, ‘skweee just has that power to make you smile,’ and for whatever selfish reason I find myself clambering for it now.

Hailing from Norway, Beatbully co-founded the Dødpop label, an outlet who’ve proved themselves more than dedicated to the strains of computer funk and synthetic beat music you can find across their two Dødpop presents compilations and the preceding run of 7”s – which have been collated on CD on the aptly titled As and Bs. Reportedly influenced by electronic pioneers Kraftwerk as much as by the boogie of Egyptian Lover, Beatbully’s music is smarter than its primitive equipment suggests. Restrained in places, saving its punch for the underlying melodies (see ‘Move Your Feet’) rather than the force of the boom and the bap, it locks on to a groove, exploring the furthest possibilities in the truest sense of skweee – making the most out of limited means.

Tracks like ‘Bølleboogie,’ ‘RnBully’ (which was given away on XLR8R back when Dødpop Vol 2 hit the shelves) and ‘Ajer vel’ contort the lower frequencies, croaking and seething at the bass whilst blossoming into high pitched hooks and lead lines that embed themselves deep into your eardrums. With the laid back nature of ‘Expecting Company’ (which features one half of last week’s SR mixers, Slow Hand Motem on vocal duty) however, Beatbully proves that he also excels at the pensive, sunshine side of the synthesizer, offering more than just fluorescent clad 8 bit drum structures. Layering his tracks with relatively simple melodies (see album closer ‘Buddah nr. 2’) he creates an electronic haze worthy of lengthier lament.

Maturing a little in his harmony over the years (check ‘Robot I Tromma’ on As & Bs to hear him in tearout, smash and skweee mode) Beatbully’s created a happy distraction from reality, a clever debut album containing 9 tracks that explore his own sound set in depth and offer a neat progression.

Words: Oli Marlow // Out: 21st March 2011

RECOMMENDED: Kassem Mosse - Workshop 12 [Workshop]

2011-03-11T11:11:00.001Z

A series of destructively brilliant 12”s have swiftly shifted Kassem Mosse’s profile from little-known purveyor of slo-mo, deconstructionist techno to something of a spearhead for a particular strain of house music. Along with his contemporaries and friends on the Workshop label (particularly Lowtec and Even Tuell), as well as UK devotees like Kowton, Instra:mental and Joy Orbison, his is a slowed-down, sub-heavy and druggy sound. Its overall effect is intoxicating in the extreme, insistent analogue grooves transposed into odd new dimensions and sounding liable to crumble at any second. With its obsession with bass, space and swing, it’s perhaps unsurprising that his music’s been picked up and widely adored by large swathes of the UK’s bass scene.

Mosse’s music is one of stasis, of single moments looped and stretched out into infinity, of single grooves allowed to run their course until they simply fall away. That was immediately evident on his earlier Workshop releases - the stuttering electro of Workshop 03’s A-side is a particularly potent example – as well as the build-release churn of the subtly anthemic ‘578’ (the Omar-S remix of which was the highlight of last year’s Freerotation festival). It’s even more explosively apparent in his sprawling live sets, which send minds into an even more extreme version of his recorded output’s fucked tunnelvision.

But if his recent 12” on Kinda Soul was Mosse at his warmest and most welcoming, its finest moment ‘Thalassocalyce’ emitting the same vaguely dystopian glow as Autechre’s Amber, this new Workshop release finds him at his most forbidding. Its tracks operate at faster pace than his usual narcoleptic, smacked-out tempo, but appear locked into even darker moods than usual. The untitled A-side sets up the same sort of infinity loop, but this time with a short and stammering vocal sample which hangs in space above his familiar, albeit peculiarly muted, bass gurgle. The main B-side’s rattling drum syncopations and uneasy, sinister drone constitute an inversion of deep house stereotypes - music of alienation and separation, despite its distinctly human warmth. It’s just as effortlessly beautiful though, and its soft pulses of melody imply something else again, tiny flickers of hope in a sea of darkness.

It’s Mosse’s finest contribution to the unerringly on-point Workshop label so far, and sits neatly alongside his best work. And as ever, excitingly, with another release for Nonplus in the pipeline, it feels like just the tip of a mighty, mighty iceberg.

Words: Rory Gibb // Out: Now

SR Mix #72: Dro Carey [Trilogy Tapes/Hum & Buzz]

2011-03-10T11:16:00.000Z

The internet’s got a lot to answer for. One consequence of it’s of access to media is becoming clearer as broadband becomes an ever more entrenched feature of modern life: a new generation of musicians are starting to take influence from across the board, with scant regard for genres or scenes. Sydney’s Dro Carey is a great example. His music draws from a host of sources – dubstep and UK bass sounds, classic house and techno, R’n’B, noise, jazz – and works them all into strange, asymmetric shapes.

Some feel immediately linked to the dancefloor, albeit abstracted, with upcoming Hum & Buzz release ‘Hungry Horse’ and recent track ‘Wreckshop Sugar’ stuttering with the same nervous energy that drives Night Slugs and Hessle Audio. Others, like the music from his recent Venus Knock EP, sound more in line with the warped lo-fi tape and synth experiments of travelers like Oneohtrix Point Never and Mordant Music. All are bound together by their twitchy, nervous energy, as though recorded live rather than sequenced, and all are presented as part of Carey’s complete online persona. His BRAIN-SO-SOFT Tumblr site places his tracks in the context of the music and art that influence them. Alongside his home-made videos and the prolific stream of sound constantly finding its way onto YouTube, the resulting sprawl is a subversion of social networking’s ability to summarise peoples’ entire lives for easy consumption, nigh on impossible to unpick or decode easily.

We caught up with Carey for a chat about his music making process, R’n’B’s current peak in popularity and how he became interested in UK dancefloor sounds despite living on the other side of the planet. In return, he’s recorded us a mix that offers a clue as to the diversity of his tastes, and how his music brings them together in jarring, but strangely coherent, ways.

SR: How long ago did you start making music?

Dro Carey: It was really when I was about thirteen or so, but I was actually doing scratch DJing, and was first inspired by hearing DJ Shadow. Then I wanted to do cutting up records and things, so that was the beginning, but I moved through a lot of different types of music. I played in free improv, noisy groups, a lot of different stuff – I’ve done ambient music too, there are some secret ambient releases under a different name.

When did the Dro Carey music start happening?

It was a couple of years ago when I thought of the name. It was just to do with hip-hop beats, basically, so that’s why it’s a marijuana pun. I was inspired by mixtapes where they have parodies of celebrity names, like Antwan Swisher and stuff like that, so it was Drew Carey to Dro Carey. It’s a fairly simplistic kind of thing. It was almost a bit of a joke because I was doing more experimental things at the time, and I thought this would be rap stuff, but I then just started working more with software rather than live instruments, and the electronic stuff still stayed as Dro Carey even when it veered away from straight-up rap stuff.

What sort of music inspires the stuff you’re making at the moment?

There’s definitely a lot of UK influence. I guess about a year ago I heard Shackleton for the first time and I hadn’t really listened to any UK electronic stuff, and then I just went through listening to everything on Hyperdub, a lot of grime, Joker, all the big dubstep names. It took a while to get into it actually, because I guess I wasn’t coming from any kind of club scene, and the interest I had wasn’t about that side of it. I’ve been going to more things recently because I’ve been getting to the stage of doing live sets myself, but really I didn’t come from a background like that, so it was more from listening to them in a personal space and it wasn’t about the heaviness of the bass.

Sonic interest, rather than functionality?

Definitely. And I’m still really interested in all the different strains of the UK stuff, I can’t quite separate all of those sub genres, but I profess to like garage, two-step, funky… I’ve listened to a number of old releases but probably, at the end of the day, there’s more of an American influence: techno and house, particularly Detroit artists. Classic stuff and more recent artists like Omar S, guys who are still going like Moodymann and Theo Parrish. Even the oldest acid stuff, definitely Model 500, Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir…

So you came to the UK stuff with very little club context – is there much of a scene where you are?

Electro and electro house is particularly popular in Australia. There’s obviously interest in dubstep but on a particular level – it’s the early or mid 2000s in terms of UK stuff, the 12”s on Deep Medi, Loefah, Skream, big on the wobble but with a fairly basic sub. They’re definitely not fully aware of all the influences you’ve got coming into it now, especially with a label like Night Slugs. There are obviously some places that have nights with more interesting stuff, but it’s largely electro and nu-disco. It’s quite different, the scene here, really, and I guess it fits with the sunny weather and vibe. But that’s not what really resonated with me. It was usually the gloomy London and Detroit sounds.

Has there been much interest in your music where you are?

It’s usually been abroad – Japan, obviously the UK, the US, in New Zealand.

I suppose the internet allows people much further afield to swiftly find your music.

Yeah, you say that, but I was on a message board thread to promote a Canberra show, and they were all saying they didn’t know Dro Carey was Australian. So the problem can be that the internet makes you so mysterious that people might not even know you’re there!

You seem to be one of the first musicians (alongside people like Odd Future) really taking advantage of Tumblr to create an online space for your music and project a complete personality online.

My idea of how you put music online has changed from what it used to be. For past projects I’d make a MySpace page or stream them on Soundcloud, but I was actually inspired by the way hip-hop is promoted online, particularly by Lil B. The way he would deliver songs in their first appearance online would be a YouTube video. You just build an archive of things that people can gradually get into. That idea came from his stuff, and from not really worrying whether people were actually seeing it. The Tumblr is weird, it’s quite impersonal with a fairly stark design, but it just groups everything together and I post whatever images are interesting me. And then there’s Twitter and Facebook pages, so an assault from every angle.

What approach do you take when producing?

I would like to get some analogue equipment but right now it’s just a midi keyboard hooked into Reason. I take an approach whereby I sample everything and try to adapt those to form elements of the track. So it may not be a bass synth I’m sampling but I would make it into one, or it wouldn’t be a keyboard or percussion but I would make it sound like that. It’s really sample based, but not really loop-based, playing samples as if they were actually instruments. But I try to make sure that… Well, if things are still too recognisable I feel they haven’t really served the purpose of re-appropriation. Then again, I’ve got some fairly long vocal loops from R’n’B that people probably can pick up on sometimes. I guess the rules are different for acapellas, you can jack more of that.

I suppose it depends what you’re aiming to get across. There might be something specific in the vocal loop you’re interested in.

Yeah, you hear something in the vocal you want. But I do often try to modify them quite a bit.

That’s happening quite a lot at the moment, there are an awful lot more people referencing people like DJ Screw as an influence on the way they treat vocals.

That was a big influence on me before I’d ever heard of witch house. Admittedly, it may have only been for a few months before, but I’d heard of screw tapes before that.

It’s interesting the way that’s happened recently. There are an awful lot more people, perhaps vogueishly, referencing R’n’B, juke, chopped and screwed hip-hop and so on.

R’n’B didn’t used to be cool! It’s funny, because I’ve read quite a few reviews of the Venus Knock EP on Trilogy Tapes where people talk about an R’n’B influence. While I like R’n’B, on that record a lot of my tracks don’t sound like it. They’re quite harsh and gritty, where R’n’B is about really smooth, slick production. So I’m kind of surprised that people have mentioned that. But then it’s a reference point that’s quite in fashion at the moment.

Do you tend to have a specific aim for a track in mind when you start?

Yeah, but often I stop right in the middle and redo everything, and it ends up sounding totally different. There’s a track called ‘Much Coke,’ which is a bit sunny. The original one was much darker and I didn’t like how it was sounding. It was all in the same sitting, I just switched everything up, worked with the same samples but it totally changed from what I envisioned. It took on a new cocaine association, Miami kind of thing.

Intensity’s an interesting thing when you’re doing instrumental beats. I try to build up and strip down percussion over the course of a track and generally keep things quite quantized. But I’m not ever trying to make a particular format or genre, or even aim for a club track, but I do appreciate the linearity of those type of tracks. I admire an evolving techno track more than a one and a half minute, Los Angeles, jumping all over the place kind of thing. I do like that kind of stuff but I tend to like longer and perhaps more ‘compositional’ electronic music.

But there’s a certain similarity between your music and, say, a lot of the current LA beats stuff in the sense that it’s really grainy and gritty sounding…

I never really consciously seek to downgrade the quality of a sample. I’m not trying to do really lo-fi stuff. I put it through a lot of effects, but I guess the main device I use is changing the pitch or the speed. That brings out a lot of interesting textures.

There’s a turntable-based musician/sound artist called Philip Jeck who’s talked a lot in interviews about the process of slowing samples down – the fact that when everything’s slowed down you start to hear new things you didn’t even realise were in the original track. On a separate note, it’s quite interesting that you live in Sydney, where it’s a lot brighter and sunnier, but your music’s so much darker.

It is. As I was saying earlier, it’s drawing from totally different places. It’s darker and it’s more reflective of internal things – of me, rather than external influences.

You talked about playing in free-improv and noise groups earlier. Do you find that the process of being expressive when making electronic music different to that process when playing an instrument? Do you feel you have the same capacity for emotional expression when you’re making sequenced electronic music?

I think once you’ve got a foundation going, you’ve got a bit of a beat going, you like it and you start to jig around in your chair, nodding your head, dancing in your seat, you start to experiment on the keyboard playing live over it. That’s what I do – not going in and penciling in all the individual midi sequences, but maybe playing something live and then quantizing it afterwards. I get into a pretty similar zone as when I was playing jazz on piano and clarinet.

Shackleton’s always adamant that he avoids strictly quantizing and using loops, in favour of something that’s more spontaneous. I suppose that’s why his music sounds so human. That, and the fact that melody is so often implicit in his percussion rather than being made explicit through synths.

It reflects that point, that there’s almost a melodic thing going on with percussion that you wouldn’t actually call ‘tuned percussion’ in the technical sense, like a vibraphone. You’re using a kick or a snare, but technology allows you to turn it into tuned percussion.

How did you get involved with Ikonika for the Hum & Buzz release?

She was looking at YouTube actually. Sometimes I do videos for other artists’ tracks if I’m into them, and she was looking up Girl Unit and watched the video I’d made for ‘Shade On’. It was cool that Girl Unit, Jam City, Night Slugs, they welcomed the videos I made, they actually used them to promote the tracks. And then the artists followed me back on Twitter. It’s weird, because I put those up before there was a lot of buzz about that label – that’s from Girl Unit’s first EP. I really love that EP, ‘Wut’ is anthemic, but it’s not as interesting to me as that first EP.

But yeah, she saw that video on my channel, saw some of my tracks on there – tracks like ‘Venus Knock’, the synths on that one appealed to her. It’s interesting; I don’t think I would do anything as repetitive as that again, it’s a bit hypnotic. She started following me on Twitter, and then she asked if I could send any tracks I’d been working on, so I sent a zip file. She said she wanted to put out two of them, ‘Candy Red’ and ‘Hungry Horse’, on the third 12” from her new label Hum & Buzz. She’s been great. I’m also working on an album for them as well. She’s pretty harsh about it, she’s pretty much going to curate it! I had a bit of a session a few days ago where I did a load of tracks, which I thought could probably be the album, and I sent them through and she only wanted one [laughs]. I really appreciate that in the end though, because we’re in no rush and she’s trying to get the best possible music out of me. It’s great because I’m always doing tracks and I probably would have wanted to change them anyway!

And you’ve got more music coming out on Trilogy Tapes in the near future, right?

We’ve got about four more different records in the works. What basically happens is that I put something online and Will [Bankhead, Trilogy Tapes boss] gets in contact and says ‘this should be on the record.’ And I’ll possibly be doing a limited white label of R’n’B remixes as well, but I haven’t done one for a while. They’re the only things I’ve had negative feedback for. But I think even guys like Deadboy cop criticism for their remixes. I guess people out there hold the originals quite close to their heart, and they may not particularly understand what we’re doing to them.

There’s been a real fad for R’n’B refixes recently…

There’s this weird fascination with Cassy in particular. The Local Action record is good, I liked it, but I got this sense that there was a bit of a glut of R’n’B remixes so I stopped doing them for the moment. I’m working on remixing Diddy’s ‘Dirty Money’ - this is something I guarantee no-one thinks is cool! But it’s actually a really good album. The production on it’s incredible, though the rapping isn’t very good. I’m into the whole package of those tracks really. I’ve listened to The Dream’s albums a hell of a lot, I’m into the saccharine, sugary melodies, I like those as much as whatever interesting synths I might hear. I like to think I appreciate it as a genre, rather than some sort of cultural platter to pick from.

What are your plans for the future, beyond the album with Hum & Buzz? Do you have any plans for live shows?

Yeah, I definitely want to do more live shows. I want to do two kinds, one where I’m constructing tracks live, and also DJ sets. As I mentioned, I’m doing more limited vinyl runs for Trilogy Tapes, and I’ve also got one coming out on Ramp. It’s quite different, it’s probably a bit more polished sounding than the Venus Knock stuff, and I guess it’s more paying tribute to classic house and techno. I’ve also got a release coming out on a Sydney-based label called Templar. I start a lot of projects, and what tends to happen is that they get interrupted by people who want to release my tracks from those projects. I’m working on a remix album of Australian experimental artists, with material going back to the eighties and early nineties. I get a lot of ideas like that, do one or two tracks, then come back later at some point.

It’s weird, I’ve never done any promotion of any of this stuff myself. It’s always just been people coming to me. I never cease to be surprised.

::

DOWNLOAD: Dro Carey – Sonic Router Mix #72

Tracklist:

Missy Elliott – Ching-a-Ling
The Notorious B.I.G. – Nasty Girl feat. Diddy, Nelly, Jagged Edge and Avery Storm (Instrumental) [Prod. Jazze Pha]
Jozif – Jus You
Moodymann – Runaway
Blackstreet – Deep
Busy Signal – Jafrican Ting
Levon Vincent – Six Figures
Optimum – Light Year
X-103 – The Gardens
Urban Tribe – Program 1
Portable – Find Me
Max B – Techno Shit feat. French Montana
Bok Bok – Ripe Banana
Steel – Shake That
DJ Clap Pina – Bass GuaraChazz
Dro Carey – All Behind Wingless
Low Deep – Down Like That (Instrumental)
Missy Elliott – Hot Boyz Remix Acapella
Lloyd Banks – Fly Like The Wind Feat. Jim Jones (Instrumental) [Prod. Germ]
Abner Malaty – Spirals The Seer of Sound
Drake – Unforgettable Feat. Young Jeezy

Words: Rory Gibb

PODCAST: Sonic Router x Bleep.com #005

2011-03-09T18:04:00.001Z

The latest episode in our ongoing saga of electronic music themed podcasts for respected retailer Bleep.com just got uploaded to the internet.

For the 5th edition we more or less went for it, focusing on a little bit of everything thats been good over the past month with from rap from Tyler The Creator and Beans, hard style beats courtesy of Demokracy and Chairman Kato, with Brainfeeder jazz, half step drum and bass and the best in the current crop of dancefloor bass from people like Cosmin TRG, Falty DL, Pangaea, Boddika and Royal T to round it all off.

DOWNLOAD: Sonic Router x Bleep.com Podcast #005
SUBSCRIBE: Bleep.com Podcast

Tracklist:

1. Tyler - Yonkers [XL]
2. TAKE - Quartz for Amber (Mono/Poly Remix) [Alpha Pup]
3. Beans - Forever Living Fresh [Anticon]
4. Demokracy - Wintermute (Dies Irae Remix) [Robox Neotech]
5. Chairman Kato - Gemini Eyes [Pictures]
6. Siriusmo - Mosaik [Monkeytown]
7. Nicolas Jaar - Keep Me There [Circus Company]
8. Austin Peralta - Epilogue: Renissance Bubbles [Brainfeeder]
9. dBridge - Rendezvous [Exit]
10. Hackman & Jamie Grind - Saw The Light [Fortified Audio]
11. Cosmin TRG - Izolat [50 Weapons]
12. PhOtOmachine - Technicolour (Optimum's 808 Reduction) [Super]
13. DJ Dom - Sunshowerd [Blunted Robots]
14. Sinden & SBTRKT - Seekwal [Grizzly]
15. Ill Blu - Overdose [Numbers]
16. FaltyDL - Hip Love [RAMP]
17. Throwing Snow - Align [Super]
18. Pangaea - Inna Daze [Hessle Audio]
19. Boddika - Underground [Swamp81]
20. Royal T - Orangeade [Butterz]

RECOMMENDED: Ekoplekz – Memowrekz [Mordant Music]

2011-03-09T15:24:00.002Z

Ekoplekz might well have first come into view via the 20th release on Punch Drunk late last year, an unexpected and downright refreshing 12" for the label that acted like a jagged edged palette cleanser. Label boss Peverelist was simply (once again) indulging his penchant for the sonic curve ball with two cuts of dubbed-out beat-less noise, fully allowing the analogue freakout. Given it probably wasn’t what the world was expecting from one of the leading lights in the, for want of a better word, dubstep scene for their landmark release, but Pev’s open policy of putting out pretty much anything he’s feeling from his surrounding Bristol geography has paid off in droves.

Upon further digging the move makes a lot of sense sonically. Noisy freakouts aren’t so far removed from dubstep’s outer limits (see The Bug and or Cloaks) and the label under the microscope here, Mordant Music, have been working alongside one of dance music’s most warped producers, Shackleton, for years. You can connect these threads further afield too, Ben UFO pretty much played a experimental noise set the other night on Rinse, debuting some extreme guitar excursions by Andrew Coltrane from Trilogy Tapes - the label who’ve dropped a 12” from Dro Carey who has been known to get a bit fractured with his samples, whilst keeping his dancefloor slant rolling – and the same goes for a producer like Egyptrixx, whose work is distressed and frayed yet decisively melodic.

Memowrekz is an epic thirty three track workout of dub infused dissonant synth music, and as such, it’s kind of a tough one to pin down. It’s a dystopian vision but one that draws you in; it’s discordant but never gets overtly confrontational. Incredibly tough to draw comparisons, the record sits somewhere within that bunch of freaks on Olde English Spelling Bee: Stella Om Source and maybe even Forest Swords; it’s got the synths of one and the heavy dub of the other. You could also draw parallels with the Not Not Fun stable: Sun Araw’s and Peaking Lights dub-psych jams, both the heavy and breezy angles... It even fits next to Oneohtrix Point Never, but in a way it's more free flowing and compelling.

The improvisational manner in which Ekoplekz works really shines and pays dividends here. His deep synthesized squiggles get shaped and treated before your ears; beats bubble up and under – when they appear at all – and echo drenched surges of noise build upon themselves atop layers of warm synth tones. Intertwining the odd bass and guitar line, dropping them deftly into the synthetic ocean of sound, Memowerkz makes for a really enjoyable listen. The blissful bright passages mark a tonal change in mood and texture and they really pop out during the full listening experience. The extremities in sound are balanced with ease though, giving Ekoplekz and Mordant Music a killer combination of industrially tinged experimental composition.

Words: James Balf
Out: Now

Catch Ekoplekz’s freshly uploaded mix for Electronic Explorations, show #146, here: http://electronicexplorations.org/the-show/146-ekoplekz/

DOWNLOAD: Snorkel - Stop Machine

2011-03-09T11:33:00.003Z

For me, the band Snorkel represented a time in my life when I was discovering the kraut element of music, their music’s all syncopated, differentiating drum structure with a massive slab of jazz enthusiasm and a distinctly industrial edge. After being recommended Can by a friend (shout to the Nomquat) and being force fed sheer noise and black metal in close confines, I stumbled across the Slowfoot label, probably due in large part to Robert Logan. A lot of close shadowing of the Slowfoot label followed that initial interset.

Glass Darkly, the debut album from the Snorkel collective, was a densely packed atmospheric affair, one that textures you wholly, sucking your attention completely, and with the announcement of their second album, Stop Machine, they’ve uploaded a free taster by the same name that displays a more energetic twist.

DOWNLOAD: Snorkel – Stop Machine

Snorkel’s Stop Machine is out on Slowfoot Records on the 9th May 2011.

RECOMMENDED: Egyptrixx – Bible Eyes [Night Slugs]

2011-03-08T15:25:00.003Z

Going a long way to justify the hype, Night Slugs had dancefloor anthems coming out of their ears last year. From an outsider’s perspective it was more than pretty impressive to consider that all these tunes - Girl Unit’s ‘IRL’ and ‘Whut,’ Mosca’s sprawling epic ‘Nike’ and ‘Square One,’ Jam City’s ‘Ecstacy Refix’ and Velour’s ‘Booty Slammer’ – stemmed from the same label. Refining that output they’re kicking off a new year with their first artist album - which follows fresh in the wake of their endlessly impressive Allstars Volume 1 compilation released late last year – produced by the most stylistically consistent artist to grace the label to date, Egyptrixx.

The Toronto native picks up where his The Only Way Up EP left off; his sound spreading itself thicker across the full length sized canvas. Having dabbled a lot with noise in various forms - playing in bands as well as being a classically trained pianist – all his experience seems to feed into his current manoeuvres within dance music. You can hear that noisy dissonance in the oozing syths but it’s paired with bright, slow burning melodies and it all manages to come together into one flowing cohesive structure. It’s a subtle, more melancholy vision that he presents across this album, opting for his own manner of depth rather than the outbursts of joy personified by other, more anthemic Night Slugs releases.

Finding a sonic cousin in Ikonika’s debut album, Contact Want Love Have, released on Hyperdub last year – they both share a hyper colour sense of fun and melody - Bible Eyes is a woozy exploration of sound. There are plenty of highlights: ‘Start From The Begining’, ‘Liberation Front’ and ‘Fuji Club’ all show off different facets of Egyptrixx’s sound; the opener is all seasick piano and spaced out percussion and brooding synth-scapes that wouldn’t feel to out of place alongside Oneohtrix Point Never or Knox-Om-Pax. One of the more dance floor leaning tracks ‘Liberation Front’ twists itself into more extreme shapes, while ‘Club Fuji’ is a hard hitting, sub-loaded but spaced out grime-like effort.

There’s a big lean toward the bastardized house direction on this album; the listener is often fed relentless 4x4 kicks broken up with rhythmic ticks and spaced out excursions into slow-mo colourful dubstep. And for the most part Bible Eyes gives off the air of a house album, or a more twisted take on one at least, but at times there’s almost a trance-like quality at work here too, like he decided to chop and screw stadium filling synths from Tiesto, transplanting them into underground 2011.

Competently displaying that both Night Slugs and Egyptrixx can step into the album format with ease – something that I wasn’t sure would be such a smooth transition – Bible Eyes is a fine album that wont bang you over the head with wall to wall bangers. It’ll ease you into a heat wave soaked colourful dimension that’s surprisingly comfortable. Deep and hypnotic without ever retreating up its own bass funnel, there’s still plenty of Night Slug’s trademark bite, it’s just presented across a very stringent sound palette by one of their most talented artists.

Words: James Balf
Out: Now

Links:
www.myspace.com/africaforyou
http://nightslugs.net

DOWNLOAD: Melé - Trappin (Contakt remix)/Contakt - Rhodophyta (Melé remix)

2011-03-07T17:23:00.003Z

Remix swaps, whilst always popular amongst producers, are becoming hard currency of late with artists swapping stems in an attempt to out do each other. The latest duo to trade off in this manner, re-working each others music are Local Action’s Contakt (who did SR Mix 68) and UK upstart Melé – who released his Mugged EP today on Sinden’s Grizzly label. You can however, download the fruits of their labour for nothing below...

In this freebie, coined by Local Action and Grizzly, Melé funks up Contakt’s ‘Rhodophyta’ giving it more of a hip hop patterned drum lean before shattering it with snare drums and the kind of drop that kicks you square in the nuts – the ultimate ‘pods’ end game finisher if you will - whilst Contakt regiments Melé’s ‘Trappin’ using an offbeat hi hat as one of the most driving forces of his rigid techno pattern.

"Divided in terms of tempo, both tracks share a fiery, red aesthetic that makes them perfect sparring partners.”

DOWNLOAD: Melé - Trappin (Contakt remix) / Contakt - Rhodophyta (Melé remix)

RECOMMENDED: They Live – Pure Palms/Don’t Know What To Say [Autonomic]

2011-03-07T10:59:00.001Z

One of the most challenging and rewarding moments of the Autonomic movement thus far has been Croms’ ‘Invisible Cities’ on Exit Records, an eight-minute synthesizer crawl through a dystopian wireframe landscape. The debut from They Live, a promising down-under collaborative partnership between Consequence (who, to be fair, is actually Kiwi) and Joe Seven, proves there’s more life in this direction yet.

While the album the duo have produced for Exit Records tends to stick its fingers into electro sockets, the two tracks on their Autonomic single are decidedly dnb-not-dnb in the same way as ‘Invisible Cities’ is. Cruising steadily on a percussive foundation that just barely manages to hesitantly tap out the required 170 beats per minute, both tracks are gentle, thermal visions, where the ethereal pads contrasted by gritty, analogue textures. ‘Pure Palms’ is simply a masterpiece of both sound and structure, slowly sputtering to life and teasing steam out at the end of each bar with the hiss of sensual, staccato cymbal hits. Its unforgettable melody crests and crashes in lukewarm waves, the slow-motion ebb playing tricks on the otherwise brisk tempo.

Where ‘Palms...’ blankets, ‘Don’t Know What To Say’ focuses more on the dynamic potential of empty space, burned-out shells of what were once drum machines crunching and crackling a makeshift beat filled in by minuscule rattling. The track’s assertive chord progression threatens to overwhelm as layers of synth are carefully piled on, until the scant framework can barely hold it up anymore. While it looks like it might be a one-off, the single’s accomplished take on scorched tropical synthwave as filtered through burned-out, afterhours Autonomic makes for one hell of a souvenir from whatever alternate universe it came from.

Words: Andrew Ryce
Out: Now

Link:
soundcloud.com/club-autonomic-com

SR Mix #71: Light Club (Slow Hand Motem & Coco Bryce) [Myor]

2011-03-04T11:16:00.010Z

Further exploring the power of 2 in this, our ‘second birthday period’ here on the world wide web, this week’s SR mix is by a super talented duo. Light Club is a collaborative project between two beat makers who reside miles apart from each other. One, Coco Bryce, we’ve featured heavily before and the other? Well Slow Hand Motem is someone whos work has slowly but surely beguiled us. Working together on a collaborative 7” released on Coco’s Myor label, a homespun imprint that’s already put out two stunning 12”s in the Tropical Heat series, Coco lives in Holland and Motem rests his head in Canada but from talking with them both its obvious that the gulf in their social geography doesn’t halt their processes one bit.

Taking cues from each other’s music, with Coco’s lineage mainly in hip hop instrumentals and Motem’s pedigree as a singer and fractured drum mechanic always prevalent, their debut EP as Light Club mixed the weirdo synthesizers they’ve both harnessed individually with a certain type of pressing melodrama. The limited edition Night Bulbs EP - freshly released in an expanded digital format with remixes from people like V.C. and Boss Kite – is built around the musical clusterfuck ‘Scirocco Night Drive’ (which you can hear below) but also holds gems like ‘Ghost,’ a woozy nightmare that flips into a 4x4 strut and the criminally short ‘Nick Nolte’ which swaggers maliciously.

Having just released his debut album, ‘Boesoek,’ on the Fremdtunes label Coco remains calm conducting himself in the same way all our exchanges to date have gone: speedily and incredibly direct, leaving me playing a methodical game of catch up.

“It definitely was a task to sort out the tunes that fitted together as best as possible from the pile of tracks I'd made over the last years,” he concedes when pressed on the spine like thread that hooks the 10 tracks together. “There's some pretty old ones on there and on the other hand I did quite a few new ones that didn't make it onto the album, simply because we (DJ Mace, one of the Fremdtunes head honchos, and myself) didn't see them fit in so well with the rest. This was kind of the first time that I really spent a decent amount of time on that, you know, to make sure it wasn't just a collection of tunes, but a real album instead.”

And even though it sounds cliché - to produce an album rather than a collection of beats - you can hear that he’s unified his productions. He can range from fist poundingly intense boom bappers, to meandering synthesizer heavy skweee explorations, and for this outing his beats are concise, with only one passing the three and half minute mark. They’re pretty much all an exploration of a certain idea, a certain groove or a kind of sound sentiment that he’s shooting for, for example ‘Embarcadero’ is constructed simply around laid back chords, leaving a long woozy linger whilst ‘Wobble Trouble’ winds up and smacks hard powered by an insistent jagged chord progression.

“Skweee is more of a departure from the boom bap stylings for me,” he offers when we discuss the variety on offer. “I've been doing hip hop instrumentals for quite some time now, and I hadn't even heard of skweee until about 2 years ago. But, apart from the drums, I think ‘Boesoek’ is pretty skweee'ed-out. At least that's what I meant it to sound like, what with those high-pitched synths and all.”

Defined by a few stand out labels and compilations, imprints such as Harmonia and Flogsta Danshall and compilations like International Skweee and Skweee Tooth, the skweee sound – so called because the pioneers were squeezing out every sound possible from their primitive equipment – the sound is developing at a glorious rate with producers a great distance apart sonically managing to stand side by side.

“When the skweee guys first started to embrace me or whatever, I was almost like ‘do you really think I’m skweee?’” Motem reveals to me over a late night Skype connection. “I do funk music so I’m like ‘am I really skweee?’ but all the guys were like ‘you don’t need to worry about that. That’s stupid.’ Especially Randy Barracuda, he was like ‘you know when its skweee, because you feel that its skweee.' Its more like, just a feeling, its not like it has to sound super Scandinavian or Arabic or whatever. That’s not the case.”

The tracks that I do now are growing,” he continues, “like I listen to the new Poisonous Gases Skweee Cruise and stuff and the music is growing, like it is super young music still. Its definitely based in older things, standing on the shoulders of its predecessors but it’s a fresh music.”

In his track ‘Supernatural’ Motem croons in his very singular and iconic way, “the funk that I present you today // is serious but in a playful way // mis-use of words, is a big nae nae // and nature, keeps my being in check.” And its this sentiment that rings true when you talk to him. Repeatedly he tells me “I’m just doing me, I'm playful. Like a cat,” and from spending an hour in his company, whether that be just looking at a caricature like face in a laptop screen or otherwise, he is really like the character he portrays in his lo-fi youtube videos. He’s passionate and enthusiastic, fumbling over himself to tell me as much as he can in as much detail as possible. He’s funny, like laugh-out-loud-repeatedly, kind of funny and by using his body and face as much as he uses lyrics, he successfully manages to channel that charisma into his visual representations of his songs.

And they are songs. He does beats too like the tuba sampling ‘Go Rilla’ I played a couple of weeks back on our Hivemind.fm show, but he’s at his wonderful best when fumbling over lyrics atop his music.

And that’s why Light Club is a project that intrigues so much; Coco has the beat polish, and Motem the lo-fi weirdness. It’s a combination that works so well in principle and in practise.

“We were both on Harmonia’s International Skweee Vol 2, right? He had that track ‘Ghetto Freaks’ and I had ‘Smells Like Randy Barracuda’” Motem recalls when pressed upon the inception of the partnership. “It was in the dying days of myspace and he was like ‘I really like your track and it’s a great title’ and I was think ‘oh… thanks man’ and he was always really good about getting back to me on the emails. There was this time when I wasn’t really going out, I was just holed up making tracks and he’d always be shooting me back these emails super fast and I was like who is this guy!? He’s really on it.”

He started sending me tracks right away trying to get me to sing on them and then I sent him some tracks. It was very natural, it doesn’t matter that its an impersonal medium like email, it just felt super natural and then he was just like we should do an EP where you do some tracks and I do some tracks – so that was Slow Hand Coco, like the first run – and then he was like lets do a seven inch [Night Bulbs EP]. So I sent him the ‘Ghost’ track and he was like this is very, very different, ‘we’re expanding the whole thing of skweee’ so that’s what, I mean I don’t think we ever set out to do anything, but that’s what happened really. Its like beyond skweee or something.”

The ‘Night Bulbs EP’ is available now from the Myor bandcamp. ‘Boesoek’ is out now on Fremdtunes and you can grab a whole heap of Motem material, including his latest work, ‘Tales from the Cryptid,’ over at the Gebbz Steelo boutique

Words: Oli Marlow

::

DOWNLOAD: Light Club – Sonic Router Mix #71

No tracklist given sucker. Search ‘em out.

DOWNLOAD: Appleblim - fabric 'Main Room' Mix

2011-03-03T23:39:00.000Z

Sonic Router's editor spoke to Apple Pips boss Appleblim ahead of his appearance at fabric on the 12th March and "in Appleblim’s trademark gentlemanly fashion, when we asked him if he had anything on the horizon ahead of the show he went above and beyond both the call of duty and our expectations, providing us with a 90 min mix of super fresh material and giving the world what is probably the first public airing on over 50% of these tracks (only a couple of them are reportedly available at this time)."

Read the full article here and learn about his forthcoming projects and collaborations. You can catch him performing alongside his old Skull Disco cohort Shackleton and Ricardo Villalobos at fabric on 12th March.

DOWNLOAD: Appleblim - fabric 'Main Room' Mix

Tracklist:

1. Butahn Tiger Rescue - Beginner's Waltz - excerpt (Kompakt)
2. October & Borai - I Didn't Mean To (forthcoming Apple Pips)
3. Kowton - She Don't Jack (Idle Hands)
4. Axel Bowman - Naomi (forthcoming Glass Table)
5. October & Appleblim - NY Fizzzzzz (forthcoming Smorgasbord)
6. George Fitzgerald - We Bilateral (forthcoming Hotflush)
7. Al Tourettes - Badger (forthcoming Bloc / Baselogic)
8. SCB - Loss (forthcoming Aus Music)
9. Pulsar - Coconut Shuffle (unreleased)
10. Sunday Roast - Choices (Soulserious)
11. Arkist & Kidkut - Vanilla Imitate (forthcoming Hotflush)
12. Phat Chex - Can't Stop - (unreleased)
13. Paul Woolford - Let It Go - Komonazmuk & Appleblim Remix (forthcoming Intimacy Music)
14. Gatekeeper - Atmosphere Processor (forthcoming Apple Pips)
15. Gatekeeper - Let Us in (forthcoming Apple Pips)
16. Arkist - Fill My Coffee (forthcoming Apple Pips)
17. Gatekeeper & Kidkut – Alpha Apex (unreleased)
18. Gatekeeper & Kidkut - Code Red (unreleased)
19. Arkist - Rendezvous (forthcoming Apple Pips)

RADIO: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm: Xpldr Session - 27.2.2011

2011-02-28T11:04:00.009Z

We're very proud to present the debut show from regular SR contributor James Balf.
Catch our more upfront focused show on the 2nd Sunday of the month and the Xpldr Sessions every 4th Sunday.
Same time: 10pm - 12am.

STREAM: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm: Xpldr Session - 27.2.2011

Tracklist:

Ability II – Pressure Dub [Outer Rhythm/Basic]
Steffi ft. Verginia – Reasons [Underground Quality]
Omar-S – Here’s Your Trance Now Dance [FXHE]
Bakey Ulst – Nose Candy [Unthank]
Kowton – Drunk On Sunday [Idle Hands]
Jesse Saunders & Ron Hardy – Hardy Saunders [rdy]
T.Williams ft. Terri Walker – Heartbeat [Local Action]
Norman Nodge – Convergence [MDR]
Levon Vincent – Invisible Bitchsplap [Deconstruct]
J.Bevin – When It Comes [Deep Teknologi]
Altered Natives – Joy Zipper [Eye4Eye]
MMM – Nous Sommes [MMM]
Emvee – Windrush [Shifting Peaks]
Jay Weed – Prism [502]
GuGu – AC Riddim [DVA Music]
Funkystepz – Fuller [Hyperdub]
Champion – Motherboard [forthcoming Hardrive]
Ill Blu – Meltdown [Numbers]
Hardhouse Banton – Colonel [Angel Brothers]
Jus-Ed – Justified [Underground Quality]
Elgato – Tonight [Hessle Audio]
Bethany Skirt – In The Meadows Under The Stars [Horizontal Ground]
Kassem Mosse – Workshop 12 Track 1A [Workshop]
Pavan – 1000 Years [Harmönia]
Sepalcure – Fleur [Hotflush]
Arp 101 – Flush [Eglo]
Boddika – Syn Chron [nakedlunch]
Boddika - Elecktron [Swamp 81]
Pangaea – Don’t Hurt [Hessle Audio]
Kahn – Helter Skelter [Punch Drunk]
Mizz Beats – The Day Before Tomorow [Eglo]
Amen Ra – Candy Rain [Keysound]
Joker – Grimy Princess [Earwax]
S-X – Wooo Riddim [Butterz]
Skream – Afeks [Southside Dubstars]
TRC – Skipping Europe [Butterz]
Silkie – 80s Baby [Deep Medi]
Becoming Real – Like Me ft. Trim [Not Even]
Royal T – Music Please (Devil Mix) [Butterz]
Dro Carey – Venus Knock [The Trilogy Tapes]
Shackleton – Deadman [Honest Jon’s]
Mala – Education [DMZ]

Direct Download (Right CLick/Save As)

Link:
http://hivemind.fm

RECOMMENDED: Peaking Lights - 936 [Not Not Fun]

2011-02-25T09:15:00.004Z

Eagle Rock, LA based label Not Not Fun has been producing the goods for well over a year now with nare a single mistep in its release schedule. Run by Britt and Amanda Brown NNF has been a focal point for heavy lidded lowest-of-the-lo-fi straight to tape bejewelled, silk-screened rumbling and mumblings since 2004, but in the last couple of years has been ramping its output up into the stars with an accelerating trajectory of future household names that has included Abe Vigoda, Ducktails, High Wolf, Matrix Metals, Sun Araw, Dylan Ettinger, Magic Lantern and of course, a lotta Pocahaunted. Now they have released the second full length 12” from Peaking Lights, the similarly wedded couple Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis (formerly of the propulsive angular guitar band Numbers). 936 is a release set to blaze this band's name into the firmament.

After a couple of split singles they released their first full album Imaginary Falcons back in 2009 through both Night People and Not Not Fun to some seriously wowed acclaim. In 2010 they released a split with Wet Hair on NNF's Bored Fortress 7” series and then the Space Primitive cassette on Night People and again on 12” through NNF. All their releases so far have involved fantastically spun out psychedelic embraces of themes, woven through spatial enhancers, psychotropic distorters, emotional compression, circuit bent trinkets and charmingly weathered keyboards that belong from within the realms of the junk-rock circuit, but none have quite hinted at the full potential realised in this release.

A mossy collage of root-bound tape-loop drone opens the album, offering a sense of intuitive awakening from the sleep since Imaginary Falcons, that tips the listener gently into the album itself with 'All The Sun That Shines.' The lead track released several weeks ago with the crate-digging collage video by Amanda Brown lays a big hook into the listener with a fat island bassline that throbs through its core, marking this out as a different entity to their former work. Comparisons to Amanda Brown's final album with (the NNF supergroup incarnation of) Pocahaunted are easy to make with the distinct dub and reggae influence a common thread amongst much recent NNF releases, but Peaking Lights are the band to have incorporated the most essential essences of dub experimentation cast from the desk of the Black Ark, ingesting and regurgitating them instinctively into the noise-band psych-folk of the West Coast US.

Long slow moving King Tubby basslines appear on several tracks, providing ample cushioning for the raft of cosmic effects and reverbed chords to flutter off into haunting repetitions of increasing opaqueness, snatches of circuit bending burst apart and melt back into the ether in increasingly deep and psychedelic successions. The suitably epic closer 'Summertime,' heralds what sounds like it could collapse into a huge speaker destroying wobble, then settles into a malleable pulse, Indra's cool vocals smoothing over what could sound demented without her presence. Joined by a lead melody tone that is both chilling and uplifting her vocal loop ushers in a host of glitchy rattling and humming opening a portal through which exotic otherworldy entities spill through.

The third track is potentially the highlight, dealing in the most sensual sonic experimentation of the record; the bobbing bottom end of 'Amazing and Wonderful' is sprinkled with soft feedback ringing out in fading ripples of delay, echo heavy guitar vibrations and an intimate tapestry of muted arpeggios descend down melody lines that cross each other like dancing lovers. What made Imaginary Falcons such a warming and beatific experience is blushed through this one track, and it's soporific euphoria that transcends all that came before it.

This album is one long slow, sustained process of sensual enlightenment. There's a total awareness of which sonic textures best nurture each other, with noises offering more in the way of melody and musicality than just surface aesthetics the relationships each element of the mix has to one another, of the space each incorporates, the dynamics that can be achieved by the anticipation of sound in the silence. This is elevated, intimate music making that may never appear from the hands and minds of another artist. This incarnation of Peaking Lights exists on another creative plane of being, like star crossed lovers set adrift on hypnagogic bliss.

Words: Meatbreak
Out: Now

Link:
www.myspace.com/peakingfix
www.notnotfun.com

READ: SRQ018: Morris Cowan

2011-02-23T14:46:00.013Z

After catching the wind and floating into our attention span with his releases on Wigflex's first 3 split releases Taylor has a new album coming and a new moniker to release it under. Taken from his middle names, whereas Taylor was his surname, Morris Cowan will release Circa on Zaubernuss, a sub label of German imprint, Traum.

We made him the subject of the February instalment of our Quietus column after he sent us the music and to quote ourselves his "compositions are sprawling 7 minute-plus slices of electronica, set firmly at the techno tempo, they're extra melodic, working away from the heat and intensity of a dancefloor as well as they do on it. Much like his Wigflex counterpart Hizatron, Taylor crafts a sound set completely his own, setting his kick drums back a little so that the melody draws the focus."

READ: SRQ018 - Patience and Progress with Morris Cowan

To live alongside the article he kindly put together a mix showcasing his production work which we've packaged up as part one of our 70th Sonic Router Mix. Stream only at this time it features a load of album tracks and many an unreleased gem from his hard drive...

STREAM: Morris Cowan - Sonic Router Mix #70.1

Tracklist:

1. Taylor – CMB [Super]
2. Taylor – Noob [On The Edge]
3. Morris Cowan – Flutterby [forthcoming Zaubernuss]
4. Morris Cowan – Sunnyville [forthcoming Zaubernuss]
5. Morris Cowan – Magnetor [forthcoming Zaubernuss]
6. Morris Cowan – Conflate [forthcoming Zaubernuss]
7. Morris Cowan – The Good Ship Fellow [Connect for Music]
8. Thomas Bjerring – Ice (Morris Cowan Remix) [Traum]
9. Morris Cowan – Afield [Super]

...but to run as his entry in our humble mix series he's today provided a downloadable mix, or SR #70.2, for your enjoyment. Described in his own words as "house/boogie tempo for the most part.. it's a mix, but i'm not quite sure what it is," its the second part of the duo of mixes he provided in lieu of his debut album and this being our 2nd birthday month.

DOWNLOAD: Morris Cowan - Sonic Router Mix #70.2

Tracklist:

1. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Waulking Song (Lone Remix) [Greco-Roman]
2. Angelo Battilani - Red Maple Leaf (Vaghe Stelle Remix Tool) [Margot]
3. Sebastian Mullaert - Music Becomes A Function [Mule Electronic]
4. Margot - H2 [Border Community]
5. Applescall - All Sparkles [Manual Music]
6. Arnaud Rebotini - The Spirit of Boogie [Process Recordings]
7. Roland M. Dill - Baked Potato [Trapez]
8. Deep Space Orchestra - Streetlights [Applied Rhythm Technology]
9. Lucy - Lav (Peter van Hoesen Remix) [Stroboscopic Artifacts]
10. Mig Dfoe - Amantea [Zaubernuss]

Link:
www.myspace.com/morriscowan

RECOMMENDED: Ill Blu – Meltdown EP [Numbers]

2011-02-23T12:44:00.001Z

Back in August of 2009 a video appeared on youtube from UK funky production team and Rinse FM regulars, Ill Blu and ever since that track has been lodged in my brain. That tune turned out to be ‘Meltdown’ the title track on the first 12” to be released on Numbers in 2011. With only a few other releases on wax - the phenomenal ‘Time To Get Nasty’ from The Fantastic 4 EP, the undisputed anthem in their ‘Pull It’ w/ Shystie, the odd remix here and there plus last year’s Hyperdub release of ‘Bellion’ b/w ‘Dragon Pop’ - it’s a pleasure to see them unleash some of that fire. Listeners to their ever growing collection of dubplates - which you can hear when you tune into their Rinse show (Tue, 11-1am) – will be more than aware of their combination of rude bass and supple hard-hitting percussion is on show here.

‘Meltdown’ comes right out the gate with galloping tribal drums, showcasing that irresistible percussive vibrancy that Ill Blu personify. Before you know it those skipping snare hits -that five in a bar flutter they’re so good at - skits over the bass tones and you’re shaking so much more than just a leg. Coupled with pulsing bass drops, acidic alien synth tweaks and melodramatic melodic ascents, - one of which sounds suspiciously like when you get spotted by a guard on Metal Gear Solid and have to go into hiding – well... let’s just say this one is a banger.

The other two track ‘Overdose’ and ‘Chelt’ aren’t to shabby either; skippy rhythms that ooze energy, rudeness and pure vibes are handed out in spades. ‘Overdose’ bleeps and bubbles in fine style, Ill Blu know how to get some dramatic dance floor tension rolling, here playing the vibey bleeps against over-saturated buzzy bass tones. The rolling snares and rushing synths on ‘Chelt’ make you feel like you’re at carnival, those raw bass hits are back and coupled with a euphoric electro rush and spaced out key melodies.

If by the end of this EP a robotic voice chanting “Ill Ill Blu Blu…” isn’t music to your ears then you’re just going to have to reach for the rewind.

Words: James Balf
Out: Now

Links:
http://nmbrs.net
www.myspace.com/illblu

COMPETITION: Win Lazer Sword Swag & Tickets

2011-02-16T14:40:00.006Z

Operating as Lazer Sword, Lando Kal and Low Limit have to date released a trio of singles and an album on the Innovative Leisure imprint. Having both made a name for themselves as singular entities with a smattering of beats on compilations like Beat Dimensions and a split 12” that minted the Numbers imprint the duo were focusing a little deeper on their joint project last year, working to create a synthesized haze of beat music on their debut eponymous album. With a selection of fifteen tracks that trickle up from a hip hop pace to a slow mo house tempo, it got a little overlooked back in November in our opinion. Beats like ‘Owl Tats’ and ‘Web Swag’ still bang - with their sound rooted in everything from southern hip hop to dubstep - and ‘Def Work’ should move any bass centric dancefloor that’s lucky enough to see it.

Everything included on the album seems like it’s been digitized specifically to give it a Tron like futurism, it’s all blossoming whirs and little intricate beat shuffles, but far be it from us to just give you a textual summation, we’re giving you the opportunity to grab a copy of it – and a borrowers mansion full of other prizes – courtesy of our family over at Earnest Endeavours.

Ahead of their date at the EE February throwdown next Wednesday – which also features sets from Cali based Edwardianist, Daedelus, Philly grime nutball Starkey and the first lady of Brainfeeder, TOKiMONSTA – we’ve been chosen as an outlet for you to grab two copies of the Lazer Sword album (on CD as well as on vinyl, that’s why we said 2), a copy of the ‘Batman’ 12”, the first single from the album which features remixes by Rustie and Nguzunguzu, a copy of the ‘Shot in the Night’ 7” - a slice of blue vinyl that isn’t on the album – a Lazer Sword t shirt and 2 tickets to the EE event itself so you can see them rock the secret venue in tandem and maybe even buy them a soft drink and tell them that you really like their glasses.

To scoop the swag just email us the answer to the below question by next Tuesday (22/02).

Q: Lazer Sword’s first 12” for Innovative Leisure was called what?

a) Gucci Sweatshirt
b) Gucci Network
c) Gucci Footwork

The winner will be notified by email. Please make sure you can attend the event before entering.

Tickets // Facebook Event // EE site

Links:
http://lazersword.net
www.earnestendeavours.com

INTERVIEW: PhOtOmachine [Super]

2011-02-16T11:43:00.008Z

Raffertie’s Super imprint is going from strength to strength of late. Being in a privileged position to hear their music early, we can confirm that they’re tapping into a lot of corners that you probably wouldn’t expect given the 4 releases the label has put out to date. There’s a definite depth and commitment to the cause inherent to what the team behind the label are doing, their choice of remixers and the presentation of their releases speaks measures of their passion for design as much as the music.

PhOtOmachine, a faceless Brixton resident, is the latest producer to step out on the label, with his Technicolour EP and again, it’s a welcome display of club sculpted productions. Harnessing the swirl of a synthesizer as much as the warm thud of his kick drum on the eponymous track it’s obvious from the first listen that its music made to solely to move you. With percussive elements that trickle in the gaps between the bass stomp, ‘Technicolour’ explodes around the 4 minute mark, underpinning the repetitive vocal chant with a looping bass line that nails the whole track to the floor.

The flip, ‘Sine Language,’ also puts you square in the middle of that darkened club space, eyes flitting up to the ceiling, to the drink in your hand and then around to the faces next to you that are all locked in a unified stare to the DJ booth. It’s an instant thing with the B side, it’s a soundsystem workout waiting to happen, hitting like early 2562 but with a more melancholy lean.

PhOtOmachine tracks are a welcome addition, they progress and twist into new manifestations without compromising their main dancefloor objectives, keeping the attention when their let fly and also popping out cleanly in the mix. We shot him some questions to quell our curiosity and honour him offering up our 69th Sonic Router mix...

SR: Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info?

PhOtOmachine: I’m PhOtOmachine, a producer and DJ from London pushing square pegs in round holes. I push buttons on old machines and sometimes things happen.

Outside of music who are you? What do you do on the daily?

I actually have a career in the music business. I think everyone working in music should get involved in the art side of it. Otherwise you might as well be in any other office. My days consists of syncing music to TV commercial and video games and signing artists to a seminal UK Independent label.

How did you first get into making music? What was it that infected you to do so?

I grew up around a Reggae soundsystem called Saxon so had always been to studios since I was young. It was buying records that made me want to make music. It starts off with turntables and mixer and before long you’ve got a sampler and keyboard. I used to go to Black Market records with my mini disk player and get them to play my tunes on the shop floor. I liked the DIY ethos that came with club music. You could make tunes in a tower block and shift units to record stores directly.

According to your biog info you’ve worked with MJ Cole and El-B – two pioneers in their own right. How deep did the work go? Do you think their influence has rubbed off on your music?

Yes. With Matt Cole I assisted his manager at the time he released his first album and occasionally I used to go to the Soho records shops and select a few tunes for him. I was at the early FWD parties in West End and one day Matt came down and introduced me to EL-B. EL had been really helpful in the studio from day dot. He’s one of the few pioneers and not afraid to drop knowledge.

What’s your production set up like?

A cross between analog and digital... I’ve got things that are older than me. That’s what seems to work for me but you can use anything really. The computer changed everything but I try not to work like everyone else does. Equipment is nothing without ideas so I still go back my old Mini Discs to hear what I did when I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. They sound bad but the ideas were great.

How would you describe your sound?

I’m feeling really at home with techno tinged grooves with a nod to the garage sound. I don’t just mean 2 step I mean the whole garage thing of twisting up the US house sound. It’s just a coincidence that geographically my studio is situated in the middle of the suburbs next to Actress and EL-B’s and sonically that’s what seems to happen too.

PhOtOmachine - Sine Language [Super]

You share an affinity to people like Martyn – in terms of providing a solid house groove with movement defining percussion on top - and those who build beats with a dancefloor in mind. What kind of music do you listen to in your own time?

Thanks. Martyn is a great producer – one of the few that has a distinctive sound. Because of my job I get sent lots of music and because of who I am I’m constantly consuming new tunes. I listen to lots; too much in fact. I have a big Studio One reggae collection and a love for Prince and Biggie. Nothing beats hearing music at its birth. Hearing dancehall in Jamaica for example is a rite of passage. Reggae producers have been pioneering for decades and I’d probably say that’s what I listen to most. That and early 80’s disco records...

What is an inspiration for you?

People; or more precisely going out to dark clubs. The next morning I want to soundtrack the entire night and capture the feeling in a 6 minute track. I remember going to a jungle rave watching DJ Ron and being mesmerized. I’d never heard of him but he had his name in lights and 1000 people dancing. My parents relaxed attitude to music genre was inspiring too. I’d hear the Bangles next to Buju Banton and not flinch.

Are there any producers you rate that the world should know about? Any peeps not getting the props you think they deserve?

The world needs to pay more attention to Funkineven. He’s already getting lots of props but he should get more. He’s such a dope producer. He’s another one who’s got his own sound and doing what he does really well. If he drops an album he’ll blow up.

You’ve got an EP forthcoming on Super – you’re the second artist on the label we’ve had curate a mix for us this year. Can you tell us a bit about that and shed some light on what else people can expect from you in 2011...

The Technicolour EP; I’m really happy with it actually. It works well and is more or less exactly how I imagined it would come out. It’s dark and light. Someone said on soundcloud the other day that it makes them want to dance and cry at the same time – that hit the nail on the head.
I’m looking to release a few more EP’s this year and keep busy. Some classic styles and others on a more mutant tip.

Tell us a little bit about the mix you’ve put together for us…

The mix is a little taster of what I play out in clubs. I’ve included a track I’m working on called ‘Freakquency,’ which is currently only available on the Technicolour coloured cassettes that you might find about.* Be quick there are only a handful of them I’ve been told.

Any words of wisdom, for our readers?

The Internet is a hyper reality. You can’t always believe the hype.

::

DOWNLOAD: PhOtOmachine – Sonic Router Mix #69

Tracklist:

1. Greymatter - Seventh Disco
2. Daniel Wang - Not Feeling It
3. 24 Hour Experience - All Nighter
4. Ben Westbeech - Falling (Deetron Acid Dub)
5. Martyn & Mike Slott - All Nights
6. Julio Bashmore - Battle For Middle You
7. Cosmin TRG - Izolat
8. Hackman - Made Up My Mind
9. Omar S - Soley Supported
10. Bad Autopsy - Callback
11. Boddika - Boddika's House
12. Seiji - More of You
13. SBTRKT - Breakout
14. PhOtOmachine - FreaKQuency

Words: Oli Marlow

PhOtOmachine’s Technicolour EP is out now on Super.

*
We’ve actually kindly been given a couple of these very cassettes to give away here. To scoop one send us an email with the answer to the below question by the 1st March.

Q: Who made the ‘808 Reduction’ remix of PhOtOmachine’s ‘Technicolour’?

Winners will be picked at random and will be notified by email.

Link:
www.myspace.com/thephotomachine

RECOMMENDED: Kahn - Like We Used To/Helter Skelter [Punch Drunk]

2011-02-15T13:32:00.001Z

Accurate or not, there’s always a certain canon that immediately springs to mind when you think of Bristol. The likes of Peverelist, Rob Smith, Headhunter/Addison Groove, Appleblim and Pinch make up part of a core group who’ve had a major hand in developing the scene into its current state of health. Up until fairly recently it felt as though they remained the central hub in the city, but over the last couple of years or so there’s been a real burst of activity from a newer generation of producers taking inspiration from those that came before them. With new music coming from people like Hodge and Artifact on what feels like a daily basis, and the rise (and rise) of Julio Bashmore, it feels as though Bristol is currently poised to unleash another wave of sound on a largely unsuspecting rest of the country.

Kahn’s another one to add to that list; part of the Sureskank collective (which also includes recent Punch Drunk signee Superisk), he’s an established DJ presence within the city already and recently released the garage-infused Altar EP on A Future Without. This new release for Punch Drunk represents a considerable step upward though – along with Superisk’s ‘Find Your Way’ it’s another great example of Peverelist’s seemingly effortless ability to squeeze great tracks out of newer producers. In this case, fitting neatly with their casually hipster-psychedelic (hah) artwork, both ‘Like We Used To’ and ‘Helter Skelter’ wring surprisingly dance-friendly results from tightly meshed layers of synth.

The former betrays a sophisticated grasp of melody and composition, setting a deftly sliced vocal refrain adrift in space above a gradually developing percussive backbone. Impressively, at certain tiny moments the two appear to snag upon one another as momentary harmonies flicker before dissipating. The same trick is used, sans vocals, for ‘Helter Skelter’, which, as its name suggests, spirals around buoyant pulses of effervescent synth and diffuse, skittering percussion that’s not a million miles away from Peverelist’s own signature drum sound. The overall effect is both energising and calming at once, perhaps mimicking that wobbly lucidity it’s only possible to achieve at three or four in the morning, assisted by a headful of sub-bass and cheap booze.

Words: Rory Gibb
Out: Now

Links:
http://sureskank.blogspot.com
punchdrunkmusic.com

STREAM: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm // Fuck the 403 - 13.02.2011

2011-02-14T11:29:00.005Z

Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm
'F*ck the 403' hosted by Oli Marlow.
2nd Sunday of every month // 10pm - 12am.

Catch Jimi The Exploder presenting The Xpldr Session for Sonic Router every 4th Sunday at the same time from 27th Feb 2011.

STREAM: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm // Fuck the 403 - 13.02.2011

Direct Download (Right Click/Save As)

Tracklist:

1. Yamaneko - Tiger Woods [unreleased]
2. Stimming - Cooking Coffee [forthcoming Diynamic]
3. Motem - Go Rilla [Gebbz Steelo Boutique]
4. Nochexxx - Timepiece [forthcoming RAMP]
5. Julio Bashmore - Grand National [forthcoming 3024]
6. Morris Cowan - Flutterby [forthcoming Zaubernuss]
7. Pangaea - Inna Daze [forthcoming Hessle Audio]
8. Ozzie - Tarantula [forthcoming Lightworks]
9. Goosensei - BigBird [unreleased]
10. Shy One - Comfortable (T.Williams Remix) [forthcoming DVA]
11. Mista Men - Crossroads [unreleased]
12. Lokiboi - Amsterdam (Ratcatcher Remix) [forthcoming Wicked Bass]
13. 2562 - Aquatic Family Affair [forthcoming When In Doubt]
14. Untold - Don't Know Don't Care (Mista Men Bootleg) [unreleased]
15. Hodge - Found His Cool [unreleased]
16. Simon/off - In Circles [forthcoming Haunted Audio]
17. Dorian Concept - My Face Needs Food [forthcoming Ninja Tune]
18. XI - Into Jupiter [unreleased]
19. Pangaea - Wont Hurt [forthcoming Hessle Audio]
20. Boddika - Underground [forthcoming Swamp 81]
21. Distal & HxdB - Booyant [unreleased]
22. Dorian Concept - Her Tears Taste Like Pears [forthcoming Ninja Tune]
23. Portrait - Can You Tell [unreleased]
24. Cloak & Dagger - Grammercy Riffs [unreleased]
25. Amerie - One Thing (French Fries Remix) [bootleg]
26. Pinch & Roska - Paranormal Activity [forthcoming Tectonic]
27. Mala x Bjork - Pagans Livin Poetry Differently (Production Unit Blend) [unreleased]
28. Superisk - Life is Live [unreleased]
29. Unknown - Only Got 8 Bar Left [unreleased]
30. Sines - I Can Try [forthcoming Rogue Dubs]
31. Kode 9 & The Spaceape - The Cure [forthcoming Hyperdub]
32. Monky - Chocolate Tweel [unreleased]
33. Lokiboi - Late Night Missions [unreleased]
34. Mumdance - Smasher (Mele Remix) [Mad Decent]
35. Kontigo - Stars Fall [forthcoming Slime]
36. Monky - Hipster [forthcoming Hoya Hoya]
37. Boxcutter - Other People [forthcoming Planet Mu]
38. Monky - Cold Drops [unreleased]

Link:
http://hivemind.fm

INTERVIEW: Contakt [Local Action]

2011-02-11T12:34:00.003Z

As localised a sound as the current strains of house tempoed music emanating from London are, its humbling to think that everything can reach the furthest corners of the globe, thanks, undoubtedly, to the invention of the internet and the level of reach its given producers. The New York based Contakt - who has this week released his debut EP for the Local Action label - is one of the many benefactors of the information superhighway, able to discover and follow new trends and productions happening here and represent them properly in his adopted home at his co-run TURBOTAX parties.

His 3 tracker single ‘Not Forgotten’ also benefits from the technoid edge of UK funky, it sits comfortably alongside releases from the Deep Teknologi camp and the work of T.Williams, which can also be found on Local Action. Contakt brings his own distinctive vibe to proceedings, his tracks full of dry kicks that hit hard and snares that sound like a rally cry for listeners to shake their hypes in time to the carving synthesized riffs. He straddles an odd boundary that hasn’t really been breached yet, keeping his productions raw with an unabashed dancefloor bump, yet rooting his sounds in a deep techno pallet.

We caught up with him on the week of his release, to grab our 68th Sonic Router mix and discuss many things, including his production, the state of play in the US of A and that fertile middle ground between techno and London house music...

SR: What do you do on the daily and where are you from?

Contakt: I grew up in Lansing, Michigan, which is remarkable only in how unremarkable of a city it is. Much like the rest of the rust belt, Lansing is a very blue-collar city, hit hard over the last two decades by the disintegration of the auto industry and the accompanying loss of jobs. Even though Lansing is the capital of Michigan, there wasn’t and still isn’t much going on, so we would head to Chicago or Detroit for concerts, raves, etc and as soon as I was done with school I moved to NYC and have been here ever since working in the music industry and media.

What’s the scene like out in NY? You’ve got Dub War kicking off, FaltyDL dropping Sushi science all over his beats, Sepalcure making Natalie Portman dance in blockbusters…

The scene in NYC is different than a lot of people think. It’s smaller than you would expect for being one of the biggest, densest cities in the states, in fact, the scene for this music in America is much smaller than you would expect from a country so huge. It seems much different from London, where there can be several clubs the same night, all with amazing DJs booked and all having a successful night. Even electronic music is “underground” in the states, and that underground is just starting to discover dubstep (and by that I mean brostep), so whatever this music is called is the underground of the underground. The nice thing about it being small is the intimacy and the friendship. When FaltyDL plays all the DJs from Dub War, TURRBOTAX®, and all the artists tend to come out and support each other and have fun – the same goes for visiting DJs which is really fun.

What first brought you to the UK sounds?

Right around 2000, I somehow discovered 2-step, I don’t even remember how, but I immediately fell in love with the melodies and rhythms and was hunting down as many MJ Cole, Artful Dodger, So Solid, and even Craig David. Back then finding these records was a true challenge (and expensive) without the convenience of the online stores we have access to now so I bought what few records I could find. The collective rediscovery and reinvention of these sounds by people like Burial, FaltyDL, and Zomby has been equally, if not even more so inspiring.

What first got you into production and what’s your set-up like? Have you got a favourite bit of kit and how do you approach working in the studio?

I first got into production through in the mid 90’s inspired by hip-hop producers like Premier, Pete Rock, J-Dilla (then known as Jaydee) as well as electro sounds of Cybotron/Model 500, Aux88, and Drexciya. My best friend bought an MPC2000 that I had unlimited access to and I essentially ended up skipping class most of my last year of high school (secondary school) to teach myself how to make beats. It wasn’t until I moved to NYC that I really developed my skills working with J-Zone. He was my first true mentor and I learned so many priceless techniques from him that I still utilize today.

My studio these days is a combination of hardware and software after long period of using only hardware, and short period of using only software. That said, I am firm believer in it not being what you use, it’s how you use it. I have old hip-hop “beat tapes” that were just MPC straight to mini-disc that still sound good in this really raw way (it’s my current Moby Dick), and loads of amazing 90’s techno and house was recorded to cassette 4-track. I will say, I do have one piece of gear that I do truly love and use on every track; the E-Mu SP-1200. It’s a 12 bit sampler with only 10 seconds total of sample time, but it sounds amazing, it’s really chunky, dark, and gritty and the filter has a really distinct “ringing” sound that can’t be imitated.

How would you describe your sound? There is this sweet vibe going around right now, which somehow unites the loose raw end of techno with the hyped up sounds of the UK underground. You seem to play with those sounds yourself. How do you get it to work?

It seems like you have really nailed the description – it may sound simplistic, or even obvious, but I think my sound really reflects the music I have grown up on and DJed for years. If you listen, there are little references to everyone from Kevin Saunderson to Just Blaze to Shortstuff and to be honest, I don’t know how I get it to work, it’s one of those things that I turn on my sampler or synth and this is what comes out.

Tell us about TURRBOTAX®, how are the nights going, what inspired it and what have you got in store for up and coming events?

It’s been a tremendous couple of years for TURRBOTAX® and 2011 is off to an amazing start. We really couldn’t be any more thankful. Rem Koolhaus and I conceived the idea as a reaction to there being no club nights in NYC (or even America) focusing on the new sounds we were hearing from UK artists like Untold, Cooly G, Brackles, Roska, etc as well as the local club scene’s focus on what people are wearing, club photography, and being seen. We wanted to do a night strictly focused on experiencing groundbreaking music with the vibe we grew up on – out of control basement and warehouse parties, not posh clubs with photographers, horrible “emcees,” and overpriced drinks. Thankfully people find it as refreshing and exciting as we do - every month I find myself as excited a fan as I am a resident. I don’t think there is anywhere else in the world that Laurel Halo shares a bill with Kyle Hall and Shortstuff, or Todd Edwards with Lemonade, or Doc Daneeka with Delorean. People not from NYC always think our line-ups look a bit odd on paper, but when you hear the artists/DJs in the context of the night it really connects the dots in a way you wouldn’t expect.

You’ve got you’re debut EP on the way with Local Action tell us a bit about that release, what’s the inspiration for the tracks?

The record just came out this week which is (of course) really exciting. I have to say this entire experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I have worked at record distributors, labels, in media, etc through out my career and I couldn’t imagine a better response. The inspiration for ‘Not Forgotten’ is a bit personal, but the vibe of tracks I think reflect all 15 years of being a DJ and collecting records – everything from Innercity to Pete Rock to Martyn. I am not sure if anyone else hears it, but I feel it.

Who hooked up that sweet Rolando remix? He’s a bit of a techno legend, its not every day you get remixed by a guy from Underground Resistance, how’s that feel?

To be honest, it feels like a dream to have a hero remix one of your songs. I remember when Rolando hit the scene in the 90’s and he has been a massive influence and inspiration to me ever since. We met this summer in the UK and admittedly, as an adult, I was nervous and reverted back to a 16 year old techno fan at first. Just meeting was an amazing moment, hearing stories and insight from someone with so much experience and talent is something that you can’t put a price tag on, and to for him to do a remix is beyond words.

What music are you feeling at the moment, any producers you think the world should know about?

It’s a really exciting time for music right now, maybe even the most exciting time I have experienced. There is something really special going on (even if it doesn’t have a genre name) and the speed things are changing and evolving is really interesting. There are so many great records that have come out recently or are on the way from the next “stars” of this sound – folks like DJ Dom, xxxy, Optimum, and Jacques Greene, etc who are all making outstanding records and all pushing things in different directions.

After this Local Action 12” arrives what have you got in store for us? Any more releases you can chat about on the horizon…

2011 is off to hectic start, I am not sure about release dates yet, but I feel like I have spent almost every day this year in my studio. The next projects I have coming up are remixes for Grizzly and Palms Out Sounds, a sophomore single for Local Action, a collaboration with Mayster from TURRBOTAX® on Dutty Artz and a return to the UK for more gigs, pints, and haggis this summer.

Tell us about the mix you’ve turned in for us...

This mix I didn’t focus on exclusives (although there are a few on there), I really just went for records I love to play. One noteworthy song is Los Hermanos - ‘Tescat,’ specifically because it’s 10 years old, yet sounds totally fresh. Mixing the old with the new is a big part of how I play, there are so many outstanding, but forgotten records out there that still sound ahead of their time – the new Planet E compilation, and the Shake one last year are great places to start, but they are just the tip of the iceberg.

Have you got any words of wisdom for our readers?

I wish I had some words of wisdom for your readers; perhaps they have some for me?

::

DOWNLOAD: Contakt - Sonic Router Mix #68

Tracklist:

01. Rolando – Junie – Ostgut Ton
02. Shy One – Comfortable (Numan Remix) – DVA Music
03. Cosmin TRG – Seperat – 50 Weapons
04. Martin Kemp – Cracks – Unreleased
05. Aril Brikha – Read Only Memory (Octave One Remix) – Art of Vengeance
06. DJ Dom – Untitled – Ptn
07. Robert Hood – Clash – M Plant
08. Contakt – Not Forgotten (Rolando Remix) – Local Action
09. Los Hermanos – Tescat – Los Hermanos
10. Julio Bashmore – Ribble to Amazon – 3024
11. xxxy – Think Twice – Unreleased
12. Contakt – Still Up – Unreleased

Contakt’s ‘Not Forgotten’ is out now on Local Action.

Words: James Balf & Oli Marlow

Link:
www.myspace.com/contakt321

RECOMMENDED: V/A – Tax Haven 1 [Iberian Records]

2011-02-08T18:18:00.003Z

Conspira, 23Hz and Numaestro’s label, Iberian Records – those who gave Octa Push an outlet with their eponymous EP – step out once again and bring out the good time vibes with their latest collated 12”, Tax Haven. Featuring a track a piece from Relocate, Mr Gasparov and Nehuen the three producers all bring a different vibe to this pre-emptively tropical release, providing cut-up, sample heavy break-laden garage, laid back, loved-up, sun blazing dance floor soul and raw, colourful UK funky hybrids.

Relocate turns in an energetic diva blazing bumpy garage number with ‘Soul Survivor,’ the beats kick hard and relentlessly like a cross between UKG and jackin’ Chicago house. The bass is deep, the samples euphoric and its all brought together with cut up horn stabs and disco strings. It’s all pretty reminiscent of hey-day 4x4 UKG and thankfully it’s addictive as hell, thanks in no small part to the beautifully percussive drum breakdown. The summer time vibes really shine through on Mr Gasparvo’s cut with vocalist G.Rina ‘Transient Love,’ It’s a punchy dubbed-out shimmering, tropical gem that sounds like a laid back beach party replete with Care Bear waiters and bubble gum fixtures and fittings.

The flip is the all out dancefloor track on the EP and Nehuen’s ‘Between Love and Hate’ is made up of the raw artefacts of UK funky: relenteless snares and bass that just never gives in. Those bass tones make me wonder if I’ve heard it in Petchy set (though I probably haven’t) especially when they’re played off by the heavy handed beats. There is an eerie urgent air to the production brought on by that swirling grime-esque dubby mouth organ melody but it’s all brought back down to earth by warm chord stabs that bubble along in their own blissful way.

Words: James Balf
Out: Now

Relocate - Soul Survivor [Iberian]

Links:
http://iberianrecords.bandcamp.com

RECOMMENDED: James Blake - James Blake [A&M]

2011-02-07T11:29:00.011Z

“Fuck the media hype, scribes sniping at me and mine, Megatron clocking Autobots with the eagle eye. They got you covered; eye colour to your sneaker size, revolutionaries demonised, Mother Earth colonised, stolen culture commodified.” – Jehst – ‘Brimstone Rock’ [Low Life]

Whilst BBC’s ‘Sound of’ poll has bought the world Adele, many a great self deprecating interview from Gold Panda and um, Jessie J, there’s never been a nomination that’s impacted quite so hard on the wider dubstep community than that of James Blake – a producer who’s musicality and measured approach to production, releases and general profile has seen him win fans for his music alone, accumulating merit thanks to the genuinely different ways he moved a dancefloor. Blake’s eponymous debut album though, has little, well nothing in fact, to do with a dancefloor. It’s a lonely listen. An isolating thirty plus minutes of personal fragility compensated for with a brittle backdrop of stripped back instrumentation and the occasional caterwauling crescendo. It’s also completely brilliant, in an emotively introverted kind of way.

For Blake, the way his work has been publicised with an emphasis on his emergence from the dubstep scene does his song writing a disservice. ‘Limit To Your Love,’ his breakout ‘song,’ does contain basslines that will rattle the air conditioning units of every venue its played in, but the rest of album - particularly the latter part - is a baroque drift that lacks the kind of instantaneous impact, inherent within any dance music. Dispelling any notion of that myth with the slow follow up single ‘Wilhelms Scream,’ which honestly feels too echoey and emotional to be leading into N-Dubz, Jason Derulo or Black Eyed Peas on the BBC’s A-list playlist for daytime radio, Blake’s pushing his real self out there poignantly, upping his sensitivity and vocal layering to new levels.

Using a lot of the same techniques as his earlier work - namely his two preceeding EPs for R&S, CMYK and Klaviwerke - letting his compositions breathe and move fluidly, layering melodies and maddeningly pitched vocal samples and using drums sparingly, Blake creates his own world; all be it one that might break down in a fit of flailing limbs and self harm if you blew on it too hard. But that’s this record’s core strength; it’s woefully sad, full of downtrodden lyricism and outsider concerns; a collection of a developing man’s feelings captured in lo-fi glory.

Words: Oli Marlow
Out: Now

Link:
http://www.myspace.com/jamesblakeproduction

NEWSFLASH: Sonic Router x Bleep.Com Podcast #004

2011-02-04T16:48:00.005Z

The 4th edition of our podcast, the one that we make for Bleep.com, just went live.

Having missed January, we had a bit more stock to choose from, so we've collated music from brilliant producers like Pavan, Breton, Instra:mental, Roedilus, Julio Bashmore, Pearson Sound, Lunice (pictured), Jam City and Shackleton in this February themed edition.

DOWNLOAD: Sonic Router x Bleep.com Podcast #004 // BLEEP015
SUBSCRIBE: Bleep.com Podcast

Tracklist:

1. Pavan - Afrika [Harmonia]
2. Pixelord - Fish Touch [Error Broadcast]
3. Breton - Hours Away [Hemlock]
4. Wbeeza - Manual Mode [Third Ear]
5. Roedilus - Regenwurm [Bureau B]
6. Instra:mental - Detuned Heart [Autonomic]
7. Morgan Zarante - Hookid [Hyperdub]
8. Lunice - Purp Walk [Lucky Me]
9. Ad Bourke - 100 [Cininite]
10. Julio Bashmore - Battle For Middle You [PMR]
11. Jam City - Magic Drops [Night Slugs]
12. MIA - It Takes A Muscle (Pearson Sound Remix) [XL]
13. Jacques Greene - Holdin' On [Lucky Me]
14. SBTRKT - Hide or Seek [Young Turks]
15. Girl Unit - IRL (Bok Bok Remix) [Night Slugs]
16. Shackleton - Man On A String Pt 1 & 2 [Woe to the Sceptic Heart]
17. Instra:mental - Voyeur [Disfigured Dubz]
18. Arkist - Out Of The Sun [Deca Rhythm]
19. Orphan101 - Disemble [Apple Pips]
20. Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX - NY Is Killing Me [XL]

Link:
Bleep.com

RECOMMENDED: DJ Dom – Sunshowers/You Can’t See Me [Blunted Robots]

2011-02-04T13:15:00.003Z

DJ Dom may have made his debut for the on form PTN label late last year, with four lush slices of flexible house music, but now he’s stepping out on Brackles and Shortstuff’s excellent Blunted Robots label. Joining the impressive roster of releases from the likes of Mickey Pearce, Martin Kemp and Night Slugs very own Bok Bok, Dom’s 12” may well be the smoothest Blunted release yet, taking queues from the deeper side of house and playing it off rawer UK vibes. It echoes the current sets from Rinse FM regular Brackles, who seems to be really enjoying exploring this side of things more and more of late.

It proper sounds like summer is on the way when the hazy good time vibes of ‘Sunshowers’ rolls in, all laid back warm chords, supple bumpy percussive kicks and snatched hits. First heard on Brackles' 'Songs For Endless Cities Mix' the screwed vocals give a woozy air to the track and the dubbed-out organ stabs and echoing bass squelches really bring that brightness alive, living up to the epiphany hinted at in the title. The drawn out heavy EQ sections where the track gets cut out into nothing but highs is pure vibes too, building expectation perfectly. The flip rolls out on a similar tip though ‘You Can’t See Me’ skips and builds with more urgency thanks to the dubby pads, twisted synth smears and fragments of 8-bit bleeps that shatter across the track. It’s the deep sub stabs, acid bubbles and flexible beats that root it to the floor while the synths take you up into those airy, blissed-out territories.

Sitting somewhere in the UK neverland where the likes of DJ Naughty and Martin Kemp can coexist without to much squabbling, Dom’s first outing on Blunted Robots can sit nicely next to the soulful side of Smoove Kriminal or T.Williams just as well as it does here.

Words: James Balf
Out: 7th Feb

Link:
www.bluntedrobots.com

INTERVIEW: Chairman Kato [Pictures Music]

2011-02-02T19:29:00.004Z

For all our love of bastard house and the overloaded synth explosions of the current instrumental hip hop and skweee that we harp on about endlessly, it ain’t half clean sounding. OK admittedly, someone like Egyptrixx - whose just announced his debut album Bible Eyes will be released on Night Slugs in early March - uses a little more of that sheet noise aesthetic, trusting a lot of his stylistics to the overbearing presence inherent in his sound, but sometimes our ears just hanker for that completely immersive, brooding, drum kit falling down the stairs type of beat music. Plus, as Slugabed so eloquently pointed out recently, there’s not been so much of the slow, slow stuff round these parts recently.

Enter then Chairman Kato, a London dweller whose productions simultaneously imbibe the foreboding spirit of early El-P (think The Cold Vein more than Fantastic Damage) and Shackleton’s passion for drawn out drones as melodies. Texturally, it’s often hard to beat the crunch and depth in sound that you get from using analogue equipment, and Kato’s forthcoming EP for Pictures Music , the Wildfire EP, displays precisely what we mean by that sweeping statement. 5 tracks strong it revels in its own darkness, perfectly creating a darkened and lonely person’s dream state. ‘Gemini Eyes’ might well be the more floaty of the productions on offer on the EP, due out this Valentine’s Day, but with its sandpapered edges, scuffed synthesizers and far off kick drum it’s more of a turmoil inducer, coming on more cerebral than the obvious smash and blap of ‘Thuddd’ or the fierce head nod of ‘No Coincidence.’

As Pictures themselves put it in some early correspondence: “it's pretty fresh compared to all the other stuff that seems to be cycling around and there’s not a 2step beat in sight.” From one listen their point is overtly evident; Kato’s music is at once hypnotically subtle and tempered like gravel, probably the over-riding reason we wanted to see what he’d throw down for his contribution to our mix series…

SR: Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info?

Chairman Kato: I am Chairman Kato, a producer based in Hackney, East London, mate. I stay up all night making music and drinking Gaviscon. I am sponsored by Nong Shim Shrimp Crackers and Pictures Music.

Outside of music who are you? What do you do on the daily?

My nocturnal habits tend to get in the way of doing anything meaningful during the day time. I have paid the bills by allowing my body to be used for experimental research into the effects of anti-oxidants in oriental teas. This is conducted in the low lit basement of a teashop in East London on Mondays and Fridays.

How did you first get into making music? What was it that infected you to do so?

Good question. I’m trying to trace it so I can undo the damage and get my life back together, maybe get a job and an Alfa Romeo or something. When I was a teenager I just had the feeling that listening to music wasn’t enough, that I needed to participate. Picked up a couple of instruments, did the usual thing of having a shit band, then started going out in Birmingham, got into DJing and later production.

What’s your production set up like?

It varies really, depending on what mood I’m in....got a lot of vinyl, some synths, some cutlery, a fridge nearby (essential). I ram most things through a vintage tape machine and make the meters go all nice and red. I often have a film on with the sound down too for extra mind-fuckery.

How would you describe your sound?

Raoul Moate’s ipod.

You share an affinity to people like Lukid, Cloaks and those who build beats out of rougher stuff. What kind of music do you listen to in your own time?

I definitely do respect people like that because they have an appreciation of depth and texture, which is something I try to spend a lot of time on. I listen to a loooot of different stuff....let me pull out my ipod and see what I’m on at the moment... Ducktails, Tame Impala, Robag Wruhme, Dakota Suite, Tommy Tempa, Tom Trago, Forest Swords, Broadcast….

What is an inspiration for you?

Being in London; mainly. Being here exposes me to so many ridiculously good things and interesting people. I get a lot of creative energy from this place. I feel lucky to be here.

Are there any producers you rate that the world should know about? Any peeps not getting the props you think they deserve?

My good friend Tommy Tempa is someone you’re going to be hearing about. Nochexxx is criminally underrated and hopefully that’s going to change this year. The first release on Five Easy Pieces is going to be an EP by a duo called Chesca Royalty that has some riddim and bounce.

You’ve got an EP forthcoming on Pictures Music. Can you tell us a bit about that and shed some light on what else people can expect from you in 2011?

The Wildfire EP is my first EP as Chairman Kato, I’m very excited to be working with the Pictures boys. It’s got a bump to it but it’s not particularly dancefloor orientated... lots of noise, lots of tape saturation, with little bits of light in there to stop you killing yourself.

There’s going to be plenty more from me in 2011. Currently putting another EP together and then I’m going to decide what the hell I’m going to do with massive pile of stuff I’ve got sitting here. Basically I’m gonna be putting out more EPs in various places and possibly an album. Also I’m working on an audiovisual installation. Oh yeah, and a live show.

Tell us a little bit about the mix you’ve put together for us…

I really enjoyed doing this mix. I knew that it would be easy to get waylaid for days short listing tracks so I just pulled out stuff that was to hand and took it from there. I think it’s important to vary tempos and styles in a mix to keep it interesting so as well as new stuff by people like Hype Williams and John Roberts I couldn’t resist throwing in some Joy Division and one of my favourite 7s, by the Fabulous Three. There’s a track by Broadcast there in tribute to Trish Keenan [who passed away recently], which I’m still in shock about.

Any words of wisdom, for our readers?

Don’t wear your jacket inside and chew your food properly.

::

DOWNLOAD: Chairman Kato – Sonic Router Mix #67

Tracklist:

1. Leyland Kirby- ‘The Sound of Music Vanishing’
2. Harmonia and Eno- ‘Vanos Companeros’
3. Kassem Mosse- ‘Untitled’
4. Chairman Kato- ‘Streets Of Rage’
5. Lukid- ‘Rags’
6. Bat For Lashes- ‘Glass (Chairman Kato’s Rework)’
7. Hype Williams- ‘Rescue Dawn’
8. Fabulous Three- ‘Answer Me Softly’
9. Radiohead- ‘The Gloaming’
10. Redshape- ‘Manhattan’
11. Wbeeza- ‘Southern Girl’
12. Shed- ‘My R-Class’
13. John Roberts- ‘Navy Blue’
14. Luke Abbott- ‘Trans Forest Alignment’
15. Joy Division- ‘A Means To An End’
16. Com Truise- ‘Sundripped’
17. Broadcast- ‘You And Me In Time’
18. Chairman Kato- ‘Gemini Eyes (Teasmith version)’

The Wildfire EP is out on Pictures Music this Valentine’s Day.

Links:
www.myspace.com/chairmankato
www.picturesmusic.co.uk

RECOMMENDED: Kowton - Drunk On Sunday/She Don’t Jack [Idle Hands]

2011-02-02T16:06:00.002Z

In some ways it’s odd that Joe Cowton has been swiftly filed alongside the bass music masses, when the majority of his tracks share far more with the slo-mo experiments of Berlin’s Workshop label than with anything that’s evolved from the London or Bristol scenes. That said, it’s in part due to his history in dubstep and the labels he’s been associated with, with a stunning first release on Martin Clark’s Keysound imprint and an equally impressive follow-up on Idle Hands. And there are certain traits in his music that warrant immediate comparisons with his UK contemporaries: though they’re recognisable as house, Kowton’s tracks are dark, slow and spacious to the extent that they generate the same feeling of creeping dread that characterised early dubstep. His beats, meanwhile, are swung to the point that they sound liable to fall apart at any time, a legacy of two-step’s latent influence.

Where his music sets itself apart though, not simply from London or Bristol but from anywhere, is its sultry, almost coy attitude; you can practically hear hips start to move as ‘Stasis (G Mix)’ swings into action for the first time. And his tracks are brooding rather than simply moody; instead of standing in the corner, eyes-down-hood-up, they’re akin to dancers who are obviously, almost painfully conscious of every move their bodies make. That aspect was thrown into sharp, silhouetted relief on last year’s awe-inspiring ‘Basic Music Knowledge’, where each of the few elements within the track – a handful of percussive tics, a pair of tightly locked bass and melody lines – flex like individual muscles on a lean frame.

This latest 12” for Idle Hands goes one better. Like the rest of his output it’s unerringly dark in tone, but subtly increases the pace and dancefloor heft. With ‘She Don’t Jack’, it’s possible to imagine it doing serious damage to peak time club crowds – something you certainly wouldn’t have assumed of his previous music. It’s tough to expect anything so stripped back and plain odd to hit dancers like a depth charge, but then it’s also remarkably difficult to envisage any other reaction. ‘Drunk On Sunday’ is closer in tone to some of Workshop’s valium-addled obscurities, less immediate but just as precociously brilliant; here sub-bass takes on an unearthly sense of physicality, at times threatening to overwhelm even on headphones, beneath dissonant winds that whistle through its derelict structure.

Another essential 12” on a label that’s fast turning into one of the UK’s best, from a producer already several leagues ahead of most of the pack, irrespective of location.

Words: Rory Gibb
Out: Now

Kowton - Drunk On Sunday [Idle Hands]

Kowton’s also just recorded the latest mix for mnml ssgs, featuring his own material alongside druggy slow motion tracks from Instra:mental, Szare and more. Get it here: http://mnmlssg.blogspot.com/2011/02/ssg-special-kowton.html

Link:
www.twitter.com/kowton

DOWNLOAD: Mickey Pearce - Mickey's Car Boot [Blunted Robots]

2011-02-01T17:06:00.006Z

We've made no bones of our love for the work of Brackles & Shorstuff over the past few years, interviewing both and keeping in regular contact since the early days of our webspace. To celebrate the launch of their own home on the internet (complete with resplendent artwork courtesy of Wigflex boss man Spam Chop), the dynamic duo are giving a way a free EP from the first artist to release on the label, the faceless, Mickey Pearce. Its three tracks of bootlegs reportedly created by robbing "the work of people more fortunate than himself and passing it off as his own."

Working over Ms Dynamite and Redlight's 'What You Talking About' and JME's 'CD is Dead' with a bonus clip that attacks Wiley's 'It's Wiley' (who according to RWD mag is back making music ready for a release once again on Big Dada) in his own manic, big big drum, ADHD infested style it's time for Mickey to step up from the shadow's joining the ranks of his Blunted Robots brethren, forever immortalised on these here pages.

DOWNLOAD: BLRD001 - Mickey's Car Boot
(when you subscribe to the BR mailing list/previews below)

Look out for forthcoming Blunted Robots material from Brackles, Dark Sky and DJ Dom before the end of March.

Link:
www.bluntedrobots.com

INTERVIEW: Kevin McPhee [nakedlunch/Idle Hands]

2011-01-28T10:56:00.003Z

Having lost count of amount of times we’ve read or even described someone’s music ourselves as being subtle, it begrudgingly seems perfectly apt when describing the work of Canadian producer Kevin McPhee. Built from a different more placated mould, his work, which we’ve been hearing in fits and spurts since the 3rd quarter of 2010, is finally hitting shops at the beginning of the year. Releasing on two of our most revered imprints, the Irish [nakedlunch] and the Bristol based Idle Hands (which is soon to be a physical record shop just off Stokes Croft in the city centre, seemingly filling the void left by Rooted Record’s closure last month) stands him in good stead from the off but it’s the fragility and soul of his music on tracks like the as yet unsigned ‘Try’ and ‘This Feeling’ that really connect.

His drum work also shouts just as loud as his twisted use of vocal snippets and samples with the [nakedlunch] signed ‘Bridges’ being a great example of what we’re attempting to shout about. Constructed from homespun and self recorded samples it traverses a drum pattern not a million miles away from the work of Mount Kimbie, but focuses a little harder on the punch of the kick drum, using those bitcrushed scratches and ticks around it to frame the resonance of the low frequencies. A track like ‘House 44,’ not included on his mix - an introductory production showcase of 100% McPhee material – is a perfect example of McPhee at his percussive best, all insistent thump underneath whilst a swamp of textures takes over the top layers hypnotically.

He really has nailed his sound deep, almost oceanic sound palette and after a bout of complementary AIM conversations we shot him some questions, playing on our own interest in his background as much as his music and he delivered our 66th Sonic Router mix. Split, in McPhee’s own words, between “slower and faster tempo tracks,” it’s a perfect and concise showcase of a truly magnificent talent.

Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info?

Sure, My name is Kevin McPhee, I am a producer from Toronto and I try to produce somewhat danceable music anywhere between the 110bpm to 140bpm range. I have releases forthcoming on [nakedlunch] and Idle hands early this year. I really enjoy collecting and playing vinyl and cutting dubplates.

Outside of music who are you? What do you do on the daily?

To be honest I don’t do too much. I buy too many records, drink too much coffee and look at too many pictures of obese cats. I also go to school full-time.

How did you first get into making music? What was it that infected you to do so?

I got into making music around the time I got my first guitar when I was 12. Rather than rely on others, I wanted to make tracks all on my own so I began experimenting with Reason and soon after I began to focus on sample-based production. It seems to have stayed that way ever since, however; I’m ever so solely attempting to move away from this approach to music production.

What’s your production set up like?

I use Logic, a turntable for sampling, a mic for recording percussion, a tape deck for adding some real stinky grit, and whatever guitar pedals I’m able to steal from my brother when he is not around.

How would you describe your sound?
Hmm, well for the longest time I felt I never had a sound, and the more I thought about trying to make things fit a “McPhee Sound” the more rigid my tracks became. Now that I don’t really focus on one set style anymore I feel like my sound is kind of coming together for me naturally.I tend to rely on vocals a fair bit, some may say too much, but I feel there is a lot one can do with vocals and I feel I can still get a lot of use out of them. That being said, I would like to begin to produce less vocal-driven tracks, as I feel that I’m at the point where I can produce equally interesting percussion-based tracks as well.

I’ve always had an interest in making tracks sound as organic as possible. I try to spend as much time choosing samples as I do arranging them. I feel it’s one thing to be able to make an interesting beat, but it’s another to be able to make one that sounds like a whole unit, that is, all the sounds compliment each other in such a way that it appears as though the beat is simply a loop cut from a previous recording.

Kevin McPhee - Get In With You -[nakedlunch]

You share an affinity to a lot of the more subtle producers out there. I can hear a bit of Actress’ muffles in ‘House 44.’ What kind of music do you listen to in your own time?

I tend to listen to a lot of electronic music, but I try to keep my mind open to everything. I only recently started listening to house so that has begun to take up a lot of my listening time as there is just so much great music out there. Once I started listening to dance music, I kind of pushed my previous musical interests to the side, I feel as though this wasn’t as beneficial as I thought it would as I began to take inspiration from only one source. Now I’ve slowly begun to take up listening to just about anything. Whether it be jazz, folk, or ambient music, I’ve learned that there exists merits to all genres, it’s just a matter of being able to push aside your initial inhibitions to get at them in some cases.

What is an inspiration for you?

As lame as it sounds, pretty much just other music. I’m not going to lie and say the wind on a crisp fall day helps me make music or something like that. I just tend to find music I enjoy, note what intrigues me about it, and then try to respond to it in such a way that appeals even more to what it is that I’d like to hear out of a song. Sometimes it works, usually it doesn’t, but I have fun regardless.

Whats your native Toronto like for music? Are there many likeminded peoples out that way?

To be honest, I don’t know much about what’s going on in Toronto, I mean, there is certainly a wide variety of nights, some focusing on the more dancefloor-oriented style of music, while others offer a wider range of sound, however, I don’t tend to go out often so I can’t give an accurate description of what’s happening here. There is certainly a large group of like-minded people here. They just may not be as vocal as others. I think that’s what really gave me the push to begin taking production seriously and actually send songs to labels. I’ve had such great support from everyone here and I can’t stress enough how thankful I am for having like-minded individuals backing what I’m trying to do.

Are there any producers you rate that the world should know about? Any peeps not getting the props you think they deserve?

Three producers come to mind (In no particular order): Klaus, XI and TMSV. These three guys offer a wide range of sound and I feel as though this year each one of these producers will get the recognition they truly deserve. Klaus offers a bizarre in-between of ambient yet horrible deep and emotive music. I try to include at least one Klaus piece in all my sets as he was really the first artist I interacted with that offered tracks that worked well with my own. For the longest time I would simply mix my own songs together, however, talking to him caused me to realise that there exists a lot of music out there that fits with what I’m doing. He’s had quite an impact on not only my Djing but how I approach production as well.

XI is just in his own world right now, you can hear just about everything in his music, yet it doesn’t sound forced or cluttered. He is taking previously established styles of music and flipping them on their heads, it’s really inspiring to see such a positive response to his music as it suggests that people are still interested in hearing complex yet still dance floor friendly (deadly?) music.

TMSV is giving the deeper side of dubstep a serious kick in its butt. I think I’ve wrenched my neck a few times just bobbing along to his simple yet hard hitting style of music. It’s cool to see that people are still down to hear dubstep that doesn't resort to clichés or mid-range drops.

You’ve got 12”s forthcoming on [nakedlunch] and Idle Hands. Can you tell us a bit about that and shed some light on what else people can expect from you in 2011...

Of course… the [nakedlunch] EP has been in production for a long time now. I think it was around this time last year that I sent them my first set of tracks (‘Get in With You’ was among them). Since then, I’ve tried to work closely with the label as I felt at that point in time I was only just beginning to explore what it was that I wanted to hear in my songs. Micky offered up great criticism (something people tend to try to avoid) and has had an enormous impact on every aspect of what it is that I’m trying to do with my music. The EP provides some slower tempo stuff (‘Bridges’) and more mellow tracks (‘Get in with You’). The LV remix is a great take on my track as they’ve created an upbeat interpretation that puts the vocal in the back seat and makes room for a seriously memorable bassline.

Kevin McPhee - Get In With You (LV Remix) - [nakedlunch]

After the [nakedlunch] release I’ve got a 12” coming out on the Bristol-based Idle Hands label, I had got in touch with Kowton back in the fall and sent him over a few songs. He put me in touch with Chris from Idle Hands and soon after he expressed interest in doing a release. I am very pleased with the tracks he chose as I feel they are a nice contrast to each other and are two tracks I feel that are really a lot of fun to mix, yet still work well on their own. Being that ‘Sleep’ was my first attempt at making slower tempo music, it means a lot to have others supporting it.

I feel that I am very fortunate to have my first two releases on labels that I had followed closely before I began to take producing seriously. The support given to me by both label owners and those I’ve met as a result of them have helped me become more confident in my music than I was this time last year. I hope people enjoy the releases as much as I enjoyed the whole process of making them.

Tell us a little bit about the mix you’ve put together for us…

Well the mix is just a showcase of my own productions. Although it’s a relatively short mix, I feel as though it offers up an all-encompassing approach to my music. I included both slower and faster tempo tracks as I feel that they exist as one style, rather than two separate entities. I made sure to incorporate a few tracks off both the forthcoming releases as mentioned above, and also some unreleased bits as well. Pretty much all the tracks in here are “exclusive” as this is really the first recording I’ve done and the first time most will have heard anything by me. I hope people enjoy it.

Any words of wisdom, for our readers?

It’s very easy to sell yourself short and simply settle when it comes to releasing/producing music. I think more people are concerned with simply getting their music out than they are with trying to use the process of releasing music as a way to improve your overall knowledge of production or how to conduct one’s self when it comes to promotion. I feel as though it is better to wait and approach a label you can see yourself on, rather than offer a lack-luster product to anyone who’s willing to listen - or even worse, having great music that goes unheard simply because it was never given the opportunity to be heard. That being said, there is always a chance to change things. I feel as though you are only as good as your last production, so people should always aim to improve upon what it is that they are doing. Don’t simply sell yourself short for instant satisfaction.

::

DOWNLOAD: Kevin McPhee – Sonic Router Mix #66

Tracklist:

Kevin McPhee - I Will [???]
Kevin McPhee - Try [???]
Kevin McPhee - Sleep [Forthcoming Idle Hands]
Kevin McPhee - Bridges [Forthcoming [nakedlunch]]
Kevin McPhee - Sucre [???]
Kevin McPhee - Be [???]
Kevin McPhee - This Feeling [???]
Kevin McPhee - Get in With You (LV Remix) [Forthcoming [nakedlunch]]

Link:
http://soundcloud.com/kevinmcphee

RECOMMENDED: FaltyDL - Hip Love/Jamie XX Remix [Ramp]

2011-01-27T17:50:00.002Z

It’s deceptively easy to get swept away in the constant barrage of new material coming from the post-garage/dubstep/UK-bass axis. Individual stand out pieces of music often end up fading into the background in favour of an unbroken mass of newness. The end result is a feeling of quantity over quality, or at the very least a serious case of split attention span. That feeling has escalated over the last couple of years as the scene’s increasingly gone global and split off into a thousand different strands. But once in a while something comes along that forces you to sit back and take stock for a little while, or holds your undivided love and attention for long enough to ignore the masses of sound streaming past on either side.

Drew Lustman’s music under his FaltyDL moniker is one of those rare things. Nothing he’s released thus far has fallen below the ‘utterly essential’ benchmark, largely because it so rarely stands still. Rather than remaining content to churn out 12” after 12” of re-arranged but essentially identical sounds, everything he’s put out so far - from the US/UK hybrid garage of Love Is A Liability to Endeavour’s restrained house experiments – has stood totally apart from its predecessors. In essence, Lustman is one of the very few musicians operating within this sphere that use their influences like gene pools to draw upon for individual flashes of inspiration, rather than allowing them to restrict the breadth of their ambitions.

That’s the reason he appears to be so strikingly original – with only a love of Luke Vibert and early breakcore binding everything together, his shifts between tempo passing those sounds through various different filters: house, garage, dubstep, electronica. ‘Regret’, his forthcoming contribution to Hotflush’s Back & 4th label compilation, is one of the most sophisticated examples of that approach so far. After allowing a bass-less breakbeat to gather momentum and intensity over a backdrop of swelling ambience, Lustman finally allows all it’s pent up tension to release in a deft two-step groove. It’s both utterly energizing and curiously relaxing, as though by suspending hyperspeed drums in mid-air he strips them of their grounded, floor-filling effect. It’s a similar trick to the one used by ambient junglists like LTJ Bukem and Source Direct - accelerating breakbeats to the point at which they’re faster than the body’s metabolism; when, as Simon Reynolds writes, “rhythm itself becomes a susurrating, soothing stream of ambience.”

And Lustman certainly deserves to be ranked at the same level as the pioneers. He’s not merely regurgitating his influences - he’s remoulding them into the shape of a unique and exciting cross-Atlantic narrative. His new single ‘Hip Love’ for Ramp (his last before fantastic new album You Stand Uncertain is released on Planet Mu) is ample evidence of that, as it’s probably his finest single track so far. Once again set around rapid-fire programmed beats that form a curiously downbeat backdrop, he playfully sets shards of brass and a yearning vocal sample to ricochet across its surface, occasionally colliding in glorious flashes of harmony. The end result is at once exhilarating and exhausting, and imbued with more emotion (both implicit and explicit) than almost anything yet to have emerged from the fray surrounding dubstep. Yeah, it’s that good.

On the flipside, Jamie XX’s remix would always have struggled to match the stunning original, and it’s to his credit that he doesn’t attempt to. Rather, he builds an entirely different sort of track around it base elements, a thick drumfunk that swings unsteadily back and forth before dropping to the floor. It’s a surprisingly unique take on bass-heavy floor music, and bodes well for his upcoming Gil Scott Heron remix album.

Words: Rory Gibb
Out: 28th February 2011

FaltyDL – Hip Love [Ramp]

Link:
http://faltydl.com

RECOMMENDED EVENT: Bloc Weekend 2011

2011-01-27T15:48:00.001Z

Bloc Weekend 2010 was a real eye opener. Through friends you hear the ruminations of one of the weirdest most absurd sounding festivals in the calendar, and what you get is exactly what you imagine, a hardstyle no messing tribute to the multi-national elite of electronic music set in, well, set in a 1960s hardstyle holiday park. The novelty of raving in Butlin’s never leaves you, but it’s the quality of the programming that keeps you grounded amongst the colour, indoor burger king and giant Bob The Builder statues. Last year’s festival was a true test of personal intensity with highlights too numerous to attempt to recall.

This year the party returns to Minehead on the 11-13th March with a lineup that really does read like a roll call for inventive futurist musicians in 2011. Topped by Aphex Twin and Magnetic Man, two acts that given the notoriety of the former and the chart success of the latter need no introduction, the festival boasts stages from likeminded people and kin like Bleep.com, Resident Advisor, Numbers, Subloaded, Plex, Outlook Fesitval and Mary Anne Hobbs featuring all manner of names from Moderat and Four Tet to Jamie XX, Roska, Shackleton and so many many many more.
Without echoing the epic lineup for this year’s festival we urge you to go here and see what your missing.

It really is more than alot.

The Bloc team have also uploaded a selection of audio content from Blocs gone by to their particularly functional site. Recommended listening goes to Pinch’s ’09 set, Model 500’s set from last year and the brand new and exclusive Venetian Snares track, ‘There Now You Have Syphilis’ which you can stream here:

Link:
http://www.blocweekend.com

RECOMMENDED: 2562 - Aquatic Family Affair/This Is Hardcore [When In Doubt]

2011-01-26T17:01:00.003Z

Over the last two or three years there really hasn’t been someone whose command and deployment of rhythm has so completely enthralled me as much as the man behind 2562, Dave Huismans. His music, whether under the aforementioned numerical postcode guise or his more heavy handed house orientated moniker, A Made Up Sound, always brings a pang of excitement and that palpable thump to any soundsystem its played on. Whilst other producers might choose to experiment more with the lower frequencies, relying on drawn out 808 kicks or tremulant low end to work the soundsystem, Huismans just further hones his craft, working overtime on his drum lines. Bringing the bump and snap like no one else, his tracks under either name are instantly recognisable.

‘Aquatic Family Affair’ and ‘This Is Hardcore’ are the first beats under the 2562 moniker to surface since Huismans’ last album under the name, 2009’s Unbalance – if you overlook his ‘The Wind Up’ track on Modeselektor’s Modeselektion Vol 1., which we are doing here to create some kind of elemental form of drama. They’re also the first 2562 material to not be housed on Pinch’s influential Tectonic imprint, with Huismans’ instead birthing a brand new label subjectively called When In Doubt, for the release of this single – 300 ltd edition blue vinyl 10”s. It's reportedly a prelude to a brand new 2562 album coming later this year.

‘Aquatic Family Affair’ should really be trademarked; it’s slamming kick drum, swung snares and chord interplay is classic 2562: his synths sirening up and out of earshot in the drum heavy breakdowns before he lets his hi hats fly and the beat rolls out again. His measurement and attention to the dancefloor make the rhythm omnipresent, its broken shuffle is destined to push your shoulders out at regular integers as the dry top on the kick drum works your ears perfectly, its base hitting you roughly in the chest. ‘This Is Hardcore’ is an ultimately darker beast, built on a brooding kick drum/bass stab pattern. Loop sampling keys and vinyl atmos in a similar manner to the way Addison Groove does on tracks like ‘It’s Got Me,’ gives it that eerie, anxious edge which suits the power and mannerism of the drum line to a tee. Huismans’ balances out the weight of the bass parts with little percussive flourishes and it’s those shakers and fills that keep popping out on repeat listens.

Two heavyweight cuts that suggest 2562’s prevalence, when the wider internet was loving off more on A Made Up Sound, was never in doubt.

Words: Oli Marlow
Out: 7th February 2011

2562 – Aquatic Family Affair [When In Doubt]

Link:
www.myspace.com/2562dub

RECOMMENDED: LHF – EP2: The Line Path [Keysound]

2011-01-24T17:57:00.005Z

LHF are a shadowy organisation at best and to be honest, that’s just the way we like it. Comprised of a production crew that’s about seven members strong, they keep it tight and have built a world of their own that seems both far-reaching and contained in itself all at once. Describe rather eloquently by Keysound boss Blackdown as sounding like “Sun Ra's hijacked Rinse FM and is using it to communicate with the heavens. Buried inside one corner of the LHF collective is a junglist fighting his way out: these guys have got drumz. Then there's another part of them that is lost in LA, their wonky beats falling off of the grid.” The Line Path EP is split between producers Amen Ra and Double Helix, two of the group’s core members.

Double Helix keeps the bumping rhythmic dubstep patterns going like on the previous EP, Enter In Silence. The horn samples give ‘Chamber of Light’ a Wu Tang shaped shadow when they hit, well Wu Tang if they also featured Mala on the buttons, plus the drums and the deployment of space are as infectious as ever. Double Helix has got a way with programming that really gets things bumping, tablas, woodblocks and all manner of percussive nuggets just keep rolling. On his second cut, ‘Bass 2 Dark,’ bursts of jabbering bass synths hit out of the rhythmic shuffle and gloriously.

Amen Ra’s track ‘Candy Rain’ sounds like it could be taken from the Brainfeeder stable, it’s got a similar de-tuned, warped and melted vibe that a lot of Samiyam’s work showcases. The unlikely coupling of what sounds like an accordion (or a synthesized version of it), steppy rhythms and the warm, lazy bass tones give the track a bright if lilting funk. It’s undoubtedly an EP highlight rounding the thing off with a techy dystopian vision on ‘Trifle;’ all dusty driving synths and gritty textures played like the soundtrack to a sci-fi race scene set in the ruins of Detroit.

Words: James Balf
Out: Now

Links:
www.myspace.com/raizms
www.myspace.com/helixier
Facebook Group

::

TOMORROW NIGHT: Keysound Recordings rush the Boiler Room:

Dusk & Blackdown ft Maxwell D
LV ft Joshua Idehen
Amen Ra (LHF) btb Vibezin

Watch it live here this Tuesday from 8-11pm.

http://boilerroom.tv/live

RECOMMENDED: xxxy – You Always Start It/Ordinary Things [Ten Thousand Yen]

2011-01-24T13:37:00.002Z

Fifth in the series of colourful 10” from Doc Daneeka’s Ten Thousand Yen label comes xxxy, whose white platter lands hot on the heels of Didz & Chico, C.R.S.T. and Julio Bashmore. The two tracks from the Manchester based producer have been floating around for some time, in fact the A-side, ‘You Always Start It,’ closes his instalment in our mix series, published way back in December ‘09. He’s also had releases for the likes of Infrasonics, Formant, Fortified Audio and was one of the producers highlighted on fabric’s Elevator Music compilation. Dude’s definitely got a way with bleeped-out, rushing garage infused house variants, and that’s what gets showcased here.

It’s the building pads over the ‘dubstep’ drum patterns that get ‘You Always Start It’ moving. Choppy vocals and relentlessly energetic synth squiggles come to a head with the pads in a crescendo that should make your hairs stand on end. Things get slowed down to a house pace for ‘Ordinary Things’ but the vibe is similar, rushing synth bursts, bleepy arpeggios that sound like Mario having a psychedelic meltdown after to many mushrooms and chopped up vocal ticks that bounce back and forth while a 4x4 kick roots it to the floor. It’s all pretty functional, there’s a thickness to the production that marks xxxy out, especially when you consider the shelf life of both these cuts at this time plus, it sure as hell works as a joyous dance floor pick me up.

Words: James Balf
Out: Today

Links:
http://tenthousandyen.bandcamp.com/
http://soundcloud.com/xxxy

INTERVIEW: Royal T [Butterz]

2011-01-21T11:08:00.012Z

Grime has been finding its feet again recently. Whilst the pop charts have been under an onslaught of 4x4 electro house beats with emcees riding the pulse, the underground roughness has always been there, bubbling under the surface and exploding out in peaks. Making some incredibly notable noise right about now a new wave of producers are coming through and taking back the scene; sounding fierce and releasing physical product. It’s all pretty refreshing to see the coverage the resurgence is getting with players like Butterz crew Elijah & Skilliam leading the charge from the regular slots on Rinse FM.

Releasing music on the Butterz imprint is Southampton based producer, Royal T. He caught a lot of people’s attention last year with his beat ‘1UP’ on No Hats No Hoods, a track that samples Nintendo’s pixelated flagbearer Mario, had a top quality vocal by P Money and even got spat on by Dizzee Rascal live on radio. After releasing a couple of other soundsystem heaters like ‘Beat Fighter’ and his ‘Hot Ones Remix’ he’s about to roll out the Orangeade EP on Butterz.

Bringing the rave back to grime T is taking his sound back to the dancefloor rather than the mixtape, putting down his gaming controllers and making some hyped-up-funk-infused grime beats that hit hard. With other remixes floating around for the likes of TRC and Wiley, that have a serious flex to them, building heavily on the garage vibe, he’s proving that he’s no one trick pony, showing he’s adept at tackling different approaches with vigour.

We caught up with Royal T, grabbing the chance to premiere his new ‘Special Stage Mix’ (aka Sonic Router Mix #65) as we did it...

Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from what do you get up to on the daily?

I'm Mark Taylor, also known as Royal-T and I’m a Grime producer from Southampton, England. I can't swim, I’ve never watched a Star Wars or Lord of the rings film in my life, I love my football, my beer and I will kick your arse at FIFA if need be.

What got you into grime in the first place?

This question's always hard for me to answer because I always struggle to think of a definitive moment. I feel like I’ve been listening to grime all my life. My earliest memories of listening to it was from stealing random garage and Sidewinder tape packs from my brother’s bedroom when he was out - also I was one of the first people in my primary school class to have the first So Solid Crew album, I walked into the playground thinking I was some gangster. I took the typical garage into grime journey of listening before really understanding what grime even was. I was always that 'go to guy' for all the grime music at school on our Nokia's sending random tunes through bluetooth.

How did you get into making music, did you jump right into grime beats or have you dabbled elsewhere?

My Uncle gave my brother and me a copy of Fruity Loops 3 when we first got our computer. I've never been musically trained or anything, I didn't take up music for my GCSEs so I've basically orchestrated everything I’ve ever made just from ear. I've been making grime beats ever since I started. There's been times in the past where I might have experimented with tempo or styles but even those tunes had that grime influence.

What’s your production set-up like?

I just make and mix down tunes in my bedroom. The process from bedroom into bedroom/studio started from when I got a part time job. I saved up to buy some big monitor speakers, a MacBook, some decks and everything else and that's all I’ve been doing since. I installed Windows on my MacBook and use that side just for Fruity Loops. My Dad and me constructed some little workspace for myself with everything I need on it. I bought a double bed recently and now I practically have no walking space in my room at all. It's all good though, it's for the music but I no longer have any space for activities (step-brother’s joke).

How do you go about laying a track down?

Most of the time I have an idea or an influence in my head already, so I’ll try to put that into Fruity like putting ideas from pen to paper and then just go from there. It's just like finishing a painting by colouring over a drawing I’ve made. The time it takes for me to finish a track varies but it means I can come back to the project a few days later with completely fresh ideas. On the new Fruity you can see how long you've spent on a project and most my projects average out at about 8 hours when finished now. That does includes all the time for mix downs and for all the time I’m not even making the tune and just browsing the internet or playing Football Manager with Fruity Loops open.

Where are you getting your inspiration from right now?

I'm only really going through old CDs I’ve found in my house at the moment, like loads of old school garage compilations, Oxide and Neutrino's first album and a lot of Mike Skinner's material. My mum even came and sat down with me the other day when I was making a tune, telling me the bits she did and didn't like. She's my greatest critic; she'll tell me if she doesn't like a song I’m making. A good indication of knowing whether she likes a tune or not is that if she ain't dancing to the beat when she comes in the room, hoovering or cleaning, it's probably not that good.

You’re really bringing back that skippy ravey grime vibe with a load of your tracks, there are some garage influences creeping in, some nice 8-bar switch ups and some tough twisted drops. Is it something that you thought was missing when you first started making beats?

Yeah in the last couple of years I felt that there really was a lack of danceable or club standard grime tunes about, it’s just iPod music for teenagers - nothing really musically stood out and everything was about the MC and his mixtape. To breakthrough as a producer it used to be all about how many vocals you could rack up. Due to my location this was nearly impossible for me because I could hardly meet MCs or be introduced to anyone as I literally came in the scene on my ones. The only people who would listen to me and my music were DJs. So I was making music for them to play and I adapted my sound to something no one else really was making at the time. I took a bit of a shortcut but it paid off eventually.

Your new EP, Orangeade, is out right now; tell us a bit about those tracks...

‘Orangeade’ is just me having complete fun with grime without having to parade it as dubstep or ‘trap music’ in disguise. I just made the grime I think we all used to and still do love to hear. I made ‘1UP,’ ‘Hot Ones,’ my ‘Air Bubble Remix’ [original by Terror Danjah] all with the same vibe. It was my sort of statement to the scene about us nearly forgetting our sound. ‘Orangeade’ came about because Teddy mentioned on Twitter that 'the best grime tune around at the moment is Gucci Mane's ‘Lemonade’ instrumental.' I just thought 'eff this' and ‘Orangeade’ was born.

Your remix of TRC’s ‘Oo Aa Ee’ is too much, what made you go for that garage flex? It’s a pretty interesting meeting of minds when a bassline producer makes a grime beat then a grime producer flips it into a garage track...

Thank you. Well, DOK made a really good grime remix so me making another grime remix wasn't really going to achieve anything. At that time I’d been making loads of garage drum patterns, messing around with swing and thin cut drums. Now, going on with what I was saying about the grime sound progression, I notice that people are starting to clock and re use the 2-step formula which I’m completely happy with, but I’m just enjoying doing the complete opposite every time. I like to think people attach music to memories so I want to make tracks that not only make you nod your head, but take you on a little journey at the same time.

You’ve had some bangers with the OGz (P Money, Blacks, Little Dee, etc), ‘Hot Ones’ and ‘1 Up’ where big ones for me. You’ve got some good chemistry together. What’s it like working with them and have you got more in the works with those guys?

I've been in contact with Blacks for a while now. He was the first well known MC to really listen to what I had to offer musically and he stuck by me. My first time having anything played on Logan Sama's show was a Blacks vocal. I had only spoken to P Money once or twice before he vocalled ‘1UP’ and I’m so pleased to see him go further, he deserves it. We both have the same ideas and focus on how we want our songs to sound like. We have tons of tunes on the way. Otherwise there are plenty of sets you can download with him spitting on my tracks.

What other MCs are you feeling right now?

Someone who has stood out for me recently is Merky Ace. I think he's sick. We have a tune together pending release which should be about soon. He should have a huge year I hope, along with Kozzie and the rest of the MCs that have had a buzz in 2010 and I always look forward to hearing any new MIK material too. I always carry his vocals in my DJing playlists.

Talk to us about Butterz, how did you get involved, what tracks got their attention and what’s it like working with those guys? There seems to be a cool community vibe to it all with producers hooking up for collaborations and remixes all the time.

The first time I ever got any sort of radio play with my music was around 2 to 3 years ago on a University Radio Station by two students who go by the names of… you guessed it, Elijah and Skilliam. They played my old ‘World War 4 Remix’ that I made ages ago. Elijah was the first person I sent ‘1UP’ to and he aired it on radio before anyone else did so I actually owe a lot to them both for their support. I think he still has that e-mail somewhere. We've stayed in contact the whole time exchanging ideas and just working really so it was only right somewhere down the line that we were bound to have some sort of project together. The funny thing is even after a nice 2010 we haven't even got started!

You’ve remixed Yasmin’s ‘On My Own’, it’s got to be one of the first commercial grime remixes to appear in god knows how long. How did that come about and what was it like messing with that kind of music compared to what you’re normally used to?

I was really proud to see the reaction it got by the people on twitter, soundcloud and everywhere as there were some cool names on the other remixes but my track achieved more hits in two days than any of the other remixes did in something like a month. It was great to finally work on a track with a female vocalist officially as I’ve always been too lazy to write tracks with vocalists before. The great thing is I didn't have to change my sound to get it heard. I kept it true to my sound and how I would have liked to make it and its bloody great to see it get recognition from other audiences.

There is a sick mix you’ve done of Wiley’s ‘It’s Wiley’ floating about right now that’s sounding large. You’ve got that garage rhythm going on and a load of cheeky bits that flip old Wiley signifiers back into the mix. How did that all come together?

Elijah got into contact with Prodigal, who did the original, about getting a remix sorted by me and I was a lucky git and got the acapella. I actually started the tune on Christmas day too. Unfortunately Father Christmas didn't bring me anything to keep me occupied that day and there's only so much enjoyment I could get out of Shower Gel and Deodorant combos. I really wanted to push the boundaries again and almost make it a tribute to Wiley and the Eski era. I was listening to a lot of old Wiley sets and the famous Wiley ‘Grimetapes’ collection in preparation where he was spitting on a lot of beats you wouldn't normally hear him on, like some nice old school dark garage, 4x4 and early grime stuff and it had been a while since I’d heard him on anything like that so i thought 'why not?'. It's really set the pace for 2011 for me.

What releases have you got on the horizon?

I've got the ‘Orangeade’ vinyls floating about now and the digital version will be due around the end of January. The Yasmin remix will be getting a release with the original single and the Wiley remix will be getting a full vinyl release scheduled for early February hopefully. Then onto the next few months I have some unreleased Butterz material to unleash and I have a couple of tracks with P Money and Blacks on my hard drive begging to be heard. I cannot wait for everyone to hear them.

Any words of wisdom, for our readers?

Stay focused on what you want to achieve and do whatever it takes to get to your goal. If you want to be able to move forward, sometimes, the simplest way to take the first step is by changing your whole outlook. As soon as you're able to accept that you may not always be right, you'll already be on the right track.

Oh and Nando's is overrated, don't believe the hype.

::

DOWNLOAD: Royal T – Sonic Router Mix #65

Tracklist:

0. Sonic 2 - Emerald Hill Zone
1. Royal-T - Chaos Emerald
2. JME - Shut Up And Dance
3. Royal-T - Shut The Funk Up
4. Royal-T - Bounce
5. Spooky - Spartan (DOK Remix)
6. TRC - Oo Aa Ee (Royal-T Remix)
7. S-X - Woooo Riddim (DJ Q Remix)
8. S-X - Woooo Riddim (Royal-T Remix)
9. D Double E - Bad To The Bone
10. Oxide - Nuff Of Dem Watch Me (Instrumental)
11. Wiley - It’s Wiley (Royal-T Remix)
12. Royal-T - Orangeade VIP
13. Swindle - Mood Swings
14. Yasmin - On My Own (Royal-T Remix)
15. Mr Slash - 1999
16. Royal-T - Royal Rumble
17. The Streets - Skills On Toast

Words: James Balf
Photo: Rob Vanderman

Links:
www.myspace.com/royaltbeats
www.twitter.com/royaltmusic

RECOMMENDED: Surf Kill

2011-01-20T11:18:00.005Z

Anyone who’s followed Belgian producer Dynooo, either through his music or though his social networking, will know that there’s a strong aesthetic that runs through him. Posting as many animated gifs as he does snapshots of 70s style home living, there’s a strong sense of looking back to create his art. Its homespun and always rich in colour; take the artwork for his Gum Dragon EP - which caught out ear back in April - it’s an almost symmetrical collage built out of patterns, textures and photographs of forests that invites your eye in further with its layered sense of depth.

A few months back we got wind of a new label project Dynooo set up with a crew of likeminded people. Called Surf Kill, it came to life with a split single from Dynooo and Cupp Cave, a fellow Belgian producer whose tracks on Dynooo’s SR mix stood out masterfully. Delightfully messy, it was awesome; full as much of stumbling drums and synthesized swirls as boogie and funk it was a tight statement of intent - in keeping with what the world knew of their music. Surf Kill 002 however, was a handmade monochrome zine crafted by Dynooo. Only 50 were made.

“Surf Kill is a label me and some friends started,” Dynooo told us after we got all excited when he brought word of new projects and started hassling him on email. “I guess you could say we offer an alternative approach to music and presenting it: we print and design our own cover art, put out zines and create visuals filmed with VHS cams. DIY has always been the ideology.”

“As far as genres, there's nothing we won't do, he continues. “The first release was kind of on some bass music; deep and synthy offbeat stuff. Distributed worldwide by Rush Hour we're lucky to say it near sold out. We've just now added two upcoming geniuses to our roster (Munch Room and the unknown Ssaliva), each bringing forth rather minimal, feel-good as well as desolate soundpieces.”

Dynooo’s words definitely hit the nail on the head. Munch Room’s self titled mini album (SK004) is incredibly moving. Like a study of drawn out tones and processing it’s a beatless collection of sonic ideas. From the bit crushed, engine deep rumbles on ‘Toyota Dreams,’ woozy keyboard tones on ‘Hoop Girl’ to the awkward, juttering noise of ‘Cross Colours’ it all has an unweilding charm. Like a fuzzy un-hyped experiment, that actually has production value.

Meanwhile SK003 is a 22 track album project called Mercury Coast by the anonymous Ssaliva. Sharing an affinity to the early Bibio albums, where it was just endless torrents of guitar loops, Ssaliva’s work feels furiously DIY. The tone of the guitars is at times choked by the recording equipment, but the intent of the loops really grows out of that. You know how a lot of people (myself included) describe Actress’ music as sounding muffled and scuffed, as if your outside the club listening to the rhythms through the walls? It’s that same kind of thing here and tracks like ‘Laps,’ ‘School Rave,’ ‘Witchrack’ and ‘Red Sky & White Floor’ seem to shine out amongst the roughness, their droning voices amplified again by the space and static they employ.

Words: Oli Marlow
Out: Both albums are available now via Surf Kill

Link:
http://surfkill.tk

RECOMMENDED: XI – Gamma Rain/Medicate [Orca]

2011-01-19T16:41:00.006Z

We’ve been down with XI for some time over here at SR. The producer from Toronto last year released music under the two lettered moniker on Immerse, Surefire Sound, Formant and Surface Tension as well as commemorating the very first plate for Orca Recordings – on which he returns for this, the label’s first release of 2011. Also working under the Ultragamma guise on some more contorted pseudo hip hop/electronic stuff it’s been his heavier handed tracks like ‘Ghost’ and ‘Slippin’ that have had the most impact up until this point, but here he takes a slightly more colourful side-step with the two cuts on offer. In some ways it’s a natural follow up to Orca’s last outing, the fantastic ‘Phoenix’ by Hyetal, but hands down this is XI at his most supple and funky.

Sitting somewhere in the micro-bubble that connects the dots between the shiny boogie friendly house of recent Night Slugs outings from the likes of Jacques Greene and Optimum, the aforementioned Hyetal and the flexible Sepalcure on Hotflush, ‘Gamma Rain’ hides a whole heap of brooding melancholy funk thats brought on by shimmering synths and expertly cut up jazz loops. Paired up with some seriously flexible wood carved garage beats this one really hits home hard – a low key anthem in the making. Then we get ‘Medicate’, which doesn’t quite hit those highs moving instead in deeper more spacious circles it’s got a subtle vibe to it but harbours plenty of weight. The colour and personality running through it sounds like the soundtrack to orbiting the earth in the Mir space station while playing zero-g pong.

Highly addictive.

Words: James Balf
Out: 31st January 2011


XI – Gamma Rain [Orca]	XI – Medicate [Orca]

::

XI was also named one to watch for this year earlier this week by FACT. Check his minimix and interview here:

Tracklist:

XI – Medicate
XI – Nitelite
XI – Gunnery V
XI – ArmourHP
XI – Virtualayz

Link:
www.myspace.com/xidubs

DOWNLOAD: Jams F. Kennedy - A Heart-Breaking Work of Swagger & G Ness

2011-01-19T10:51:00.009Z

Nepotize this: Earnest Endeavours are a transatlantic crew loosely based in London. Stretching over the Atlantic the core has secondary bases in New York and Los Angleles. They launched their conjoined aesthetic a few months back in fine fashion with the debut London performance of Nosaj Thing’s AV show and the first performance from Free The Robots (you can watch video footage of the event here).

Ahead of their second event, a double header featuring a gallery show from Kutmah – a DJ, producer and artist who whilst incarcerated regarding immigration issues made works of art armed with nothing but a short pencil and prison ID card – and an aftershow party featuring Kutmah, Dorian Concept, Teebs, the reason for this post: Jams and more (for more info on the party, which is tonight btw, go to the facebook event here), EE have unleashed their very first mixtape.

In their own words:

“Earnest Endeavours are proud to present the first audio outing on the label. An Earnest Endeavours mixtape, curated & mixed by the Patchwork Pirates. A Heart-Breaking Work Of Swagger & G Ness arose from a shared love of beats, bass and rap. Mixed by Patchwork Pirates in LDN, laced by Jams F. Kennedy in NYC and engineered by Bobby Evans in LA. The limited edition CD is packaged in a hand screen-printed heavyweight recycled board sleeve with full inlay. Start as you mean to go on…”

What you get, is a impeccably segued selection of drum heavy beats and some super fine lyrical ammunition delivered in Jams’ trademark drawl. The punch of the project is the new Widows material - the group Jams and Bobby Evans (both formerly of rap outfit Brother Reade) formed from performances with just two drum kits and a couple of microphones. Its completely stripped back and in the vein of Foot Village its pure, pounding skin laced with some gratuitously loveable emceeing.

“Rap, since the beginning, has never been a sound. It was always a method. It never requires more than two steps. 1: Listen to the wildest new music where there are people there to hear it. 2: Interject vocally." Jams F. Kennedy

DOWNLOAD: Jams F. Kennedy - A Heart-Breaking Work of Swagger & G Ness

Tracklist:

01. Intro – Jams F. Kennedy
02. Drama – Widows
03. Jams vs. Gemmy – Jams F. Kennedy
04. Don’t Start None (Boom Bip Remix) – Widows
05. Jams vs. Hudson Mohawke – Jams F. Kennedy
06. Find Your Way – Superisk
07. Jams vs. Guido – Jams F. Kennedy
08. Issey Miyake – Salva
09. Move – devonwho
10. Jams vs. Dizz1 – Jams F. Kennedy
11. LAX – Widows
12. Jams vs. Bobby Valentino – Jams F. Kennedy
13. Live & Direct – The Works feat. Jams F. Kennedy
14. Jams vs. B Bravo – Jams F. Kennedy
15. Us – Nosaj Thing
16. Room Temperature Liquid Plastic – Mushen
17. Jams vs. B Bravo – Jams F. Kennedy
18. Oil Fields – Mono/Poly
19. Orchid – Widows
20. Jams vs. Juice Aleem vs. Si Begg – Jams F. Kennedy
21. Orion’s Belt Buckle – Free The Robots
22. Mahjongg – Charles Trees
23. Jams vs. Flying Lotus – Jams F. Kennedy
24. Why Like This? – Teebs
25. Unsigned Hype – Widows
26. Glut – Ramadanman
27. Step 2 Funk – DVA
28. 7.62 – Widows
29. Outro – Jams F. Kennedy

For more info on the gallery show go here. For more info on the aftershow party go here.

Links:
www.earnestendeavours.com

RECOMMENDED: Royal T – Orangeade EP [Butterz]

2011-01-17T17:38:00.002Z

With a few strong 12”s already under his belt, including the ‘1UP’ 12” on No Hats No Hoods, Royal T seems to be making all the right moves; ‘Beat Fighter’ and his ‘Hot Ones’ remix have barely left the bag since they dropped. His latest offering, ‘Orangeade,’ has dropped on Butterz, an instrumental grime label run by Rinse FM DJs Elijah & Skilliam. They’ve had a hell of a run lately with beats from TRC and DOK, plus the much called for hard body release of the sublime ‘Wooo Riddim’ by SX, so it’s no surprise that the title track is a forthright, rhythmically skippy grime weapon that bangs hard with enough intensity to keep dance floors alight. Atmospheric pads and synth whines shuffle in and out of the bumpy beats and big bass tones to great effect on the title track; it oozes that typically British vein of hyper-funk that people like Terror Danjah excel in.

‘Whistle Song’ sounds reminiscent of Beatie Boys’ ‘Alive,’ it’s melody makes you want to sing “dip dip dive, so-socialise, open up your ears and clean out your eyes” but it’s probably more like what would happen if Daft Punk drank to many pitchers of orangeade and whipped out on talk-box whilst on a three day tour of Bow, E3. Loosely translated that makes it a banger.

The return of the ‘Devil Mix’ concept is a welcome one, especially when it’s done as well as it is on ‘Music Please’. In the hands of the likes of Zomby, Untold and more recently Logos the beat less version, a more restrained and twisted instrumental - pioneered by Wiley - is an inspired creation. Royal T coins it in here, morphing the hyped up synth leads into a pent up hypnotic gem that just keeps on brooding.

Words: James Balf
Out: Now, direct from Butterz

Royal T – Orangeade featuring OGz (P Money, Lil Dee and Blacks)

Links:
www.butterz.co.uk
http://royaltmusic.tumblr.com

COMPETITION: Win Bleep's Top 100 Tracks of 2010

2011-01-13T16:06:00.006Z

Our podcast hosters and those all round good dudes over at Bleep.com just announced their Top 100 tracks of 2010.

According to their HQ:

“Putting together The Top 100 Tracks of 2010 was a labour of love for Bleep. An opportunity to showcase the music that has turned us on in the last 12 months and put across our take on the year’s best music. Through a process that included the whole team and contributions from our friends and partners the massive amount of great music that was released in 2010 was whittled down to just 100 tracks.”

They’re offering an incredibly unique download opportunity for the public to buy these 100 tracks in high-quality, DRM free MP3s for just £30. The list spans Bleep's wide-ranging hand-picked catalogue of music and includes critically acclaimed artists from the last 12 months such as Brian Eno, Caribou, and James Blake.

You can check the full list of tracks here. And you can also read our thoughts about why James Blake’s ‘CMYK’ got included right here too.

“When it drops it explodes like a paint splash on canvas, eclipsing whatever it bursts out from with ease. - Oli Marlow”

As a token of good will for the new year, Bleep have kindly offered Sonic Router the chance to give away one of these download bundles for the price of an email. So electronically ping us your answer to the below question by this time next week to be in the running.

Q: Which Untold track did James Blake remix to astounding effect back in 2009?

Links:
http://bleep.com

READ: SRQ017: Braiden

2011-01-12T12:05:00.004Z

The 17th edition of the Sonic Router column of theQuietus focuses on Rinse FM DJ, Braiden. With his debut release, 'The Alps,' now sold out release on Joy Orbison's Doldrums imprint and a steadily building reputation as a selector we treated him to lunch on a snowy afternoon last December and sat eating quietly as he monologued...

"UK music is so based on rhythm, you know what I mean? You look at a lot of drum and bass, UK funky, dubstep etc and a lot of those genres would look down on 4x4 music because it's one rhythm – which is totally missing the trick – but, they would say that. And a lot of it is rhythmically focused but it doesn't have any atmosphere to it, or doesn't really experiment with the emotive qualities of the music. You get that a lot more in techno - I think sometimes you get that too much in techno - but it's very much about the atmosphere and the sounds made, but they don't do anything interesting rhythmically. That's what I'm trying to bring together: something that is emotive, in an interesting headspace that does a lot for the mind but is also rhythmically interesting." - Braiden

READ: SRQ017: Braiden

Braiden - 100% Braiden Mix for Mary Anne Hobbs (July 2010)

Link:
www.stevebraiden.com

INTERVIEW: Randomer [Super]

2011-01-12T10:40:00.003Z

Randomer’s music bangs; and it’s a testament to his artist name and personality that his music can bang in such different measures. His early work on Hospital Records offshoot Med School trod a darker more rolling jungle sound set (hence the release on a d&b affiliated label) but his newer stuff – including collaborations with Fife and Adverse – seems to be on more of an energetic house tempoed carnival kind of tip. His recent work on Soul Jazz and Brighton label Tru Thoughts has been of the highest quality, those glossy, high energy, full clip kind of tracks that unleash themselves across any dancefloor. Catching our attention from the off, they’re measured to perfection, with thick stabbing FM bass and at times (‘Zabu’ put out on Tru Thoughts is a case in point) the melodic emphasis is simply stunning.

With a release out on Raffertie’s Super imprint this week, a release that features a couple of collaborations and remixes from HomePark and Greymatter (previews of which are embedded below), we figured it high time that our geographical bedfellow Randomer took the reigns of our mix series, so we set him the task of curating our first mix of 2011. Now we get to bask in the results...

SR: Can you provide those who may not know you with a bit of background info?

Randomer: My real name is Rohan and I’m from north London. My first release was in 2008 on Medschool and since then I’ve had music put out by a variety of labels such as Hospital, Soul Jazz, and Tru Thoughts.

Outside of music who are you? What do you do on the daily?

There isn’t really any outside of music to me. I decided to concentrate on music production full-time about a year ago and have been lucky enough to get by so far, with short spells of teaching music to help me along. I spend most days from waking to sleep working on writing music or discussing it with my flatmates who also write.

How did you first get into making music? What was it that infected you to do so?

I’ve been making my own music in one way or another since I first picked up the guitar aged 12, and started making electronic music at the age of 15 on Cubase and Fruity Loops. I couldn’t honestly say what made me write music, I’ve just always been more interested in making my own than learning other peoples. I think it was my first proper experiences of rave culture (both chemically and physically) in my late teens that made me so passionate about writing electronic dance music.

What’s your production set up like?

I use Ableton Live on a PC which I recently switched to from Cubase - the workflow in Ableton is amazing, it really suits the intuitive way I go about writing music. I have Mackie HR824 monitors and a large midi keyboard also. Occasionally I play live bass or guitar on my tracks and I’ve been saving up for a decent microphone to record more live sounds.

How would you describe your sound?

My sound is pretty random. I mean at the time of thinking of the name ‘Randomer’ I have no idea what came through my head, but I’ve stuck with it because it seems to suit my music. I write in a really intuitive way, usually depending on how I’m feeling on the day and what is inspiring me then will dictate the music that I come up with.

My music from one track to the next can be pretty bi-polar. I think the two most prevalent things that determine how I sound, are a kind of quirky, tongue in cheek energy and a deep, dark and sometimes aggressive vibe. It’s those parts of my personality that compete with each other to come alive in my music.

SPR003 : Randomer & Adverse – Alizé

I remember getting a zip of the tunes you did with Fife (that ended up on the Soul Jazz 12”) and it was a departure from that Med School tip – only one of the files worked and I was gutted not to get both haha – it was such a pleasant surprise to hear something on much more of a soca tip. Do you listen to a lot of that type of music?

I listen to all kinds of stuff from all around the world, old and new. Discovering other sorts of music is another thing that makes it all worthwhile. Whether I was listening to soca or not at the time I don’t remember, but what I do know is that there was a lot of sun in 2010 in London and that seemed to have quite an effect on what I was writing at the time.

As my discography is a little disjointed it can be sometimes be hard to work out how the Medschool and Soul Jazz stuff fits together, but they’re all basically part of this two-sided thing that I elaborated on in the last question. This may have hindered me commercially a little as it can be hard for first listeners to pinpoint where I stand, but it also has the advantage of giving me distinctiveness. And excuses the fact that I called myself ‘Randomer’...

You share an affinity to the kind of impact that Untold unleashed with his eski sounding Stop What You’re Doing era work. What are the really important elements to your music? i.e. Bass, melody etc and why?

Jack is constantly pushing the boat with his production and everything he comes out with I find inspires me, so I’m glad that my work comes across with an affinity to his.

I love percussion. Sometimes simple stomping rhythms do it for me, but I also like complex cross-rhythms and syncopation. Melodically, I have perhaps gone too far in writing overly complex melodies in the past, due to my background in jazz improvisation, so I’ve recently been simplifying things to give some more coherence. It’s a balancing act.

Your beats have been picked up by the DJ elite, from Ben UFO beyond, do you feel comfortable making music for dancefloors?

I enjoy the limitation of writing music that has to be mixed by DJs. It means you have the challenge of being as creative as possible within a fairly rigid structure. I don’t want to repeat what has been written thousands of times, but you can’t put across in words how great the collective experience of a properly tuned soundsystem with a good crowd and skilled selector is.

What is an inspiration for you?

Other people’s music. Although I did hear this street cleaning machine while walking down Wood Green high street the other day that made the sickest sound. And there is this broken fridge in the Tesco express in Hornsey that makes the DARKEST synth noise.

I read that you consider yourself something of a synth geek? What is it about them that you can loose hours in/on do you think?

I’m a music geek. Synth is part of it. I really enjoy making weird sounds from scratch, its proper satisfying when you spend hours warping a sound until you create something that you’ve never heard before. But it probably ends up being so weird that you could never use it in a tune.

Are there any producers you rate that the world should know about?
Blawan has some fire coming this year. He’s got ridiculous skills. Also I hear something about there being a militant gabba collective called Hornsey Terror Corps that will be making waves.

You’ve just put out a 12” on Raffertie’s Super imprint. Can you tell us a bit about that and shed some light on what people can expect from you in 2011...

The release on Super is a pretty quirky collection of dancefloor tracks that I wrote during some sunny and probably hungover days. ‘Alizé’ has a bit of a vintage 2-step feel with cut up vocals and some bouncy synths and ‘Five’ is a bass heavy stomper with some marching band stuff going on.

In 2011: I have a collaboration I did with Foamo last year which is coming out in late Jan / early Feb on Fat!. Remixes in February for Marla and the Nightshifters artist Magnum and following that there will be some more stuff with Super, and later in the year I’ve got some tough dark vibes coming out but must remain hushed about which labels as it is still a bit secret.

Tell us a little bit about the mix you’ve put together for us…

The mix I’ve done represents where I am at musically at the moment. It’s a mixture of UK bass music, house and techno, a bit of a musical journey. One tune I had to put in the mix is the opening track.

I found it on my laptop desktop and had thought Joe had left it on there but he denies this, and there’s this strange vibe to the track – the whole thing is a bit mysterious.

I have included some exclusives which are so fresh that I have to keep the artist names secret for now, I’m sure you will found out what they are and who wrote them in the next few months.

Any words of wisdom, for our readers?

Work hard, play hard, take the piss.

::

DOWNLOAD: Randomer – Sonic Router Mix #64

Tracklist:

Jason Havelock - The Fusion
Olantunji - Jin-Go-Lo-Ba
Cristian Vogel - Bopx Bocx Variant 1
Batida - Puxa (Randomer Re-edit)
Green Velvet - Pursuit
Gregor Salto - Just for Fun
Manare - Voodoo
Talk - Holy Mountain
Apster Firebeatz - Cencerro
Dj Gregory & Gregor Salto - Vem Rebola (Instrumental)
A Made up Sound - Rear Window (Shattered)
? - Lavender
? - Lost Everything
Blawan - Bohla
Randomer - Brunk
? - Obtuse (VIP)

Links:
http://soundcloud.com/randomer
www.facebook.com/rohanrandomer

RECOMMENDED: Dro Carey – Venus Knock EP [The Trilogy Tapes]

2011-01-11T17:13:00.002Z

Dro Carey is a young Australian producer who is undoubtedly one to keep an eye on this year - his blend of haunted hip-hop is really on point. His debut 12”, the Venus Knock EP, is a super limited affair for The Trilogy Tapes so get in quick if you like physical product, if you miss it, don’t fret. Theres already talk from Ikonika of picking him up for a release on her and Optimum’s Hum & Buzz label. The EP shows Carey flexing his muscles and knocking out some seriously twisted mutations – imagine a heavier variant of the ghostly R&B of How To Dress Well or Hype Williams playing off the computer funk of Actress or 10-20 and the twisting bass heavy drum machine/sample workouts of DJ Rashad then you’ll be somewhere close.

Starting with a strong opener, the brooding ‘Get Rid Of This Guy,’ Carey takes rolling 808 drum patterns and plays them off a menacing sluggish synth tone. Along with the infectious chopped vocal motifs it’s a real winner. Quick on its heels is the booming title track; whose bass punch hits holes in your chest, as the angry buzz swoops into earshot through a post-industrial haze it all becomes a little bit more sinister.

Flip the wax over for the slow motion smudge of ‘Dead Keys’, which feels like its come fresh off the set of a horror film with a scene set in a Chicago house club, the vocal hits twisted in and out of shape against the creeping backdrop. While the closer ‘Glitter Variables’ sounds like a submarine in trouble sampled and chopped into the form of a lost Dance Mania record.

A super solid EP all round.

Words: James Balf
Out: Now

Links:
http://drocar.tumblr.com
www.thetrilogytapes.com

DOWNLOAD: Hackman & Jamie Grind - Saw The Light (Mista Men Remix)

2011-01-10T21:37:00.007Z

The Footwork EP on Glasgow's Fortified Audio imprint, out digitally today, marks the debut solo release for Yorkshireman, Jamie Grind. After releasing on Spatial's Infrasonics label with the resplendent 'Balloon' and 'If You Want' on a split 12" with Irish producer Gon, Grind has been a staple in our Hivemind FM sessions, often providing a melodic respite to the overloaded drum workouts we're prone to.

Featuring 4 tracks, including the constant drum machine trickle of 'Without You' whose high pitched percussion line bubbles over snatches of Grind's 2step blessed drum lines, the EP shines thanks to a collaboration with fellow Leeds resident, Hackman. Called 'Saw The Light' its more subtle than the other three tracks, peeling off in tangents, before the snatched vocal merges with the roughened bass line, creating an emotive house tempoed workout that gets better with each listen.

To mark the passing of the EP, we've been bestowed the honour of passing out the Mista Men refix of that Hackman collaboration. In the Doncaster trio's patent leathery style (check out their recent SR mix) they focus a little more on the interplay between 4x4 pulse and the bass, splicing apart the tunes melody whilst managing to retaining the same kind of harmonic linearity.

DOWNLOAD: Hackman & Jamie Grind - Saw The Light (Mista Men Remix)

Links:
www.myspace.com/jamiegrindmusic
www.myspace.com/fortifiedaudio

READ: Trap Magazine #002

2011-01-10T17:45:00.006Z

The 2nd issue of Trap Magazine should be in shops and on streets (not literally, though if it is, pick it up and read it) now. Harbouring an interview, penned by yours truly, with SBTRKT, a chart from Hessle Audio and selector general, Ben UFO, and assorted reviews it also features accomplished interviews with Jammer and Mumdance, Spectrasoul and Logan Sama and more.

You can read it online below, but grab a physical copy if you can. The paper quality is gorgeous.

Link:
www.trapmagazine.co.uk

STREAM: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm 09.01.2011

2011-01-10T11:53:00.005Z

Sonic Router on Hivemind.fm
Hosted by Oli Marlow.
Bi-weekly/every 2nd & 4th Sunday of the month // 10pm -12am

The first SRxHM session of 2011 aka The Honeydew Confidential.

Yes - I was a little over excited.

STREAM: Sonic Router x Hivemind.fm 09.01.2011

Tracklist:

1. Kidstreet - Out Loud (XI Remix) [unreleased]
2. Portrait - Because [unreleased]
3. vood - Summer [Free via Bandcamp]
4. George Fitzgerald - Don't You [forthcoming Hotflush]
5. Wascal - Stork [forthcoming TTKK]
6. Trim - F64 [Monkey Features]
7. Gremino - Ruffness [Car Crash Set]
8. Wiley - Bow E3 (King Cannibal Remix) [Big Dada]
9. Gremino - Silver [Car Crash Set]
10. XI - Nitelite [free from SonicRouter.com]
11. Randomer & Adverse - Alize [Super]
12. Bad Autopsy - Gin Mixer [forthcoming Ramp Recordings]
13. Addison Groove - Footcrab VIP [free from Swamp81]
14. Shackleton - International Fires [free from XLR8R]
15. simon/off - Start The Pressure [unreleased]
16. Jamie Grind - Without You [forthcoming Fortified Audio]
17. XI - Medicate [forthcoming Orca]
18. Hyetal & Baobinga - Trouble [forthcoming BUILD]
19. Mickey Pearce - Whats Mickey Talkin About [forthcoming Blunted Robots]
20. Zoltan - 4am [free via Freshmore http://soundcloud.com/freshmore]
21. Toddska - Gal From England [forthcoming Girls Music]
22. Jamie Woon - Night Air (Deadboy Remix) [free from Numbers]
23. Contakt - Not Forgotten [forthcoming Local Action]
24. Jacques Greene - Holdin' On [forthcoming Lucky Me]
25. Hackman - Bam Bam [forthcoming PTN]
26. Randomer - Five [Super Recordings]
27. Jamie Grind & Hackman - Saw The Light [forthcoming Fortified Audio]
28. Jera - Another One (Mista Men Remix) [unreleased]
29. Hyetal & Baobinga - Anything For Now [forthcoming BUILD]
30. mlr - Knuckle [unfinished & unreleased]
31. Mosca - Tilt Shift (Julio Bashmore Remix) [forthcoming Fat City]
32. Kowton - She Don't Jack [forthcoming Idle Hands]
33. Bad Autopsy - Gin Mixer (DVA Remix) [forthcoming Ramp Recordings]
34. Niaggra - Travesti + Palmeiras AV [Ltd CDR from Dromos]
35. FaltyDL - Hip Love (Jamie XX Remix) [forthcoming Ramp]
36. Kahn - Like Used To [forthcoming Punch Drunk]
37. Sentel - Bones [unreleased]

Direct Download (Right Click/Save As)

Link:
www.hivemind.fm