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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
