Sebastian Tellier + Metronomy

Super sweet
Sebastien Tellier - La Ritournelle (Metronomy Remix) by PhilippoM

Illustration by Sandrine Anne Sautejeau

Balam Acab - See Birds

Not exactly new but the perfect song for the moment. There's alot of neat influences packed into this song and the production quality is also worth noting.

Makaronniiiiii

Fresh out of Santiago de Chile like a warm (humid) summer breeze.



Also, be sure to check out their soundcloud

El G + Andrea Balency

Fantastic cover of El Guincho's Lycra Mistral from Andrea Balency. You may also notice a cameo from Torreblanca on backing vocals.

Set Free

D'Marc Cantu - Set Free 
One of the highlights from a solid release.

Koreless 4D/MTI

19 Year old Glaswegian Lewis Roberts aka. Koreless, heavily backed by the likes of none other than Gilles Peterson has released a killer EP 4D/MTI. Those who listen to Jamie xx's mixes might recognise MTI from his Benji B radio show mix, if anything a seal of quality from a man who is so hot right now. Koreless plays with vocal samples on both tracks, MTI, though being a B side in my opinion is actually the stronger track with an awesome drop and easily danceable beat to boot.

This one is dedicated to those working late at night as I've been doing myself for the last few weeks now and probably for another few weeks to come.

Jeff Mills' classic live mix gets the review treatment for music class

Jeff Mills

Live at the Liquid Room, Tokyo: Mix-Up, Vol. 2 (1996)

It goes without saying that the genre of techno often falls prey to crude and primitive labels, awkwardly lumped with everything from house music to synth-pop. Hordes of perverse, ecstatic Deutsche flailing about like the village gimp in a dimly-lit room for days on end, riding substance-induced benders; or are we too good for these prehistoric stereotypes?

Cue Jeff Mills. Riding atop a career of almost 25 years, he helped usher in the second wave of Detroit techno and electro in the early ‘90s, while still actively a part of (then) underground techno collective Underground Resistance (UR). Characterized by their militant black dress style and endless mysterious monikers, UR married Detroit’s industrial elements with its rich musical history, resulting in what some term as techno-funk, and more commonly known as Detroit techno. Live At the Liquid Room, Tokyo: Mix-Up Vol. 2 acts then as both an appropriate example of this machine-funk legacy, and a testament to Mills ability.

Separated into three distinctly different segments, Live at the Liquid Room is ultimately a showcase of Jeff’s constant desire to push musical boundaries. What might normally be misconstrued by the local cynic as mindless, repetitive beats is transformed into an organic and visceral journey, unrestrained and unrelenting. The decks are Mills’ vehicles of expression; they are an extension of his creativity and concept.

After treating his audience to 30 seconds of foreboding synth strains, our host launches into the first of what is to be 38 tracks in total, culled from what was originally a 3 hour set. What follows is ten minutes of somewhat clunky mixing; as if Mills were conducting a bedroom experiment, randomly scratching and skipping, and matching beats awkwardly.

Off-putting? Hardly. In doing so, Mills establishes the perfect canvas upon which to apply his frenetic and almost-impatient mixing, akin to an irritable child unsatisfied with its slew of new toys. There is a primal urgency to the beats as they tumble through and over one another, never settling as Mills flexes his technical ability over 3 turntables. One would struggle to find a track that overcomes the 2-minute mark; rather, we are left with interwoven fragments, subjected to paranoid skipping, rewinding and cutting. At times seeming on the verge of collapse, it’s all brought back together, adding to the occasionally audible sense of excitement from the crowd. Amidst the chaos, though, he does find time to drop DJ Funk’s ghettotech classic Work That Body, Derrick May’s Detroit-staple Strings of Life, as well as his own techno-monsters The Bells, and the dramatic and deliciously barbaric Strings of Life-rework, Changes of Life.

As a recording, it is barely manipulated, avoiding the tendency of many DJs to simply release mixes recorded ‘live’ in the studio. Muffled crowd noise, needle-drops, and some obvious (though not detrimental) muck-ups all contribute positively to the intensity of the overall experience. At its best, Detroit techno is immensely celebratory and life-affirming music, and there are few greater examples of this than the 60-odd minutes Mills brings together on this LP.

What most defines this recording, and mix, though, is its truth-to-form, its ability to truly convey the essence of a live performance, where many others have failed. Even as an external audience, we feel a sense of being there. As much as Mills continues to purport an intellectual substance in his work (what he and others describe as Afro-Futurism), Mills’ most attractive trait is his ability to satisfy our cerebral needs, as active beings. The mix justifies this in standing as greater than the sum of its parts, of which there are dozens. The instinctive and sometimes abrupt track changes somewhat paradoxically drew me closer to the work as a listener than away from it, as my speakers churn out lines upon lines of throbbing bass, an addiction for which there is no antidote.

Even today Jeff Mills is a diminutive figure, relatively softly-spoken as per many of his peers, but his transformation into a techno monolith is transcribed within the revered Live at the Liquid Room, Tokyo: Mix-Up Vol. 2. The mix functions not only in the cerebral and physical realms, but as a basic history lesson for those mildly interested in the history of Detroit electronic music, and commands a princely price of over US$50 per unit. My only disappointment is not being at the Liquid Room myself that October night in 1995.

edit: Jesus Christ, Word formatting fails to transfer willingly onto blogger posts.

Me Gusta La Noche

Adrianigual + Alex Anwandter
So many types of win.

Novos Baianos

Grab a friend/person of the opposite sex that you find attractive and dance. MPB at its best!

It takes two...

Picked up this gem whilst in BA, unfortunately I didn't see or dance as much tango as I'd have liked but this CD takes me back every listen. The instrumentals are some of the best renditions of these classics that I've heard and  the sound quality is great, no old crackly vinyl rips (however I don't mind that at all). 

I believe there are also compilations by the same people of Cantados for those who love the tango cantadors, either way you'll wanna drop everything, grab a lady and dance.

Jovenes y sexys vs Javiera Mena

Dormida escuchando tu voz, mirarte hasta el amanecer. - Sleeping whilst listening to your voice, looking at the dawn.

Ayobaness: The Sounds of Township Funk

So in typical fashion everything I said I'd review first takes a back seat to a compilation of South African house I recently acquired. If you've got any interest in house music globally, you've probably heard South African DJ Mujava's Kwaito track 'Township Funk', which was released on Warp back in 2008, and got a bit of exposure from Gilles Peterson, amongst others. It got the remix treatment from Skream & Sinden, among others.

original mix



Skream remix

(probably needs a little more bass tbh)

Aesthetically it's not mindblowing. Like Major Lazer's 'Pon de Floor', it's got a basic drum intro, akin to marching-band rolls, but very rhythmic. The marriage of those hypnotic synths over the top is what makes it what it is, ie. a great track to dance to, and ultimately a great step forward for the genre, and its exposure to a broader audience.

A relatively new genre, Kwaito is essentially South Africa's take on house music, with minor influences from disco, hip-hop, and local tribal dance. Slightly slower and often resembling hip-hop, it takes the American house sound of the early to mid 90s and fuses it with African rhythms, chants, and basslines/synth stabs reminiscent of 80s electro. The word comes from the Afrikaans slang kwai, meaning 'hot', or 'kickin'; as in, 'this new shit is fresh' type thang. The emergence of Kwaito is hardly surprising, given the South Africans liberated way of life following apartheid. It represents those freedoms as much as it does the ghetto townships; an increasingly competitive and developing blend of distinctly African dance grooves. Out Here Records, a label focusing on compilations of popular music styles in Africa, brought out this great collection in May of last year: Ayobaness! - The Sound of South African House. It features one track from DJ Mujava, among a dozen other nuggets of S.A. bliss. I've posted a few of my favourites below.







If you're still into paying money for music and listening to it on a proper sound system, you can pick up these jams right here.

Emilio Jose

Its taken me quite a while but I can finally say that I enjoy/somewhat understand Emilio Jose as a legitimate artist after not only listening to Chorando Aprendese on repeat but also exploring the mind space and lets be honest, getting a bit crazy on the weekends.

At face value, many of Emilio's songs seem to be quickly thrown together to look complicated/sophisticated affairs, however look a bit deeper and realise things on a grander scale and his music evokes vivid memories and feelings of time and space. Much like the avant-garde Soviet film makers who create meaning and story through montage, juxtaposition and a dialectic mindset are Emilio's tools of choice in the creation of Chorando Aprendese. This is most apparent in tracks like Ti Deixachesme. I could also go on about Emilio's master of language not in the sense of lyrical genius in one particular language, but jumping between his native Portugese to Spanish, English and even Catalan, however if you can't understand most to any of it, it doesn't really matter.

Get yourself a copy of this latin american masterpiece, not folk or alternative as you'd expect in the current musical climate, but music for the mind.

Newest Releases in 2011

Privyet

A lot of new techno and house releases out in the last few months, each of which I'll be reviewing over the next fortnight. James Blake has of course released his debut LP, following many months of anticipation, and it is an interesting blend of art pop, soul, and dubstep.

There are also new releases from Nicolas Jaar, Steffi, Maceo Plex, Chaim, Deniz Kurtel, Hercules and Love Affair, Robag Wruhme, Isolée, a new Fabric mix courtesy of Derrick Carter, and compilation overviews from German techno labels Ostgut Ton & Bpitch Control.

Rolling in the Deep (Jamie XX Reshuffle/Remix)

The xx made many if not most people's best of 2009 charts, and much of the credit thrown towards the young Brits is thanks to the production talent of Jamie who does remixes under the Jamie xx moniker. Applying the xx's trademark sound to tracks, stripping them down to their bare bones and showcasing their true essence as music with production ironically thrown out the window. If people didn't take notice with Jamie's remixes of Glasser, Jack Penate and Eliza Doolittle, they certainly rose up and embraced his reworking of Florence and the Machine who  reworked You've Got The Love; and to be honest if you were a producer who had a track reworked, and distributed with the Jamie xx sticker on it you'd be understandably pretty pissed off because in my humble opinion he's showing everybody how its done. He takes these tracks and not only makes them his own but makes them as some might suggest should have been made in the first place. 
Come 2011 and he's dropped another bombshell with a reworking of Adele's Rolling in the Deep. Speaking in architectural terms Jamie creates a modernist masterpiece where the song is honest in its materials/samples, practically minimalist, always focused and never detracting from the landscape/environment that is Adele's amazing voice that can at one moment can seem synonymous with sunlight gently piercing a tree's soft, fresh leaves and at the next sends the ground shaking and making you feel horrible for yet again getting on her bad side. 


Make sure to not only check out Rolling in the Deep (Jamie XX Remix) but also his reinterpretation of Gil Scott Heron's album 'I'm New Here' funnily enough entitled 'We're New Here'.

Rolling in the Deep (Jamie xx) ft. Childish Gambino by Childish Gambino

the sound of silence

m n m l s m

...Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features''

The appeal of minimalistic works, and thus minimalism itself, would and does appear at first almost absurd. I would be lying if I said that I have never stood before a piece of artwork and thought of it at this; absurd, dull and in a single word - shit. Whilst now I rarely find myself in this position, it is surely and necessarily impossible to say that all minimalism, whether it be in the form of art, music or architecture, is brilliant. Stripping anything down to its barest minimum is dangerous - a house with only one wall and no roof is not a house, it is a wall. Similarly, one might argue that a single note compromising music is not music, it is a note. I do not deny that these positions are absolutely correct, I merely consider it important to retain a level or a limit to minimalism in order to avoid locking horns with obscurity; in order to avoid minimalism becoming equal to nothingness.

minimalism = something

So minimalism is far from nothing, but it is without a doubt hard to put a finger on, precisely because of the nature of it. A kind of interactive self-inversion is at play - a simple, repeated melodic motif in a piece of music demands attention because of its inconspicuous nature. It grows like a seedling, it develops and matures and that idea is transformed into something greater. It takes on new forms, colours, ideas, and it slowly begins to redefine itself. It evolves beyond itself and it transgresses the boundaries it initially set for itself, and this is where the beauty of minimalism and minimalistic ideas lies. So what then allows for this intangible evolution?

Perhaps we might consider this by example of a simple painting. If we are to imagine a blank canvas, and a black square in the middle of the canvas, a multitude of ideas may spill forth, but initially these are inevitably masked by what appears to be something of extreme, perhaps demeaning, simplicity. But the longer we stare at that square and the longer we consider the relation between the two aspects of the painting, the greater the complexity becomes. As an observer we can begin to consider and examine the relationship between the two colours - white and black - and between the two geometrical shapes. We can invert the relationship , alter and distort its form and if you like, re-create the initial form. In doing this we understanding the initial form to be quite literally a form - it is not a concrete shape but rather an abstract representation of something else, of something, of anything! It represents something - geometries, colour relationships, symmetries, physical spaces, etc. - and thus allows the brain to completely expand of this form and to create its own multitude of relationships with the form, thus defining the form as something which cannot be labeled.

minimalism ≠ something

Having considered it in this light, the relationship between a piece of art, a structure, a melodic idea and the observer/viewer, far from being passive, is reciprocal, abstract and beautiful. The viewer becomes a creator, becomes the artist, and in this way meaning is passed on through representation and reconfiguration. Meaning is passed on, and meaning is created, and it is exactly through this process that we might truly understand minimalism as an art form.