One of the more elegantly put together produced albums this year has to be Luxury Problems by Andy Stott. He has been bubbling and raising with every EP and single he’s put out in the UK beat scene but with this release and the help of NPR this could quickly take over as not just filler for a need of more Bjork, Portishead, Massive Attack for the broader audience out there but as a one that will stand among those names for this generation.
Sometimes it makes me smile how big The Xx are and imagining all the fans out there hoping for something dancey or trendy but instead what they get is real music and I can see some of them being bummed out because of that.
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Sabrina Ratte has done it again and this time its for this upcoming Steve Hauschildt upcoming release. The song alone would have been a true pleasure but Sabrina came in created a beautiful world for it, as always perfecting inversion/decay/color.
Courtship’s [Imageless] caught me off guard on his recent EP, it wasn’t asking for my attention, its as almost like you were watching the song happen, it settles in the distance like a slow moving still, the dialog makes it though, it drops you back into reality in seamless way.
4AD signs an unknown Danish man that goes under the name Indians(how was that not taken?), sounds like something Bibio will one day become.
Knxwledge aka Knx. has the loosest sounding beat out there, almost to the point that it almost sounds like your wood block jacob’s ladder is struggling to work again. My favorite part about him is the quickness he gets in and out of a song, he makes me come back and play his songs 7 or 8 times so I can get the full satisfaction out of them, beat makers take note.
Fascinating BBC doc on history of recorded music featuring a whole lot of EMS synths including the Synthi 100 “Delaware” modular system (pictured below). Fun Fact: Years ago I had the opportunity to buy a Synthi 100 system in beautiful condition for a very reasonable price. For reasons I can’t explain now, I passed on it. Honestly, it would have been a nightmare to maintain and very impractical, but look at that thing. I still regret the decision every time I see a picture of a 100. These days my synth acquisition pace has slowed quite a bit, mostly just holding out for a Memorymoog LAMM and a Prophet 5, then I’ll be done.
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Up there with Battles I loved seeing PVT build a very complex song in a live setting, its technical but human and after hearing clips from this new LP its even more human.
Chromatics using something that sounds like a 8 bit version of the Airwolf theme song, which might be one of the most adored sounds from my childhood.
Bullion has been coming up with magic, probably the most prolific artist that came from the beat scene and moved onto something bigger and better, soo impressed, Talabot should be soo thankful for this one.
When I started DJing in 1997 I was obsessed with fast deep detroit techno, I wanted every tribal hypnotic record at the time, this Skudge remix is a perfect example of all my old records, i’m sure it might be hard to understand by some especially out of context or ever experiencing a good old Detroit rave but I think it has a lot of appeal to everyone.
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More and more pieces of the new Toro Y Moi album are surfacing, I love his new album cover, it gets better and better the longer I look at the detail. As for the music i’m just content with what kind of fusion of genres Chaz is overlapping, this album couldn’t come any sooner.
Indian Wells reworks Kyson for his upcoming EP Blackstone. Sounds like early Baths material playing in the rain.
When I hear beautiful songs like this one by Session Victim, I can’t imagine session musicians actually being there anymore, I just always think musicians are sampling to make this sound and that is probably the saddest thought i’ve had about music in a while.
New experimental Apparat, the song really opens up at the end, wind tunnels and quartz covered waterfalls.
Its always your creative ideas and story that makes your music reach out even further to new people. This idea of 10 locked grooves on a 12″ by Darkstar is better than a buddha machine, you might want to preorder 2 of the 12’s incase one wears out.
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Benoit & Sergio make some of my favorite singles to play out, they have a special way of going about a build to a song, its not smoke and mirrors, its not a formula, it just feels less fabricated and more necessary than most dance song builds, the whole song is a groove, no gimmicks.
Prefuse 73 and Teebs team up as Sons of the Morning, sounds very much like early Prefuse, thank god!
The sex appeal / heartbreak is harder to grasp more than ever for any Cold Wave musician in the US and it has almost become too available so its even more difficult for a new act like Dream Affair to get the recognition they deserve. An amazing effort though, I hope to see them live and feel the authenticity because thats the best way to survive in this genre.
Memory Tapes could have made 3 songs from this 8+ minute jam, just the keys in the intro could be a AM Gold classic then there’s a mellowed Weird Tapes sounding portion that flutters around in and out. Then some sort of Dan Deacon epic mountain climbing guitar attack making this song just the most dynamic thing i’ve heard in years but I don’t know if it translate as the best decision making.
