Hotflush Recordings is delighted to announce the arrival of a second full length from Sepalcure, the American duo made up of Travis “Machinedrum” Stewart and Praveen “Braille” Sharma. Arriving four and a half years since their acclaimed debut, 11 track album Folding Time is a singular and tender statement that lands in May 2016.
This special coming together of distinctive musical minds produced a much-loved, self-titled debut LP in 2011, plus six EPs between 2010 and 2013, all of which suggested a penchant for broken beats and bright melodics. Both have since furthered their accomplished solo careers – Braille released his debut solo album Mute Swan, while Machinedrum’s experimental exploration of Vapor City landed on Ninja Tune – that have kept them busy in the studio as well as on the road. As such, and owing to their insistence that any production work had to be done in person “since that results in a certain sound and experience you just can’t recreate remotely”, the new record took some time to come together.
The album, written over many bottles of whiskey, is made up of brand new music, but also tracks that have been worked on, forgotten, then revived over many years. Its title comes from the fact that, “it felt like we were connecting the present with the past. Going through each session was like digging through old memories.” Stylistically, of course, this pair have very different musical DNAs, but that means studio work cooks up many surprises along the way and results in an album that is awash with everything from field recordings to guitars and electric piano. It is a mix of playing and programming, has many multilayered tracks full of intimate and personal easter eggs and is, essentially, “two homies hanging out and having fun; a meeting of our minds.”
Right from the distant vocal mutters and blissful guitar licks of opener ‘Fight For Us’ featuring Rochelle Jordan there is a seductive r&b sensibility to proceedings. Tumbling drums and pained vocals have you in a love locked free-fall before ‘Not Gonna Make It’ gets to the point with Sepulcure’s trademark stuttering drums and fractured vox. ‘Devil Inside,’ featuring the pair’s long time friend and collaborator Angelica Bess, is future pop from a perfect world, ‘No Honey’ strips things back to a harmonic headspace of bumpy rubber kicks and percolating jungle percussion, then ‘Been So True’ shows a playful side, lovable sense of sampling and broken reggae rhythm. The second half of the album explores direct dance floor grooves on ‘Hearts in Danger’, snaking synths and reverb rich beats on ‘Loosen Up’ and deeper, more introspective moments on tracks like ‘Dub Of’ and ‘Brother Forest’ before closing down with a brace of blissfully melodic and dreamy excursions to a beach during sun down.
With plenty of well paced peaks and troughs along the way, as well as an underlying sense of humour and a very real human warmth, this is an album that works on both head and heel in equal measure.
I’ve been waiting for the full album stream to share this release with you but I got antsy, you need to hear this release. Future lush dance music that opens up and tunnels down through virtual pipes and opens in spaces we’ve never seen, sooo happy to have him on Ghostly.
As half of Teengirl Fantasy, Logan Takahashi is best known for making glassy, expansive tracks. On his debut solo album NoGeo, however, he creates an intimate world of fertile, furtive rhythms. Throughout the album, techno-tinged patterns unfurl with zeal and digital melodies slowly rise and fall. If the music of Teengirl evokes widescreen, technicolor club scenes, NoGeo is a zoomed-in study of timbre, rhythm, and melody. “I started a lot of these tracks almost as etudes for myself,” Takahashi explains. “I was trying to draw on my experiences both from the last few years of my life working with TGF and from my musical experiences beforehand.” Takahashi grew up studying classical violin as a child and attended Oberlin Conservatory out of which TGF was born. “There are many things that I still either use or try and consciously reject from my musical upbringing and this was a way for me to explore some of that.”
Much of NoGeo was composed using Elektron’s Monomachine, which contributes to its minimalist aesthetic. There’s a uniformity to the tracks on NoGeo; though each has its own distinct, vibrant shape, all of them are cut from the same cloth—built on a sturdy rhythmic foundation that’s ornamented with buoyant candescent, sounds. “People talk a lot about borderlessness in dance music, and indeed I’ve always been most drawn to music that exists in or a works to create new grey areas,” Takahashi explains. “From the late ‘80s Japanese Neo Geo genre to the early ‘00s Brooklyn tabletop electronics scene, I’ve always been inspired by the notion of being able to create your own vocabulary.
As Takahashi points out, the album’s title is a nod to the musical style that Ryuichi Sakamoto spearheaded, one that fused Japanese and Western influences. Sometimes that influence was direct: the track “Kazoku Ogawa” was inspired by Takahashi uncovering a box of lost letters written by his grandfather containing family secrets from Japan. Others, like the somber, quietly cruising “Rekr,” simply use the idea of obscuring borders as an abstract starting point. “There’s an idea that I’ve been pretty inspired by for the past 5 or 6 years, and it’s the idea of viewing technology and computers as ‘organic,’” he says of the thought-process behind “Rekr.” “We normally think of ‘technology’ and ‘organic’ as two separate things, but computers are made of crystals and metals and magnets from the earth. That idea is interesting to me.”
Binding everything is Takahashi’s steady hand and clear musical voice. While each track has its own distinct, vibrant shape, there’s a oneness to NoGeo; it is the sound of Takahashi standing on his own for the first time.
You know the drill, this guy is one of our favorites, just dive in.
On Silicon Tare, the sci-fi story that Seth Haley, who records as Com Truise, began on the Galactic Melt LP and continued on the Wave 1 EP takes a dark turn. At the conclusion of Wave 1, the protagonist, Earth’s first synthetic astronaut, successfully makes contact with the far-off Wave 1 colony but, once he does, things get fuzzy. He falls in love; there is a war coming. A story that began in hope and dreams of discovery ends on an uncertain note. Change is in the air.
It’s evident Haley’s style has matured since 2010’s Cyanide Sisters. Sisters wonderfully warped sonics could have been the sound of broken VCRs spinning analog tapes, all of them singing in unison. His 2011 full-length Galactic Melt was rich and expansive, full of slowly-coasting synths, melodies that wriggled and popped, and masterfully-controlled rhythms. Since then, Haley’s sound and production techniques have progressed, becoming wider and fuller—high definition 3D madness. His always-cinematic signature sound and 4/4 kick drum patterns are present, of course, but the dynamics and tempos are increasingly more colorful and varied.
Silicon Tare opens with a skating sheet of synthesizer before easing into a steady, walloping beat. It doesn’t stay there for long: halfway through, the lights come up, and synth notes crackle across the sky. “Sunspot” is a departure–its soft-pink tone, synthetic slap bass and quasi-808 percussion recalls the edgier end of ‘80s pop. And he pushes the boundaries even further on “Forgive,” a big, booming number with fat streaks of synth and a gleefully hectic rhythm track that stops, starts and sputters over and over again.
Silicon Tare moves Haley and the fictional Com Truise even deeper into the cosmos, discovering new lands along the way and offering a glimpse of where he may travel in the future. And if the characters at the center of his ongoing story may be in peril, Haley himself is in control.
Tare sets the stage for the final chapter in Haley’s Com Truise saga, which will be the first official follow-up to Galactic Melt. It’s not only the perfect prelude to that finale, but the perfect representation of Haley’s ever-expanding universe of sound.
I’m looking forward to music from Mark Pritchard more than I am from anyone from Radiohead and this track makes me feel good about that thought. Mark is a top of the line swiss army knife when it comes to production, plenty of patience and precision, he uses things sparingly, just guides you to how you want to feel.
Single #2! “IM U” by Beacon is out today, listen and watch the video by our very own Charles Bergquist.
Beacon 2016 North America Winter Tour
02.04 Chicago, IL SCHUBAS
02.05 Detroit, MI Majestic Cafe
02.06 Toronto, ON The Drake Hotel
02.10 Allston, MA Great Scott
02.11 New York, NY The Bowery Ballroom
02.12 Philadelphia, PA Boot & Saddle
02.13 Washington, DC Songbyrd Music House & Record Cafe
02.16 Atlanta, GA Aisle 5
02.17 New Orleans, LA Hi-Ho Lounge
02.18 Houston, TX Rudyard’s British Pub
02.19 Austin, TX Parish Austin
02.22 El Paso, TX The Lowbrow Palace
02.23 Phoenix, AZ Valley Bar
02.24 San Diego, CA Soda Bar
02.25 Los Angeles, CA Club Bahia
02.26 San Francisco, CA Noise Pop
02.27 Portland, OR Mississippi Studios
02.28 Seattle, WA Nectar Lounge
03.01 Boise, ID Reef Boise
03.02 Salt Lake City, UT Kilby Court
03.03 Denver, CO Lost Lake
03.04 Wichita, KS Barleycorn’s
03.05 St. Louis, MO 2720 Cherokee
Thomas Mullarney III and Jacob Gossett are unstoppable. The New York artists, collectively known as Beacon, have been on a productive hot streak since 2012, and their efforts continue to pay off. “When we weren’t writing,” Mullarney starts, “we hit the road and didn’t really look back. We toured the US five times since The Ways We Separate came out, building this project the old-fashioned way.” And Beacon’s natural, time-tested process has brought us Escapements, their sophomore album for Ghostly. “We went into this feeling liberated,” continues the singer/producer, and Gossett seems to echo his thought: “This record is in part our attempt to formulate what Beacon is going to look and sound like going forward.”
Escapements is about time, to put it simply, and all of the baggage it brings. The title is taken from clock mechanics; escapements are timekeeping regulators designed to transfer energy at a constant pace. “I was attracted to this concept because of the entropy it implies,” Mullarney explains. “Friction and changes in amplitude over time mean every escapement, no matter how well crafted, will lose its accuracy and effectively slow down time via its own decay.” This theme is delicately explored through Beacon’s music and lyrics, engaging ideas of pain and loss with a surreal palette. Whereas the duo’s debut was more streamlined and defined, Escapements thrives on an amorphous, free-flowing nature.
More than just a central concept, time manifests itself in these 11 songs quite literally, too. Take opener “IM U”, a slow-swelling cut of electronic pop that has knocked around in Beacon’s arsenal since the beginning. As Gossett puts it, “In its final form, ‘IM U’ is a track that has the history of the project embedded into it, an old idea filtered through years of growing interests and experience as songwriters.” His idea is reflected by the remarkable cover photo, a single shot taken by Caleb Charland in darkness for eight hours. “The arc of the star trails show the rotation of the earth,” Gossett points out. “I can’t imagine a better representation of time, process, and discovery. It’s how we wanted Escapements to sound.”
After the initial demos were written, Escapements was refined and recorded over the course of nine months at Beacon’s Brooklyn home studio and Gary’s Electric, where it was mixed by Al Carlson. Tycho drummer Rory O’Connor was brought in to perform, unleashing new energy onto the Beacon sound and helping expand it to unheard places. Which is another notable theme on the album. “I hope this record proves our restlessness and shows that we really aren’t content to have only one approach to creating music,” says Mullarney. “Every part of our process is linked to discovery.” And that meant trying out studio tricks and recording techniques on the fly, getting lost in the process until they came out the other side. Like on “Cure”, Escapements’ frenetic, breakbeat-inspired penultimate track. Mullarney explains: “There’s a moment where I was simply playing chords on the studio Wurlitzer and singing while the mic recorded the room. The idea was to escape the produced electronic music, just for a moment, and capture the energy in the room.”
Suffice it to say that Escapements tackles the difficulties of a sophomore album by ignoring their existence altogether—this is a record truly free of constraint and expectations. But because it’s still a Beacon album, the duo’s identity continues to shine through. Mullarney’s voice sounds full and confident, even as it floats weightlessly over limber dancefloor constructions in songs like “Backbone” and “Better or Worse”. It’s a precise balance, and yet feels wholly organic. “When you don’t give yourself a specific place to land you never really miss,” Gossett adds. “We just tried to trust ourselves and not put limitations on what this record was supposed to be. In that sense, it’s exactly the record we were meant to make.”
Excited to announce Awake Remixes! The album will be out digitally January 15th and on vinyl May 20th. It’s the first vinyl release since 2014. Preorder the blue colored vinyl now in the ISO50 shop shop.iso50.com/products/awake-remixes
Tycho Awake Remixes
A1. Awake (Com Truise Remix)
A2. Montana (Christopher Willits Remix)
A3. L (Dusty Brown Remix)
A4. Dye (Nitemoves Remix)
TYCHO. DJ SET. TOUR DATES.
02.10 Denver, CO @ Club Vinyl *
02.11 San Diego, CA @ Bang Bang *
02.12 Tucson, AZ @ Gem & Jam Festival
02.13 Los Angeles, CA @ Exchange LA * #
02.16 Miami, FL @ Bardot *
02.17 Washington, DC @ Flash *
02.18 Brooklyn, NY @ Output *
02.19 Chicago, IL @ The Mid *
02.20 Detroit, MI @ Populux *
03.04 San Francisco, CA @ 1015 Folsom w/ Nitemoves, Dusty Brown
03.05 San Francisco, CA @1015 Folsom w/ Few Nolder, Christopher Willits
Probably like the 5th mix on the blog from Hatchback and the great guys at Dream Chimney, which doesn’t feel wrong in any way. I thought this mix was actually already up for some reason but I couldn’t find it. Dive into it, info below and close your eyes and imagine the cold weather is just air conditioning in your ocean view loft on Honolulu in 1991.
Mix of the Week #76 is a mix of unreleased Hatchback tracks in honor of the first ever limited vinyl release of Hatchback’s 2008 debut album ‘Colors of the Sun’ on Be With Records. A blissed-out 80-minute opus, its assured kaleidoscopic sound can only be described as ‘Cosmic-Krautrock-Disco.’
Double LP available now: bewithrecords.com/product/hatchbac…2lp-bewith009lp/
Wasted Brain: Hatchback Sessions 1999-2009
It’s something of a personal milestone to welcome Colors of the Sun to vinyl, so to celebrate the occasion, I dug into the archive to make a mix of unreleased material from the years leading up to and slightly beyond my first album. It means a lot to me that the Dream Chimney is hosting this mix, because the only place these tracks really ever existed outside of my iPod was on Track of the Day. It was really The Dream Chimney community, particularly Ryan Chimney and Clunkified (hugest thanks Sentrall), that kicked my jams off of the internet and onto a record. Also it wouldn’t been possible without the creative support of so many other Chimneys, especially Sorcerer, Elf, Carousel, Electronimo, and Home Chime. You guys are all kind buddies forever. Putting this together brought back a lot of sweet memories of my days in the Bay Area, in particular that sun-baked apartment in the trees above Lake Merritt. These tracks have likely remained unreleased for good reason, but I hope its worth a listen for old times sake.
Tracklist:
clear my sky – 2002
the fox – 2005
white tigers – 2008
i call her molecule – 2000
plums – 1999
doppelgänger – 2004
player piano – 2004
sunstroke 76 – 2001
pelican flamingo – 2007
theme from weldon vermont – 2003
7:32 a.m. – 2003
spaceship earth – 2009
MODLBOI / modern man – 2004
