Synth artist Golden Donna has a new EP out and this little preview track marks a bit of a departure from his seriously zoned-out, kraut-influenced jams from last year. "Machete Bathtub" instead crafts more of a horror/creeper vibe, with an Italo groove propelling its minimal-synth theatrics.
We haven't heard from Vektroid -- the net-addled producer also behind Macintosh Plus and Laserdisc Visions, among other aliases -- for a while, and this new track seems to mark a new chapter in her sound for 2013. Eschewing the more sample-based palette of some of the side projects, "Enemy" conjures up rich midi-scapes that mark the point where dystopia and utopia meet.
Two of our favourite producers, Veracom and Heatstroke, have hooked up for a next-level collaboration. "#HD_ELBOWS" occupies rich and slow territory familiar to any listener of either producer, but it's really pushed over the edge with its fine-grained sense of high-definition luxury.
Producer Blue Angels has dropped something deeper than his usual fare with these two new tracks. Playing around with a house-y, hi-hat shuffle, plaintive piano loops, and slightly-screwed vocal samples, everything comes together just so to evoke a slickly late-90s cafe sensibility.
This year my music listening habits fragmented even further; listening to most things online first, often at work, is a great way of forgetting about some really great stuff, and it was quite a task reconstructing and recollecting my year's disparate listening through old blog posts and soundcloud faves. Albums were drastically less important to me this year than previously, although there were many excellent full-lengths and EPs released this year. I don't especially want to enter into deep reflections on the year in music, but a few things/trends really stood out. There have been some truly excellent high-concept albums that seem to be looking for ways of resisting the interfaces of contemporary networked capitalism, and which find answers in a re-articulation of our (post-human?) bodies, in particular the Laurel Halo, d'Eon and Jam City ones. I'm a huge partisan in favour of everything James Ferraro has done this year, including Sushi, which while not as bracing as Far Side Virtual was when it came out last year, has really consolidated his position as an aesthetic-leader within the contemporary underground and as a result has proved to be more subtly divisive. And finally, I'm so happy that so many producers are doing breakbeats again, and I've been drowning myself in old Hardcore and Jungle mixes this year trying to catch up on received wisdom.
Huge s/o to the hottest labels of 2012 for releasing so much good stuff and being such pivotal sources of orientation in an often confusing, badly-curated sea of content: UNO NYC, Hippos In Tanks, Software, AM Discs, and L.I.E.S., you have all killed it.
1. Kuhrye-oo - Give In (For The Fame)
from Kuhrye-oo EP [UNO NYC]
A skittering and mournful 2-step beat provides the anchor for a song that is probably the closest distillation of what I was after musically in 2012. A stunning tribute to and re-evaluation of club music's past, from easily one the best labels of the year.
2. Autre Ne Veut - Counting
from Anxiety (forthcoming) [Software]
There's nothing like a new track from one of your favourite artists of 2010 to remind you how much things have changed in two short years, but Autre Ne Veut has updated his sound just enough to take it to the next level, with tighter production giving the track an r&b grandeur his older, lo-er-fi records could only aspire to, and featuring a guest verse from 2012 it-boy Mykki Blanco.
Just a really beautiful track built around a slow, housey piano loop and Cantonese-speaking Triad God's beguiling singing/rapping.
4. Physical Therapy - Drone On
from Safety Net EP [Hippos In Tanks]
Physical Therapy's steady stream of mixes have been carving an oblique path at the vanguard of NYC's club culture for a little over a year now, and his first release of original productions was kind of a revelation. Highlight "Drone On" is one of the more ecstatic examples of a heavy jungle/breakbeat influence that is certainly a notable-2k12-trend.
Dark York is a deep, complex and at times, uh, dark listen; what I love about "Go In" is those chiming arpeggios that run in the background, and the way at certain points in the track it syncs up with the subtly rapid-fire snares to create this lighter-than-air feeling. Le1f's flow is amazing too, this guy is so talented.
6. Girl Unit - Ensemble
from Club Rez EP [Night Slugs]
Squeaky, crystalline production not unlike label-mate Jam City (whose Classical Curves, incidentally, is my album of the year), "Ensemble" is impossibly uplifting.
7. Bwana - Baby Let Me Finish
from Baby Let Me Finish EP [somethinksounds]
A completely addictive footwork-indebted slice of UK Bass; the vocal sample is a total earwormer.
8. Slava - File
from Soft Control EP [Software]
The footwork influence was pretty pervasive this year (not to mention some terrific, career-defining full-lengths from Chicago veterans Traxman and DJ Rashad), but no-one had such an elegant, high-fashion take on it as Slava did with "File".
9. Waka Flocka Flame - Bill Russell (Ryan Hemsworth's 情報デスクVIRTUAL Mix)
from Collected [mixtape]
An already pretty blissed-out song is made in even more so; I've lost count of the number of times this on repeat was the soundtrack to me zoning out at my desk mid-afternoon, forgetting to do any work.
10. Inc. - 5 Days
from No World (forthcoming) [4AD]
Impossibly slick, their full-length is much anticipated round these parts.
A new Deep Magic LP has just dropped on Housecraft and its chimes as obliquely delicately as we're used to. It's mastered by no less than Sean McCann whose no stranger to this sort of half-awake, textural immersive bliss.
Love this short brittle techno set from Detroit producer MGUN, who seems to be operating on more of an experimentalist wavelength; think less techno futurism, more crackling, jittering electrics.
It's been a minute since we've heard anything from Beer On The Rug and this new one from "contemporary classical"/drone artist Exael comes a little out of leftfield for the label that has come to be (dubiously?) associated with "vaporwave". Even though it cuts a fairly austere figure on first listen, Ghost Hologram is equal parts blissful and soft-focus, conjuring up states of total zoning that rewards repeated listens.
Ex-Auckland, New Zealand, now Portland, Oregon-based experimentalist Sam Hamilton has a new single out, which sees him streamlining his approach to off-kilter, subtly hypnotic pop, and reining in some of the ecstatic, Amazonian tendencies of his last album Pala. The suggestively titled "Perennial Traditions" is a tightly-wound and satisfying slab of art-rock, infusing the studiousness of something like This Heat or Liars with the restlessness that has previously defined Sam's work.
The full-length LP Integrifolia is available soon on Sam's own imprint Tumbling Strain.
Prior to the release of a deluxe sounding four-way cassette split between Motion Sickness of Time Travel, Aloonaluna, Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier, and New Zealand's Birds of Passage, the Hamilton-based label Cooper Cult -- who specialise in ultra-limited cassettes and lathes -- will be releasing a "pre-cassingle" from the rad Birds of Passage. B-side "In Heaven" is cracked, distant drone, with Alicia's hovering, ethereal vocals threatening to disappear in smoke and hiss, and the song's a cover of a song from Eraserhead FYI.
Tape available soon from Cooper Cult and only 100 downloads on this one so get in quick...
One of the highlights from the a i r s p o r t s album earlier this year (which was a co-release between Amdiscs and Sewage Tapes), "don't need u" now has a video thanks to Chris Byler, who was also responsible for the video for Ital's "Culture Clubs" we posted a few months back. The track is notable for its amazing, wavering, alternately creepy/triumphant outro & the seriously buzzy video is redolent with weed imagery & features a formal monster energy drink tasting. a i r s p o r t s is available for free download here.
Teams' next release is set to be on Beer on the Rug and its his take on the plastic-y, Ducktails-inspired guitar world but ultra Californian in his own way. Look for a release in 2013.
Thanks to our friend Mark Wundercastle for pointing me in the direction of these deep house cuts from Brooklyn producer Philip Eichorn. Hypnotically decadent, these tracks nail that early 90s Strictly Rhythm vibe; "Get in a House Party" has deep chord stabs while "Here I Am" is all about 'that' groove, listen to those snares stutter.
I've spent the last few weeks with Featureless Ghost's debut LP Personality Matrix, which is out now on long-running purveyors of forward-thinking weirdness Night People. The album sees the Atlanta-based duo self-realising even more than on their previous Night People cassette Mind Body, combining their future-shock minimal synth palette with a melodic liminal longing.
This video for album-track "Flash" has been making the rounds online and you can download the track above.
Incredibly sleazy, low-lit video for "Condom," a highlight of James Ferraro's slick new album Sushi, which streamlines the New Age Playboy sound of his recent Bodyguard and Bebetune$ personas.
Altar Eagle's Nightrunners album from earlier this year excelled at the kind of muffled, slow-motion pop that filtered wistful melodies through pop-synth washes. The No UFOs remix strips things right down to reconfigured Detroit industrial-scapes, with hardly a trace of the original.
Nightrunners is available digitally through Digitalis and will be out on cassette on Crash Symbols by the end of the year.
Auckland's Mark Wundercastle finally has a release out, and his EP, Straight Up Leisure Time, highlights the house producer's ear for forgotten, crystalline pop samples, and his knack for shifting from pop-house, breakbeat hardcore and chill-out. Nu-track "What's Going On" is showcased here by a seriously next-level post-humanoid vid, which stares directly into the liquid vortex. Out now on Crystal Magic.
