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Fennesz :: Endless Summer (Mego)
Brilliant, beatless ambient stuff. Reminds me of a noisier To Rococo Rot or possibly a more ambient take on Electric Company, in terms of the sounds used. If I were to characterize the nature of the music behind the sonics, as if they were separable, I’d have to call it almost like Curd Duca in terms of the simple, pretty loops being used. If those three namechecks don’t do it for you, might be best just to pick up a copy of it and see for yourself. I did, with mighty little Fennesz back-catalogue to inform my purchase, and was very pleasantly surprised. The title certainly fits, too, unless you live somewhere that’s cold year-round.
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Electric Company :: Slow Food (Planet Mu)
Laner’s best yet in my opinion, not just because it’s the most accessible but also because it’s the most consistent of all his work I’ve been exposed to so far. As usual he throws in everything as well as the kitchen sink, and makes it all come together. I can’t necessarily agree with the “poppy” label some have been tagging on to this release, though I suppose it is more pop than EC’s past records- that just
doesn’t say much, though. ‘Real’ instruments sampled on several tracks, to great effect, and arrangements that remind me a lot of our latter-day scratch-DJ artists’ cut-ups. Really and truly modern without being excessively difficult, and that does say something.
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Plaid :: Double Figure (Warp)
A good, solid outing, with everything we’ve come to expect from Plaid. Which is sad, because while it’s not a bad record, it certainly seems to show Plaid becoming sort of a one-trick pony band, and I hate when that happens. This album sticks mostly to syncopated 4/4 and 3/4 beats, and has some really beautiful moments as well as top-notch production throughout. It reminds me that something can be exquisitely polished,
yet remain slightly less than brilliant. Perhaps I’ve become a little too accustomed to Plaid exceeding my expectations- not the first time this has happened, either.
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Kid606 :: PS You Love Me (Mille Plateaux)
This is a good one –the album sounds and even looks, colorscheme-wise, similar to
Jake Mandell’s recent Love Songs for Computers, which was also a good score. Smooth, almost Kompakt-brand 4/4 in lots of places. I can dig it. Actually, on second and third listen, it becomes very much in line with the Kompakt/CR school of deep, smooth techno, at least on my favorite tracks, though perhaps a little more melodic, and, if you’ll allow me such a conceit, more American. A good sign of an excellent remix album is when I listen to it before hearing the original material and spend the next day searching for a copy.
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All Access Compilation :: (Planet E)
Positively gorgeous Detroit sampler compiled by Carl Craig. Variety and
consistency usually find themselves opposed in electronic music, but not in this case. Swayzak Vs. Theorem alongside Stacey Pullen’s Black Odyssey and Recloose mixed by Herbert- who could imagine a less than
stellar compilation with this talent roster on the tracklist? Listening to this album makes you think Detroit is less of a city than a planet in itself, or some kind of underground arcology with advanced alien
technology buzzing away in the artificial luminescence. It certainly doesn’t leave you on Planet Earth. My only problem with this comp? I already have a copy of the Common Factor track.
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Bisk :: Moonstruck Parade (Quatermass)
Had this for a while, and just like most every other Bisk album I have, still not the least bit tired of it. Chop chop chop chop, bleep daboop, skittery too-fast OK slowdown WTF billie holiday in one ear and waltzing R2 D2s in the other, gorgeous, full of surprises, and classical piano +
acoustic guitar samples to make you want to own a house on the beach for some reason. The title track is going down in history, and I’m not kidding, not in the least. I still don’t understand why Bisk doesn’t get
more attention. Maybe he should move to Detroit.
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RKK 13 Compilation :: (Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge)
Which is more hit-and-miss than any comp I’ve bought in a while, some good tracks, but everything’s about 2 min. long tops so you get to relish JayRope, Electric Birds, Blitter and Fennesz’s contributions about the same amount of time that you have to suffer through the sound of Thurston Moore chopping through the Ramone’s “I wanna be sedated” under radio static, which sounds a lot more interesting than it, er, sounds. Sorry folks, just not open-minded enough, I guess. As I said, good moments in with the bad, but when everything is just a moment,
where’s the feeling?
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Fantastic Plastic Machine :: Beautiful (Emperor Norton)
Lounge disco over-the-top silliness and beats to back the best of blue movies, FPM hits the spot again with another fantastic sunny day driving album, unstoppable and not the least bit self-conscious, even in dense traffic. The cover of “Whistle Song” is eight minutes of sheer joy for those who still find flowers pretty and female voices alluring. Demands absolutely nothing of the listener other than a minimal dash of optimism- Mr. Tanaka will do the rest, rest assured.
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Herbert :: Bodily Functions (Studio !K7)
Around The House was a fine enough record, but if you’d rather more brain-tickling bebop or just regular smoky old jazz inflected stuff, to include the use of more than a few live-sounding musicians etc. Plus even more Dani Siciliano, love that voice, and lyrics that make ten times as much sense as Underworld, not that anybody cares. This is not acid jazz or looped-riff trip-hop, this is serious smoky back-room
cabaret style with technical bite for the musician’s musician and floating arrangements for that platonic relationship that only needs one good evening to give Plato the boot. Is this a roman a clef or a record review? I’ll shut up now.
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Ken Ishii :: Iceblink (RS)
Boom Boom Boom whatever, not bad but not nearly as good as Metal Blue America, the Grip + Re-grip material, sounds more like an EP with some filler thrown in than an album. A few tight thumping tracks and then
some overproduced silliness. Why oh why can’t people make more techno records that sound like well-conceived, self-contained albums as opposed to a bunch of 12″s mashed together? Or perhaps that should be obvious. For the Ken Ishii completist like myself; for the rest of the world, there’s better techno out there this time of year.
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V/VM :: Help Aphex Twin 1.0 & 2.0 (V/VM Test Records)
V/VM, you see, they can’t even afford their own source material, so they turn to Aphex Twin, whom England’s favorite meat sculptors have rearranged, smashed, inappropriately appropriated and generally improved upon in favor of lower S/N ratios and sheer aggressive twistedness, which come to think of it nobody might’ve imagined years ago but now is perfectly acceptable. Or not. Lots of fairly well-known Aphex material reworked into more cacaphonic and unpredictable arrangements, pitchbent all out of wack and cut up so as to make the trainwreckingest DJs worldwide look smooth. Also a nice little :30 take on “If I Were A Rich Man”, which I thought was funny and totally worth it. Takes a certain
frame of mind, and you know who you are.
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Mouse On Mars :: Idiology (Thrill Jockey)
Which when swinging, rocking, thumping, shouting and bumping like a squadron of nymphomaniacal (and/or satyriatic) imps and faeries breaking into a high-dollar studio and ruining it during an all-night orgy, is a great record and again one that definitely fits the bill for incarlistening, at least in my car… but when they stop and do that thing where dude talks on and on about some post-a-modern
con-a-ceptssss, mm hmm, it drives me-a nuts, same as it did on the Gerhard Potuznik album some years ago. At least the Potuznik voiceover bits were a sort of narrative. Anyway. Brass, winds, screaming people, and the beautiful antique-synth-dipped-in-goulash sound we’ve all come
to love, with the more aggressive almost-ska dub style from the last two albums in full effect. Exciting to say the least.
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