Fennesz: Endless Summer
Brilliant, like a beautiful, beatless ambient
Electric Company: Slow Food
which, BTW, is also great, 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.
Then there's
Plaid: Double Figure
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. Rest Proof Clockwork is more inspired and enjoyable for my
money by a long shot...
Kid606: PS you love me
is a good one, album sounds and even looks, colorschemewise, 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.
I can also dig
V/A: All Access
fantastic fantastic detroit sampler compiled by Carl Craig, fantastic,
oh boy, takin' this one on the road first chance I get, smooth with bite
like a fine cocktail, yes indeed, and a Theorem vs. Swayzak track for
the rare-collab collector fiends...
Bisk: Moonstruck Parade
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 +
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, nor am I kidding about
V/A: RKK 13
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 unexpectedly have to suffer
through the sound of Thurston Moore chopping through the Ramone's "I
wanna be sedated" and bad radio reception noise, which sounds a lot more
interesting than it sounds. Sorry Vat, just not open-minded enough I
guess, or then again, I am the sort of person who enjoys
Fantastic Plastic Machine: Beautiful
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.
Herbert: Bodily Functions
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 on this list cares.
File under "girl-friendly" but only if she's really smart y'know huh huh.
Ken Ishii: Iceblink
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, you know how it goes, these guys make a
bunch of money and it all goes poo before you can sneeze, kind of like
V/VM: Help Aphex Twin 1.0 & 2.0
Not V/VM, they can't even afford their own source material, I'm talking
about Aphex Twin, yeah, the guy that 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 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. I likes it, as I do, finally,
Mouse On Mars: Idiology
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 on the way to see Lex + Devine in LA
this weekend, ha ha all you people who'll miss it (I've never gotten to
say that, you realize, or even feel it really)... 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. Good record, really like it,
except for the Annoyinggg MAnnn.
Is that it? I think that's it.
Tom
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