'Giving It Up To Feel Effected' - Signer (Kog Transmissions / Involve)
I've no idea whether the title was supposed to be "affected", which would
have been the most brilliantly ambiguous title in the history of the
universe. Maybe. Still, it works either way, and is ambiguous anyway. Now
for my usual disclaimer: yes, I collaborate with this guy (who you may
know as Aspen) and am released on his label. I'm not, however, trying to
give him free advertising. :-) Anyway.. the music.
Most tracks on here end up doing that trick of ending up as an ambient
lull, despite all the components sounding like they should add up to
techno. To be more blatant, lots of tracks have four drum machine kicks
thudding through each bar, Roland TR-909 sounds abound, and chords ping
off in all directions through a variety of effects. The very techno drum
sounds on some of the tracks (especially some Grow! style 909 tom
patterns) are pretty antithetical to my tastes, but the good bits far
outweigh them. :-P
Comparisons time: some bits reminded me of the Modernist, particularly the
tune 'Fallover Disco' with its 80s metronomic bass-line. I have the same
sort of smiley response to both. That said, there's always the echoes and
tweakings that remind me quite strongly of Nick Rapacciolli. Other than
that, there are plenty of Aspen-style trademarks sneaking back into the
techno structures, particularly on the fucking nice final track, which
shifts back to a low-key electro groove, that is almost a match for the
beautiful simplicity of 'Sleep' by B Fleischmann. Hmm... these are last
month's cool comparisons.. ;-)
Waffly descriptions aside, I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone who liked
releases like 'Fishcake', '8 / 8.5 / 9' 12" by Various Artists, 'Vegas' by
Burger/Ink, or anything I mentioned above. Very worthwhile, and standing up
well to some serious thrashing!
'Paradigm Shift' (Statra)
I wanted to check this out for some new stuff from Denver McCarthy, a New
Zealand producer I think is damn fine. As it happens, his contributions to
this are actually tracks already released on Kog Transmissions under the
name Micronism.
Probably just having my expectations dashed, but they actually sounded a
little lackluster here, outside the context of the consistently good album
they're taken. After a couple of listens I remain similarly cagey about
how the rest of the album is.. some good stuff, but sort of forgettable.
By no means essential, IMO.
The tracks are generally in a synths and non-drum machine percussion loops
vein, a bit like recent Sun Electric or maybe As One. Lots of breaks
getting cut up but not really anything to do with hip-hop.
Susumu Yokota being fairly established, I'd pick Supersoul as the ones to
watch and Jeff Sharel as the one's to watch. Probably a release by either
of the consistency of the tracks presented here would be well worth
having (as with Denver/Micronism's 'In A Quiet Mind').
'Stratospheric' - Lypid (Statra)
The Lypid tunes on 'Paradigm Shift' sounded pretty good, so I picked this
12" up as well, without listening to it, and I wanted to test my above theory
that on their own the artists' material might sound more consistent.
Unfortunately the tracks on here don't really do it for me at all and aren't
particularly similar to the stuff on the comp. The sounds are all a bit
check-out-our-modern-and-expensive-synths for my liking, and the beats that
come in on the opening track don't grab me at all.
Still, probably worth it for the Jonah Sharp mix, which is pretty inkeeping
with recent Spacetime Continuum output, and never veers off into big the sax
jams which distressed some of his fans when they heard the last album.
Anyway, ob links:
http://statra.com/ has RA of the two releases from them, and
the Involve web site in my sig has a complete MP3 of 'Scooter' from Signer's
album.
Michael
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Involve Records
http://involve.co.nz
Jet Jaguar MP3s
http://mp3.com/jetjag/
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