22 Jul 2013 — Evelyn Malinowski
Upon the first slamming drum beat in Katie Gately's “Last Day,” and the crackling, sweeping-glass-up off-beat dragging behind, we are reminded of the contemporary mood of intelligent dance music as well as recently resurrected dark electronica provided by Perc, Forest Swords, and Miles Whittaker. The quivering vocal loop zooms in to quite poignantly adorn the factory floor dissonance while the greater structure of the dreamy track is successfully spotlighted: synthesis of polar elements and textures. Metal and water. Fire and ice. Atheist techno drone and ephemeral vocals?
Female vocal loops is a style familiarized by the likes of Julianna Barwick, or, if applying dance beats, Grimes, and timelessly, always to some mentionable extent, Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins can be placed as influential. Gately's voice falls into the same octave range of High Places' Mary Pearson, a neighboring Los Angeles dance duo who mostly participate in faster, less intellectually straining sounds. Yet, uniquely, what we experience with “Last Day” is a deliberate remaining in an ominous uncertainty. The track picks up assertively while lingering for the rest of its duration.
Alexander Stewart's textural, gestaltist video is accurately representative of materials – and primary colors – opposed to each other. Climbing up the screen we see jagged lines which recapitulate mountains. Lain on top are slowly revolving solid colored and gauzy spikes that remind us of both sharp edges of which to beware, and altitudinal convection. We are struck with empirical memories of things that can penetrate and pinch the skin, especially within an atmosphere of manual labor. Perhaps Stewart's images echo Gately's perspective on the southern California mountains rolling out of the desert to finally meet the ocean. Regardless, it is safe to infer that Gately is somewhat reverent of machinery.
Katie Gately's self-titled debut on Public Information is out September 2nd. Pre-order now here.
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19 Jul 2013 — Henning Lahmann
Lindsay Powell aka Fielded's fantastic latest full-length Ninety Ninety Thirty has been haunting us for a good while now already, yet even a couple of months after its release, the whole project apparently is still capable of surprising us. Below, we're happy to premiere the video for album closer "My Hand, Meant Only For You", a song that starts with twisted synth noises and an unsettling voice before Powell's pervasive singing weighs in to give rise to the unfolding of another baroque, exuberant opus, focusing on the music's beauties without ever completely releasing the initial tension. The accompanying visuals, directed by Alice Millar and starring Isaac Ledesma, feel all too appropriate despite being not overly subtle towards their subject-matter; yet even though we might have seen such mise-en-scène before, this particular realization comes across as particularly convincing and forceful, creating a dense and irresistible atmosphere.
Ninety Ninety Thirty is out on Captcha Records. Order your copy over here.
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18 Jul 2013 — Lukas Dubro
The topic of the video for "Airy Me" by Japanese musician Cuushe is a tough one: it deals with human subject research, as clarified in a recent interview with Dazed Digital. In the video you can watch a girl getting injections until she turns into some chimera, subsequently hunting the nurse through the hospital. At the very end, the two women hug each other, which leads to question whether the transformation really happened or had only been a dream.
Another interesting question provoked by the video would of course be what exact point creator Yoko Kuno is trying to make. Did she want to make a statement against human subject research in general? Or does she criticize Japan for having done experiments with humans in the 1930s and 1940s? It is always difficult to reflect on those topics within pop culture, escpecially when it's not clear what the creator's intentions are. At the end of the day, you risk to disrespect the distress of thousands of people that died and got hurt in such programs.
"Airy Me" is part of Cuushe's debut full-length Red Rocket Telepathy, which is out on flau. Her new album Butterfly Case will be released on September 23rd.
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16 Jul 2013 — Henning Lahmann
When someone names a track "Darkness in My Soul" and puts it onto an EP together with other tracks that have names such as "Before the Death of Rave" or "Rave Pt.1", a video shot in black and white that juxtaposes images of young people raving and scenes of nature that evidently serve as a metaphor for melancholy and solitude shouldn't exactly come as a surprise. The whole thing works out beautifully though, mostly thanks to the visuals' outstanding composition that indeed do evoke all those emotions that simply suit this delicate piece of retromanic yearning.
"Darkness in My Soul" is part of IVVVO's most excellent Future EP, which is out on Public Information in an edition of 500, each individually numbered by hand. There should still be some copies left over here.
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12 Jul 2013 — Selina Begum
"Lie Follows Lie" by Naked is a swooning melody of vocals, with hints of Japanese culture interspersed both within the track's vocals and video. The latter is a neon-light infused projection, simple in its layering amongst dark shadows, directly encapsulating the sombreness of the song. The words ' lie follows lie' are revealed in different languages, from Japanese to Norwegian, to Swedish and French, adding that unique touch to an already intense song. Bright things seem to lie ahead for Naked.
Watch the video below:
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11 Jul 2013 — Andrew Wagner
Released two weeks ago with barely a moment’s notice, Blondes new LP Swisher is turning out to be one of the summer’s pleasantest surprises. Today, Blondes dropped a video for album closer “Elise.” One of the breeziest jams on Swisher, “Elise” is a sort of respite from some of the denser techno compositions that precede it. The visuals, made by Greg Zifcak (who also made the visuals for the Swisher YouTube stream) are like an old TV set emitting Bauhaus-style animations, and I can’t think of anything more fitting for “Elise’s” stunningly beautiful melodies.
Swisher is available for digital download from RVNG Intl., and will be released physically on August 6th.
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05 Jul 2013 — Henning Lahmann
After the label's exceptional latest offering Retakes courtesy of brilliant South London producer Orphan, patten's Kaleidoscope imprint is about to strike again with yet another cassette release arriving in a ridiculously small edition. The concept should be familiar by now: recorded straight to tape, none of the physical items put out sounds exactly like any other. This time coming as 23 unique C30 tapes (and as usual accompanied by a free-of-charge digital version), the fifth instalment of Kaleidoscope's LIMITED DUBS series is by Croydon-born producer Yearning Kru, now living in Taiwan. Judging from the first audio snippet that scores the expectably weird visuals below, patten continues to explore the most thoroughly hidden corners even of the already left field-indebted dancefloors of today – and we surely couldn't be more thankful for that.
Yearning Kru's Cracked Lacquer/Vanadium arrives July 23 at midnight, so keep an eye on this page.
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04 Jul 2013 — Andrew Wagner
Brooklyn musician Michael McGregor (whom you might remember from Chocolate Bobka) has an invigorating new tape, Midtown Direct, out on the just-launched label 1080p. Yesterday, a video dropped for the track “8 (Dub)”. The song is very, very loosely techno. Starting with some distorted noise and vocal samples, “8 (Dub)” slowly inches its way towards club-ready rhythms before McGregor brings in an intense amount of warping and filtration, taking this track somewhere far stranger in the process. The video, meanwhile, appears to be some nameless tourist's footage of China, only tripped out and edited to be quasi-psychedelic. The effect is unsettling, to say the least.
Watch “8 (Dub)” below. Midtown Direct is available for purchase as a cassette from 1080p and digitally from either Boomkat or Juno.
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