15 Feb 2013 — Henning Lahmann
Cloud Boat aka London residents Sam Ricketts and Tom Clarke recently started turning heads with their nocturnal post-whatever blend of drone-heavy electronica to be filed somewhere close to Vondelpark or Mount Kimbie. In anticipation of the duo's upcoming double a-side single, slow-burning and opaque late night city stroll named "Wonderlust", an ardent ode to urban alienation, was taken care of by enigmatic East London collective and NFOP favourites Old Apparatus, premiered on FACT earlier this week. If the original version was sombre, OA manage to add some even darker shades of grey, enriching the restrained textures with some elusive layers of industrial noise and unsettling sound fragments that sound like heavily processed field recordings. Watch out while wandering through the night, even the brightest city can be a menacing place sometimes.
The Wanderlust b/w Drean single is out March 4 via Apollo.
Check out the original as well:
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15 Feb 2013 — Silent Shout
Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about Rakam's Stranger Things Before is how easy it is to imagine it never leaving the bedroom it was clearly created in. It could fairly be described as an attempt at pop music, but it exists in a space carved out entirely by its own gleefully freewheeling invention, and seems motivated exclusively by the giddy realization that there need not be a limit to what form that invention takes. The New Wave DIY disco strut of the album's only French language song, "Le Jazz dans la Rue", is buoyed brilliantly by Marc-André Roy's exaggerated cool-guy croon, reaching peaks of impassioned warbling that recall a Francophone Patrick D. Martin only to be interrupted by a surprisingly delicate Casiotone harpsichord arrangement. Another standout, "Long Island Beaches", is about as close as Rakam gets to a plausible love song and veers into slightly more typical synth pop territory, albeit with some spastic drum machine programming and another run at a 'baby's first Bach' harpsichord interlude. The album's instrumentals are consistently excellent, especially the wonderfully developed "Ocean Liner", which owes equal debts to Brian Eno and 8-bit video game soundtracks, and shades its own complexity with its charmingly understated lo-fi sound and more than occasional missed notes. That juxtaposition is probably the greatest strength of Stranger Things Before, as it allows Rakam to maintain a level of intimacy while simultaneously being as wildly expansive and imaginative as they care to be.
Stranger Things Before is available on RAKAM's bandcamp.
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14 Feb 2013 — Will Stevens
Modern Love is a label synonymous with the North of England and Manchester, having heralded the likes of Andy Stott, Mark Stewert aka Claro Intelecto, Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty as Demdike Stare, as well as its association with the Manchester based store Boomkat. It is evidently clear that the city holds some sort of impalpable influence on the sound of the label – even though the music is not explicit to its locality.
The label's latest release comes from Rainer Veil: formed of Liam Morley and Dan Valentine, who met while studying contemporary music in the North of England. Struck EP is the debut release and begins with a single of the same namesake. "Struck", the track, plays out as a distinctive Modern Love release – mechanized characteristics are played through layers of hushed white noise. The chaotic nature of the beats hint towards a jungle influence but the track's success is the emotional response. This gathers further weight from "Slow Beaming" and "Wade In", with both displaying delicate choral and vocal tones in a wash of poignant ambience, the latter points to the duo's interest in UKG. "Bala" is also an intense disconsolate track – the production has reduced individual noise levels creating this personal and parochial palette.
The production has gone through an intriguing process. All the tracks began life as a framework before being dismantled and reconfigured as a new entity. Struck EP plays as a thoroughly thoughtful record full of intriguing, intimate details and convoluted production techniques. It fits in perfectly with the Modern Love narrative without sounding like any other of the label's releases. Not bad for a debut.
Struck EP is out now. Get it over here.
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14 Feb 2013 — Parker Bruce
SWAYS Records, known for introducing us to NFOP favourites M O N E Y and The Louche, definitely know how to create a mood, and that being said, the video for Emperor Zero’s “Mental Health Café” (which was released on a 7’' February 1) is the definition of said moodiness. Reading the video’s back story makes it even more crazy: “The video to ‘Mental Health Café’ was filmed inside the infamous wooden cage in the main room of the warehouse, a Kafkaesque structure that deliberately recalls the Kafes (‘cage’) of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, that was built to protect members of the ruling elite from fratricide and safeguard their succession to the throne. Since the days of Beyazit II, it had been ruled that a new sultan should execute all of his brothers, in order to avoid bloody wars of succession. To prevent such barbarity, Ahmet I decreed that a new sultan’s brothers should instead be locked in a cage with deaf mutes and a harem of concubines who were not allowed to leave the cage unless they got pregnant — in which case they were drowned. Thereafter, for several generations, when the sultan finally died and the time came for the younger sibling to leave the cage, the new ruler of the Ottoman Empire would emerge, unsteady on his feet and quite, quite mad.”
We'll leave you to the mystery: have a first peak at the strange video below.
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14 Feb 2013 — Henning Lahmann
Last year's for ostland by elusive NYC-based experimental project Nihiti was one of the truly surprising efforts in the ever-expanding field of dark-ish electronics that employ bare, reduced beat structures as the foundation for a raw blend of industrial, noise, and drone, with a result that you may or may not want to dance to, probably depending on your level of substance intake. Now, album standout "Ghosts and Lovers" – a bleak, menacing and nearly beatless take on Marissa Nadler's song of the same name – has received the remix treatment by a bunch of essentially like-minded producers, including Zebrablood (aka Nathan of Excepter), National Park System, Mark Verbos, and La Big Vic member Alienboy, with invariably compelling results.
Two versions have already been premiered recently on FACT and International Tapes, today we present an exclusive stream of all six reworks. Check them out below.
The Ghosts and Versions EP is out today on Lo Bit Landscapes.
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14 Feb 2013 — Trey Reis
I haven’t heard acoustic guitars played over walls of distorted noise like this since that "Sometimes" song on Loveless. Not that it’s a common thing. Thankfully. Because every time it is done, it’s done right.
Austin’s Pure X has been pretty quiet since their album Pleasure, which hit summer of 2011 hard with a take on the dark side of that reverb/distortion wall when everyone seemed to be exploring its brighter side. This time, "Things in My Head" is reaching us, fittingly, in the middle of winter, and it certainly has a coldness to it. It’s like the whole song feels like something is missing while managing to sound absolutely complete. Maybe it’s the singing. Or the patient tempo. Or the guitars that have nowhere to be. Either way, it’s the kind of playing around with sound space that Pure X perfected early on. We’ll find out where they’ve taken it when forthcoming LP Crawling Up the Stairs is released via Acéphale and Merok on May 14.
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13 Feb 2013 — Henning Lahmann
It sometimes seems as if the ancient art of pure, blissful tropical haze has been lost ever since James Ferraro went all post-apocalyptic digital glare, Sun Araw went to Jamaica, and Ducktails went full-on shiny charts pop. Okay, this might be both an over-simplification and a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea. Anyway, good thing is we have Swedish artist Henrik Stelzer aka Fluorescent Heights, whose 2011 debut Tourism had left us all gleaming and pleasantly intoxicated. Follow-up Vendetta in Paradise continues to sonically exploit the realms of humid, sweaty beaches somewhere south of here, albeit adopting an overall tone that's considerably more unsettling and disconcerting: 'There are bloodstains on your Hawaiian shirts and you know why', the press release reads; we swear we don't, and we're actually not sure if we really want to find out.
Vendetta in Paradise is out on cassette via the excellent SicSic Tapes.
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13 Feb 2013 — Will Stevens
"In The City" sees the return of the compelling collaboration between Anika and Geoff Barrow, with the latter having previously produced Anika’s self-titled debut with his band Beak>. A relationship built around their mutual love for ‘punk, dub and 60s girl groups’, the track is brimming with Barrow’s production aesthetic.
"In The City", a Chromatics cover, is a relatively short track, at only two and a half minutes. But there is much to be admired: Anika’s off-kilter vocals are auspiciously contrasted to a backing track that combines a typical Barrow Krautrock aptitude with some unexpected groove ridden finesse. Anika’s vocals display a similarity to Laetitia Sadier, but that might just be because her vocals always sound so alluring. The track also has an air of pastiche about it, but due to the combination of textures and influences it is able to sound refreshing and unique.
It’s a glorious partnership, which will lead to a self-titled EP released on Stones Throws in April. Highly Recommended.
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