olumn four (on the floor) of Beatz finds us with a smattering of new releases by such big names as Booka Shade, Soulphiction, Kiki, Tiefschwarz, and Sleeparchive. There’s also Michael F. Gill searching for emptiness in house and Nate DeYoung digging up some obscure minimal techno from…1982?! And of course, if you haven’t checked it out yet, take a look at Todd Hutlock’s lovingly detailed primer on Detroit Techno.


In Our House
[Inside Dance Culture]

Most of us would agree we need less clutter in our lives, and a certain degree of physical and/or emotional space from people, the media, and even the things we love in order for them to retain their sense of purpose and freshness for us. Life itself is an unflinching eye, eternally staring at us without a pause, and while are able to close our eyes and hide from the world at any time we’d like, it seems our own personal space is getting smaller by the day. With the internet giving us fingertip access to such a plethora of information, we have the ability to see the widest ranging scope of art and ideas than ever before. Of course, it’s incredibly exciting, but at the same time you don’t have to look further than this site to see burnout becoming a more common facet of our musical lives.

So while this discussion is neither new nor unique, and as I am writing this someone is able to legally or illegally obtain (but not listen to) every record Motown and Stax ever committed to wax within a day or two, I still find myself and my desires rather insatiable. Sure, I have some distant fears that the other shoe might drop some day, and there are a couple of times a season where listening to music seems like an overwhelming chore rather than a supplement. But I’ve been asking myself, “Why is my passion still undiluted even after seven years of downloading abuse?” At this point in my life, my answer lies in electronic dance music: it actually helps me cope with the lack of space in my life.

I wasn’t always such a techno booster, I grew up listening to the adult contemporary radio stations my mom would have on while driving me to school, and then when I actually began to seek out music in my teens I listened to Top 40 and rock. What I’ve come to learn is that popular music is often too focused for me, where there are very few times where it is not actively trying to engage you and get your undivided attention. You could run the gamut from Mogwai to Nelly to Sheryl Crow to even Beethoven, and 90% of the time the albums are filled to the brim with clearly structured songs or soundscapes. I am a sucker for a good pop song as much as anyone else, but these types of songs and albums all demand an immense amount of energy, desire and interest to go through and get acquainted with. I find there is no sense of space, no freedom for one to think when you’ve got an abundance of vocals and melodies to focus on, and a lack of pieces that are based on texture and tone. And so I, just like many others, have felt a sense of burnout with pop, indie rock, and even experimental music. It’s wasn’t the quantity of music I consumed though, it was the quantity of notes that lead me to fatigue.

As I switched to listening to house and techno, I’ve found my mindset rejuvenated to a sense of excitement and wonder that usually only happens to neophytes. Most people are aware of dance music’s focus on rhythm and texture above notes and songs, and to me this focus on texture also opens up a third dimension that stimulates contemplation. I could probably write endlessly about the comfort and security I feel when I hear a four-on-the-floor kick drum, how it’s a reliable, unobtrusive friend whose steady rhythm perfectly complements and/or enhances traveling anywhere in the world. It’s the foundation by which even the most alien or arrhythmic soundscape can seem effortlessly listenable. Everything from industrial techno to noodley jazz-house is grounded to a steady beat, anchored in repetition. From this launching point, I find myself freely able to daydream while still being inside the groove and cognizant of the track’s direction. Dance music encourages passing thoughts, it seeks to gently harmonize with your brain, not interfere with it. I have enough stress, responsibility, and sensory stimuli to deal with in life before music is even in the picture demanding my concentration. House, like any good friend, seems to intrinsically inspires me to creativity and inspiration by leaving out all the notes, vocals, and clearly delineated sections. It’s as if my mind is filling in all the blank spaces with thoughts.

The way I see it, rock and pop is always aiming quench your thirst, to fulfill you. But in my mind, the more we think of music as a savior to redeem us, as something that will lift our spirits up from the tedium of the world, the harder it becomes to achieve the desired excitement and stimulation. Fulfillment breeds dormancy, and this leads to people complaining that there is nothing new out there, even if they are a victim of their own set ways. I believe the key to avoiding fatigue in the arts is to permit yourself some emotional breathing room, always allowing space for desires and passions to develop when you listen to music. I have found this metaphysical space in dance music, where freedom and creativity are spawned from the enduring strength of active indifference.
[Michael F. Gill]


Spin Cycle
[New Music Reviews]

Featured Release

Sleeparchive – Radio Transmission EP
Label/Catalog #: ZZZ / 005
Released: February 2006

After a long night of dancing six months ago, a track from one of Sleeparchive’s earlier 12 inches ended one of the better DJ sets I’ve heard at around 4 AM. I’ve since gone on a fruitless quest to find the track responsible and hoped beyond hope that the mysterious act would release similar work to sate my urge for pounding, unrelenting sonar minimalism that often only utilizes a simple panning effect to woo. This is the EP that I’ve been waiting for. When archive isn’t pounding out five long-form tracks that seem to bob and weave between every variant of this sound, there are short ideas (usually spanning less than a minute) presented in the grooves that seem to beg for further examination. Many will undoubtedly find home-listening a chore for this sort of release, but once you’ve heard it out in the hands of a talented DJ, you’ll probably be finding yourself pleading for more. For the bulbous underwater sound of Berlin, look no further.
[Todd Burns]

Delon & Dalcan – La Migale Infernale
Label/Catalog #: Boxer Recordings / 036
Released: January 2006

As heard on a previous Beatz mix, Delon & Dalcan’s opening salvo on their latest 12” for the Boxer Recordings label metastasizes shortly after it begins into an electro-bleep house epic. “La Migale”’s spindly synths wrap themselves around a deep, grinding bass that dares you with each passing bar to stop dancing. It’s physically impossible: I’ve tried it. Of course you can turn the wax over if you’d like, but as you might expect things don’t get better. But “Frisches”’s charms lie more in one of its synths sounding like a lost puppy lost amid a torrent of determined organization and “Live” sounds like it get lost somewhere along the way to a dark EBM rave and wandered into a trance set. Which is a good thing, I promise. Recommended.
[Todd Burns]

Sasse feat. Kiki – Loosing Touch
Label/Catalog #: Moodmusic / 039
Released: January 2006

Somewhere around the second minute of “Loosing Touch,” the beat, the melody, and the vocal all seemed to cohere into what the track should have been from the beginning—as if the sequencers somehow needed a bit of time to get into a locked groove. This, I think, is key to the sort of space disco that Sasse is proffering here: the idea that these machines are fallible and that the future that they are audibly creating is not the perfect glitz-encrusted cocaine high. That future is out of our reach, Kiki corroborates—he’s losing touch. The fact that the instrumental B-side somehow retains this sentiment is more than enough reason to track this one down.
[Todd Burns]

Error Error – Remix 1
Label/Catalog #: Italic / 057
Released: January 2006

You can tell that Error Error said two one word answers to each participating artist in this remix 12” when asked what sort of feel to go for. The word for Antonelli was “Detroit.” He takes Error Error’s bouncy, ecstatic take on “music make you lose control” and stretches it out to its breaking point, employing the original’s organ to provide the bed in which the rest of the composition lies. The whole thing sounds like it might find a nice home on a Depth Charge compilation, but it’s too melancholic and not enough of a risk-taker for my tastes. Paul Kalkbrenner’s word was “Euro.” His ebullient version of “Your Everlasting Breath” is more my speed, increasing the pace and allowing a little bit of the disco into the solemn proceedings. As if nodding back to Antonelli, a mournful organ makes its way into the mix late into the track, only to be subsumed by one of the squelchier basses I’ve heard this week.
[Todd Burns]

Scorchio – En Fuego
Label/Catalog #: Unlocked Groove / 002
Released: February 2006

The Unlocked Groove label is in the unfortunate (so I’ve heard) business of trying to make it as a tech-house label in Boston. It’s certainly not for lack of bringing the goods musically. Scorchio’s first solo release for the label features a slickly melodic cut-up (“Hate Me Not,”) the attendant deep(er) rework (by Fred Giannelli), a minimal funk B-side that you forget upon hearing (“Inverted Burning People”), and the shuffle-in-the-style-of-Orb (“Nervous.”) In fact, it’s like they took a page right out of Kompakt’s playbook. Which is to say, grab the A-side and the shuffle. Lose the rest.
[Todd Burns]

Soulphiction – State of Euphoria
Label/Catalog #: Sonar Kollektiv / CD 008
Released: February 2006

For his first full-length under his SoulPhiction guise, Michel Baumann (aka Jackmate) strays from his own Philpot label onto nearby Berlin imprint Sonar Kollektiv to deliver Germany’s best imitation of Moodymann. The faded soul samples with crackling voices, the velvety smooth Rhodes, the plush, jazzy atmosphere being interrupted by snippets of conversations: these are all tactics you’ll hear on your copy of A Silent Introduction or Black Mahogani. “Midnight Funk Infinity” even revives one of The Electrifying Mojo’s spoken introductions to the Midnight Funk Association. To Baumann’s credit, he’s able to keeps things entertaining throughout the album, shifting easily from house to R&B to a downtempo funk that’s not too far removed from a Madlib production. I’m not too sure about his jazzbo cover of Bob James “Angela” (mostly known as the theme to US sitcom “Taxi,” sounding here like it’s been rewritten for “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,”) but at his best, like on the sparse neo-soul of “Used,” the steamy mist of the title track, or the spacey soul-house of “Transistor Slugs,” State of Euphoria is able to live up to its title.
[Michael F. Gill]

Tiefschwarz – Fly
Label/Catalog #: Four Music / Fine / 8287678734
Released: February 2006

Sounding better alone than it did on Tiefschwarz’s disastrous crossover album Eat Books, “Fly” is still a rather by-the-book electro-house number, based mainly on a honky synth patch, mechanical organ pads, and a plodding beat. It’s way too flaccid to entertain any thoughts of being introspective or anthemic, and Tiefschwarz are sounding like a mainstream imitation of themselves here. Steve Bug’s “Cause There Are Too Many Traffic Signs” remix on the flipside is an arthropod’s delight. Can you imagine the ironic delight Mr. Bug takes in reshaping the main hook in “Fly” into a waspy, detuned insect? It adds a much more distinct sound to the track, but just like the original, it’s an invertebrate, lacking any backbone to propel the track anywhere.
[Michael F. Gill]

Tim Xavier – Ride The Matterhorn
Label/Catalog #: LTD 400 / 003
Released: February 2006

Longtime American techno producer Tim Xavier, now living in New York, started up his own self-distributed label LTD 400 in late 2005, where he produces highly percussive, and often menacing minimal techno. “Ride the Matterhorn” is the third and best release for the label so far. The opening cut (all four are untitled) revolves around a bristled loop that spins like a treadmill of nervous anxiety, riding on percussion that may be wafer thin but is still incredibly itchy. The other highlight is the third track, an interesting study on industrial reverb tones and manipulations of digital echoes, backed only by a tiny synthetic kick drum. While a bit more epileptic, this 12” would fit well next to the similar sounding Sleeparchive during a late night DJ set.
[Michael F. Gill]

Phillipe Cam – Somewhere Between Here and There
Label/Catalog #: Musique Risquee / 008
Released: February 2006

French producer Phillipe Cam has been absent (and forgotten?) for four years now, long after his trancey trio of ambient 12 inches for Traum, and his massive “Karine” landed him plenty of comparisons to Manuel Göttsching’s “E2-E4.” “Somewhere Between Here and There,” released on Canada’s Musique Risquee, comes with remixes by label heads Deadbeat and Akufen, and also shows Cam absorbing more of the sound of his new labelmates. “Un Salon Dans Le Ciel” is akin to a more ambient Akufen production, with a gentle ticking panning back and forth, and warm, yet jerky organ stabs. Deadbeat’s remix of “Un Salon” sounds exactly like you’d expect it to, adding his signature tech-dub feel and plenty of cavernous reverb, but it still remains enjoyable while it plays. Cam’s title track on the flipside is more similar to his early material, with gorgeously lush synth pads that could brighten a room like sunlight through a window. Akufen’s remix barely tampers with the original “Somewhere,” other than replacing the breezy shuffley feel with a straighter four-on-the-floor pulse. A very enjoyable release, from an artist who needs to record more.
[Michael F. Gill]

Phage & Daniel Dreier – Beeswax
Label/Catalog #: Klang Electronik / 104
Released: March 2006

Welcome to the minimal kitchen sink, where you don’t have wait more than ten seconds before another stuttering, puking, or chopped up vocal goes “ba-jah-de-um-ah,” where belching acidic bubbles are scribbled all over and tense synthetic organs are ready to become your latest earworm. Your body will bump to a jumpy and fidgeting kick drum, and you will experience no less than twelve aquatic spills into wells of reverb. You will be tickled three times every seven seconds if you don’t keep dancing, and you’ll learn quickly that being tickled so often can be rather annoying. Now you wouldn’t want to come here unless you wanted to get down, as there is no hope in trying to mentally process all eleven hundred and forty of the microscopic sonic permutations that occur in these nineteen minutes. We are here to drive your body mad, not your mind. Please watch your step as you slide in.
[Michael F. Gill]

The Knife – Silent Shout Remixes
Label/Catalog #: Rabid Records / 029
Released: February 2006

It’s fair to say that the duo has swapped the sawtooth and steel drum prom-theme of “Heartbeats” for something a little more threatening. Knife v. 3.0 is all shimmering tension; after a few minutes of noir pop-house, the creeping synth arpeggio finally bleeds out like sunrise on tundra, followed closely by grotesquely pitch-shifted vocals reminding that “I caught a glimpse now it haunts me.” After its breathless grandeur, “William’s Acidic Circuit” remix still makes a good enough show, littering a firmer beat with slippery noises and excising the vocals, but the Troy Pierce remix gets tops rewards for its adventurism, turning all the vocals into clipped whispers and putting a considerable amount of skip to the rhythm (even if it deemphasizes the song’s overall shape.)
[Mike Powell]

Booka Shade – Night Falls
Label/Catalog #: Get Physical / 041
Released: March 2006

“Mandarine Girl” left big clogs to fill for Get Physical and Booka Shade. If “Night Falls” comes up second in melody, the feeling is better articulated: dimming light brings uncertainty until pupils dilate. Still, the intrepid interplanetary embrace is a paradoxical one—space, you know, is cold, but somehow the minimal, dreamy “Night Falls” feels very warm after a couple minutes. I almost prefer the ruthlessness of “Tresspass06,” which hacks its own fully syncopated bassline to death with only the simplest blip-beat to bear witness; said bassline haunts the last two minutes with Latin percussion found in the afterlife. “The Spectralist”’s full-on vibe is gonzo by comparison, but after 13 reasonably enchanting minutes, you’d do well by just about anything.
[Mike Powell]

Socks and Sandals – Shatter
Label/Catalog #: Microcosm / 011
Released: January 2006

Already releasing tracks on the Foundsound and Microcosm labels, Socks and Sandals’ Shatter EP is actually the group’s first solo release, but they’re definitely not willing to sound like it. By burrowing into the vogue realm of Herbert-ian flavored micro-sampling and coming out with unexpectedly vivid results, the group’s original conception as a strictly live band seems all the more criminal by the day. Instead, Socks and Sandals sound like they lived with the title track until they cleaned out every tic, cough, and white-noise-fuzzball they could find. Unwilling to focus on the crevices, the group also sculpts droning swirls into a long lost realm of Frank Gehry sonic architecture for “Found in Space.”
[Nate DeYoung]

Kiki - Boogybytes Volume One
Label/Catalog #: Bpitch Control / 120 Released: February 2006

If you’re only after the Bpitch hits, then you need the simultaneously released Camping 2, as Boogybytes is a CD that, aside from Kiki’s own contributions and a few other digitally sliced and looped snippets, includes virtually no music from the label that is releasing it. In fact this isn’t the place to come if you’re looking for a simple mix of any kind as, as the title suggests, the tracks are chopped into hard-disk sound-dust and algorithm fodder then smeared across each other. To begin with the mix is too polite and breezy, little more than music for sped-up cloud footage. Geez, it’s electronica. Then, a third of the way through, about the time that the vox from Kiki’s own “So Easy to Forget” ride the elephant-noise trance of Michael Forzza’s “Kahana,” there’s the realisation that one has got caught in the upswell and from then on Kiki cranks up the pace and the rush. The end section, with tracks from Bedrock Records Guy Gerber, and Digital Excitation makes euphorically explicit the electro-house scene’s current swing toward the once disparaged sounds of trance. Roll on May/June, for the Sascha Funke mixed second volume.
[Patrick McNally]


Reanimation
[Crate Digging & Reissues]



Monoton - Monotonprodukt07
Label: Monoton Released: 1982

If an inclusion into The Wire’s list of “100 records that set the world on fire (when no one was listening)” means an automatic spot in permanent obscurity, it does also give Monotonprodukt07 a free pass to avant-garde legitimatization in the same broad-stroke. Such obscurity also breeds a reputation for Konrad Becker’s masterpiece into a cultish following. A following that I fell entrapped by when critic Matthew Ingram not only called the record “the square root of Basic Channel, Kompakt and Oval” but also “a very strong candidate for the most important record of the last 30 years”—seemingly hyperbolic statements that both piqued interest and skepticism. But even after my initial pair of spins, I knew I couldn’t refuse.

With Monoton’s constant pulses of arpeggiating analog synths stringing together much of Monotonprodukt07, the album has an uncanny sense of sterility and rigidity that is not only furthered by Becker’s interests in mathematics and sound, but also as a metaphor running through the song titles (ie. “Soundsequence” & “Root of 1=1”). But there’s a tactile expanse that belies a merely frigid barren; echoes, drones, and fat dubbed oceanic waves of analog sound complicate the strictly dystopic tone of the tracks. Becker’s intention of an “integrated sound massage” certainly comes across with the sensuous drones of “New” and acid-tinged pounding of “Where Am I?” Littering the sheen of the underpinned rhythms with trance-inducing murmurs, Becker’s vocals float in and out from ether, sounding less like mere disembodied voices than full-on séances. Rather than just an ominous tone throughout, there’s a variety of trance-states that each track achieves, from the motorik-lite of “Root of 1=1” to Becker’s curiously nonchalant chant of “a fish in water thirsty” in “Wasser.”

While easier to trace paths back to Monotonprodukt’s influence on minimal techno, with the austere chic of Richie Hawtin and the label Sahko as the first of many strains to spring to mind, it becomes profoundly more difficult to explain why this didn’t “set the world on fire” itself in its time. Perhaps the album’s trance-like meditations transferred directly to its reception, with it spurning an interest that is more a fixation than an explosion. But Monotonprodukt07 is a fixation that haunts, not aging a day since it was first released—instead caressing and completely disregarding the effects of time itself. The re-release of the album sound especially impacting with a nice digital re-mastering for CD in 2003, retitled Monoproduckt07 20y++.
[Nate DeYoung]


Chart
[Playlists & Mixes]

Mallory O’Donnell
Soft Cell - Seedy Films
Gaznevada - IC Love Affair (Chinese Version)
Kano - Baby Not Tonight
Erasure - Love to Hate You
Gwen Guthrie - Seventh Heaven (Larry Levan Remix)
Don Ray - Standing in the Rain
Telex - Moskow Diskow
Machine - There But For the Grace of God Go I (Remix)
Underworld - Dirty Epic
New Order - Video 5.8.6

Cameron Octigan
Alexander Robotnik - Problemes D’amour
Claro Intelecto – Peace of Mind
Claude Von Stroke - Chimps
Joakim - Wish You Were Gone (Dub)
Konrad Black - Medusa Smile (Don\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t Look Back)
Lifelike & Kris Menace - Discopolis
Mathew Jonson - Decompression
Mikkel Metal - Victimizer
Nathan Fake - Charlie’s House (Apparat Remix)
Scsi-9 - On The Edge
Sebastian - Smoking Lills

Nate DeYoung
Sleeparchive - Radio Transmission
Mobius Band The Loving Sounds of Static (Junior Boys Remix)
Peter Grummich - The Roll
Mark Broom - From London with Love...
Pantytec - Maybe
Break 3000 - Lights
Delon + Dalcan - La Migale Infernale
Daso - Go Upstairs
Jonas Bering - Behind this Silence
Nhar - Adrenochrome EP

Michael F. Gill
DJ Goon & DJ Koyote - Diamond Grills
Marcellus Pittman - M. Pittman EP #2
Fuckpony – Dave Brubeck
Fela Kuti – Ako
Quentin Harris - Let’s Be Young
Sutekh – Fire Weather
Virgo – Mechanically Replayed
Barbara Mason – Yes, I’m Ready
Kid – You Don’t Like My Music (Hupendi Muzikil Wangu)
E.G. Daily – Say It Say It