Friday sunrise brings another Beatz By The Pound, and we’ve got reviews of Audion and Mathew Jonson, plus new releases from Get Physical, Perlon, and Festplatten. But first, Todd Burns is back with an audio profile of the Foundsound label.


Beatz by the Pound continues with its newest podcast: Influx. On this third edition, we profile Foundsound. The label puts out music “showcasing quirky, dancefloor-friendly tracks constructed from fragmented samples, organic minimalism, and random field recordings.” Stylus editor Todd Burns talked to Sean O’Neal and Cyhl Takerkart about the Philadelphia electronic music scene, the differences between DJing and producing, and what’s up next in 2006 and 2007 for the label.

Tracks
01: Sarah Goldfarb - Forty Years Ago I Sold My Body
02: Redwan - Macky & Donald (Fusiphorm Remix)
03: Someone Else - Goofball
04: Omar Salgado - Miniature

[INFLUX #001: Orac Records]
[INFLUX #002: Hand on the Plow]


Audion
Mouth to Mouth
Spectral Sound / SPC-39
September 2006

Matthew Dear’s latest (and arguably greatest) single is a 13-minute epic of relentlessness. Building up from the humble beginnings of a simple, slightly echoed backbeat and nagging synth riff to incorporate a growing number of swollen noises that pass like flying saucers zooming overhead getting closer and closer and louder and longer, “Mouth to Mouth” has all the makings of a classic, including a healthy reputation prior to release (apparently, bloggers have glossed it the “Swarm of Bees” track since hearing it in sets this summer). To really appreciate the track, it needs to be played loud and at length, where the buzzing, swarming signatures really get a chance to work their magic. This doesn’t work nearly as well in your living room as it will in a packed, sweaty club, pressed up hard next to the hottie of your choice. Flipside “Hot Air” is altogether sexier, by the way, but next to the sheer insanity of the A, it will likely not even get noticed, which is sort of a shame. Buy this now and cane it everywhere you can.

[Todd Hutlock]



Miss Fitz
Komisarin Kauz Sounds Good
Archipel / ARCHPL003
August 2006

Maayan Nidam (aka Miss Fitz) follows up her debut on Sushitech Purple with an equally strong four-tracker of percussive minimalist grooves, this time on the Canadian Archipel imprint. Lead track “Porn 04” pops along and careens with a swooping, sliding synth, punctuated by a random “Hey!” vocal sample that keeps things from getting too dark. “Plak Du Jour” follows a similar ping/pop rhythmic base, but this time with a warm and dreamy, melodic riff that gets your head nodding in several directions at once. A definite grower, as that damn riff has been in my head for days now. Remixes on the flip by Pheek (a slightly skewed rhythmic workout of “Porn” that adds a clipped hi-hat and some more glitchy noises to the mix) and Mossa (“Plak” taken down a dark alley and fed some amphetamines) work well, but Miss Fitz is the queen of this outing. Nidam’s material recalls similarly percussion-obsessed minimalists like Ryan Crosson (who remixed a track on the Sushitech 12”) or Gaiser, but she has enough of her own thing going on to make her a qualified up-and-comer in her own right.

[Todd Hutlock]

Richard Hinge
Audiopath EP
Path / Path-007
September 2006

Active since the late 80s but not having released anything for a fair bit, Conrail Records boss Richard Hinge returns with a three-track EP of electro-tinged techno that sounds a bit like a lost EBM record, right down to the sorta cheesy nude model on the cover and the unfortunately titled lead track, “Be My Bitch.” All that’s missing is an angry Germanic vocalist shouting over the top, but once “Bitch” hits its groove, it works fairly well. On the flip, “Time Continuum” adds a bit more techno and tempo to the mix, but still keeps the retro fires burning, while “Electrostatic” is more rhythmically interesting, but no less dated sounding. Nothing here to make you forget Nitzer Ebb, and nothing to really make you remember Richard Hinge, either.

[Todd Hutlock]

STL
The Early Tracks
Perlon / PERL 57
August 2006

Hot on the oscillating heels of Baby Ford’s “Bubblebath” EP (see last week’s Beatz) comes this great EP. STL’s imagination lives somewhere between the chin-stroking of Robert “Monolake” Henke’s early beatless/sound-design works like “Piercing Music” and the residue of the Drexciyan drugsweat that leaked into your drum machine’s innards. It’s big, bad, and dark minimal techno, properly constructed with one ear cocked toward the microscopics of the sound, and the other receiving the call from deeeeep space. “Purple Saturn Days” is a monster, and the standout cut, beginning with a six-minute ambient intro before blossoming into an epic trip through the outer atmosphere and into the techno cosmos. As for the other tracks, “Getting Deeper” does exactly what the title promises, while “That Mnml Track” is somewhere between a short piece and a DJ tool, although it’s not as explicitly functional as “Loop A” and “Loop B,” which literally are manna for the three deck maniacs.

[Peter Chambers]

Mathew Jonson
Automatic
Wagon Repair / WAG 016
September 2006

Mathew Jonson’s EPs don’t contain tracks so much as the blueprint for an evolving arrangement, one that’s only completed once it’s de/re-constructed in his own scorching live sets. He’s one of the few “producers” who, like the blues greats, have to be seen live to be understood properly. If his earlier work blissed out or brooded away on its own beautiful arpeggiating melodies, recent EPs have seen him return to the low-end party with bells on. “Automatic,” very much like “Zombie Bikers” before it, sounds like Zapp and Roger on mushrooms in the sunshine, or maybe Jonson hallucinating about seeing Zapp and Roger in the sunshine, while on mushrooms (ahem). It’s the B side that deserves your hard earned fungi though; it’s a massive expanse (a veritable Jonsonscape) of swirling drums and revolving grooves, turning and turning in and out of itself for nearly twelve minutes, only exhausting itself right toward the very end as it dissipates into the past, like the clouded memories of a hedonistic weekend.

[Peter Chambers]

Marek Bois
Mampe Halb / Halb EP
Rryglar / RRY07
June 2006

Freud thought that repetitions were caused by a failure to remember. In a sense, that’s also true of machine music: too many mnml kids these days are failing to remember, and are possessed by the urge to repeat, repeat, repeat something they can’t let go of. Marek (Dapayk) Bois’ “Mampe Halb” is a symptom of this kind of suffering—and you’ll be feeling it too if you listen to these tracks outside their functional context. Both on my home system (with a subwoofer), my good headphones, and the tinny earbuds I use at the gym these tracks speak loudly of an inability to remember that compression is no substitute for songwriting. Remember songwriting? Remember songwriting? The title track at least has a good hook, but once introduced (after three minutes of static drum programming) it just goes round and round, like the shred-head in the apartment next door who’s still trying to master that one Sabbath riff. “Sutskop” could easily find its way chopped, looped, and re-constructed in a Magda set, but as a finished piece it lacks color and character of its own. “Schnelle” likewise could easily prove a useful tool, but like everything here, it’s too repetitive, and not at all memorable.

[Peter Chambers]

Andi Teichmann
Refaded
Festplatten / FEST 33
September 2006

Berlin’s Festplatten are back with a remix 12 inch for Andi Teichmann’s Fades CD, which doubles as one of the few exercises in recent memory that makes clinical sterility sound enticing. While none of the these three remixes [plus a skip-worthy 20 second collage called “Loops”] are club material, there is something a bit jarring and claustrophobic about layering mellifluous Joe Pernice-styled vocals over such prickly, quantized, and whitewashed productions. With ultra-dry toms and chiseled minimal acid-lines, Hannes Teichmann’s crystal clear remix of “They Don’t Care” is like an anemic version of Trentemoller, while Ukraine’s Dubmastas turn in a grim, mostly beatless keyboard that nevertheless shows off only a few ugly glitches in its freshly shined exterior. When the disjointed kick drum comes in during the latter, it could pass as the unlikely combination of The Notwist jamming with the dubstep of Burial. Ada comes up with the biggest winner here, nailing the trademark Festplatten sound of synthesized electric guitar (used so well on practically every record by Gebr. Teichmann) while adding just the slightest bit of her own squelchy basslines and lush organ pads. Everything here might be carved a bit too lucid and upfront to really sink your teeth into, but just like excessive plastic surgery and botox, it still demands a curious kind of rubbernecking attention.

[Michael F. Gill]

Putsch '79
Box Jams Remixed 2/3
Clone / C#45.1
September 2006

Norway's Prins Thomas does plenty of disco remixes both under his own name and together with his bud Lindstrøm, but I could see his new Major Swellings side-gig taking more of the lead as early-evening mid-tempo burners become the NBT, especially because of DC Recordings (e.g. Emperor Machine) and Clone, where this track comes from. They've been hit or miss so far, remixes and tracks alike, but Swellings' job on Putsch '79 is pretty fantastic: the remix is way relaxed, a third the tempo of the overly edgy original, now with synths that take a good four or five seconds to wash away, compressed timbale sounds, and plenty of campy keyboard squiggles elsewhere. Remixer Daniel Wang knew retarding the tempo was mission number one, but I don't like the MIDI-does-Paradise details, the fake strings, and voicelike doo-doos on the synths, the faked funk from a guy I worry more and more has kicked the feeling. What are you gonna do?

[Nick Sylvester]

Stephen Malkmus
Kindling for the Master
Domino / RUG229T
August 2006

Bad fodder for a dance remix if you ask me, Malkmus has at least a fighting chance here if the remixers respect his ennui and craft backdrops vox-apropos. Lo, three out of four remixers turn in really wobbly, really mid-tempo, really quote slacker grooves. Emperor Machine and Major Swellings have the same patient disco approach, but EM's sloppy funk, klutzy bassline, and reverence for/feature of Malkmus's vocals can't beat MS's sleek future-retro brood, fat one-note low-end thump, and fake theremin ghost whispers. Polmo Polpo overdoes the drum-programming and trackstuffing and ends up turning Malkmus into a poor man's Beck circa Midnite Vultures, which probably isn't a hard thing to do, considering that Hot Chip do pretty much the same thing with their take too (Beck post-Sea Change, pre-Guero). This could have been worse.

[Nick Sylvester]

Silversurfer
Dirty Dishes / Ace of Spades
Festplatten / FEST 33
July 2006

"Dirty Dishes," Crosstown's Silversurfer tries his hand at one of those hard-sounding squelch-driven "Rocker" redux tracks, really bottomed out, lots of space, etc.. Too bad it doesn't work out for him—all the sounds are there, but there's no monster hook to compensate for the minimalism, and the aux percussion is pretty worthless. "Ace of Spades" is only somewhat better, something like a Kompakt b-lister remixing Ministry, but it's half-assed from the start: The snare clicks are fat and sandpapery, but the basskicks couldn't sound more lifeless. I guess the only-upbeats synth line counts for the melody here; at the very least it will remind people of Kylie's "Can't Get Your Out of My Head" both sonically and sentimentally. The flipside is that it makes the "Ace of Spades" sound merely like an instrumental, incomplete and unfulfilled.

[Nick Sylvester]


BEATZ STAFF CHARTS
Todd Hutlock
The Rice Twins - For Dan [K2]
Donnacha Costello - 6.3 [Minimise]
Mathew Johnson - Beach Party [Wagon Repair]
Nitzer Ebb - Shame (Derrick May Remix) [NovaMute]
Porter Ricks - Port of Call [Chain Reaction]
Afternoon Coffee Boys - Busted Speaker Brew [Clink Music]
Thee Madkatt Courtship - Da Mindfuck [Deep Distraxion]
Sami Koivikko - Dore [Spectral Sound]
Limaçon - Ajar [Intrinsic Design]
Mr. Fingers - Can You Feel It [Trax]

Nate DeYoung
My My - Butterflys and Zebras [Aus]
Audion - Mouth to Mouth [Spectral]
Heidi vs Riton - Vejer [Get Physical]
Cobblestone Jazz - India in Me [Wagon Repair]
Donato Dozzy - Dimensions EP [Dozzy]
Jona - Tizia [Get Physical]
The Rice Twins - Reach for the Flute [Kompakt]
Sleeper Thief - Chasing You [Mobilee]
Madonna - Get Together Remixes [Virgin]
Justus Kohncke - Advance [Kompakt]

Michael F. Gill
Voigt & Voigt - Was Du Willst [Kompakt Extra]
V/A - Dashammer Remixes [Max.I]
Gusgus - Mallflowers [Pineapples]
Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill (Instrumental) [EMI]
Phreek - May My Love Be With You [Atlantic]
Dalton & Dubarri - I (You) Can Dance All By My (Your) Self [Hilltak]
Moment of Truth - So Much for Love [Salsoul]
V/A - Historical Archives Volume 2 [Members Only]
Gino Soccio - There’s a Woman (Carl Craig Re-Edit) [Moxie]
Munich Machine - Bolectro [Casablanca]

Cameron Octigan
Alice in Chains - Dam That River [Columbia]
Dominion - The Light of Day [unknown]
Jan Jelinek - Im Discodickicht [~scape]
Jesu - Your Path to Divinity [Hydrahead]
JPLS - Program 01 [M_nus]
Limp Wrist - Just Like You [Lengua Armada]
MDK - Rohe Gewalt [Weird System]
Putsch 79 - Doin’ It (Putsch 79 Edit) [Clone]
Rex the Dog - I Look into Air [Kompakt]
Ricardo Villalobos - Que Belle Epoque 2006 [Frisbee Tracks]