elcome back to another edition of Beatz by the Pound, our first of 2007. We’ve spent some time going over what we missed in 2006 and we’ll be presenting some choice tracks in the reviews section, as well as some of the early hot ones from the new year including joints from Ricardo Villalobos, Martinez, and Escort. Enjoy!


tobias.
Street Knowledge
Logistic / LOG055

It was a sweet inevitability that once computer technology plateaued in plug-in heaven, increasingly large groups of nerds, purists, idiots, and visionaries would run for or cling to their old gear. Street Knowledge, produced by Cassy’s partner and NSI half Tobias Freund, shows that there’s good reason for the flight into obsolescence. Street Knowledge is one of those brilliant deep EPs that stay put in your box for years. The title track is one of the funkiest, deepest, driving-est tech-house grooves you’ve heard in ages—the kind yo mamma warned you about.

As with his NSI release on Cadenza, Freund proudly displays all the gear used for the music on the back cover of the EP, so I can tell you that the bass on this puppy was generated by a Studio Electronics se 1 (defunct in its original form, of course). Man, it’s the business. This track just rolls along, with the bass overshot by short horn stabs, and 808 claps, shots, and cowbells (real 808, of course.). “Solid State” appears to have been composed from the same arrangement of machines, and while not as obviously killer as the title cut, it’s a groover with the same quietly classic mood, movement, and presence that marks the EP as a whole. “Bayside” on the B is another winner, a slightly more sober, gliding record that skims to a calm halt right in the middle, then spins off into the clouds. Ah.

The gear sounds great, but it’s Tobias’ intuitive use of all the sounds available here to generate a record that sounds “just right” that’s so inspiring. It’s about the touch. With barely a fat lead or a farty bassline in sight, Freund has created an incredibly attuned, proper EP that won’t go platinum, but may well become a classic.

[Peter Chambers]

Ricardo Villalobos
Unflug Mixes
Frisbee Tracks / FT 069

You would think that the label cash-in effort would be limited to the likes of Johnny Cash or Kurt Cobain, but apparently Ricardo Villalobos is a big enough name to warrant Frisbee Tracks latest exploitation of his back catalog. The original “Unflug” was released in October of 1998 and was one of Villalobos’ earliest productions—meaning it wasn’t nearly as accomplished (or lengthy) as his recent work, but was still decent enough, a stomping tech house thing with a nifty analog riff and some drifty background chords and of course those trademark layers of percussion.

The two mixes here by Franklin De Costa and Good Groove & Yapacc (who?) aren’t necessarily bad, but given that the source material isn’t exactly Ricardo’s greatest moment, how great can you expect the remixes to be? The Good Groove & Yapacc remix goes on nearly twice as long as it needs to in true Villalobos fashion, stripping the track down, accentuating the techy end of things and adding a deep bass swoop, but lacking rhythmic invention and that feeling that at any moment, the bottom could drop out and leave nothing but rainforest chants or finger cymbals for the next six minutes. De Costa turns his take into a bubbling percolator, filtering the original’s Latin percussion fills into something interesting and alien and spontaneous and vaguely akin to the sort of work that Villalobos does these days. Not a bad cut by any means, but if you’re looking for “Villalobos,” stick with his recent work on Playhouse or Perlon, not these half-baked releases aimed directly at your wallet.

[Todd Hutlock]

Shane Berry
Fillertet 2
Trapez / Trapez LTD 040

South African producer Berry made a big splash in 2006 with three twelves (and a remix single with takes by Dominik Eulberg and Gabriel Ananda) and a download-only EP, but it was this, his debut release, that still sounds the strongest to these ears. On “Fillertet 2,” a series of rhythmic typewriters, ticks, phasers, and God knows what else assemble themselves into marching formation and bubble and twitch their way into your synapses and feet simultaneously, until suddenly your needle starts to buzz and malfunction. Is there a short in your cartridge? No, but the buzz keeps growing and growing, flitting between the speakers, increasing in frequency and fluttering to a gentle landing, leaving you breathless. By the time the break is over and the beat comes back in, you’ll be a sweaty pile of nothing on the floor. Gawd-DAMN! On the flip, “Polytet 3” is a similar sort of twitchy boogie with charms all its own, the buzz replaced by a steady, sinister hum and a shuffling static burn, but the dynamic on the A is what will keep you coming back for more and positively wrecking any dancefloor that can stand it. One of the best cuts of 2006, cursed by being released the first week of January in a genre that turns over faster and faster every year.

[Todd Hutlock]

Martinez
Restructured Layers
Out Of Orbit Recordings / ORB CD001

Cophenhagen-based Martinez is behind the mix on his Out of Orbit label’s first CD release, and he’s chosen to use the imprint’s back catalog as his template, including Lowtek Sounsystem, Robert Babicz, Trentemøller, and many tracks by Martinez himself. But rather than simply mixing things up in a traditional style, Martinez goes the DE9 route and cuts the tracks into loops and bites, sewing them together to make a new whole, playing as many as eight tracks at one time. If you’ve heard Hawtin’s work in this vein, you can guess that the results don’t sound much like the original tracks—how could they?—but still retain the flavor and tone of the label’s general output, making this an ideal entry point for new listeners, as well as a new experience for those who already know and love the label. This mixing style may be a bit too clinical and emotionless for some, but it’s a well-executed project and the label’s clean tech-house style lends itself to the process.
[Todd Hutlock]

Sessomatto ft. Carolyn Harding
Movin’ On
Z / ZEDD 12 084

Many are the things we here at Beatz By the Pound never tire of, when adequately deployed—a radiant sunrise after an exhausting night of dancing; that sound that goes whap-whap and the one that goes wrrw-wrrw-wrrw; the first bars of our summer jam being mixed into whatever is playing right now; a little bump of something to get us through the night; a diva vocal with gospel touches telling us something great about “our love.” All of which stand and deliver during the course of Joey Negro’s 2006 Sessomatto single (and aforementioned summer jam) “Movin’ On.” I’m all for beardy meanderings, minimal midnight assignations and space-disco dust, but come four in the morning I want a song exactly like this one—crazy peaks and valleys cranny-crammed with every trick that’s worked a thousand times on a thousand house twelves and enough collective upliftment to raise a boat full of ravers to the top of Mt. Etna. Call me old-fashioned.

[Mallory O’Donnell]

Kiki
Trust Me
BPitch Control / BPC 141

Kiki’s streamlined techno, with its graceful interpolation of EBM, electro, and darkwave elements, has occasionally suffered from being a bit too well-mannered. One thing it never fails to do, however, is provide a sense of motion. “Trust Me” gurns along at the steady altitude of a night flight across the Atlantic, split between a “Super Dub” to placate those seeking only depth and texture, and a “Cowboy Mix,” which introduces turbulence in the form of a menacing theme and some reverbed effects, hee-ya! So, sure, we’re traveling, but where the hell are we going? On to the next track, then the next, then so on—this is a well-crafted set-builder for the early evening, more interesting for the direction its motion implies than anything that actually happens. And we’re just fine with that.

[Mallory O’Donnell]

Aroy Dee
Embrace EP
MOS Recordings / mos0005

Eminently listenable throwbacks from techno’s second wave sonically, these benefit from hindsight too: none too ravey breakbeats, no overblown overly chromatic hooks (i.e. stuff that sounds like the Mortal Kombat soundtrack), the grind felt, not heard. Part of its success comes first from Aroy Dee keeping more insistent rhythms soft in the treble, which reminds me of Gottsching’s unrushed hi-hat sixteenths in E2-E4, and second from drizzling the synths onto the ear rather than dropping them like knives. Modern parallel: Juan Maclean’s “Dance With Me,” but without that track’s lovesick subtext. The track “Embrace” has a Morr Music-like comfort food quality to its longtoned lullabied progression, but the palette is totally food-and-arts-era Carl Craig, subdued analog, legitimate warmth. Like I said, really easy on the ears, and, serving tradition well, second b-side “Shade” makes for a nice beatless chaser.

[Nick Sylvester]

Escort
A Bright New Life
Escort Recordings / ESCRT-003

As with their last two twelves, one of which was Beatz’s #1 of 2006, this one’s just too well done to deny. On the a-side, Singer Zena Kitt dwells on various personal uncertainties in the verse over a spare synth octave thump and rich, long strings, but when the chorus approaches it’s like every sound starts getting really cagey, and when it finally does come the empty space is filled with cheeky chicken-scratch guitars, a healthy dose of horn stabs, and (naturally) “a bri-yut newww li-i-ife.” The songwriting’s smart, the stylized diction is perfect, the instrumental buildups and breakdowns are taut, no note’s out of place, no smirk’s in sight. Just awesome. For his remix, Morgan Geist subdues everything—even the volume is lower—and after a new bassline and lots more space and just enough reverb, we’ve got something of a Metro Area track, the instruments taking turns soloing in the lime.

[Nick Sylvester]

Jacek Sienkiewicz & Marek Raczkowski
Warsaw for Beginners
Recognition / r-epo019

Jacek Sienkiewicz has, slowly but surely, been nailing the craft. Recent releases on his label Recognition have reached sublime heights of mean, moody, and magnificent techno, full of interlocking parts, sudden bad moods and noodling string pluck melodies capable of tugging even tautly tuned heartstrings. Late 2005’s “Double Secret Life” found its way onto both Tobi Neumann’s fantastic Fliederlieder mix and Lawrence’s Groove compilation as the crescendo selection, and with good cause.

Given the incredible polish (ahem) that Sienkiewicz has managed to achieve of late, it’s odd that he would choose to release “Warsaw for Beginners” (co-produced with Marek Raczkowski). Why weird? Simply because, despite a wealth of inventive ideas and odd combinations of almost “Guru Josh” piano lines, boisterous digitechno rhythms, and delicate au Harem textures, this feels like a strange sketch, a study for a far greater and more interesting EP that wasn’t quite realized. I keep waiting in vain for “it” to happen—maybe this music needs new ears that are still growing. Give me time on that one, but for the moment, this is an eccentric, promising cacophony that doesn’t quite hit the spot.

[Peter Chambers]

Pigon
Little Albio Street
Dial / dial 33

It’s funny how these things become entrenched, isn’t it—those unwritten rules within genres: try having a coolsie guitar band without “The…” in the title (hey, “The Titles,” that works). It’s an equally impossible feat to be a German producer without pseudonyms, alter egos, and aliases, it seems. Pigon is Efdemin’s straight shooting dark techno cousin, with bigger balls and bells and less tears, for your dancefloor delectation.

“May in Little Albio Street” is still waiting for those darling buds to burst forth, by the sounds of things. Pigon’s vision of the place has one track imagining 90s Detroit imagining deep space and the other few bouncing through loops full of driving melancholy. It all works well enough, but there’s a touch of the empties about the rigid corners, and not enough of those sweet, smoky memories that Efdemin’s best work evokes. The B-side “November in Little Albio Street” suffers from the same stiffness, but with a plug-in borrowed off Lawrence’s desktop for the main melodic motif, and could almost be a Peter Kersten co-write. Like the A, it’s a nice ride that putts along, but never really soars.

[Peter Chambers]

YMO
Solid State Survivor
1979

YMO have always been blocked into history as the Duplo to Kraftwerk’s Technics—the Technicolor “toy” version of the Kling Klang’s more “adult,” high-minded man-machine constructions. A glancing listen to Solid State Survivor might do little to remedy that impression, with the first two tracks sounding for all the world like the theme tune for a second-rate 70s anime. But listen closer, listen again—the whimsical surface belies undeniable pop smarts and a keen ear for song craft that beavers away at your humorless notion and leaves you realizing that, far from being some second-rate kitsch mensch-maschine thieves, you’re actually hearing the “coming out” of one of the most innovative, playful groups in techno’s history.

Yes, techno, that’s right. Although it might be a mistake to say that any individual invented techno (I’d give the title to the quiet hands of Roland Corp. or Leo Theremin), but if you do subscribe to a musician inventor theory, you’d have to say that YMO may well deserve the title—1983 might have been the year of Kraftwerk’s unreleased Techno Pop album and YMO’s Technodelic, but the word finds an earlier home as “Technopolis,” the fourth track on Solid State Survivor, a track that is itself already fully fledged techno, albeit in pop form.

Not only does Solid State Survivor constitute a landmark in the emergence of techno, but the album itself is a joyously, sweetly disrespectful romp through its various frames of reference. In a recent interview, Uwe Schmidt, whose most recent Señor Coconut album Yellow Fever re-worked the trio’s classic materials into his vision of electro latino, explained that for him, YMO were far more important than Kraftwerk, simply because of their willingness to leap whole genres in a single bound and gather the ecstatic treasure in trash with as much reverence as you’d give to Bach. Solid State is bursting with enthusiastic genre-bending and stylistic pastiches that borrow as heavily from advertising jingles as enka.

“Technopolis” sounds like the promotional music from “Expo 1980” or any number of incidental tunes still doing the rounds on NHK. “Absolute Ego Dancer” is a fully-fledged bubblegum techno rocket and the high point of the sugar rush. But it’s the moodier numbers such as the pop ambient “Castalia” (emphatically Sakamoto’s song, judging by the mood) and the mixed weather of “Behind the Mask” (later covered by Eric Clapton) as well as a hilarious, bent cover of the Beatles “Day Tripper” which really amaze. In the space of less than 35 minutes and only eight tracks, YMO nailed out a hyperactive manifesto whose garish reverberations can be heard across the poptronic spectrum, from Devo, through Daft Punk, Mouse on Mars, and right up to the more boisterous moments of microhouse.
[Peter Chambers]

01: Tomboy - Young Enough to Know
02: Broke - Overhat
03: Klein and Zenker - Delusion (Jussi-Pekka Loves Old Trance Remix)
04: (A)pendics.Shuffle and Mikael Stavöstrand – Looking for Me (Mossa Mix)
05: Tiga - 3 Weeks (Troy Pierce Mix)
06: Florian Meindl – Chase the Robot
07: Mike Uzzi and Ben Recht - Talk You Down
08: Jeff Bennett - Surface Diving
09: Ripperton - Farra

BEATZ STAFF CHARTS
Michael F. Gill
Sylvester – I Need You (Dim’s Maxi Disco Blend) [ITH Records]
Remute – Bounce 23 [Trapez]
V/A - This Is Rong Music [Rong Music]
Lil Louis - I Called You (The Story Continues) [Epic]
E-Dancer - Oombah [Planet E]
Midnightrats - Goalmaker [Magic Circus]
Macho Cat Garage - Ghetto Blues [Viewlexx]
V/A - Make Me What [Minisketch]
Benfay - Pink Silk Panties (Bang Goes Remix) [Stattmusik]
The Nova Dream Sequence - Interpretations [Compost]

Todd Hutlock
Depeche Mode - People Are People (Underground Resistance Remix) [Mute]
Tomas Andersson - Mot Matsalen! [Bpitch Control]
Radio Slave - Weeeze [Rekids]
Theo Parrish - Falling Up (Technasia Rmx) [Third Ear/Syncrophone]
Hot Chip - Over And Over (Naum Gabo Remix) [Astralwerks/DFA]
False - Kickball [Plus 8]
Thomas Fehlmann - Dusted [Kompakt]
Pier Bucci - L’nuit (Dominik Eulberg Mix) [Crosstown Rebels]
Booka Shade - In White Rooms (Shinedoe Remix) [Get Physical]
Nitzer Ebb - Control I’m Here (Superchumbo Dub) [NovaMute]