he year inches forward, and we’ve got another new batch of winter release for you here on Beatz by the Pound. This time around, there’s new stuff from 3 Chairs, Kathy Diamond, and Radio Slave, plus the latest from Tirk, Musik Krause, and Defend Music. Not to mention a new mini-mix from Todd Burns. Let’s get going…



Radio Slave
No Sleep (Part One) / No Sleep (Part Two)
REKIDS / REKIDS008/REKIDS009

The four tracks across these two separate twelves show Matt Edwards at his best, working his unique minimal tech-house vibe. The Part One opener “Weeeze” is the best of the four great tracks, starting with a simple thump and low-end hum before exploding into a truly wicked bass groove that rides off on a bender, dropping in some acid and finishing with a percussive coda that will take your breath away. On the flip, “Modena” is a deep 11-minute workout featuring a repeated/distorted keyboard riff that should mix well with just about anything. On Part Two, “Screaming Hands” (an ironic title, given the beat-up, sore-covered feet on the record sleeves) rolls out with a bare-bones percussion intro before a seriously twisted and distorted analog riff breaks the hypnosis and a cutting hi-hat and snare pattern kicks in; “Transistor Rhythm” maintains a more subtle, circular groove. It seems like barely a week goes by without something from Edwards hitting the shelves—a single, a remix, a mix CD—but don’t let his prolific nature lull you into thinking that his quality control is falling off. No Sleep should most definitely not be, um, slept on.


[Todd Hutlock]



3 Chairs
No Drum Machine Pt. 2
Three Chairs / 3CH 6

Rick Whilhite, Theo Parrish, Marcellus Pittmann, and Kenny Dixon, Jr. are all quite capable of getting it done on their own, and so when they get together, something special usually happens, but this four-tracker of shag-carpet deeposity is a bit more abstract than you might expect. The title track opens things with a bongo-and-organ riff that shuffles along through deep space, flashes of noise and other weird bits whizzing by as if they don’t have a care in the world. This is light years from the sort of floor-fillers you might expect, but “Camillion” gamely tries to move asses with some intricate hi-hat patterns and jazzy chords and riffs, and “Congo Mambo” moves in a Latin direction while staying dead mellow and low-key. The sample heavy and thoroughly filtered “BABO” is a bit puzzling (and also sorta funky), but this is clearly music aimed at the after hours set rather than peak time, and at that, it succeeds beautifully.

[Todd Hutlock]

Roxy Music
Remixes 02
Virgin / VST 1920

For all the steam generated by the initial betting pool for the Roxy Music remix project, it's finally starting to sizzle a bit. After the lumpen first round, the arts n' crafts neo-disco crowd get their hands on "The Main Thing" and "Same Old Scene" (two of the better cuts from Avalon and Flesh + Blood, respectively). Rub-N-Tug do a really nice turn on "The Main Thing," seizing on the post-disco lounginess of the original and contorting it, working up a snazzy proto-house groove starring some delicately funky keyboard. The Glimmers walk home with the statue though, squeezing all the sensuality inherent in "Same Old Scene" until it works up a nice lather. The contrast with Ferry's louche boredom / arousal in response to said scene ought to be enough to stimulate some discrete rubbing by discerning hipsters.

[Mallory O’Donnell]

Love Supreme
Rocquet 12"
Tirk / Tirk 020

For what seems eons now, the Cult of Italo has been scattered across the Earth, small cells of patient worshippers eking out what existence they could from dusty bins and eBay auctions, while the motherland continued with its gauche betrayal of the scriptural imperative laid down by their forerunners in cold black wax, serving up slabs of tepid pop-house instead. Milan's Love Supreme try to address that grievance within the span a single 12" (which, it should be wryly noted, has emerged on a UK label). They come pretty damn close. Side A is the New Testament—"Rocquet," a slithering spaceship paean to all things electrofied, with bits of ethereal static clinging to it like cosmic plankton. It quickly leaves the earth in its wake—a remix by Lindstrom or the DFA would probably shoot your ass into the stratosphere. Side B brings the Old Testament fire with the absurdly named "Pork Chop Express," a hammering roots-disco workout with stirring flashes of analog electronics and inspired, organic percussion sounds.

[Mallory O’Donnell]

Home Video
The Penguin
Defend Music / DFN 80015

Was this inspired by March of the Penguins? I hope so, because I really like my read: Like March humanized the flightless birds to now parodied degrees (cf. Bob Saget's latest Farce), "The Penguin" redeems countless hopeless/loveless/escapist/truly awful lyrics via penguinization: Sometimes "I wish I could fly away" is just "I wish I could fly away"; sometimes "waiting for the light to change" is not just the stuff of late-night high-school instant messaging. What I'm trying to say is that if you imagine this song being sung by a penguin, it's pretty great. Otherwise it's merely a good Maxi Priest mockup ("I just wanna be close to yoooouuuu") with better-than-average bedroom dance-pop synths and drum sounds, and way better-than-average mixing and programming. There's a steel-drumlike synth arpeggio that pops up every now and then and it's just gorgeous. On the backside, DFA's Tim Goldsworthy makes his solo remixing debut as the Loving Hand. To most it'll just sound like a flightier DFA remix, much like the Unkle "In a State" one or the Chemical Brothers' "The Boxer," but keen ears will notice that the drum kicks are softer, and the background mix is extremely dense, with layers of soft ambient textures tickled by competing skitters of synth. It builds well and isn't afraid to break down for the verse and build back up again. Really quiet, really confident.

[Nick Sylvester]

Robag Wruhme
Pap-tonnik EP
Musik Krause / MK 19

Robag Wruhme (or Gabor “Wighnomy” Schlabitzki to his mum) did a fateful thing, the day he bought Ableton Live. Like a lot of other new users, it seems, it wasn’t long before Mr. Wruhme was able to “unlock the secrets of this amazing software” by following the tutorials. I think it’s the third one that must have really grabbed him, because (if memory serves) it’s the one in which you learn how to use stutter. Between Ableton’s stutter, its reverb plugin, and his own talent for whimsical boompty, Robag managed to build an album’s worth of tracks, with a sound signature that was startlingly different to his earlier Herbert-ish workouts on Freude am Tanzen and Musik Krause. The stuff sounded wild, and the album, unsurprisingly, got the big thumbs up from a lot of tech-loving pundits. Three years, a half dozen twelves and umpteen remixes later though, and Robag’s stutter patter is beginning to sound decidedly tired, and his tracks like a parody of themselves. It’s something that plagued Akufen until he (thankfully) ditched the microsampling techniques that made his reputation. Unfortunately, Wruhme has persisted with the same formulas. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great in their own right. Both “Papp-Tonik” and “Ikke's Schlonze” kick along with the same housey rump, boisterous breakdowns and sudden, rearing echo chambers that made standout EPs like Kopfnikker and Backkatalog so fresh, and “Pontifekks” shows his obvious love for Richard D. James blossoming in new directions. It’s just that, well, there’s only so long that you can whip a one trick pony (even a champion) before it becomes a dead one. And Robag, with a reverb, a stutter, and barely a second thought, is flogging a dead horse. Will someone please buy this guy some new software?

[Peter Chambers]

Various Artists
We Are Smallville
Smallville Records / SMALLVILLE001

Smallville Records is a Hamburg thing, and grows in the same soil as Dial and Liebe Detail, presenting Hanseatic tech-house with brittle percussion, minimalist melodies, and grayscale moods. There’s a kind of sleight of hand involved in computer music—a neat nip/tuck that’s needed so the listener hears the various threads as a tightly braided whole, and not each stringy bit chafing against your brain. This is music, after all, which is meant to mesmerize. The first cut on this release, Steinhoff and Hammouda’s “Chestnut Way,” nearly gets there, but too little attention seems to have been paid to where the drums sit in the mix, and the track sounds too much like a conscious imitation of the style it seeks to become. If I were at the record store, it’d be the offer of the Sten (Lawrence) track that’d hook me, and sure enough, this one’s a beauty, driven by a dry, ding-donging cathedral bell synth line that works like a gothic rendition of a Larry Heard tune. If you heard “Faces” off the Sender compilation a few years back, you know what to expect—the compositional formula here is almost identical. DJ Swap’s “Blue,” with its blunt steel drum-sounding motif and metronomic drums, relies on slowly, sweetly doing your head in. It all sounds okay, but somewhere around the four-minute mark you get jarred, or bored, when you realize what you’re listening to is more like an arrangement of “cool sounds” than a track. Magda-cribbing collage mixers could easily take their favorite four bars from this and re:make it into something, but as it is, this one’s a chore.

[Peter Chambers]


Kathy Diamond
All Woman
Permanent Vacation / PERMVAC 005-1


Peter Chambers: Maurice Fulton has been at it for quite a while, producing everything between trancey techno, house, dub-disco, electro pop, and jazztronic. What’s so striking though, aside from the effortless versatility of his productions and the musicianship and acute ear he brings to everything his touches, is how much he manages to excavate polished and personal sounding gems from tired genres. Like Hans-Peter Lindstrom, Fulton has a knack for generating space in his recordings. His instrumental versions add to the groove by subtracting clutter, following George Clinton’s edict that “funk is what you don’t play.” This recent EP with Kathy Diamond sends him to the sparkling dub end of space disco, armed with slap bass, fruity keys and mad-isms. Like recent remix work for Hot Chip and !!!, this EP has got a sense of ease to it, and grooves along, propelled by a self-assured succession of reverbed claps, skittering bongos, and wiggling synths. The B-side gets you an instrumental version, which stands equal scrutiny with the vocal cut. Kathy or no Kathy, this is one of the biz’ most talented people, doing their best work.

Nick Sylvester: I first heard this on Tim Sweeney's Beats In Space program a few weeks ago actually. Reminds me of Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody" though this night does actually last forever, if that makes sense: excessive slapbass, conga accents of the "afro-electro-disco-funk" variety, the heavily FX'd Wurlitzer rhythms, "I came, I saw, I conquered your heart," etc. Plus Diamond, who is Sheffield-from but London-in at the moment, has legitimate pipes, none of the whispery quote-naïve girlfriend-of-producer stuff that OK yeah I've come to like a lot too. Either way, this is a Maurice Fulton production, which means the bass kicks are taut, and the snare clacks and handclaps combine on the twos and fours just a millisecond out of sync. I'm not sure how much longer it'll be before that multitracked vocal harmony breakdown goes from cheesy-irresistible to merely cheesy, but let's be fair: not all Rufus breakdowns aged well either.


BEATZCAST

01: Roxy Music - Same Old Scene (Glimmers Remix)
02: In Flagranti - Just Gazing
03: Escort – Bright New Life
04: Diskokaines – Rock-A-Boogie (In Flagranti Mix)
05: Heib - Acid Pimp
06: Gui Boratto – Mr. Decay
07: The Field - Everyday
08: Elektrochemie – Mucky Star
09: Remo feat. Chelonis R. Jones – Empire (Spektre Remix)

BEATZ STAFF CHARTS
Todd Hutlock
Kiki - Trust Me (Super Dub) [Bpitch Control]
Radio Slave - Weeeze [Rekids]
Pantytec - Micromission (Daniel Bell Remix) [Perlon]
Thomas Brinkmann - Wait A Minute [Max Ernst]
Mikkel Metal - Noff [Echocord]
Sieg Über Die Sonne - You’ll Never Come Back (Tobi Neumann’s Waiting For You Rmx) [Multicolor Recordings]
Villalobos - Tub [Playhouse]
Alan Parsons Project - I Robot (Pilooski Edit) [D*I*R*T*Y Edits]
Depeche Mode - Master And Servant (An ON-U Sound Science Fiction Dance Hall Classic) [Mute]
Convextion - Solum Ferrum [Down Low]

Mallory O’Donnell
Roxy Music - Same Old Scene (Glimmers Remix) [Virgin]
Love Supreme - Pork Chop Express [Tirk]
Kathy Diamond - All Woman [Permanent Vacation]
Flim Flam - Best of Joint Mix [Dum Dum]
Marsha Raven - I Like Plastic [Red Bus]
Pet Shop Boys - One More Chance (Remix) [ARS]
Orgue Electronique - The Garden [Creme Organisation]
Chocolate Milk - Action Speaks Louder Than Words [RCA]
The Field - From Here We Go Sublime [Kompakt]
Gui Borrato - Chromophobia [Kompakt]

Michael F. Gill
Tenderness - Got To Keep On Trying [RCA]
Bob-A-Rela - Why Does It Rain? [Channel]
O'Gar – Playback Fantasy (Instrumental) [Magic Circus Productions]
Quartz – Beyond The Clouds [T.K. Disco]
Omar-S- The Maker [FXHE]
Robert Hood – Hoodmusic 2 [Music Man Records]
Marcellus Pittman – Come See [Unirhythm]
Herbert – The Movers & The Shakers (Green Velvet Remix) [!K7]
Remo feat. Chelonis R. Jones - Empire [Dance Electric]
Home Video - The Penguin (Tim Goldsworthy's The Loving Hand Remix) [Defend]