back on beat

ok, back to the beat. normally i find myself cycling through sets at a very quick rate. it seems like most barely keep my attention for more than a week or so... recently, there have been a couple that have been on repeat. first, is the guido schneider set i posted earlier. if you didn't take my advice and grab it then, do so now. second, the DBX livepa and discussion got me in the more for some more bell, so i tracked down this oldie. and it is simply superb.

daniel bell @ star club, detroit 2001


and i know i post quite a few move d sets - and this one has been doing the rounds - but seriously, if you haven't heard this recording from his doing his sunday best in NY, do so. now. this is really sublime dj'ing. have been listening to this daily. life is a bit rough these days and D has been helping me through some really long days.

move d @ sunday best, NY 2008

keeping on the house tip, here is something from the dutchies - jacking house with a great feel to it: boris werner & lauhaus @ club 11, amsterdam 2008

i am sure there was another set or two i meant to post, but can't remember them now, so that'll do. been listening to quite a few mix cds and albums, will report on them soon if the chance presents itself. enjoy the sounds.

luv DBX

some comments in response to the previous post reminded me that i needed to share this little beauty with everyone. it is 30 minutes of the livepa daniel bell played at 5 days off. there is a bit of crowd noise, but the recording is good enough to listen to, and to hear what we are all missing out on. and we are missing out for sure. DBX is playing a select series of live shows and that's it, back to dj'ing after that. and while his dj'ing his exceptional, well, his productions are truly special. i would happily sell an organ or two to see DBX live. unfortunately no one has offered me that deal, so i'll have to make do with this recording. and hope that he changes he mind and plays live again someday, when i can see him. and a bit of advance warning, the recording finishes while 'losing control' is still going. ouch. but we do get the full version of 'baby judy' and that is pretty awesome.

DBX livepa @ 5 days off

stinky or just dinky?

someone i am still really trying to figure out is dinky. she first made a name for herself with the excellent 'acid in my fridge', but since then it seems she has presented herself more as a dj than as a producer. i may be wrong this front, especially as she has a new album coming out on vakant in a few months... regardless, i can't quite decide what i think of her as a dj. while i haven't seen her live, the sets i've heard always frustrate me: they have some really brilliant moments and inspired selections, but more often than not the overall mix lacks enough coherence for my liking and doesn't sit well. i am not sure whether this opinion is because of a personal preference for mine, which desires a high level of coherence in a set (admittedly this may come at the price of variety). regardless, i find it a bit strange that dinky markets herself as a dj primarily, when her stronger suit is definitely her productions. she has done some really great stuff on her own horizontal label, and i'm very interested to see what the album is like. i think it might have some real gems on it. anyway, i'd be keen to hear others thoughts on her djing. i am not sure why it frustrates me so. most likely because her sets almost always include some really inspired moments. the problem is they are moments. here is a new set from dinky that got me thinking, plus some other ones:

dinky july 2008 mix
dinky RA podcast march 2008
dinky @ club mio, moscow, december 2007

also, dinky has made her mix cd on crosstown rebels from the end of last year available for free download. right when it was released, the distributor went under and her mix never saw the light of day. dinky presents get lost 03

ok, there are some recent examples of her dj'ing. if you want, tell us what you think...

mnml ssgs mx08: Jasper TX

The latest ssgmx is an ambient collection of gorgeous drones, guitar tones and neo-classical swells courtesy of Swedish artist Dag Rosenqvist, better known to the listening public as Jasper TX.

Rosenqvist’s guitar-based explorations have drawn comparisons to Fennesz and Oren Ambarchi. But while these artists are most definitely touchstones for Rosenqvist, he has developed a style that is distinctly his own, both melancholic and uplifting, swinging between beautiful melodies and warm haunting drones.

A prolific artist who is showing no signs of slowing down, Rosenqvist has released five full-length albums since 2005, with his very latest ‘Black Sleep’ having just been released on the Miasmah label. (A label worth keeping an eye on, by the way.) He also produces more “traditional” indie-rock sounds with his band De La Mancha.

Rosenqvist kindly answered a few of our questions, talking about the mix, his music and the importance of hope.

1. How did you make this mix?

I made it using Pro Tools. Since there are little or no beats to this kind of music I just wanted to get the tracks flowing seamlessly into each other.

2. Why did you choose these particular tracks?

Well first off I wanted to include one of my own tracks, just as a small introduction to what kind of music I make. It might not be 100% representative of my overall sound but I think it’s a sweet little gem of a song. The rest of the tracks are basically divided into two different categories. Songs by artists that I have been inspired by, and songs from artists that might not be that well known. I realize of course that none of these artists are that well known, some of them are just slightly bigger fish in our little pond. I just felt I wanted to introduce you to some of the smaller fish too.

3. Are there any particular emotions or feelings you would like to express with this mix?

I wouldn’t say that there are any particular feelings I want to express. My intention with this mix is rather to shed some light on the kind of music I like. I think a lot of people out there think of this kind of music as kind of depressing and inaccessible. But to me that’s just not the case. To me this is really uplifting, warm, embracing music that makes me feel very good. I want the listener to have an open mind when listening to this music and really give it a chance.

4. Are there any particular emotions or feelings you would like to express with your music as Jasper TX?

Each song is an attempt to express emotions, feelings, dreams, hopes. A lot of my songs start out as snapshots in my mind. What I then do is try and transform these images into music. Always aiming at coming as close to that initial snapshot as possible.

5. I'm curious about the name Jasper TX. Does it have any special meaning?

In 1998 an African American man named James Byrd Jr. was killed in the city of Jasper TX. On June 7, 1998, Byrd, 49, accepted a ride from three men named Shawn Allen Berry, Lawrence Russell Brewer, and John William King. Instead of taking him home, they beat him up behind a convenience store, chained him by the ankles to their pickup truck, stripped him naked and dragged him for three miles. Although Lawrence Russell Brewer claimed that Byrd's throat had been slashed before he was dragged, forensic evidence suggests that Byrd had been attempting to keep his head up, and an autopsy suggested that Byrd was alive for much of the dragging and died after his right arm and head were severed when his body hit a culvert.

So I decided to take the name Jasper TX for my project, so that we never forget and to remind myself that the world can turn into a horrible place if we don’t try and change it. This is why I try to fill my music with hope. Because the last thing that abandons us is hope. Right?

6. Now that ‘Black Sleep’ has just been released, what are you working on at the moment?

I finished an album a while ago that is set for release early 2009 entitled ‘Singing Stones’. It’ll be released on the Swedish label Fang Bomb. I’m also currently working on a follow up to ‘Black Sleep’. I have two or three finished tracks for that one but as of now I have no idea when or where it will be released. All I know is that it’ll be dark and very, very good. Aside from these releases I have a 3” CD coming on the Norwegian label Fenetre Records this fall and I also have a song on a compilation and a split 7” on the Australian label Sound & Fury. Be sure to check by my Myspace frequently for more info and news.

Tracklist:
1. Jasper TX – Better days to come (Lidar Productions)
2. Mountains – Sewn two (Apestaartje)
3. Anthony Burr & Skúli Sverrisson – Except in memory (The Workers Institute)
4. Machinefabriek – Somerset (Lampse)
5. Jóhann Jóhannsson - The Sun's Gone Dim And The Sky's Turned Black (4AD)
6. Cerberus Shoal – Omphalos (Temporary Residence)
7. Tsukimono – Gathering heavy breathing (Kalligrammofon)
8. Wouter van Veldhoven – First simple song (Eat This Media)
9. Eluvium – Everything to come (Temporary Residence)
10. Jacob Kirkegaard – Church (Touch)
11. Erik Enocksson – The lingering procession (Kning Disk)

A few technical notes about downloading the mix:

direct download here



Also, the podcast should (hopefully) be working again, so if you would like to subscribe to the ssg cast please do so here.

Jasper TX’s Myspace site

And, finally, a huge thanks to Dag for providing us with such a beautiful mix … and some hope.

We Were Never Mnml (Inpress Column, July ’08) [Techno: it's just not cricket...]

Melbourne is a very rockist city, in case you haven’t noticed. Oftentimes, my fretting fellow acquaintances of the ‘3000s’ will ask me, at a complete loss, ‘Just what is it about techno that you like?’ Okay, sure. I can understand why rock kids are puzzled by techno. After all, rock has a force and immediacy that has seen it become hugely popular the world over. Without a doubt, a big part of its strength and appeal is its ability to generate powerful recognitions and identifications: listeners know the words, they can sing along, and not only that, the singer is crooning or yowling about something (usually love or lust) that makes fans feel better about themselves. The rhythms are strong and simple, the melodies big and memorable, and if the musicians are any good, then the timbres they generate can be quite interesting. It’s just a shame that, for the most part, there’s been very little stylistic or technological innovation in rock in the past ten years. Don’t believe me? Tune in to JJJ or MMM – it’s still 1995.

It’s also true that, to a person whose ears are finely tuned into all the things that make rock ‘tick’, techno is… arid, to say the least. This is music (if indeed it is music), that has been shorn of almost everything that’s considered ‘musical’ by most traditions. Au revoir my sweet chord progression; farewell my cherished verse/chorus/verse; goodbye my lovely lead singer (and your hairdo and abusive personal life); so long my sweet, phallic props.

There’s nothing of that in techno. Even among other forms of electronic music, there’s not much to cling on to. Trance, at least, has huge melodies, harmonic progressions and roller coaster breakdowns; house, meanwhile, has funky basslines and vocals – when we surrender all this, what are we left with? No human voice, no songs, no hooks, very little melodic development, and almost no audible ‘human’ musicianship. Just endless sets of incessant machine-generated drum patterns cycling for hours at allegro-ish tempos between 125-140 BPM, almost none of which stray far from the basic pattern of four crotchet kicks to the bar interspersed with snares and hats every second or fourth beat. Yes, you’re right, it really is mostly just ‘doof doof doof’. So yeah – just what is it about techno that I like?

Well, I like it for all the features just described: the inhumanity, the aridity, and yes, the repetitiveness. Techno is repetitive, but all rhythm is repetition. And by getting rid of almost everything else, we can get deeper into the deep, incessant joy of the groove – the very same thing that made James Brown squeal and call for his cape. As Berghain’s resident DJ Marcel Dettmann said, all a good techno track has to have is ‘character, soul and a kind of hypnotic, industrial feeling.’ You surrender almost everything else, and in return, you get ‘clarity, deepness and simplicity.’ It’s simple, no mistake. But that’s what’s good about tracks – what’s good about sets, sequences of tracks that go on for hours and hours and hours. Isn’t it repetitive? Doesn’t it get boring? Well, yes and no – maybe to you… what’s good about it is actually very similar to what’s good about test cricket.

A lot of people in Australia – mostly the kind who find techno deadly boring – spend their summers giving their passionate enthusiasm to watching the tests… events which, like techno sets, are considered baffling, boring or even downright stupid by many. Let’s just say you’re a pole-vaulter from Bratislava on holiday in Melbourne over January and you turned on the telly of an afternoon – I’m sure you would wonder what the hell was going on. Why is everyone standing around? Why do they perform the same action over and over and over, where are their poles… and when is ‘it’ going to happen?

What the Slovak with the penchant for bendy staves would be missing is the fundamental enjoyment of test cricket, a pleasure that it shares with techno. A test match, like a good set of techno, is an epic, one that unfolds on a grand scale. On this kind of massive canvas, you have to surrender your desire for instant gratification, in exchange for the thorough and complete ‘testing’ that comes out in the slow unfolding of strengths, movements, flows and impacts. Be patient, keep watching, have a beer, talk to your friend, and slowly but surely, the accumulation of numbers slowly turns into results: things shape up, and gradually this determines the outcome of the match or set. Your enjoyment is only limited by your lack of knowledge of each of the elements, your lack of awareness of the skills with which the person delivers them, and your ignorance of what came before. As when you enter a nightclub at 2am (no mean feat in the 3000s of ’08), turning on the cricket at 2pm every day with the ignorance of a Slovakian pole-vaulter would reveal a spectacle that appears to be always the same – unlike a marriage or an assassination, there’s never one decisive, irreversible moment that changes everything. In a way, ‘it’ never happens. But in another way, this is just because it’s always happening: it’s not about the moment, it’s about the movement. Techno sets, like cricket matches, are a sustained, gradual, accumulative and almost inexhaustible polyrhythmic revelation of a group of enthusiastic, skilled people’s most continued and attuned engagement with their instruments. If you know the rules, the skills, the state of play and the personalities playing it, there are few things more rewarding or entertaining.

tune in, drop out.

a bit of live blogging action for everyone out there. if you happen to read this now-ish (sunday or monday), i strongly suggest tuning into the bar25 stream. i've been thoroughly enjoying it so far. i have no idea who is dj'ing but the music is good and that's enough for me as i sit in my office on a sunday afternoon trying/failing to work. i would record the stream, but i can't be bothered and my work computer is crap. so tune in or miss out. click *here* to start the fun.

again. berghain. again.

i'm hoping to do a longer post in the next few days on some thoughts i've had coming out of philip sherburne's (or sherbs, as we have titled him) worthwhile piece at pitchfork, but that'll have to wait until i get a bit more time. for now, just a couple more sets from two of our favourite berghainers. the nodge set is brilliant. i think we will be seeing a lot more of him in the coming years.

mixmag.info presents norman nodge, podcast # 12 /2008/
1. Martyn – Vancouver -3024
2. Shed – Another Wedged Chicken -Ostgut
3. Substance – Relish (Shed Remix) – Scion Versions
4. Mossa – Body Selector -Complot
5. Kevin Gorman – SevenEightNine (Marcel Dettmann Remix) - Mikrowave
6. Function- Disaffected – Sandwell District
7. Technose District – Untitled – Technose District
8. Octave One – The Neutral Zone – 430 West
9. Phase – Morodem (HTS Mix) - Token
10. Arthur Oskan – Flashback - Matrix
11. UR – The Final Frontier – Underground Resistance
12. Tsui Baalbek – Slim - Grade
13. Silvershower – Ice Fractions I – Plus 8
14. Van Rivers – Spaces II - Stockholm
15. Alex Cortex – Reticarga Pt. 4 - Klang
16. Regis – S/He 1 – Downwards
17. Hrdvision – Playing For Keeps – Wagon Repair
18. Petar Dundov – Oasis – Music Man
19. Donato Dozzy & Nuel – Untitled – Aquaplano

and two more, these ones are live recordings from the klock rocker, one old, one new:
ben klock at pulp mansion berlin 20.01.2007
ben klock @ ALRT eindhoven 05.17.2008

enjoy. more soon.

digging deep

i was in the mood for some tobias yesterday (whom, by the way, i'm tipping to be producer of 2008, but we'll leave that debate for another day), and headed over to pacotek's website to download again this livepa of tobias' from may last year. while i was there, i did a bit of digging and came across a 20 minute recording simply entitled 'live act'. having listened to it, my guess is that it is part of the livepa prosumer, murat tepeli and elif did at pacotek in february. *check it*

as for other sets i've been digging, i've been reminded that mnml ssgs isn't the only blog providing some quality mixes. at LWE nick höppner has put together some lovely sounds, breaks sl has done the same for the frenchies at boing poum tchak! and not to be outdone, random circuits goes deep and dark with samuli kemppi.

what else? two from producers i am not completely sold on, but they come up with the goods here. par grindvik delivered a pretty serious set at awakenings, while guido schneider has proved to me that his dj sets are not nearly as dry as his productions. i am really, really digging the guido set. great flow and energy.

also, for those who like afterhours fun, remember to tune in and drop out at bar25, which has livestreams for all their parties. i've been enjoying the streams on sunday and monday over the last few weeks and the lineup for this coming sunday looks enticing, with both of the mountain people being amongst the djs spinning.

mnml ssgs mx07: Jackmate (Philpot, Phil e)

Well, it never rains it pours. Hot on the heels of the SSGs' last two mixes (both fantastic) comes another doozy, this time care of Michel Baumann. Baumann is perhaps best known as Jackmate and Soulphiction, but also works as Supatone and is a member of the League Of Ordinary Gentlemen and Manmade Science. Oh, and he runs Philpot and Phil e. A busy lad. I first got hooked on Baumann's sound with his Soulphiction track 'Phake and Phoney', which appeared on a compilation of minimal house called Inhouse Volume 1 - Modern House Sounds From Deepest Germany. After that, it was his Jackmate track 'Ghetto of My Mind' – sampling Gil Scott Heron – that won me over. But more than anything, it's been Baumann's recent tracks that have been mindblowing, and whether it's sonorous Detroit-y house, slamming, rolling minimal techno or atmospheric, finely-crafted tech-house, Baumann's productions manage to be both reverential toward their influences and full of their own character, detail and life – they're classic and personal. A mantra of mine in all things work-related is this: 'Attend to your work with passion and care.' All of Baumann's work contains a similar ethic – he gives a fuck, and it shows in everything he does, whether its the crafting of beats, the development of one of the best catalogues of any label, or DJing. As for this particular mix, what we have here is... one of the best sets I've heard all year (okay, I'm not disinterested but all the same), one that effortlessly, intricately weaves together European and American sounds and styles, old and new. Some of my favourite tracks are here: Sensorama's evergreen 'Harz' (which is thirteen years old and still sounds fresh), Isolée's great remix of Lawrence, and the everdark beauty of Aphex Twin's ambient imagination. This is everything good DJing should be: intelligent and historically-engaged track selection, deft programming, and mixes that show the inter-sympathies of each tracks as well as revealing something new about both in the slide of the fader. Lad(d)ies, you're in for a real treat. Nuff preamble – here it is.

1. rod modell - aloeswood
2. sensorama - harz
3. claro intelecto - gone to the dogs
4. robert hood -
5. dave angel - tokyo stealth fighter (carl craig remix)
6. dennis ferrer - buzz beatz
7. patrick russell - love spray
8. lawrence - titel 3 (isolee Remix)
9. burial - night train
10. martyn - vancouver
11. yennek - without house
12. patrice scott - visions of mantada
13. md3 - face the nation
14. dp 6 - hungry look
15. jackmate - earthtones dub
16. quince - for my mr.
17. ur - amazon
18. osunlade - my reflection (deetron mix)
19. dop - i..m just a man
20. dj koze - i want to sleep
21. aphex twin - slaw2

direct dl

shareonall dl




more infos about jackmate at his myspace

SSGs are givin' you High Fives

A note/disclaimer before we begin: we individually compiled our lists without any cross-consultation. All the lists therefore represent our idiosyncratic tastes... and this goes for the layout. Okay, here goes – SSGs' top 5 albums for 2008 so far:

PC's take:

I think this year's been an interesting one so far. We've seen a lot of high-quality material; several perfectly-executed simulacra of classic styles; a whole lot of forgettable Abletonised drivel; and some other works that defy easy categorisation, or even cognition. It's the last bunch that have really moved me. These are the works that nothing could have prepared you for – the albums that 'fell to earth'. So my top five is as follows:

1) Move D and Benjamin Brunn – Songs from the Beehive

I've already reviewed this puppy for RA. A lot of (ahem) people didn't like my high-falutin' language and overly-intricated descriptions. Who could blame them? ...Me! No, 'but seriously', this was an album that sent me into all kinds of rhapsodies. It's one of those great works I try to foist on people, including my classical and jazz friends who 'don't get' electronic music. I bought a new pair of speakers the other day (Dynaudio Audience 42s to replace my aged KEFs) and after I forked over the money, they let me upstairs to the 'silly room' where the dreams of middle-aged middle-class men come true. I listened to D/Brunn's 'Radar' on a 20,000 system... wow. I think the guy in the shop was bored by the slowly developing track, but for me this is just a superb piece of music, and on the ridiculously expensive speakers, it was like getting licked, hearing liquid, and having goosebumps all at the same time.

2) Matmos – Supreme Balloon

Everything is analysis, process and rule-governed 'projects' to Matmos, which can be incredibly stifling. But as a research student, I can kinda dig it. This album is supposed to be them 'letting go'... except that it's still totally rule-governed: it's *all* made with vintage synths. As such, there's a lot of Raymond Scott here, a lot of Peter Thomas, a lot of Tangerine Dream... maybe a touch of Vangelis? Then a healthy dash of Switched on Bach and so forth... Man, it's just amazing how cool all this vintage gear sounds, and it's so easy on the ear! Much nicer to listen to than so much of the compressed-to-shit, clean melodic tech-house that's about (which I like too, but it wears me out and can be very mono and dull). This project would be just a folly (tra la la), but then there's the title track. FUCK ME. This is easily one of the coolest compositions I've heard all year. Can't stop playing it.

3) Kangding Ray – Automne Fold

Ray (or just Kangding to his mates) is fantastic: imagine monolake learned how to write songs – imagine Apparat learnt the beauty of restraint. This album manages to be 'high-concept digital minimalism' as you'd expect from Raster-Noton, but it's also warm, soothing, and 'well played'. Took it home from the pub the other night on the headphones, and (with the help of maudlin-ising liquor) I got all teary listening to this. It's bleak, it's dark, but it's also fragile and warm and expresses a lot of vulnerability. Turns out his last one's just as good, too, if you can't get enough.

4) Kelley Polar – I Need You to Hold on While the Sky is Falling

KP is just so hyper-melodic. Virtuosity often leads to dubious music (BT, Steve Vai), because quite often (usually? always?) taste and style is more important for expression than technique. It's true – think about people who 'can't sing' like Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. Would you rather listen to them, or a 'technically gifted' nightmare who looks like a trussed-up whippet in a cocktail dress... you know who...
These are great songs, and actually far more new wave and less disco than they appear. My ipod kept on bringing on John Foxx after Polar (who understands the logic of the pod's 'random' function?) and, aesthetics aside, there was a lot in common. But that's not the main thing, which is the incredible colours of the melodies, and the way they lift you. Listening is like the aftermath of good loving – you'll be humming all afternoon.

5) Jacaszek – Treny

Nothing's better than this one for a sadsack, cold afternoon watching the grey clouds drift by. Very Murcof-y – and if you dig Max Richter, Rune, Colleen, or any other such tones and timbres, you're likely to be as enchanted by this as I was.

Runners up? Lots, and many of these didn't make the cut simply because although I enjoyed them immensely, they lacked originality and/or were simply collections of previously released EPs. And with the Four Tet, the disqualification is on a technicality: it's an EP.

Syclops – I've Got My Eye On You
The Mole – As High as the Sky
Osborne – Osborne
Prosumer & Murat Tepeli – Serenity
Four Tet – Ringer

There have also been some outstanding EPs, mixes and recent promos/leaks, but we'll have to save them for another time. Okay, over to Dave.


Dave: Thus far 2008 has been an excellent year for albums. Probably the best for the last 2-3 years. However, it's been the non-techno albums which have fared best. Therefore many of the albums on this list are of a non-techno nature.

1. Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing

I've often felt that the glitchier side of mnml sounds like musicians making accidental noise. However, Fuck Buttons sounds like noise artists making accidental music. Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung started out as straight up noise artists who specialised in brutal live performances but as they moved into a studio environment rhythm, melody and even traces of song structure started to enter into the mix. The end result is an album which takes elements of drone, ambient, techno, psychedelia, shoegaze and noise. It's probably the most original sounding album i've heard since Mu's "Afro Finger and Gel" and a great example of how a different approach to music can yield fresh ideas.


2. Rhys Chatham - Guitar Trio Is My Life!


While I found the recent detroit debate rather interesting, it wasn't something i contributed in as i find it pretty much impossible to classify what techno is. Also, i'm pretty sure whatever my classification is wouldn't be shared by many others. I believe Radiohead's "Kid A" is a techno album as is PiL's "Metal Box" and Pansonic's "Kesto" To me techno is more about philosophy than just sound. It's about taking minimal mechanical structures and electronic tones and creating something falsely human from them. So this is probably why i think this is the best techno album of the year so far. Rhys' guitar trio project involves a drummer, a bassist and several guitarists who are instructed to play the same chords/rhythms for a set period of time with an initial buildup followed by a breakdown then one final wall-of-guitar onslaught. Spread over 3 hours is 10 performances of the same song only with different players who are each allowed to add their own subtle styles to the mix. So each performance takes it's own shape with the guitars combining into different amplified shapes and textures. Despite the minimal approach and strict limitations in structure, and sounds Guitar Trio Is My Life manages to be highly engaging and expressive over 3 hours. It's like the guitars take on their own personality and i get the same "falsely human" feel i'd get from traditional techno. Oh yeah and it rocks too.


3. Move D and Benjamin Brunn - Songs From The Beehive


Everyone has labels or sounds that they struggle with getting into. Dial has always been a label i've wanted to like but just can't get into. It always sounded nice enough and I know it's skillfully produced but it always left me cold. However, i find Move D and Benjamin Brunn's added analogue warmth and squelches really engaging. As Pete said in his RA review, Songs From The Beehive is able to transport you to another place. It's a feeling i haven't had so intensely from a techno album since Wearemonster.


4. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours


So this is an album that takes New Order-esque pop and adds elements of electro house, indie and 90s techno-pop. This has been attempted so many times before and before In Ghost Colours i honestly didn't think it would be possible to pull this off so well. So where exactly does Cut Copy work where so many have failed in the past? Simply because of some excellent song writing and the midas touch of DFA's Tim Goldsworthy. This is a superbly crafted pop album which is well paced, cohesive and full of catchy hooks. What more could you want from a pop album?


5. Paavoharju - Laulu laakson kukista


I've always loved Finnish Phych-folk but only in small doses as it was a little to abstract. But for their latest album Paavoharju have inserted bursts of pop amongst their psychedelia. The album sounds like an old dusty mix tape with moments of staticy folk interspersing moments of europop, straight up fold and piano ballads. With such a wide range of sounds squeezed into a 35 minute album Laulu Laakson Kukista really should sound like a mess but it sounds anything but.


it really was hard to keep this list down to just 5 so here's another 10 that missed the cut:

Kangding Ray - Automne Fold
Raster Notion micro-glitch with an infusion of pop

Times New Viking - Rip It Off
Noisy lo-fi art punk with great energy and hooks.

Soulphiction - Do You Overstand
Beautifully executed soulful house music from Jackmate

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus Dig
Cave strips back his sound and comes up with his best work in years

Syclops - I've Got My Eye On You
Maurice Fulton doing his thing with predictably awesome results

Maju - Maju-5
5th in the excellent series of ambient soundscapes from this Japanese collective

Growling - Lateral
Largely guitar driven ambient drone

Hercules & Love Affair - S/T
Yes it's not as consistent as i first thought but still a great disco-pop album regardless

Portishead - Third
The fact Portishead was able to reinvent themselves so effectively after such a long absence is probably the most pleasant surprise of 08 so far

Yellow Swans - At All Ends
Doom metal meets dark ambient drone in all its sinister glory

Cam's take:

1. Jacaszek: Treny (Miasmah)

On ‘Treny’ Polish artist Michał Jacaszek deftly blends classical elements with electronic manipulations, crafting 11 pieces of hauntingly beautiful melancholia. There’s a touch of gothic here, with operatic female vocals gently floating through the tracks that are slightly reminiscent of Dead Can Dance. There’s a hint of Murcof too, with subtle micro-edits and subterranean sounding bloops appearing here and there. A layer of gauze is thrown over the album, with crackles, static and hiss evoking hazy feelings of nostalgia for times long past. The atmosphere is funereal, but unlike some artists on the Miasmah label Jacaszek refrains from taking proceedings into areas of unease and dread, and actually turns up the lights (slightly) for the album’s final track. With every track locking together perfectly to create a fully realized vision, Jacaszek has produced not only the best neo-classical release of 2008 (so far), but also one of the best I’ve heard in the past few years. This is nothing short of brilliant.

You can listen to the first three tracks of the album over at Jacaszek’s Myspace page, and you can see an excerpt from a live performance here.

2. Move D & Benjamin Brunn: Songs From The Beehive (Smallville)

With Pete’s rather excellent review for RA perfectly capturing the feel of Move D and Benjamin Brunn’s second full-length collaboration, I’m not sure I can add anything more. But I’ll give it the old ssgs try.

For me, the pleasure of ‘Songs From The Beehive’ comes from enjoying the ebb and flow of the tracks as they take their (ahem) sweet time in gradually unfolding, tracing lazy circles as they do so. This is particularly true with the album’s four longer tracks, with the shortest of these almost 12 minutes long and the longest clocking in at just over 20. Despite their length, the tracks are not “epic” or “huge” in feel; instead, with the palette of soft, smoothly flowing sounds that D & B employ, the tracks are gentle and comforting, washing warm waves of aural honey over the listener. Yet as Pete pointed out in his review, there’s groove here too, which is essential for sharpening the tracks (ever so slightly), giving them structure and drive. The result is one of the most sublime albums of the year so far … I cannot recommend this highly enough.

You can preview the tracks over at Smalleville’s Myspace (you’ll need to scroll down a bit to the “whatpeopleplayer”). And massive props to Smalleville for securing such an amazing album for the label’s first full-length release.

3. Kangding Ray: Automne Fold (raster-noton)

For those who’ve come to know and love (or perhaps loathe) raster-noton’s experimental/digital aesthetic, Berlin-based artist David Letellier’s second album for the label as Kangding Ray is something of a surprise. Melodies. Vocals. Organic instrumentation such as violins and a detuned piano. Song structures. A lyric sheet in the CD. Hang on – this is a raster-noton release, right?

Indeed it is. Letellier combines these elements with many of the hallmarks of the label’s sound, as he deploys crisp digital beats, higher-end frequencies and rhythmic bursts of hiss and static to create an album that feels very clean and pristine, yet also very warm and organic. It’s this contrast that makes ‘Autumne Fold’ such a fascinating album, and the way in which Letellier so perfectly marries these seemingly opposing sounds is amazing.

Of course, the raster-noton label has seen melodies and organic instruments before, most notably on Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s absolutely brilliant collaborations. Yet the extreme restraint and austerity of those albums made them difficult for some listeners to approach. With ‘Autumne Fold’ Letellier has crafted an album that is both extremely interesting and extremely accessible. Amazing stuff, and another feather in the cap for raster-noton.

You can listen to five tracks from the album over at Kangding Ray’s Myspace, and check out more sound samples at his website.

4. The Mole: As High As The Sky (Wagon Repair)

Ladies and gentlemen, The Mole hereby presents the feelgood summer album of 2008. Incredibly fun, funky and infectious ‘As High As The Sky’ is packed full of highly danceable disco/house tracks that are positively loopy. Yes, I am indeed making a groan-worthy pun here, because one of the great joys of the album is its many loops that spin around and around and around. I know that sounds rather simple, but as with many things that seem simple (there’s actually a lot going on under the hood in these tracks), that’s why it works. As Hot Chip once sang, “Over and over and over and over and over … the joy of repetition really is in you.”

You can listen to some samples here. Also, please note that while the above Discogs entry I linked to is for the double vinyl, there is indeed a CD version of ‘As High As The Sky’ with 11 tracks including an edit of ‘Baby You’re The One’. (The CD version hasn’t been listed on Discogs yet.)

5. Peter Broderick: Float (Type Records)

I was starting to worry a little about Type Records; after releasing some amazing albums in 2006 and 2007 they had fallen silent. Thankfully, the label has finally come out of hibernation with Peter Broderick’s debut full-length ‘Float’, a lovely neo-classical album. The album’s ten tracks are built around piano, augmented by strings and other instruments (including a theremin and a banjo, both used to great effect). The arrangements are simple and uncluttered, allowing the instruments and the sweet yet melancholic melodies to come through loud and clear. However, there are some subtle treatments applied to some of the tracks, and there is a highly effective use of field recordings (which in the case of the album’s centerpiece ‘Stopping On The Broadway Bridge’ reminds me slightly of Rachels). At the tender age of 21, Broderick will no doubt be someone to keep an eye on in the neo-classical scene over the coming years.

You can hear two tracks from the album, along with some other tracks, at Broderick’s Myspace.

And the runners up:

Christopher Bissonnette: In Between Words
I’m not as enamored with ‘In Between Words’ as when I first heard it, mainly because while the six tracks are all excellent, they don’t fit together to create a cohesive whole. That said, the final two tracks are especially worth checking out.

Philip Jeck: Sand
Avant turntablist Jeck takes dusty and discarded pieces of vinyl and transforms them into engrossing soundscapes. Some may find the sudden bursts of noise off-putting, though.

Alva Noto: Unitxt
The most rhythmic Alva Noto release in a while. Yes, you can dance to it. Kinda.

Paavoharju: Laula Laakson Kukista
Wonderfully weird Finnish folk/pop with lovely orchestral interludes, all coated in a misty haze.



back to PC: That's all from us listwise, but stay tuned for my mouthpiece/rantpiece about some recent trendencies. That on Shunday, Shimon.

...and here's the rantpiece/thinkpiece, as promised. NB, this was written mid-June, and since then I've heard a lot of amazing albums. Cheers, PC:

We Were Never Mnml – June 2008

We’re now approaching the year’s half way point, and for me (and a lot of you I guess), it’ a time to sort through piles of papers and send off tax returns, as well as dust, stack and file the massive piles of books, CDs and records that have accumulated over the past six months. June’s a time for reckoning, for straightening, and for reorganising, so given that I’m doing a bit of summing up, looking back and re-focussing, I thought I might give some time to going back over a few of the albums that have popped up on our mutual radars since January, reassess their merits, and up or downgrade them, depending on how they’ve come out in the wash.

Generally, I think you’d have to say that 2008 has been a weak year for electronic albums, so far. A number of the well-received albums so far this year have been re-presentations of old formulas, and very few people have offered anything that’s bold, fresh and totally unexpected. A few of the best in this vein: Syclops’ I've Got My Eye On You, The Mole’s As High as the Sky, Prosumer & Murat Tepeli’s Serenity, Osborne, and Soulphiction’s Do You Overstand?!. Each of these are a great ride and all of them are worth checking for the charming, well-executed interpretations of house music they’re offering. But all the same I wonder: are any of them offering anything truly singular, anything really outstanding? Maurice Fulton’s Syclops album is made fresh by the maestro’s unique production style and recording techniques, his live drum sound and his wild, impressionistic piano playing. Even so, I've Got My Eye On You contains several tracks that were released as early as 2005 – so as great as it is, you can hardly call it a new album of originals. The Mole’s effort is a wonderful piece of long tripping easy listening tech-house with some very well utilised disco samples, but again, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done as well elsewhere many years ago. Serenity, likewise, is great, but here things are even more straight up retro – in fact, the album is more about producing ‘that feeling’ (ie a perfect simulacra of 80s house) than it is about exploring new possibilities. Do You Overstand?! is extremely well put together, but there’s a little too much cribbing of late 90s Detroit house going on – again, like Serenity, it’s a very well made simulacra of the ‘original’, with a wee something extra. Same goes for Osborne too, really, and, like Syclops, most of the best of it was previously released – so it’s a re-packaging of a re-presentation of the classics – a second-order simulacra. To the broad, reflective, and perhaps unanswerable question that considering this provokes: what does this say about where we’re at? What further innovations are possible, given the ‘rules of the genre’? Is it time to break a few of them? Or even abandon them all together?

I’ve mentioned both Luke Solomon’s Difference Engine and Kelley Polar’s I Need You To Hold On While The Sky Is Falling at length in this column in previous months as original albums that are doing something new, and while I’m not quite as enthusiastic as I was about them a couple of lunar cycles back, I maintain that both, in their own way, are attempting something original and interesting and are still definitely worth checking out. The same can’t be said for the big over-rated albums of the year: Claro Intelecto’s Metanarrative and Hercules and Love Affair. With the former you could almost feel people straining as hard as possible to like it, like the trick of squinting at a painting in order to try and finally see ‘it’. But is anyone still listening to it now? It sounded nice, but there was actually very little to really grab on to. In fact, I’d even say it’s the dullest thing he’s done, and a big disappointment. And as for Hercules, well, apart from Blind, is any of it really all that? Take that one sublime track out and it’s a three star album, at best. I tried to listen to it all the way through the other day and got so annoyed by the sixth track I had to can it.

In fact, of all the touted albums of 2008 so far, I’ll wager that only Move D and Benjamin Brunn’s Songs for the Beehive will make it into most people’s End of Year lists. Where does that leave us then? Well, either the best albums have yet to drop (a large possibility, given a whole six and half months to go), or we’re this year’s shaping up to be a fairly average crop full of well-made but unadventurous albums, most of which are overwhelmingly looking to the past for their inspiration. ‘From innovator to imitator/from imitator to respirator…’ But, of course, it is only June.

The same can’t be said for EPs though. I feel like it’s been a good crop, and a recent few have been truly exceptional. Alongside the Namlook/Pepe Bradock Subatomic Atoms EP and tobias.’ I can’t Fight the Feeling, The one I think of immediately is Ricky V’s new Vasco EP PT I double for Perlon – and speaking of Perlon, isn’t their consistency – or, as they would say, ‘superlongevity’ – incredible? I’m astonished that they’ve been able to keep the quality this good, without deviating from the label’s fundamental sound, for so damned long. Ricardo’s newie, being the latest of these, is hardly likely to convert ardent doubters, but for me this is real (if subtle) development of RV’s unique sound signature, with more sub-bass, more percussive detail, and a more thorough integration of the melodic elements with the rhythm than in recent ‘dissociative’ times. Most importantly, there’s something surprising about these tracks – you couldn’t listen to the first four bars and predict what’s going to go on for the following three hundred, unlike his Enfants, which was an extremely dull record that few people made could make work in the mix. As far as Vasco goes, the moody beast that is Electronic Water is really outstanding, but the best track on the whole thing is Shackleton’s remix of Moonstar, which straightens the rhythm and introduces a great vocal sample. Without a doubt, Shackleton, along with Peverelist and Appleblim, are three producers who are pushing something fresh, new and exciting, and their productive association with the minimal/house/techno spectrum is a welcome direction. Here’s to more of that in the coming months.

i have been set up.

ok, well i haven't been set up. but i have been busy. no time for proper explanations, but these are some sounds i've been digging lately:

tinman live. the ever-reliable peeps at hardwax tell us: "long acidic trippin’ retro tracks - TIP!"

more on the old school tip, an amazing old school mix based around the classic X-mix series. a seriously impressive mix this one.
red kite presents 10 years without X-mix

and a reminder of what richie sounded like when he still cared. this mix is so good. what happened? lets not start that again.
richie hawtin @ breezeblock 12.6.98

for those of you who loved the luke hess ssg mix, he is another great mix from the man.
luke hess @ radio grenouille 2007

another ssg favourite, this klock knows the time.
ben klock - bodytonic podcast 17 (24-06-2008)

who is adriaan vankeerbergen? he likes ben klock. we like him. and he has put together a really nice mix of dubbed out deep techno.
adriaan vankeerbergen - elevation mix

and last two treats i came across today:
first up, plenty of good records and a nice vibe throughout this mix. tastes good.
sweet'n'candy @ PB afterhours 6.7.2008

second, new sounds from the one man production machine. keep 'em coming. go deep.
mikael stavostrand @ kontrol 5.7.08

enjoy...

mnml ssgs mx06: mike parker

ok, sorry for the radio silence peeps. but what better way to make up for it than a new ssg mix. the latest installment is from mike parker. to be honest, we came across mike's work reasonably recently. we noticed a common theme in quite a few sets from donato dozzy and cio d'or - the best moments in these mixes were coming from records by mike parker. after a ssg reader noted that parker is a bomb dj, we decided he was definitely worth approaching for a mix. and luckily he agreed. the result is exactly what we hoped/expected: deep, dark and hypnotic. this mix is very reminiscent of steve bicknell's lost/cosmic soundscapes. unique and special music that very few are capable of producing and providing. so grab this mix and get lost...

mnml ssgs mx06: mike parker

1. Mike Parker / Substratum (Foundation Mix)
2. Lustmord / Heresy Part I
3. Steve Bicknell / How Can We Know? (A2)
4. Sleeparchive / Meson
5. Apathism / Ten
6. The Source Experience / Universal Energy
7. Paul Horn / Vibrations
8. Stanislav Tolkachev / Rudiment 4
9. Samuli Kemppi / Neliöavaruus
10. Solieb / Plastic Facility
11. Steve Bicknell / Spirit (A2)
12. Emptyset / Isokon
13. Sub Space / The Voyager
14. Unexplained Transmissions / Airlock
15. Donato Dozzy & Nuel / Aguaplano 000 (B2)
16. Jack Dangers / Burbidge Chain
17. Damon Wild / Travel
18. Jeff Mills / Intruder Alert
19. Jack Dangers / Pinwheel Galaxy

big thanks to mike for taking the time to contribute to our series. for more info about mike, check his homepage and myspace.

mnml ssgs mx05: luke hess (FXHE, berettamusic)

given the recent discussion, it is most appropriate that the latest installment of the ssg series comes from a detroit artist, luke hess. luke is part of the beretta music crew out of detroit, who have been pushing some really strong sounds over the last few years. like all contributors to this mix series, hess' productions have a very distinctive and unique sound that have attracted us. his records, on FXHE especially, suggest that he is going to be exploring some really interesting directions. we look forward to discovering where he takes us. in the meantime, here is a great mix he put together. like our previous contributor shed, who incidentally did an amazing remix of hess' 'believe & receive', luke is also in a summer mood.

mnml ssgs mx05: luke hess presents summer sounds


1. ruanda - marko furstenberg
2. perfect moment - efdemin
3. shalom dub - luke hess
4. a req - marcell dettmann
5. amity - sven weisemann
6. octagonal - luciano
7. dolido's groove - ripperton
8. massai mara - mahias kaden
9. platte - luke hess
10. te vi el hojaldre - sistema
11. 520 - matthew styles
12. 5 - circunbalation
13. magnat - urban force
14. debajo - alexi delano
15. just a track - efdemin
16. catobolism - efdemin
17. in the mist - argy
18. just dance - mr. v


download here

more info on luke hess at his myspace.

much thanks and respect to luke for taking the time to put together this mix for the ssgs. so enjoy hess and next week ssg mx06 will be from mike parker...

Back to Detroit (part 4 of a 3 part series)

Continuing on with our debate over Detroit - music/myth/origin - we now have a 4th part to our 3 part series. Cliff Thomas from the Submerge crew has provided us with a view from Detroit. Thanks to Cliff - and everyone in the comments sections - for contributing. To cap things off, later in the week the next ssg mx will be from a Detroit artist, Luke Hess. Anyway, now over to Cliff:

I don’t claim to be the “be all, end all” authority on everything Detroit Techno. In fact I wasn’t listening to it at the very beginning that much. But I do come from the Detroit area and I am an artist for Submerge Recordings and Wallshaker Music so I have access to a different perspective on the subject than most. I’m a member on some forums that tend to discuss this subject on a regular basis. On discogs forums my screen name is “sgt” where I run a forum on Detroit Techno called “It’s That Detroit Shit……”, on mnml.nl I tend to hang around the production forum mostly under the name “Torque” and in the techno world I produce music under the alias “The Plan” and “Thought Criminal”.

There are a few points that I’ve seen people try to make in this type of discussion that I take issue with. One of them being “Techno was created at the same time all over the place, so why does Detroit get all the credit?...” and “Techno would have happened somewhere else if it didn’t happen in Detroit”. Of course there are even more silly things than that I have heard stated but I’m going to save you an even longer read by just ranting on these two statements alone and I should be able to answer them both together. So let’s get started…..

People in Detroit in the beginning never had any interest in what the hell the music they made was called. It’s the press that took a statement by Juan Atkins back in the day to the effect “This is Techno Music” when he was asked to describe the music he was making and ran with it. I think for some reason people think techno just popped up in Detroit the same way it came to their city, with big parties and allot of hype. Back then there was no hype, it was just music. People like the Electrifying Mojo picked up on some of the local electronic stuff and thought it was funky so he played it on his radio show in Detroit which it seemed just about everybody listened to it and before long people wanted to hear it at the club and dance to it. Some people like to look exclusively at what was happening at legendary hangouts like Derrick May’s Music Institute where allot of great advances were made in the music. People tend to forget about the more humble places it was gaining ground like in the Cabaret parties in the neighborhoods all over Detroit where dj’s like Jeff Mills got their start. These places were allot more rowdy and dirty and were held in the lower class neighborhoods in Detroit. Not everybody that was involved was from Bellville and not everybody was middle class and absolutely nobody gave a crap what the music was called. These were places you would hear “Rock Lobster” from the b52’s played next to music by Juan Atkins, Kraftwerk, Parlaiment Funkadelic and house music from Chicago. Everybody would hang out, get drunk, jit and get into fights all in the name of having a proper night out in the D and maybe having a moment away from the hell that was going down on the streets and the people they knew that were not going to survive the Crack epidemic at the time. To them it was all just funky music they could dance to and it was a form of escape. In other places that had money they would probably have picked the better equipment at the time. The music from here was created mainly on the cheap stuff which had allot to do with the sound. This music could not have come from any other place but Detroit and it has nothing to do with any kind of myth. It was not handed down as a grand ideal to anybody on a silver platter from the Gods, it was just an expression of Detroit culture.

Growing up in this area was not like growing up in Berlin, Paris, Chicago, New York or London. Detroit is completely unique in many areas. Detroit first off is one of the most racist areas in the US. Just like Berlin had the Berlin Wall Detroit has 8 Mile Road which granted isn’t exactly the same but it seems to hold the same function. On the other side of 8 Mile is are the shiny white neighborhoods and all the money of the white community that abandoned the city after the ’67 riots and the black community has had it made clear to them over the years that if they cross 8 mile they’re going to have trouble from the police. This division runs deep in Detroit and the mentality seems to have affected everybody, both sides view the other with suspicion. In a way it seems like a racial version of a cold war that has never stopped. This is somewhat ironic because besides the condition in the neighborhoods we have all experienced the same culture. Almost everybody comes from a family that is tied into employment with the big 3 car companies, whether it be for the big 3 themselves or for many of the smaller factories in the area that make parts for them or the businesses that cater to all the auto workers. Everybody listened to the same radio stations, everybody follows the Lions, Tigers, Pistons or Red Wings. Everybody’s laughed at the same goofy ass commercials from Mel Farr (Superstar), Howards Jewelers where a guy in beard dresses as a woman and tries to tell you about his latest sale on jewelry or the Wonderland Music commercials where this dude would just be smashing drum sets and guitars while claiming he’s slashing prices. Everybody woke up on Saturday morning ate smurfberry cereal (which made your shit turn blue BTW) watched cartoons and kept sitting in front of the tv to watch Sir Graves Ghastly sit up in his coffin and introduce the next horrible B rated horror flick he’s going to play like “Night of the Lepus” (Which gave me nightmares when I was a kid because we had pet rabbits at the time) and other movies about science gone array like “The man with two heads” etc…. and the “creature feature” which was where they played Godzilla movies to death. Our culture here seems to be fascinated by strangeness and failed science experiments. Maybe because in a way everybody feels like Detroit itself was a failed experiment in a way.





With all this stuff being thrown at you as a kid all you could do is bury yourself in comic books and fantasy material while your parents were working their 14 hour shifts at GM. This is why I think music acts like Parliament Funkadelic and Kraftwerk caught on here because they took you to another place and let you escape the thought of your entire society going to shit around you. Escapism is what drove the sound and concept of Detroit Techno and still does. Nobody was thinking of what people would do on the dancefloor, they were thinking of what would happen when all those robots that took our parents jobs at the Ford River Rouge car factory would do when they revolted against their makers. This is why I think that Techno could not have happened any other place but here. Revolution runs deep in Detroit and it goes back to the days where people were getting shot trying to form auto workers unions. Later we had the black community revolt with the ’67 riots. Detroit Techno is the product of another revolt against all of our local society at once by people that refused to accept what they saw as the truth so what they did is try to create another world that they could escape to. Of course later it turned out that people here weren’t the only ones who felt that way and the music caught on. It’s the press that felt the need to tack on a genre name to it so they could package it and sell it.

The problem lately seems to be that people are having a hard time looking past the name to hear the music. If that refers to you, it’s your fault, not Detroit. Apparently those are the kind of people that need the “Myth”. To the people here it is not a “myth”, it’s just music and a way to get away for a minute. It just so happens that the people that do make this music here have allot more time to sit back and become very adept at putting what they think into musical terms than most. It’s probably because there isn’t shit else to do but make music. I’m sick of hearing people bitch and moan about Detroit getting all the credit, well they should god damnit, everybody else got all the money. How many Techno legends in Europe drive around in beat up pickup trucks? I’m guessing not a whole lot. Yeah some Detroit artist get payed pretty good to go play at some clubs overseas off of the music they made, so what, all the club owners and record labels over there have made a shitload more off of it then they could ever dream of and when they come back to Detroit the average joe on the street has no idea what the hell techno is. What more do people want? The music never stopped coming from here, people never ran out of ideas and there are plenty of new artists to listen to. Maybe not as many new artists as Berlin or some shit but god damn, this city only has about 800,000 people or something and if you look at history in electronic music Detroit has a pretty good batting average when it comes to hot tracks. Contrary to popular belief artists in Detroit don’t have much of a superiority complex. Yeah they might fly over for a night and rock the club but all of them know that feeling when they get back on the plane of dread when they know they have to come back to Detroit and be just another dude back in the hood. You won’t find many elaborate studios here. Most of them just have one or two pieces of equipment in their moms’ basement they can afford. I say if Detroit can’t have the cash at least give them the credit. Most of them would gladly trade you for the cash if they could. So if you’re an artist and you’re mad about all the credit coming to Detroit you should just come and live here for a while and see how long you last. I know a legend or two from some other places that tried that and didn’t last much longer than a year. Respect came with a price.

Being from the Detroit area hasn’t done me allot of favors monetarily. I don’t make enough to quit my day job. What it has done is give me the opportunity to become involved with some other very good artists and learn allot which is awesome in itself. These people have earned the respect they get and even though it would probably work in my favor to downplay what they did so maybe I wouldn’t have to exist in their shadow being from here I’m not about to make the claim that what they did didn’t matter hugely. Genres that are more popular right now like trance and minimal owe their lineage to what was done by Detroit artists and they are still affected by what is being done here now as we speak. Detroit isn’t done making music and if you think it’s over it’s only because you chose to look away for a minute, there is allot more to be said by new and old artists here alike. Sub-genre names aren’t real and if you rely on them to tell you what’s cool then you need to get a life because it’s all just Techno. Ignore the hype and keep your ears open. Techno is music about the future so when it was made should be of no consequence. If you like Techno most likely at one point or another you’re going to come across Detroit stuff because Detroit has made a whole lot of it. Just forget the bullshit and enjoy the music…….

Detroit: Myth Hating, Myth Creating [Part III of III] {Detroit Techno City}

Still with us? As a quick recap, this is the third part of a three part series on Detroit: the music, the myth, and, in Thomas' case, the place itself first and foremost. For this third post, Chris and I sent Thomas (Pipecock) Cox our draft posts in order to elicit a reply. The result is less a response and more of an affirmation of love. In any case, here it is, the Detroit of a Detroit lover...

Pipecock's piece:

When I was first introduced to techno music, it was during the heyday of hard, banging techno in the early summer of 1998, almost exactly 10 years ago. I went to an all techno party in my hometown of Pittsburgh to hand out flyers for an event I was throwing with the intention of sticking around for just a short while and then checking out some other things going on that night. As I wandered outside into the already bright day around 8am the next day, I realised that techno music was not what I had previously thought. Seeing artists like Vapourspace, Christian Smith, John Selway, Alexi Delano and others made me realise how ridiculously diverse a night of one genre of music could be. Techno never really took hold in Pittsburgh in the 80s, so there was no independent scene based around it. It was always in the context of raving that it was presented. Seeing a party based around the genre alone, it became obvious to me that this style was beyond simple rave music. I began buying mixes and a few vinyls here and there from artists like Thomas Krome, Ben Sims, Chris Liebing, and Surgeon. This variety of techno was right up my alley as I was mainly into harder dance music like drum and bass, hardcore, and early breakcore. Due to my new affinity for techno, I volunteered to drive up to Cleveland a few months later to hand out flyers at an event called "Phunktion" which featured deejays Adam Beyer, Cari Lekebusch, Joel Mull, and Christian Smith over two nights. Little did I know that they would all pale in comparison to one of the greatest deejay sets I have ever seen. On the first night around 3am, a black man dressed in all white hit the decks like a whirling dervish, playing music like I had never heard and mixing it fast and furious. The music was not techno like I was used to, the sounds were electronic but far more elegant and beautiful than hard and pounding. I swear he never let a single record play for more than 30 seconds. The man was Derrick May.

After watching him play for hours with smooth intensity like I had not previously witnessed, my idea of techno changed. I still liked the harder stuff, but I began seeking out records like Derrick played. This led me to "Nude Photo", Basic Channel, Shake, Laurent Garnier, Drexciya, Underground Resistance, Recloose, Dan Bell, and Aril Brikha. As I grew increasingly disillusioned with the constant "progression" of UK dance music, I found comfort in the references to all the other music I liked in techno. Jazz, reggae, soul, funk, pop, it was all in there but twisted up into a cohesive sound that still sounded more fresh than the music that sold itself as being "futuristic". I began exploring other sounds like broken beats and house, and I continually noticed many references to Detroit music. My mind was being twisted by Marc Mac, Titonton, John Tejada, and many others all of whom were clear about the influence of Detroit music on their own. The discovery of Theo Parrish in particular really helped me to understand the importance of Detroit as he played music from all over the map, much of which came from the 313.

I missed the first three because of my crappy job that required working weekends, but when the opportunity finally arose for me to attend DEMF in 2003 I jumped on it despite being almost completely broke. This was my first chance to witness a celebration of the music I was increasingly in love with in the place where it came from, and it affected me deeply. Seeing the reaction of the hometown crowd to the 3 Chairs set in the tent on Sunday night was especially intense, it was not anything like what I was used to seeing. Every subsequent trip to Detroit has revealed more and more about the city and the people who live there, each bit another piece of the puzzle of techno music. At some point I realized why Detroit was so important to dance music: techno culture IS Detroit culture.

If you read mainstream dance music media, it will tell you that techno is about hedonistic Berlin nights, hyper-intellectual futurism, wild drug binges on Ibiza, glowing blue cubes, the newest production software, and a plethora of other scenarios. None of this is true in the least. Techno is DIY electronic punk soul music, nothing more and nothing less. It is made mostly by black people living inside the city of Detroit, people who have been influenced by the culture that exists in that forgotten void.

The stories about Electrifyin' Mojo are almost stereotypical at this point, but to truly understand what that means to the music one needs only to visit the city. One Sunday morning while I was eating breakfast at the Clique restaurant on Jefferson Ave. downtown (the best breakfast spot I've ever been to!), I found myself tapping my foot along to an odd choice of Muzak. It took a second to recognize due to the lack of context: it was Paul Hardcastle's "Rainforest"! This was followed up by choice disco-funk jams by Rick James and others. This constant influence can even be heard in the music of hip-hop producers like Jay Dee whose tracks were chosen by Laurent Garnier for his "Detroit Perspective" mix for the Kings of Techno compilation and Waajeed whose mix CD for 555 Soul included "techno-influenced geek music" as he calls it in the liner notes. Regarding the famous Derrick May quote about techno's origins "it's like George Clinton and Kraftwerk are stuck in an elevator with only a sequencer to keep them company", people forget that it is as much George Clinton as it is Kraftwerk. Each was equally important to techno music, the electronics without the funk is not techno music. The history of Detroit music before Mojo is no less important, some of the most intense jazz, funk, soul, and even rock music recorded has its roots in the seventh city and can be heard in the music of musicians like Carl Craig, Moodymann, and Anthony Shakir.

Mojo certainly influenced the selection of music, but it was Jeff Mills aka the Wizard whose mixing style has defined techno deejaying techniques. His quick mixing and cutting on the radio in the 80s influenced nearly every producer and deejay who would go on to invent techno music. Mills' style is also what influenced many deejays outside of Detroit like Richie Hawtin and Surgeon. This has been a constant through over 20 years of techno no matter what the subgenre of the week is. The futurism of Juan Atkins and Jeff Mills, while different even from each other, is often confused with being the essence of techno music. In reality, those are just the distinct visions of two of the most prolific and popular Detroit artists which have been ripped off and

Car culture is techno culture. Detroit is huge, due to it being home of the US auto industry. The factory jobs and pride in their own work led to everyone owning a car. This is reflected in the earliest Detroit records, from the catalogue number on "Sharevari", Cybotron's "Cosmic Cars", Model 500's "Night Drive Through Babylon" to Mad Mike financing Underground Resistance through his street racing and Omar-S' well publicised love of racing. Derrick May, DJ Assault, Theo Parrish, and many more have a widely known love of automobiles, which influences them and also their music. Driving in Detroit is not like driving anywhere else, possibly the only comparable place I have driven are Germany's Autobahns which were influential to Kraftwerk, yet another connection between the 313 and the robots.

Detroit's economic conditions since the race riots in the late 60s have a huge impact on the sound of techno. Aside from the auto factories obvious influence, the exodus of businesses and white people to the suburbs left the inner city to fend for itself. A drive through Detroit's business districts reveals countless thousands of independent black owned businsses. Combined with the musical legacy, the founding of labels, distributors, clubs, and record shops by the techno artists themselves had a fertile ground in which to grow. In Detroit, it is never expected that someone else will do something for you. No wonder the artists from the city have such a fiercely independent streak! It is also obvious why Detroit artists take offense to the watering down of their music: in a city where you have to fend for yourself to make ends meet, seeing people cashing in on a weaker version of your creation is seeing people take food out of your family's mouths.

To assume that techno could have been created anywhere else on the planet is erroneous. It almost seems like techno exploded out of nowhere in the mid-80s, years after the records by Cybotron and A Number of Names that predicted the sound. What really happened was that the artists involved simply distilled their experiences and influences of living in Detroit into music, and not surprisingly it came out sounding like a cohesive whole. The personalities of each artist gave them a special sound, while the overall culture made those sounds work together. Sure, a debt is owed to many artists outside of the city, especially Kraftwerk and the early Chicago house producers, but props and respect is always given to those who deserve it. Sadly, those props are not always returned by those who should! Notably though, Kraftwerk performs the Underground Resistance mix of their song "Expo 2000" in their live sets, giving love to Detroit even though it was they who influenced Detroit, not the other way around.

Techno no longer belongs exclusively to Detroit, but the people who make real techno music all have some understanding of how to properly combine funk and electronics. From popular artists like 4 Hero through to the underground cats at Delsin, the Detroit aesthetic lives many places. A huge number of artists rip off the sounds, but miss the feeling. I know some people look down so-called "ghetto tech", but really it is techno music much more so than 99% of what is out there calling itself techno.

Every trend in techno has roots in Detroit music, even acts such as BT and Deep Dish were involved with Carl Craig before setting off down the progressive house and trance paths. The harder end of techno was all based on the music of Jeff Mills and Robert Hood. Electroclash leaned heavily on Detroit artists like Adult and Dopplereffekt because Detroit is one place where electro never went away. Whether you attribute the current trend of mnml to Basic Channel, Richie Hawtin, or whomever else, they all owe their sounds to Detroit. These fads come and go, but there is always Detroit right smack in the middle of each one. And when they go away, Detroit remains. Just like it always does.

Detroit: Myth Hating, Myth Creating [Part II of III]

And here's part two, folks, this time from me (Pete).

In 1995 I was a noise rock kid, proudly listening to Fugazi, Shellac, Slint, June of 44 and the like, guiltily listening to Tool, Primus, Pantera, Nine Inch Nails and Prince, and covertly listening to different kinds electronic music: the single of the Prodigy’s ‘Voodoo People’ that I’d bought behind my friends’ back, and a cassette of Rotterdam hardcore that I purloined from a friend whose older brother was a ‘raver’. In a way I’d grown up with electronic music: be it the 8-bit themes of PC classics like Captain Comic, the endless series of Sierra’s ‘Quest’ games, the rap music of Public Enemy, Run DMC, NWA and Tone Loc that had been my first cassette purchases, or the Stock Aitken and Waterman hits of Kylie et. al. that I would dub off the radio each week. During this period of pop awakening that occurred via FM radio countdown shows and ABC’s Rage, I was also introduced to my first explicit understanding of ‘techno’: Technotronic, Black Box, Snap, Dr Alban, M People, and even Prince. I mention the wee purple fella because, retrospectively, I think the ‘Batdance’ medley was the track that had the single greatest impact on my musical development. Yes, really. But I enjoyed them all indiscriminately, until I realised – approximately with the onset of pubes, puberty and the first rising boils of seething self-consciousness – that ‘Mr Vain’, ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Spin that Wheel’ just weren’t cool. At that time, it was all about flanelletes, undercuts and long hair, earrings, and grunge… egad.

1996 marked the turning point at which my musical development curved back into techno, or, at the very least, drum machine music. Somehow, the grunge and pimple-induced stigma attached to listening to machine-generated beats (excepting Big Black, Ministry and even Nine Inch Nails) had lifted, thanks, not doubt to the general crossover success of the Chemical Brothers (and their fantastic albums Exit Planet Dust and Leave Home). On a more personal level, I also became confident of expressing a more strident, less fearful assertion of my own idiosyncratic likes and dislikes. The album that clinched it for me was Tortoise’s first (and still amazing) self-titled album. Hearing it as a teenager, stoned out of my gourd as it played loud on my father’s high-end hi-fi during a short parental absence, I realised that something entirely different was possible. Dance music in its pop forms had been with me for years, but what Tortoise were doing completely blew my mind. Then came Don Caballero, Six Finger Satellite, Trans Am, Rome – thanks mostly to my trust in Thrill Jockey and its associated others. There followed the second epiphanic listening: Mouse on Mars’ Autoditacker. The same friend who had dubbed me copies of the Chemical Brothers (one album each side) had it playing round at his place when I arrived for a coffee. ‘What the fuck is this!?’ I demanded. I bought it the next day, then quickly discovered Oval, Autechre, Aphex Twin, 2 Lone Swordsmen, and so on… Armed with pocket money from working graveyard shifts at a service station, a non-skip discman, a voracious curiosity and the earlier (and much, much better) incarnation of All Music Guide as my rough map, I plunged in. I’ve been happily lost ever since.

I mention all this at length to make a short but (for me at least) fundamental point: this was all techno to me. Public Enemy, Technotronic, Rotterdam hardcore, the Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers, Tortoise, Mouse on Mars – I filed all these cassettes (then later CDs) together in a cluster beside my speaker that was always understood, though never named, as the techno group. I listened to ‘I’ve got the Power’ with the same ears as I listened to ‘Batdance’, ‘Pump Up the Jam’, ‘Fight the Power’, ‘Spin that Wheel’, Ginuwine’s ‘Pony’ and even the Outthere Brothers ‘I like to Move It’. For my ears, what Warp, Sonig and Mille Plateaux were doing with these ideas in the second half of the 90s was just blowing the first half through a transdimensional psychedelic particle accelerator. In other words, it was like somehow, using computers, they’d figured out how to feed drugs directly into the music.

Having left high school, I plunged into the world of 18+ venues in Melbourne: pubs, bars, live venues and, of course, clubs. The egotism and stagnant formulas of every group of Steve Albini wannabe noise rock motherfuckers had me cheesed right off that whole scene. Incidentally, they’re still at it ten years later – check My Disco, if you don’t believe me. Obviously this is a very compeling formula for some people. Hey, I guess I’ve been listening to minimal techno for ten years now, so who am I to talk? But meanwhile, away from the Travis Bean guitars, the Big Muff pedals and the Rickenbacker basses, it was the dance kids that were having all the fun. I thought, ‘I know techno, techno is fun, let’s do some techno.’ So of I went to a whole bunch of different big box raves with the same ‘everything’s techno’ mindset: Eat Static’s goa trance, that was techno. CJ Bolland was techno. Speedy J, the Speedy J of A Shocking Hobby, that was techno. Even drum’n’bass as various as Aphrodite, Storm, Krust, and LTJ Bukem? Yup, all techno to me. House? House I disavowed. House I repudiated. To me at this stage, house was beyond the pail. It was too feminine, too disco, too camp, too cheesy, too gay – although all the while I nursed a secret, raging love of Crystal Waters’ 100% ‘Pure Love’, and if you’d have asked me to distinguish between house and techno, I probably would have come up with something as profound as ‘techno is like house, but good! House is like techno, only cheesy and camp.’ Etc…

While all these things were percolating through my head and filling my weekend hours, techno in Melbourne was going gangbusters. And chief among these parties, at least in terms of perceived prestige, were the Innovator parties. At about this time, I’d just got my hands on a CD-R copy of Derrick May’s Innovator double CD, with all his classic tracks on it. Who was this guy, and why was he so innovative? Was he as good as Autechre? As weird and talented as Aphex? So I went to a few of these parties, and began to sense that something different was afoot. Gradually, as my exposure to this whole scene and sound increased, I was given to understand that my personal, inclusive, idiosyncratic soundmap of techno was wrong. The strong sense was (a la Crocodile dundee’s knife scene), ‘That’s not techno. This is techno.’ The sense was like ‘they’ had tried to tell you that techno was something white, something cheesy, something commercial. Something soulless. But here, so the counter-narrative would have it, was ‘high tech soul’, made by real, oppressed black people (dreaming of space from a post-industrial ghetto). It was, so the riddle ran, a music so unquestionably authentic that to present an opinion to the contrary would invoke an accusation of ignorance, or even heresy, followed by a lecture on the Belleville Three. For white kids from the Melbourne suburbs, this allowed them to be righteously proud of aligning themselves with a noble tradition, which, in turn, allowed them to make peace with the fact that they all grew up listening to…. Technotronic, Snap, and M People, of course. Is it any different to the quiet joy of the Vanilla Ice fan who discovers Ice T and Ice Cube? He who ended up in Wu Wear often began with Twelve Inches of Snow. Never, ever underestimate the power of guilty pleasures in shaping musical taste.

Six months later I was finally coming to terms with a guilty pleasure of my own. I had started listening to house, after a triple conversion: the first was thanks to the house section on Juan Atkins’ still fabulous Master Mix. The second came from a CD copy of Carl Craig’s collection of Paperclip People singles The Secret Tapes of Dr Eich – five dollars in a bargain bin that changed my life. Thirdly, and perhaps most consequentially, was Herbert, whose Lets All Make Mistakes mix introduced me to Perlon, DBX, to Theo Parrish, to Isolée and to Green Velvet. Herbert, I owe you buddy. Anyway, around about this time I began to get the inkling that the history of Detroit was far, far more fraught and entangled a history than the hagiography that had been presented to me. I realised that both Innovator and Hi Tech Soul were brands of Derrick May, and that maybe, just maybe, he (and perhaps even Mad Mike) had some pretty kooky, probably self-serving, and maybe or even totally bogus ideas about who had the right to say who and what techno was. I stopped feeling bashful about ‘my techno’, and started feeling pissed off. I began to get the impression that if Derrick had his way, he would even have trademarked techno, along with innovator and high tech soul. I got the impression that Derrick May was a dick.

With this scuttlebutt in mind, I kept working into the catalogues, back in time. The further and deeper my retrospective colouring and shading of the histories went (and this is still and will always be a work in progress), the more I realised that everyone who’d bought into this whole Innovator thing had been sold a pup: having discovered P-funk, early electro, Kraftwerk, YMO, the Talking Heads, Eno, David Bowie and others, I realised that all the parts were there, lying around. Techno was an invention of Korg and Roland Corp, if anything. I became sure that, although it would never have emerged in the shape it did without Detroit, it would have emerged nonetheless. While the best of the early Detroit records were wonderful creations, no doubt, there was no ‘moment of creation’ – there was no formula in them that you wouldn’t end up arriving at if you had been listening to electro, Italo, krautrock and disco and you owned a synth and a couple of drum machines. The creative, mimetic feedback loops had been in active motion since the early 70s, and it was knowledge that was there for anyone who cared to check. In fact, it would take (and it does take) concerted, repeated acts of active forgetting in order to not acknowledge that. I also realised from this that my own personal mutant genealogy, my map of ‘techno’ was no less biased and discriminatory, not less selective and ordering than theirs – the difference was that I wasn’t insisting that mine become the orthodox account that everyone else had to swallow and regurgitate (without chewing).


So why do it? Why the need not only to claim being an innovator, but to have invented a whole kind of music? This is hubris in the mouth of anyone but Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Little Richard, or Jimi Hendrix. So why? Well, because you need to, and you need to because you’ve become deeply invested in your myth. The anthropologist Mary Douglas said it best, so I’ll quote her here verbatim: “Institutions create shadowed places in which nothing can be seen and no questions asked. They make other areas show finely discriminated detail, which is closely scrutinised and ordered. History emerges in an unintended shape as a result of practices directed to immediate, practical ends. To watch these practices is to establish selective principles that highlight some kinds of events and obscure others is to inspect the social order operating on individual minds. Public memory is the storage system for the social order.” I felt, and I still feel, that just such a thing had happened in the creation myth that has become Detroit techno, and that continual investment in this has strangled the creativity and dynamism out of the style, turning its proponents into a bunch of cantankerous, conservative has-beens who demand dues and respect on behalf of things that happened twenty years ago. Innovator becomes necessary because of an absence of innovation.

At this point, you can’t avoid talking about America in a much larger, broader way, and I say, (as an outsider who’s never been, and who doesn’t know what it’s like), that if I’d grown up black in Detroit and seen suffered discrimination, neglect, a lack of opportunities and been left vulnerable to arbitrary acts of harassment and even violence (often by the police who are supposed to be there to serve and protect me) I’d probably be pissed and bitter as well. It seems to me that the another reason the bitterness has become entrenched is because Detroit techno has always been seen as a minor music in the US, made by a group of producers who never got the respect, sales and money that others working hip-hop and r&b received. Like their city, they feel discriminated against, they feel like they’re not recognised and respected (to the point of abandonment) and because of that some of the key players have become defensive and antagonistic. But what of the shithead fans in Switzerland, Sweden and Australia who have insisted on spitting bile in the name of their prophets? Interestingly, no, perhaps crucially, this kind of defensive, antagonistic, toxic bitterness has not affected producers like Carl Craig, and from my distant point of view this seems like it’s for two reasons. The first is because CC was never so invested in the myth – he never needed it. And this connects to the second reason, namely, that CC is still relevant, and he’s still relevant because he’s growing, changing, and creatively developing, something that cannot be said of May, who (in an act of monumental irony) is re-releasing Innovator. The distinction between the two artists might offer an object lesson in two possible ways, two different struggles: May’s path of closure (seal the myth and man the barricades), or Craig’s path of continual development and openness. I know which path I’d take.