Boomkat update

Truly EPIC debut album from unavoidable Drag/Witch-House protagonists, Salem – quite easily the years most exhilarating listen. Since 2008 this trio have been spiking the sewers of pop with prescribed doses of scarily prescient ghettogothic crunk on Acephalé and Merok records, inventing one of the most spellbinding modern genres in the process. They’re a tiding of ghoulish pop magpies, accepting of all that is good and grimy about ubiquitous mainstream saturation and robosexual R’n’B, absorbing and filtering their most unheimlich elements and enhancing them with a blank-eyed Shoegaze aesthetic, wickedly exaggerating and distorting their features until they leer back with overwhelming intensity, simultaneously creating one of the most oppressing and liberated sounds you’ve heard in years. Their vision and influence has spawned a coven of scattered, yet like-minded operators in Hype Williams, Balam Acab and oOoOO among others, finding kindred spirits in the affective potential of chopped and screwed rap and classic 4AD feelings, cutting past any ironic bullsh*t to acutely fulfill the needs of a generation searching for viscerally psyched, tactile “experiences”. Following a tiny handful of 7″s, ‘King Night’ is their defining statement, eleven tracks of devastating, slo-mo MPC drum fills worthy of Araab Music, fused to nuclear synth bursts delivered with an achingly blank insouciance, all smeared in acetone-wet MDMA and left to degrade in a Michigan basement until it’s nerves are permanently polarised, fluctuating between extreme, saccharine euphoria and melancholy misanthropy. Inside you’ll find the revamped 808-rolling genius of ‘Redlights’ from their ‘Yes, I Smoke Crack’ debut 7″, the slow nosebleed beauty of ‘Traxx’, sounding like Seefeel on a codeine overdose, next to the narco-saturated E and E-esque synth saturation of ‘Sick’, and the supremely uncomfortable MBV intensity of ‘Release Of The Boar’. Every time we come back to this album we uncover yet more bewitching, peripheral “what the f*ck was that?!” moments, like where the rhythm seems to slip out of place in ‘Frost’, (but did it?) or wondering what the hell the drawling rap of “I Can’t Feel It/ I Can’t Feeeel Sh*t” in ‘Trapdoor’ is all about. ‘King Night’ defines the intangibly elusive, illusive, and yet omnipresent contradictions of contemporary pop culture and we can’t recommend it any higher. Serious contender for album of the year.

Absolutely crucial remix album of Commix tracks from Burial, dBridge, Instra:mental, Kassem Mosse, Marcel Dettmann, Underground Resistance, A Made Up Sound and more!!! It was probably over two years ago when that infamous 2-min clip of the Burial remix appeared on Bailey’s 1Xtra show, causing moody fanboys and fangirls the world over to shed a tear in the light of their macbook screens. Finally we get the full six minute version of ‘Be True’, every bit the Burial classic and more than enough reason to make an investment. In case you’re a picky f**ker (which you should be) the rest of the album is grade A gear, from the fluid suspension of Instra:mental’s ‘Japanese Electronics’ remix, through the Mala-ish mix of ‘How You Gonna Feel’ from Pangaea to Kassem Mosse’s stunning version of ‘Strictly’ with its classic Goldie sample rewired to a squashed techno template. A delicious dub-house cut from Sigha and standardly solid techno ructions from Marcel Dettmann and UR’s sinister acid rub of ‘Satellite Song’ finish a heavyweight set. ESSENTIAL!

Emeralds member Mark McGuire presents his heart-melting solo album for Editions Mego. Mark is no stranger to solo releases, he’s got about 800 gazillion of them on tiny tape and CDr labels including his co-run Wagon Tapes and Gneiss Things besides a tonne others. He’s also worked with Daniel “Oneohtrix” Lopatin as Skyramps, but for all we’ve heard ‘ ‘Living With Yourself’ is surely his most accomplished excursion yet. Taking inspiration from early friendships, family and “the problems that inevitably develop through years of knowing someone” McGuire’s compositions tenderly unfurl nostalgic scapes of Göttsching-like guitar forms and bubbling synths with that endless ability to capture elusive, fleeting moments of bliss like the best of his work with Emeralds. His knack for blending acoustic guitar signatures with magical synths is conducted with the keenest sleight of hand, not deceptively so, but more like an illusion of blissed misdirection, contrasting and melding textures and harmonic qualities to create unpredictable crux points that’ll leave you beaming inside. He dispenses this formula to sublime effect on tracks like opener ‘The Vast Structure Of Recollection’ and the achingly affective ‘Two Different People’, delivering acute hits of romantic yearning and ponderous wonderment with a beautifully instinctive nature. Possibly most gorgeous of all is ‘Clear The Cobwebs’, paring down the synths for a largely solo guitar delight with a flourish of electrcity in the final throes, and furthest from anything we’ve heard previously is ‘Brothers (For Matt)’, a ten minute closer floating from tape collage to Shoegaze thrash with a meditative kosmische finalé. There’s an intimate personality and existentialist optimism to ‘Living With Yourself’ which we reckon will really take hold after a few listens. Highly Recommended.

Awesome double header from the modern psych craftsman Cameron Stallone aka Sun Araw; three new tracks recorded earlier in 2010, and the ‘Boat Trip’ from way back when (er…2008). ‘Off Duty’ is essentially the down time after ‘On Patrol’, deeds done and kicking back with the biggest, most potent zoot you’ve been bothered to make in a while. ‘Last Chance’ makes a visceral entrance with cataclysmic starburst noise subsiding to reveal the slouchiest, loping psyche-dub rhythm vocals hollering from 20 metres away… or is he right next to you, no bother, i’m high and this sounds f*cking cool (i’m not really, y’know, i’m just getting into it maan). Next ‘Midnight Locker’ evens the keel, centred on droning, down-pitched melodica played by Augustus Pablo from his submarine in the bathroom over bowel-quaking subs heard from the basement, while all kinda FX gremlins gate samples from the other rooms of this freakin’ haunted house. ‘Deep Temple’ finishes the ‘Off Duty’ trip with an eleven minute visit to the attic, where we find a shrine to Terry Riley amidst a hydroponic skunk farm and lie down to the sound of a thousand unremembered dreams, caught in ecstatic suspension between a furious axe solo and a the sound of Jackie Mittoo dribbling on his Wurlitzer. Messy in the best possible way. Finally ‘Boat Trip’ is like some mystical steppers excursion to the Bermuda triangle, booming Wolf Eyes tracks over a ten foot stack into the fog over a placid sea before ‘Canopy’ hits a remote island and sits down to chew peyote with the natives. Or something. ESSENTIAL!

Having nicely set up the release of this album with their Ret Marut Handshake EP a few months back, Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld (of Einsturzende Neubauten fame) deliver a set that exceeds all expectations. One of the most strikingly obvious comparisons to arise from that first batch of material was the Alan Vega/Pan Sonic collaboration, yet Mimikry goes much further than combining the established aesthetics of its constituent parts and creates something that actually feels very new. Carried over from the EP you’ll find ‘Ret Marut Handshake’, ‘I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground’, the Harry Nilsson cover ‘One’ and an extended version of ‘Bernsteinzimmer’, but it’s the all-new material that tends to impress the most. Ten-minuter opener ‘Fall’ is a fairly challenging starting point, introducing the album with an artificially elongated wheeze/scream that develops into an almost unbearable cacophony that suddenly recedes to reveal hovering sub-frequencies, fractured electronics and heavily layered and manipulated vocal takes from Bargeld. The mutating soundscape proves to be both emotionally engaging and quite brilliantly complex, at times referencing the glitch vs. piano dynamics of Alva Noto’s Ryuichi Sakamoto collaboration. After this tour de force of an opener the album starts to find a more solid rhythmic groove with ‘Once Again’, on which Bargeld sounds like Current 93’s David Tibet encoded as a computer virus. Splendid stuff. Mimikry is also one of the more sonically liberated Alva Noto releases, finding Carsten Nicolai experimenting with more freely melodic content that embraces conventional notions of song in a far more wholehearted fashion than you might have expected. A piece such as ‘Bernsteinzimmer’ really underlines this, embracing a wonderful string arrangement that somehow doesn’t feel out of place alongside the more uncompromising, surging electronics you’ll hear elsewhere. Indeed, fans of Nicolai’s remarkable beat constructions will be overjoyed to hear the furious, detailed arrangement of ‘Berghain’ (which seems to neatly incorporate some of Einsturzende Neubauten’s familiar scrap metal percussion tactics), while the crunchy, distorted and finely filtered beats of the title track really hit the mark too, grinding out an imposing bassline to frame Bargeld’s always captivating vocal. A brilliant meeting of two of Germany’s most restlessly experimental artists, Mimikry comes heartily recommended.

Mark Pritchard, Oneohtrix Point Never, Broadcast and The Focus Group, and Dem Hunger, among others, are invited to remix one of 2010s most unique albums, ‘A Sufi And A Killer’ by GonjaSufi. Between his distinctive vocals and the superb instrumentals from Flying Lotus, Mainframe and Gaslamp Killer, this is some prime source material which the appointed remixers treat with due care and reverent attention. Most interesting to our ears is the sublime OPN mix, sweetly blending acoustic guitar with pastoral synth chords and a flock of stray seagulls before mutilating Gonja in a matrix of FX to make him croak like a wizened old android. It’s not what you’d expect and all the better for it! Broadcast & The Focus Group also make a magical pairing on ‘The Caliph’s Tea Party’ remix, countering the eastern mysticism of the original with a peculiar, vintage sense of English psychedelia which unfolds into stately baroque motifs and finely layered shellac textures. Dem Hunger also makes a memorable appearance with his ‘Bowel Blood’ remix of ‘SuzieQ’, taking license to mulch the original to a fractal display of unpredictable, smudged and screwed psychedelics. The Hezus remix is great too, taking a hazy kinda ’60s garage/surf approach and the Jeremiah Jae mix remakes ‘Kobwebz’ as an unstable display of timestretched oddness. Needless to say, this album is very good.

Magnificent reissue of this tape obscurity from 1980, Cluster’s eighth album (the first of three live LPs) originally released on the YHR label (which was curated by Pump’s David Elliott), also including archival material never before issued on CD. With so much stuff from this era coming to the surface recently it’s sometimes easy to get blasé about it all, but this is one you really ought to give your fullest attention to. As the title says, this was recorded live in Vienna in 1980 at the Wiener Festwochen Alternativ, replete with all the ferric static, atmospheric noise and inherent hazy gremlins you’ve grown to adore about these artefacts. But that’s by-the-by, as the music within is of the most seductive teutonic avant-garde variety, featuring six tracks of free-roaming and intuitive kosmiche improvisations, both highly experimental and engrossing to the core. ‘Service’ draws us in with a tentative display of arcing synthesizers and ominous gong tones before the unusual addition of Joshi Farnbauer beautifully meshes his percussion into their vast sonorous scapes, gradually evolving into a stunning 30 minute improv session. The effect is so compelling you can almost hear the audience collectively holding their breath, waiting for the next spurt of ideas or plume of discordant synth signaling the next phase. Two shorter tracks, the disturbing ‘Kurz’ and its martial typewriter rhythm follow into the more classical ‘Piano’, presumably conducted by Roedelius, completing the first disc. The second disc opens with an overheard exclamation of “Schiese!” and into the controlled urgency of ‘Drums’, winding unsteady and explorative drum patterns around a bobbling synthesizer until the two copulate like the genesis of Techno, EBM and all that, happening right before your ears. This track is nothing short of genuinely mindblowing! In the longer 25-minute centre-piece ‘Metalle’, the trio are joined by more percussionists, the mysteriously monikered Jürs and Rapnik, as the ensemble expands to embark on a mystical trip full of shuddering Faustian sheet metal, unpredictable percussive quirks and epic synthesizer shapes morphing and coagulating like some mechanized astral jazz trip. Again, Rodelius closes the show with the contrast of his fluid piano sequences, joined by tender, spidery percussion tingling like the hairs on the back of my neck right now. This album is a bona fide stunner, ESSENTIAL.

Volume 3 of this commendable compilation series joining the dots between New Wave and New Beat with some exceedingly prime selections from New Order, Front 242, Xmal Deutschland, Anne Clark, John Carpenter and more. As with the previous installments, they find a special blend of well known and obscure cuts from a pivotal era in electronic music. The highlights here run deep and thick, from the dystopian urban ennui of Anne Clark’s New Wave anthem ‘Sleeper In Metropolis’, to the seminal EBM of The Neon Judgement’s ‘Fashion Party’ – which is massively influential on the likes of Adult, Jamal Moss and Alden Tyrell, respectively. John Carpenter’s ‘The End (Sound Version)’ is nothing short of an electro/synthwave blueprint, again inspiring hundreds, if not thousands of successive artists, and then we get two sides of the rock/pop dance dichotomy, with Front 242’s Industrial classic ‘Take One’ and New Order’s sublime ‘Your Silent Face’. On the more obscure tip, Koto’s ‘Chinese Revenge’ is an absolute peach, as is the 12″ ‘Qual’ remix from 4AD’s Xmal Deutschland, primed for the most discerning goth discos around. Oh aye, and there’s also total standards like Laid Back’s ‘White Horse’ and Cocteau Twins’ ‘Sugar Hiccup’, but we’re guessing you know those well already. Basically, we gotta give this a massive thumbs up!

**Red Vinyl** Another superb reissue from Seattle’s Medical Records, plucking Dorothea Raukes’ ’81 album ‘Deutsches Wertarbeit’ from Krautrock obscurity and resissuing it on red vinyl in a limited run of 500 copies. Dorothea was in a tiny minority of German frauleins to work in Krautrock circles, first with her Düsseldorf band Streetmark (she recorded four albums as their lead singerin between ’76-’81) and later as a solo artist for Sky Records. She’s responsible for all all the sounds on ‘Deutsche Wertarbeit’, finding an endearing blend of sensibilities, from the rhythm driven pop of the Neue Deutsche Welle to the spacey textures and ambience of Klaus Schulze. Her canny melodic character shines through cheeseball keys of ‘Guten Abend, Leute’, but doesn’t shy away from darker tones like with ‘Unter Tage’. Best of all is he proto-tranz glide of ‘Auf Engelsflügeln’, which is pretty much worth the cost of entry alone, while the electric grey drama of ‘Intercity Rheingold’ and ‘Der Gross Atem’ seal the deal. Really feeling this!

Charlemagne Palestine’s ‘Strumming Music’ is universally regarded as his best-known composition and considered a masterpiece of the 20th Century Avant-Garde. Sub Rosa have compiled three versions over three discs, Charlemagne’s original ‘Strumming For Bösendorfer’ (1974), Betsy Freeman’s performance ‘Strumming For Harpsichord’ (1977), and ‘Strumming For Strings’ (1977) organised at SF Conservatory by John Adams, together with a 16-page booklet by Ingram Marshall. The original piece features Palestine forcefully playing two notes in rapid alternation for over 45 minutes on a nine-foot Viennese Bösendorfer Imperiale Grande piano with the sustain pedal depressed for the entire duration. The notes gradually expand into clusters and as the piece grows the piano slowly detunes, building spine tingling harmonics and eliciting a variety of rarely heard spectral timbres and high overtones which could really only be captured with an instrument of this calibre, and by a musician of such magnitude. The ritualistic effect is intensely astounding, in the most visceral, mesmerizing and physical sense of the word, capturing your attention from the first note and exponentially increasing it over the duration with the most sublime and somnambulistic grace. We could not recommend this set any higher. Life affirming stuff.

Tri Angle Record’s 2nd issue is the debut release proper from a very special artist, San Francisco’s oOoOO. He’s in very good company on this exquisitely curated label, nestled among the likes of Balam Acab, Stalker and Nowa Huta, who together form a collective shadow over the disciplines of big money R’n’B and shivering Cold Wave electro with a creepily succinct Pop aesthetic. And it’s this acute articulation of mood and style that sets these productions apart from any other crowd out there. Tracks like ‘Hearts’ with its Fever Ray-meets-Cassie feel or the arcane hooks of ‘Burnout Eyes’ have the mark of a scarily intuitive Pop genius, knowingly built with the most conventional structures yet nudged at all the crucial moments with choruses that beguile like a shy, lo-fi version of Kate Bush’s finest or enrapture like David Sylvian at his most melancholy, perpetually toying with the tuning for spine chilling and perspective re-aligning effect. Also, their debt to Salem, acknowledged progenitors of the Witch House/Drag scene, is keenly felt in the numb melancholy of ‘Sedsumting’ and to a lesser extent in ‘Plains’, while the Visions Of Trees remix of the breathtaking ‘Burnout Eyess’ adds a spectral New Age ambience worthy of the most lushed out Juno 6 moments, and we say that without the slightest hint of cynicism. This is simply one of the most extraordinary debut records we’ve heard in a long time and should be owned by every house so your kids can come across it one day and perpetuate a cycle of blissed melancholy. Totally Essential.

**Strictly limited vinyl edition of the ace debut from Industrial Funk project, White Car, on the excellent Hippos In Tanks label!** Having already collaborated with Giallo exponents Gatekeeper, and had a video pieced together by Daniel ‘Oneohtrix’ Lopatin, White Car is the latest buzz project to emerge from the hugely promising Hippos In Tanks label and features an addictive leather trousered passion for the EBM/Industrial sound of DAF, Nitzer Ebb, or Liasons Dangereuses with an incredibly canny eye for detail and a taste for sinister gothic splendour. Like Jamal Moss’s Medusa edit series (dedicated to the underage Goth/Pop/Rock club), they’re inspired by a virulent strain of European Industrial music that infected the Chicago club scene through the ’80s and whose influence can be felt right through the catalogues of Trax and Mathematics. With the benefit of hindsight, they’ve burned off any excess to leave a sulphuric residue of disaffected vocals, sledgehammer snares and sweaty chested synths, efficiently recalling the frisson of sexual energy and electronic futurism which ignited Chi-town night spots. We couldn’t recommend this release any higher to fans of Chris Carter, Ministry, Jamal Moss or Amyl Nitrate.

In preparation for his forthcoming ‘Undivided’ album, Helixir gets it together on ‘Atlantis’, backed up with a brilliant Millie (DJ MLZ) remix. The title ‘Atlantis’ is deeply reflected in the subaquatic nature of Helixir’s original, serving a fluid flow of heavily compressed and sinuous dubtech bass rhythms with flickers of coruscating percussion. Coming up for air, Millie’s 4Ward mix adds a brace of scaly hi-hats to the deep flowing bass currents, pivoting around whirlpool edits and dappled with a murky synthline. One for the very deepest techno mariners, and fans of Pinch, Headhunter or AnD.

Superb deep house treat from Jus-Ed, plumped up with remixes from Levon Vincent and Aybee! ‘I’m Comin’ is the signature tune from Ed’s forthcoming ‘Next Level’ album, framing the earworming lead refrain around a strong New York bassline and crisp, punchy percussion with his standard seal of vintage freshness. Levon Vincent, meanwhile, offers his first production of the year (remix or otherwise) with a robust NY House heavyweight bulging pumping machine rhythms and wickedly spacious reverbs for that epic feel. Aybee confirms the essential nature of this record with a tenderly hushed and grooving rework leading to a sublime second half. Killer House music!

Killer single from Kevin Martin’s King Midas Sound project, dropping ‘Lost’ from the ‘Waiting For You’ album, plus an exclusive version of ‘Cool Out’ featuring French singjay, Pupajim. Roger Robinson’s performance on ‘Lost’ is just sublime, singing a tale of forlorn Lovers rock over a dread-weighted riddim sounding like a RZA offcut from the ‘Ghost Dog’ soundtrack. On ‘Frequencies’ Pupajim’s meditation on the tactile experience of bass provides another intensely dark pleasure, sailing like a ghost ship over swells of frayed crackle and bone crushing subs with the exquisite elegance of Horace Andy. Essential, no less.

Haughty R’n’B/Club heavyweights from the Night Slugs quadrant – quite possibly one of the years deadliest 12″s. Needless to say, we’re big fans of the Kingdom sound round these parts and we’ve been clamming for this on vinyl all bloody summer! We get three tracks from the digital copy, optimised for club potential and sounding deadlier than ever. The title track is a lethal fusion of darkside synth drones, bolshy ballroom kicks and helium R’n’B vox delivered in devastating style, primed for fake-out Vogue flops and proper C*nty behaviour. On the flip ‘Bust Broke’ comes closer to the Night Slugs fold with clocking percussion and cavernous trance stabs leading to an addictive R’n’B breakdown, while ‘Seven Chirp’ chops florid flamenco guitar into a swinging dancers special peppered with bird sound and deliciously melancholy synth motifs. These tracks inject any dancefloor they touch with an undeniably dark and sexy vibe and we can’t get enough of it. Essential!