CLUBLAND JUNE
Listening to the innocuous soft house meanderings of Everything But The Girl (EBTG as a generation of MOR dance music lovers came to know them) it comes as no surprise that Ben Watt needed something a little different from his day job to keep his creativity piqued. Enter his Lazy Dog project with Jay Hannan and more recently his Buzzin' Fly label, which is a continuation and evolution of Watt's club night/label vision and just turned five years old. With his interest in house music gradually exploring the more minimal and synthetic end of the spectrum, the latest Buzzin' Fly release sees German producer (Martin) Stimming contribute a melodic, deep tech house twelve inch that would probably appeal to many of those aforementioned EBTG fans - though it can be fairly said that Stimming crafts his sound sculpture with a great degree more subtlety than the crossover hit artists.
The A side, Kleine Nachtmusik is a brilliant tech house track more on the house side of things, with its piano refrain and lilting horns rounding out a more mechanical percussive backbone. It possesses a supple grace that shows a mellower side to Stimming’s more minimal output and the dual nature of the label. Understandably, the B side Danke addresses the balance of this with an understated, robotic groove that languidly progresses and builds to a slight climax before dropping off again into the sonic trench.
It barely needs to be said that Ricardo Villalobos is one of the most innovative artists in modern techno. The sonorous alchemist incredibly packs in an exhausting tour schedule, enough free radical inducing recreationals to fell an army of rock stars and still manages to churn out some of the most spellbinding releases in the genre with hardly a duff in sight. His latest triumph is a double vinyl EP on the mighty Perlon label called Vasco Part 1. Unlike his Sei Is Drum mini album from the end of last year, Vasco Part 1 is not such an experimental, raw affair. That’s not to say that it’s a big club filling slice of anthemic electronica either, but the tracks sound a bit more polished and listenable to all the way without needing a good mixing to put them in context. Sei Is Drum was minimalism in its most primal form; disrobed, its bare bones visible (or audible perhaps), Vasco is refined, though undeniably full of the same outer edges exploration that makes Villalobos’ work so exciting to discover. Minimoonstar begins life as an atonal, aimless meander, but slowly picks up intensity and some orchestral stabs along the way. Ethereal, unnerving pads augment the composition but never quite resolve the piece, leaving you with something that can ultimately be added to (through mixing) or just leaving you hanging. Shackleton straps on his techno tools and polishes up an absolute gem of a remix of the track, complimenting the original with a whole new direction and proves again that these two artists understand each other’s work intimately. The other track, Electronic Water is, to my ears sounding very much like a minimal techno interpretation of a dubstep track with its staccato percussion and boring-to-the-centre-of-the-earth bass. It is a quirky, kinky track but utterly brilliant in it’s complexity, and not well captured in the remix by San Proper who translates it into some kind of bizarre industrial disco dub gremlin.
One of the lynchpins of the Dutch techno scene, Sterac AKA Steve Rachmad AKA far too bloody handles to mention has always been seen as one of the progenitors
of the Detroit godfathers, and over the years has notched up more remixes and releases than a lot of the Motor City producers combined. His earliest works like Sitting on Clouds from 1994 can still raise the hairs on your neck, such is the emotive beauty of his productions, and throughout his twenty-plus monikered, fifteen year career he has rarely put a foot wrong. 2008 sees him back in Sterac mode after a three year hiatus from the name, continuing as he does on a double sided release based around the same theme. Rond/Bot is Detroit to the bone and hits us on the Dutch Delsin label, considered by many to be the modern day Detroit sound flag bearer (and rightfully so, despite the nationalities of its artists). Making the most of a simple melody, we are treated to the minimalist and maximalist Detroit style over the two sides of the single, bells chiming and pads floating to intensify the repetitive rhythm.
Silverbeat’s Top 5
Stimming - Nachtmusik
Sean Palm - Corian (Simon Flower remix)
Ricardo Villalobos - Minimoonstar (Shackleton remix)
The Mole - Baby, You’re The One
Russ Gabriel - Hot Dyke Action
Classic Album
Altern 8 - Full On Mask Hysteria
No comments:
Post a Comment