Elastic Dreams - A Saggitariun

Today's free listening is on a dark and minimal techno tip. Elastic Dreams mixes it up for Teshcast.

We deliver another grab bag of funk, psyche and minimal, chaotically blended for your pleasure. Vintage bleeps, cutting edge electro, and the latest from techno’s grizzled veterans; Shallow Rave are all about the the wonkiest, weirdest and most out-there beats.

Tracklist

1. Skudge – Ursa Major (Cosmin TRG Remix) – Skudge
2. THP Orchestra – 2 Hot 4 Love – Butterfly Records
3. Marc Houle – On It – M_nus
4. Walton – 808 Vybzin – Hyperdub
5. Bernard Badie – Overjoyed – Mojuba
6. Sweet Exorcist – Test One – Warp
7. Karl Krak – Tin Tin – Unknown
8. Sweet Exorcist – Mad Jack (Jimi Tenor Remix) – Warp
9. Wes Montgomery – Tequila – Verve
10. The Slits – Newtown – Island Records
11. Psyche – Crackdown – Transmat
12. King Midas Sound – I Dub – Hyperdub
13. Todd Terje – Swingstar (pt 1) – Smalltown Supersound
14. Christian Vogel – Today’s Standard Form – Shitkatapult
15. Sixties Guns – Lightz – Unknown
16. Bering Strait – Surface – Apollo
17. Indigo – Sunrise – Apollo
18. The Black Dog – Bleep #2 – Dust Science
19. Nothern Structures – Session 4 – Sonic Groove 
20. Andy Stott – Ceramics – Modern Love
21. Echologist ft Spaceape – Mercy Beat (Cosmic dub) – Resopal Red
22. Alan Backdrop – Ramas – Motoguzzi
23. Oliver Deutschmann – Sadness Descends (Hiver Remix) – Vidab
24. Black Dog – Bleep #5 – Dust Science
25. Space Dimension Controller – Welcome to Microsector 50 – R&S
26. Space Dimension Controller – Music for Spaceports - R&S
27. Karl Sanders – Luring The Doom Serpent – Relapse

We promised, and here it is - a brand new two hour radio show from ShallowRave...

Radiomagnetic link.

Floating Mind - Live from Chez Moi mix

Todays listening is some deep and minimal tech from the Monokrak crew.

Sun Electric - O'Locco (Sei A Remix)

I currently have something of a fan-stiffy for Apollo Records, R&S' ambient sublabel, following their re-emergence as a major player last year, and Sei A's delicate rework of Sun Electric is perfect music for the early spring we're (apparently) getting. Fresh, cold and delicate, with fingers of light peaking through.

Lakker - Death Mask EP

Lakker - Death Mask EP (Love Love Records, Out Now)

Despite having put out a long string of (mostly) free downloads for the past four years, Love Love Records have generally escaped my attention until the release of this, their first physical release. Admittedly, their back catalogue deals heavily in breakcore, chip-tune and the more extroverted corners of experimental music that generally err too heavily on the hyperactive, or downright bizarre for my liking - their LoveCore comp has got some great moments though, particularly Scrase's skronky electronica, and their digital-only Kanji Kinetic release is a must for fans of his work. For their first 12", Love Love are releasing an EP from long-running Irish audio-visual artists Lakker, three tracks of far-out techno that constantly threatens to devolve into complete noisecore. A-side LF9 channels a hefty dose of PanSonic, with delicate bleep melodies constantly threatened by washes of redux and distortion, with a meaty kick-snare combo that recalls Forward Strategy Group- it's a stark contrast between delicate electronica and aggressive techno that sets the tone for the rest of the record. Numb on the B-side is similarly based around monotone bleeps, taking a simple four-note pattern and distressing it repeatedly via pitchbend and filter modulation - again, Lakker allow the sounds to veer towards the uncomfortable, but coat it all in an ominous fog of reverb that softens the blow slightly. With the flattened-out 909 kicks and toms leaning more towards the microhouse styles of Farben or Frank Bretschneider than the militant techno of the A-side, the B-side is a much less intense proposition that LF9.

Title track Death Mask is definitely the best of the three however, coming across like Analogue Bubble Bath-era AFX, with breakbeat influence techno formed from electronic feedback and white noise. The chords are lush, the samples distorted and robotic, and the beats follow a recognisably glitchy two-step pattern, all of which are garbled by filters and noise, before breaking back into rich techno again. As with much of Lakker's work, it occupies the far corners of techno, ever so slightly too surreal for most dancefloors, but great listening nonetheless.

Find more Lakker at their tumblr account.


LOVWAX01 - Lakker - Death Mask E.P. from Lakker on Vimeo.

2012 favourites Tropic of Cancer - I Feel Nothing

As every magazine starts compiling the inevitable end of year lists and arguing over the best releases, best live acts, most influential singles etc, I realised I'd never given any time on the blog to the bloody excellent Tropic of Cancer, who I've really been digging this year. With releases on Downwards and a forthcoming long-player due on Blackest Ever Black, there's a strong technoid influence running through their work, with hints of Raime, Throbbing Gristle and Regis all apparent, despite the slower tempo and gnarlier sound palette. Tropic of Cancer's work finds the middle ground between the syrupy psychedelia of hynagogic pop and the bleached emptiness of Witch House, carefully nurturing the space at the edge of sound to create unsettlingly beautiful atmospherics around dark gothic pop songs.
For me, their releases were some of the best stuff of 2012, and appealed to both my love of electronica and techno, and my long-standing love of doom metal. Yeah, I said it, they're doom. Deal with it. Bandcamp here.

Tropic of Cancer - M.U. Podcast #31 (December 2011)  by Mundo Urbano on Mixcloud

Surviving the Apocalypse

Lukas Zpira & Spectre performing @ the Borderline Biennale. Warning - NSFW. I hadn't actually realised how much of the Bordeline Biennale had been recorded; there's over six hours of video on the main site. Art without definition, under the banner of No Program, no press, no money. More can be found here, the majority of which will feature some adult content. Unfortunately, most of the interviews are in French, but the performances included are fascinating.

Shelter Point - Forever Now (Hot Flush 22nd August)

Shelter Point - Forever Now (Hot Flush 22nd August)

Shelter Point's debut EP for Hot Flush marks a distinct evolution for the primarily dancefloor label; incorporating elements of hypnagogic pop, found sounds, shoegaze and lo-fi, it's a brilliantly skronky mess of melancholic and euphoric sounds channeled into four quality tunes. Certainly, Forever Now shares DNA with other Hot Flush acts - Mount Kimbie most obviously, though there's elements of George Fitzgerald's r'n'b stylings in there - but Shelter Point's sound is a good a two steps to the left of anything else we've seen from Scuba's baby. The two piece act manage to work with a spectacularly diverse sound palette of analogue synthesis, upright pianos, spectral effects and some unique vocals that will undoubtedly garner James Blake comparisons, despite having a great deal more in common with Burial.

Much like Burial, Shelter Point approach dance music with a heavy focus on deconstruction, reconfiguring the building blocks of dance music from the ground up; blurring the synth lines and drawing out the vocals to leave the melodies feeling strained, distant and ineffable. The percussion feels like a vague sketch of a familiar shapes, as hi-hats and claves are reduced to mere frequency spikes, shorn of their decay, whilst the staple 909 snare becomes a broken-glass shatter, or the harsh metallic strike of Zippo. Forever For Now exhibits this best, with brittle yet forceful drums stabbing up through the mix, harshly punctuating the isolation tank synths. In the most literal sense, Shelter Point's aesthetic is "post" dance music - the sounds from after the dance, the fuzzy third-hand memory of bright lights and big beats, drawn from background hum of the city. Occasionally this drags a little, and the 2nd half of the EP is nowhere near as strong as the first, with both Hold on Me and Sleep Easy indulging in excessive chopped and screwed dynamics that detract from their beautifully melancholic feel. That said, the formers detuned vocal snippets are beautifully executed, and hint at further greatness. Coupled with two really strong tracks in Braille and Forever For Now, this is an exciting debut from an act we'll definitely be watching.

Pole - Waldgeschichten 3 (August 27th)

Pole - Waldgeschichten 3 (August 27th - Pole Music)

Pole continues to broadcast from the most strangely isolated places with the third and final part of his Waldgeschichten series, producing two defiantly dub cuts that work the listener hard with seemingly unending repetition, before finally allowing rays of light to permeate the mix. In contrast to the skanking dub of the first EP, and the more agressive follow-up, Waldgeschichten 3 takes the slip-slide groove of minimal hip-hop and spreads every element thin, amplifying and enunciating the edge sounds to create a spectral palette. In keeping with the minimalist aesthetic, both tracks work with very simplistic dub structures, slowly shifting timbre and key until the repetitiveness verges on unbearable... and then carries on a while for good measure. Moos places particular emphasis on a resonant clave that becomes almost jarring, so that when the simplistic two-note bassline finally emerges, it's dynamic impact is far more significant. In other hands, this kind of slow-burning minimalism could end up uninspired or boring, but Pole's delicate engineering always ensures a certain level of quality, and Lurch's deliberately rough recording quality and heavy emphasis on static and microphone pickup yields an intriguingly different aesthetic.

14.09.12 Sopot (PL) – Open Source Art Festival (video by P.MA)

04.10.12 Braga (PT) – Semibreve Festival

http://www.festivalsemibreve.

com/

06.10.12 Graz (AT) – Musikprotokoll

http://musikprotokoll.orf.at/

Alva Noto / Byetone

Previews of the forthcoming Alva Noto / Byetone A/V collaboration named Diamond version. If it wasn't exciting enough to see more collaboration between Carsten Nicolai and Byetone, the previews tell me this is going to be something special...

"Diamond Version is a project born out of a live situation. We occasionally performed encores together after our solo sets. These spontaneous and improvised tracks always had a kind of "special energy" which we missed in our solo works.”

“Diamond Version tries to capture this energy and combines it with conceptual ideas: every day we are exposed to the Daily Short Message Information Culture (DSMC), the aesthetic of this information system became a strong topic and a Blueprint of the visual identity of the Diamond Version project.” explains Diamond Version.

Bass Clef - Reeling Skullways (Punch Drunk, 30 April)

Bass Clef - Reeling Skullways (Punch Drunk, 30 April)

Shallowrave likes Bass Clef - watching him rise over the past few years, we've been in attendance at some wickedly screwy live sets in the Subby and in Stereo and repped his EP's as best we can. So a new full length on the excellent Punch Drunk is very welcome, and sees 'Clef unveiling a totally different style to his traditionally freeform dub/noise/IDM blend. Taking his cues from the wonkier moments of Chi-town and Detroit, Reeling Skullways is nine tracks of house twice-removed; a roiling mix of analogue modulation, swung four-to-the-floor rhythms and epic cosmic riffs. Whilst A Smile Is A Curve That Straightens Most Things, Hackney Centralist and Cumbers' early works are strongly carnivalesque, with trombone riffs and sampled MC lines, Reeling Skullways focusses more on the delicious quirks of analogue kit, and draws heavily from Model 500's space-age feel. Equally, the likes of Hackney-Chicago-Jupiter and Suddenly Alone Together show a far more focussed side to Cumbers, being edited and arranged into more coherent dancefloor numbers than the deliciously erratic Clapton Deep or Promises. Most striking is Embrace Disaster, where the warm analogue heart, delicate synth strings and conga percussion come together to create something that sounds like a beefed up Moroder classic.

Whilst Reeling Skullways first gives the impression of being some strange new beast, it's possible to hear elements of Cumbers' past experiments across the album, from the echochamber and delay work on Stenaline Metranil Solar Flare, to the EkoClef-esque industrial grind on the opening and closing beatless segments. It's a singularly bold step forward however, and opens up many new possibilities for Bass Clef.

Death Grips -The Money Store - Out April 24

Texture, one of Shallow Rave's erstwhile hip-hop afficionados, got the chance to listen to a stream of the new album (and major-label debut) of Death Grips the other day, courtesy of the lovely chaps at The Skinny.

While we're duty bound not to share anything about the album with you that isn't already public, we can say that 'The Money Store' is a breathtaking, intense, apocalyptic tour-de-force. The Quietus has a very good track-by-track analysis of the album, and we have to wholeheartedly agree with their assesment, that it sounds like: "2-Live Crew meets Tetsuo 2: Bodyhammer."

With upfront, down-low, synth-led productions, the punishing drums of Zach Hill, and MC Ride in fine, furious flow, we predict this will be one of (if not THE) best albums of 2012. And they have another one dropping later in the year. We're super hyped.

Below you'll see the four tracks Death Grips have already made public. Jaunt on over to Third Worlds to grab the mp3s of these badboys, and whet your appetite for 'The Money Store.'

Barbara Preisinger Mixtape for LoMidHigh

I recently started browsing the LoMidHigh podcast series, and found some quality listening. In particular, this mix from Barbara Preisinger has been given a good few spins.
Stream it here

Subscribe to itunes/Podcast:
Podcast

The Shallow Rave Show - 22nd March 2012

Shallow Rave's radio team returns! After last month's triumphant guest mix from TEXTBEAK, which garnered in excess of 1500 listens, hosts Liam, Boag and Bram (aka Black Lantern's Texture) are back to present their selection of the finest cuts in experimental and electronic music, with exclusives, classics and red-hot mixes.

You can download and stream below. Show A features some chat from the presenters about their selections, while Show B has just the music, nothing else. We'll be back very soon with Show 004, when we'll have some exciting news about the show, and some very special guests, including a guest mix from dark electronic / hip-hop wunderkind BL▲CK CEILING.



Playlist for Shallow Rave 003:

Voltergeist - 69 Psalmpled [ soundcloud.com/microrave-records ]
Demdike Stare - Filtered Through Prejudice   (Tryptych) [ modern-love.co.uk ]
GZA - Publicity   (Beneath The Surface) [ MCA Records ]
Byetone - Golden Elegy (Symeta) [ raster-noton.net ]
Randomer - Get Yourself Together   (HEK015) [ hemlockrecordings.co.uk ]
The Roots - Thirsty   (Phrenology) [ MCA Records ]
Silent Servant - Untitled Regis Edit (Sandwell District) [ Sandwell District ]
Solomun - He Is Watching You  (Something  We All Adore) [ wearesupernature.com ]
FiNiGHT - Neverglades (Icepunk Compilation) [ auralsects.bandcamp.com ]
Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica (Replica) [ Mexican Summer / Software ]
oOoOO - No Way Back ft. Butterclock [ soundcloud.com/ooooosounds ]
Roly Porter - Rossack - [ subtextrecordings.net ]
Unknown Artist - Untitled - [ soundcloud.com/kid-ritalin ]
Sigha - How To Disappear - [ hotflushrecordings.com ]
Ben Klock - Static Test - [ ostgut.de/label ]
Sigha - Where I Go to Forget - [ hotflushrecordings.com ]
Northern Structures - Plus Minus - [ sonicgroove.com ]
Claro Intelecto - Voyeurism - [ delsinrecords.com ]
Ricardo Villalobos - Easy Lee (LetKolben Remix) [ soundcloud.com/letkolben ]
Model 500 - The Messenger [ randsrecords.greedbag.com ]
Soft Riot - Another Drone In Your Head [ tundradub.bandcamp.com ]
Ingen - TRYC9 [ soundcloud.com/ingen ]
Micoland - Awareness Spectrum Narcotic (Pirate Radio Astronomy) [ dead-channel.com ]
Louie - Oddacity ft. Solareye (The Discernible Truth) [ louiedeadlife.bandcamp.com ]

Monolake - Ghosts (Imbalance Computer Music)

Monolake - Ghosts (Imbalance Computer Music)

Robert Henke's Monolake project returns with its first full length since 2009's foray into untreated sound Silence, this time utilising more drum and bass-inflected structures to explore the malleability of sound. One of Henke's major achievements has been his continual ability to utterly reinvent the contemporary zeitgeist, redefining the minimal sound with Hong Kong, creating a terrifying industrial/ breakbeat hybrid on Momentum, and reinterpreting the merging strands of dubstep and techno as an experimental untreated album on Silence; as such, it's slightly jarring to hear a man widely regarded as being at the cutting edge of electronic music's philosophy and science reacquainting himself with his D'nB and Breakbeat roots. It's fair to say that credibility of both genres has been severely strained over time, with the tools of the trade (funky drummer, reeses bassline etc) having been overworked to the point of boredom, or pushed to extremes of speed and volume that inevitably burn out.

Whilst Ghosts opens with a rapid 2-step pulse and lfo-wobbled sub-bass that sounds very breaksy, it's immediately recognisable as Monolake, with dessicated vocal snippets and armour-piercing percussion that sounds like absolutely no-one else - it's Henke at his most terrifying; doomier than ever, haunted by freakishly engineered vocals and sprays of digital glitch. Whilst much of the tempo of the album is decidedly upbeat, as a musical journey, it's a slow-moving beast that takes gazes on Goan psychadelia and eastern mysticism, playing out through singing bowls and the echoing sounds of great valleys. Creating natural acoustic phenomena through digitial synthesis, then feeding them into an array of digital effects is a stark contrast to Silence's unmastered beauty, and as such, even the more ambient moments of the album feel imbued with darkness and doom.

Ultimately, any new record from Monolake is happily recieved, and even total curveballs such as silence, and Henke's inimitable style makes for compelling listening. With Silence and Ghosts the first two parts of trilogy, I'm eagerly anticipating the final third.

Sendai - Geotope

Sendai - Geotope (Time to Express, 26th March)

Peter Van Hoesen and Yves De May's Sendai project returns with a full length album of super-minimalist sound explorations that probe the relationships between technology and music, melody and form, mechanical aesthetics and pure machinery. Whilst Sendai is more than just the sum of it's parts, the seeming disparity between Peter Van Hoesen's brutalist techno style and Yve's De May's delicate audio-engineering provides an analytical framework for Geotope, which imposes a minimal aesthetic onto the techno template until it begans to collapse inwards under the weight.

Whilst the likes of Terminal Silver Box and Win Tepsit / Brief Delay could easily be mistaken for somnambulant doom or wallpaper-esque drone, with their cavernous groans and swathes of noise, there's the most spectral sense of rhythm that pervades everything - a repeated snap of static that might be a snare, or noticeably quantised swathes of noise. Equally, when Sendai indulge in obviously beat-driven tracks such as A Refusal To Celebrate A Statistic A Probability, or the AFX-inflected Further Vexations, the percussion continually buckles under brutal layers of distortion and grain delay, never allowing a solid groove to build up. Throughout the album noise defeats melody and abstraction is key, with Sendai dismantling the techno blueprint, taking it apart from the ground up, using decaying machinery and white noise to distort anything recognisable.

Towards the latter half of the record, Sendai ease up on the white noise headfuckery, and give the listener two sublimely screwy tracks that verge on techno genius in EP2010-4- and Geotope. The former sits somwhere between Sandwell and Sahko, with a truly monstrous wall of bass and shortened bleep melodies, whilst the latter's slow-loping beat and watery melodies are utterly devastating and demands to be played loud. Despite the almost aggressive resistance to techno's norms, Geotope provides a solid narrative and evolution that proves rewarding listening. Closing track Emptiness of Attention feels like one of Move D's weirder moments, with a bubbbling bassline filtering up and down, punctuated by synth flourishes and static, before breaking down into a drained ambient coda. It's at oninfuriating and somehow a perfect close to a dense and tricky album.

GuMMy†Be▲R! - Spectral Analysis [Tundra]

Go and grab this fantastic four track release by electronic wunderkind GuMMy†Be▲R! now, from the ever-fabulous Tundra label, out of San Francisco. Expect hypercolour synths, crunchy electro breaks and spectral atmospherics... but grab it quick, it's only free to download for 24 hours.



- posted by Texture

Pole - Waldesgeschichten 2, Dec 5th

Pole - Waldesgeschichten 2, Dec 5th

I was pretty excited by Pole's first release on his new label, and enthused about the new ideas he's been working with, so it's pleasing to see him gather momentum with the follow up 12". Warm and resonant subs underpin Pole's trademark glitchy sound and shuffling, rootsy structures, fusing the best of techno and dub with the kind of syncopations more often seen in the work of Headhunter, 2562 and Martyn. There's a far more distinct sense of narrative to Aue and Pirol than exhibited on the first Waldesgeschichten, with more evident build ups and breakdowns, despite being built around long, evolving loops. Equally, the tension between Aue's solid, bass-driven repetitiveness, and off-kilter two-step bounce of Pirol gives the EP a sense of structure with it's contrasting styles.

Continuing in the same Romantic vein as the first EP, the track titles are drawn from natural imagery - Pirol is a vibrant yellow songbird, whilst Aue roughly translates as grassland - and channel the same sense of vitality and organic growth. Betke's work has often focused on the mechanistic, fetishising technology and searching for the ghosts in the machine, but this change in direction is a welcome refresher, without losing sight of what make his work so special. A-Aue-Excerpt by pole original
B Pirol-Excerpt by pole original

Pole plays the following dates in December, if anyone wants to buy me a ticket to Berlin...

09.12.11 Santiago (CL) - Mutek Chile Festival

http://www.mutek.cl/

12.12.11 Montevideo (UY) - SOCO Festival

http://www.socofestival.org/

04.02.12 Berlin - CTM Festival

http://www.ctm-festival.de

KEEP SHELLY IN ATHENS - CAMPUS MARTIUS EP [PLANET MU]

Greek synth experimentalists Keep Shelly In Athens have caused quite a splash of late, with hype from Pitchfork and The Fader among others. On December 5 they drop their first release-proper on Planet Mu, after a fantastic remix of Mouves by Tropics, earlier this year. The new EP is a 4-track 12" release featuring their majestic, Italo-influenced remix of 'Cub' by Solar Bears, plus three new tracks. Vocalist Sarah's beautiful melodies are drenched in (but never obscured by) reverb and FX, while the bands multi-layered synths and stuttering electronic percussion keep subtle, minimal time.



This release perfectly showcases the experimental pop side of Planet Mu, one of Britain's best electronic labels, and one that consistently pushes boundaries. Keep Shelly In Athens are a bold signing, because of their marvellously atemporal sound: they manage to balance forward-thinking production and science-fiction-feeling sonic motifs with clsasic songwriting techniques and melodies, which recall Cocteau Twins, Curve and Massive Attack.

This hits all the right notes - ethereal shoegaze vocals vie with pitch-bent synth lines and complex polyrhythmic drumpad patterns, combining to make songs that are both enchanting and technically impressive. It would be intriguing to know more about Keep Shelly In Athens and their approach to music - what kit and software they use, and where they see themselves fitting in the modern electronic scene. With this high-profile release on Mu, hopefully the band will come to even wider attention, and we'll get to know them better.

For now, have a listen to their Soundcloud page, which includes the magnificent 'Our Own Dream':

Latest tracks by Keep Shelly in Athens

Pre-order 'Campus Martius' from Planet Mu



- post by Texture

ƸC†OPL∆SM - PLAID x CUSAX x FUNERALS x ∆AIMON x RUSTIE

PLAID x CUSAX x FUNERALS x ∆AIMON x RUSTIE by ƸC†OPL∆SM

At 8:45 long, this really is a mini-mix, but producer ƸC†OPL∆SM manages to cram a lot in, from mutated Rustie breaks to post-witch house vibes from Funerals and ∆AIMON. If you enjoy this, check out some more ƸC†OPL∆SM releases:

Mutagenesis: Nattymari meets ƸC†OPL∆SM [Aural Sects]
ƸC†OPL∆SM - DREAM CHEMICAL

- post by Texture