Wighnomy Brothers

I know I have gone on about these guys before but there is no harm in plugging good stuff. The Wighnomy Bros. have free downloads of some great DJ sets they have done over the last couple of years. The one I am listening to right now was recorded on 01/18/06 so the tunes are relatively fresh. It seems that this is as close to seeing them preform as any of us here in the States are likely to get until the release of Speaking in Code.

Get it here.

Modeselektor

I recently picked some of the remixes from the wonderful Modeselektor album. I had planned to post the Sleep Archive mix of Dancing Box but apparently the ftp gods are not happy with me today. I shall attempt a sacrifice later tonight and see how that affects their mood. In the meantime check out this still wonderful but woefully short Grime Mix of Silikon by an unnamed mystery techno producer. My guess is Rex the Dog, but who knows.

Modeselektor - Silikon feat. Sasha Perera (Grime Mix)

Ostara

I have been discovering the many wonders of Nero. I am probably behind the curve on this but the product is really pretty good. It does DVD burning, you can do your own mixes with crossfades in 2, 5.1 and even 7.1 as well as quite a few other things I haven't even investigated.

In any case I did a mix a couple of nights ago for the first time in ages. To be honest I would like a little more from Nero, but that is only because I am comparing it to ProTools and that is hardly a fair comparison. The ability to design your own crossfades in ProTools is very cool and that is something Nero lacks.

As far as the mix goes I had a very odd concept in my head that seemed best expressed by the picture of the King's Cross gas rings up above. The mix has a pastoral element to it, but is tempered by quite a bit of electonic drift. It reminds me of certain areas of London that were thoroughly city yet had been there for so long that nature had begun to creep back in. A feeling of high/old tech decay and assimilation. There certainly is not much in LA that gives me that feeling, but these photos also hint at that kind of cross pollination.

Here is the tracklisting for Ostara
Current 93 - All the Pretty Horses
Six Organs of Admittance - Spirits Abandoned
Blithe Sons - Waves of Grass
Earth - Lost in the Desert
Tim Hecker - Neither More nor Less
Fennesz - Laguna
AGF - Shumine
Loscil - Sickbay
Dj Koze - Chiminea

Listen to the silence.

Loremo: The Ultra Efficient Car - 157MPG!

German Loremo AG will introduce their ultra Efficient Car at the Motor Show 2006 (site) in Geneva next week.

The car start-up developed a light-weight passenger car with outstanding aerodynamics. The Loremo LS is powered by a 2 cylinder Turbo Diesel engine with 20 hp and 160km/h top speed. The amazing thing is that the Loremo only needs 1.5l per 100km. This is approx. 157MPG!
The Toyota Prius hybrid has only 55MPG (combined city and highway).
With one tank (20l) you could drive 1,300km.

Parent stuff

I know that most people that would read this blog are not parents. Most parents simply dont have the time or money to care about music one way or the other and simply give it up as something that interested them in their youth.

I however did not. So I have kids, in particular a daughter, that gets a ton of homework every night. Which might be ok, if she wasn't in first grade. I have often talked about how ridiculous this is with my wife but this article has confirmed some of my suspicions. Kids should be allowed to be kids. Its the only chance they get.

Yikes

Just watch the first few minutes of this video .

I know there are good cops, because I have met them and been astounded by their humanity and fearlessness. However, like the man said on the tape there are both kinds.

The Knife

Ok, so I know I mentioned earlier that I was going to hold back on the video posting, but I guess I was full of shit. The Knife's Heartbeat was one of the great tracks from the last few years for me so I was a little overwhelmed when I found this video for their latest track

The Knife - Silent Shout

It kinda sorta reminds me of the direction Delia & Gavin head towards on their album.

Rip it up and start again

If you read my previous post about Simon Reynolds book you have some idea of what my reading habits have been recently. Doing some online sleuthing has led me to discover a couple of little gems.

Throughout the book and in a recent article Reynolds aludes to the significance of Death Disco by PIL. In particular he talks about how their appearance on Top of the Pops altered his conception of music. Doing my now daily trawl through Youtube's archives I found the very performance he was talking about. So here you go.

Be sure to give the video some time to load.

/Rupture

There is no excuse for going this long without paying respect to this man. Rupture throws cultures together like he is making a Tacos Por Favor Burrito, so yummy. The mixes move, and he creates and mutates genere's like it is the most natural thing in the world.

I'll be honest and say that occasionally their ferocity makes me twitch, but hey sometimes you gotta suffer for art.


From Low Income Tomorrowland:

Bong Ra - Old Skool Armageddon

Boredoms

The Boredoms. What is there to say about a bunch of Japanese noise and drum circle freaks that has not been said before. For me the Boredoms take the stance of The Stooges, & The Butthole Surfers twin drum attack out to the furthest degree. They strip down rock to its bare bones of propulsion and energy and use that as a jumping point to Psychedelic transformation. There is certainly a krautrock feeling of metronomic drumming and exploration, but whereas the German sound has a sort of brittle iceiness to it the Boredoms are able to power through through that to incorporate more raw energy.
This track sees them on a more exploratory trip but check out some of the other tracks on Vision Creation Newsun to see how they can thrash.

Boredoms - Arrow Up

Also, More Youtube goodness.

Rework

A could have been, should have been, and maybe was. This track off of Alter Ego's Transformed album is giggly in all the right places. I haven't heard much discussion on it, but since I live in LA and don't go out that isn't very suprising. Enjoy the groove.

Vincent Van Dance - Rework Remote

P.S. Although it didn't work very well for this group, or really any underground techno, try typing in the name of your favorite band into Google. They started a new service that provides a relatively complete discography for any band as the first search result. For instance check out The Aphex Twin.

Kraftwerk

I Love Technology! Click on the screen, there is no download time.

Holy Crap

This looks very intersting. High art funding for odd music events reaches the U.S. West Coast. I wonder what the crowd will be like?

Always

I first heard Lisa Shaw in the summer of 2002. I had just heard Swayzak and was quite obsessed with their sound at the time. That minimal deep house feeling was just taking off for me and I was trawling around trying to find things similar.

On my first visit to Amoeba SF I started questioning their dance staff and low and behold I was handed a copy of a mix cd my Marc Deon (click on the link he has some free mixes). He played great soulfull techy deep house. This cd went everywhere from Swayzak to Lisa Shaw to Pepe Braddock with a little Stevie Wonder thrown in for good measure. Her voice was enchanting and as my wife and I began to find a common ground in deep house we came upon this track.

Lisa Shaw - Always (Lovetronic Vocal)

We bought quite a few of the Naked Music compilations at the time, but this track has stood the test of time. In case you are interested it is off of Nude Dimensions Vol. 2.

Mylo

I know this stuff has been out there forever, but I just LOVE the Mylo remix of Freeform Five. The acidic house quality to it is infectious. Every time it comes on the stereo everyone in the house starts shaking their hips and inevidably I get up to check the track name (a sign of quality).

I recently got the full length album by him and so far it has not killed it in quite the same way. I am giving it time though. In any case the weekend is almost here!

Freeform Five - No More Conversations (Mylo Remix)

Shortwave

He sure doesn't up date often but when he does its nice. Check out the noise.

I hve been wondering about this very thing myself

This post by Glenn Greenwald is stricking in its simplicity and its rhetorical force. I first started wondering about the commitment of small government Republicanism in the 80s when it seemed that a large government apparatus was fine when it worked for their causes. The Bush administration has gutted what remained of this admirable ideal.

But please read.

Connections

I am just getting around to reading Mr. Reynolds new book. I had wanted to wait for it to come out in the States to give it a go, but the planned elimination of the SST chapter compelled me to order it off of Amazon UK.

I am a big fan of the writer. He got me hooked with Generation Ecstacy, his previous book on dance culture. My only fault so far with Rip it up is that I think it is either too expansive or not long enough. Perhaps not long enough is a better discription. Many of the bands only warrant a couple paragraphs or at times a couple of sentences. It just leaves me hungry for more information.

In any case, he does a good job of tracing influences. Although I had heard the story of Joy Division being inspired by the track Warszawa off of Bowie's Low before, a discovery within my own collection made it suddenly relevent.

Trawling through my Joy Division cds I rediscovered a bootleg cd I had purchased in Camden market years ago of the Warsaw demos. they are pretty raw but give a real feeling for what the band would later become in the studio with Martin Hannet.

David Bowie - Warszawa

from the Warsaw demos a heavy version of
Joy Division - Transmission

perhaps their most fully realized track in the style of Warszawa
Joy Division - Atmosphere

My Sundays

Musical Mural goodness.

A little mural art for the citizens of Hollywood. 

A view of the posters on the way out.  

A view from the dvd section of the main floor. There is another giant room in the back for jazz, classical, and exotica. 

Its too bad I don't play anymore. 

A little corner of the house cds. It stretches on and on. 

A first glimpse of the the magic kingdom 

Dance music 

So much vinyl.. 

The State of the Nation

Last night I read Angry Robot's post regarding posting new or leaked tracks, and his belief that music blogs have lost the grass roots energy and independence that made them unique and vital. In addition Philip Sherburne wrote something similar a few weeks ago regarding the temerity of publicists trying to influence his writing policy by sending him review copies of albums.

I have a great deal of respect for both of these writers, but these posts have got me thinking. The sort of behavior they both describe can be thought of as bad. However, in this post sell out world could it not be better viewed as an industry shifting to adjust to the realities of the modern marketplace. As a former publicist, record reviewer, and dj I understand that the placing of music in tastemakeres hands is a vital survival tactic in a glutted marketplace. Once placed into the hands of a reviewer/dj/ect.. what the recipient chooses to do with that new information is in the hands of the individual. I recieved a lot of tunes in my time that didn't hit me, wouldn't work with my style, and most importantly would adversely effect the trust of my reader/listenship if I started championing only because I got it for free.

It was not so long ago that all record companies were fearful of being put out of business by uncontrolled distribution of any of their content online, and aggressively prosecuting anyone who tried to create new rules. I think I see this distribution of mp3s and promo copies to bloggers as a profound sea change in the way that record companies view the internet. They now see it as a mechanism for profit, and when you are dealing with a business that is the attitude you have to take when thinking about how they function. Businesses almost never act for purely alteristic reasons. When that is taken as a given, it becomes much easier not only to understand their way of thinking but to take advantage of it. I would much rather have companies send fluxbog tracks, for example, than sue him.

It has taken me a long time to come around to this way of thinking. In the 80s and 90s I was very much a hardcore purist towards artists that "sold out" and the tactics of record companies that chose to market "my" music to the world. As I have come to know more and more musicians and artists, I realize that it is a tough business to make a buck in and who am I to begrudge them their livelyhood. I expect to be paid at my job.

P.S. I do not recieve promo copies and am not advocting that they be sent. I do not even have time to listen to the music I have in as detailed manner as I would like. I just like to see all sides of a subject.

and because the best music is often made by indies that often do not have the budget to send out promo copies here is a great track that was not much advertised at all.

Sir Richard Bishop - Mystic Minor 23

Since I hit up Autechre last night i felt it was only right to continue the thread this morning with another great 90s electronica act.

Plaid

Like every other electronic music obsessive of the 90s I was into Black Dog. Sometimes their themes of Egyptology and technology went over my head, but I enjoyed the tunes. One night in the early to mid 90s I ventured to the famous Sir George Robey pub in Finsbury Park to check out a night of electronic music. Ed and Andy (pictured) were playing a mix of recent and past electro maddness that fried my brain. I had been expecting something a bit more trendy and of the moment and instead they took it back to the mid 80s playing stuff I used to break dance to in junior high. Needless to say it was awesome. I began obsessively tracking their releases after that point, following the name changes and label shifts along the way. Here are two very different tracks from their long career.

From 1989 Plaid - Uneasy Listening

From 1995 Kushti - Stromboli

Get DRM free music at Bleep!

There are tracks which one should simply have.

They provide a point of reference for which other things may be judged. This is one of those tracks. Its up to you to decide what end of the spectrum it falls on.

Autechre - Second Bad Vibel

pronounced (AWW-tech-ra) no matter what they say

(Update)As an added bonus, since it was mentioned in comments, a video.

Just in case you weren't around back in the day. This album is as essential now as it was then.

I first saw Vladislav Delay/Luomo in early 2002 at a small space in LA called the Echo. I wasn't keeping up with house or techno much at the time. I was coming off of one of my periodic facinations with the horribly named IDM, and went to hear the Vladislav Delay portion of the show with a couple of new friends. All dubbed out effects and space he did not dissappoint.

However, about half way through the show a funked up drum track started up and the floor started to fill up with a small group of grinding dancers. I was intrigued, but not entirely receptive at that point, still straddled with the baggage of IDM I found it difficult to get back into 4/4. Shortly later something snapped and I began to hoover this style of music up like there was no tomorrow. See if this effects you the same way.

Luomo - Syncro

Strangely, I agree with Christopher Hitchens.

These, if you didn't know, are two very different artists.

Ricardo Villalobos has altered house music's DNA in the last several years. Some might credit him with making minimal the defacto genre of 2005. When Sasha is digging in the minimal crate things are definitely weird.

On the right is Six Organs of Admittance. Ben Chasney is the leader and was the sole member of this group for a while. He makes a dreamy, feedback washed style of folk that owes a debt to John Fahey.

I only bring them up in the same post after purchasing Achso, Villalobos's latest. As usual he is out there, combing the depths that I thought house would never reach. On the track I am putting up, Seiso, he practically creates a new genere. Somewhere between krautrock/free folk (a la Six Organs) and of course techno. I was also reminded of Amon Duul II. Hell, I could just be imagining things but both tracks are worth checking out anyway.

Ricardo Villalobos - Seiso

Six Organs of Admittance - Home

I love a rolling bass line, and this track just rocks. Chuncky beats and a chicken scratch guitar line complete the picture.

Check out his website for mixtapes.

If you have not noticed up until this point there is a link for Beatport in the sidebar. It is a great place to pick up DRM free high quality mp3s and still support your favorite artists.

Oliver Koletzki - Muckenschwarm

Oliver Hacke just came on itunes following this and he is well worth checking out as well. Maybe I will throw one of those out soon. School and work are seriously cutting into my ability to post but I will soldier on.