Poul Verner - Nowawes 2 (Nowawes)

 

Title: Nowaves2

Artist: Poul Verner

Label: Nowaves

Cat Number: Nowaves2

Genre: Dub Techno

A: Choose Your Future

B: Choose Life

Both tracks here offer slightly different takes on the dub techno aesthetic. ‘Choose Your Future’ is sub 120BPM voyage through dense layers of analogue warmth. It’s a track to get lost in and feels lie its been constructed from spider webs, such is its apparent fragility and longevity. ‘Choose Life’ picks up the pace and adds levity to the mix. Both pieces feel like contrasting journeys through darkness and light and they aren’t over quickly, which is good, as their potential for layering other, more lively tunes in the mix can be fully realised. That being said, there is enough imagination and invention in each tune to make them stand out on their own.

Track Of The Day: Cybotron - Alleys Of Your Mind (Deep Space Records)

 

‘Alleys Of Your Mind’ can lay claim to be the first ‘techno’ single. The eternal debate is whether it is really electro, and are the two genres inseparable. Yes to the second question, and no to the first. It’s very much a product of its environment and time. The sounds that are used could be heard if one listened to the likes of Giorgio Moroder, Depeche Mode or Ultravox. And this particular track is rumoured to have been inspired by the latter’s ‘Mr X’. Which it resembles a slowed down version of. Sort of recorded in treacle. The direction that this music was to take though, coming out of Detroit, was completely different than that from its European influences. Tracks like this were the template for electro, hip-hop, house and techno. It’s not overstating things to say that even though it wasn’t the first to utilise such sounds, its probably one of the most catalysing and influential tunes ever recorded. The artists behind it, Juan Atkins and Richard Davies, had this idea and brought their own mindset and backgrounds into play in order to give it life. Juan Atkins went on to establish himself as one of the fathers of a movement which, even though he is now no longer with us, will live on.

Hackney Electronica - Feedback Memory (Dark Entries)

 

Title: Feedback Memory

Artist: Hackney Electronica

Label: Dark Entries

Cat Number: DE-358

Genre: Electronica

1: Feedback Memory

2: Six Foot Seven

3: Lost Trip-Destino

4: Trapped In The Circuit

5: Compressed Air

Hackney Electronica, a trio of “Quinn Whalley (Paranoid London), Unai Trotti (Cartulis Music), and Margo Broom (Hermitage Working Studios)” first released on Dark Entires in spring last year, so this is their follow up which is, it’s fair to say, varied. Electronic muscles are flexed and they deliver, if you like that sort of thing. ‘Feedback Memory’ opens proceedings with a piece of linear funk that does its best to go off the rails even chance it gets. ‘Six Foot Seven’ chugs along but isn’t that different in essence from its predecessor. The BPMs have been slowed down, but the percussion is more emphatic and the sound design more minimal, allowing the spoken word to take centre stage. ‘ Lost Trip-Destino’ feels like electro on crack and, as such, is very good indeed. Haunting even. ‘Trapped In The Circuit’ raises the temperature a little, and comes across as very urgent compared to what has gone before. Two sides of the same electro coin. ‘Compressed Air’ finishes the package by smudging the sonic envelope into halfway between beats and the imagination.

Track Of The Day: Blunted Dummies - House For All (Definitive)

 

Elegant in its simplicity innit. ‘House Music For All’ has an unforgettable hook which rests up three or four core elements, at least that’s what I can identify. The point is that, as one of the Discogs comments goes: “Still sounds fresh as hell today and is a testament to the fact that it doesn't take 1,000 synth lines and build ups at once to fill a floor.” And from another comment: “the original contains samples of the following tracks:

- beats from "Earth People - Dance" (1990)

beats from "Brand Nubian - All For One" (1990)

- synth + rides from "Bobby Konders - The Poem" (1990)

- vocals from "The Blackbyrds - Happy Music" (1975)

vocals from "A Tribe Called Quest - Check The Rhime" (1991) 

maybe also the title was inspired by that Brand Nubian album ("One For All" -> "House For All”).”

In any case, we’ve all been on a dance floor at some time somewhere and heard the omnipresent vocal sample that this tune is built around. It doesn’t get deeper than that because it doesn’t need to. That underlines its existence as a perfect piece of layering that doesn’t need layering. Listening to this track you’re constantly waiting for something to happen, which doesn’t. In the end it’s unnecessary, but the tension and it not getting out of second gear builds and builds until its impossible to ignore. The only thing that would improve it would be to make a longer edit, but maybe the stress of waiting for it to explode would then be too much.

Track Of The Day: Nuages - Move (F Comm)

 

Nuages were Ludovic Navarre and Shazz. Two of the founding fathers of French house and sonic polymaths. This track from their ‘Blanc EP’ is a great piece of protocol wild pitch. So much so that I wouldn’t be surprised that, in some parallel world, DJ P[erre admitted that this is what inspired him. Anyway, it’s possible for more than one person to have the same great idea. ‘Move’ is elegant in its simplicity. Vocal sample which are gents, groans and cries combine with loping percussion, synth washes and that dominant wild pitch stab to create a track that has echoes of techno and garage but which is undeniably house. Pitch it down ever so slightly and give it an extra two minutes and it’s presque parfait. One of the other tracks on this EP, ‘No Work Today’ was featured on these pages almost exactly three years ago. There must be something in the autumnal air.

Track Of The Day: Son.sine - Karuna (Nurture/Delsin)

 

One of those tracks that if you’re not playing it on vinyl, you’ll be asked why. That’s not because one format is automatically thought to be superior to the other. Just that the brittleness of this recording causes it to capture every little blemish in the ether. This is highlighted by everything being thrown into sharp relief by the kick, something that also doesn’t manage to escape the high end heist. It’s another dub techno record Jim, but not quite as we know it. Everything shimmers on this record, which isn’t something that one normally writes about this genre. One which seems to have had no embryonic passage, or pupating stage. I love the way the percussion suddenly gathers momentum at around the halfway mark. Something which gives the track a new leash of life and, in some way, does mark a stage of advanced development. Only this concerns the specific tune though, and not the whole genre. The sounds are very familiar of course, but they’ve been put through a blender of sorts rendering them into some sort of spiky, flat relief. Now I know that is an oxymoron, but it’s all I could think of in a bid to say something original about a genre which in spite of its relative uniformity, still manages to confound. Music for looking out over a dark horizon.

Voyage De Lux w/ Alex Downey - 28.10.26

1BTN · Voyage De Lux w/ Alex Downey - 28.10.26

Dub Cleanse 4

 

isitbalearic..? · Dub Cleanse 4

Track Of The Day: Donnacha Costello - Pistachio B (Minimise)

 

It’s. Ore than twenty years ago that the ‘Colours’ series was released on Irish producer Donnacha Costello’s own Minimise label. It was clever marketing because something in the record buyers psyche would mean that one would never be content with owning a few of them. It was all or nothing. Thankfully this was also an easy choice as the music is brilliant. Emerging around the time that the minimal movement was starting to gain some momentum, it rode that wave but was always a little bit more well-rounded. And this from the ‘Pistachio’ release shows why. It’s well-crafted dub-techno with extra layers. Like a perfectly baked mille-feuille, it just keeps on giving. Layer after layer it unfolds revealing something that little bit different on every level. I’m waiting for the whole series to start appearing in random sets so that the prices rise exponentially. Because at the moment they’re dirt cheap.

Track Of The Day: Popol Vuh - Aguirre I (l'acrime di rei) (Cosmic Music)

From Herzog’s incredible ‘Aguirre, The Wrath Of God’, and another contribution to a Herzog film on these pages, Popol Vuh’s spellbinding, symphonic medieval wall of sound is a proper trip. If you haven’t seen the film, put it on your list. It, like the music, is a truly transcendental experience.