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OSBORNE / BULLION / LUKID - The Ghostly Remixes

2010-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

OSBORNE / BULLION / LUKID
The Ghostly Remixes
Ghostly International
BEATS / DOWNTEMPO / WONKY
12"

*STRICTLY LIMITED VINYL EDITION - INCLUDES THE KILLER BULLION REMIX, PLUS A PAIR OF DEEP AND DEADLY REWORKS FROM LUKID, AND THE RETURN OF BOGDAN RACZYNSKI* Osborne (aka Soundmurderer) hands his Ghostly International catalogue over to Bullion, Bogdan Raczynski and Lukid for a wickedly varied remix package. Bullion starts the session with a terrific remix of 'Afrika' sounding uncannily like Boards Of Canada revising Fela Kuti. Its totally fresh and on the money - possibly the best and most original thing we've heard from Bullion yet. The undeniably talented Bogdan Raczynski makes a rare appearance with a strange techno mix of 'Ruling', before Lukid deploys the deepest of the mixes on offer with two gorgeous versions underpinned by ear-quivering subs and those super-squashed percussive flourished he's so good at. Killer package.

BREAKAGE - Foundation

2010-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

BREAKAGE
Foundation
DIGITAL SOUNDBOY
DUBSTEP / GRIME / FUNKY
CD

One of 2010s most anticipated Dubstep/D'n'B albums lands on Digital Soundboy, featuring an all-star UK urban dance cast of Burial, Rodigan, Roots Manuva, Newham Gens and Donae'o. Just in case all that government-disapproved megaweed has addled your mind, we shouldn't forget that his debut 'This Too Shall Pass' was a landmark LP for the D'n'B fraternity. As a follow-up 'Foundation' certainly builds on a few of its themes, while also incorporating his new dubstep style to effortlessly alternate between the two tempo regions. Blatantly, the Burial link-up on 'Vial' is one of the biggest attractions. Thankfully, it's also worth the investment too, finding solid ground between Burial's quicksilver slink and Breakage's tuff bass-sculpting. The established anthem 'Hard' featuring Newham Generals and Rodigan's inimitable mic chat is another major highlight, shaping his sound with a grimier intention, while the uptempo junglist tracks are superbly executed. 'Old Skool Ting' runs on some potent Congo Natty juice and Kemo's appearance on 'Temper' imagines Tricky working with Krust on some darkside Bristolian ting. With Breakage's sound it's all about the lushness of his execution, making bass that exudes comfort and chills in equal measures, while his percussive programming is still the envy of many in the scene...

THE XX / UNTOLD / NOSAJ THING - Islands (Untold / Nosaj Thing Mixes)

2010-03-11T15:00:00+00:00

THE XX / UNTOLD / NOSAJ THING
Islands (Untold / Nosaj Thing Mixes)
XL
DUBSTEP / GRIME / FUNKY
12"

Latest single to be lifted from the inescapably addictive XX album features suitably weighty remixes from Untold, The Blue Nile, Nosaj Thing and Delorean. From the bloodied edge of the Dubstep vanguard, Untold's remix is the certified highlight, using his bone-dry palette of percussion and eye-quivering subs to turn 'Islands' into an exceptional XXXX'step anthem. Just add those vocals and let the shivers commence. In an inspired move from the band, the second mix comes from enigmatic Scots The Blue Nile, who live up to their mystical status with a wee dram of economical post-punk percussion and exquisitely shimmering indie-guitars. Meanwhile Nosaj Thing mixes cyber-strafing bass and crafty rhythmic tics on his version before Delorean come over like all AI-era B12. Choice!

LV & UNTOLD / MOUNT KIMBIE - Beacon (Mount Kimbie Mix)

2010-03-11T15:00:00+00:00

LV & UNTOLD / MOUNT KIMBIE
Beacon (Mount Kimbie Mix)
HEMLOCK
DUBSTEP / GRIME / FUNKY
12"

Untold and LV step into the future with a slab of advanced Afro-tek backed with a Mount Kimbie remix on Hemlock recordings. The collaboratory effort on the A-side is exceptional, with Untold kneading maleable subbass into fluid forms at the bottom of the spectrum while melodic percussion plugs the gaps between post-garage shuffle and shoulder-dipping Afro-flex. Noticably LV's contribution comes in the stealthy camouflage of smoked dub vibes, favouring spooked FX and crackling textures woven into the rhythm with a deft crispness. Providing a lighter counterpoint on the flipside Mount Kimbie stir effervescent jazz chords over a slightly unstable garage rhythm, using only fractions of the original to make a frothy swoon of IDM-debted steppers rhythms for the club, car or headphones. Absolute killer.

GOBLIN - Profondo Rosso (Limited Gatefold Edition)

2010-03-11T14:00:00+00:00

GOBLIN
Profondo Rosso (Limited Gatefold Edition)
AMS
SOUNDTRACKS / LIBRARY / EARLY ELECTRONIC
LP

Beautiful gatefold edition of 'Profondo Rosso', Goblin's amazing debut album, and also their first working alongside Dario Argento. Here, they would find their style of synth and drums driven prog-rock drama that suited the stylish celloid imagery so, so well. This symbiosis of sound and cinematography lead to 'Profondo Rosso' originally selling over 1 million copies within one year of release in 1975, topping the Italian album charts for twelve months and occupying a space in the history books as one of the most revered soundtracks of all time. We can hear elements of the Yes, Genesis and King Crimson records that would directly inspire the group, but they're executed with a sense of romantic drama and characteristic tension that owes so much to their Italian flair for fusion and stylish aesthetics. LP comes housed in classic red gatefold sleeve with 4'x4' poster. Very highly Recommended!

DEM HUNGER - Caveman Smack (Limited Cassette Edition)

2010-03-11T14:00:00+00:00

DEM HUNGER
Caveman Smack (Limited Cassette Edition)
Leaving Records
BEATS / DOWNTEMPO / WONKY
Cassette

*KILLER DEBUT FROM DEM HUNGER, FUSING SQUASHED BEATS, HEAVILY NARCOTIC FOUND SOUNDS, DRONES, 8-BIT SYNTHS, FIELD RECORDINGS AND FILM SAMPLES - WE HAVE JUST 30 OF THESE TAPES!* Dem Hunger gets our weekly WTF?! award for his debut release 'Caveman Smack' on the Leaving Records label. And believe us - this is a very good thing. A little research tells us this fella is behind a string of highly respected mixtapes, which makes a lot of sense when you encounter the psychotomimetic collages of his music. It's like The Gaslamp Killer has finally lost it and locked himself in the studio pretending to be the alternate personalities of Madlib and Phillip Jeck with only a broken MPC, a copy of Eraserhead and a crackpipe full of DMT for company. This is mental, incredible music. Very Highly recommended!!!

SCOTT TUMA - Dandelion (Limited Vinyl Edition)

2010-03-11T13:00:00+00:00

SCOTT TUMA
Dandelion (Limited Vinyl Edition)
DIGITALIS
HOME LISTENING / MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT
LP

*Another highly anticipated limited vinyl pressing from the excellent Digitalis imprint - this time from Boxhead Ensemble's Scott Tuma who manages to weave a sound that incorporates dense and unsettling field recordings with Takoma-esque porchside strums, wiry violin, rhythmic metal scrapes, music-box interludes, spectral banjo plucks and distant piano sequences. 400 copies only for the world* Dandelion' arrives with no small amount of anticipation. The first thing we hear is the exaggerated whirr of phased tape treatments opening up to expose beautiful, disjointed music box chimes that carve out a mysterious, nocturnal path through 'San Luis Free 2E'. This short piece gives way to the similarly fleeting 'Old Woman', another miniature populated by wiry violin and rhythmic metal scrapes. It's only by the time 'Red Roses For Me' comes around that we're really permitted enough breathing space to fully cast ourselves into Tuma's universe. Here, layered field recordings underscore spectral banjo plucks, distant piano sequences, and eventually, a folksy accordion melody. It's this kind of fragmented, displaced approach to acoustic music that best represents Tuma's craft, whisking him far away from comparisons to the legions of Fahey-ites out there and other such contemporary exponents of Americana. 'Again And Again' marks another highlight, sculpting a nebula of airy guitar twangs and manipulated drone vapours. By this point the album seems to be converging on more fully-formed, song-like arrangements, all of which leads us up to 'Hope Jones (Jason's Song)', where we hear a voice rising from the ghost-country stillness. All this invites a moment of outright spine-tingling beauty before 'Free Dirt' limbers up to shred your nerves in the most exhilarating fashion, offering considerably more visceral pleasures with its bowed metal percussion, howling feedback and dissolved room sounds. The closing couplet of 'True History' and 'The Roses Are Red' deliver some sort of catharsis - the former dispensing glorious reverberant blues while the latter finds Tuma's guitar achieving a kind of weightlessness, floating off into the atmosphere in a fashion that's halfway between Loren Connors and The Durutti Column. Sublime.

INDIGNANT SENILITY - Plays Wagner - Part Two (Limited Vinyl Edition)

2010-03-11T13:00:00+00:00

INDIGNANT SENILITY
Plays Wagner - Part Two (Limited Vinyl Edition)
Type
DARK AMBIENT / DRONE / METAL
LP

*Limited Second part to this amazing set exploring the ghostly echoes emanating from old Wagner recordings, slowly disintegrating into a haunted landscape of frayed tape loops and gradually exposed vapour trails of forgotten sounds and memories...so good* Following on from where its equally enigmatic predecessor left off, Plays Wagner Part 2 finds Pat Maherr returning with another volume of dark, phantasmagorical soundscapes. These somnolent, dreamlike passages bear all the hallmarks of that most overused of buzzwords: hauntology, and there's little avoiding comparisons between Indignant Senility and one the movement's best known affiliates - Leyland Kirby. Plays Wagner is in a sense a 2nd generation hauntological work, arriving some time after the term was first ported from Derrida over to music journalism, and so whether it be by the artist's implication or the listener's inference there's an unavoidable intertextuality evident in this music. In the crackling vinyl tracts of Philip Jeck, the evaporating tape reels of William Basinski and the haunted ballrooms brought to life by The Caretaker you can hear the virulent spread of a fictionalised brand of nostalgia, and Maherr's work channels a similar language, exhuming dusty old Wagner recordings and exoosing eroded treatments of them onto cassette for a further degree of separation from the source. The material at the heart of this record seems incredibly remote and spectral, residing somewhere within the muffled hum and warbling pitches of Maherr's discolouring analogue equipment. By the time these sounds reach our ears, Wagner has long since gone and something very dark and elusive has taken his place. Essential Purchase.

SORENG SANTI - Iron Man

2010-03-11T13:00:00+00:00

SORENG SANTI
Iron Man
FINDERS KEEPERS
WORLD
7"

Finders Keepers' Compacta series uncovers a hard rocking diamond in Soreng Santi's psych-rock slaying version of 'Iron Man'. Until his freakish death in 1982, Soreng was responsible for a string of Thai hard-rock, with his cover of the Sabbath standard counting among his greatest achievements. The track works exactly as you'd imagine, replacing Ozzie's howl with an exotic incantation which we can only assume has been translated directly, while the band recreate that crushing riff and breakbeat with a commendable force. On the flipside we get the strange fruit of 'Dub Fai Kuigan', a superb psyche-rock jam with a genius hook of unidentified melodic percussion, perhaps a marimba, or maybe a rack of Singha bottles, we haven't the foggiest. This seven is also intended to prepare us for the oncoming 'Thai Dai' compilation of "Far-eastern esotericism", which should be a rather exciting project in their hands! If you know what's good, jump on this quick sharp!!!

FABIO ORSI - Winterreise

2010-03-11T13:00:00+00:00

FABIO ORSI
Winterreise
SLOW FLOW REC
HOME LISTENING / MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT
CD

This most revered and productive of contemporary ambient composers issues his latest album via Japanese label, Slow Flow Rec, following in the footsteps of Home Normal boss Ian Hawgood and Celer, whose In Escaping Lakes was one of the duo's finest releases in a prolific 2009. For Winterreise, Orsi turns to a wrong-footingly simple list of devices: "guitar, effects, old keyboards" and creates an absorbing six-part suite. The Italian composer continues to operate at the top end of his field, making music that's tangibly organic and far more real-time in its feel than much of the computer-generated work produced by his peers. The first part of Winterreise arrives under a blanket of frosted drones - all filtered into blurry ambiguity, while loops of processed guitar lend the piece a sense of motion and continual flux. As this initial eleven minutes establishes, Orsi seamlessly bridges the distance between electronic drone music and live instrumentation, obscuring the threshold between performance and heavily constructed production. The third piece exhibits a more pastoral, hazily nostalgic feel, as prompted by field recordings of children playing being dissolved into minimal guitar gestures and evocative electronic chords. The second and fourth parts of the record offer a slightly more minimal, strictly realised sound, reminiscent of the micro-universes of Chihei Hatakeyama's music, but the album signs off in grander style, closing with a thirteen minute drift of lilting synth-strings and soaring ascents toward amped-up dissonance. Beautiful.