DXIII - Par Avion/Lockdown Mix

It really is about time I wrote something about the remarkable DXIII again.  The work of Paul Foster, from Wales, has regularly featured in my Dandelion Radio show almost since it began streaming, thirteen years ago. He's recorded a stunning lockdown mix for the show this month, which you can hear at various times throughout August here.

He's also offering his work as NYP on his bandcamp site during lockdown so it's more than worth your while to get on there and, if you've not done so already, treat yourself to the work of an electronic artist whose music remains consistently enthralling and innovative.

As a starting point, try his Par Avion album, which he released in April this year: the title track forms part of the mix he's done for us but everything on there is more than worth your attention.   It's Paul Foster very much at the height of his powers, as the blurb on a paperback might say, but rather than continue to throw clichés around it's really best that you find out for yourself.  You can download Par Avion as NYP here.

Roman Angelos - Spacetronic Lunchbox (Happy Robots)

Happy Robots are establishing themselves as one of the most fascinating and innovative labels around at the moment.   This quirky delight from Roman Angelos (the pseudonym of New Yorker Rich Bennett) crams eleven synth pop tunes into ten minutes.  It's like the kind of muzak you'd hear in a psychedelically-altered elevator.

Having played a track from the album in my Dandelion Radio show last month I've been playing 'Farewell To Love' in this month's show (hear it today or tomorrow or on Mixcloud after that) and I still can't get enough.  If the elevator analogy can be extended further, it's like, having reached your intended destination, you forget all about it and want to leap back in again and again just for the hell of it.

Get the album here and look out for the forthcoming album from Mood Taeg on Happy Robots: I'll be playing a track from that in my show next month.

V/A - 'Mark Barton's "The Sunday Experience"' (Bearsuit)

I have to confess I hadn't been aware of Mark Barton's  work prior to his untimely death earlier this year.    Having got hold of a copy of this excellent tribute album, it's clear how much I was missing out.   So many terrific bands and artists have contributed to this tribute compilation, it's hard to know where to begin.  The Lovely Eggs, JD Meatyard and Moon Duo all feature here among many other staples of my musical diet over the last few years.

I'm featuring selections from the compilation in my April Dandelion Radio show, concentrating on artists I've either not played in the show before or not played enough.   That both helps to narrow it down and also enter into the spirit of this tribute to a great lover of new music and someone who clearly dedicated a lot of his life to bringing it to the attention of others.

In my show, which streams at various times until the end of the month, you'll hear tracks from Schizo Fun Addict, Xqui, FortDax and Eat Lights, Become Lights but please do yourself a favour and don't leave it there.  There are 42 tracks on this mammoth release, lovingly assembled by the wonderful Bearsuit Records, and all proceeds go to McMillan Cancer.  Get it on CD or download here.

Mikimo Sosumi - Disco Kill Disco (Daddy Tank)

 

 

I've no idea who Mikimo Sosumi is and the Daddy Tank biog seems content for that to remain the case.  If this is another moniker of the excellent Michael Valentine West, that wouldn't come as a great surprise as it's got the same kind of bewitching style underpinned by menacing beats that you find in so many of his releases for Daddy Tank.

 

All such attempts at detective work, if you're so inclined, quickly become superfluous when you begin engaging with the music itself.  Because wherever it comes from, this is great.  Opener 'Stop Being Strange' has a confrontational yet laid-back Grace Jones-type quality to it.  Huge fan of Jones that I am, that's probably why I've chosen to play it in my Dandelion Radio this month.

 

It would be a mistake, however, to overdo the comparisons.  Disco Kill Disco, as its name might suggest, seems as keen to bury any influences as it is to praise them.  'You Are Melting' flickers into your consciousness on the back of some demented take on Moroder, picking apart and demolishing any prevailing eurodisco proclivities before your ears have a change to engage with them.

 

The breathy, intoxicating 'VU Meter' is another highlight, dripping with sexuality while somehow blasted to within an inch of any resonant human urges disappearing within the same laconic, roboticised delivery.

 

You get the picture, I hope.    The Daddy Tank label is back to its best and to say that this release bears comparison with the Twiggy & The K-Mesons and Social Studies albums that so enrich their back catalogue is the highest praise I can possibly give it.  Get it here.

Ippu Mitsui/Annie & The Station Orchestra split (Bearsuit)

 

Bearsuit is one of those labels that just never lets you down, so I suppose it's entirely possible you'll not bother with this review and just get yourself a copy of this as soon as you know who's responsible for putting it out.

 

For those who still need to be convinced or have never encountered them before, however, this album covers classic Bearsuit territory of wonky electronics birthing melodic yet brilliantly off-kilter tunes. 

 

Ippu Mitsui does that amazing, classically Japanese thing of pulling together a load of diverse elements and putting them together in a way you suspected wasn't possible, but hoped it would be.  I'm featuring 'Doramyu Kick-Off' in my Dandelion Radio show this month, a typically frenzied stab of mad beats and colliding electronica

 

Meanwhile, Chas Kinnis, aka Annie, offers something more spacious, at times delicately textured, at times anything but.  'Time', in particular, is a sprawling six minute opus of the smoothly atmospheric and defiantly catchy.

 

Above all, it's a great listen, Annie's less manic tunes offering a sublime contrast to the frenzy dished up by Mitsui yet somehow complementing it brilliantly.

 

Get it here.

Katie Gately/Tlaotlon - Fat Cat Split Series #23

For the penultimate instalment in their Split 12" Series, Fat Cat dig out one of the most astonishing releases of 2014, bringing together LA-based sound artiste Katie Gately and antipodean electronic manipulator Tlaotlon in an intoxicating marriage of musical ideas.  ‘Marriage’ in its most idealistic sense is probably not the right word, but when applied to the kind of relationship where you smash plates over each other’s heads before generating an impassioned and very loud beast with two backs, it seems entirely fitting.

Last year, Katie wowed us all with her extraordinary ‘Pipes’ release on Blue Tapes', which Dandeilon Radio listeners voted into the top twenty of last year’s festive fifty.  Gately's broad appeal is both reassuring and telling: however challenging her music, it’s easy to find yourself captivated, drawn in and submerged into her blissful soundscapes.  It’s what makes her a unique artist – she can absorb you effortlessly while leaving you gasping at the audacity of it at pretty much the same time.

She’s on similarly fine form here.  ‘Pivot’, like its illustrious predecessor, doesn’t so much give you a tune to listen to as take you on a whole musical journey.  Gately’s tunes can be hummed in the bath (I’ve done it) but they offer so much more: this is music to be immersed in, to surrender to and, if the opportunity presents itself, to build your entire day around.

Tlaotlon offer music of a similar substance but something different all together.  This is electronic music of stunningly detailed intensity, offering rhythms that punish and pulsate in roughly equal measure, fragmented stabs of caustic sounds as opposed to Gately’s bewitchingly weird sonic manipulation.

What they both have is that remarkable awareness of how the world can be simultaneously a very dark and a very beautiful place, together with the rich ability to express this in sound.   It demands to be heard.  I'll be playing the Gately track in my November Dandelion Radio show, which will be streaming from Saturday, and you can cop the rest of it by getting a copy of the release in all its 12” glory or as a download here. 

21 Songs for John: 10. Christ.

Christ. – Zeroth Law (Dandelion Radio Session)

When Christ., aka Christopher Horne, performed his only Peel session live at Maida Vale in December 2003, Peel awarded it the rare plaudit of requesting an encore.  Sadly, he would pass away before being able to engage Christ. for another set, although Horne would go on to record a memorable session for my Dandelion Radio show in January 2013.  The session included this track, a reworking of a tune from his Cathexis: Motion Picture Soundtrack album, released the previous year by the excellent Parallax Sounds label.  This version is available for the first time here.

 www.facebook.com/christhyperact

http://parallaxsounds.com

21 Songs for John

Gyratory System - Utility Music

Previous Gyratory System albums have certainly received their share of acclaim but this, the third from the London-based three piece, may well be their best yet.   It's one of those releases that renders attempts at classification almost distastefully crude, which is why so many attempts to describe it end up taking in a curiously wide spectrum of references, from krautrock to jazz to psychedelic to electronica and all the way back again.

This is, ultimately, electronic music, but while so much of what gets placed under that term sadly appears to regard the production of electric sounds as an end in itself, Gyratory System use it to explore realms too often unexplored in what might broadly be termed popular music: there are elements of neo-classical probing here, and a restless experimental spirit that results in an album that manages to combine the celebral and the rhythmic in a way that shouldn't work, but does, constantly.

I'm playing the sub-ethnic throb of 'AAA' as the opening track in my January 2014 Dandelion Radio show.  It's an ideal way to start the year, teeming as it is with rich and extraordinary juxtapositions.  But you could say that of the album as a whole, which works as a brilliantly evocative template of possibilities than as a mere collection of tunes.

I've got the excellent 'Lackland' scheduled to feature in February.  It's a current favourite, but this is an album I'm sure I'll be discovering new and brilliant things in throughout the year.  Utility Music is out now on the Soft Bodies label: get it as a download here and check out the Soft Bodies website for their other releases and other fascinating stuff.  

Best Albums of 2013: 2. Fuck Buttons

2. Slow Focus - Fuck Buttons (ATP)

My last.fm page tells me that my seven most listened to tracks of the year were the seven tracks from this album.  I suppose you might conclude from that that it ought to be my number one of the year, but it just got edged out by an album that regular listeners to my show won't be surprised to see at number one - but more of that later.

Both of the earlier Fuck Buttons albums were great favourites but this one managed to be even better, taking that glorious electronic fuzz, meticulously placed rhythms and beguiling changes to such heights that you really wonder where this incredible duo might take us in the future.  For now, they have their particular field to themselves.  They also produced the best live performance I witnessed in 2013, with their set at the Green Man Festival.  If you're wondering how two blokes standing behind computers can generate such a spectacle, I advise you to go and see them without delay.

The album, needless to say, is easily available, but can be got here among other places.

I suppose I ought to start reminding you now that you can hear the first broadcast of the 2013 Festive Fifty from twelve midnight on 24/25 December here.  Join us for an hour before midnight where some of us Dandelion DJs will also be playing some of our favourites of the year.

Best Albums of 2013: 5. Dissolved

5.  Surge of the Lucid - Dissolved (Daddy Tank)

While there are many labels that deserve a massive pat on the back for their support for great music and constant capacity to surprise, Daddy Tank deserves particular appreciation for its consistent ability to stay ahead of this very strong pack.  Every time you think the label's gone about as far as it can, another release comes out that cranks the quality level up another notch and sets the standard that others must be judged by.

No Daddy Tank release since that Twiggy & The K-Mesons album a couple of years ago has achieved this quite so spectacularly as this.  If we felt our love for Dissolved's work could not increase in intensity, Surge of the Lucid came along to push us to insane emotional depths.  It's an extraordinary nine-track panorama of experimental electronic wizardly, the technology barely concealing a playful touch that, at all the right moments, unleashes a very human intensity too often absent from the work of those who treat their electric toys as if they were an end in themselves.  In Dissolved's hands, they are a means to something very different, something that's much more difficult to define but, whatever it is, Surge of the Lucid is its most astonishing manifestation yet.

Download it from the Dissolved bandcamp page here or get it on CD from Daddy Tank here.  

Lee Negin - Lunar Collection

As will be clear from anyone who's either read this blog or heard my Dandelion Radio shows in the last couple of years, I can't get enough of Lee Negin.  There are some electronic artists who dabble in a form that, if you're not absolutely aware to its vicissitudes , will quickly swallow you up and drain very quickly any creative energy you once had so that you, very quickly, become stale and predictable.   Lee Negin is not one of those artists.

Negin expertly controls his sounds, never a slave to a rhythm or a preconceived idea.  Here, he moves dextrously between the sparse and atmospheric, as in the nine minutes plus of opening track 'Commute', to the rumbling intensity of 'Cosmic Ooze' while still able to step into the sub-tribal beats of 'Cheeze Sticks' when the mood takes him.  Throughout, snatched voice excerpts play around the beats like enigmatic satellites of sound with no pre-ordained orbit.  In Lunar Collection, even more than in other recent releases from this remarkable artist, you're never allowed to dwell in familiar surroundings for long.   The atmosphere around Lunar Collection is light, the hold of gravitational laws tenuous.  It makes for a listening experience that's as stimulating and challenging as it is enjoyable.

I've chosen the masterfully ironic 'Spare The Rod' to play in my Dandelion Radio show in April, which will begin streaming on Easter Monday.  The track winds loosely structured beats and sound patterns around snatched soundbites dictating moral strictures and battered American conservative mores, pummelling them purely with the weapon of expertly deployed sound structures.  In the universe inhabited by this album, no such simple-minded rhetoric can hope to survive: easy concepts are warped and mangled into obtuse shapes, and quite right too.

You've got to be an artist extremely confident in your abilities as well as highly proficient to put together an album this diverse and yet make it hold together as such a sublime whole.  Lesser artists would opt for a single style and hide behind its unifying mass, claiming thematic consistency as the greater good.  Lee Negin, as we've observed, is not such an artist.

Get a copy of the album here.  Then take it home and put it on repeat.