Beatz would be remiss without offering a small tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen, the prolific and heavily influential avant-garde composer who died in Germany on December 5th. Also included in this post is a short primer to his electronic work in the 1950s and 1960s.
Another Monday, another bluffer’s guide! Be sure to check out Gavin Mueller’s guide to Ghettotech on the Stylus main site.
Happy Monday to all. Be sure to check out Michael F. Gill’s featured article on Stylus this week: The Bluffer’s Guide To Freestyle
Despite being a highly prolific and innovative DJ, remixer, engineer and producer for the last two decades, Ben Liebrand still seems rather under heard outside of his native country of The Netherlands. His 1983 radio show “In The Mix,” on local station Radio Veronica is often cited as the first radio shows to feature non-stop mixing/beat-matching, and the station also exclusively featured Liebrand’s own remixes and re-edits throughout the 80s.
From this he went on to produce the yearly “Grandmix,” for Veronica from 1983-992, which was an amazing mix of 100 of the years beat dance tracks whittled down to an hour. Sure, this idea of the “megamix” has practically become cliche over the years, but if you’ve ever been lucky to hear one of Ben’s grandmixes (they were never released, although radio copies are often bootlegged and traded) it’s an amazing thrill to hear how he well he can perfectly blend thirty second snippets of underground disco, italo, house, and hi-nrg with such mainstream hits by George Michael and INXS. Trevor Jackson (aka Playgroup) recently tried to something similar with his erratic “Party Mix” from a couple of years back, but lacks the sheer minute focus of Liebrand’s mixes, which, over the course of the hour, can really paint a uniform picture of what that year sounded like. There’s a highly detailed Dutch fansite which has a listing of most of his playlists from back when.
Nowadays, he has finally dipped into the world of commercially available mix CDs, and is selling them through his own website. Ironically, one of my favorites is his unmixed “Grand 12 Inches” series, a great primer of disco classics and obscurities in their full-length versions. I also love the obsessive technical details he keeps about the recording of his mixes: “If nothing else was available, vinyl copies were used which were recorded into the DD1500 from a Technics SL1200mkII turntable fitted with a new Stanton 681EEE stylus, running through a Studer turntable preamplifier.” It’s certainly an interesting site to wander around in.
[Michael F. Gill]
Even if it sponsored by the popular energy drink, The Red Bull Music Academy is perhaps a bit too good to be true. It’s a traveling mini workshop that zooms in on micro-cultures and new musical hybrids, while bringing together young producers of diverse backgrounds to interact with their contemporaries as well as with established producers in the field. It’s a place were people openly discuss aspects of dance and DJ culture, explaining how they create their own tracks, what motivates them to make them, and how they go about promoting themselves.
Now this isn’t an advertisement for the workshop, the main draw to the Academy’s website is that it has archived, in both streaming video as well as in full text, the majority of all the guest lecturers they have had in the most recent years. Just a brief scroll through the current diaries and lectures sections brings up video interviews and transcripts with Sway (one of Stylus’ favorite MCs,) Kerri Chandler, Alexander Robotnick, Atom Heart, Carl Craig, Claudio Simonetti, Leon Ware, Leroy Burgess, Legowelt, Madlib, and Michael Mayer. I haven’t even gone through the entire archives yet, but previous sessions that you can view also include Theo Parrish, Mathew Jonson, DJ Harvey, Tiga, Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Steve Spacek, Morgan Geist, Larry Heard and Danny Krivit. It’s often hard enough just trying to identify the faces behind dance music, but to be able to actually watch them ruminate on how and why they create their own music is something I find completely fascinating.
[Michael F. Gill]
One of the chief instigators in the early development of electro and electro-funk in the UK, Greg Wilson is not only a veteran DJ and remixer, but is also interested in preserving the origins and evolution of disco and electro in the UK. His fabulous website traces the roots of electro-funk through Wilson’s own interviews, recollections, and playlists, while also offering articles on the legacy and history of UK electro and electro-funk. It’s truly a labor of love.
You may be familiar with last year’s Credit To The Edit, Wilson’s wonderful CD of Disco/Electro/Boogie re-edits that came out last year on Tirk. If you haven’t heard it, or if you are thirsty for more, Wilson’s has just launched a monthly radio show called Time Capsule, which is a monthly showcase of records that Wilson has played when he first started DJing. Each edition comes with a fully detailed description of the tracks played, and plans to cover a month in the life of disco and electro, starting from December of 1975 and moving on from there. Needless to say, the archives of the show should become a valuable resource for anyone interested in the history and evolution of dance music.
[Michael F. Gill]
Run by the Dutch DJ/producer/robot lover I-F, The Cybernetic Broadcasting System (CBS) has been essential in reviving interest in italo-disco, spacey electro, and synth-heavy dance music this decade. Most people know I-F’s seminal mix Mixed Up In The Hague, which kick started interest in italo back in 2001, but not many are aware that Mixed Up is just one of over a hundred similarly-styled mixes hosted by The CBS. Not to mention the site also contains an informative forum and a 24/7 online radio station that plays anything from Chicago House to experimental electro to roller disco.
The next Beatz column will provide a rough guide to all of the CBS mixes, but today I’d like to briefly focus on The CBS Top 100, which has taken place around Christmas the past two years, and looks to becoming a yearly tradition. During this eleven-hour gargantuan show, I-F DJs his way through the top 100 hundred tracks of all time as voted by CBS listeners and forum members. As you can probably guess, the list is chock full of italo-disco (whether it be the detached cool of Charlie’s “Spacer Woman,” or the flamboyant uncool of Ken Laszlo’s “Hey Hey Guy”) and electro classics, with the odd freestyle (Nice & Wild’s “Diamond Girl”) and contemporary selection (Lindstrom’s “I Feel Space”) rounding things out. You can view the final top 100 list here, and perhaps more importantly to music geeks worldwide, you can download the entire countdown extravaganza from Bruce Heller’s Elektrosonik website here.
[Michael F. Gill]
“Contexterrior is a label geared at bringing sub bass, click, and glitch heavy music to your bedroom and the dancefloor.” So says their website. But things have a way of mutating and evolving into forms that you’d never imagine when you begin them. With its latest releases, Contexterrior has shown itself to be a label interested in a new brand of psych-house—the type of music that Ricardo Villalobos explored intensely on last year’s Thé Au Harem D’archimède.
Ricardo vs. Jay
Prefer Summer
CNTX 08, 2004
The title track of this 12” illustrates what I’m talking about perfectly. At 12 minutes long, it takes one watery synth theme for its length and then puts a whole host of garnishing around it. The beat is rubbery and hardly a stomper, but it provides just enough backbone for the whole thing to stand steady enough to keep everything on the table. It’s hardly going to knock over dancefloors, but it’s intense home-listening. The dancefloor is taken care of on the other side of the vinyl: “Cactus Love” is an awkward jaunt, until halfway through when it finds its footing and starts to really hum. Literally. “Archive” on the other hand revives the rubbery for an almost goofy sounding tune that puts its faith in reverb.
Ricardo vs. Jay
Fenlow
CNTX 08.5, 2004
Sessions must’ve gone well, as this 12” followed up “Prefer Summer” immediately in 2004 in the Contexterrior catalogue. The words printed on the B-side of the vinyl here are “Mother Earth Is Pregnant - Feed Her Some Funk” and it probably illustrates the difference in the two works best: “Fenlow” is a far more substantial piece of dancefloor material than “Prefer Summer.” Here, the track rides a riveting beat as coiling glitches and effects work themselves out over its 12-minute length. “Kick the Verb” is a heady surprise from the two, it being a relatively straightforward banger that delivers on the promise of their collaboration fully and unexpectedly. “It’s Alright” similarly rocks a more obvious beat and is all the better for it. Definitely recommended.
Jay Haze vs. Robag Wruhme
Socrates Rules
CNTX 09, 2005
On the label’s first release of 2005, Jay is collaborating again, but this time with Wighnomy Brother Gabor Schablitzki. “Change Is Natural” leads off the proceedings with a suitably Wighnomy-esque slow-burner that seethes along its length, until a slight crescendo in its second half. The track, along with the rest of the 12” go straight for the label’s insistence on love of bass and revel in it. And while “Do Something” and “Change” are worse for the wear because of the adherence to dub, “Don’t Stop” is another highlight that wouldn’t be anywhere without its bass bona fides. That and the cut-up vocals and rolling toms that inch the whole thing forward without break.
Pheek vs. Vivianne Project
Untitled
CNTX 11, 2005
The label’s latest 12” isn’t necessarily a vs. proposition, as the title states: Pheek singularly provides the first three tracks here, while new on the scene Vivianne Project finishes it off with “Der Frau.” Pheek’s contributions here are typically deep, typically accomplished, and typically boring. While it’s obvious that he’s a talented producer and deserves to be here, it’s hard to heartily recommend anything here because it hardly anything excites or surprises. Vivianne Project is another story: “Der Frau” makes you jack, rather than sway or nod; makes you gasp, rather than acknowledge or appreciate; makes you want to seek out more, rather than accept it for what it is. Considering this is coming from someone that only has one other 12” to their credit (on Contexterrior affiliate, Textone), the future is looking bright for Vivianne Project.
[Todd Burns]
American microhouse? The essential problem, I think, is that the country is just too big. Whereas parties in Cologne and Berlin perhaps focus the energies of those scenes, the drive to other cities is almost oppressive in allowing sounds in the Midwest and the West to form properly. That’s why the self-run labels Ghostly International (and its dancefloor leaning subsidiary Spectral Sound) and Orac are so important towards the creation of a truly American aesthetic. Just don’t ask me exactly what the hell it is.
Mossa
Slavery When Wet
Orac / ORAC16
Mossa’s first 12” for the label seems to be as representative as any: “Slavery When Wet” is a cut-up house cut that boasts vocal tics, slivers of dub, and sundry bells and whistles inside of its glitch moments. It’s all laid out by the one-minute mark and, by the time you reach five, it all seems a tad more repetitive than most. Ben Nevile’s mix of the song immediately dispels any qualms, as his faster-paced take runs through all of the possibilities of the song, rarely overdoing any one portion throughout the length of the song, which is incidentally the exact same as the original. The B-side, “Gastrula,” stretches out its arms and moves in the same arena as its predecessor, but does so more confidently. Its counterpart, “Gastrula (Crushed),” hammers the song into nearly half of the original and is a highly abstract joint that only really gets going two minutes in and doesn’t really ever find its step completely. Some mixed feelings on this one, but “Gastrula” is definitely a keeper.
Bruno Pronsato
Silver Cities
Orac / ORAC09CD
You could hardly find anyone with a bad thing to say about Pronsato’s Silver Cities full-length last year, which is why I tried to stay silent on it. That being said, “Wuorinen” reminds me much more of Pronsato’s DJ sets, about which I have nothing but kind things to say (Go see him live, you won’t regret it.). The song is first-rate microsurgery-house, intersplicing elements that only begin to make sense later on, but never take away from the moment. And it’s funky as hell. Jackmate’s remix is stellar—exactly the sort of smooth rejoinder to the semi-schizophrenic original. It’s “Live in Cascadia” that I keep coming back to, though, which takes the best elements of both tracks that come before it for an epic B-side of dubby micro-house that shouldn’t be missed.
Caro
The Return of Caro
Orac / ORAC14CD
At the very least, you should get a good look at the cover for Caro’s first album for his own label. It features, presumably the label head himself, atop a pony and looking quite dapper. For a genre increasingly fond of humor, it’s a brilliantly pompous image that can’t help but make you smile. Music-wise, the album veers over and says hello to just about everything imaginable: acieed, Italo, down-tempo, minimal house, and jazz. “Heavy Wheel” does one of these synthesized moments best, working a Keith Jarrett piano into a fascinating duel with acid bass. Of course, the previously released “My Little Pony” is a highlight, but honestly that track’s adherence to the one genre that Orac can be accused of favoring (cut-up house) is the exception and not the rule here. “Can’t Tell Why,” for example, moves straight from dubby techno into a fierce jacking beat, for example, hardly stopping along the way. Caro’s The Return of Caro sounds exactly like what you might expect from the guy that is credited with helping create software called Jitter for Cycling74, but that’s hardly a bad thing—it’ll keep you on your toes throughout.
Geoff White
Etsche
Spectral Sound / SPC-29
Labeled sketches, intended to show off his incredible production diversity, “Etsche” is White’s second 12” for Spectral in a series started with “Ince.” Unlike that more natural outing, “Etsche” finds White mining the more techno side of his personality, instead of the langorous ambient guitar side best exemplified by Aeroc. The closest he comes is “Guitarjacked,” which is too indebted to Steve Reich and Hurley to make much of an atmospheric impact. But White’s music, especially gem B-side “Scillecta,” never gets too hard That track rides bubbly synth pads and melodies, and a severe lack of low-end, into mid-set bliss.
Brian Aneurysm
Das Element Des Menschen
Spectral Sound / SPC-31
No lack of low-end on this, Brian Aneurysm’s initial entry onto the label. In fact it’s probably the hardest song that the label has ever put out. Ostensibly an ode to water, the A-side crackles with intensity and purpose, throwing out stabs along the way that pierce rather than comfort. Similarly, the B-side “Unwanted” is a single-minded slab of vinyl that doesn’t let up. Otherworldly voices, shifting blocks of rhythm, and a melody built from a simple four-note bed distract but momentarily from the ferocious beat. James T. Cotton’s mix of “Das Element Des Menschen” turns on the acid and throws the vocals through a variety of effects changing the tenor of the song rather drastically, but keeping the high level of quality.
[Todd Burns]