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Ulrich Schnauss: Missing Deadlines: Selected Remixes

Review
Pitchfork
March 26, 2010
Link
6.1

As a teenager in Kiel, Germany in the early 90s, Ulrich Schnauss discovered bands like Ride and My Bloody Valentine by tuning in to British armed forces radio. “As soon as I put the headphones on,” he says, “the world seemed to be a nicer place.” Nearly 20 years later, after three albums and a slew of remixes, Schnauss still seems engrossed with those lush sounds. Like Sonic Cathedral, the British club night and label that embraces shoegaze in all its permutations, he takes a wide-angle view of the genre, seeing it as a current that runs through many different eras. The solid source material he reworked for the remix collection Missing Deadlines– which ranges from solo work by members of Slowdive and Ride to songs by Rainbirds’ frontwoman Katharina Franck and the John Tejada/Takeshi Nishimoto project I’m Not a Gun– speaks to this sense of related history and possibility.

Taken as a whole, though, Schnauss’ treatment of these tracks is aesthetically redundant. Prone to creating ethereal music that sometimes skews toward being too amiable, many of Schnauss’ remixes sound like pretty shoegaze setpieces, orchestrated to create a familiar emotional payoff with tricks we’ve heard many times before. While he pulls some of the songs in a more dance-friendly direction, his bent guitars, clouds of static, and vocal echoes have a way of blending together here.

Take Madrid’s “Out to Sea”, a track built around bright synths, gentle guitar, and breathy vocals. Schnauss’ remake bathes it in warm synths and gauzy vocals, softens the guitar, and washes out the sound, placing a halo around the song for emphasis. That dreamy haze also seeps into his treatment of “Remembrance”, a single by the Joy Division-influenced Dragons that’s smoothed over with bent vocals and thick, swirling layers of suspended synths. Mojave 3’s epic “Blurbird of Happiness” has a warm, rambling vibe that Schnauss over-accents with nature samples and back-masked glockenspiels that sound like wind chimes. Orbital-like echoes are applied to Juanita Stein’s vocals on Howling Bells’ “Setting Sun”, maintaining the track’s sensual groove, while the rhythm of A Sunny Day In Glasgow’s “Ghost in the Graveyard” is brought more to the fore until it sounds a bit like M83.

But redundant or not, Schnauss knows how to create sweeping, emotive, grandiose music– and his remix of Mark Gardner’s “The Story of the Eye” gets it right by bulking up the track, trading the quiet focus and slow bassline for vocal layers and accordion-like synths. Schnauss always adds a certain signature to his remixes, but it’s not always clear if making something busier necessarily makes it better.

03/26/2010
Pat
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Georgia Anne Muldrow: Kings Ballad

Review
Pitchfork
March 22, 2010
Link
6.9

Georgia Anne Muldrow’s latest album, Kings Ballad, was supposedly crafted against the backdrop of Barack Obama’s early days in office. And just as Obama is, for better or worse, an inspiring figure whose influence isn’t quite in sync with his accomplishments, Muldrow can sometimes come across as an amazing artist in theory: She hasn’t totally delivered on the promise hinted at by her debut album, Olesi: Fragments of an Earth. It’s not her inspirations or intentions that are in doubt. But hope is a campaign, not a governing strategy; similarly, dropping spiritual signifiers and referencing legends Nina Simone and Alice Coltrane doesn’t necessarily make great music.

But Kings Ballad stands on its own, a vessel for Muldrow’s lyrics and beliefs. It sounds more concentrated, cohesive, and restrained than previous albums, especially her binge of releases last year. Soulful where she was occasionally brash, her voice pivots and floats but sounds more grounded and assured, like on “Doobie Down”, where she calmly vamps over her own coos and chorus (“No apologies, I’ll be as black as I want to be”). It flows well, outside of a final stretch of songs seemingly tacked on for variety, including vaguely Latin “Morena Del Ray”, vocoded sci-fi riff “Industrial Bap”, and the senseless pop-punk outlier “Room Punk!”.

Throbbing low end plays well with jazzy piano throughout the album, like the riff on “Indeed” and the elegiac, descending line on “R.I.P.”, an ode to Michael Jackson that achieves a certain tension by ending on a snapped beat. The instrumental passages, including the liquid funk-lite of “Chocolate Reign” and chugging “R.I.P.”, are decent. Her beats aren’t the most adventurous take on splashy, one-two rhythms, but they work here. Kings Ballad still doesn’t meet all the expectations Muldrow may have initially inspired, but it’s a positive, measured sign that there’s more to come.

03/22/2010
Pat
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Autechre: Oversteps

Review
Pitchfork
March 22, 2010
Link
7.2

After more than two decades of recording together as Autechre, Sean Booth and Rob Brown can still create the aural equivalent of whiplash if they want to, or showcase a deep knowledge of dance music. The production duo’s energetic 12-hour online radio broadcast from earlier this month– joyfully tweeted about and linked to by fans– was a massive, almost exhausting display of influences and favorites. Floating between Coil and Lord Quas, the mix inspired someone to crowdsource the track list on Google Docs.

Oversteps takes a much quieter approach, focusing on a smaller scale. Coming after 2008’s Quaristice, a varied collection of shorter tracks that originated during live jam sessions, Oversteps leans toward some of the slower, more atmospheric aspects of albums like Amber (minus the metered pulse). After the album’s initial 20 seconds of silence, the opener “r ess” slowly surfaces– cold, distant synths arc overhead while broken, incomplete rhythms clatter and collide– seemingly suggesting that steady beats aren’t the main focus here.

Many tracks, such as “O=0” and “d-sho qub”, do contain propulsive rhythms, and a slow funk and dull handclap seep through “Treale”. But the textures are where things get interesting. Whether it’s from tones floating in space or notes brushing up against each other in quiet but effective dischord, the ambience and atmospheres of Oversteps are haunting. “st epreo” expands and contorts with bass notes that seem bound to the rules of fluid dynamics. “Yuop” steadily builds and crests with ringing, grandiose synths. Sometimes, the lack of propulsion distracts, like on “pt2ph8”. But the overlapping round of notes in “see on see” points to a clear design within the synthetic ether.

Autechre have evoked heavy moods while pushing the possibilities of production technology forward and broadening the vocabulary of electronic music. The famous video for their track “Gantz Graf” suggests as much, that they harnessed the grating sounds of a machine in the middle of a grand mal seizure. Oversteps finds them working in a comparatively less rigid fashion, almost organic compared to something like Confield. Focusing on creating tension and release within their compositions, they’re still incorporating new designs, not merely repackaging the previous products.

03/22/2010
Pat
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Room On Fire: Hot Chip Set Alight Their New Studio With a System Wired for Improvisational Sound

Feature
EQ Magazine
March 2010
Link

English band Hot Chip has a particularly kinetic take on dance music. It’s funky machine music with pop soul, a combination cheekily referenced by a recent band shirt boasting an image of R&B eccentric R. Kelly sporting a red Devo hat. The group’s myriad influences came to play on One Life Stand [Astralwerks], a slower, more layered record influenced by the Detroit/Chicago techno/house axis and a 110–120 BPM disco pulse. Between the buoyant, Vangelis-like tones of “Brothers” (created with a detuned Moog Voyager) and “We Have Love,” a funky synth jaunt with a fat rubber bass line, the album is a stylistic free-for-all.

One Life Stand was the first major project recorded in the band’s new East London studio last spring. The space’s straightforward layout was inspired by a visit to Peter Gabriel’s famous Real World complex, where the band recorded a cover of Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.”

“When you’re putting together a studio, you have to decide if you’re going to try and compete with the big boys or whether you’re going to make it into a place to sketch out ideas,” multi-instrumentalist Al Doyle says.

So the band designed the lone room to be flexible enough to capture fleeting ideas but technically adept to make small, refined adjustments. Reinforcing the band’s improvisational studio style, they connected keyboards and other units to an extensive MIDI setup wired to a Toft ATB24 analog mixing console, which feeds into a computer running Cubase 4. The group also sends a second feed into a computer running Ableton Live for extra tweaking. Meanwhile, a Bricasti M7 Reverb provides spaciousness to sounds recorded in the small room, and the band records vocals with future shaping and editing in mind, via Celemony Melodyne or the Eventide Ultra-Harmonizer, to avoid repetitive extra takes that stifle creativity.

“We want to keep all options open,” Doyle says. “We just really wanted to get a decent signal. We were using these great DI’s made by Radial. We weren’t too concerned about perfecting mics and signal chains. It’s destructive editing at that point. If it’s recorded clean, you can do whatever you want.”
Read more…

03/16/2010
Pat
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The Besnard Lakes: Are The Roaring Night

Review
Pitchfork
March 16, 2010
Link
7.8

You can only be the dark horse once. The Besnard Lakes may have been a (mostly) unknown quantity when they broke out to a wider audience in 2007, but they were also insiders of sorts– guitarist/vocalist Jace Lasek had done production work with Montreal heavyweights Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown. Fitting of its title, Are the Dark Horse had a subtle, almost shy, quality– on many songs, the group’s quiet side slowly swelled into a symphony. On the follow-up, Are the Roaring Night, husband-and-wife duo Lasek and Olga Goreas map out a sonic landscape that follows the peaks and valleys of their previous work, but the terrain is more ragged.

New songs like “Glass Printer” sound more electrified and easily triggered from the outset. Marching forward with the inexorable, unforgiving pace the title implies, “And This Is What We Call Progress” pairs a steely two-drum pulse with a line of static suspended by an EBow. Even the slow, pretty interludes often exude more tension than the suspended-in-space, Spiritualized vibe of an older song like “For Agent 13”. There’s more unease in the band’s bold space rock– vocal harmonies mask that sense of menace on the two-part “Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent”, which opens the album with oscillating notes and fluctuating guitar. After trading cloying choruses with Goreas, Lasek sings, “Deciphered your lines from the short wave/ It said ‘Kill all the swine, young and old.'” Darkness and destruction are also central to “Land of Living Skies”, made even more poignant after an opening segment of sinister radio transmissions.

Talk of scrambled signals and short-wave technology is fitting considering Lasek’s production background (check out the online gear list for his Breakglass studio). An impressive array of crunchy guitar tones courses throughout the album, pushing forward two-part epics so the steady cycle of build and release doesn’t become overwrought. Craftsmanship permeates the peels of reverb-laden melodies or the Loveless-like gyre of lead single “Albatross”. Are the Roaring Night sounds richer, and while it doesn’t rewrite the formula, it contains many small refinements to the band’s songwriting and production skills. Outside of the twinkling, sub-orbital synths on the closer “The Lonely Moan”, there isn’t anything that would be considered a radical departure. But when you make the kind of entrance the Besnard Lakes did, there isn’t much to fix.

03/16/2010
Pat
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White Hinterland: Kairos

Review
Pitchfork
March 11, 2010
Link

Casey Dienel doesn’t stay put for very long. The singer’s last full length with White Hinterland, 2008’s Phylactery Factory, swayed to brushed drums, dainty piano, and perky vocals. Later that year, she created prickly, sophisticated art-lounge on the Luniculaire EP, a collection of originals and covers all sung in French. Like her earlier work, there was still a strong theatrical element in those edgier songs, but it didn’t exactly point the way toward the hazy pop pulse of Kairos.

From the opening seconds of the album– a lazy tide pool of swirling synths and echoing vocals– White Hinterland strike a different pose. The graceful piano, chamber-pop arrangements, and storybook lyrics of the past were crisp snapshots; Kairos is a collection of over-exposed and landscapes– bold, blurred, and wide open.

Dienel and bandmate Shawn Creeden removed the piano from the equation on Kairos, and the result is a textbook case of addition by subtraction. Dienel’s voice, still delicate and fluttering, sounds more powerful and expressive, free and untethered from the jazzy arrangements of the past. With antiquated references stricken from the lyric sheet, Dienel’s words come off as more personal and direct. She swoons on “Cataract” and “Magnolias”, two of the gorgeous tracks in which her sweet tone and confident phrasing, along with unfurled guitar melodies, recall Bitte Orca.

Considering the album’s chugging, fuzzy rhythms and lo-fi synth wash, Dirty Projectors won’t be the only indie reference point cited when discussing Kairos. But the myriad of elements, from the dubstep-grade bass hits to looped vocals, beautifully comes together. Kairos represents a bold step for Dienel and White Hinterland, a re-imagining of the music-making process and an example of musical experimentation and evolution. As the restless Dienel sings on “Moon Jam”, “I am afraid of so many things/ But I do not fear the future.”

03/11/2010
Pat
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Peverelist: Jarvik Mindstate

Review
XLR8R
February 23, 2010
Link

As owner of Bristol’s Rooted Records shop and founder of the Punch Drunk label, Tom Ford (a.k.a. Peverelist) doesn’t have trouble staying current. But the dubstep producer’s full-length debut, named after the inventor of the artificial heart valve, incorporates futurist techno vibes into his dub vibrations and low-end rhythms. Boasting seven new tracks, along with previous singles “Infinity Is Now” and “Clunk Click Every Trip,” Jarvik Mindstate showcases his tight style, crisp rhythms, and junglist roots. “Yesterday I Saw the Future” rolls a bit on gentle synth currents, pitched forward by staccato beats and satisfying bass thumps, while “Valves” runs slight but solid, with swatches of sound bouncing on shifting beats. These are tracks that move forward but keep the past firmly in focus.

02/23/2010
Pat
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Strong Arm Steady: In Search of Stoney Jackson

Review
Pitchfork
February 5, 2010
Link
7.1

Finding patterns in Madlib’s rambling yet brilliant production work can be difficult, but on his new In Search of Stoney Jackson album, he doesn’t take long to zero-in on some recurring themes. An obscure sample ushers in “Chittlins & Pepsi”, a stick-to-your guts blend of flashy soul and food-based free association. Meanwhile, pot ramble “Cheeba Cheeba” is anchored by resonant strings and a fluid bass line inhaled and exhaled between minimal beats. It may sound like Doom’s M.O.– tracks seemingly teed-up for the masked marauder. But L.A. hip-hop collective Strong Arm Steady provides the lyrics here. Once the home of auto repair hypeman Xzibit, the crew now stands as another entry in a long line of Beat Konducta collaborators.

Stones Throw has been widening its circle of L.A. connections recently, including putting out the acclaimed Dâm-Funk album and reissuing Arabian Prince tracks. This post-Death Row SoCal crew– which has been reduced to core members Krondon, Phil Da Agony, and San Diegan Mitchy Slick for this release– has seen its underground profile rise slightly this past year due to a middling Clinton Sparks mixtape and a forthcoming album on Talib Kweli’s Blacksmith label.

The group’s experience working the L.A. scene and slinging mixtapes shows on In Search of Stoney Jackson. In the enviable position of getting a slate of Otis Jackson, Jr. beats to work with, Strong Arm Steady do raise their game, but rarely rise above workmanlike wordplay. They provide vocal diversity but never overshadow or own a track, only accenting different aspects of Madlib’s work. Phil Da Agony’s curt, taunting flow, filled with bent phrases, darts around between measures. Albino rapper Krondon has a deeper, rounded tone, which plays well on the chorus of the dark “New Love”, and Mitchy Slick sounds passable on the few tracks he appears on. Along with a roster of collaborators, like Planet Asia and Stones Throw standbys like Oh No and Guilty Simpson, it adds up to a set of solid yet often unremarkable lyrics staking a comfortable perch atop another stellar Madlib production workout.

Filled with funky vocal samples, discursive monologues and the inevitable dry coughs, the music is the centerpiece and bears Madlib’s signature hazy melodies and blunted edges. But there’s a muscular feel to many of the tracks, meaty beats anyone would be happy to rap over. “Best of Times”, featuring Phonte on the chorus doing his best John Legend, is a slow-rolling, soulful piece built on a solid foundation, a warm bass lick and almost metronomic four-beat rhythm. “Pressure” bumps with oscillating synths and a stiff, crisp beat. “Questions”, which starts out sounding like a washed-out TV theme and then pivots on a big, bulbous bassline, is simple but effective, accented with subtle vibe hits and a single wiry guitar chord. For all Madlib’s eclecticism and supposedly short attention span, his work here sounds focused and sharp. The beats aren’t wasted here by any means, but a different crew could have brought out even more potential.

02/05/2010
Pat
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Dam-Funk: Toeachizown

Music Reviews
XLR8R
February 2
Link

Boogie revivalist and long-haired LA electro visionary Damon Riddick (a.k.a. Dam-Funk) wants to make music that lets your hair blow in the wind—a difficult task, but his massive Toeachizown offers just that kind of soothing experience. Full of retro-futurist ’80s funk filled with smeared keyboard melodies and dirty beats, it’s perfect for banging out of a souped-up hovercraft and is easy to soak up and get lost inside. Buoyant backgrounds and vapor-trail synths mirror the mantras and platitudes that double as lyrics. Prince-style falsetto and airy chords run throughout, create an inviting, optimistic atmosphere, especially compared to more inward strains of hypnagogic pop. Dam may be doubling down on a genre many discarded, but he’s got the style and sincerity to make it work.

02/02/2010
Pat
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Sonic Options: Yeasayer Edits and Processes Sounds Into Oblivion for Odd Blood

Article
EQ Magazine
February 2010
Link

Yeasayer2BA104

After a season spent playing songs from their woozy, soaring debut, All Hours Cymbal, at outdoor festivals, Brooklyn’s Yeasayer wanted to record a sophomore album that was bold enough for the big stage. Odd Blood [Secretly Canadian], the result of a stretched-out yet deliberate recording process, reflects the band’s constant tinkering and drive to one-up their electric debut.

“There was so much creativity in creating new sounds,” engineer Britt Myers says. “I’ve done sound design and a lot of music mixing and engineering, and this was really the first record that combined both of those backgrounds.”

Vocalist/guitarist Anand Wilder, vocalist/keyboardist Chris Keating, and bassist Ira Wolf Tuton began with a set of initial demos, some recorded as early as 2007. They reworked them in a rented house in Woodstock, New York, owned by drummer Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel) before re-recording and mixing with Myers at Great City Productions in Manhattan. Marotta’s relatively remote home studio was fully wired and boasted a cache of gear, including Taos drums and vintage synths, such as the Prophet-5 and Prophet-VS, which augmented the Clavia Nord Lead, Nord Wave, and Roland XV-5050 used on the album.

But Yeasayer hunkered down with Pro Tools and a Digi 002, painstakingly laying down and tweaking one track at a time. Notes blur, melt, and reform, partially due to the band’s habit of recording to Ableton Live, then adding glide between notes.
Read more…

02/02/2010
Pat
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