ehm oh ei

every now and then i find something floating around online that makes me go hmm, and this week it’s a track by a guy called mr knall peng. i don’t really know anything about him, except for the following:

mr knall peng is good.
mr knall peng likes music.
mr knall peng is friend.
mr knall peng is dj.
mr knall peng likes beer.
mr knall peng wants good party.

he’s got a free ep on his myspace called jaja, but what caught my attention was ehm oh ei. a repeated whine, a kicking african-style beat with a hint of some marimba-esque riddims, it all gets taken forward by a snarling squelchy thrust. about three minutes in there’s a horror film type breakdown that’s almost reminiscent of psycho. not even in a derivative way, but it’s something that gives the track even more depth. let it darken up your friday.

truancy

much as i hate bigging up another blog – well, i don’t hate it, but competition n’all – i’m quite impressed with the revamped and upgraded truants blog.

TRUANTS is a blog currently taken care of by five writers from all over the world. Immy (Amsterdam), Janna (Amsterdam), Hunter (California), Sin (Delft) and Ryan (Newcastle) are mainly interested in (electro) music, heart breakers and the galaxy.

they’ve just launched their truancy mixtape series, kicking off with a mix from riotkid, they’ve more coming from, among others, brodinksi, and they’ve a great interview with mr teki latex. all well worth checking out.

more than the sum of its parts

modyworks, the team behind young paco de moor, have put out another nutso release this week. coming from f.r.a.c.t.a.l, the brainchild of jérémie kaminski, “a self-taught musician and mad sonicist who thrives on always re-inventing himself and exploring new grounds”, it’s a wild and energetic affair.

opener obselete is a delightful slow burner with a haunting organ chord throughout, a squelchy synth adds to the air of menace and melancholy, while a searing drone dances overhead. it concludes with a sort of daft punk-esque fadeout, suggesting a future of uncertainity and fear. the only words i can think of to describe arise are glitch bounce. it’s underpinned by a dirty, distorted bass and propelled by a wowee lead. it gets the blood pumping alright. paperboy keeps things going at a frantic pace, with a whole lot more angry distortion over some shuffling beats. a crazy robotic voice pops up towards the end – i’m guessing that’s the eponymous paperboy. battlefield, which is available as a free download, is quite that. it sounds like an apocyalptic rave going on in the middle of a war, or maybe it’s a war going on in the middle of a rave. either way, it’s exciting, and it near blows you away. resurrection is another appropriately titled track, closing the ep with a hint of redemption. it takes the tempo back down again, and, again using those funky shuffling beats, returns to the ethereal synths of obsolete, but not without retaining a healthy dose of that menacing distortion.

what’s great about this release is that each track has something interesting going on, but nothing outstays its welcome – the longest track clocks in at a mere 4.17, so you’re not kept waiting for bits to drop or for themes to develop. if only more producers worked like this. as well as the ep though, which is available for preview on soundcloud and for sale on juno, f.r.a.c.t.a.l has put together the tabula rasa mixtape, which is well worth a look.

ttl – turntables, tanning, laundry

white light xx

unfortunately, though my girlfriend is flying there with friends next month, it’s more than 20 years since i’ve been in new york. i’ve since been to boston, southern california and chicago, but a second trip to the big city of dreams has not been in the equation. that said, i think i get what rub maestro dj eleven is saying about his contribution to the white light mix series with respect to not driving. over the past let’s say 13 years, most of my listening has been while sat on buses or while walking. i can listen to a mix or album and picture exactly what point of my route i was sitting on the first time i listened to it. so while my route isn’t as exciting as the one described in the blurb below, dj eleven, i feel you.

When Matty C first told me about the White Light series, he kept coming back to a description of listening to music while driving at night. Since most of us in New York City don’t drive, traveling music has to be approached differently. So I set out to make a mix from records I never get a chance to play out that would provide the perfect soundtrack to the walking, turnstile hopping, dude-selling-his-beat-tape-out-front-of-Fat Beats-avoiding, taxi-hailing, dollar-van-riding, slice-grabbing, coffee-on-the-run-drinking, and then walking a little more that is getting around the Rotten Apple.

White Light 20 – DJ Eleven

Simian Mobile Disco – Cruel Intentions (Maurice Fulton Remix)
Azari & III – Reckless (With Your Love)
Toby Tobias – In Your Eyes (Tensnake Remix)
Lifelike – L.O.V.E Is What You Need
Farley “Jackmaster” Funk – Love Can’t Turn Around (Lifelike Remix)
Chromeo – Night by Night (Siriusmo Remix)
Housemeister – What You Want (Siriusmo Remix)
Little Boots – Earthquake (Treasure Fingers’ Epicwave Mix)
Curses! – The Deep End (Holy Ghost! Day School Dub)
Bodie Lee – Foxy Tonight (Ajello Remix)
Kris Menace & The Dream – Walking On Lightning (U-Tern Blend)
Empire of the Sun – We Are The People (Shazam Remix)
Walter Jones – I Am Loved
Fred Falke – 8:08pm @ The Beach

new booka shade – i’m excited

casualty of love

having missed it last year living in preston, i’m delighted that i can once again experience the jameson dublin international film festival. working the hours that i do i won’t get to see everything i want to (life during wartime, les yeux sans visage), but i’ve managed to fit in a few. today i got to see sally potter’s 1992 adaptation of virginia woolf’s orlando. it might seem a bizarre choice of film – not old enough to be completely retro, not new by any standards – but as the festival is committed “to celebrating film as an art form” it fits right in.

i gave up on the novel on my first attempt – i was in my first term at university and most definitely burning the candle at both ends (not that i’ve ever stopped doing that). when exam time came around i tried again, and all of a sudden i was mesmerised. as well as its beautifully bizarre plot, the book is laced with so many fascinating ideas that even if you aren’t completely taken in by the narrative (which involves a young elizabethan man who lives forever and suddenly becomes a woman) you can’t help but be entranced by the words.

so i wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the film. with any adaptation you are bound to notice differences, omissions and additions. this was no exception. yet it was shot so beautifully, and was so perfectly self-containing that any major omissions were completely forgivable. tilda swinton’s performance was perfect, capturing the protagonist’s androgyny perfectly – utterly convincing both as a young man and woman. the only major drawback was billy zane’s lifeless contribution, well, that and the appearance of jimmy somerville. the final song’s 90s beats seem quite dated now, ironically even more so than the elizabethan chamber music that accompanies the eerily twisted scenes featuring quentin crisp as the virgin queen. for the most part, however, the score – composed and performed by potter herself together with david motion – was ethereal and entrancing – the perfect accompaniment to the hazy quality of the picture.

the next films i plan on seeing are a mexican film about the victims of an underground porn ring kidnapping, a czech “unromantic comedy” and a 30s take on the vampire legend from a master of cinema. i can only hope that they live up to this excellent start.

dj sector go-slow

last night i played sidetracked for the first time in a few weeks. i always enjoy those sets as it gives me the chance to play sloooowwwweeer. i started off at 124 and ended up down at 114. mmmmmm. daire jumped in and played this ridiculous(ly good) edit of thriller, but he’s my boss there so who am i to say no.

Junior Boys – Hazel (Ewan Pearson’s Extended Disco Edit)
Walter Jones – Living Without Your Love
Lindstrøm – Grand Ideas (Prins Thomas Radio Edit)
Caribou – Odessa
Lenka – Trouble Is A Friend (Eli Escobar Remix)
DAIRE JUMPS ON
Michael Jackson – Thriller (OOFT Phazed Edit)
DAIRE JUMPS OFF
LCD Soundsystem – 45:33 (Prince Language Remix)
Bent – Swollen (Mighty Mouse Remix)
Azari & III – Hungry for the Power
Veronica’s Veil (Erol Alkan’s Extended Rework)
45 King vs Wale – Roof (DJ Ayres Remix)
The xx – VCR (Matthew Dear Remix)
Woolfy – Absynth (Marcus Worgull Remix)
Holy Ghost! – Hold On

after sidetracked i went to the good bits to see boy 8-bit. it’s always funny watching this long-haired dude in a death metal tee rock out to dance music. but when you think that guy is the man behind such impeccable productions as baltic pine and that remix of florence and the machine, it makes a lot more sense. he even dropped joe and will ask?‘s the rusty pig, which is gas as i’d always thought it shared stylistic tendencies with the boy’s remix of mars. there were a lot more people present than at his show at the twisted pepper last year, which is great, but he really deserves much more attention and credit for his top-notch tracks and perfect djing. boy 8-bit, i salute you.

Shadow Dancer interview (part two)

So last night either my blog or WordPress itself crashed, and I was unable to post the second half of this interview. I’m guessing it was the blog – the first part resulted in an unprecedented wave of interest here, which shows just how much interest there is in the Farriers. I’m hoping that all you Dubs out there reading these pieces will show up at Transmission next week! Anyway, read on.

You’ve been making music on and off for the last X number of years. What has it taken to finally arrive at the sound you’re making now?

Paul: A combination of boredom with the direction of lot of dance music was going in and whatever technology we use. The one factor that has remained the same over the years is that we create music that we’d like to hear but never do… if that makes sense. Back in the 90s, we wrote a lot simply because we couldn’t afford to buy records and we wanted something to listen to. Come 2003, we stopped producing as music had become much more accessible and life in general got in the way. Plus, we were using a studio set-up that consisted of ancient, unstable hardware (Amiga A500, Akai S900, knackered old FX unit, mixing desk with faulty connections, etc) so producing had become virtually impossible. It was quite a miserable time, looking back, as I still had a compulsion to write but just couldn’t.

Three years later, out of boredom, I tried a demo of FL Studio and discovered that not only could I write using only a computer, but that I still loved doing it. Of course, having avoided clubs for a few years, the early Shadow Dancer material (and a lot of Golden Traxe) doesn’t follow some of the conventions of dance music like 16-bar run-ins and outs, for which we’ve had plenty of criticism. The more recent stuff is more club-friendly as a result of the last three years of gigging and absorbing what we’ve seen and heard.

Al: I think in the early days we would try our hand at everything – there is hardly a genre we haven’t had a go at, including ambient, drum’n'bass and pop. I think what happens over the years is that you realise what is really part of your idiom and what is contrived. I don’t think that the Shadow Dancer sound is contrived.

Shadow Dancer interview (part one)

Well this is something special. Normally when you do an email interview, the questions are adequate enough. Sometimes they take things up the wrong way and you’ve no way of qualifying your question. Sometimes they just respond with the bare minimum. In this case, I’ve got so much material that I’m actually going to split it in two rather than cut anything.

So, here you go. Two brothers, Paul and Al Farrier, better known to the world as Shadow Dancer, the formidable duo on Boysnoize Records. They’re not touring right now, but they’re making a special appearance at Transmission next week, and in advance of that gig, they were kind of to answer a series of ridiculous questions from yours truly. Enjoy.

You were born in Liverpool. You’re now based in Manchester. Fill in the gaps?

Paul: We went from Liverpool to Saudi Arabia to Liverpool to North Wales to Manchester (and then I ended back up in Wales, where I currently live, although a move back to Manchester is on the cards as there’s not much in the way of a music scene around here… the K-Klass days are over).

Al: We grew up in Wales, but I was really attracted to Manchester because I was obsessed with Manchester music – New Order. I always wanted to live in a big city, but London didn’t really occur to me. I wasn’t even particularly aware of London, but went to the Haçienda when I was 17 and I was hooked.

Is the sibling dynamic a hindrance or a help? Apart from touring/performing, how much time does the project mean you need to spend together?

Paul: It’s a definite help when touring and performing as Al provides extra hands and options for the live set, and he’s more outgoing than me… I can come across as the “moody DJ” sometimes, but it’s really down to my being shy and occasionally uncomfortable around large groups of people having far too much fun. We haven’t produced together for a long time now, so I don’t know how that would work now. There’d probably still be a lot of arguing.

Al: It’s never been much of an issue really, because we’ve also been best friends since we were kids and we grew up discovering and learning about making music. We spend a bit of time together when we’re not performing. I take a back seat these days in terms of writing and production. Paul’s always buying new bits of kit, and he generally shows me the ropes.