Wednesday 16 May 2012

You Smell That?

I've talked about Stenchman a couple times before, and his unique brand of dubstep. I've wanted to do a post on him for a long while. After salvaging some of his free EPs from the laptop fiasco I decided now would be a good time to do just that!


Now don't skip out on this one cos I mentioned dubstep, 'Ol Stenchy branches out fairly regularly and while his older dubstep may fall into that stereotypical dub format, his newer stuff is fairly solid that's very nice indeed. And as always the most amazing part of Stenchman's tracks is always the name, check this!



Speaking of branching out, the Stench recently tried his hand at hip hop, bringing his trademark sound along with it. I was skeptical at first but he actually pulls it off in a very nice fashion. My only complaint with this is it could use a bit more variation, but seeing as this is taken from a free EP I can't really complain.



I mentioned in my last drum & bass post that I wished he did some longer tracks for it. Well, it seems I need to take that back now as he in fact DID do a longer drum & bass track, and like many tracks from Commix's Call To Mind the buildup on this one is amazing.




Now I don't know much about the scene these days but I'm willing to bet there's a "Chillstep" market out there. I'm not going to call it that just because. But anyway Stench is pretty good at that too, think like that Big Trouble... track I posted and you'll get the basic idea for this one.



And finally another slow number to play us out. One of the things I like about Stenchman is his flexibility within the dubstep field. Like here the typical bassings you get from a normal dubstep track are in the background, which leads to some pretty interesting stuff, check it!

Stenchman - Won't Get To Me

And that's about it from me today, kinda getting the hang of posting from my phone now so with any luck I'll be here to keep you awash with tunes hopefully, despite the longer time to write and code and whatnot.

Smell It For Freshness,
-Claude Van Foxbat

Sunday 13 May 2012

Ze Haus Ja?

I've had a pretty bad week, between final exams and my lil' laptop I post from giving up the ghost I ain't had no time to stop. That is until today. Hanging out on my twitter I was hit with inspiration, check this out.


Long time friend of us here at ilictronix, a Mr. Earl Grey hit me up with his latest with a simple note "DAT BASSLINE" and I have to agree with him on that one, give it a listen and you'll soon see.

Earl Da Grey - Ressurection

And that got me all nostalgic for my early days of electronic exploration which was a daily diet of house. And you can't get far on the interweb looking for house before you get yourself some Crydamoure, what with Guy Manuel from Daft Punk being involved and all. So, to continue the house theme, here's my fave bits from Cryda's catalogue!



One of my favourite Le Knight Club tracks that doesn't get near enough attention as it deserves, it's short enough that it doesn't overstay it's welcome like some LKC tracks. I mean, their tracks are still quality and all, but this one just takes the cake for me.



Archigram's single sided Doggystyle EP is another overlooked release, but I just love it. The sample stays interesting for the full 6 minutes or so it lasts. It must be really something on actual vinyl. Must remember to pick that up one day.



And finally, this remix of Santa Claus is better than the original for me, just because it cuts straight to the chase and hits you with that nice trademark French House sound. Class.



B-side to the amazingly titled T.I.T.T.S! EP, this one doesn't come up on my radar often but I checked it out as I was flicking through my Cryda archive and I don't know why I've passed it up, it's another bloody good example of why Crydamoure are as highly regarded as they are.



Sorry to leave ya'll with another short post, I was planning to get some done and then my laptop died on me. Do now I'm posting from a combination of my phone and some apps, so it's taking twice as long to knock one of these out. That won't stop me from trying though, if this works I'll pump out some more!

Housing House,
-Claude Van Foxbat

Monday 7 May 2012

Cats & Dogs

Good news! I'm going to art university! Good news 2! Now that I no longer have to do boring things like anotations, putting together a portfolio and going to interviews I can crack out this post I've been waiting on for about a month or so now. This leads us to Good News 3! which is that I will have a massive bit of free time coming up as I leave college and wait about 4 months till Uni starts, which I plan to exploit like it's 1991! Just as soon as I get used to blogger's fancy new futuristic WEB 2.0 layout.



First up is Rex The Dog. Here's posted a couple of his remixes iirc, which got me to swipe me a copy of his album that took me way too long to find a copy of. Anyhow it's pretty sweet, it's mostly made up of tracks from EP's he'd released previously, but chopped down by a couple minutes. Now I've seen a lot of people moan about that but honestly I think his tracks work better in this format, especially when the Dog doles out quality track after quality track that're full of synthesized bliss.



Doing a bit of research I found Rex's youtube channel where he has some neat stuff, including a lot of videos of himself dropping this and other tracks live, and a sick rendition of one of the album's tracks on a circuit bent Casio VL Tone. I've never actually seen curcuit bent stuff used for conventional tracks so it was new to me, he's also got some other cool stuff so give him a peep at rexthedog1980








Rounding us off is Miss Kittin, who I've recently been diggin' as I track down a copy of her second album BatBox. I've mentioned her first offering I Com before and how it explores a bunch of atmospheres. The dancefloor stuff may be a little thin on the ground, but the entire first half is pretty much all quality dancefloor styled tracks before the more ambient/experimental second half. I figured it'd be a nice compliment to Rex's stuff if I were to drop my favourite slices from it on ya enjoy!










Mass Hysteria,
- Claude Van Foxbat