Out Of Character

Breaking the trend with two new posts back to back just to mix it up a little. That and my old writings are very dated now, some of them carry extremely powerful 2010's teen energy. Anyway, this is just another rundown of tune I like at the mo, and as the reason for the title is twofold: One, it's odd to have back to back new posts in this hellscape of a year. And two, we're starting off with a recent addition that is of a genre that I very much am unfamiliar with.

Roberto Aizenberg - Character (1968)

If these past few years have taught me anything it's not to say with complete confidence that "I don't like X", which is something I should have come to terms with after my Eurobeat and J-Pop jaunts. Yuzo Koshiro takes a break from his usual Trance MO on this LP, experimenting with Drum & Bass and other genres along the way. Today's order is Hardstyle (I think?), I have some Hard house and Trance but me and Hardstyle and by extension Gabber never really gelled, could be that I have just heard some bad Gabber in my time! This one has taken me by storm though, every time I hear that intro I get a little bit hyped. It's a little surreal to be sending work emails to tunes like this but it's keeping me sane. Or at least what passes for it around here.



Next up is Cylob. I've been meaning to take another deep dive into Cylob since the Rephlex days and some solid remixes he's done over the years. This one is slightly reminiscent of another favourite of mine from him Rewind purely because I love love love the Mac text-to-speech voices. They have a slightly omnius vibe to them always, and more often than not are used as monotone accompaniment to a track (not that I'm complaining about that!), from my brief foray into that world myself I'm pretty sure that you can add parameters to do interesting things with the pitch and the like (See the old Moonbase Alpha memes from years ago for a not so practical demonstration). And that's exactly what Cylob does here, I love those voices at the best of times but making them 'sing' like this is absolutely brilliant!



And finally, an obscure compilation I was surprised to find a legal stream of, the suitably German compilation of Hambrgeins. If the Helvetica on the cover and minimal design didn't tip you off, this compilation is exactly that: a bunch of Ambient, Tech House and Minimal all put together in one big turn of the millennium package. This has been an important listen for me as I try and scope out what I like potentially branch out into that world. Some of them are hits, some of them are misses, some of them are hits that are too long in the tooth and need a bit of variety, but I digress. This one is of the former, scratching my glitchy / smooth juxtaposition itch all so commonly hit by Apparat or The Flashbulb. Take this as yet another note to self to check out Pawel further in the near future.



-CVF