Electronic Immersion

I'm batting around ideas for a new mixtape type deal, I settled on a theme pretty early on but it's gotten a little broader with time. Like most of my mixtape experiments it's mainly going to be tracks that I can't find legit streams for, but there are plenty of others that are in the running that might make it, but they also might not. This post is half to help me make my mind up and half to put the tracks out there anyway on the off chance they don't make it. Let's go.

Janet Fish - Five Tall Glasses, Afternoon (1975)
Some Dopplereffekt to start with, fine purveyors of hi-tech electronics for many a year now. The cover for Cellular Automata will likely look a little odd on your screen - the close knit lines of the cover will make Moiré patterns (though on preview it looks like the tiny version of the cover on the Bandcamp embed has lost the effect, head to the main Bandcamp page to see the effect!). As for the record itself, it's more Dopplereffekt - I don't mean that to sound flippant or anything, they've totally honed their sound by this point: cold and clinical electro. To the surprise of no one, the more ambient cuts are my favourites - technological feasts like Ulams Spiral and Exponential Decay. Isotropy probably tops the list though, I knew from the lush sweeping intro that it was going to be - gorgeous stuff.



Bit of a left turn with my next choice, it is one that definitely isn't going to make the cut because I've already used it twice (I think) so far on other tapes. It does inform a lot of the choices I'm making with the sound direction of the upcoming one - I have a deep love for this very specific kind of early 00's electronic, that sort of downtempo style that I used to label 'Coffee Shop Electronic'. The Tusen Takk Rework of Drop is a surprisingly electronic turn from the usually Indie Kings Of Convenience, but then again this is just before Erlend Øye released his first solo effort which was one big collaboration with various electronic musicians so there is probably some cross contamination there. Very much in that Röyksopp vein (again, no surprise there given Øye's collaboration with them on their first album Melody A.M.), Øye's vocal really suits this kind of vibe and I wish he'd explored that electronic sound of his debut album a little bit more.



In keeping with the theme once again, a little bit of short and sweet from Gimmik. One of my more recent finds thanks to a couple of old experimental compilations, Gimmik's stuff is often very lovely - I've picked up a few album's worth but not actually mentioned too much of it. (Back To Basics) was my first proper full length listen and is a greta jumping in point. If, like me, you also enjoy the Aphex Twin sound circa Richard D. James album then this album will very much appeal to you. Really, the whole album is a sort of amalgamation of all things IDM, there are shades of AFX in there, a touch of Flashbub perhaps, and on tunes like L'Appel Des Cors and my choice for today it's much closer to the work μ-Ziq was putting out in the late 90's. I could live in this little microcosm of sound forever, it's very beautiful but fleeting.



And that'll do it for this slightly eclectic selection for today, of the three I'd say that the Gimmik tune is the most likely to appear in this eventual mix if I get around to making it - I have some free time coming up so time will tell. At any rate, I hope you've enjoyed these selections, I'll be back soon enough with more, Bandcamp Friday is looming as well so look forward to that! Until then, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

November Has Come

Francis Bacon - Head VI (Year)

Had grand ideas about starting up another week of Bite-sized Bits and all that but you know what? It's only Tuesday and I've already had enough, people up to their usual bullshit and it's frankly baffling. But you don't come here to hear me vent, so let's get into the meat of today. In what's fast becoming a roundabout once-a-month trend I've decided to just chuck down some more cathartic tunes down instead, a return to the more classic post format really.

Grabbed a random selection this time but there are some usual suspects in there. Some of which I think have come up before, the first one definitely has - Clark's recreation of Milanese's So Malleable. A Very different beast to the original: fully loaded with Clark's trademark grit but with a proper old school Drill & Bass edge that recalls classic Warp, especially early Squarepusher. The last quarter takes a total ambient turn as well, which operates as a nice cooling off period after the bevy of breaks. Pretty wild to see Clark tackle some hard Drum & Bass compared to his usual works, but he does real well.



More from Alec Lambert next, with one of the more soundtrack-y bits from Heaven Will Be Mine. I've been enamoured with it for a while as you might have been able to tell from the repeated appearances it keeps making - it does a fantastic job of setting the mood even separated from the visuals, particularly for Electrotoxin, I'd say you could hazard a guess at the style of it from this alone. This one is at home being actively listened to as it is in the background, which I suppose goes without saying when it comes to soundtrack work but the point stands. Full of great little touches throughout - tiny digital glitches that make the whole thing feel off kilter for one, but my favourite is the super time-stretched breakdown starting around 2:10 or so, I've always been a sucker for that kind of effect anyway but the way the mix drops back in like a sucker punch afterwards makes it all the more visceral to boot.



Some Dopplereffekt now, this one has a nasty habit of coming and going in and out of availability on other streaming services, but thankfully Bandcamp is always there as a backup. The A-side of the Tetrahymena EP is a masterclass in my favourite bits of Dopplereffekt. Cold, clinical, calculating electro / techno stuff. Dark waves of plunging bass and ethereal almost MIDI voices make it by far and away the standout track on here. Not to say the other tracks aren't as good though, the high tech vibes of Gene Silencing are also trademark Dopplereffekt as well, albeit the softer side when compared to the all out darkness of Tetrahymena.



And finally a bit of Noisia, with a release I thought I wish listed but didn't. Noisia have done a fair bit of soundtrack work over the last few years or so, and thankfully they have most of it collected on their label's page for easy access. Not so much their older releases, but I figure that's just red tape from before they made their own label and/or releases that weren't on their own anyway. Regardless, I'm going to steal a bit of the BC page description here to set the tone: 'Armajet is a game with its roots in 90’s twitch shooters. Hardcore, unforgiving, instant, inhuman.' between that and the actual shoutout to the soundtrack of Unreal Tournament '99 from them in their description, I was on board before even hitting play.

Keeping in that 90's shooter theme we have Wallhack. It, like Electrotoxin, is quite soundtrack-y as far as Noisia productions go - straying a little from the Drum & Bass you might know them for, bordering pehaps more on the Dubstep side of things. But it's been a while since I've touched anything of that kind so I'm into it a little bit, a proper little stomper this one, a fine finale to this selection.



Man, it has been a while since a longer one like this hasn't it? Can't guarantee it'll stay like this for long just because this time of year is super busy for me but I might make an effort to put more of these down, it's been a fun switch up. Can't say when I'll be back with another post but it shouldn't be *too* long. But until then, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Speedy Bleeps

Time continues to make fools of us all, I took a day or so off and went to narrow down what I was going to scoop this BC Friday and only came away with more things on my wishlist. The post I had planned originally is a little more in-depth and could be a long one as I focus on a specific topic and write at length about it, should be a good time when I get around to it. But enough excuses, in the meantime I've gathered up a quick roundup of some bits of electro and techno from my archives, let's have a look!

Starting with a relic of the early aughts - the EP that came immediately after The Other People Place's Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café, the fittingly titled Sunday Night Live at the Laptop Cafe, as the pic above shows, the title isn't just for show, these tracks are actually taken from a set at a Laptop Cafe as far as I could tell. If you liked the cool electro of the Laptop Café LP, the two tracks here are worthy additions to your collection: the A-side, Sorrow & A Cup Of Joe continues the vibe laid out on that LP - lovely electro with a slight depressive edge (curiously my copy that I got from Bleep is a good minute or so shorter than this one for some reason).

For this post though I've chosen the B-Side - Telepathic Seduction by a one Mystic Tribe A.I., which is actually an alias of DJ Stingray of Drexciya fame. It occupies the same atmosphere of the A-side very well, of the two I think it might just edge out being my favourite as sometimes the repeating sample on Sorrow sometimes grates on me. By far and away my favourite bit of this one though is that deep as hell shelf rumbling bassline - I highly recommend digging out your headphones or hooking up a decent speaker setup for this one.



Keeping things Drexciya adjacent here, dipping into High Tech territory again with Der Zyklus - an alias of Gerald Donald and the Dopplereffekt lot thats more electro-focused. Personally, I find the work they've done under this alias to be a little more accessible thatn the stark stoic techno of Dopplereffekt. Both halves of this EP made tons of appearances in DJ mixes and compilations of the time and rightfully so - I've posted one half of this EP before with Mathematische Modelle, which is a little more... playful sounding than this one, however both are very much Kraftwerk-esque, particularly the Computer World era. You can hear that influence plenty on the B-side as well, the equally German sounding Elektronisches Zeitechno. it's one of the few times I'm not going to pick a favourite from the EP because honestly both sides totally nail what they're going for, I can prefer one over the other on certain days for sure but together they operate in perfect harmony.



And finally, E.R.P. - yet again an alias, this time of Gerard Hanson, better known as Convextion. I've been drip feeding myself E.R.P. releases because each one I hear seems to have been engineered to appeal directly to me, they carry that high-tech futuristic feel that Warp was championing for the Artificial Intelligence era. Surprising no-one I know, and perhaps a little reductive of E.R.P's other work - tracks like Lodestone from the Evoked Potentials series still carry that spacey sound but are much more punchy upbeat pieces. I'm more than happy to admit that I'm slightly biased in that regard, not only because as is well documented I just adore that sound, but also becuase the first EP I checked out from E.R.P. was Alsoran, which is very firmly rooted in that style.

The version on Bandcamp is a combined EP of both the Vox Automaton and Alsoran EPs and there's not a bad track on it. I've posted my absolute favourite Lament Subrosa some time ago, so I've gone for another slice of spacey goodness in the lush and delicate tones of Irma which ironically is far and away the most Artificial Intelligence-esque sounding track on here - echoes of B12's Electro-Soma and a little of F.U.S.E's Dimension Intrusion too are all over this one and I cannot get enough of it. Simply gorgeous stuff, one of the best finds I've had in recent years and an artist I'm looking forward to sharing more of with you in the future.



Looking back over the post as I wrap up, that's a whole lot of monochrome album art isn't it? Funny how things like that work out. Just a quick note before I get off - I might take a little longer with that in-depth post I mentioned at the top than usual but I'll keep making li'l posts like this one in the meantime, dipping in and out will probably help with the burnout that I ended up getting on the longer Retro Reviews post that I did for Moby's 18. With that out of the way, I hope you've enjoyed the EPs on show here and as always: stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Short Sharp Shot

A break from tradition today as there won't be so many words as usual. I'm just feeling a little tired, I think the twee nothing statements about how valued we are and mental health 'awareness' is finally getting to me a little - I know for a fact that the sheer prevalence of this mask off selfishness, the 'fuck you, got mine' mentality has me absolutely disgusted.

Or as one internet user perfectly summarised it:

Trying not to sound like your average 'hurr faith in humanity lost' edgelord there, but it does always bother me that out in the media everyone has to be all smiling faces all the time - you are allowed to have other emotions! The talking heads come on asking why there's a rising mental health problem among young folk and yet also never show a single hint of anything other than an obviously fake saccharine attitude.

It's ok to admit that things aren't all that great, to do otherwise is at best insincere and at worst simply unhinged. I'm gonna stop here because I am aware it's already getting a bit preachy but I just had to get something down. Feel free to skip over all this and just get to the tracks below.









And as always, stay safe and enjoy the music

-CVF