48 Hours Of Electrics

I spent the last couple of days with a friend, and we spent a lot of that time waxing nostalgic about when we were beginning to explore Electro. We were lucky that it was around 2006-7, which is pretty much the time when every track out there was golden and new stuff was out every week or so. And after spinning them both on vinyl and from files I was feeling pretty inspired, so now I'm putting together another list of my Electro favourites, both old and new. An Electrospective if you will (sorry.)

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Vitalic's OK Cowboy is a stonking release, especially when you find out that three of the album's biggest tracks (Poney Part 1 & 2,La Rock 01) were originally recorded/released in 2001. They held up well enough not only to still be fresh when included on OK Cowboy in 2005, but like the whole album, is still bloody good even now.



I had a pretty terrible vinyl rip of Kavinsky's Teddy Boy EP for a long long time, it wasn't until I previewed it on JunoDownload that I realised what I'd been missing. I thought the rip I had sounded pretty good, so I was blown away by the DL, by far the highlights are the two Testarossa tracks. I love 'em both, but Nightdrive gets nowhere near as much press as Autodrive so that's my pick for this one.



I got turned on to Shinchi Osawa from his brilliant remix of Felix Da Housecat's Radio and never looked back. Pretty much all of The One is quality,and when I finally picked up the re-issue with a boatload of remixes on it, I was surprised to find this extended mix of The Golden on the tracklist. I was kinda disappointed at first 'cos I liked the original, but then I hit play.




I'd heard of Siriusmo through remixes and that, but never paid much attention to his EPs and such. Then when Mosaik dropped I decided to check him out. I've commented on his unique brand of electro and posted a couple of my favourite cuts from it before, so I'm just gonna cut to the chase and leave you with another nice bit from Mosaik



Likewise, I knew of Modeselektor for a while, but outside of a couple tracks here and there I could never get into their releases too much. I gave them another go around when Monkeytown was coming out and I was sold. The intro track left such a good impression I could have gone out and bought it then and been happy, the progression throughout is solid and the album as a whole is top notch, definitely one to check out if you missed it the first time around.



And that'll be all for today, hope you enjoyed my less eclectic mix of tracks this time, I can't promise it'll stay that way for much longer though!

The World Over,
-Claude Van Foxbat

Warped Leftovers Three: Squarepusher - Big Loada EP (1996)

A quick one today as we hit up an EP I couldn't get my hands on in time for the main entries. I managed to pick this EP up about a year ago from a nice German bloke, and it contains arguably what is the Square man's most famous track, that is Come On My Selector. There's a bunch of other quality sprinkled throughout the 7 tracks here, so let's do this.


I'd heard of the opener a couple of times but never actually listened to it. The first minute or so is fairly slow, with just the occasional drum roll to mix things up. But that all changes around 1:30, where what will soon become the main hook of the track is dropped in spectacular fashion, followed by a liberal slathering of butchered beats before that hook comes smashing back into the mix. One of the 'Pusher's defining moments I'd say.



Retuning to his roots, Squarepusher drops a fuzzy sounding compressed drum loo, which we haven't heard from him since his debut Feed Me Weird Things. This is actually quite close to conventional drum & bass and Jungle starting with the MC (referred to in the credits as MC Twin Tub) with the scene's staple low quality mic at :45. It's a little short,but I think it works better that if it were an extended mix. Saying that, I think the ending could have been handled better.



Skipping over Massif (Stay Strong) 'cos I've posted it before, we get to the main event, the track everyone's here for: Come On My Selector. Like Aphex Twin's Come To Daddy, a lot of the popularity stems from the infamous Chris Cunningham directed video that you can watch HERE. Saying that, it's a very good demonstration of what Squarepusher does, as demonstrated by that sublime bass work at 1:33, and then again at 1:53. It's not my favourite track of his, but those parts make it more than worth the price of admission.



Playing us out is what is an underrated track from SP's catalogue. I think the main problem is that it doesn't grab you from the get go like most of the tracks on here. I'll admit I wasn't a fan of this one until like Rotate Electrolyte from Hello Everything I forced myself through it. And like Rotate Electrolyte, my opinion soon changed. The breakdown at 1:43 caught my attention, But the deal sealer for me was the same sounds that made A Journey To Reedham at 2:02, I love that sound so much. Unfortunately after about three and a half minutes they're gone, but the track's rebuild in that section is pretty great too, before ending with the same phonecall bits from Reedham.



There is a little interlude that rounds off the album, but it's only 50 seconds long so I'm not going to bother with it. Back to the EP: it's got plenty of gold on it, definitely some of the best Squarepusher has to offer in handy bite-size form. Give it a listen and get your hands on it if you can.

Il N'a Pas De Chance,
-Claude Van Foxbat

Weekend Randomness

Hey guys

I probably won't have time to post anything, so here are some good tunes that came out this week. No particular order or theme, sorry!




Let's start with Justin Faust's new gem.



Vanguard's remix for the Tekken Tag Tournament remix contest, anyone that owned a Playstation probably played Tekken so there's no need to introduce it I guess.



An old guilty pleasure remixed by Cyril Hahn, it sounds really good, don't worry.



From Rusko's new EP : Thunder.



Directly from Australia, Moonchild's remix for Shelby Grey.



I'm not the hugest fan of The Bloody Beetroots, and I don't really know Gigi Barroco's stuff, but this was a pretty decent banger.



Enjoy!
-Here

Slow This Down

Today's been a quiet one, been tracking down some demo cassettes. It's been nice though, after the past couple days I was ready for a little bit of doing nothin'. And that meant what a day off usually means for me: a bit of catch up on things I meant to do resulting in an art and sound binge. And it's that that I'll be taking select pieces from today.

After my last post about old school dubstep, I picked up the latest free EP dropped by Suspect and Stenchman (Together appearing as Suspicious Stench) cleverly dubbed The Fr33 EP and the opener is pretty special. It almost, just almost tops my all time favourite chilled dub track: Pangaea's absolutely stellar Router

Suspicious Stench - Faith In The Future

It's been a while since I've mentioned our Norwegian pals Röyksopp, this one's from The Understanding, which I initially thought was a lacklustre sequel to the now cult Melody A.M, but over time it grew on me. There's plenty of quality to pick from here, but this one's especially great for those do nothing at all kind of days



I can't quite make my mind up about Plaid, they have good songs but I can never listen to them one after another after another. That doesn't matter too much to me because I swear by the shuffle button, but regardless sometimes a track just grabs you you know? like Autechre's Nine before it, the spaced out echoes in this track meant that this jumped straight into my favourites list and will stay there for a very long time.




An old track I found buried in my library but thanks to the magic of shuffle came up again one day. I didn't remember who it was by, so after about a minute I check and I was surprised. It's a little known bit from Zombie Nation's debut Leichenschmaus The beats are pretty great but the icing on the cake for me is that vocoder. I loves me a good vocoder.



Last one is another from Pretty Lights. His debut album is very very sweet hip hop through and through that just hits the right spot for me, and the man himself is giving it out for free on his website so you can get it right now! It's a shame he moved away from it for the sophomore, but that's what second albums are for right? and there's still plenty of nice material in the fifteen tracks from Taking Up Your Precious Time anyway.



Future Proof,
-Claude Van Foxabt