Colors of Love - Another Valentine's Mixtape

After being on the back burner for nearly a year, I present to you another valentine's mixtape. I say a year because immediately after I finished last years I had a handful f leftover tracks that I really wanted to have put in but missed their shot. Guess what this year's mix is made up of? I don't want you to feel like this is 'the leftovers' or anything, each of these tunes stands on their own! Stay tuned for a bit of commentary by me after the player and tracklist!

Tracklist:
Monk - L
Mitsunori Ikeda - Fallen Angel
Phil - Crazy & Ready
Chromeo - Bonafied Lovin'
R·O·N - Adult Bath
Tsutchie - Deeper Than Words
Clammbon By Nujabes - Imaginary Folklore
Röyksopp - In Space


I may have been a bit over-ambitious again this time, it feels to me a bit clunkier in parts than my last attempt at this kind of thing but I guess that's the price I pay for trying to put Eurobeat into Chromeo - the selection is unique at the very least! I tried this time to get a nice even balance of upbeat and downbeat this time - there's four tracks of each so it's balanced in a sense! We open with the beautifully hazy L from Monk. I was first introduced to this one from the soundtrack to OlliOlli2, which is full of other tracks with this style of hazy, compressed indie electronic, I love it but it's easy to have too much of it too. From there it's the one track that really pained me to miss out of last year's tape - Mitsunori Ikeda's Fallen Angel, yet another cut from the Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt soundtrack - which is also full of absolute stonking tunes. Fallen Angel is far too funky to just be an ending theme, and Aimee B just straight up kills it on the vocal front as well.

I spent a fair bit of time deciding what to put next... I knew I wanted some Eurobeat in there (after all a good 80% of Eurobeat lyrics are either about love or are innuendos) but the question was finding one that was mostly accessible. Which is tough when you're as into the genre as I am, it's kind of warped my perception of cheese a bit! But there are plenty of tracks out there that wear the disco influence on their sleeve, and Crazy & Ready is one of them, much closer to the House side of the spectrum of Eurobeat. That's not to say it's not still got that earnest cheese that I love - some of the lyrics are choice and the synth melodies should carry a warning label for how sugary sweet they are!

From there it's the surprising first appearance of Chromeo. And really what is there to say about them? They've been at it for well over a decade at this point and they are still doing what they do exceptionally well. I did almost put a track from their 'Quarantine Casanova' EP here, but I couldn't find one to mix well (and in hindsight it probably would have been in poor taste too). Instead I went for the tried ad tested fallback Bonafied Lovin' from Fancy Footwork. It's the album of theirs I'm most attached to but if you like the sound they have here, you could pretty much pick up their entire discography and not be disappointed. We're around the halfway point now and we begin our slide into downtempo, and what better way to signify that change than with Adult Bath. Perhaps not strictly electronic but I just had to include it for it's sound alone, and as I said just before it nicely sets us up for the more hip-hop final half.

Another track that I missed off of last years, Tsutchie with Deeper Than Words. I found Tsutchie during my dive into the world of Japanese hip hop a little while back and quickly became one of my favourite names in that space. There's no shortage of Tsutchie tunes that could go here - often super slick and smooth, it was no question of whether Tsutchie would make the mix but which one would I choose. Keeping it in that sphere for the time being, a super lush produced track from Nujabes. There are two versions of this one, Folklore and the one that I went with, Imaginary Folklore. It's one of Nujabes' more popular songs and it's not hard ot hear why, it's easily one of the best examples of his distinctly lo-fi production methodology and is just a gorgeous listen.

Finally, we round out with Röyksopp's In Space. I've been revisiting their debut Melody A.M. as of late - it turns 20 years old this year and it does sound very early 00's in it's overall style but it's aged very gracefully. and one that I still very highly recommend if you are at all into Electronic music, doubly if you like downtempo stuff as much as I. My heart told me to pick Sparks yet again as it's one of my favourite songs of all time, but I switched it up and went with a full instrumental piece instead. In Space perhaps shows off that turn of the 2000's sound more than most tracks from the album (a friend lovingly calls Melody A.M. 'Advertising Music - The Album') but it's still a lovely listen and I think closes this little selection out nicely.

Right, the commentary was a little longer than I expected but that'll about do it for us. I hope you like some of my selections here, and I'll be back soon enough with more. And as always: Stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Always Returning

Going to knock something out right quick for old times sake. I've taken a break from the IV of non-stop Hi-NRG and Eurobeat that brings me up to operational speed most days and swapped it from something a little more familiar. My love of techy glitchy things is well known by this point, but it's been a while since I had a whole post dedicated to it - so let's do that.

Grace Cossington Smith - Bed Time (1922)
I've said before one of the things I like about my recent Bandcamp scoops is that I get notified when new things from artists are coming out, gone are the days of me being surprised by a new album because I didn't check an artist's socials. It hasn't stopped to wishlist pile from getting larger and larger but it's something.

Enter Ocoeur, an artist who I found in almost a stereotypical way for me at this point: heard them on Grooveshark when that was still a thing and it just snowballed from there. This was during that time when I was sailing through the Warp Records catalog for anything and everything experimental and was always hungry for more. The downside for that was that I think a lot of the stuff I was listening to got lost in the undertow - like Light As A Feather for example. There's a couple of tracks from it that I've absolutely rinsed but coming back to it now it's almost like a completely new album. A track that has surprisingly not come up much for how often I re-start my shuffle from the top is 1.11 - a great distillation of the album as a whole. A typically lush juxtaposition of skittering beats and smooth synths, backed with the occasional intentional recording artifact. Perhaps a touch generic if you're very familiar with the genre, but I always have a soft spot for tracks like this.



Speaking of that era, one of the artists I also picked up in that time was The Flashbulb. His style is quite a bit different from the stuff you'd normally think of when it comes to the 'IDM' label. There's a lot more acoustic elements, particularly on this album - the beautifully bleak titled Soundtrack To A Vacant Life, though that's maybe not too removed from the genre given the Piano pieces on Aphex Twin's Drukqs. Anyway, the track I've chosen is part of the extended intro alongside the opening track Prelude.

Kirilian Voyager highlights some things I really like about The Flashbulb, I think his use of vocal samples like on the intro of this one is fantastic, it's from the movie 'Waking Life' which is equally fitting - though I can see it coming off as a bit trite nowadays (especially the later track on this album Suspended In A Sunbeam sampling Carl Sagan). The rest of the song is quite different from the Ocoeur one above, sporting an almost post-rock influence to the instrumentation with some little glitchy bits here and there for added flavour. The album as a whole is a really good introduction to The Flashbulb if you're new, though it is a little long at 31 tracks! I'd recommend listening to Warm Hands In Cold Fog and Submerged Renewed for both a more traditional IDM sound and a good cross section of the album too.



To round us out, one of the bigger names. One of my potentially most unpopular opinions when it comes to electronic music is about Autechre: I can't really get into any of their stuff after Tri Repetae. On paper I should at least like the album after that as well as it's really the last one before they went all in on the abstractness but I've yet to have it click (come back to this post in a couple years and see if that's changed!). That's not to say I don't at least admire their later work - they are absolute wizards when it comes to making what has now become their brand of experimental electronic, but it's not for me. In contrast, I think their first album Incunabula is an absolutely divine piece of that early 90's Warp sound, but I'm going to revisit their second album Amber today.

It's been a long time since I talked about Amber since the Warped History posts roundabout 10 years ago now, shy of re-posting one of my favourite ambient pieces from it Nine every so ofter, it's not come up too much. If ever there was a release that deftly avoided the 'difficult second album' trope - Amber may just be it. Released just one year after their debut, it sees the overall sound get much more refined and you can almost hear the signposts being laid of the eventual direction they would take into Tri Repetae and beyond. Despite the short gap between them it sounds quite far removed from the charmingly retro vibe of their debut, and as a whole sounds very, very modern for a release from 1994 - a trend that would continue for Autechre going forward.

Nil is one of my favourites from the album, and probably one of the more accessible Autechre tunes out there - it's much more melodic than their later work for certain, and in hindsight almost tame compared to even the follow up Tri Repetae. It creates a really great atmosphere though, well structured with peaks and valleys throughout - my favourite of which being the ambient break being pierced by those lush keys at around 3:30 or so.



The republishing quest continues - aside from a couple of unrecoverable posts it's been fairly smooth sailing. I'm trying to put up as much of it as I can but there are missing players here and there. Still, some of it has been pleasantly surprising in how easy it was too, and great little slices of history like us hyping up Madeon before he blew up. Good times. Right, that'll do it for this instalment, I might get another small one in before the Valentine's Mixtape hits but if I don't - I'll see you then!

And as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

What's in my (digital) bag

First Bandcamp Friday of the year yesterday, and I had plenty of stuff to go at thanks to the extra month of prep time and Warp Records making most of their catalogue available there too. I got some usual suspects this time - things I've mentioned in previous posts (partly as a reminder to myself!) and things I'd been generally eyeing. Some non-electronic stuff in there too but I won't be talking about those too much. So - What's in the bag?

Sam Francis - From Tokyo #3 (1970)

Despite the art chosen for this post, there's no Yokota or Rei Harakami this time - instead we have Squarepusher. I talked a bit about the Lamental EP when it was near release and a couple of times since, and those posts focused on two tracks in particular - MIDI Sans Frontieres and Detroit People Mover. The reason I kept talking about these tracks is that they are absolutely divine pieces of Ambient, and I've been saying for years that every time Squarepusher turns his hand to that kind of sound it's always brilliant and leaves me wanting more. That's not to say that the EP is full on Ambient though - the (Avec Batterie) version of MIDI Sans... gives it a beat reminiscent of tracks like Iambic 9 Poetry from Ultravisitor, or the Jazzier parts of Just A Souvenir. Between the two I can't say which I like more, they compliment each other really well - though I will concede that Avec is certainly the more Squarepusher sounding of the two.

There's another great ambient guitar piece on the EP too - once again evoking Every Day I Love and Tommib Help Buss from Ultravisitor. 'Les Mains Dansent' is a short little interlude almost in the middle of the track list, it's short but really lends this very heartfelt atmosphere to the EP. Not that I haven't been a fan of Squarepusher's more recent work, though I admit I haven't really listened in a lot of depth, but it's an absolute delight to hear his return to this kind of sound.

Anyway, the track in question I'm going to actually post today is the opener - The Paris Track. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect going in (when do you ever with a Squarepusher release though?), his more recent work has run the gamut from dark electro to acoustic (or at least, played on instruments) versions of his old material with Shobaleader One. Paris Track seems to bridge that gap for me, the opening is very much in the style of the rest of this EP - smooth but haunting synths guiding us in. However once the meat of the track hits around 50 seconds in the whole thing becomes undeniably Squarepusher with an injection of slightly acidic synth accompaniment, I know a lot of fans have been disappointed with some of the changes in sound on newer releases, and to me I feel like this almost bridges the gap between the two. This track could have almost been a B-Side from Hello Everything, the structure itself is very much old-school 'Pusher - not quite as intense 'Drill & Bass' of Come On My Selector perhaps, but definitely more familiar. I'm very happy with this EP, if the album accompanying it, Be Up A Hello is at all similar I may have to add that soon too



Another scoop this week was more from E.R.P. - better known as Convextion. I've been slowly drop-feeding myself all things E.R.P. because so far every single release I've heard is like a direct line to that part of me that loves that early 90's ambient techno that Warp was pioneering and the Pith EP has been no different - it too is full of those spacey vibes that I love oh so much. Having said that, the main body of this EP is much more on the pure Electro side of things than the usual brand of stuff I post when talking about this specific genre, the opening track Luctu wouldn't have sounded out of place on the Elektroids LP on Warp (the Elektroids themselves being the legendary Gerald Donald and James Stinson). It hits a great balance of E.R.P.'s lush, sometimes melancholic synths with these newfound electro stabs, this is new and differnet territory for my listening of E.R.P., but I am very much into it!

Tuga is the prime example of this - I immediately slammed it into my playlist of futuristic electro. It's as if you took all my favourite Doppelerffekt tracks and combined them here, albeit perhaps not quite as dark. not to repeat myself but tracks like this really appeal to me, this is the kind of stuff I was fascinated by when I was younger and as I say every time, to me this is still the sound of the future. Title track Pith also epitomises this for me, perhaps even stronger. By far and away the track that's most Ambient Techno on the EP, it embodies that ideal I mentioned in the first half of that forward looking kind of techno from the 90's. It is definitely tied for my favourite on the EP, and it only just missed being posted literally as I type this. I do love it, but at times that beat can get a little repetitive for my liking, not all the time but still. With that in mind, I'm going to have to go back one step to the bouncy Tuga.



Cheating a bit for the final one. One thing I did do this time was finally get around to replacing the vintage Sébastien Tellier remixes I had from way back in the blog days with proper decent quality ones. But those have already been posted to death and just a touch more than a decade ago(!) too. So instead I thought I'd shine a light on another Warp release I think is worth your time now that it's more easily accessible, I picked up a physical copy a long time ago so it's not technically 'in my bag' as it were!

Plone are a fairly obscure entry in the world of Warp Records, I originally became aware of them as they were supporting acts for some Broadcast gigs back when (so you'll find them recommended if you ever get really into Broadcast) - and Mike Bainbridge of Plone also played Keyboards for their live shows in the Haha Sound era. They are more electronic than Broadcast for certain but they are most definitely sonic cousins at the very least - much like Boards Of Canada, Plone's sound originally is all tinged with nostalgia, full of vintage keyboards but with a distinctly more pop style overall - much like the Polyphonic Size track I talked about a while back now I think about it. It's been a long time since I talked about them but that's pretty much how I sum them up: theirs is a very unique and playful style of electronic that I didn't really see replicated until the 2010's.

The oddest part of the Plone story however is how it just suddenly stops. They looked as if they were set to become yet another staple act on Warp, their sound was a nice compliment to the lineup they were building, and Plone would release successful singles, an album and even contributed to the 10th anniversary Warp10 and We Are Reasonable People (WAP100) compilations. But after that, they pretty much just disappeared, their time on Warp only being around 2 years total. There is an unreleased second album floating around the internet, there's no solid proof it's legitimate (but if it's a fake, the sound is imitated almost perfectly) but things went quiet after that. They did however return out of nowhere in 2019 and announce that they would be releasing a new album Puzzlewood on Ghost Box in 2020. A surprising return to be sure, but a happy one. Though true to myself I have yet to check out the new album yet!

Their debut, For Beginner Piano is an ideal (and until recently, the only) place to hear this playful sound in action. Tracks like Plock just radiate that vintage, slightly weird electronic pop vibe that you might have heard courtesy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I've picked Marbles to post - it's as good a demonstration as any track from the album. I especially love this one because I have a bootleg recording of it from a Peel Session that they did, and hearing a track like this on a slightly tinny and radio compressed recording only enhances that atmosphere. Plone is a little ray of sunshine in musical form, and if the weather where you are is anything like how it is today for me, I think we could all do with some right about now.



Righto, so it goes for another Bandcamp Friday. In hindsight I should maybe actually post these on the day but hopefully if you dig them, you can wishlist them for the next Friday at the very least. Apologies for the slightly bigger gap this week, I was hanging on for this and also hashing out ideas for another mixtape so it shouldn't be as long next time.

And as always - Stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Think of Fire

I'm taking one of those turns again where I get a bit ticked off to put it mildly. I normally let stuff go pretty easy because for a while now I've tried to live a life that's mostly free of negativity, but I do turn bitter every now and then, but that's OK, it's healthier to release than just sit there slowly building up into a foaming rage. Enter the past couple of days... If I were at all religious I would definitely consider them tests that's for sure. A combination of entitled arseholes, general idiocy and frankly plain irresponsibility has me quietly seething off to one side but I'm going to try and follow my credo of limited negativity - and do a controlled release with some audio assistance.

Yves Klein - La marque du Feu ['The Trace of Fire'] (1961)

Death Magic again sprang to mind. So many pieces of this album could go here, but for instant impact it has to be SALVIA. The sheer sudden intensity of it makes it nigh on perfect for just this occasion. The machine gun beat appears unrelenting, it blindsides you and contiunes to layer on the intensity. And just when you think you can no longer breathe - suddenly you're falling free in a daze. But it's not long before it all comes crashing back down again around you. The cycle repeats once more, only this time the serenity stays. A short and brutal track, SALVIA is the musical equivalent of a sucker punch.



Coming up again after the recent mention - ADULT.'s later work is also a great shout for this theme. While the Why Bother? album is sometimes a little too noisy for my tastes - the EP before it D.U.M.E. really hits the spot, maybe it's the overall shorter length making it easier to digest. At any rate - Hold Your Breath is another great distillation of this mood and perhaps the most obviously Punk influenced tune from ADULT. I've mentioned so far. It might not have the sudden plunge of SALVIA, but it does have Nicola Kuperus putting in one hell of a performance - her frantic delivery wavers between cold and calculating to borderline manic throughout, giving the whole proceedings a beautifully disjointed feel.



I couldn't do a post in this vein without mentioning this one. The Autumnal Crush will destroy you in the most pleasent way. The opening is slightly misleading on this front, but it's not long before things get fairly intense. Something I always loved about this track (and sort of gets spoiled if you read this before listening) is that it absolutley does not let up, the intial post-introduction is already pretty heavy, but it just keeps on going and going with more and more layers - an experience befitting of the Crush in it's title. But like SALVIA, it does eventually let go, and for the remainder of its 7 minute runtime it becomes a much calmer beast. And with that, it's probably the most fitting track here by a long shot. Truly, if there were a piece of Clark's work I could point to that I think best demonstrated why I use that 'Melodic Grit' descriptor - Autumnal Crush would be up there.



Apologies for the slightly shorter (and a little more poetic than usual) post - I didn't really plan this one out! I could have put a couple more selections here but as I said in the opening paragraph, I'm trying not to dwell on things too much these days. And I don't know about you but I certainly feel a little better having written this out and immersed myself in that sound.

I'll be back later this week with more, but until then - as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF