Trip Report

I am back with a sit-rep on what I actually got around to getting on Bandcamp Friday. No massive changes in plans this time though, I did end up subbing out the Arpanet LP for some other stuff though, as well as getting the ADULT. EP thingy I talked about last time but didn't actually post about. Let's get stuck in.

M.C. Escher - Blocks of Basalt along the Sea (1919)
First major change was I decided to listen to a couple of other LNS releases just to feel them out, I ended up on her latest LNS-id first of all - the pun in the title is stretching it a bit, but as it suggests, this is much more Acid flavoured than the track from Recons One I used last time. I do like Acid, but I don't have a right lot of it in my archives, I feel like it's one of those genres that can suffer from being quite same-y in its execution (but admittedly, I haven't gone too deep into the genre so take that with two handfuls of salt). Most of my Acid comes from Squarepusher's brother's project Ceephax Acid Crew, his work tends to be quite creative in the boundaries of Acid and as you might have guessed from some of those album covers, often very much embracing the sillier side of things. I thought that maybe this one might be the same, what with the massive Acid smiley over LNS' frog logo on the cover and all.

So with that in mind, I wasn't really sure what exactly to expect going into this one - would it be some tongue-in-cheek Acid? A straight up tribute to the style that fully embraces all the clichés like Luke Vibert's Luke Vibert Presents UK Garave Vol. 1 maybe? Not quite as it turns out, the opening Blue Acid grabbed my attention straight away with its ambient techy vibes, the frantic 303 that you might expect for an Acid track is very subdued at first and it gives the whole thing this very different feel than I've ever encountered in the world of Acid before. LNS nails the production side of things here too, just when I find myself thinking that it needs a little something to spice it up, something that changed up the formula would drop right in. I can understand the 303 being repetitive to some, and there are some times where I feel it too - I'd have liked that ambience lurking in the background to have more time to shine like it does around the 4:10 mark - but overall I'm very into it, even if the EP has given me 200% of my recommended dose of 303 for the next few weeks.



Turning around in terms of sound with a bit from that ADULT. EP I brought up last time. One thing I love about about ADULT. is that they are doing a fantastic job of making most of their discography available on Bandcamp, including things that were super rare before. The extremely on brand titled Let's Feel Bad Together EP was previously a Beatport exclusive - but you could also get an 'Official Bootleg' CD of it from their website that they would sign with a little personal message for you too. It's from 2008, so just after the release of the nihilistic and intense punk of Why Bother? - though that LP would sometimes leave the electronics behind, Let's Feel... is very much in the vein of ADULT. releases of old.

It waxes and wanes though, tracks like Dance Avoid feel more like their Resuscitation-era sound and shares some DNA with the album immediately after this The Way Things Fall, whereas album closer Sideways feels much more like the fidgety anxiety of Why Bother>. There's not a dull moment on this EP, each of the four tracks are pretty relentless and don't let up until the timer runs out. They feel a little less fleshed out than the mainline album tracks or even some of their other EPs, but I don't want to make out like that's a negative - it makes everything here feel like the 'best of' of an extended jam session or even some live improv.

This is most easily spotted in Nicola's vocals, there aren't really verses to speak of here so much as her playing around with the titles of the songs, most obviously on Dance Avoid with lines like 'Dance avoid, dance avoid, dancing in a void', but again that just plays into what I mentioned above, and even if the content is much more simple than usual, her trademark delivery does an amazing job of matching that Punky atmosphere. I've picked both Today and Dance Avoid here because I think the two show off the two 'moods' of the EP really well (and because Avoid came on as I was typing and I fell in love with the intro all over again).





I also got around to getting the other two thirds of the Evoked Potentials series from E.R.P. (AKA Gerard Hanson or Convextion). They're super small and bite sized at two tracks each, I feel like the label could have compiled them into one, especially considering the original vinyl releases were limited to a couple hundred copies but hey ho. About the tracks themselves though - E.R.P. has fast become one of my favourites over the past year or so, the brand of hi-tech electro slash techno released under the name just really appeals to me in the same way all the early 90's Artificial Intelligence series from Warp does. I know that's a comparison I trot out all the time when talking about this kind of sound but it's more apt than usual this time, parts of the Evoked Potentials series sound a hell of a lot like the stuff B12 was (and continues to) make.

And you'll find yourself among good company if you're into this style of electro - Discogs recommends stuff like Drexciya, The Other People Place and early Underground Resistance - that's especially true here, of all the E.R.P. I've posted so far, Repose most certainly feels more in line with that kind of style. I just adore the spacey vibes on this one, it's very easy to get lost in - the stripped back ambient turn in the last quarter is just divine. It's not quite dethroned the Alsoran EP as my favourite release from him (But there is some bias there as it was the first thing I'd heard as well), but I will happily snap up more of this sound whenever I find it. My only complaint is a very nit-picky one: for some reason there's a good chunk of silence on the end of this one, it ends at around 6:40 for reference.



And that'll do it for this time. I'm a little late on this one because I took an easy day off yesterday because I was feeling a little sick, but that actually gave me time to listen and hash out some thoughts on these picks so it wasn't *too* bad I suppose. I'll be back soon enough with more but until then - as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Coming Up

That time of the month where I look over my ever expanding list of things to get and attempt to make some choices for the rapidly approaching Bandcamp Friday. The most recent additions to the wish list have been a a bit all over the place, normally they follow a theme, but I've chucked a couple on as of late that are just there as reminders really, biggest example being the Warp stuff - it's cheaper direct from Bleep but I find Bandcamp easier to browse. But I digress, let's have a look at some potentials for this round.

Rosalyn Drexler - Men and Machines V (1966)
It's not been as tricky this time, I seem to have managed to catch some stuff way in advance so it means I'm not scrambling for options this time. Quite a techy edge to it this time, but I think it's come together semi-naturally from other things that just missed the cut last time. Starting with another alias of Gerald Donald with Arpanet - as both names suggest it's quite high tech electro stuff, albeit in that early 2000's way. It can get a little long in the tooth at times (but I feel that way about a lot of Donald's other work as well), but the moments where it shines are very bright indeed. Album opener The Analyst waxes philosophical about technology in text to speech tones - some still relevant, the extended parts about 'wireless information transfer' with lines like 'people can now transmit electronic mail (...) from their mobile cell phones' not so much. It's a great mood setter for sure, but the real highlight comes in track 2 - Illuminated Displays, an encapsulation of my favourite of Donald's styles, and the perfect soundtrack to the far off year of 2002.



In a similar kind of vein we have Versalife. Recommended to me because I've really liked the stuff that Convextion has put out under the E.R.P. alias - that kind of spacey techno slash electro type of deal (and bonus points for what is I assume a Deus Ex reference in the name). I initially wanted to start with his debut album but opted for an EP instead - easier to digest that way I thought. And I wasn't disappointed as Night Time Activities Pt. I starts incredibly strongly with Solenoids Of Insomnia, and it would have probably been the track I chose for this post but it has strong competition from the one I actually did pick in Tales Of The Unexpected (or Tales From the unexpected if you're going by what's actually on the vinyl sticker). If you're at all like me and are a big fan of the E.R.P. I've posted before, you'll find yourself in familiar territory here: I'm going to echo something I read about E.R.P's work here: it's all real atmospheric techy stuff - I keep feeling like this one reminds me a little of the more downtempo bits on Aphex Twin's Analord series, though not quite as acidic. I'm liking it a whole lot, it seems like my requests of posts past for more things in this style have been answered.



Another tale from my "Wishlist for later, sounds cool" trips is LNS' Recons One - volume 2 is slightly puzzlingly missing from her Bandcamp but there's plenty there to get stuck into as-is. Speaking of puzzling, her releases make ample use of the now-defunct Bullfrog Productions logo, which I'm very familiar with from my younger days, but enough of that, let's talk about the tunes. I wasn't sure how to feel about the title track at first, the beat was good but I wasn't sure where it was going to go, when that first stab at 0:14 took me by surprise in the best way. It builds upon that solid base as it goes on naturally, but I think those stabs may still be my favourite thing about this one. It's a lot less space-y than my previous two picks, much more bouncy and... well, kinda funky to an extent - it reminds me quite a bit of the instrumental DMX Krew cuts in places, but not as out and out funk as those from DMX. I'm a couple of years late on this one, but I'm looking forward to diving into the rest of LNS' releases and seeing what else she comes out with in the future.



And that'll do it for this time, there is an ADULT. EP I've got lined up as well, but it doesn't quite jive with the others posted above so I'll hang fire on that one for now. As is tradition I could end up picking up a bunch of completley unrelated stuff, only time will tell. It might be a day or so before I actually get around to posting the scoops from this time as I have a busy weekend coming up but I'll try and get it written up and scheduled for some point next week. Until then, as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Going Italo

Another quick one this time that's been brewing for a while, going to have to be Youtube players just because we're going a little deep this time but I can deal with it every now and then. Today we're taking a trip back to a genre I've given plenty of shout-outs to over the years as it is the precursor to one of my favourites in Eurobeat - Today we're talking some Italo Disco.

Giorgio Moroder (minus trademark moustache) illustrating the vibe. Though Moroder made straight up Disco and not Italo!

But even if you're not into Eurobeat, Italo has a lot of relevance to electronic music on the whole, it along with plain old Disco were both partially responsible for House too. Don't be discouraged either if all you've heard of Eurobeat is the sugary sweet 160bpm side of it that I've brought up in the past, the truth is that it runs the full spectrum of tempos, and the early examples that people point to as the initial Eurobeat releases are incredibly similar to Italo as it was.

To start off, here's an early example from Vanessa, one of many aliases of a one Clara Moroni who would go on to co-found one of the big labels of Eurobeat in Delta and more than earn her reputation as the Queen of Eurobeat - she's featured her vocals on literally hundreds of tracks over the years. Moroni's voice is one of those cases where a vocalist and genre are just perfect for each other, her delivery and overall style perfectly suit both these more Disco style tracks, to the full fledged Eurobeat of tracks like Tell Me Baby (though admittedly some Eurobeat tracks are just Italo with the BPM increased, so that makes sense!). Back to the song in question though, Just A Game is from 1989 originally and has all the hallmarks of Italo Disco as well as parts of the contemporary dance music sphere of the late 80's to early 90's.



The use of really plain pseudonyms in Italo and Eurobeat has always been amusing to me, you have artists like Chiara De Pieri choosing things like 'Norma Sheffield' as their stage names, which would sound more at home in a bingo hall than on a Disco record. Which brings us to Katy Gray - who you'll find nothing about on the internet save for the picture that was included on the sole EP released under that name. And even then, that could not even be a picture of the actual vocalist, as Eurobeat and Italo have the slightly concerning practice of using different models for the visuals than the vocals. But I digress, out of the small pool of Italo I have in my collection, Hold Me Tight might be one of my all time favourites - it's a bit of a cult hit that you might recognise from elsewhere: it was given a Vaporwave treatment by Oneohtrix Point Never & Joel Ford on the first volume of their 'Heaven Can Wait' mixtapes, and the vocoded vocal and break at 2:40 among other elements were sampled by Teenage Bad Girl on 'Hold Me Tight' from their second album Backwash. The original track is great on it's own for me, but I really like showing off those samples of it as I think it makes the connection between Disco and other branches of Electronic music all that more clear.



That trend is going to continue with my final two picks, both from Gary Low. You might know of Low's work from the oft-sampled I Want You, most famously getting a chillwave rework from Washed Out on Feel It All Around, but also a more contemporary House update in the early 00's from Miss Kittin & The Hacker with The Beach. But I've told that story a bunch already, so I've gone ahead and picked out some other Gary Low tunes for this time - starting with Play The Game (I'll Do The Same). I'm going to echo what I said earlier and say that coming back to this one after consuming a ton of Eurobeat over the last year and a half or so makes the genealogy all that more clear. Likewise for a multitude of other genres as well, listen to the basslines on this one and compare them to the House of the late 80's and you can draw a line between the two. I find the whole thing quite charming, especially the warm vinyl crackle on the opening. I can't deny there is a bit of humour in it though, get a load of Gary's pensive steely eyed look (naturally making sure to flash the watch as well) on the cover of this one!



To round us out, the opening track from Low's debut album Go On in 1983. I feel like the House connections are even easier to spot on this one, especially on the opening. It does meander a bit with it's 7 minute runtime, especially as the verses disappear in favour of repeated bits of the chorus, I feel like even repeating the first two a couple more times would have done wonders to spice it up a bit. But I suppose that's just a casualty of hearing it out of its intended context, I'm sure it went down a treat on the dancefloors of 1983. Even so, the final quarter where the instrumentals get a moment to shine makes up for it a bit - the showcase of retro sounds is an absolute treat to listen to, and is actually the part that inspired me to finally sit down and write this post up in full. I definitely need more Italo in my collection, I've yet to come across any that I don't really care for - but it's one of those genres that is incredibly vast, I've got Ishkur's (of Electronic Music Guide fame) mixes lined up to listen to sometime soon which I'm hoping will give me some leads to follow up on and maybe do a sequel to this post as well.



I actually came up with the original idea for this post back in the days of the podcast, it was originally going to lead into that oft-promised Eurobeat episode of mine. I still might make a solo podcast of it sometime soon where I run through some Eurobeat in chronological order so you can see/hear the evolution - Claude's Eurobeat Essentials it was going to be called! Still, I'm more than happy for this quick history to be in text format instead, I just wish I had other streaming options to include. Regardless, I hope this little time travelling trip has been interesting for you and maybe you've even gained a little love of Italo Disco along the way. Until next time, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

In The Queue

Mel Bochner - Rules of Inference (1974)

Hey all, just another quick post with a rundown of things that are as the title says, in my queue. Starting with a fairly recent addition - the Celebrating Aphex Twin show on BBC Radio 6 (That link should let you listen, but you might have to be in the UK though and sign in/up, but you can see the tracklist in text on the page - and it'll only be available for 20 days as of this post as well!) from a few days ago was pretty great and managed to squeeze a decent amount of variety in there beyond just back-to-back AFX.

An early highlight is Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan with Gateway To The North. If the album art didn't already tip you off, this is more in the vein of Boards Of Canada than it is AFX - replacing the tinges of Americana that BoC with a full-on British version. I have to admit, based on the title of the album and everything else, it does come across as trying a little too hard at first - the tunes themselves are great though. When Gateway To The North gets going around the 30 second mark it's lovely - while it is evocative of BoC it doesn't completely rip them off, there are echoes of Oneohtrix Point Never's early work in there as well with the analogue arpeggio making up the main body, a little like the Tron Legacy soundtrack as well now I think about it. Annoyingly, it's one of those bandcamp releases that doesn't let you preview all of the tracks, but if the rest of it is anything like this I'm sure I'll love it.



Speaking of previews, I decided to check in with Ocoeur again after bringing him up not too long ago - today we're talking the upcoming LP from him called Connections. It's always interesting to see which tracks get chosen as previews for an album, they can change wildly in sound from one track to another and that goes double for the kind of electronic that N5MD usually works with. From the two preview tracks on offer: Opposite Sides and title Connections, the experience seems to be a lot more delicate than the earlier albums I have in my collection.

A marked movement away from the glitchy electronics of Light As A Feather, though still with a hint of that roughness of those previous releases as well (most prominently on the title track Connections). But that's not a complaint from me - Ocoeur's melodies remain as beautiful as ever on both the sample offerings here. I've gone with Opposite Sides as my pick as it very much feels like an intro track (though according to the page it's actually the second). At the risk of repeating myself from the previous paragraph, if the rest of the album is at all like the small glimpse we've been given so far, I will very much like it.



And finally returning to something a little more local with a bit more from Ceiling Demons. It's been a while since the last time but they've returned with a new full length slated for a little later this year. Perks of the job mean I've had the privilege of hearing the full thing, but the rest of you'll have to wait until the full thing comes out on the 22nd. Snakes & Ladders makes a strong impression from the get go with the folky All Let Go heading things up, reminiscent of an old drinking song, complete with violin accompaniment. It's not long before returning to more familiar Hip Hop ground on track 2, Let The Currents Carry You Home. With a slight Jazzy feel that reminds me of Weekend World-era E-Z Rollers (albeit with a slower tempo) and it's catchy shout along chorus continue that strong impression.

I'd say it's an emotionally charged record, but then again truth is that all the Demons' releases so far have been - for Snakes & Ladders this comes to a boil on Freedom Fighting Dystopia (which is also our first hearing of Lee "Scratch" Perry(!) on this record - more on that later), stripped back to a lone guitar and some frankly cathartic delivery, culminating in the two accelerating to destruction in the final quarter - the vocals do a fantastic job keeping pace with the rising tempo until it's just not possible anymore too.

I could go on, but I best save it for A) When it actually comes out and B) When you can actually hear what I'm talking about as well. Couple final points before I leave it: there's a great Eastern influence (ironically) on the instrumentation of Dust Of The North and my favourite is the gentle treatment on the main Lee "Scratch" Perry feature and closing track Reprise Of Light. Until then though, here is one of the two previews From The Womb To The Grave.



One final note before I wrap up, Snakes & Ladders is on Bandcamp twice but with good reason: cheaper shipping rates on the physical releases if you're in the USA! The link for the USA Bandcamp page is here - and just for redundancy's sake the EU / UK one is here as well. And that'll do it for this round, time got away from me a little bit again, but you can pretty much expect future posts to kind of be on this schedule for a while - they might even become sparser in the coming weeks because things will be getting busier IRL. But until then, as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF