*This is also posted on my personal blog, which features pictures of a hairy, mostly naked man this week.*
I listen to music constantly, and I’m constantly acquiring new things. So much, in fact, that serious evaluation on an album-by-album basis is impossible. To ensure my musical hoarding doesn’t amount to too much waste, I’ve elected to begin picking out choice tracks from my catch and reviewing them, here. I’m hoping to make this a weekly thing, every Thursday or Friday Saturday night, mods willin’.
*** This week saw the arrival of a few packages from Mimaroglu and Boomkat that I’d been expecting for some time, as well as the usual bumper crop of digital music. I’ve got an old track from 13 & God, new stuff from NWG (aka Niggas With Guitars), and a new compilation entry from Subeena.***
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13 & God – Von Gradleute (Hrvatski Remix) (from Men of Station / Soft Atlas on Anticon)
While researching a Keith Fullerton Whitman / Hrvatski split casette I invested in a few weeks ago, I came upon a happy discovery – a set of remixes that Whitman’s “breakcore” guise Hrvatski had created for the great Anticon supergroup 13 & God (a collaboration between “art rappers” Themselves and German art pop group The Notwist) – and I just had to have it. 13 & God was centrally important to my entry into indie music 6 or 7 years ago, when a friend of mine included their perfect pop song “Men Of Station” on a mixtape he sent me, and I fell in love. The prospect of Whitman (my favorite experimental composer) having his way with that song and others was too much to resist.
As a general rule, remixes (and album-length compendiums of them in particular) are a grab bag, as you’ll usually have so many different artists pulling the music in so many idiosyncratic directions that at best you’ll get a few remarkable edits among a number of inessential curiosities. The single format that the Men of Station / Soft Atlas release takes is a lot easier to handle, and it helps that it’s backloaded with the two Hrvatski remixes, one for each song. “Men of Station” was my favorite 13 & God effort, and much to my relief Whitman’s edit does not disappoint. The song’s central melodic motifs are wisely kept intact, and even augmented by swirling harp samples, as well as reverb and delay that are sorely lacking in the original, and Whitman’s frenetic jungle drum programming fits in better than it has any right to. I’m sort of perplexed it took me this long to figure out that this remix was out there – I can only imagine how ecstatic I would have been hearing this when I was first listening to 13 & God and Hrvatski.
Stream “Von Gradleute” on Soundcloud.
(I acquired “Men Of Station / Soft Atlas” on vinyl because I’m dumb like that, and if you’re dumb too KFW probably has a few more copies over at Mimaroglu, but normal people can find it on iTunes, along with the 13 & God full length. Their follow-up LP is due in the next few months, so that’s exciting.)
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Niggas With Guitars – Milky White (from Ethnic Frenzy on Digitalis Vinyl)
This was the other half of my 13 & God Mimaroglu shipment, one that I picked up on a whim based on chatter that I had heard from associate tape collectors I respected. I have no idea who these people are or why they felt like “Niggas With Guitars” would be a good name for their outfit, but their music is definitely interesting. The vinyl was so new when I got it that there was no indication of which side was which, so my naming convention might be way off.
“Milky White” (if that is indeed the name of the song) is either the second or fifth track on the 6-track album, and like all of NWG’s music that I’ve heard, it is quite disarming. It could, one imagines, fit nicely into some odder corner of the “chillwave” scene, steeped as it is in a certain sort of nostalgia – the lilting, gentle synth melodies and horn-like drones call to mind old nature film soundtracks or meditation music ripped from casette (fittingly, NWG kicked around the fringe music casette scene before landing this endorsement from the sterling Digitalis label). But more than anything else, it’s strongly reminiscent of the interlude music that Boards of Canada would insert between its more propulsive songs on their old albums. Lovely, if slight, music. Now if they could just do something about that name…
Listen to “Milky White” on Soundcloud.
(I purchased “Ethnic Frenzy” as soon as it hit Mimaroglu, and your best bet might be finding it there [it’s up there at the top] – if Discogs is to be believed, there are only 200 copies for the world, with the first run of 75 sold out at source. Better hurry!)
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Subeena – Miscalculate (from Super Volume 1 on Super Recordings)
I’ve waited for Italian producer Subeena to go “next level” popularity-wise for awhile now and it hasn’t happened, much to my chagrin. Of all the dubstep(ish) techno-leaning freshman producers to come out of the UK in the last few years, Subeena was by far my favorite, as her love of early Warp records sounds was something that I shared, and she spent some time in the Planet Mu roster, which I’ve always looked to for more forward-thinking trends in electronic music. Popularity’s kind of a relative thing in electronic circles but I’ve always felt like she didn’t get the sort of recognition her talent called for.
“Miscalculate”, which just popped up on her friend Raffertie’s Super Recordings compilation, doesn’t sound like it’s going to break that trend. Overall it takes after some of the more recent work she’s done for her own Opit label, which finds Subeena contributing vocals, and bringing a more rave-ish sensibility to the music. But I feel like this track in particular is a little too reminiscent of “Spectrum”, the b-side from her “Picture” single. Perhaps it’s just the fact that the track feels in general a little too much like a b-side (not that anyone should expect A-material to show up on label compilations, necessarily). The track is still fun enough, but in comparison to Subeena’s best work it doesn’t quite measure.
