When downloading Joseba Irazoki’s new EP, Negurdin, from the con-v.org netlabel, if your time and bandwidth is limited, stick with the odd-numbered tracks. Irzaoki is one of the most interesting guitarists today working outside of traditional song form. The vocals on the album, to the extent there are any, appear on the even cuts as […]
The aspiring hip-hop producers who populate the forums at cratekings.com work together for mutual musical benefit — and not only by commenting on each other’s work and pushing the collective to tweak each sample, hone each beat, and better craft each instrumental track that they post. They also collaborate, as on the 14-track compilation of […]
There’s something about Eastern-bloc electronic music that often suggests a heavy influence of synth-rock, the soundtracks of Golem, the space explorations of Cluster, the melodic drones of Tangerine Dream. Veron, of Budapest, Hungary, fits that mold, judging by a recent four-track release on the Stasisfield netlabel (stasisfield.com). It’s most noticeable on “Early Morning” (MP3), a […]
A new collaboration by Adrián Juárez and Juan José Calarco provides one of those situations wherein the sum of the parts is considerably less than the constituent parts themselves. Except in this case, that statement is not just a compliment; it’s a formal measure of the duo’s accomplishment. The material that Juárez and Calarco plumbed […]
Indie hip-hop figure Oh No has provided an album-length podcast for the Stones Throw label (stonesthrow.com/jukebox), in which he mixes up various afro-jazz tracks from the group Oneness of Juju, led by prolific saxophonist Plunky Branch. It’s a rough mix, with occasional gaps between tracks, and noticeable delay in some of the beatmatching, but Dr. […]
On Turns in the South, his recent two-CD set, Aaron Ximm delivers raw and filtered documentation of his travels. The highlight is a 40-minute track titled “Madurai Mani Fold” (MP3). Described by Ximm as an “epic of introspection,” it is an exercise in minimalist process. The lengthy track is built from but a mere few […]
Sound designer Tim Prebble keeps a prolific, enthusiastic and informative blog at his substation.co.nz website, often sharing experiences from the set of film productions. It’s the sort of place where he’ll link to a Fatboy Slim video one day, and then theorize on the value of temp tracks the next.
Late last month, he went into […]
A new collaboration between Rutger Zuydervelt and Stephen Vitiello has been released on the 12k label. It’s a collaboration in, with one exception, a purely conceptual sense — but since creative collaboration often has more to do with casting than with curation, more with people than with process, their innovative approach is especially appreciated.
The album, […]
In hip-hop, nothing sounds as contemporary these days as old school. It’s remarkable how much excellent beatmaking has resulted, of late, from the combination of a slightly dusty vocal sample, tweaked just so, and an automated beat. It’s a style perhaps most closely associated with A-list producer Kanye West, but everyone from Just Blaze to […]
Right on schedule, another month yields another free track from Monalake, aka Robert Henke. “Index I” was first a 12″ and later appeared on Hong Kong, the debut Monolake album, back when the act was a duo, before Henke’s partner, Gerhard Behles, left in order to start up the audio-software company that became Ableton Live. […]