Texas-based lawyer-cum-beatmaker Diego Bernal is back with Besides …, nearly a dozen tracks of downtempo, hip-hop-infused, crate-digging goodness. Lightly strummed guitar at the opening of “A Long Second” suggests some regional flavor, as flanging light noise and a raspy drum kit kick in, followed by wisps of r&b horns that sound more like memories than like samples. “Blue Neon,” a particular favorite, makes the most of a back beat, a hi-hat, a vocal call-out, and some sour organ playing.
The music is the like some secret side-project team-up between Ennio Morricone and DJ Premiere, mixing atmospheric melodrama and rough beats, especially on the haunging “2nd Degreed Bern,” with its quavering background strings, looped electric guitar, and swollen bass line. Not that it’s all music for late-night montages; “West Quad Lottery” ups the album’s heartbeat briefly, thanks to an exquisitely brief bass riff and a squonking horn part.
Get the full set for free through the “Download” button in the above interface, or visit the releasing record label (which is selling full-on vinyl versions at a steal): exponential.bandcamp.com.
Bernal’s previous album, For Corners, was one of my favorites of last year (full list at disquiet.com).
When musicians plumb the murky depths of their nostalgia, one might think they run the risk of alienating, or at least confusing, an audience with whom they do not share a common pop-cultural background. Camberwick Green was the name of a British TV series for children that apparently ran for a short time in the mid-1960s. It made enough of an impression on Guy Birkin of Nottingham, England, that he took a sample of the show’s opening theme music — a mix of music-box melody and spoken introduction — and fashioned from it his own contemporarily glitchy yet backward-glancing rendition.
If only there were a thin line between electronic music and European free improvisation. Instead, there’s more of thick, broad line — a gulf at times, really — between digitally processed music and the rich culture of abstract ensemble play. It’s a gulf occasionally, and increasingly, bridged by individuals like Ikue Mori and bands like Diatribes. The latter, consisting of d’incise (laptop & treatments, objects, percussions) and Cyril Bondi (drums, percussions), recently teamed up with the trio HKM+ (Ludger Hennig: laptop & software instruments; Christof Knoche: bass clarinet, live electronics; and Markus Markowski: prepared guitar, laptop & software instruments) and three other musicians: Piero SK (saxophones, metal clarinet), Robert Rehnig (laptop & software instruments), and Johannes Sienknecht (laptop & software instruments). The result is spectacular. At times, it’s spectacular simply because it’s exactly what such a teaming, what such a confluence, should sound like: hi-hats against droning synth tones, lightly brushed guitar chords against sharp textures, mouthy woodwind vibrations that seem to bleed into light static. 
