Artist: Max Tundra Album: Parallax Error Beheads You Label: Domino Release date: 20 October 2008 Genre: Electronic Style: Electro Pop/Experimental RIYL: Psapp, TunngTracklisting: 01. Gum Chimes 02. Will Get Fooled Again 03. Which Song 04. My Night Out 05. Orphaned 06. Nord Lead Three 07. The Entertainment 08. Number Our Days 09. Glycaemic Index Blues 10. Until We Die Total running time: 41' 47" [Max Tundra - Open MySpace page in a new window] [Max Tundra - Will Get Fooled Again - Video Clip] [Cooking With Max Tundra - Interview]
About Max Tundra by Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy, ex-Arcade Fire, Last Shadow Puppets arranger)
"Max and I met in Barcelona in 2005 at Primavera Sound. His slot was at 4am. He put on a mask, wrapped himself up in tape, and played forty minutes of music made mostly using Amiga sample tracker software from the late 1980s. There was virtuosic melodica playing, Pointer Sisters-style singing, and an eight-minute version of “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound Of Music. I was wasted and ended up passing out on a beach in my underwear. When the sun rose, I woke up with dried merengue and sand glued to my hair, and in a daze, I realized that I had just witnessed nothing less than the best music performance of my life.
What sets Max Tundra apart from any other band in the world is his attention to detail. This album is impossibly full of ideas, seeking out every imaginable sound in the world and giving each their own curtain call. When you listen to this album, you'd think that it was made by an eccentric millionaire, with every name-brand pop music producer in the world contributing their own two seconds of material. Upon closer inspection, you'd realize that it's been six years since “Mastered By Guy At The Exchange”; in that time, Max probably hasn't had a single good night's sleep.
I can't compare this record to any record I've ever heard before. Even Max's previous records are a distant echo. It is dance music, it is discourse, it is teen sex comedy, it is a video game, it is a dance troupe, it is a thirteen course meal with Amontillado. It is shock and awe. Listen and be humbled." [Domino]
Artist: Cut Copy Album: In Ghost Colours Label: Modular Release date: 22 March 2008 Genre: Electronic Style: Electro Pop/Synth Pop RIYL: New Order, Junior Boys, Simian Mobile DiscoTracklisting: 01. Feel The Love 02. Out There On The Ice 03. Lights And Music 04. We Fight For Diamonds 05. Unforgettable Season 06. Midnight Runner 07. So Haunted 08. Voices In Quartz 09. Hearts On Fire 10. Far Away 11. Silver Thoughts 12. Strangers In The Wind 13. Visions 14. Nobody Lost, Nobody Found 15. Eternity One Night Only Total running time: 50' 30" [Cut Copy - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player] [Cut Copy - Lights And Music - Video Clip] [Cut Copy - Future - Live]
"Cut Copy are set to return in 2008 with the shimmering timelessness of In Ghost Colours. Haunted with machines of the past and sounds of the future, In Ghost Colours inhabits the kind of space in time where trends are irrelevant and music is about feeling rather than following and 1969 is just as relevant as 2020.
In Ghost Colours traverses genres effortlessly, from already-anthem Hearts On Fire's epic sax-house to the noisy blissout of So Haunted. For Cut Copy the record was an exercise in drawing parallels between favourites old and new and trying to find a meeting point in between - from the vocodered robo-pop of French house to prog's soaring harmonies to the texture of shoegaze, In Ghost Colours lands at some sort of trans-galaxial intersection between these disparate planets.
This idea was something that appealed to Tim Goldsworthy, DFA's inhouse producer, programming guru, synth mogul and eventually muse for In Ghost Colours. Goldsworthy was enlisted to get nerdy on the project after a series of conversations with the band, who were admitted DFA fans, and when frontman Dan Whitford found he had found an equal to his obsession with ELO's Time record. When it was revealed that Goldsworthy had dropped out of school to follow My Bloody Valentine around England in the 80s and could pinpoint every pedal that was used for every sound on Loveless the contract was signed in blood. And so the band travelled to New York in early 2007 to spend 6 weeks tracking In Ghost Colours at DFA's Plantain Studio in the West Village, geeking out on DFA's collection of vintage analogue equipment and on an endless hunt for decent coffee.
The songs that Cut Copy had collected in the period since Bright Like Neon Love arrived in New York as promising bones of a more assured, song-based follow up. Upon encountering Goldsworthy's approach to recording, which Dan revealed involved a lot of experimentation. A lot of the time it was a matter of listening to where a track was at, then going over and picking up a random piece of gear, or messing around with pedals and filter, and seeing what you could get from it. Whether it ended up in the finished track or not, it was all a part of the process, and it was a fun and experimental one. This approach meant some sounds you hear on the record are entirely unique and impossible to replicate. From the epic trance breakdown in Far Away, to the sawtooth synth bass on Out There On The Ice, to when an old radio receiver was plugged direct into the analogue desk for Voices In Quartz, these sharp, succinct pop arrows to the heart are benefited from an array of special sonic sparkles.
The progression from Bright Like Neon Love to In Ghost Colours is brazenly apparent from opening track Feel The Love, an acoustic guitar led stomp of a space rock tune, instantly unforgettable and with recognizable Cut Copy glow. Where Bright Like Neon Love was charmingly vague and hazy, In Ghost Colours is directly to the point and efficient in it's songcraft, with vocals much more apparent and Whitford's imprint all over every track. The record is sewn together with passages of woozy dreamscapes between the straight up jams." [Modular]
Artist: Hot Chip Album: Made In The Dark Label: DFA Release date: 4 February 2008 Genre: Electronic Style: Dance Punk, Electro Pop RIYL: LCD Soundsystem, Junior Boys, Simian Mobile DiscoTracklisting: 01. Out At The Pictures 02. Shake A Fist 03. Ready For The Floor 04. Bendable Poseable 05. We're Looking For A Lot Of Love 06. Touch Too Much 07. Made In The Dark 08. One Pure Thought 09. Hold On 10. Wrestlers 11. Don't Dance 12. Whistle For Will 13. In The Privacy Of Our Love Total running time: 53' 57" [Hot Chip - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player] [Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor - Video Clip]
"The music making partnership of Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin came into existence in gradual stages, and has culminated in their third album Made In The Dark the follow up to the UK gold selling, Mercury Music Prize nominated album The Warning. Made in the Dark will be out February 5th.
The nuclei of the band is Taylor and Goddard, school friends who found common ground and began to make home recordings using an odd assortment of cheap synthesizers, guitars and percussion. Clarke, another school friend, joined the duo soon after, impressing them with his quick-witted playing and rather devious musical experiments. The end product of this era was the first full Hot Chip album Coming on Strong.
The Warning represented a great step forward in terms of songwriting and production, though the album was still recorded exclusively at home and without recourse to a professional studio (though they were grateful to DFA for the offer).Al Doyle and Felix Martin, already members of the band as well at work on their own musical projects, now joined the band full time as Hot Chip took off as a live entity, performing in the United States, the UK and Europe. The sound of the band evolved towards wilder, heavier electronics, though still coupled with a signature pop aesthetic." [source]
Artist: Erlend Øye Album: Unrest Label: Source/Astralwerks Release date: 10 February 2003 Genre: Electronic Style: Electro Pop/Synth PopTracklisting: 01. Ghost Trains [Produced by Morgan Geist] 02. Sheltered Life [Produced by Soviet] 03. Sudden Rush [Produced by Kompis] 04. Prego Amore [Produced by Jollymusic] 05. Every Party Has A Winner And A Loser [Produced by Prefuse 73] 06. The Athlete [Produce by Minizza] 07. Symptom Of Disease [Produced by Mr. Velcro Fastener] 08. The Talk [Produced by Bjørn Torske] 09. A While Ago And Recently [Produced by Kilogram] 10. Like Gold [Produced by Schneider TM] Total running time: 45' 15" [Erlend Øye - Sudden Rush - Video Clip] [Erlend Øye - Every Party Has A Winner And A Loser - Live Acoustic @ Santiago de Chile]
"When you think of a diva, probably the last person that comes to mind is Erlend Øye. In terms of physical dimensions, the featherweight, Poindexter-glasses Øye looks more like a guy that would help you out with your calculus than the kind of person who would get people on the floor. Work experience? Øye made his name with the Norwegian duo Kings of Convenience, an outfit bookish enough to title an album Quiet Is the New Loud without gagging over their own preciousness. They're not exactly Fischerspooner where image is concerned.
And yet, the Kings have already tipped their hand about their secret predilection for the electronic world, having released the remix album Vs. last year with work from the likes of Røkysopp and Four Tet. Now, Øye's decided to take the complete binary plunge-- he'll Garfunkel no more! Collaborating with a slew of laptop jockeys from around the world on each artist's home turf, Øye's strung together an LP that's all about the disco.
For an album where each track is under new management from the one before it, Unrest remains remarkably consistent in tone and quality. It helps that all of Øye's collaborators, no matter the pedigree, leave the avant-garde leanings at home for fairly straightforward electro-pop atmospheres wrapped rather conventionally around what I assume were pre-prepared verse/chorus/verse Øye originals. Here, frontiersmen like Prefuse 73 and Schneider TM prove themselves equally capable of applying their arsenal to a more direct sound (Schneider TM, in particular, have some previous experience from their 2002 album Zoomer) as they are to working in abstract territories.
However, the more immediately appealing songs are by artists already hip-deep in Italo-disco or house. Morgan Geist kicks off the proceedings with an understated, moody synth bonanza on "Ghost Trains," then is narrowly outdone by the livelier hydraulic-hiss percussion and swoop-strings of his fellow Americans in electro band Soviet, who are not afraid to make "Sheltered Life" bounce beneath Øye's croon. But like most things these days, Sweden takes the opening trio of tunes, representative Kompis shellacking "Sudden Rush" with a subtle lite-rock sheen and a perfect head-bob bassline.
Compared to these easy-swallow tablets, the more heady work of the marquee acts take a bit more time to sink in. Prefuse 73's "Every Party" throws Øye onto a set of Scott Herren's trademark Nordictrack-glide beats to make the song stand out from the tighter house beats of its neighbors, but also never reaches the peaks of the more trad-club jams. Schneider TM, on the other hand, brings the affair to a new level without sacrificing the song format, irregular drums and sudden clumps of notes still coming together to appropriately swoon under the "my baby" romantic choruses of "Like Gold".
But let's not commit the sin of forgetting young Mr. Øye just because it's annoying to keep inserting that "Ø" symbol-- he's playing conductor through all this jazz, and he does it skillfully. Whereas his decidedly non-dramatic voice might sound like a limitation in this kind of setting on paper, his cool delivery is run through with just enough melody to be more hummable (see: "The Talk") than the ironic detachment that sometimes brings down this genre. Quietly assured, he recalls no one so much as the Notwist's Markus Acher, another fish-out-of-water finding a new home amongst the whirring machines.
Thus, despite sagging a bit in the middle, Unrest skillfully skirts the myriad ways this kind of variety project could go wrong. The main failing I'd peg is a disappointing tendency to be overly retro-based, all too focused on Stevie Wonder keyboards and the days of asymmetric hair. With indie rock and dance music showing indications that they might be merging onto the same highway somewhere in the near future, it's time to tone down the recycling and start applying the innovations of IDM to this ungodly, and possibly thrilling, hybrid. While only Schneider TM seems fully up to that promise on Unrest, it still stands by Enon and The Postal Service as another important signpost on the way to new pixilated horizons. Forward things push let's!" [source]
Artist: People Press Play Album: People Press Play Label: Morr Music Release date: 15 June 2007 Genre: Electronic Style: Electro Pop/Indietronica/DowntempoTracklisting: 01. Girl 02. Always Wrong 03. These Days 04. That Walk 05. Hanging On 06. Frail 07. Studio 08. Before Me 09. Everything 10. Stop Total running time: 38' 26" [People Press Play - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]
"At its simplest, System (Future 3 members Anders Remmer, Jesper Skaaning, Thomas Knak) plus singer Sara Savery equals People Press Play. But reducing the quartet and its self-titled album to an equation does a disservice to this exceptional album's fully-realized electronic pop. Informed by its creators' many years of experience in constructing meticulous electronic atmospheres and rhythms, the album's ten songs are intimate, melancholic, joyous, dreamy, and pulsating—perfect vehicles for Savery's versatile voice, which easily moves from crystal clear (“These Days”) and intimate (“Always Wrong”) to alluring (“Hanging On”).
Traces of other groups can be glimpsed: a song like “Frail” likens People Press Play to a more beat-focused Susanna and the Magical Orchestra; “Always Wrong” pairs Savery's voice with a bass-heavy propulsion reminiscent of Remmer's Dub Tractor style; and a subtle injection of shoegaze roar informs “Everything” and “Stop” while “Girl” sweetens her whispered murmur with blurry sheets of sound. And though People Press Play's style is distinctive, largely instrumental tracks like “Studio” and “That Walk” reveal that the quartet's style isn't radically different from System's (notwithstanding its recent move into dubstep on Tempo EP), once Savery's singing is removed. Even so, the sparkle of the musical backing provides a gorgeous support for her relaxed vocal in “Hanging On” while the chiming electro-pop of “These Days” shadows Savery's voice with Theremin-styled counterpoint that—in an alternate universe at least—would have hit single written all over it." [source]
Artist: Misha Album: Teardrop Sweetheart Label: Tomlab Release date: 19 June 2007 Genre: Electronic Style: Electro Pop/Indie RockTracklisting: 01. Scars 02. Losing 03. Anaconda 04. Wheaterbees 05. Summersend 06. Crystal In Love 07. Delovedly 08. The Book (Of Glaciers) 09. Cruelist Heart 10. Shake A Little Looser 11. Trying Total running time: 39' 11" [Misha - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player]
"Misha are Ashley Yao and John Chao. The two have crossed paths since their childhood days in Taipei, but each time, circumstances caused them to move, wandering the world (here in Hong Kong, there in Paris) until they met again after college in New York. Two years after their debut on the highly respected Alphabet-Singles-Series on Tomlab, the Asian/American duo now presents their first LP "Teardrop Sweetheart": a cycle of happy/sad love songs with a new take on an old pleasure: the classic pop album. Walking the line between traditional songwriting and modern music making, settings of grandeur and intimate doubts, Ash and John make little big things, imagining a dimestore Joseph Cornell, Buster Keaton with holes in his shoes.
Revolving around seemingly light-hearted lyrics, bittersweet melodies, and analog circuitry, the opener „Scars“ sets the tone of the album, combining the "anything goes" sound and structure of contemporary pop with the glamor-filled, nostalgic optimism of the modern era, when everything burned brightly and anything was possible. Of course there is no way back to innocence (but cynicism is not the only way out). Below the bright and colorful side of Teardrop Sweetheart lurks something darkly. Misha compare this feeling of dislocation to an empty city. Imagine Neon-Shanghai or Tokyo in a movie by Wong Kar-Wai. A place overwhelmed by new ideas replacing old traditions. But the city’s core feels hollow. Something is missing. This is Misha’s attempt to fill this void, not only by giving some comfort but also raising questions about this failure of belonging a lot of people nowadays can relate to.
Misha sets these ruins of love on top of their disparate influences and childhood sounds, here Bollywood and Brill Buildings manifest, and there Tropicalia and Sino-pop ebb away. Van Dyke Parks and Burt Bacharach have clearly left their marks in Misha’s quirky songwriting as well as Billy Strayhorn, RD Burman, Kraftwerk, the duo of Froom and Blake, and Os Mutantes in the skillfully crafted arrangements. (Just don't mention the little group from Liverpool.)
Broadway-sized strings, and horn sections are brought into strange environments built from rather ready-at-hand ingredients. Held together by the sense of nostalgia and dislocation, the album ranges from the Troplicaliaesque „Anaconda“ and secret anthems like „Summersend“ to the weird electro//Quasimoto-tribute tune „Cruelist Heart“ and the quirky ballad „Delovedly“ (ok, it's a bit more John than Paul). The songs came into being in Misha’s bedroom near Union Square, in what used to be The Strokes' old apartment - such are the vagaries of New York rent-controlled living. Emerging from a set of trans-atlantic valentines, these songs were produced, mixed, and mastered all over the world. Both members move around a bit – Ash works as a model (in the same agency as R’n’B up-and-comer Cassie) and John pays off his school debt with a suit-and-tie day job. Feel for Tomlab and producer Mense Reents (Ego Express, Die Goldenen Zitronen, Stella) who deconstructed the songs-in-the-rough with his canny approach from techno, punk, and pop music, dragging in good friends and Hamburg’s finest musicians like DJ Koze (for sanity checking), DJ Phono from Deichkind (for mastering), and Ted Gaier and Melissa Logan from Die Goldenen Zitronen and Chicks on Speed (who lent a place to stay), before mixing the techni-colour miniatures of "Teardrop Sweetheart“ with a touch of fancy seduction." [source]
Artist: Matthew Dear Album: Asa Breed Label: Ghostly Release date: 5 June 2007 Genre: Electronic Style: Tech House/Electro PopTracklisting: 01. Fleece On Brain 02. Neighborhoods 03. Deserter 04. Shy 05. Elementary Lover 06. Don And Sherri 07. Will Gravity Win Tonight? 08. Pom Pom 09. Death To Feelers 10. Give Me More 11. Midnight Lovers 12. Good To Be Alive 13. Vine To Vine Total running time: 44' 23" [Matthew Dear - Open MySpace Standalone Music Player] [Matthew Dear - Deserter - Promo Video] [Matthew Dear - Pom Pom - Promo Video]
""In a fantasy world—which probably won't happen—I'd like to take minimal techno and make pop out of it, the same way Depeche Mode and New Order did 15 to 20 years ago," Matthew Dear told me in a 2003 interview. Guess what? Dear's fantasy world has become reality.
The transition from techno producer to singing/lyric-writing techno producer is rarely attempted, never mind executed with competence. Sterling examples could be cited on one hand (um, can I get back to you?), which makes this Detroit minimal-techno artist's stabs at being a laptop-tapping song-and-dance man so refreshing. He established himself in the early '00s the way most underground-techno savants do: with instrumental cuts geared for dance-floor devastation. But on 2003's Leave Luck to Heaven and 2004's Backstroke, Dear included his own vocals (think Bill Callahan or Leonard Cohen—low, lugubrious, lecherous), and the results were club gold that also clicked in the bedroom.
Asa Breed finds the man furthering his songcraft within the genre, his flat, sometimes stilted voice complementing his low-slung, artfully spare techno. The disc's first single, "Deserter," is twinkling, vaporous electro pop that falls somewhere between Seefeel and the Postal Service, and "Death to Feelers" coheres around an ultra-cute, spangly synth motif that typifies the record's tension between escapist and earthy inclinations.
Throughout much of Asa Breed, Dear achieves a serendipitous balance between the uplifting and the eerie, the hummable and the hypnotic, the tuneful and the texturally adventurous. You can hear a refreshing strain of electronic pop—with occasional African-inflected rhythms and Jon Hassell–esque ambiance—struggling to be born here. It's a sly, seductive effort that could help Dear break out of the techno ghetto. (Not that there's anything wrong with techno ghettos.)" [source]
Artist: Schneider TM Album: Skoda Mluvit Label: City Slang Release date: 21 April 2006 Genre: Electronic Style: Indie Rock/Electro Rock/Electro PopTracklisting: 01. More Time 02. Pac Man / Shopping Cart 03. Peanut 04. S'kcorratiug 05. Caplets 06. Vodou 07. Skoda Mluvit 08. The Blacksmith [Feat. Max Turner] 09. Klexx 10. Cataractact 11. The Slide 12. A Ride 13. The World's A Cup Total running time: 58' 11" [Schneider TM - Pac Mac / Shopping Cart - Video Clip] [Schneider TM - The Slide - Video Clip]
"From the outside, Dirk Dresselhaus’ apartment is much like any in the Prenzlauerberg district of Berlin, housed inside a hulking, grey, pockmarked exterior that towers five tall stories above the cobbled streets. It’s different inside, though. In the room he uses as a studio, but which also doubles as his living space, a drum kit has been erected, though it sometimes doubles as a keyboard stand. A huge desk is filled with electronic equipment and guitar pedals linked together, all threaded through an antique mixing desk. There are guitars lying on the floor and spread across chairs and sofas. On the floor are a variety of strange wooden objects, elaborate traditional instruments that resemble wild variations on a xylophone.
This is the room that, for two years, played womb to Skoda Mluvit, a remarkable album that sees Dresselhaus – known to friends and fans alike as Schneider TM – continue his unusual journey through the netherworld of ‘indie’ and ‘electronic’ music. It’s a room that Schneider, on occasions, didn’t leave for days at a time, locking himself away whilst he tinkered with and poked at anything he could find that made a sound. He calls it Constructionsite Studios – not because it looks like it’s currently being renovated, which frankly it does, but because he is constantly surrounded by the sounds of construction as workmen continue the repairs to the delapidated buildings of the old East Berlin. You can hear the noise in the dying moments of Skoda Mluvit, hidden away as a secret track.
Skoda Mluvit is an album that encapsulates all the things that have led to Schneider TM being one of the most unusual but respected artists out there. He hovers between pop and avant-garde, as comfortable being compared to Matthew Herbert as to the Pet Shop Boys. Perhaps that’s why Zoomer, his last album, didn’t achieve quite the stratospheric commercial success that critics had earmarked for it: people simply didn’t know where to place it. Schneider, after all, is just as likely to discuss extreme noise bands from Japan as he is West Coast hip-hop.
This still shows on Skoda Mluvit, but the times have caught up with him: electronic musicians are integrating acoustic instruments into their music with such fervour it’s become almost as much of a cliché as when indie rock bands added “a dance element” to their sound in the early ‘90s. But the thing here is: Schneider doesn’t actually know what he’s doing. He just can’t help himself. So the thoroughly uncontrived results include the lethargic acoustic funk of “Peanut”, the distorted noise of “S’kcorratiug”, something that Schneider describes as Fela Kuti mixing Neil Young’s Greendale with the blues (“Vodou”), the twisted hip hop of “The Blacksmith”, the sweet soul melody of “Cataractact”, the whorl of sound around “The Slide” and the utterly undefinable “A Ride”.
On the album sleeve, Schneider lists every single thing that he used as source material for the sounds that make up his album. But this is misleading. You wouldn’t expect sailing trousers, a cigarette lighter, a pool table or paper to have played a part in this brilliantly playful, if elaborate, collection of warped but brilliant pop. But then again you wouldn’t expect Fela Kuti and Neu! to collide with such grace, or Sun Ra and Teenage Fanclub to gel so elegantly. Schneider is a master of unusual concoctions – that is no doubt why he originally came to so many people’s attention when he and long time collaborator KPT.Michi.Gan covered The Smiths’ “There’s A Light That Never Goes Out” to such devastating effect on their sublime electronic version, “The Light 3000”.
On Skoda Mluvit he continues a journey he began with Moist in 1998, when he turned his back – initally temporarily – on his successful indie act, Locust Fudge, and a developing career as a VJ on German TV. Initially he indulged himself in the extremities of sound that electronica opened up to him, but slowly he began to integrate his indie roots into the songs, resulting in 2002’s Zoomer, a masterpiece of what was dubbed “indietronica”, packed with off-kilter pop nous – “Frogtoise”, inspired by animal surgery experiments carried out in Dresselhaus’ dreams; “Reality Check”, a brilliantly subliminal protest song – and sonic exploration that he dubbed “chemical listening”.
Skoda Mluvit sees him combine all the different elements of his musical interest to even greater effect. But it’s not just about how he recorded, or what he recorded with, so much as why he recorded, that lies at the heart of Skoda Mluvit’s genius. Following the release of Zoomer, Schneider TM – accompanied by his trusty cohorts in the Schneider TM Experience, KPT.Michi.Gan and Mek O’Baam – made his way around the world. They criss-crossed across the whole of Europe, taking in unusual dates on a Goethe-Institut sponsored tour through southern and eastern Europe; they traversed America, including a lengthy tour with The Faint and Les Savy Fav; they performed in Japan; they played in Brazil. They broke down at midday in non-air conditioned vans in the desert whilst tripping. They stayed up all night so as not to waste money on feculent hotel rooms. And they partied hard. This had its upside, like the night their van was broken into, something far more bearable under the soothing effects of ecstasy. But it had its downside. The downside was that it had to end. And when it did they were incapable of dealing with the sudden stillness. And that, says Dresselhaus, is when things started going wrong.
What happened is irrelevant. As Schneider’s Czech grandmother would say, “Skoda mluvit”, her way of dismissing a painful but tired subject. “It’s not worth mentioning”, it means, “move on.” The phrase became a motto as Schneider struggled to deal with the stuff that was going on in his life – standard post-tour tedium, relationship problems, a bad motorcycle accident - and he used the music as “a kind of voodoo”, he laughs. It clearly worked, given his good humour now the album is completed.
Life on the road had exposed to him to so many new things that he has no idea where Skoda Mluvit came from, so if you ask him what his influences were he’ll shrug. He stated that Zoomer had been influenced by old soul records, especially Shuggie Otis’ Information Inspiration. Skoda Mluvit, though, is the result of exploring even further the roots of music with which he had fallen in love. Especially evident is a love of dub and afrobeat, but as Schneider says, “I had no intentions – it just came from inside. But you never forget your roots. And,” he adds, “apart from Panasonic I don’t listen to electronic music at all.”
For the first time he wrote lyrics before he wrote music, articulating things that he had to get out his system. That might be hard to believe when you hear a song like “Caplets”, which riffs on the Instructions For Use from a packet of Aspirin, or the shroom-inspired madness of “Pac Man / Shopping Cart”, but there’s a magic to the lyrics, a logic in the nonsense. “To be honest,” Schneider explains, “their real meaning often lies between the lines.” He started to obsess over the sound of wood, purchasing, amongst other things, a Ghanian Bellafon, and then became increasingly fascinated by the noises he could make with the everyday objects that he found around him. Rather than sample and process them, however, he simply integrated these as he heard them, like trousers being rubbed to make the sound of a shaker. At other times he allowed unscheduled interruptions to remain part of the mix – the telephone ringing during “The Blacksmith”, for example, was completely unplanned.
Schneider tried to maintain a sense of childish innocence throughout the recording, and much of the album is made up of first takes. “I tried to keep it minimal,” he explains, “ to find the essence of the music, and to find a balance in the chaos.” But whilst the music emerged from a bleak time in his life, that post-Zoomer comedown, he didn’t want it to sound morose. Like the album’s artwork, a simple beauty emerges from a sombre background. “It’s dark,” he believes, “but it’s delivered in a light hearted fashion. It’s not intellectual. But it is spiritual.”
A number of guests grace the album: Edith Kuss, the grandmother who inspired the album’s title, is charmingly integrated into the title track; Max Turner, the Berlin based poet and rapper joins her on the title track and also steps up on “The Blacksmith”, whilst cellist Hildur Gudnadottir (who has previously collaborated with Icelandic act Múm and Panasonic’s Ilpo Vaisanen) plays a valuable role on a number of tracks. Plus, of course, regular collaborator KPT.Michi.Gan plays a vital part on tunes like the hypnotic opener “More Time”, which employs mathematical tricks in much the same way as My Bloody Valentine’s “Feed Me With Your Kiss” as it rushes to its final, inevitable conclusion.
“It’s indie rock ragga,” Schneider jokes of the finished album. Like everything on Skoda Mluvit, that concept is much easier to embrace than you might think." [source]
Artist: Hot Chip Album: The Warning Label: Astralwerks Release date: 13 June 2006 Genre: Electronic Style: Indie Rock/Electro Pop/Dance PunkTracklisting: 01. Careful 02. And I Was A Boy From School 03. Colours 04. Over And Over 05. (Just Like We) Breakdown 06. Tchaparian 07. Look After Me 08. The Warning 09. Arrest Yourself 10. So Glad To See You 11. No Fit State 12. Won't Wash Total running time: 41' 29" [Hot Chip - And I Was A Boy From School - Video Clip] [Hot Chip - Colours - Video Clip]
"Tragedy and comedy: they're more than just two masks adorning a Mötley Crüe album cover. They’re also alternate aspects of the same human emotional impulse. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry, but the rapid beat of the heart remains; our breath gets shorter; salty tears form in the corners of our eyes. It's like this with many parts of the psyche—our inclination towards the divine is but a flicker away from our animal instincts, the urge to think comes in constant friction with the desire to act; the banal forever kicking the sublime in its ass. Hot Chip are a band that make brilliant, mostly electronic pop music that lingers in this tense, electric region of the human consciousness. It's similar to the places that Prince (God vs. gonads), Abba (spirit vs. style), and New Order (innocence vs. experience) have all taken us—the better to slap us in the face with our own humanity. Throughout The Warning, their second album, Hot Chip work up a sweltering cauldron of beauty and ugliness, sublimity and banality, tender touches and sucker punches.
The intro track, "Careful," is your actual warning. Warm verging-on-ambient synths abruptly knocked-up by huddle-formation beats and an incongruously longing chorus of "every year, about this time of year / I am with you as if you are here" both of which drop out periodically to reveal delicate ahhhs and tickling xylophone-esque synths. "And I Was a Boy from School" continues the swerving around your expectations—a clipped disco beat demanding you to dance to the narrator's vague romantic memories, broken up by the smooth, sustained melancholy of a mis-shape's recollection ("We tried, but we didn't have long / We tried, but we don't belong"). "Colours" is even more wistful ("I only wanted for to see / There's nothing in this heart but me / And everything we want is not free"), but the twee sentiment rides on a slowly building motorik-style beat that turns loneliness into a dating-game mantra ("I'm everything a girl could need"). The first single, "Over and Over," released late last year, wields a maddening techno-hop bass-and-drum motif like a weapon, insisting you "lay back" while the "spell of repetition" pulls you into doing anything but, heavy wigged-out synths and distorted guitar in tandem beating all thoughts of relaxation from your mind. "(Just Like We) Breakdown," which benefits little from the DFA remix tacked on, is another strong dance track—a thick, thunking drum pattern beefed-up with melodic key stabs and an irrefutable Zen koan ("all in the name of what we're not sure") hidden in its pants. It pulls at the heartstrings like a deep house anthem, then leaves you standing outside the rave waiting to be frisked.
If the first half of The Warning establishes the method to Hot Chip's madness, the second is where they see how far the formula can be spread—generally with good, though sometimes jarring, results. "Tchaparian" is the closest thing to the goofier material found on Coming on Strong—the mood is truly silly throughout, evoking Lewis Carroll by way of Philosophy 101 ("What can be drunk in a dream / What can be dreamt in a drink"). The title track is more flippant still, but right in the face of a heartfelt vacancy ("Excuse me sir, I'm lost / I'm looking for a place where I can get lost / I'm looking for a hope for my malfunctioning being / I'm looking for the mechanical music museum")—then of course it turns into "Hot Chip will break your legs / Snap off your head," and we're given the best dose we'll get of their full-on prankster mode. But from there, we go right into "Look After Me," the most unflinchingly and unselfconsciously lovely song they've written so far, even going so far as to swipe a line from Bacharach & David's "Walk on By." I mark it as the moment where the band lets their guard down and aims for nothing more complex than sweet vulnerability. After this highlight, most anything would feel a letdown, but "Look After Me" is followed by "Arrest Yourself" and "So Glad to See You," which I would enjoy as b-sides, but which seem superfluous once we've reached the 35 minute mark. Without these two songs, The Warning would be rubbing shoulders with Off the Wall, Beauty and the Beat, and Different Class, and there is no higher praise I can give an album. Thankfully the final track, "No Fit State," is another triumph—a compressed funk back-beat billowing along on warm analog synths that hearken back to the album’s beginning and featuring both Chip mainmen Alexis Taylor (the faux falsetto, yearning one) and Joe Goddard (the laddish, half-rapping one) on vocals. It adds a charmingly epic and weighty feel to the end of a record that seems equally divided in its desires to be both sardonic and your savior.
The fact that Hot Chip can take all these conflicting moods, string them together, and make of them a satisfying whole is testament to their understanding of the classic rubric of the pop album—an identifiable, unique sound that has enough room to allow for variety and enough consistency to keep the listener's attention. It's astonishing, then, that a band so very easy to listen to has been afforded such a stilted reception. Much has been made of whether or not Hot Chip should be taken "seriously." Seriousness, as you ought to know, is an epidemic that afflicts the rock community like scurvy does stranded sailors. Humor is the purview of those free of this dreadful affliction, and we're told never the twain shall meet. But with Hot Chip, they get together often, go out for drinks, and spend the night awkwardly groping each others' private parts. Taking a match to the balsa wood tower of popular music's inflated sense of "meaningfulness," the embers left after Hot Chip's conflagration burn with a profundity that eludes the po-faced masses." [source]
Artist: The Whitest Boy Alive Album: Dreams Label: Smalltown Supersound Release date: 5 June 2006 Genre: Rock Style: Indie Rock/Electro PopTracklisting: 01. Burning 02. Above You 03. Inflation 04. Fireworks 05. Done With You 06. Don't Give Up 07. Figures 08. Borders 09. Golden Cage 10. All Ears Total running time: 41' 29" [The Whitest Boy Alive - Golden Cage - Video Clip] [The Whitest Boy Alive - Burning - Video Clip]
"Alongside his partner Eirik Glambek Bøe, Erlend Øye spent most of the early ’00s playing timid Norwegian folk-pop in Kings of Convenience, a brainy guitar-and-voice duo whose name perfectly reflected its stripped-down setup. Between Kings releases, Øye has also tended to a sideline in electronic music, releasing a solo album made with a group of guest producers and assembling a likable mix-CD that featured his singing over disco-house tracks by other acts.
Øye’s latest project is the Whitest Boy Alive, a Berlin-based quartet that began in 2003 as a dance group but “has slowly developed into a band without any programmed elements,” as explained carefully on its website. Once again, the group’s name is apt: Dreams, the Boy’s debut, is a remarkably wimpy bit of indie pop, meticulously constructed out of breathy vocal melodies, spindly guitar lines and romantic reflections like this one, from “Fireworks”: “You keep your cards so close to your chest, you’re making me confused.” Poor baby!
Yet thanks to Øye’s time-tested trust in the merits of minimalism, Dreams doesn’t play like the overly precious pity party it could have been. In its uncluttered economy, the music echoes early-’80s outfits such as Young Marble Giants and Everything But the Girl (before its own dance-music phase). And despite his self-effacing manner, Øye actually manages to give a few numbers a sly sexiness that should make him a pinup on the walls of public-library break rooms worldwide." [source]
Artist: Tarwater Album: Spider Smile Label: Morr Music Release date: 20 April 2007 Genre: Electronic Style: Electro Pop/DowntempoTracklisting: 01. Shirley Temple 02. World Of Things To Touch 03. Witch Park 04. A Marriage In Belmont 05. Lower Manhattan Pantoum 06. Roderick Usher 07. Arkestra 08. When Love Was The Law In Los Angeles 09. Easy Sermon 10. Sweet Home Under White Clouds 11. When Tomorrow Comes Total running time: 45' 35" [Tarwater - Witch Park - Video Clip]
"Electronically-adept but fond of pop hooks, unsentimental but never austere, Tarwater has always toyed with the mind-body problem. Here on their eighth full-length, the band’s two principals — Ronald Lippok (ex of To Roccoco Rot) and Bernd Jestram — find a nearly perfect balance between digital cleanliness and human warmth. Slipping sensual beats under intellectually challenging abstractions, Spider Smile expands on the brainy pop forays of 2005’s The Needle Was Travelling and takes them another step forward.
Consider how “World of Things to Touch,” one of the disc’s highlights, begins in a squawk and squall of synthesized sounds, then resolves like a developing Polaroid into lighthearted rhythmic pop. The cut is breezily, easily in motion, built on a groove that carries you blithely through the song. And yet, there’s something uneasy buried within the verses, a tension between sensuality and intellect that turns up in lyrics like: “She wondered how far he had come / and what it cost him to return / all the memories he brought back / would be deleted by / the world of things to touch.”
Or later, on “A Marriage in Belmont”, when icy cascades of keyboard notes splatter over a hip-shifting beat, you can almost hear the clash of pristine intellectuality and the pleasures of dancing. The lyrics are opaque, at intervals rife with natural imagery, as the protagonists hang upside down like bats or, in the song’s most evocative lyric “walk ... into the cobalt blue.” There seems to be a desire to merge with the natural world, express both in organic sounds and nature-loving lyrics. And yet there’s something chilly and observant in these songs that separates the dancer from the dance.
Spider Smile has more vocal-less cuts than The Needle Was Travelling; roughly a third of the album is instrumental. These are a bit less accessible than the ones with words, yet quite lovely in their own terms. “Shirley Temple” opens the disc, and has a slow echoey dignity to it, its overhanging harpsichord tones merging with space-ship howls and drones. And “Witch Park” is sheer syncopated joy, metallic clangs and reverberating drum slaps bouncing off synthetic keyboards, some sort of Eastern-flavored woodwind buzzing around in the background.
There’s a certain amount of philosophy embedded in these songs, and an unsettling end-of-days tinge to at least a couple of them. “Lower Manhattan Pantoum” opens with the observation that it’s, “Always a bad sign / People on the sidewalk looking up”, abstractly evoking a certain September day early in the decade, but without exactly saying so. “Easy Sermon” also refers to current events obliquely, describing a time, “When every scripture leads to rapture ... When towers are falling and muezzins are calling / The message will come to the deaf and the dumb.” And yet the beat is so insistent, the keyboard melody so clear and cool-headed, that you might easily miss the politics.
And really, that’s okay, because Spider Smile is the kind of album you can play in the background (or foreground) for sheer musical pleasure. It’s full of beautiful beats and fluctuating layers of melody, its lyrical fragments, delivered in a deep echoing monotone, can stick in your head without ever attaching themselves to literal meanings. You can dig deeper — there’s plenty underneath — but there’s plenty to enjoy on the surface." [source]
Artist: Björk Album: Volta Label: One Little Indian Release date: 7 May 2007 Genre: Electronic Style: Tribal/Electro PopTracklisting: 01. Earth Intruders 02. Wanderlust 03. The Dull Flame Of Desire 04. Innocence 05. I See Who You Are 06. Vertebrae By Vertebrae 07. Pneumonia 08. Hope 09. Declare Independence 10. My Juvenile 11. I See Who You Are [Mark Bell Mix] Total running time: 55' 14" [Björk - Earth Intruders - Video Clip]
"Once again finding harmony and creating alchemy between seeming opposites, on Volta Björk is bold but thoughtful, delicate yet strong, accessible and avant. The intricacy and complexity of projects like Medúlla and Drawing Restraint 9 suggested that she might have left the more direct side of her work behind, but Volta's opening track and lead single, "Earth Intruders," puts that notion to rest: the song literally marches in, riding a bubbling, ritualistic beat courtesy of Timbaland and Konono No. 1's electric thumb-pianos. Björk howls "Turmoil! Carnage!" like incantations over the din, and after several albums' worth of beautiful whispers, it's a joy to hear her raise her voice and volume like this. "Wanderlust" follows and provides the yin to "Earth Intruders"' yang, its horns and brooding melody giving it the feel of a moodier, more contemplative version of "The Anchor Song." These two songs set the tone for the rest of Volta's pendulum-like swings between sounds and moods, all of which are tied together by found-sound and brass-driven interludes that give the impression that the album was recorded in a harbor -- an apt metaphor for how ideas and collaborators come and go on this album. Timbaland's beats resurface on "Innocence," another of Volta's most potent moments; a sample of what sounds like a man getting punched in the gut underscores Björk's viewpoint that purity is something powerful, not gentle. Antony and the Johnsons' Antony Hegarty lends his velvety voice to two outstanding but very different love songs: "The Dull Flame of Desire" captures swooning romance by pairing Björk and Hegarty's voices with a slowly building tattoo courtesy of Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale; "My Juvenile," which is dedicated to Björk's son Sindri, closes Volta with a much gentler duet. Considering how much sonic and emotional territory the album spans -- from the brash, anthemic "Delare Independence," which sounds a bit like Homogenic's "Pluto," to "Pneumonia" and "Vertebrae by Vertebrae," which are as elliptical and gentle as anything on Vespertine or Drawing Restraint 9 -- Volta could very easily sound scattered, but this isn't the case. Instead, it finds the perfect balance between the vibrancy of her poppier work in the '90s and her experiments in the 2000s." [source]
Artist: Dntel Album: Dumb Luck Label: Sub Pop Release date: 24 April 2007 Genre: Electronic Style: Ambient Pop/Electro Pop/GlitchTracklisting: 01. Dumb Luck 02. To A Fault [Feat. Grizzly Bear] 03. I'd Like To Know [Feat. Lali Puna] 04. Roll On [Feat. Rilo Kiley] 05. The Distance [Feat. Arthur & Yu] 06. Rock My Boat [Feat. Mia Doi Todd] 07. Natural Resources [Feat. Fog] 08. Breakfast In Bed [Feat. Bright Eyes] 09. Dreams [Feat. Mystic Chords Of Memory] Total running time: 41' 19" [Dntel - (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan - Video Clip] [Jimmy Tamborello - Studio Tour]
"Jimmy Tamborello likes to take his time. Thirteen years after starting to work under the Dntel moniker and almost six years after releasing his last Dntel full-length, Life is Full of Possibilities (Plug Research), he has painstakingly built and birthed Dumb Luck, an album five years in the making.
Thick with Tamborello’s signature electronic washes and genius beat placement, Dumb Luck is an album lyrically as much about human distance as connection. With vocal contributions from friends Jenny Lewis (Rilo Kiley), Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Valerie Trebeljahr and Markus Acher (Lali Puna), Mia Doi Todd, Grant Olsen and Sonya Westcott (Arthur & Yu), Andrew Broder (Fog), Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) and Christopher and Jennifer Gunst (Mystic Chords of Memory), the organic instrumentation by Chris Hathwell (drummer, Moving Units) and Paul Larson (guitarist, The Minor Canon) is manipulated, chopped and pasted amidst Tamborello’s skittish beats, house clicks, organ washes and dreamily pixelated symphonies. The result is at once understatedly epic, ethereal and concrete.
Like Mistake Mistake Mistake Mistake (Plug Research), his 2006 release under the name James Figurine, and The Postal Service’s 2003 release Give Up, Tamborello meticulously labored over each element of his bit-crushed compositions in his LA home studio. Fueled by a short attention span, his distaste for working on any one project for extended periods of time meant that this was, like most worthwhile things, a process fraught with redefinition and constant change.
After all, producing, engineering and songwriting initially started out as pre-teen after-school fun for Tamborello, whose early interests were breakdancing music and ‘80s techno pop (and later the sonic tampering of Skinny Puppy and Aphex Twin). In the mid-to-late ‘90s, he played in the post-hardcore band Strictly Ballroom and satisfied his ‘80s techno pop appetite with the (still active) Figurine he also played stints in So-Cal pop groups Further and The Tyde. The myriad of friends Tamborello made along the way informed the collaborative element of Dntel; each vocal is viewed as another instrument in the arsenal, helping to create a warm masterwork that is uniquely his." [source]
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