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Wink Wink 2011 - A bit of a change this year

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Avec:
I'm a total amateur with Dubstep. Not making an insinuation or anything there...

nufan:
James Blake - James Blake (2011)


So I guess a lot of people have already heard of this guy, especially if you read P4k/live in the UK. I heard his remix of Untold's Stop What You're Doing this time last year. I listened it to once a day for at least 4 months and it became my favourite song of 2010.

OK I wrote a whole post about how great this guy and tried state my feelings towards the album but it came off as sycophantic so it turns out I can't do positive reviews. I'll say this instead - after my first listen it confirms my suspicions that James Blake is the first Important Artist of whatever this decade will be called. He manages to mix Dubstep, Gospel, Soul and all sorts of electronic influences into one while still covering indie songs that enter the UK charts. I'm sure there'll be a better Boomkat review along soon, but seriously - download this.


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KvP:
messin' up words because these are a coupla leakz.


noreH-ttocS liG & xx eimaJ - er'eW weN ereH

This one's been massively hyped for awhile - it's a remix album for GSH done entirely by one of the dudes from 2009's favorite band, the XX. Honestly I don't think it works most of the time - the spare trip-hoppish production on the original album really kept out of the way of the main attraction (GSH's voice, which packs enough character into a single song for a whole album) but Jxx's post-dubstep production often tries to step up and share the spotlight and more often than not the results are messy and underwhelming. But don't take my word for it - in two weeks or so people are going to be talking about how brilliant this is.


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ioM y oroT - htaenrednU ehT eniP

So there was this guy named Chad and he hit the tail-end of the so-called "Chillwave" scene, and he was noticeably competent compared to his compatriots. Later on he started making filter house as Les Sins, and it wasn't Ed Banger filter house either, so it was pretty good. Now he's back with a second album about a goatee'd man turning into a giant anemone, or something. The music is pretty good! He'll probably be the one guy who survives when the last bit of public interest is sapped from the dying genre.


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Anyway

Exillon - Mean Rich Mud

I hadn't really heard of Exillon before but they straddle a fine line between Benga-esque Diary of An Afro Warrior wobble dubstep (hard to mention that without conjuring images of WOBWOB music, but it's not like that, for serious) and more dexterous IDM-ish arrangements. More often than not it skews towards the former, which is actually for the better as far as I'm concerned. Brainier productions are well and good but every once in awhile you long for something that isn't too dense but isn't too dumb, and this does quite nicely.

--- Quote from: Boomkat ---Exillon strafes into the post-dubstep quagmire with a crafty six-tracker. 'Buzzkills' keeps it minimal and mechanical, kinda like a robotic Wiley beat, while 'Paper Kites' exudes techier compositional virtues with its cinematic string arrangements and 'Hardware Acid' steers close to the recent Funckarma sound. Jump on 'Mean Rich Mud' for a Starkey-style romper and 'Popplerdad' for a derivé into Analord vibes.
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Higuma - Den of the Spirits

I shared this months and months ago but that was an LP rip with undifferentiated tracks - this is the digital version, with a full tracklisting.

--- Quote from: Boomkat ---Glooming folk drone ambience from Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and Lisa McGee aka Higuma. This gorgeous pressing is every bit as dark and brooding as you'd expect from someone involved in Barn Owl, conjuring arcane drones and spellbound choirs of forest folk to commune with the gods during a sixth month winter. This is the kind of stuff that would have been banned in 1342. If they had electricity. And turntables. It feels like we've stumbled across a meditative ceremony where simple folk voices gradually emerge from the gloom into haunting choral hazes. Coruscating guitar notes provide faint light, gaseous shimmers which sometimes grow into subdued swells and moments of intensity but always dissipate into the black background, lost to the night. The drawn-out bowed strings are a constant, maintaining a slow burning tension throughout while occasional occult percussion chimes across the scene, jangling rhythms gently dusting the surface with bells and gongs. This record creates it's own fully formed alternate dimension for a limited opening of time, allowing us to enter and observe the proceedings from a branch on a tree before receding into the run-out grooves and wondering where we just were. Magnificent.
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KvP:

Submerse & Resketch - Get Away

Prime garage cuts from the inmitable L2S imprint and Submerse is turning out to be something like their breakout talent - agile drum programming and luminescent, clean synthwork. You can definitely discern the jungle lineage on the title track.

--- Quote from: Boomkat ---Melancholy 2-step and jammin' Garrij on a future swivel from L2S's hottest prospect. Following their acclaimed 'Hold It Down' burner, 'Get Away' comes with the brooding emotional vibes (it's ok, just let it out, yeah?), whereas '2nite' features Submerse solo deploying classic samples and crisp swingers rhythms to soul-tugging effect.
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Royal-T - Orangeade

Butterz is a label in its infancy but it's already staked a distinct niche for itself, namely instrumental Grime production (fitting that they got Terror Danjah for their maiden release). Royal-T's been gaining a lot of heat for his remix work, and this EP shows he can be just as good hammering out originals. The title track is very, very Starkey-esque (though given Starkey's debts to Grime, maybe it's best to say he sounds like Royal-T) and only gets better as it goes along. The rest of the EP is in TD / Swindle taut Grime mode.

--- Quote from: Boomkat ---Certified Grime killers from the youthling Royal T, hitting up the 7th release for the very excellent Butterz label. The ruffneck and wickedly darkside-tinted 'Orangade' was apparently created after Silencer claimed Gucci Mane's 'Lemonade' was the best Grime tune at the moment, causing Southampton's 20 year old Royal T to respond in deadly style. On the flip the harder, Breaks-driven 'The Whistle Song' gets a look in, while a slickly suspended Devil mix of 'Music Please' closes the side. Rude.
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Baron Retif & Concepcion Perez - Superman

A curveball, this one. Authentic electronic funk, but not computer funk, per se - the instruments all sound live / analog. Pretty cool use of synths playing traditional guitar part on the title track, smoldering spanish (?) vox on the B backed by a thick monosynth bass. The drumming is the best part here - very authentic, very jazzy. Like Helado Negro scoring a blaxploitation film.


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Joyride - Joyride
Heard the first 30 seconds of "Baby Soldier" and I was hooked. Indelibly arranged groove-oriented DJ music, sort of shamblotic and glitchy and definitely fast-paced but it's definitely not Low End Theory kind of stuff. The tone really jumps around a lot, too ("Afrrkk" is almost twee). Wouldn't be surprised to hear whoever this guy(s? Girl{s}?) on Planet Mu or some other "progressive" dance music label. Really incredibly strong for something that just materialized out nowhere. The more I listen, the more impressed I am.


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Ensemble Economique - To Feel the Night As It Really Is

Definitely feeling the Endtroducing-era DJ Shadow comparisons here - jazzy drum breaks, plaintive and moody organ and strings, building and building and building... Affecting music. Just one track, unfortunately.

--- Quote from: Boomkat ---Brian Pyle managed to direct two near-perfect excursions into gloomy, cinematic ambience last year with ‘Psychical’ and ‘Standing Still, Facing Forward’ and ‘To Feel The Night As It Really Is’ follows that rich seam with a wry smile. Eschewing the near-psychedelia of ‘Psychical’ and the post-classicism of ‘Standing Still…’ this five-minute piece instead takes in the dustiest of breaks and brings us something closer to early DJ Shadow, Keith Fullerton Whitman’s long-departed DJ Hekla project or a rare Trunk records basement-find. It’s fantastic stuff, and if Pyle is working on an album’s worth of this kind of material we’re really in for a treat. Don’t miss it!
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KvP:

Craft Spells - After the Moment / Love Well Spent

Yo dawg I herd u liek 80's. It really is pretty New Order-y. Canned drums and everything. Such hooks!

--- Quote from: Boomkat ---Bittersweet pop music heavily indebted to New Order, the 2nd release by Craft Spells for Captured Tracks. 'After The Moment' is post-coital blisspop par excellence, wholly indebted to Manchester's finest but that's no bad thing at all. The distanced vox and arpeggiated NRG of 'Love Well Spent' has a taste of the '80s pop explored by The Soft Moon.
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Julio Bashmore - Everybody Needs a Theme Tune (The Remixes)

Yeahhhhhh. Ramadanman tries on a new name (a new Luke Vibert in the making?) but his production touches are a dead giveaway, while Midland brings Bashmore into sci-fi techno territory with skybound organs and tons of delay. Awesome remixes for awesome songs.

--- Quote from: Boomkat ---Ramadanman adopts his new, US Garage-sounding Maurice Donovan alias to join Midland in remixing Julio Bashmore. Distinguished from his Pearson Sound and Ram's styles, the remix for 'Battle For Middle You' is more conventional NYC garage albeit with a UK subbass pressure and his crisp production style. Midland's 'Ask Yourself' remix shows why he's tipped for big things this year, hitting a sweet stride between lushly proggy House and Bass-soaked swing grooves. Big big twelve.
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Chelsea Wolfe - The Grime and the Glow

Lo-fi lady-garage rock, with neofolk and dub-goth excursions thrown in. Better than LA Vampires! Everybody wins! That Boomkat review just rubs salt in the wound left by my inability to acquire Sasha Grey's industrial-drone album. Fuck you Boomkat!

--- Quote from: Boomkat ---NYC's Pendu Sound follow aTelecine's 'A Tape Culture...' with the much talked about sophomore effort from L.A. native, Chelsea Wolfe. Like Sascha Grey, Chelsea has a taste for the sweet blood of gothic noise music, giving her vocals over to a grim and remorselessly gloomy style of garage goth-rock also comparable in no small part to the earlier Zola Jesus records. There's a lugubrious, lead-hearted aesthetic at the core of 'The Grime and the Glow', from overcast neo-folk like 'Cousins Of The Antichrist', to chillingly maudlin garage in 'Moses', the solo piano extractions of 'Benjamin' and the Marissa Nadler atmospherics of 'Halfsleeper', but the most tangible, memorable moments occur with the scouring guitars of 'Bounce House Demons' and the incredibly ethereal 'Widow'. Don't pass over this one, there's just something about it...
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