My first encounter with lis­ten­ing to Mary Anne Hobbs was in 2000 when she had James Lavelle (of Mo’Wax and Unkle) and Pablo (of Psy­cho­nauts) on the show to mix it up. Specif­i­cally I had read that they had played an acetate of the then-unheard “Giv­ing Up The Ghost” track that DJ Shadow had made for Michael Mann’s The Insider. Never used, it even­tu­ally appeared on the follow-up to Endtro­duc­ing, The Pri­vate Press. This was the time of post–Endtro­duc­ing Shadow obses­sion for me and many oth­ers. How was I to hear this slice of new music? (more…)

Long time read­ers of this blog will know that I’ve been a fan of the var­i­ous doings of The Glitch Mob for awhile now. From first stum­bling upon Ooah’s mixes to mixes and albums by edIT, they’ve been on my watch list for awhile. A full-length album for them seemed to be rumored years ago but it wasn’t until recently that they solid­i­fied The Glitch Mob has a per­form­ing and record­ing force to be reck­oned with. How­ever, as a group known pri­mar­ily for doing crazy “glitch remixes” of pop­u­lar songs, how were they going to trans­late this into an orig­i­nal album? The answer was to go back to basics and method­i­cally com­pose and per­form music as a band. (more…)

Saw this linked on Mar­tin Clark’s twit­ter a cou­ple days ago, grabbed it, for­got I grabbed, heard a track on Mary Anne Hobbs from last night, went crazy. Really style LA Beat style stuff. Fans of Shlohmo, Teebs, Baths, Fly­ing Lotus, etc. should be all over this! No earthly idea who Dun­ian is but well worth the down­load. 4 tracks of pure head nod­ding lush shoegaz­ery beats.

Down­load DUNIAN — Free EP (ZIP)

PS. Shlohmo’s Camp­ing EP is insanely good. If you like the above down­load, you should really buy Camp­ing.

I just hap­pened to see the cover of hotly-tipped pro­ducer Baths’ new album for Anti­con Cerulean, and was struck by a clear trend to this year’s elec­tronic music cover design. Is the inspi­ra­tion for this rush of omi­nous sphere cov­ers related to the the futur­is­tic sound­ing year and it’s tit­u­lar movie 2010 — The Year We Make Con­tact (posters for the movie fea­ture plan­ets promi­nently as well). Or is the sin­gu­lar­ity approach­ing fill­ing every­one with the hope that Bar­be­lith is finally com­ing to push us into the super­con­text? Yeah. Any­way, check out this brief col­lec­tion of glo­ri­ous sphere cov­ers: (more…)

I’ve been try­ing to write a review of Rudi Zygadlo’s amaz­ing debut album Great West­ern Lay­men for the past cou­ple weeks but have been strug­gling with how to describe this opus. It’s an immac­u­lately pro­duced vision, end­lessly inven­tive with com­po­si­tion and sound design and tinged with more than a lit­tle humor. Beyond these words I am not sure how to talk about some­thing that sounds like every­thing and noth­ing I’ve ever heard before. (more…)

A strong empha­sis on melody and struc­ture define Mar­tin Dosh’s music. On Tommy, he keeps in fine form while con­tin­u­ing to layer dis­parate ele­ments between melodies. The drums are more hec­tic, the pace more fre­netic. The open­ing free-jazz of “Sub­trac­tions” gives lis­ten­ers intensely paced per­cus­sion while the gui­tar and keys dance between its whirl­wind. Even when melodies are lush and beau­ti­ful, such as on “Yer Face,” Dosh’s drum­ming sounds like a blender; kicks and snares sur­round each other furi­ously. (more…)

The open­ing moments of Cos­mo­gramma are a rapid ascent into the future world of Fly­ing Lotus (Steven Elli­son). Once arrival is com­plete, the lis­tener is instantly enveloped in a busy urban-metropolis of jazzy robots wet with elec­tronic rain and percussion-driven hov­er­craft speed­ing over head. (more…)

I read quite a few of the advance reviews for Starkey’s new album Ear Drums and Black Holes and many of them left me con­fused about what the album would be like. There is a cer­tain num­ber that revolve around sim­i­lar crit­i­cisms: that it’s too long and too scat­ter­shot. After spend­ing time with it recently, I’ve come to the con­clu­sive it’s not either of those things. Rather, it’s relent­lessly assertive. Each one of these tracks is say­ing some­thing in a loud voice. They stand up and put them­selves out there as indi­vid­u­als. Per­haps this is why it might seem “scat­ter­shot.” Even though the songs form a seam­less whole, they all have dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties. Too often these days albums con­tain ten tracks that are vari­a­tions on a shared theme. The songs don’t break out as indi­vid­ual nuggets of cre­ativ­ity. They do on Ear Drums and Black Holes.

Right off the top I find myself not miss­ing Bad­ness on “Ok Luv” and thor­oughly enjoy­ing the new vocals on “Mur­der­ous Words” by Cere­bral Vor­tex, two songs that orig­i­nally appeared as vocal­ized and instru­men­tal, respec­tively. This is a tes­ta­ment to the com­po­si­tional skills of Starkey. Both of these songs work as pure instru­men­tal music and as “pop” songs with vocals. The weav­ing and melodic synths of “Ok Luv” were some­what sub­merged by Bad­ness’ vocals but here they pop out brightly, giv­ing the album a hope­ful start. Cere­bral Vor­tex and Starkey go together so well, they need to make an album. On “Mur­der­ous Words” and “Club Games,” the MC knows just where to stick his empha­sis and where to let the music shine. The stop-start cadence to his verses per­fectly repli­cate Starkey’s big beats and esca­lat­ing synths.

Through­out Ear Drums and Black Holes, there is a clear sci­ence fic­tion epic being told. It’s mostly clearly told through the epic “11th Hour” and the four-part mid­dle sec­tion of the album: The big buzzing bass of “Mul­ti­dial,” the vocoder turn of “Space­craft,” and the tour de force of “Neck Snap” and bru­tal “Fourth Dimen­sion.” A jour­ney through the sonic fab­ric of the uni­verse is being repli­cated here. It’s the most bump­ing of space­craft, though. After a stop at the local spot (“Club Games”), it’s back to space with another vocoder lament “Alien­styles” and per­haps the most breath­tak­ing track on the album, “Cap­sule.” This nugget is tucked away near the end but is a sub­tle and tex­tured behe­moth. The open­ing bleeps give way to a thick for­est of ring­ing and alive crea­tures before the bass kicks in, push­ing up against this organic mixture.

Starkey ends the way he opens many live sets, with the gigan­tic “Fide­lio,” the swag­ger­ing bass synth com­ing in big and then fad­ing away before the drums and leads drop in. It’s easy to see this as the big song that plays over the end cred­its. Like the rest of the album, it’s a bold state­ment and tells you to watch out, Starkey will be back.

Fan­tas­tic label 2600 Record­ings has brought the qual­ity again with their lat­est release, Aupheus’ Exca­vated EP. The eight song salvo is full of dark atmos­pheres and relent­less drums. It all kicks off with the title track’s omi­nous intro. The intri­cate drum pro­gram­ming is tied with a lightly syn­co­pated bass that gives the whole thing a slightly futur­is­tic sound, Blade Run­ner by way of Wild Style. “Insec­toid” feels like 90s turntab­lism updated to the new cen­tury, com­plex scratch rou­tines float­ing atop pound­ing per­cus­sion and cin­e­matic waves of noise. This widescreen feel to Aupheus’ music is one of the most inter­est­ing traits of the EP, with each track being a mini-film expe­ri­ence. The seven-minute “Fourth Dimen­sion” is a good exam­ple of this, shift­ing through heady move­ments that evolve and mutate, all the while keep­ing up a con­sis­tent tone. Even the titles of tracks evoke a nar­ra­tive, from “Exca­vated” to “Exoskele­ton” to the ele­gant “Frozen Sur­face.” One can imag­ine a space explo­ration land­ing on a planet to uncover it’s secrets and find­ing some­thing ter­ri­fy­ing and mirac­u­lous below the sur­face. One of the strongest tracks, “Frozen Sur­face,” starts out with chim­ing notes and devel­ops a wind­ing stair­case of ambi­ent sound, grounded by the stut­ter­ing drum pro­gram­ming beneath. The purely ambi­ent tone poem of “After­life Empire” (as well as closer “Three Thou­sand Years of Sleep”) could eas­ily be the actual moment of con­tact with a dor­mant species that once had a majes­tic life. Over the course of an EP, Aupheus shows that he can craft a nar­ra­tive through music. It’s a great story to hear.

Approach­ing the Con­tact, Love, Want, Have game cab­i­net, I’m ner­vous. Stark black-and-white graph­ics omi­nously fore­tell the chal­lenge ahead. A sin­gle word is embla­zoned across the front: Ikonika. Who is this mys­te­ri­ous Ikonika? As the paren­the­sis of intro track, “Ikonok­last (Insert Coin),” orders me to, I insert my change (or $15) and press play for the short instruc­tional level. I sure hope the name of the next level isn’t what I’ll turn out to be, because as “Idiot” begins, my thumbs furi­ously tap­ping out beats, laser melodies bom­bard me and I have trou­ble keep­ing up. The mil­i­tary beat helps me keep my head, though, I pre­vail! Com­ing out the other side of this tough early level, I feel embold­ened but SHIIIIIIIII–! Here comes “Yoshim­itsu,” the silent space ninja attack­ing me on all sides, mov­ing through time, slow­ing it down. I expe­ri­ence the attacks as gen­tle waves of synths.… but when he stops, my expe­ri­ence as a war­rior is hum­bled. He allows me to pro­ceed through to the under­wa­ter level of “Fish” though, where I bat­tle exotic amphib­ians with the help of a soundblaster-equipped sub­mersible. Float­ing amidst the clack­ing sea-life and bright lights of bio­lu­mi­nes­cent allies, I suc­ceed in reach­ing my goal: “R.E.S.O.L.,” the base-club where I will receive new train­ing by com­man­der Ikonika.

After a thor­ough reg­i­men of Moog acro­bat­ics, and battle-drum pat­terns, I’m launched into the con­cep­tual sim­u­la­tor “They Are All Los­ing The War,” a devi­ous test con­cocted by the com­man­der to judge recruits poten­tial. The bass-synth melody belies the com­plex­ity of this bat­tle­ground, though. Employ­ing advanced mind tech­niques, I even­tu­ally real­ize the trick to this seem­ingly unbeat­able level, lay down your weapons and let the music con­sume you. The knowl­edge gleaned from this expe­ri­ence is the true objec­tive! Ikonika con­grat­u­lates me and sends me on to do sonic war­fare with the first boss level enemy I will encounter on my jour­ney to the end: “Mil­lie,” a huge rolling speaker-monster. Against this bass-heavy foe, I’m not sure even my new train­ing will be enough. A relent­less night and day of slow drums and loop­ing synths finally gives way to a vic­to­ri­ous dawn. As a reward for my vic­tory, I’m allowed leave to visit my com­pan­ion “Sahara Michael,” and enjoy a short fur­lough sand-surfing and scuba-sailing the ionos­phere, high-pitched and thick gales of synth weav­ing around us. I receive the coded drum-skitter mes­sage “Con­tinue?” soon enough and I’m off for another level.

“Hes­ton” proves to be the name of a for­est planet under thrall. Push­ing through the dense 808 foliage of this swampy jun­gle, I’m con­fronted by dive-bombing Moog fly­ers, blast­ing me with delay and reverb weapons. For my next mis­sion, a minia­ture clone of myself is sent to defeat “Pso­ri­a­sis.” The battleground.…my own body! As I swim through my own puls­ing blood veins, the sub-decimal sounds of my own heart pound with aban­don and my laser scalpel cuts away the dis­ease from the inside. This is a fight I must win! I’m almost at the end of this game, and “Video Delays” is a pen­sive level, full of low har­monic intrigue and syn­co­pated bells that her­ald the arrival of my final chal­lenge. The oth­er­worldly percussion-boss “Look” has arrived! With a stut­ter­ing stomp he lands and pro­ceeds to send jets of high fre­quency stabs in every direc­tion while I dodge and deflect the attacks with my syn­thetic orchestra’s keys and envelop­ing washes. Soon enough, “Look” is over and I’m allowed to enter my name in “Red Marker Pens” with the other high scores that Con­tact, Love, Want, Have has accu­mu­lated. The con­tem­pla­tive bass hum and play­ful melody is the per­fect end to this jour­ney. It’s safe to say that <a href=“Hyper­dub has pro­duced another chal­leng­ing experience.

Album pre­view mix for Mary Anne Hobbs