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. (more…)

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. (more…)