Rudi Zygadlo — Elec­tronic Explo­rations Mix
Upcom­ing Planet Mu artist did a mix for pop­u­lar music show Elec­tronic Explo­rations. Check out the track­list and try not to be instantly intrigued. I’m in love with this guy’s immi­nent sin­gle, “Reseal­able Friend­ship.“
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Eli­jah & Skil­liam: Black­down 2010 Mix
Sexy grime mix done for Mar­tin Clark’s Black­down blog.
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Eli­jah & Skil­liam — FACT Mix 135
Prac­ti­cally part two of the above fea­tur­ing the insane Ter­ror Dan­jah/Joker col­lab “Gully Goon Estate.“
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Black Acre — Kmag Guest Mix
The peo­ple behind Black Acre Records did this fan­tas­tic mix of beats and atmos­pheres for Knowl­edge Mag­a­zine.
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DJ Sach — Farewell Def Jux Mix
El-P announced the demise of Defin­i­tive Jux, the stal­wart hip-hop record label, recently. In cel­e­bra­tion of their huge cat­a­logue of clas­sics, DJ Sach put together this great ret­ro­spec­tive mix.
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sasQwax — Gut & Baste
Old friend sasQwax aka Wax­fac­tor turned in this heady mix for Rhythm Incur­sions recently. Beats, psych, sam­ples, every­thing in between.
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Babe Rain­bow — Shaved Mix­tape by Rico Uno
Recent Warp Records sign­ing Babe Rain­bow put this mix­tape together to pro­mote their first release, Shaved. Fea­tures orig­i­nal tracks, remixes, etc.
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Shlohmo — Dis­rup­tion Mix
LA beat­maker Shlohmo did an inter­view and mix for Disrupt:on Inc. Hazy beats and woozy tex­tures galore.
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Untold — Live at Num­bers 9/4/09
Glas­gow club night/record label/collective Num­bers just launched a brand new site and one of the treats is a 2009 live set from the bass and beats star Untold.
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Mix­mas­ter Mike — Napalm Rock­ets Mix
Lurk­ing on world famous turntab­list Mix­mas­ter Mike’s web­site is prob­a­bly one of the cra­zi­est dub­step mixes you’ll ever hear. He tears and shreds the beats to pieces in his own unique way.
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Om Unit — Rinse FM Guest Mix
Om Unit did an amaz­ing 40min mix for Rinse in Feb­ru­ary. Check the Sound­cloud page for down­load and track­list.

Once in awhile, there is an album that per­fectly reflects the most excit­ing aspects of the cur­rent music waves. What those waves are is obvi­ously up for debate, but with­out a doubt bass and dub­step has been one of them for the past sev­eral years. Like­wise, the work released by labels like Type Records, Mias­mah, and Bed­room Com­mu­nity has been build­ing an astound­ing dia­logue of exper­i­men­tal elec­troa­coustic music. In the world of elec­tronic music, these groups don’t nor­mally mix. How­ever, I think the case can be made that Autechre’s lat­est album Over­steps melds these sounds to fur­ther Rob Brown and Sean Booth’s his­tory of push­ing the lim­its of what music is. Take opener “R Ess”: An omi­nous silence leads to a repeat­ing gale of syn­the­sized noise (almost sounds like a gui­tar, recall­ing Ben Frost or Emer­alds in it’s manip­u­la­tion) that sounds as if it is com­ing towards you and crash­ing off your ears. Amidst this bil­low­ing melody, the shuf­fling beat worms its way in (yes, I said “beat.” On an Autechre album!). Com­bined with the sway­ing per­cus­sion and tex­tural low end, you find a very exper­i­men­tal take on dub­step. A DJ like Youngsta or Loe­fah could sneak this gem into their sets and it wouldn’t seem out of place. How­ever, the atten­tion to minute detail and painstak­ingly crafted synths might be rec­og­niz­able of artists com­ing from a slightly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. This track com­pletely astounds me.

“Ilan­ders” is one of the few tracks that feels like the Autechre of Quar­is­tice and Untilted, the pre­vi­ous two albums. Mean­der­ing melodies, and warped “per­cus­sion.” The dif­fer­ence this time is a sense of struc­ture and for­ward rhythm. The elec­tronic exper­i­men­ta­tion of pre­vi­ous work can some­times sound stag­nant, an intel­lec­tual exer­cise moreso than “music.” This time around, even the abstract com­po­si­tions like “Ilan­ders” and “Qplay” are infused with warmth and a rhyth­mic order. Some of these tracks even bump a bit like the robotic funk of “Treale.” The fresh melodic side that Autechre dis­plays is espe­cially evi­dent on gen­tle med­i­ta­tions like the beau­ti­ful “See On See,” full of cas­cad­ing keys, and the ele­gant “Known(1),” a piece with vaguely Baroque strum­ming enclos­ing a stretched and strained synth texture.

Through­out Over­steps Autechre demon­strates an abil­ity to fil­ter the best of the cur­rent musi­cal tableau through their own sen­si­bil­ity, push­ing every edge of the bound­aries out to form their own shapes with the pieces. Elec­tronic music has a ten­dency to go stale and it takes vision­ary artists to reset the ears of lis­ten­ers and musi­cians alike. This album cer­tainly her­alds a new day for exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ics, full of pos­si­bil­i­ties. Breath­ing life into “Intel­li­gent Dance Music” is no mean feat, but I’m glad that Booth and Brown have intro­duced us to their thoughts on the mat­ter. Hope­fully it will inspire even while it confounds.