VEKTROID - TELNET EROTIKA (2010)

The artist formerly known as Vektordrum has recently released his Telnet Erotika EP for free download under the new moniker VEKTROID. With new writing processes, ideas, and projects comes new names and we shall see if this one sticks. Regardless, Telnet Erotika shows Vektroid toying with the “chillwave” movement, reforming it into a throwback to classic computer culture in an immense lo-fi trip. The genre? MS-DOS WAVE. "Motions Feel" just may be the sexiest track of 2011, keeping a hot buttered groove for over 8 minutes. With other psychedelic bangers such as "Nobody Here" and an absolutely insane Toro y Moi remix (check his Tumblr for the cut), 2011 seems poised to give him the praise that is long overdue.

| TELNET EROTIKA @ Bandcamp |
| Vektroid @ Tumblr |

Luns - Subjective Women (2010)

Some of the best instrumental beats I've heard in quite some time. A change of pace for the followers/readers of this blog, but you won't be disappointed, I promise you. Neck-cracking rhythms and samples that go all over the place, dabbling in warbly synths, brass instruments, breakbeats, slow grooves, and more. Any fan of early Brainfeeder and instrumental hip-hop in general will have a fun time with this.

"This is a year's worth of work. Random instrumental and sampled tracks that have each been breastfed and housebroken accordingly. Do not expect a cohesive album. They had no home and my music has moved in a different direction. Please give them a home in your head." - Luns

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| Luns @ Uncorrected |

Airliner - None (2010)

More fantastic work from Mr. Com Truise!

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Mark Fell - Multistability (2010)

SND's Mark Fell makes a late entry for one of the electronic albums of the year with his latest solo opus: Multistability. As one half of SND alongside Mat Steel and solo as 'H', Mark uncompromisingly operates on the bleeding edge of digital music production. He's in possession of a beautifully rare talent; the ability to make highly academic music with an innately Funky and dare we say, accessible, edge. He himself and many others may not agree, but there's something so listenable to his rhythmically-driven and melodically aware style that we can't help but hear him in that context. The concept behind Multistability is assuredly highbrow, referring to the notion of seeing two separate images at once, kinda like a Rubin face/vase effect. From the outset we're entangled in a meticulous mesh of ultimately chaotic, but incredibly well organised patterns and sonic topologies - essentially the result of experiments whose side-effects just happen to be the most extreme and stripped examples of digital funk imaginable. Believe it or not, Mark cites his collaborative efforts with friend and fellow musician Yasunao Tone as a major influence on these tracks, which is understandable when it comes to their constantly morphing aesthetic and deliberate intentions, but seriously, I couldn't ever imagine feeling as compelled to twitch like this when listening to a Tone CD.

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Lone - Emerald Fantasy Tracks (2010)

Emerald Fantasy Tracks...if you've seriously danced in the right place (doesn't matter where, England, Italy, Spain..etc.)in the late 80's or early 90's you can't fail to recognize these sounds and you may not be able to stop that feeling of sweet malancholy that only the good memories can generate.

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Yellow Swans - Going Places (2010)

Released on the beloved Type Records, run and operated by John Twells (Xela), Yellow Swans spearhead the development of sound, as it's concerned with noise, drone, and power electronics. But in their latest release, Going Places, it's not all about distortions and sheer cringing fuzz. There's clear structure, texture, and even pulsating rhythm behind each track, allowing the foreground instruments to carry out the development, while the background noise soars to new heights. Based out of Portland, the duo of Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman describe their music as "powerful rendering of free rock, black electronics, and white light vibrations." Their latest work is a product of over a decade worth of music, released on CD-Rs, cassettes, and vinyl, coming to an end. In April of 2008 the band announced their decision to split up, concentrating on finishing up their final album. Even the title suggests that they might be going places, and the same-titled last track fades away, like a burning rocket into deep space. If you are at all curious about the capacity of noise, start off with Yellow Swans and then work your way into darker territory...

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Airliner - Self Destruct (2010)

Another free release from our friend Com Truise, via his Airliner alias. The answer for the lack of Boards of Canada in 2010, pick it up!

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Arkhonia - Ttrails/Traces (2010)

Arkhonia is a solo offshoot from one half of the long-defunct jz-arkh duo, who released two limited edition 7"s in 2001 before capturing the attention of Kompakt and the Pet Shop Boys, both of whom selected the track 'DDRhodes' for compilations (Pop Ambient 2002 and Back To Mine, respectively). Clearly this piece has legs: it also cropped up on a soundtrack to an experimental film and a commercial for the Norwegian Postal Service. An unedited, near twelve-minute original version of the track appears here, and you can certainly hear what the fuss was about. Positioned as the centre-piece of Trails/Traces, 'DDRhodes' gently swells through ruptured electric piano chords and synth-string sounds, going on to embrace watery, field recorded textures in its latter stages. It's a most musical take on all things ambient, eschewing the default settings of drone in favour of something far more structured and, above all, tuneful. Trails/Traces covers nearly a decade's worth of Arkhonia compositions, and this mysterious artist's catalogue proves to be a rich vault. 'GDLadyburn' hints at more nefarious, diabolic sounds with a spread of witchy organ intervals and wonderfully menacing discord, while the album's longest entry, 'BCTrails' takes on a more pensive character, floating through warmed-up waves of static in an alluringly ambiguous fashion. The album is dotted with a number of more concise, miniature compositions that help break up the sequence nicely, the finest of these being the strange, hollowed-out soundscape of 'Events/Non-Events' whose sub-four-minute duration charts considerable sonic depths almost by suggestion, putting reverb and spatial distribution to subtle but effective use. Excellent stuff.

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Oval - Oh (2010)

Oval’s Oh signals a significant shift — in both cases to something more melodic, less fractured, than listeners might expect. While Autechre on Quaristice employed recognizable synthesizer sounds (in contrast with rougher tonalities of the past), Oval’s Oh often sounds like broken segments of raw recordings of a post-rock band in rehearsal. And whereas Oversteps was, to me, a slight disappointment, Oh so far is anything but.

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Mount Kimbie - Crooks & Lovers (2010)

This is a great album that really shows the development of sound in this group. The mending of lo-fi guitar and vocal elements coupled with crunchy drum beats and bass make a very dynamic and aurally pleasing experience. The album starts out with "Tunnelvision", a garage-esque beat coupled with sliced acoustic guitar and vocal samples, next up is "Would Know", this track has a lot more dubstep influence than the previous and uses more electronic sounds. Then we have "Before I Move Off", this track starts off very gloomy and out of tune but develops into a deep two stepper that's almost indicative of Burial's style. "Blind Night Errand" is a garage track with heavy elements of electroclash, with a very calming outro into "Adriatic", Adriatic is a very calming track led completely by acoustic guitar and 2 vocal samples. It's simple but calming. "Carobonated" starts out as a disco track, almost acid-like. But develops into a garage track with sliced vocals and looming pads that'll entrance you. "Ruby" is your standard chilled out dubstep track. "Ode To Bear" is my favorite track on this album, it has elements of accordion and simple reverberated effects at the beginning, as it develops it becomes quite a complex and very emotional soundscape, this track will capture you. "Field" is a very guitar driven track with a simple dubstep beat in the back, coupled with vocal samples it's a nice track to keep you uplifted towards the end of this album. "Mayor", this track is one of the fastest paced out of all the tracks, it is almost entirely synth based unlike the rest of the album.

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VHS Head - Trademark Ribbons of Gold (2010)

Blackpool's VHS Head made quite an impression with his Skam debut Video Club some months back. Now following an acclaimed set for the Mary Anne Hobbs Radio 1 show he presents a remarkable debut album, sounding like something approaching James Ferraro or Daniel "OPN" Lopatin's Games project, as edited by Gescom. Over the twenty tracks he deploys a palette of atypical Skam edits and icy spikes of digital glitch to a barrage of samples - mostly idents, incidental music - presumably lifted from his collection of video tapes. It's a vividly idiosyncratic world he's created here, like being given access to his private den built out of clamshell cases, which actually turns out to be the portal into a videodrome arena of schlocky drama and strangeness on the cusp of the analog-to-digital transition which occurred across the '80s. But that's just one side of his flex, the other relies upon his razor sharp editing skills, hitting that '86 vibe head-on with lethal electro/boogie edits nodding to Arthur Baker and Mantronix as much as Aphex Twin or Autechre. Just check the chops on 'Twitch Of The Nerve' or 'The Murder Cycles' and you could be in the most twisted Blackpool nightclub that never existed. It's blatantly the best thing Skam have released in years and shouldn't disappoint anyone who knows what that means.

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Actress - Splazsh (2010)

So what is it that gives this particular album such a hold on me? I could point to the blown-out bass whoomp of “Bubble Butts and Equations,” or the late night tech-soul of “Get Ohn,” like a house anthem repeatedly re-encoded until that gorgeous forlorn melody buckles under the digital haze, breaking the surface among broken steam valves. Then there’s “Maze,” with its cold wave innards exposed on an autopsy table, its beautifully icy synth backbone glowing under fluorescent light. “Purrple Splazsh” takes cues from the flayed 80s fetishism of James Ferraro, the sample that eddies in its cathode ray spatter so damaged it’s almost impossible to place. “Let’s Fly” plays seance over flanged chords, summoning lost voices as if it’s watching The Disintegration Tapes roll in reverse. “Wrong Potion” may be the most disruptive track here, a chaos of overlapping signals that buckle and flail, picking out the patterns of beauty in amongst the white noise and “The Kettle Men” has mechanist swagger that’s buffeted by ambient gusts, like a cyborg revisioning of Sly Stone’s paranoid funk and one of the most head-spinningly dense tracks Actress has put his name to. Although the album touches on all these styles, it’s unified by a particularly Actress approach, a gloriously off-kilter brand of techno that’s driven by dream logic, like music piped in from a reality where the rules are gradually torn adrift from their moorings.

My favorite albums are ones that work as a whole – that don’t just reflect my mood, but shape it. Albums that invite me to walk into the words they conjure. It’s what I love so much about his masterful 2008 debut Hazyville, but Splazsh is even bolder, more assured, more labyrinthine and occluded. It’s a curious record from a wonderful, idiosyncratic producer, and it needs time and space to appreciate. Walking with it is the most intense, the world around soaking up the feeling it exudes.

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Blog Posts until Late August will be Few and Far Between

Due to a situation that I cannot prevent, there will no new posts on this blog until August 22nd. The connection in the residence I am currently using (at the moment) will not support quick uploading of any type, due to a bad wireless router + high ping. This problem may change, and I will definitely let all of you know if and when it does.

I request that my loyal followers do not abandon the blog, because I'm doing this for you guys, because I care! :) There may be the odd post here and there, but the system of 2-3 posts per day will not be going on until Aug. 22. I am thinking of a weekly post, not sure yet.

I am so sorry about all this, I do feel quite bad about it all, and I wish I could change things for the better. Hopefully, you will all continue to use the many posts (Wow, I didn't even know it was 100+!) I've put up here already, continue to look for the occasional post here, and remember that I will be back in August in full force. Thanks for your understanding.

Take - Only Mountain (2010)

A dense and groundbreaking work, Take's Only Mountain stands as a staggering collection of gorgeously brilliant melodies and deep subharmonic bass. Truly future music towards a brighter end.

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Enduser - 1/3 (2010)

After almost 2 years here's the new proof why Enduser is one of the biggest names in breakcore. If you're familiar with Lynn Standafer's musical output or ever had the chance to witness one of his electrifying livesets you know that there's not one logical argument NOT to get this record. For everyone else here's the ultimate pick to experience what makes this artist so special. 1/3 (that comes with a beautiful artwork, that has to be mentioned at this point) is the distilled energy of punding drums, catching melodies and basslines that wait for just the right moment to kick in and rage deep in your guts. Many have tried to play king but the ace is back.

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Hautlle - Broken Past (2010)

The prefixes "emotional electronica" and "organic electronica" worry me quite a lot. What is meant by them exactly? If one means electronica that is emotive and sounds organic (whether or not this is the process by which it has been made or not) then Hautle would, for me, be an excellent example of both of these things. The track in question, "If You Were Me (And I Was Someone Else)," clunks along like a rusty oil can full of car parts and broken glass rolling across an open landscape - both rhythmic and naturalistic - accompanied by the low howl of airy synths blowing like the wind through overhead telegraph wires. Then the melody cuts in – a desperately lonely staccato joined only by an organ’s mournful wail, the whole thing gradually building into a scratch-chorus of desolation…I felt extremely moved by the whole thing.

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Ras G - El-Aylien Pt. 1 (2010)

Introducing part one in a two-part 2010 Leaving Records dombination from Los Angeles-based producer Ras G. Undoubtedly focused and expansive, El-Aylien Part 1 is a cosmic exhibit in sonic explorations of collage and rhythm. The EP, to be released on both cassette and digital-format, features remix contributions from Los Angeles' dak, and GB.

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H.P. Sneakstep - The Swarm (2010)

New craziness from Dr. Sneakstep, this time covering the theme of insects and bugs. Very entertaining album with high re-playability. My current favorite is "Woody"; the sounds make me feel like I am trapped in a beehive with millions of bees flying around me, all to the soundtrack of unsettling melodies shooting back and forth through the channels. Do not sleep on this one, this is the future of electronic music (or where it should be going!).

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Brainfeeder 4/20 Cosmogramma Set

Recorded live from Dublab Studios in Los Angeles, sets from Flying Lotus, TokiMonsta, Ras G, Teebs, Samiyam, Kode9, and more!

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Caribou - Swim (2010)

So you say you loved Andorra, but you don't trust Dan Snaith because the sneaker bugger never does the same thing twice? Good call. However, if Dan Snaith is known for anything, it should be for being able to live and breathe whatever musical genre he is currently digging. When he was heavy into dreamy '60s psych pop, we got the brilliance that is Andorra. Now, Snaith has been getting his groove on to dark electro dance music, and true to his craft, he has expertly synthesized what he knows and turned it into a fresh and unique take on the genre. First track "Odessa" happens to be both my favorite song on the album and simultaneously the most accessible one. I hope this doesn't reflect poorly on my cred. The rest of the album takes a darker, pulsing turn, with stretched out melodies belying very intricate production. With help from guys like Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys and Four Tet, you should expect no less. Yet another great album for 2010.

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