Christmas Presents

Following up on my last post about electronic music gifts, I thought I'd do a roundup of some nice Christmas presents that came through this year. To start things off, here's my friend Madeleine Bloom (who has some beautiful music that you should all check out), with a short Christmas greeting uploaded via SoundCloud mobile:

 Merry Christmas by Madeleine Bloom

Now, here are some fun and free gifts:

Madrona Labs Aaltoverb
Format: AU plug-in (Max OSX only)
I covered Aalto and my flowery praise for it in the last post. On Christmas Eve, we got a free gift from Madrona Labs, in the form of Aaltoverb. It's a standalone version of the Reverb that's built in to Aalto (which has a fantastic, spacey-plate sound to it), with new dry/wet and brightness controls. A nice way for Madrona Labs to say thanks for 2010, and a fantastic effect to try out.

Valhalla FreqEcho
Format: VST/AU/RTAS plug-in (Windows and Mac OSX)
Technically, this one isn't new for Christmas, but it's a good way for me to say "my bad" for failing to include the brilliant Valhalla Shimmer in my gift guide. Shimmer is a gorgeous, affordable ($50) pitch-shifting reverb, inspired primarily by the "shimmer" sounds of Brian Eno/Harold Budd productions. FreqEcho is a free pitch-shifting delay plug-in, with a similarly well-thought out sound and pristinely minimal GUI. Fun for dubby pitch freakouts and alien sounds, among other more practical pitched-delay applications.

Native Instruments Reaktor Mikro Prism
Format: Reaktor instrument (requires Reaktor of the free Reaktor Player, which can both be used as VST/AU plug-ins for Windows and Mac OSX)
NI presents a lite version of the Reaktor Prism, a unique synthesizer/effects unit that uses impulses and resonant filters to make a range of sounds. Well worth checking out for some unusual sounds - especially the plinky ones.

Ableton Holiday Live Packs
Format: Ableton Live Sets (requires a version of Live to run; free trial version can be grabbed here)
Ableton Live Packs provide users with an opportunity to see how a number of different artists use the program for their music. The two new holiday packs, from funk musician Everett Bradley and experimental hip-hop violinist Christopher Tignor, provide very different insights into ways of using the program. These packs come as an extra gift to supplement a previous series of five other Live Packs for the season.

TeaTracks Xmas Spin
Format: iOS app (iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad)
TeaTracks' Gliss app is one of those special sound toys that makes it a joy to make music on a touch screen. For Christmas, they've offered a free, interactive set of visuals and sounds inspired by the season, in the familiar advent calendar format. While you're at, think about giving Gliss a try - it's on sale for only $1, and it's good enough for Gorillaz.

I'm back again / last-minute digital gifts

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it? Long-story short, I moved to Berlin, Germany in September to start a new job managing social media for Ableton. You can Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check out our YouTube page, and dig around the Forum. Expect to hear more about that as I resume blogging regularly. Nice to see some upgrades to Blogger in the time I've been gone.

It being Christmas Eve-Eve and all, now's an appropriate time to address that wonderful segment of the population who, unlike my lucky Jewish ass, have to buy gifts for pretty much everyone they'll be seeing in the next week. There have already been some great gift guides published - check out some of my favorites, from CDM and Synthtopia, but I figured I'd add some last-minute deals to the pot. Everything here is under $100, does something unique, and, best of all, can be ordered digitally (as in, now). No guarantee that you'll get the license sorted out by Christmas, but at least you'll have a proof of purchase that says "I love you." You can also think of this as a guide for what to do with some of that holiday cash that may be coming your way.

Lastly, let me reiterate that nothing posted here should be seen as an opinion or endorsement of any third party - these opinions are just mine. Check it:

Madrona Labs Aalto
Format: AU plug-in (Mac OSX only)
Price: $99 (~€75)
So what do you get the electronic musician who has everything? This. Hands-down the most unique new synth I encountered this year, the Aalto is a work of art, sonically and visually. Based on classic analog modules (the oscillator in particular is based on Buchla designs), the Aalto provides a unique oscillator, unique delay, excellent sequencer, and great reverb. The architecture is technically semi-modular - you can route anything to anything, but the modules are fixed - but Aalto still feels like an audio toy box. Sound design is a joy, and with the 1.1 update, it no longer devours CPU. Probably not the best synth for someone just getting started - it helps to know a little bit about audio processing and synthesis, though the manual and presets cover this well - but it's a real diamond.

d16 Phoscyon
Format: VST/AU Plug-in (Mac OSX and Windows)
Price: €39 (~$51)
There's nothing new about emulations of the classic Roland techno boxes, but d16's dedication is impressive. There's real soul (and science) behind Phoscyon, an emulation of the classic TB-303 bass synthesizer, most famous for being the sound of acid-[genre]. The quirks of the original 303 have been preserved, including its puzzling-yet-rewarding sequencer and that 3-pole lowpass filter. There are also some enhancements, including greater envelope controls, a distortion effect, and an arpeggiator. On sale for the holidays, Phoscyon is a great deal. If you're making pretty much any kind of dance music (or even if you aren't), a 303 is just a great sound to have access to. Also, if you're into the classic Roland drum machines, you'd also do well to check out Drumazon, Nepheton, and Nithonat, the best modeling I've heard of the 909, 808, and 606, respectively.

Audio Damage (anything)
Format: VST/AU Plug-in (Mac OSX and Windows)
Price: $30-80 (~€23-61)
Audio Damage plug-ins have that perfect combination for this list - they're unique, they're cheap, and you aren't sacrificing quality for price. Are you buying for someone who's into IDM? Replicant and Automaton are excellent choices. Looking for a versatile drum synth? Tattoo packs in a surprising amount of innovation alongside classic analog-style drum sounds. Thoroughly great choices, all around.

Ableton Live Intro

Format: DAW/hosting application (Mac OSX and Windows); runs VST and AU plug-ins
Price: $99 / €99
Now's as good a time as any to point out again that, yes, I work for Ableton, and, no, nothing in this post is being done in my capacity as an employee. Live has been my DAW of choice for the past six years (I also enjoy Renoise and Audacity) - I've found it to be the most easy and versatile environment for sketching out ideas, playing live, tweaking tracks to the finishing point, and controlling external hardware instruments. Live Intro makes a great gift for the beginner musician, for the professional who wants to get into working with software, for the DJ who's interested in production - the list goes on. It's definitely the kind of entry point that I wish had existed when I was in high school.

Renoise
Format: DAW/hosting application (Mac OSX and Windows)
Price: €58 / $76
As mentioned above, Renoise has become another application of choice for me in my own music. It's a tracker, so there's no hiding it - you'll either love this way of working, or absolutely despise it. Breakcore, Chiptune, and Glitch musicians tend to dig what's offered here. Renoise is as sexy as a tracker has ever been, and it's great fun once you get the hang of the key commands. Spend some time learning how to talk to it, and you'll be mashing out dense rhythmic explosions like a pro. It's also excellent as a tool to be rewired into another DAW. It's not the best for Live performance, but the new pattern matrix offers some innovative options for that.

Native Instruments The Mouth
Format: Reaktor instrument (requires Reaktor or Reaktor player, which can be used as VST/AU or standalone)
Price: €69 / $79
Following up on the similarly funny and wild effect scrambler The Finger, Time Exile presents The Mouth, an instrument that turns your voice into nearly anything. This one rates high in uniqueness - there are vocoders out there, and you can replicate what the Mouth does in other other programs, but no others tie it together like this. It also comes with the best introductory video of the year.

Tobor Experiment Gleetchlab 3
Format: Standalone application / can host one VST (Mac OSX only)
Price: €10.69 (~$14)
Let's get one thing out of the way - if the person you're buying for wants to be the next hot progressive house producer, Gleetchlab is not the tool. If, on the other hand, you're buying for someone with a love of sound and a curiosity to really get in there and sculpt it, you can't do much better than this. At its core, Gleetchlab is a granular sample with six sample slots, each with a dedicated filter. The modules it comes with range from the expected (reverb), to the incredible (Mephisto - a sequenced delay, feedback and bitcrushing effect). Gleetchlab has its quirks - saving is disabled by design to encourage improvisation, and it can't be used into a DAW - but it's a deceptively simple tool that I've found very conducive to creativity. It's also worth checking out Berna, another standalone app from Tobor Experiment, which replicates the setup and sounds of a 1950s-era electronic music studio.

My name is...

Here's a fun banner tool via my friend Rod - bigassmessage. You type in your message, and it converts it to plain black and white (all caps of course), "magic" (crazy multicolored flashing), "jprdy" (Jeopardy category style) or "pepsi" (looks like a pepsi ad with the logo replacing certain circular words - great little piece of subtle sponsorship that gets the joke).

Here's a shot of the crazy blinking shiz, which you can also see here:

Simplicity is Bliss

There's little question that mobile is the next dominant platform for music production. The success of Apple's App Store, and the burgeoning market in applications for Google's Android platform, are pointing to the future of electronic music; it'll be increasingly portable, and increasingly more powerful for such a small size. For the time being, however, mobile devices are still far less powerful and, in size of screen alone, less versatile than their PC-based cousins. The best applications for mobile music making accept these limitations, and work with them, even turning them into advantages. To start the conversation, I'll look at nanoloop, originally a cartridge for the Nintendo Game Boy (and later Game Boy advance) developed by Oliver Wittchow, and recently ported to the iPhone. Just as Wittchow pioneered the 8Bit music scene by approaching the original nanoloop as a tool custom-made for the limitations and quirks of the Game Boy, so too has he designed the synthesis and sampling capabilities of the iPhone version; in other words, this is no 8Bit emulator. It's specifically an iDevice instrument.

Lovely, those rows of numbers!

See those rows of numbers? That's the sequencer in nanoloop, and it is a beauty to behold (and to work with). It's a painstakingly simple model - each channel of up to six sounds can be sequenced linearly (or in a loop) from up to 16 four-beat loops per channel. There's no flash, no soundwave display of the loop, but this tracker-lite approach works perfectly for a mobile platform. It'd be a limitation on a PC, but on the iPhone, it's conducive to immediate creativity, which is really a make-or-break point for so many apps. Nanoloop further eschews any traditional effects, going instead with its own quirky system of envelopes, filters, and LFOs (one per synthesizer). As for the sampler, it's (unsurprisingly) simple yet very usable, and conducive to on-the-spot recording and sequencing.

nanoloop's synthesizer

When I was in college, one of my professor's instructed the class to "never drape the patch cables around your neck," a quote which he attributed to Brian Eno. I've always taken this to mean that you must never let the process override the results (unless, of course, that is one's conscious creative decision, which is another matter entirely). I can sympathize with such a neck-draped situation, as I run into it often when making electronic music. How easy is it to work on sculpting a sound or sample for hours, and end up with an overprocessed, flat mess? While I do certainly appreciate the impressive arsenal of synthesis and effect tools available in an app like Amidio's moster synth, the Noise.io Pro, it can be far too easy to get lost in a black hole of endless tweaking and still end up with an ultimately unsatisfying sound. Nanoloop's limitations and basic interface encourage immediacy. There's only so much to be done with each synthesizer, which forces the musician to think outside of the box. Already, I've had a great time turning simple sequences into odd, noisy drones using the BPM control, which has a lower limit of 1 and no upper limit. Here, then is a track composed and sequenced entirely in nanoloop for iPhone (some dynamics and light multiband reverb done in Ableton Live):

Drop by thecrater

Nanoloop is far from the only simple-yet-brilliant kid on the block, however. The Strange Agency produce similarly well-designed little apps - in the $1-3 range, each one is a small investment with big sonic rewards, through simple adjustments. Soundscope Space is a monophonic synth with a rich analog distortion that can easily be reduced to digital grit. The controls behind Space are simple but very unique, including a x/y volume/pitch dual LFO (dubbed the "kuzmoscilator" and responsive to the speed with which it is flicked), and the ability to draw out any wave form (with selectable starting blocks of sine, square, and sawtooth). Sample-chopper Slice and tactile granular synthesis display Curtis are two more excellent (and cheap) examples of The Strange Agency's impecable design and utility.

Soundscope Space

Inevitably, any viable platform for electronic music production needs a good sampler. Many applications have arrived feature packed for these purposes - Beatmaker, iSample, Looptastic Producer - and they're all worthwhile, with their own unique draws. But I have to specially recognize Trapcode's ProLoop for its design and simple ingenuity in playing loops together. Like the simply laid out timbral controls in nanoloop and Space, each allowing for extreme possibilities, ProLoop's modular system between loops is its secret weapon.

ProLoop's main screen

In ProLoop, a minimalist interface for playing sampled loops, allows for up to 6 simultaneous loops to be played. Each loop has its own parameters for pitch (which can be optionally locked to a "master" loop), playing forwards/backwards, volume, granular freeze (stutter, which can be locked), and modulation. Each loop can be routed to any other loop as its modular source, enabling variable levels of phase, ring, and frequency modulation. This, of course, opens up a wide range of possibilities, particularly when combined with ProLoop's granular and pitch-shift controls.

Nanoloop, The Strange Agency apps, and ProLoop all conceal awesomely powerful features behind minimalist facades. It's always easy to get something that sounds good and encourages creativity in each app - yet it always takes dedication to get something that sounds great. Surely, that's the sign of a keeper in the app world? As mobile technology advances, it may soon be feasible to have something as complicated and processor-heavy as a PC virtual instruments or DAW available on the go. In the mean time, the best mobile music apps embrace limitation rather than fight the unwinnable battle against it, and come out as stronger, more focused (and, often cheaper) alternatives.

Music Boxes Together

Last Saturday, I received a promo Gristleism in the mail. Designed by legendary industrial musicians Throbbing Gristle, along with FM3's Christian Viraant, the Gristleism is a little music box with a built-in speaker, 13 loops of TG's music, and controls for volume, loop selection, and pitch. Like FM3's Buddha Machines (though lacking a built-in 1/8" output jack), The Gristleism is an exercise in intriguing simplicity - the speaker obviously is not of the greatest quality, and the box is limited to playing the loops that it comes with. The pitch wheel on the Gristleism boasts twice the range of the Buddha Machine II (the first Buddha Machine did not have a pitch controller). Here's a little video I made, playing all three boxes together:

The loops are, in order of appearance - #1 "Persuasion" on the Gristleism (black), #2 "Li" on the Buddha Machine II (brown), and #6 "Xiao" on the Buddha Machine (white). This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg of how much fun it is to play around with these boxes - the range of loops and pitch controls make for loads of possibilities.

I'll be reviewing the Gristleism for PopMatters - it's turning into another feature piece, kinda like what happened with the Buddha Machine II. Look forward to it!

Initial reflections: Autechre - Oversteps

A new album from Autechre is always cause for mass celebration. I'm still not sure how the lads manage to do it, but Booth and Brown manage to deliver a beautiful new statement of emotional machine music every two or so years. March 22/23 sees the release of their 10th full-length, Oversteps.

I received a promo copy yesterday, and, shock of the new aside, we've really got something special on our hands here. Autechre's trajectory had been on a stable (though still satisfying) path, from 1998's LP5, through 2005's Untilted, their immersion in generative and algorithmic music having reached its pinnacle with 2001's superb Confield. After delivering a run of albums which successfully built on twitchy beats and dark FM synths, 2008's Quaristice was rather a curveball. Sparse in stark contract to the density and long track lengths of Untilted, Quaristice was filled with sublime little sketches. These worked very well with the slew of remixes re-versions of the material, released as the bonus disc, Quaristice (Versions), as well as the digital release series, Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae.

So, what to make of Oversteps, then? Well, more than ever now, Quaristice sounds like a steaming prelude record - a cool In A Silent Way to the more aggressively beautiful Bitches Brew of Oversteps. There are tracks here with the kind of ambient techno melodies that have scarce been present on an Autechre album since 1995's Tri Repetae. Where part of the thrill of Quaristice was the unmistakable sound of the duo wrestling with where to fit all the pieces, Oversteps beams with confidence; everything is fleshed out here.

The temptation is go on much, much longer, but I'm saving the more flowery phrases for my review of the album in Big Shot. I'll also be interviewing Sean Booth for BS next Sunday; look for that all to be out in March, around the same time as Oversteps itself. Lastly, beautiful packaging for this one, natch:

Rhizomatiks' lovely iPhone clocks

Thanks to Creative Applications blog (definitely worth keeping up with if you're interested in browser, desktop, Processing, and iPhone-based art of the more fringe and digital varieties), I've discovered the lovely iPhone / iPod Touch app maker Rhizomatiks - specifically, their fantastic clocks.

At present, the Japanese artist collective has 12 free clocks apps available in the App Store. Each one has a different spin on telling the time. Clock10, for example, shows the time as virtual electronics knobs, while the recent Clock12 has a timely snowfall theme. Each Clock is elegantly minimal, and they don't take up much space (perhaps upwards of 10 MB for the whole set); personally, I've set up a separate app page for all of them, app glutton that I am.

More about Rhizomatiks and the artists involved at this fantastic site. You can preview short animations of each clock here.

My tops of 2009 on Big Shot

As the year winds down, it's been that list time again. A few weeks ago, I had some contributions to PopMatters' best of 2009 feature. Today, a longer personal article is up on Big Shot, featuring my top 25 albums and top 10 singles of the year. You can read the full thing here, but in the mean time, here are the lists:

Albums

25. DJ Hell - Teufelswerk (International Deejay Gigolo)

24. White Rainbow - New Clouds (Kranky)

23. Vinyl Life - Vinyl Life (Tape Theory)

22. Basement Jaxx - Scars (Ultra)

21. Tim Exile - Listening Tree (Warp)

20. Ethan Rose - Oaks (Holocene)

19. Gui Boratto - Take My Breath Away (Kompakt)

18. The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die (Take Me To The Hospital)

17. Clark - Totems Flare (Warp)

16. Falty DL - Love Is A Liability (Planet Mu)

15. Alva Noto - Xerrox Vol. 2 (Raster-Noton)

14. Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country (Kranky)

13. Ras G - Brotha From Anotha Planet (Brainfeeder / Alpha Pup)

12. Voodeux - The Paranormal (Mothership)

11. Gus Gus - 24/7 (Kompakt)

10. Babe, Terror - Weekend (Perdizes Dream)

9. Kid606 - Shout At The Döner (Tigerbeat6)

8. Moby - Wait For Me (Mute)

7. Antipop Consortium - Fluorescent Black (Big Dada)

6. Dixon - Temporary Secretary (Innervisions)

5. Meshell Ndegeocello - Devil's Halo (Mercer Street)

5. Telefon Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself (BPitch Control)

4. Kikumoto Allstars - House Music (International DJ Gigolo)

3. Syntheme - Lasers 'N' Shit (Planet Mu)

2. SND - Atavism (Raster-Noton)

1. Harmonic 313 - When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence (Warp)

Singles

10. Moby - "Mistake"

9. Matias Aguayo - "Rollerskate"

8. Neurotic Drum Band - "Robotic Hypnotic Adventure"

7. Marek Hemmann - "Gemini"

6. John Callaghan - "Phylactery"

5. Audion - "Look At The Moon"

4. The Juan Maclean - "Happy House"

3. Speech Debelle - "Searching"

2. Gus Gus - "Add This Song"

1. Fever Ray - "If I Had A Heart"

* - yes, I noticed I have two #5 albums. Whoops. Consider it a tie.

Snow Storm - new track & RjDj scene!

My friend Paul Edwards came up from NJ today to make some music. We'd been meaning to do this for awhile, and now I feel like an even bigger tool for having to delay things so much; if I dosay so myself, the results from today are pretty dope. Listen for yourself:

Snow Storm by thecrater

Click through to the SoundCloud page to download a high-quality AAC version of the track. It's still a work in progress, so don't get mad if you hear some odd things hear and there. But it's pretty, yeah?

There's another way to hear "Snow Storm" - as an RjDj scene! For those who aren't aware, RjDj, a product of Reality Jockey ltd., is a free iPhone/iPod Touch app made up of "scenes" that facilitate playing/making reactive music. Scenes are put together in Pure Data, Miller

Puckette's free, open-source, platform-agnostic environment for modular DSP. Here's a snapshot of the "back end" of the scene, with heavy use of the excellent RjDj-provided developer macro objects:

In this case, I've take a couple stem loops from "Snow Storm" (they come with the scene as packaged wav files) and made it so that incoming sound controls the relative loudness of certain parts, while lowpass and bandpass filters on all parts are controlled by the x/y/z positioning of the accelerometer. You can download it by clicking on the link below, but first, a warning: this is still technically a private share - I have yet to submit it to RjDj for public approval. I haven't noticed any major issues with this revision of the scene, but you're downloading at your own risk. With that out of the way, here it is:

Here it is. Before you download it, you need to first download the RjDj app for free. Then open up that link - http://bit.ly/4nqzyj - in your iPhone Safari browser, click "install," and RjDj should take care of the rest. The picture above is the artwork for it - original photo is of the kitchen setup where Paul and I recorded the track earlier today. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas from ol' Saint Ranta

My friend and colleague Alan Ranta - some of you might know him by his former penname, Filmore Mescalito Holmes - has unleashed another yearly bounty of mixes designed the make the holidays a bit more interesting.

This time around, there are three Ranta mixes for your holiday enjoyment, all of which can be found at his blog, The FMHole. The cover to the first mix, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sugar Plums? is pictured above; the other two mixes (one with a rather NSFW cover and theme) go the lusty and family routes in exploring this universal North American holiday.

So, ho ho ho, and would this dude sell you short?

MiniSpillage - free drum synth for Mac OS

Here's a fun little free drum synth courtesy of AudioSpillage - MiniSpillage. Essentially a "lite" version of the upcoming DrumSpillage, it's a great tool for making some interesting percussion sounds. If you've been looking for some more out-there or deeper electronic percussion sounds, this is a good one to try out. Note that it's not modeled off of any classic analog machine, but rather just features parameters that you'd general want to have with a drum synth.

Download MiniSpillage here.

Jasuto Pro - new demos

Chris Wolfe, author of the impressive Jasuto app for the iPhone / iTouch, revealed new information about the forthcoming Jasuto Pro today in a post on the Jasuto forum. Here's the first of four demo videos:

There's an impressive laundry list of new and improved options, including a vastly improved sampler, manual patching of wires between nodes, oscillators that Wolfe promises are "nearly alias-free," an ADSR envelope node, granular synthesis (especially excited about this one!), and some other new tweaks and goodies - see the post for the full list.

Wolfe plans to submit Jasuto Pro to the App Store on December 18, though given the sluggish pace of approval these past few months, who knows what that means regarding a public release date. The app will initially cost $5 as an incentive to early adopters, before going up to $10 - steep for the App Store, but steal a huge bargain given Jasuto's capabilities.

2009 Halfway Review [Part 4/5]

Albums 10-6 of my halfway review of 2009. Almost there at #1!

10. Hauschka - Snowflakes and Carwrecks (FatCat)

I can generally handle cold much better than heat, but that doesn’t mean I particularly care for East Coast winters. Still, even in the middle of a beautiful summer’s day, hearing Snowflakes and Carwrecks raises a pang of longing for nights in from the frost. German prepared pianist Volker Bertelmann’s early-2009 EP is a testament to the warmth of good friends and shelter during the harshest season. Bertelmann’s small-town origins are an acknowledged influence on his music, and hearing centerpiece “Tanz” (“Dance”) reach its final crescendo, it’s easy to get swept up in the feeling of a lively, glowing, social gathering in the middle of ice and snow.

My review at Cokemachineglow

9. Clark - Totems Flare (Warp)

With less than a year left, I’ll go ahead and declare Chris Clark to be the defining artist of the decade for Warp Records. His runaway acid, spiked with industrial grit and noir-like levels of reverb have made his albums intensely personal journeys through human emotion. Last year’s Turning Dragon was an angry explosion, leaving Totems Flare to pick up the pieces. It turns out that, for Clark, this involves vocals, more accessible melodies than ever before, and shuffled marching rhythms. Continuing to ride high from the career-peak Body Riddle (2006), this is his most varied record to date.

My review at Cokemachineglow

8. Telefon Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself (BPitch Control)

It was only a few days before the release of Immolate Yourself, Telefon Tel Aviv’s third record, that member Charlie Cooper died suddenly and unexpectedly. Surviving member Josh Eustis has since picked up the pieces and toured to support the record, but, even if the name survives, Cooper’s death is the end of an era for TTA. The sadness of Cooper’s young death is only amplified by the triumphant sound of Immolate Yourself, which finds the duo more focused than ever in creating majestic songs, informed by techno, shoegaze, and ambient glitch styles. Still, it’s rare that any artist is heard on the level that TTA has. If nothing else, and even if incomplete, TTA told their stories.

My review at Cokemachineglow

7. Miss Kittin & The Hacker - Two (Nobody’s Bizzness)

“I am not / a silent woman!” declares Caroline Herve on “The Womb,” her second collaborative album with The Hacker. That she is not. Miss Kittin has never been silent, nor timid, having embraced techno, goth, punk, electro, and many other influences over the course of her impressive career. Her greatest marks were made in collaborations with Felix Da Housecat and The Hacker during that early-90s era was electroclash surged, which threatened to make Two a retread (…of what was kind of a retread to begin with). No such deal, as Kittin and The Hacker create a more sensual, full, inviting, yet also challenging record than they have in the past. Eschewing the monotone mistress figure she played on 2001’s First Album, Miss Kittin shows all her dimensions here, with The Hacker’s backing induced with more, welcome, lush tones than before.

My review at PopMatters

6. GusGus - 24/7 (Kompakt)

Technically, this is firmly from the second half of 2009, coming out in the Fall. But having heard the promo stream mix, I can’t help but pop it down here. Unfortunately, it looks like singer Earth has sat out this album, but in her stead in the return of Daniel Agust, the elfin-voiced androgyne whose inimitably playful and sensual vocals have marked the best GusGus tracks, from “Ladyshave” to “Desire.” Signing to Kompakt, GusGus return here with an album of fewer and longer tracks, going for synth-layered techno jams that play off all their strengths. Just wait - it’s gonna be epic.

2009 Halfway Review [Part 3/5]

Here's part three of my top 25 albums of 2009, halfway through, numbers 15 through 11.

15. Voodeux - The Paranormal (Mothership)

I love horror movies and shows, and I love techno. Imagine the glee when my inbox chimed in with a promo for Voodeux, a new group on Claude Von Stroke’s Mothership label who also love those two things, and made them the impetus behind their work. That’s the great thing about The Paranormal--it’s a gimmick, certainly, but a fantastically entertaining one, that results in some truly spine-tingling minimal beats. With a penchant for empty, reverberated spacey, and wobbly organ and chime sounds, Voodeux have created a solid debut offering with tracks that work great on the dance floor and in the headphones. A recent interview I conducted with one of the duo, Tanner Ross (look for it in the next issue of Big Shot), suggests that Voodeux are looking to expand beyond simply being the “horror techno” group. Regardless, Paranormal delivers fully on the promise within its premise.

14. SND - Atavism (Raster-Noton)

I cannot stop listening to this record, which is not quite what I would have expected upon first hearing about it. SND, veterans of the glitch scene, return from a release hiatus with an album that redefines just how “minimal” minimal techno can get. Every one of the unnamed tracks on Atavism uses the same narrow palette of digital, inorganic sounds: a bouncy bass drum, something like a cymbal hit, another something like a snare hit, and an FM-sounding pad with an icy sheen and little timbral variation. This record is a love letter to the disinfected cleanliness of digital signal processing, using sequencers and computerized sound generation to thoroughly de-humanize the productions, and the product is nothing short of addictive. If the sanitized future-dwellers of THX 1138 made funky techno, you can bet it would have sounded like this.

My review at themilkfactory

13. Jimi Tenor & Kabu Kabu - 4^th Dimension (Puu)

“It’s imperative / to groove.” So goes the lyrical call-to-action at the start of “Aligned Planets,” the opener from 4^th Dimension, the latest from versatile Finnish musician Jimi Tenor, in collaboration with afrobeat ensemble Kabu Kabu. This record sees Tenor disrupting the afrobeat formula with jazzy dissonances and a light synthesizer haze, for a result that sounds like a kind of dream group featuring Miles Davis and Fela Kuti, both at the height of their willingness to think outside the box. Admittedly, I know relatively little about afrobeat, and only chanced upon this album because of the involvement of Warp records alumnus Tenor. Good on him, for continuing to challenge the complacency of each segment of his wide audience.

12. Babe, Terror - Weekend (Perdizes Dream)

The phrase “tropical” has become comically overused in 2009, as bands as stale as Vampire Weekend get slapped with misnomer tags like “Balearic” (which, to remind readers, was a general categorization for electronic dance music popular in Ibiza in the late 80s). The Zeitgest record here is Panda Bear’s 2007 album Person Pitch, which has spawned a rash of half-hearted imitators. If there’s any justice, Babe, Terror, will rise above this fray and get proper recognition, a process that has already started, to some extent. Made entirely out of samples and recordings of his own voice through a relatively basic audio editor, Weekend is a dizzyingly psychedelic journey from São Paulo-based artist Claudio Szynkier. Like Bobby McFerrin on hallucinogens staring at a beautiful sky, Babe, Terror’s music is hyperreal, vocal communication on a non-verbal plane. That it’s available for free download means there no excuse for you not to go and get it now.

My review at Cokemachineglow

11. Ras G - Brotha From Another Planet (Brainfeeder / Alpha Pup)

There’s so many hot new beatmakers coming out of LA these days that I’m amazed I didn’t trip over an MPC when I was there in March. But few are as out-there and compelling as Ras G, whose Brotha From Anotha Planet is equal parts J Dilla and Sun Ra. The beats are grounded in the earth and humanity--note the lack of quantization, contributing to a chewy feel on the percussion--but the themes are out of this world by quite some distance. This is George Clinton’s funk in space as seen through, blunted, introspective, information-age glasses. Lose yourself in it.

My review at Cokemachineglow

2009 Halfway Review [Part 2/5]

Here we go with part two of my top albums of 2009 at the halfway mark. Before starting with the next five, here's a quick plug for pitches for a special features section on the 20th anniversary of Warp Records that I'm co-editing for PopMatters. The call for papers is public, so you (yes, you!) should get cracking on a pitch or two! Deadline for pitches is August 14.

Now, without further ado, here's 20-16:

20. Venetian Snares - Filth (Planet Mu)

This is far from the first time Aaron Funk has done something close to pornographic - his Nymphomatriarch collaboration with then-partner Rachel Kozak (aka Hecate) was built entirely out of sampled sounds from the duos “private debaucheries” recorded while on tour. But Filth is much more about the giggles than the (hypothetical) shits, with Funk relying on the syrupy snot of distorted acid to communicate the sounds of darkly absurdist fluid-swapping.

19. Ethan Rose - Oaks (Holocene)

Great year for ambient, part 2. Something serene from Portland-based composer Ethan Rose, who built Oaks out of samples of the ancient organ at the Oaks Park skating rink. Since I have childhood memories of birthday parties and rainy afternoon at the Oaks rink, this one definitely hits me in the nostalgia. It’s to Rose’s credit that Oaks avoids sounding sappy, instead relying on reverb and the digital artifacts of computer processing to invoke the hazy nature of memory.

My review at PopMatters

18. The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die (Take Me To The Hospital)

When I interviewed Liam Howlett about this one (to be published in full soon, really I swear), he mentioned that recording and touring for this album, The Prodigy has felt more like a solid band unit than ever before. Certainly, we have the opposite of 2004’s Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, which saw Howlett turning mostly towards guests vocalists, as MC Maxim Reality and singer Keith Flint have a heavy presence on Invaders Must Die. Where Outgunned lagged in parts, Invaders is an abrasive thrill-ride through rave sounds past and present. The trio are clearly more comfortable with their status as rave’s veterans, and as such, it’s nice to hear some call-and-response and hoover-esque stabs back in the mix.

17. Moby - Wait For Me (Mute)

After last year’s disco curveball, Last Night, I had no idea what to expect from Moby. Coming within a year of Last Night, Wait For Me sees Moby going back to his “Little Idiot” persona of the daydreamer with a synthesizer and a bunch of field recordings, only this time things are a bit different. Wait For Me is as soul-baringly naked as Moby’s ever been on record - he truly does sound like he’s about to burst into tears on the New Order-esque “Mistake.” It’s inspiring to see that Moby, two decades into his career, still wrestles so heavily with where to go next. Luckily, his avenue with this record is a rewarding one.

My review at Cokemachineglow

16. Alva Noto - Xerrox Vol. 2 (Raster-Noton)

The second album in a series conceptually exploring the link between the sounds of past and present, Xerrox Vol. 2, like its older brother, Xerrox Vol. 1 (2007), finds Alva Noto glitching out over aching strings. Vol. 2 is even more toward the accessible end of anything Carsten Nicolai’s done, with nary a harsh beat or burst of noise to be found. Instead, we get an entry with a foot in the door for Great Year for Ambient. It’s also, it should be mentioned, a fine jewel in what is shaping up to be an excellent year for Raster-Noton. Well worth seeking out.

My review at Cokemachineglow

2009 Halfway Review [Part 1/5]

I hear a lot of records these days. 2009 is a bit over half over (already? I know - time passes these days, doesn't it?), and I've heard nearly 100 albums; not all as deeply as I'd like to, but enough to have a rough idea of what's really sticking. So, I'll be posting a series of updates, five at a time, counting down what, at the moment, are my top records of 2009 so far. Starting now with 25-21:

25. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion (Paw Tracks)

This one has been a difficult grower on me. Upon first listen, it sounded like a meandering sprawl of beauty in need of some more structure to really gel. I’m still not as sold on it as I am other Animal Collective records, but moments like “Also Frightened” are some of the most beautiful twisted psych-pop this year.

24. Moderat - Moderat (BPitch Control)

The collaboration between Apparat and Modeselektor has fantastic potential, and almost always delivers greatly. It’s interesting to hear Sasha Ring’s glitchy ambience tempered with the fat basses of Modeselektor. “Beatswaysick,” featuring California MC Busdriver, is a clear highlight.

23. Tyondai Braxton - Central Market (Warp)

I’m still getting used to this one, and boy is it something different from Ty Braxton. While previous solo efforts have found Braxton in an insular mode, focusing on the layered structures of his vocals and guitar, the upcoming Central Market sounds like Stravinsky collaborating with Braxton’s post-rock group, Battles. A fully-orchestrated affair, Market still maintains Braxton’s quirks - notice the omnipresent kazoos and whistling.

22. Benjy Ferree - Come Back To The Five And Dime, Bobby Dee, Bobby Dee (Domino)

A concept album about child stardom - wait, did Cory Feldman actually get a record deal? Naw, this is just an intriguingly dramatic little tale of the life of Bobby Driscoll, one-time number-one Disney kid actor (he was the voice of Peter Pan in the animated classic), who ended up dead at 31 to an overdose, long forgotten by the shady cast of characters who had supported his pre-pubescent rise to the top. “Fear” and “Pisstopher Chrisstopher” excellently capture the mix of anger, sadness, and crippling paranoia at play.

21. Kyle Bobby Dunn - Fervency (Moodgadget)

It’s been a good year for ambient so far, to say the least. Still a young composer, Kyle Bobby Dunn’s rapid, genre-bending development pauses here to focus on lushly resonant drones. This is music for deep thought and indescribable emotion, icily shiny yet warmly embracing at the same time.

WIR #7

Should I even bother calling these "week in review" posts anymore? I can't seem to get in the pattern of actually posting them weekly. Well, it's Monday, it's been a couple crazy weeks of turnover in my life, and here's some stuff that's gone up:

Miss Kittin & The Hacker - Two (Nobody's Bizzness; 2009)

Score: 8/10

It took almost eight years, but we finally have another collaborative effort from Caroline Herve and Michael Amato. The icily passive sexuality from First Album is still present on a few tracks, but it's no longer the dominant theme. Herve is more emotional and Amato is more lush, for a more naked experience. Also, bangin' chunes.

Full review at PopMatters

Moby - Wait For Me (Mute; 2009)

Score: 70/100

After remaking Play with diminishing returns and then throwing a curveball in last year's NY disco-themed Last Night, Wait for Me is a return to sad, ambient, symphonic Moby. Only this is sadder and more personal and soul-baring than he's ever been, really. For someone who included all those essays in his earlier records (none of that here), that's saying something. A consistent portrait of longing and malaise, plus a lot of tracks that sound kinda like "G-d Moving Over the Face of Waters."

Full review at Cokemachine Glow

Cylob's Acid Harvest

Look - it's a new color! Big Shot Magazine orange! While I'm pretty sure that most of my stuff for Big Shot will only appear in the glossy print form, apparently a few articles get posted to the website over time. So, here's my profile of acid ace Cylob, and his uniquely coded DJ program, the Kombine BeatHarvester.

Full article at Big Shot

WIR #6 - long time coming

Hi everyone. Guess what? I'm alive! And here's some overdue updates of stuff I've written:

Kikumoto Allstars - House Music (International Deejay Gigolo; 2009)

Score: 80/100

In a landscape overrun with throwback acts looking for elusive "authenticity" in their nostalgic interpretations of dance music, Kikumoto Allstars manage to rise above and deliver a tight long-player of house grooves. It's all here - squelchy acid lines, ravey sawtooth synths, liberal helpings of TR-808 and TR-909 percussion - and it all pumps.

Full review at Cokemachineglow

SND - Atavism (Raster-Noton; 2009)

Score: 4/5

SND return from out of the blue with an intensely sterile take on minimal techno. There's no superfluously delayed percussion or field recordings, and certainly no M-nus- / Basic Channel-esque reverb. No, we get digital percussion pounding away with FM pad stabs, drawing from the same narrow sound palette for the entirety of the release. So why do I like it? Read on!

Full review at the milk factory

Ear Pwr - Super Animal Brothers III (Carpark; 2009)

Score: 55/100

And here I thought that Adventure album was as ridiculous as things could get in the "let's ape Dan Deacon" segment of Carpark. Ear Pwr have something really interesting going for them - namely those wonderful analog toys - but it all gets a shit-smear thanks to unfortunate (and unnecessary) hipster posturing. Did you really need to title a song "Cats Is People Too?" Or how about "Sparkley [sic] Sweater?" Ear Pwr would be so much more likable if they didn't elicit eye-rolls.

Full review at Cokemachineglow

Atom™ - Liedgut (Raster-Noton; 2009)

Score: 7/10

The man also known as Señor Coconut has some interesting tricks up his sleeve. In this case, said tricks include making a series of tracks based around a motif of rhythmic cell-phone interference, vocoded poetry on the nature of radio signals, and a guest appearance from the godfather of German techno himself, Florian Schneider! Ja.

Full review at PopMatters

Sascha Funke - Watergate 02 (Watergate; 2008)

Score: 8/10

No, I'm not sure why an album from 2008 didn't send out a promo copy until Spring 2009. Be that as it may, this is still a pretty impressive mix from Funke. Requisite 2008 inclusion of that one Nathan Fake track, of course.

Full review at PopMatters

That's not quite all for now - if you'll pick up the latest issue of Big Shot Magazine, you'll find a couple articles from yours truly; a discussion with Chris Jeffs (aka Cylob) about his homemade DJ software, the Kombine BeatHarvester, and a review of Ableton Live 8. They aren't online, but I think it's a pretty fantastic issue with some great pieces on The Prodigy, Pet Shop Boys, Peaches and more!

WIR #5

Been a busy week, particularly with CMG, where it was Kid606 Week™ for me. Check it!

Interview: Kid606
Anticipating the release of Shout At The Döner, I spoke to Miguel De Pedro about a whole host of subjects, for an engaging discussion long enough to warrant publication in two parts. Hear about his perspectives on running a record label, how he makes his tracks, what he thinks of the explosion of the mashup scene he pioneered, how Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart is unexpectedly hilarious, moving to Berlin, and much, much, more.
Part 1 at Cokemachineglow
Part 2 at Cokemachineglow

Kid606 - Shout At The Döner (Tigerbeat6; 2009)
Score: 84/100
The full-length return of Kid606 from his hiatus. Following the the dubstep phatness of last year's Die Soundboy Die, Döner is a return to the rave-obliterating madness of albums like Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You. This time, we also get zombie references. That, and it's one of his most solid releases.
Full review at Cokemachineglow

The Juan Maclean - The Future Will Come (DFA; 2009)
Score: 75/100
Co-authored with Calum Marsh (okay, being honest, he wrote 2/3 of it then asked me to add stuff, and is dude enough to give me co-writing credit). DFA's non-label-owning star returns with a second full-length, following the pure bliss that was "Happy House" (which appears in full form at the end of The Future). You'll wish some of the tracks went longer, but things could certainly be worse than that.
Full review at Cokemachineglow

Mauxuam - Viceversa (Interchill; 2008)
Score: 3/5
Worldly Italian producer returns from three years of traveling with this glitched-out aural document. While it's at times weighted down by its socio-political concerns, we've still got a worthwhile think piece on our hands.
Full review at the milk factory

WIR #4

Been a good week. Enjoy!

Reinventing the Music Box (Again)
Score: 9/10
Don't let the score fool you; this puppy is a feature-length discussiong of FM3's recently-released Buddha Machine II, and what the technological add-ons (in this case, a pitch-wheel) mean for the device's reputation as a tool of simplicity.
Full article at PopMatters

Ras G - Brotha From Anotha Planet (Brainfeeder/Alpha Pup; 2009)
Score: 70/100
Equal parts Sun Ra and J Dilla, Ras G is a promising new beatmaking talent out of the fertile blunted-space-beats garden that is LA. Like contemporary Flying Lotus, only more spaced out (which is most often a good thing).
Full review at Cokemachineglow

Jane's Addiction - "Whores" (self-released; 2009)
Jane's Addiction are back with the original four members in tow - including, for the first time in 1991, bassist Eric Avery. Fittingly, they've laid down some blasting new studio versions of songs from their semi-live debut for inclusion in a free sampler for their "NINJA" tour with Nine Inch Nails and Street Sweeper (if you're unfamiliar with the latter, it's a new collaboration between Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello and The Coup's Boots Riley).
Track review at Cokemachineglow

I'm aware of how lame it is that there's nothing on the milk factory this week. But I'll get something soon - promise!

Lastly, a couple new things. First off, I've started another freelance relationship, this one with Big Shot, a Brooklyn-based DJ magazine with some sweet features, reviews, and charts galore. I've written a review of Ableton Live 8 and a feature about Cylob's homemade DJ software (made in SuperCollider, my coding environment of choice, I might add) for the next issue.

Additionally, though it's not music-related, I've also started doing some writing for New York Magazine; I covered an ASPCA gala honoring Martha Stewart last night. You can read a couple items about it here and here.