The best new singles this week
The must have 45s from the last seven days
SINGLE OF THE WEEK
In her evolution as an artist, Jlin was already way out in her own field when she first broke through. The Indiana-based footwork firebrand felt like one of the first to truly show where the Chicago-rooted dance form could head with a more experimental mindset. That’s not to say footwork wasn’t experimental to begin with, but as with techno and all other genres, interesting things happen when outside forces start spinning variations from a founding formula. In truth, three albums in Jlin sounds more like Jlin than she does footwork, but even as this new EP darts out into fresh territory you can hear the pace and fragmentation of the genre setting the tone.
There is a definite look towards fresh sound palettes on Embryo though, especially on the title track. You can sense a little more techno propulsion in the low end, no matter how often the locomotion gets disrupted. It’s the lead synth sound which takes the prize though, coming on with an acidic buzz which feels like a specific incitement to rave in a thoroughly Midwestern sense of the word. It’s also remarkable how fractured Jlin can make things without losing that thrust that makes a deadly dance track.
There’s also a bleep n’ bass thread running through ‘Auto Pilot’, although here it feels a little more like an incidental side effect of the intense drum workout. It’s ‘Connect The Dots’ where things get wild again, with a hissing, slithering line in DSP production which captures the essence of electronica at its most extravagant. It’s charged with acute angles, a frenetic pace and a rush of sonic information, although never at the expense of the groove.
What’s interesting is how Jlin can pivot from that kind of hi-octane action to a curiously low slung kind of funk within the relative constraints of her approach. ‘Rabbit Hole’ is a much sparser affair which again picks up threads of bleep but gives them plenty of breathing room to flirt with P funk-informed synth flex. The EP overall seems to come from one focused area of inspiration, and it’s a zone we haven’t explored with Jlin so far. Within that, she can find ways to express distinct ideas, call back to the foundations of Black dance music (Detroit techno, bleep, P funk) and come out sounding like nothing else around.
OW
Gigi FM – Magnetite EP (Bambe)
There are plenty of artists out there who like to infuse their techno with a spiritual dimension, but beyond the odd bit of washy reverb or a cloying pad, how far are they prepared to go? Gigi FM can truly declare her music to be created from a spiritual, metaphysical perspective, which she brings into sharp focus on this EP for Bambounou’s Bambe label.
Beyond the snaking, spiralling patterns of percussion and melody, Fournier-Mercadante also looked to mineral and elemental forces for inspiration as she made the EP, hence the Magnetite title, This all nods to electro-magnetic energy fields and our relationship to the earth, feeding into the barefoot, transcendental scenario the music feels absolutely made for.
As well as producing music and DJing, Giulia Fournier-Mercadante is also a trained dancer, and movement is a central focus within her craft. Perhaps that sounds obvious for a techno release, and this EP is undoubtedly techno, but there’s an approach to cyclical patterns which feels more attuned to conscious, expressive movement rather than the head-nodding shuffle or fist-pumping jack of 4/4 dogma. It’s no surprise to learn the EP was partially made with movement sensors triggering a Max MSP patch, closing the gap between her dancing and music until they’re essentially one and the same.
Crucially, sonically she’s captured exactly what she’s proposed. You could strip away all the conceptual framework and the vibe would still communicate this sense of dance as an ancient rite, sidestepping every naff 90s trance pitfall with the poise of an expert mover and conjuring incredibly elegant, immersive modern techno in the process. From the Euclidean pattering of ‘Senstronaut’ to the fast-paced synth flurries of ‘Ketu’s Dance’, Gigi FM is here to take you deeper inside yourself and further out into the environment around you, offering exactly the kind of holistic techno experience we all need in our lives.
OW
Omar-S & Desire – 54321 (FXHE)
For his latest joint on FXHE, Omar-S is teaming up with Italians Do It Better mainstays Desire. The long-running noirish synthwave group are fronted by Megan Louise, who you can hear front an centre on this new track. It’s not clear whether Louise’s other band members were involved in the production but you’d suspect not. The track itself sounds like grade-A Omar-S material, so why would you need anyone else on the buttons?
In recent times we’ve seen the FXHE boss dropping funkified Prince-nodding gear like ‘The First 100’ with Andre Foxx and tackling epic kick-less techno and disjointed ghettotech with John FM on Music For Hot Babes Only!, but ‘54321’ lands more in line with the incredible, vocal-led ‘Ever Green’ link up with Supercoolwicked, which came out back in January.
Here though, it’s the cavernous chord line in front which takes up the mix, with Louise’s sultry spoken word murmuring in the shadows. That works just fine on this brooding big room track, with Smith’s synths striking the sweet spot between functionality and flair as the straight-ahead melodies swerve and sway through washes of reverb. There’s no great mystery to this track – its immediacy is part of its charm, honing in on the eternal appeal of techno in the classic sense of the word.
OW
Moka Only – More Soup (FlipNJay)
Daniel Denton might not have achieved the same level of recognition as his contemporaries, but he has certainly outdone them in prolificacy. Under his Moka Only moniker, the Canadian rapper has amassed an astonishing 70 albums since the mid-90s, which has cemented his status as one of underground hip-hop’s most hard-working creative minds.
Among his wealth of material is his collaboration with the late, great MF DOOM. Taken from his 2005 LP Desired Effect and lovingly reissued by FlipNJay Canada, ‘More Soup’ is Moka at his most effortless. A swaggering guitar loop and punchy boom-bap drums set the groundwork for his witty, braggadocious bars, in which he consolidates his prowess with a dash of humour (“Mic by the mirror, I’m the best I ever saw record”). Of course, DOOM’s gruff delivery and inimitable wordplay is on point too. No rapper manipulated rhyme and syntax like the supervillain; whether he’s making Happy Days references or plotting to feed a prospective lover with minestrone, it’s delivered with precision and light-heartedness in equal measure. At 2 minutes and 14 seconds, it is brief, but it doesn’t diminish the sense of triumph.
The B-side features production from another late hip-hop innovator. ‘Franks & Beans’ – which originally belonged on the same album as the A-side – is home to a thumping J Dilla beat. It’s grittier and harder-hitting than ‘More Soup’, made even more so by the whirring synths and bleeps, and the laser-sharp focus with which Moka attacks his verses. These two tracks demonstrates his versatility, and the ease at which he can adjust to the idiosyncrasies of his collaborators. It’s the sound of a rapper operating at a high level, but it’s almost as if he knows how good he is here.
MDW
Moka Only/J Dilla – One Time (FlipNJay)
The second Moka Only release from FlipNJay Canada this week, One Time is another exercise in innovation between the Canadian rapper and legendary producer J Dilla. The track has a curious history; it was remade for Moka’s album Desired Effect due to studio interference, but the original version (which included the famous Bel-Sha-Zaar sample that appeared on Deee-Lite’s ‘Groove Is In the Heart’ and Tyler the Creator’s ‘I Ain’t Got Time!’) eventually surfaced years later. At long last, it has been given the vinyl treatment it richly deserves.
Firstly, it’s impossible to describe any other aspect of ‘One Time’ without focusing on that beat. Simply put, it’s one of Dilla’s best. The sample is slower and lower-pitched, which perfectly compliments the louche, raunchy grooves. It’s raw and minimal, but there’s an intoxicating sense of danger too, and the bottom-heavy drum textures suggests that it could’ve been used for a 00s R&B club banger if it had ended up in a different pair of hands.
Nevertheless, Moka works his magic with it. Like an artist gliding across a blank canvas with a paintbrush, his bars pour with limitless confidence, but at the same time it’s clear how much fun he’s having. That balance between technical excellence and palpable enjoyment of his craft is what makes One Time one of his most definitive tracks to date, andan essential listen for all hip-hop heads.
MDW
Kenny Dope Edits – Wild Style: Down By Law (Mr Bongo)
If you’ve got an ounce of hip-hop culture in you then you’ll know about ‘Wild Style’, the seismic movie that put hip-hop music and its attendant cultural trappings (especially graffiti) on the map. It’s probably fair to say that Kenny Dope’s exhaustive Wild Style Breakbeats box set from 2014 is slightly less well known, but neither of these facts make this 7″ single – in fact, the first of six singles in said box set – any less of a desirable item for anyone who likes to shake their tail feather to a bit of funk.
Both sides of it – ‘Down By Law’ on the A-side, with its loose but undeniably groovy bassline right up in your face and the slightly more tension-filled, cowbell-driven flip ‘Subway Beat’ – are sure to get anyone with a pulse and the vaguest feel for the funk up on the floor. The atmosphere of the film, with its portrayal of early 80s New York in all its steaming, sweaty glory (or not) remains intact, just sliced up and re-rolled in a more palatable-for-DJs fashion. Sheer brilliance, treated with reverence but not preserved in aspic. You’ll have to search for a long, long time to find seven inches of funk more dazzling than this. Utterly dope.
BW
The Gloria Records – The Gloria Record (reissue) (Big Scary Monsters)
After Chris Simpson and Jeremy Gomez disbanded the legendary Mineral project in 1997, they moved on to lesser-trodden realms. Now, the fruit of their explorations – Austin indie emo project The Gloria Record – are a comparatively lesser-known US bastion of the genre, but they rode the late-90s voguish wave for it just as effectively.
Originally conceptualized as simply ‘Gloria’, the altered name that is The Gloria Record came about in a strangely ‘meta’ way. As Simpson and drummer Matt Hammon mused over doing “the Gloria record” together, thus the name was born. And while this certainly yields to the trope of funny band name origin stories resulting in quite genre-specific music, that certainly doesn’t make this not one of the more impressive gems of the era. Unlike Mineral, The Gloria Record drew comparisons to bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and Radiohead. And from the outset of ‘Ozona & Sonora’ – named after the stretch of road lying between two towns in Texas – we instantly glean a sense of boundless, bittersweet, gushing male emotion streaming from its crisply strummed guitars and mathy progressions.
As with much emo, voices are distant and waily, but this occurs on an even more washed-out plane than most classic examples of this. ‘Grain Towers, Telephone Poles’ even recalls the strange instrumental buildups of GY!BE, while ‘Ode To New Grass’ sings of misspent emotion and rumination: the refrain “places I can never see” referring to this sense of lost land. Like the cover’s alabaster sepia colour, the vinyl on this reissue is marbled, just like this band’s evidently brittled souls.
JIJ
UBALD – Rouge de Colere 16 (Rouge de Colere)
Ubald Hirsch comes straight from Europe’s gabber and breakcore heyday: having put out most of his early releases in the late ‘90s and early noughties, he returned to the style after a couple decades’ hiatus, following an upsurge in popularity centred on the German label Doomcore Records.
Said hiatus seems to have bred an extra dimension in Hirsch’s brain entirely. His new addition to the French hardcore label Rouge De Colere – who only release their wax in blood red editions – is much more experimental than his prior output, and sees him rejoin newer yet no less masterful hardcore aliases like (yes) Noize Destroyer, BudBurnerz amd Autistic Ghost. Fittingly, we’re almost knocked into near-death by the A-side’s first track, ‘Death’, which blends French anarchist vocal samples with psychopathic gunshot samples and offbeat stabs that beat our ears to a bloody pulp. As much is true for ‘The Mix’, a more machinized alternate version.
The B-side is even less forgiving. Byron Bogues-style, a bosslike kickdrum edges through wafts of spooky pad noise on ‘Samael’, inducing a state of dark entrainment in us that very few other kinds of music can muster. ‘Truands’ continues in the theme of sampled French anarchist rallying cries, but it has a slipperier edge to the mix. Overall, Ubald makes his brand of hardcore wax and wane, as though he’s teasing our sense of its edge; is it truly hard, or is there something more meditative going on?
JIJ
This week’s reviewers: Oli Warwick, Jude Iago James. Matthew D Watkin, Ben Willmott