The best new singles this week

The top layer of this week’s singles action

SINGLE OF THE WEEK

DJ Minx ‘Do It All Night’ (Planet E)

Queen bee of Detroit’s electronic music community DJ Minx scores her debut EP for Planet E, oozing class on a well-deserved single release of ‘Do It All Night’. The Women On Wax founder has been a cherished member of the motor city underground since she first began gracing the turntables back in the ’90s. Cutting her teeth hosting the ‘Deep Space Radio’ show on Detroit’s WGPR, she’s performed at each and every iteration of the city’s Movement Festival and continues to tour in-the-know venues internationally. Despite being honoured with the ‘Spirit Of Detroit’ award in 2018 and featuring in Time Out New York’s 2016 list of “Best house music DJs of all time,” there’s a feeling that her name doesn’t ring out beyond her home town as perhaps it should.

Real name Jennifer Witcher, productions under the DJ Minx moniker have been arriving at a leisurely frequency since the early 2000s, most often on Women On Wax Recordings. ‘Do It All Night’ first appeared digitally on Carl Craig’s long-running Planet E in 2019 – albeit in C2 edit form – and now receives a full wax release alongside bona fide trailblazer, Honey Dijon.

Launching over an irresistibly skippy drum groove, the original mix sees hypnotic synth licks looping into eternity as sinister bass and off-kilter pads caress the achingly soulful vocal. On the reverse, Chicago born globetrotter Honey Dijon ramps up the energy levels on her club-focused remix, funnelling her battle-hardened dance-floor nous to ensure maximum kinetic impact. Retaining the vocal alongside the key musical themes, Dijon beefs up the drums and reworks the arrangement with the main room in mind, adding a couple more shovels of gravel into the mix. DJ Minx’s place on the wall of house and techno immortals is assured, but this release should help garner a little more awareness of her status in the peripheries of the scene.

PC

Pytko – Silent (Phantasy Sound)

Pytko is one of the newest signings to London’s Phantasy sound, and here returns to the Erol Alkan-helmed imprint for her second 7” affair. Since her first release, the producer, singer and songwriter has demonstrated her ability to break down barriers between club smoke-outs and pop singles, coming out with a new yet subdued brand of sophisti-indie not normally made on the dance music circuit.

The A-track ‘Silent’ delivers anything but the silent treatment. Singing of a tumultuous love affair recently endured by the artist, Pytko sings disturbingly of going quiet and ghosting, as fantasy sound effects pan from left to right across our ears, and a sort of brimming, blooping palette of beatless yet rhythmic ambience wavers under the surface. Comic producer Bullion serves up a fleshed-out beat, bringing extra dimension to the vocals while making them clearer: “we don’t need to keep the cushion between us”. An infectious synth guitar hook follows, as acoustic bleeds further into electronic. 

On the digital version of the LP, we’re greeted by a secret B-side, ‘Orchids And Limes’, our favourite track of the two. Jazz-punk guitar gets the ambient wash treatment, as great cinematic bass pulses away in the low mix, creating a sort of cinematic coda worthy of any new Hollywoodized sci-fi film. 

JIJ

Saucy Lady ‘Hoshi No Suna (Stardust)’ (Austin Boogie Crew)

Japanese Bostonian Saucy Lady never fails to raise a smile with her effervescent releases. Having previously appeared on the likes of Star Creature, Soul Clap Records and Toucan Sounds among others, the Beantown Disco Queen lands on the Austin Boogie Crew label with a typically honeyed 7”. Growing up surrounded by music and with a fanatical jazz collector as a father, it’s perhaps unsurprising that a career in music beckoned for the saucy one. Schooled in classical piano since the age of five, her music brims with an authentic musicality that appears plucked from the golden age of disco boogie – whether she’s functioning as vocalist, songwriter, or producer. Her debut album ‘Diversify’ appeared on the shelves via Audio Chemists in 2011, with a pair of follow-ups arriving on Star Creature a decade or so later.

The woman behind the alter-ego has garnered an impressive list of achievements – obtaining a Master’s degree in Library Science, working as a Music Librarian at the Boston Conservatory, and interning for Jive Records. Despite this, it’s clear that when she assumes her familiar moniker she revels in the freedom that her polychromatic persona affords her. Encompassing outrageous costumes, stage-ready swagger, abundant sensuality – and more than a little tongue-in-cheek humour – her music, too, is embodied with a shimmering sense of fun. ‘Hoshi No Suna’ sees her singing sweetly in her native Japanese, her seductive vocals echoing over a bed of vintage, boogie-fuelled and pop-coated loveliness. Emotive strings glide over squelchy bass, crisp drums and delay-laden stabs. Sounding suspiciously like a long-lost Japanese disco gem, the music lends itself magnificently well to the instrumental version on the B-side, where the dreamy synth-led instrumentation stands up supremely well for dub-inclined floors.

PC

Terrence Dixon – Relinked (Kynant)

It seems like there’s a current trend for wormhole techno. Ever-increasing numbers of artists diving into extended, cerebral creations where subtlety and hypnotism are key, using vapourous, textural beds and riding slow-shifting loops until they’re buried in the listener’s subconscious. Of course the practice has been around a long time, and it’s more interesting hearing the unintentional pioneers of such trends in the context of so much derivative music. Terrence Dixon’s music doesn’t sound like it’s designed to take you deeper in a conceited way, but its delivered with assured minimalism and an otherworldly quality which makes for incredibly immersive listening. 

This is the first time Dixon has linked up with Kynant, who have increasingly been exploring this area via the likes of Mike Parker, Iori and others. If you’re an avid follower of Dixon’s work this 12” won’t come as a shock by any stretch, but it’s a timely reminder of the level the Detroit outlier operates at if you’re considering where the freshest deep techno can be found. Such is the inherent otherness of Dixon’s sound – the loping offbeat melodic phrases, atonal dissonance, slender drums and loops stretching out into infinity – his music sounds fresh even as he delivers something true to his output for nigh on 30 years. 

Which particular tracks jump out will be highly subjective depending on the DJ, and it is worth considering Dixon’s work in DJ terms no matter how heady it gets. The simple, spooky phrase coursing through ‘Change’ might well suck you in for a mid-set trip out. ‘Transcend’s kickless suspension could inspire you to engage in more audacious energy manipulation, sucking the low end anchor out of the mix while teasing the synapses. The dub tech rumble of the lead in ‘Relentlessly’ is immediate and effective, hitting somewhere between cavernous intensity and basement intimacy. At all times, Dixon’s weird finish prevails – those eerie, off-key notes that speak to his singular style. That’s ultimately what sets his sound apart, and in the context of deep and trippy techno, those errant elements become powerful psychoactive flourishes.

OW

Various Artists – Marks Of Existence (Exist)

Born out of the festival which first took place in Ramallah in 2019, Exist now becomes a record label holding true to a representation of Middle Eastern music but with a global outlook. The festival also held an edition in Athens earlier this year, and the founders are based in Amman and Amsterdam, with a show on Threads joining the dots between a range of international connections. This isn’t a label seeking to solely promote music from the Middle East, but rather valuing the international exchange of experimental music and culture with this often marginalised region in the heart of the conversation. 

The label strides out with a formidable four-track EP as its opening statement, and they notably lead with a piece from ex-Coil synth wizard Drew McDowall. You can hear his ample experience and past endeavours in the spiritually charged, subtly unnerving ‘Conceal The Wound’. He’s placed next to Muqata’a, one of Palestine’s most vital artists who creates a powerful abstraction of leftfield instrumental hip-hop with glitch and noise as potent production tools. On ‘Idari’ he takes a more experimental than usual approach, holding back on drums to let layers of edgy noise fizz and buzz through the stereo field until he starts folding disheveled shards of breakbeat into the mix. As ever, his approach is taut and unnerving, capturing something of the fractious environment his music has emerged from.

CASKO is an alias from Chafik Chennouf, the Exist co-founder with an already-established line in nervy techno via Opal Tapes and Khemia. His own sound on ‘The Price You Pay To Be Unattached Flesh’ has a curious mix of big room drama and grubby, underground pressure, which makes for the most direct statement on the record. Adel Poursamadi and Tegh round the compilation off with an piece which combines electronic processing and electro-acoustic noise with strained string work, at once speaking to the vibrant experimental music culture in Iran and something more ancient, as though the rich history of the region were manifesting between the clusters of noise, static and found sounds.

OW

My Life My Passion – Mist Across The Window Hides The Lines (self-released)

Rarely, we stumble across a release that has absolutely no context to back it up – and in those cases, that’s exactly what makes said releases great. But this one raises the stakes tenfold. My Life My Passion is a completely unknown artist. They have no online presence; no Instagram, no Facebook page, no public contact details. This 12” is branded as a ‘self-release’, but there’s not even a corresponding link to it outside of our webstore. 

All we know, on listening, is that MLMP make pretty radical baleariccy disco, upending any expectation we might have had (save for perhaps the ones set by idly flicking through the ‘filter by genre’ tags on Juno’s sidebar). And the only thing rooting the damn thing in anything that came before is the EP’s title, ‘Mist Across The Window Hides The Lines’, which draws on an old Joe Jackson lyric from his 1982 song ‘Steppin’ Out’. Naturally, track 1 is an instrumental remake of this song, adding extra slapping drums and eking out the synths, bringing out the punch in the sub-300hz range. Curious! 

On further listen, we realise, in fact, that most of this thing is made up experimental rerubs of old, randomly-sourced hits. Track 2 smushes indistinct vocals together with drums from Portishead’s ‘Machine Gun’, while track 3 takes David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ and adds glitzing, magick, psychic production to its outer and inner edges, giving us the balearic remix we didn’t know we needed. Track 4 rounds things off on an emotive instrumental piano-disco note, adding cute reflection to the whole thing. We suspect that the lack of PR for, and the act of self-releasing, this 12” was due to its basis in unlicensed samples of massively popular songs, but that’s in the beauty of things.

JIJ

Panoram – Acrobatic Thoughts Remixes (Running Back)

Earlier this year, mysterious sound-smith Panoram continued his adventurously genre-bending musical journeying with a typically classy LP on Gerd Jansen’s Running Back. ‘Acrobatic Thoughts’ was a gorgeous meditation in evocative audio immersion, and here, a pair of remixes are plucked from the album’s far-reaching branches courtesy of Quiet Village and Luca Lozano. The boundary-defying original version of ‘Seabrain’ saw a tapestry of vocal textures saunter across a stripped rhythm, giving Matt Edwards and Joel Martin plenty of scope for a rendition crafted under their Quiet Village moniker. Their scintillating version stretches the track out into a 10-plus minute epic, voyaging through soul-searing terrain as pulsing bass drives emotive piano melodies through an ocean of harmonic waves. Next, the tripped-out sonics of ‘Wandering Frames’ are ushered firmly into dancefloor consideration thanks to Klasse Wrecks co-founder, Luca Lozano. Repurposing the elemental essence of the original, he adds gritty drums while providing focus to the track’s ethereal swells, pitching atmospheric vocal chops over glistening pads and psychedelic bleeps as the heads-down groove plays out an intoxicating club rhythm. Both versions are rather wonderful, and, though each feels distinct from the original compositions, the respective metamorphoses channelled by the remix artists feel entirely organic and in keeping with the intention of the music.

PC

Lonely Pirate Committee – He Was In The Father (Saddle Creek)

Lonely Pirate Committee make what can only be described as ‘cut-up rock’. This meandering, postmodern sound emerges as a direct result of, simply, not wanting to pigeonholed as anything other than a rock band. In the process, they happily side-eye and slight all the silly self-referrers. All the ‘post-punk-gazers’, ‘blackened thrash goths’, ‘straight edge math heads’, et al, can go do one.

The two tracks on this split single, ‘He Was In The Father’, seem to contain every noisy rock style under the sun in the space of two 5-minute long tracks. In a similar vein to Slow Dance’s odd futurist noise compilations, or Hot Air’s 7” cut-up blitzkriegs, the Cleveland, Ohio duo’s careful efforts are second to none here. The eponymous first track sounds pretty much like what would happen if Flying Lotus was the celebrity subject of the film ‘Being John Malkovich’; strange electronic jazz beats and post-rock influences swerve in and out of self-referential, intuitive ‘portals’ of sound.

At about one and a half minutes in, a plodding gabber beat embeds singer Pearce Gronek’s nihilistic, thousand-yard-stare vocals, before instantly switching into what sounds to be like electrical wires crossing, spluttering. As much is true for the B-side, where meandering dynamics and structures weave up and down, never settling or resting. A stunning, promising new release from the pair.

JIJ

This week’s reviewers: Oli Warwick, Patrizio Cavaliere, Jude Iago James.