The best new singles this week
Singles of the
SINGLE OF THE WEEK
Tim Reaper – The Cosmik Connection Vol 3 (Unknown to the Unknown)
Drum & bass and jungle have a long history of repeating themselves, perhaps more than any other electronic genres. The cyclical process these sounds seem destined to relive— underground boom to commercial bust, obscurity to new wave resurrection — perhaps reflects the fundamentals of the sounds themselves. Noises which, at their most full-blown, often come close to stepping across lines, into the obtuse and overwhelming, over-the-top even, it’s no wonder this end of the club spectrum has been prone to blowing up in rather unimaginative ways, which border on selling out.
Thankfully, though, there are still many names that seem intent on bucking the consistent trends of these creatures of habit. While drum & bass has been commanding plenty of attention over the past half decade or so, informing a slew of big stage and often pyrotechnically-minded acts, scratching beneath the surface reveals a true underground that remains in very good health indeed. Suffice to say, Tim Reaper is among the scene’s greatest and most forward-thinking contemporaries, the sort of artist we’re safe in the hands of, determinedly pushing passed boundaries without resorting to the use of the more garish sub-canons.
The Cosmik Connection is a perfect case in point. The London-based producer’s first appearance on highly revered (and rightly so) label Unknown To The Unknown, the EP throws down four essential jungle cuts loosely tied together with some sci-fi detailing, hence the title of this package. Opening the scoring with the deepest of the quartet, all sublimely warm pads, top end percussion and sparse, spatial touches (‘Solar Flare’), we continue through high tempo four-to-the-floor beats atop dub wise low ends (‘The Cosmik Connection’), spiralling, mind-melting chords and complex drum patterns (‘My Definition’), and old school influenced hardcore (‘DJs In the Mix’). As a release, it’s exemplary of where these styles should be.
MH
DKMA – Boston Boy: Vol 3 (Guidance)
It’s official: house music doesn’t get much better than this. But it’s also sad. DKMA’s ‘Boston Boy: Vol. 3’ is the third compilation in a series, consisting of tracks rescued from boxes of DATs once stowed away by the project’s mastermind, Dana Kelley. While Kelley is a celebrated and even maybe-much-worshipped musician in house circles – especially in his home turf of Boston – the lack of wider recognition for his music only goes to show how some of the best artists out there never truly get their music to the ears that need it.
We hope this series changes that. After Kelley’s death in 2013, the rediscovery – each volume arguably making up an album in its own right – has contextualized his life neatly. The first and second volumes of ‘Boston Boy’ are slow-pacers, steadily settling into each groove over the average course of six minutes and teasing the beats in a Reichean fashion. Volume 3 here, however, is immediately flooring. Opener ‘Savages’ sets the tone in the key of Todd Terry – “tribal” drums, whip-cracking claps, and a lulling swing – but brings a cosmic flair and attention to detail that (we’ll make a risky charge here) not even Terry could match.
It’s clear Kelley liked film soundtracks; we can hear Western guitar twangs interpolated into synths, while floaty flutes drift across the mix, not unlike Jerry Goldsmith’s original suspense-setters for the first Alien film. Guidance Records clearly saved the best tunes till last, also salvaging a couple of titleless tracks for this release: ut ‘DAT-17_08’ and ‘DAT-05_01’ hardly sound like throwaways, merely exploring the deeper and dubbier angles of DKMA’s sound. While versatile, Kelley effortlessly portrays the inner world of a creative powerhouse in a pre-gentrified city, its streetwise sound heard through radio samples, urban noise and crate-dug imperfections.
Meanwhile, rumbles of jungle (the cut-up soul samples and reeses on ‘Deconstruct’), speed garage (‘Twilight’) and minimal techno (‘Luv ‘n’ Pain’) can all be heard as the EP progresses. Kelley’s music is Pangaeic music, much like Lennie De Ice’s ‘Were Are I.E.’ in that it sounds like several now-established genres at once, but was actually made at a time when they were still nascent, and far less crystallized into the public consciousness.
JIJ
Ex Terrestrial – Urth Born (Pacific Rhythm)
Adam Feingold’s Ex Terrestrial alias once more hears him lean further into the crux of his nostalgic breakbeat project. A favourite among scenesters and outsiders alike, the concept behind Ex Terrestrial is perfect fodder for music press types like us, modelling itself after a recess of musical memory that was maybe partially constructed, maybe real.
Echoes of UFO-themed, existential dance music – the obvious being West Coast breaks artists such as Dubtribe – crop up in his music, but there’s also an thread to it that remains pretty much indescribable. Maybe it’s the sheer clarity of it; contrasting to much of the emo-breaks world, Ex Terrestrial isn’t doing the whole ‘retro vinyl noise’ thing, and isn’t trying to make his music sound too wilfully raw or lo-fi. With that comes extra space for filling the emotional gaps with beautiful sounds, whether they be whistly synths, sampled mantric chants, or extra stereoizing on the pads.
‘Urth Man’ opts for a suspenseful, Kubrickian synth line that stays static on the root note. Faint harmonies dance around it like shooting stars, and a three-note chord – full of wonder and awe at the oncoming hero’s journey – brings up mental images of ancient primitive contact with far-advanced alien civilizations. By comparison, the track’s sibling ‘Everybody Dreams’ is a tranquil undulator, comparing offbeat acid lines, tabla improv and liquid bubblings to the happy turbulence of REM sleep. It’s true what certain others in the music reviews world might have said – the track does sound vaguely “ethnic”, but whether that is problematic isn’t fully clear in this case, and the track is still functionally calming and quelling. ‘Water Walker’, meanwhile, hears what could be the same acid line settle into a neat grotto of elegant choirs, while its remix by Priori bisects a bolder axis, somewhere between drum n’ bass and new age. The breakbeats go without saying.
JIJ
Anna Funk Damage – Same Old Flame Again (Land Of Dance)
Andrea Natale is our kind of artist. Hailing from Livorno, Italy, his music has heard a crushingly consistent output under guises including Selezione Nationale and this one, Anna Funk Damage. His main palette is gritty, unlivably post-urban beatscapes, bringing an electro and coldwave crunch to a bank of rhythmic undertones drawn from grime, dubstep, synth and post-punk.
Recalling far-flung influences from Gantz to Die Z Lectric, every track on the six-track EP ‘Same Old Flame Again’ sounds as though it’s lifted from a camcorded future city at breaking point. This is the sonic expression of civil unrest – except the partisan rebels are using phasers, not muskets. Cloverfield meets Battle Of Algiers meets Children Of Men meets Liquid Sky.
The rapid-quantized acid line on the opener ‘Lost Inside’ is cleverly out of key with its bassline, and though it sounds much hollower, like a skeleton, one could describe it as the calm before the storm. Or the moment before the black triangle drops the atom-splitter. Incomprehensible vocal cut-ups – like warzone commando orders you’re not supposed to hear picked up on a handheld, cruddy walkie-talkie – appear on every ensuing track from ‘Nomo’ to ‘Old School Zombie’, blaring like ghostly apparitions (fighters on the cusp of death) between lasershots and grim winds. Closer ‘Snake Life’ is the best, being a dubstep unrelentor featuring Damage’s improvised vocals over the top – the rawest and least overthought of the lot.
JIJ
Fatima Al Qadiri – Gumar (Hyperdub)
Kode 9’s Hyperdub may be known for breaking ground in 140s, but the imprint has released a wealth of differently wonderful, weird, rich and unique sounds over the years. This latest from Fatima Al Qadiri and fellow-Kuwaiti vocalist Gumar fits right in with the farthest reaching ends of the back catalogue, then, but by no means feels out of place. Christened after the guest collaborator, with that name meaning ‘moon’ in Arabic, pressing play means stepping into a mystical world ruled by shadows, torchlight, and wonder.
While not really what you’d describe as minimal — these tracks are actually pretty full — there’s a feeling of sparseness at play. Inspired directly, and to the untrained ear, sounding in-line with aeon spanning Middle Eastern lamentation singing, which both artists grew up on, Gumar is at the bleeding edge of traditional and contemporary sound art from the region, blending lush vocal cries with subtle electronic details to create a soundscape so rich and involving you’ll soon be lost. A record crafted with such exceptional musicianship it’s bound to bridge stylistic gaps between those looking for the dancefloor end of this label, and a canon Western ears hear, but rarely listen to. Special stuff.
MH
House Of Intergenerational – Methodology (Disco Hospital)
House Of Intergenerational are an anonymous outfit from Toronto, Ontario. Their music has so far rooted itself on fertile soil, relating the flow of music genres with the shifting nature of social issues in the artist’s home city. An intellectual favourite, if you will. ‘Methodology’ comes in EP form and follows up the experimental LP of the same name, released at the end of last year. Given its vinyl-only release, this reviewer can’t actually listen to and compare to the album, but reviewing the EP alone doesn’t necessarily make our view of the project any less considered.
The overarching project is ostensibly about PNP / chemsex circles in Toronto, and contains a wide variety of effected voices from the scene retelling their stories and experiences. On its singular track, ‘Party Bareback Positive Responsible’ (the title reflects words we might hear when attending a party) we hear long-form house influences from Maurice Fulton to Terre Thaemlitz to Kerri Chandler, as buzzing sci-fi ricochets embed both confident and reticent voices, from “hey, let me tell you something!” to “I’m responsible…”.
The irony of the project lies in its questioning of what the paradigm of responsibility truly is: responsible to whom? Just your sex partner? Or the cultural arbiters of “responsibility”: lawmakers, police, teachers, parents, puritan types? “I’m bareback, I’m perfect, I’m positive…” repeats in our ears like voices heard during a high-induced headspin, as a perfect haze of crossthythmic hangdrums and dub-delayed voices gives off the mood of an interzone, a safe space where the Overton window of “responsibility” might be a left little wider, a little more ajar than usual.
JIJ
Enayet – Phiriya (SLINK / Daytimers)
Founder of the NYC club night SLINK (not to be confused with the long since-inactive Bournemouth, UK trance institution, Slinky), Enayet was raised in Dhaka, and has earned a name for himself as a master of cross-cultural sonics, combining Bangladeshi musical traditions with electronic, often club-first tones, the resulting mood is very much of today. A time when at least some of the barriers that once stood between mainstream dance music world and South Asian artists and communities have come down.
First made for Shezad Dawood’s ‘Concert From Bangladesh’ film, ‘Phiriya’ sees Provhat, of London-based crew Daytimers, Dhaka composer and sitarist Nishit Dey, and a full ensemble of vocalists and musicians set paint a soundscape born directly from their shared heritage as oppose to contemporary re-appropriations. The deep, ethereal, dreamlike atmospherics lure us further into the arrangement, before condensed 140 breaks drop into the mix. End result — a masterpiece of tension, hold and release, and a fresh, more immersive interpretation of raga to boot. Throw in a wealth of excellent remixes, including the legendary Talvin Singh (who strips it all back for a dubby, squelchy halftime gem), and it’s hard not to find yourself rating this one very highly indeed.
MH
Beau Wanzer / Hieroglyphic Being – 4 Dysfunctional… (Natural Sciences)
Mancunian techno label Natural Sciences could easily be said to have been instrumental in defining the city’s identity as an industrial music powerhouse, keeping up a steady stream of releases since 2015 and welcoming the likes of Antonio, DJ Laxxiste A, Dalibor Cruz and Mars89 and through their kept gates.
Celebrating their sixtieth release, they’ve dropped a split EP, featuring the squelching, clip-distorted music of Beau Wanzer, and the Afrofuturistic, high-concept movements of Hieroglyphic Being. Released on vinyl with a limited edition sew-on shoulder patch, the EP homes in on the anti-establishment, contrarian leanings of Wanzer, who is described as dipping “back into the rotten world of underground promotion” in an otherwise revolting “circuit of first class departure lounges, candyfloss trance and DJ meme culture”.
A launch party in a disused industrial estate in Salford (not the White Hotel, you pleb) with a 60-person cap exemplified this, but not so much as the music itself. ‘The Table Scrap’, with its acid window-washers and downtempo headbang backbone, sounds like an old Techno Animal bit – but run through far more distortion that Martin and Broadrick would ever dare. Hieroglyphic Being’s inimitable ‘This Is The Right Time In Human History 2 Be Stupid’ brings up the B, with its wondrous bitcrushed lead synth filtrating and dancing in an otherwise oppressively glitchy, rhythmically dubious space – not long before ejecting into jackhammery breaks liftoff.
JIJ
This week’s reviewers: Martin Hewitt, Jude Iago James.