The best new singles this week
Our writers’ favourites from the past seven days
SINGLE OF THE WEEK
Can Oral’s roots might be Finnish and Turkish and he may well have been born in Frankfurt, but his sound has always been indelibly marked by living in New York for the majority of the 90s. As well as fuelling the city’s techno scene with his Temple Records shop and label, he kept himself busy slinging out bold club music on legendary labels. His is a catalogue bursting with surprises, and his sound so often sported that dirty, overdriven drum machine sound which tells you someone was vibing hard when they recorded the music.
Oral knows how to make a dancefloor track, but the best artists know the rules so they know how to break free of them. In linking up with self-described microhouse label Daro for the latest instalment in his Super-8 series, we get a look in on the mechanics of his non-conformist approach. While we don’t know the exact origins of ‘My House’, it comes on with a clipped, swung house shuffle which calls to mind the deeper end of NYC somewhere between Nu Groove and Strictly Rhythm, but even then the blippy stabs and spooked-out pad tones move according to their own logic. ‘In Waves’ goes further out, laying down a thick blanket of low end and letting slow modulating synth pulses and icy chords mark out a space like LFO’s deepest early cuts given some heavy downers.
‘The Demonic Screen’ and ‘Turkish Camp’ were previously released on the 1997 CD-only album Silentmoviesilverscreen, and both uphold the moody late-night veneer felt elsewhere on the record, albeit with different outcomes. ‘The Demonic Screen’ is a reduced creeper with a tracky focus but more than enough twitchy energy scratched into the mix down, while ‘Turkish Camp’ toys with some gnarlier leads and a tighter rhythmic framework, but Oral remains focused on a sense of reductionist functionality which keeps these primed for the contemporary minimal dancefloor. Don’t think these are identikit cuts to blur into the homogenised mesh of most minimal tech house though – there’s guts to these tracks, and that’s what makes them noteworthy.
OW
Millsart – Don’t Ask Me Why (Axis)
Techno pioneer Jeff Mills is best known for his instrumental part in the formation of the genre – and for that reason is known perhaps more for his, well, ‘techno-ey’ music. You know the sort: industrial, clangy, repetitive, tintinnabular. Relatively fewer people know about his Millsart alias, and fewer still are aware of the Expressionist releases arm and series, one of many subsidiary parts of Mills’ longstanding Axis record label. Well, that’s all well and good, because the rarer a release is, the more likely you’ll be able to treasure it as your special secret.
Less focused on the body-centric act of dancing – something of a cliche nowadays, as techno has no real reason to not function just as well as listening music – the Expressionist series is in Mills’ own words “about reflecting on the complexity and simplification of life.” What results on ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’ is something both visually and sonically reminiscent of Can’s Soon Over Babaluma (compare the album covers), traversing a lesser-trodden, proggier side of techno. Shavings from the dark side of techno’s moon. An obvious mysticism wafts off these tracks, from the thematically titled ‘The Wise One (Khufu Mix)’ to long-form B-siders ‘Wind Walkers’ and ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’.
Like carefully exalting resurrections of ancient occult magic, Mills carefully works dynamic claves, whirling flutes and tuned percussion into the tracks’ mechanical kick-drummed bodies, refusing to succumb to baser time structures, instead preferring to get at the ‘infinite time’ of traditionally African diasporic music. Something closer-sounding to a Herbie Hancock studio jam, not Motor City industrial din, is evoked by the time we reach the titular ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’, which really seems to treat the electronic elements of what we’re calling ‘techno’ here as an afterthought. Revelling rather in an electric-piano-and-hand-drummed polyrhythm, even thorough listens reveal merely a reversed drum line to be the only overly processed element here. Is this Mills’ furthest foray from the car factory yet?
JIJ
Piezo – Cyclic Wavez EP (Nervous Horizon)
From his base of operations in Milan, Luca Mucci keeps the mutant bass scene well-oiled. At this point in time, his role as Piezo feels as significant to the progression of that weird club music without a name as Batu, aya, Yushh, Simo Cell and the like. While some artists have pivoted towards mellower iterations of broken soundsystem stuff (the Wisdom Teeth stable, for example) or left the dancefloor altogether, Piezo is amongst those still committed to finding wild ways to incite a maximum physical response with all the deranged splendour modern production allows. It’s cerebral and psychoactive, but it’s also innately tapped into dance music’s sense of fun.
Now landing on Nervous Horizon in a strong co-sign from TSVI, Mucci sounds like he’s having the time of his life twisting out the bouncy, metallic lead hook of ‘Ottovolante’. It’s the kind of clanking riff which also did wonders for some of Surgeon’s fiercer 00s cuts, but when the strong techno impulse is given a crooked bass injection, it becomes a paean to full faculty abandonment, providing you can find yourself on a proper dancefloor when it kicks in.
It’s not just flamboyant hooks Mucci has to rely on to make his mark though. Even when the overall attack of the track is more measured, as on ‘Skinner’, his production bristles with clarity and character, eschewing obvious sound sources to sculpt percussive music that makes the most of using anything that tonks or clangs to get the movement happening. ‘Bbent’ leans in on the DSP interference, creating lurid peaks that take a maverick approach to the time-honoured art of the build up. As a time-stretched voice apes the old jungle technique straining out the word, “bass heavy”, Mucci shows his irreverent hand.
A bit like the cheeky missives cloaked in serious chops from the YCO crew, Piezo’s isn’t music trying to take itself seriously. That doesn’t stop it from being mind-meltingly crafted and over-flowing with skill, flair and all the things which make for a genuinely next-level banger, delivered here five times over.
OW
Carlo Maria – Inverno (Echocord)
There’s lots of melodic modular techno out there, most of it not particularly compelling. So we’re more than elated, on the release of ‘Inverno’, to hear Berlin producer Carlo Maria add to the pile of the actual, rare few releases that do this stuff justice.
Rather than going for the ‘arpeggiations for electronic machine’ approach – drying up the style by titling the tracks ‘I’ through ‘IV, or navel-gazingly calling them ‘compositions’ – Maria makes damn well sure to keep a firm hold on the stylistic potential of this music. This is a simple EP of beauty, and it doesn’t need to flaunt virtue-signally markers of high esteem in order to prove that to you. Recalling the very same ambient works that made Aphex Twin’s softer side famous, the likes of ‘Exhumed’ and ‘Winter Sun’ are not just deft excursions in melody, but their textures, and tasteful choices in layering and processing, prove to be the finishing touches that make them sound… cool. Washed-out dream-cascades of noise, as on the third track, only reveal the rhythmic backbone to more considered listeners, ones who’ll take the time out of their day to listen deeply, in an Oliveros-ean way.
At the same time, Maria amps up the theme of winter, which in his words is “often seen as the season of death”, the implicit fear of which he revels in. Background noises and field-recorded drifts, like twinkling air on ice, make for impressive immersions, especially on the last track ‘Luna Piena’, the most muted of the lot. With its endless undulatory refractions and a hostage-taking drum machine pattern – even recalling the ethereal beats of old-school post-punk artists like Pink Industry – this track is like finding a rare gem, or chancing on a full moon, in a frostbitten tundra where no-one else dares to look. These tracks might sound simple, but a deeper listen leaves us with no surprise that years of time and effort went into them. Bravo, Carlo!
JIJ
Lunacy – Universal Pressure (Ded Strange)
“Industrial darkwave monk” and self-described “dystopian shadow figure” Lunacy tops up their indelible repertoire with their latest EP ‘Universal Pressure’. While many ‘-wave’ heads might be used to minimal, snappy, lo-fi drum-machine-driven jaunts, Lunacy represents the continuation of a longstanding alternate tradition, the historical flow of which has meandered through his native Pennsylvania since at least the mid-1980s. Giant walls of harmonic sludge, languishy vocals and impossible analog ectoplasmic gluings characterise Lunacy’s sound, which stands at the tipping point between dance music and that worthy of a concert in a thousand-mile graveyard.
Marking few changes from the 2019 debut eight-track LP Age Of Truth, or the many cassette and 7” releases that followed – sacrificially offered to the likes of DedStrange or Funeral Party – ‘Universal Pressure’ is still an EP to relish. With Lunacy’s routine theme of mental health appearing once more, every track here evokes a very specific kind of anxiety. Not the anxiety born of immediate familial or societal pressures, but rather the more existential, cosmic kind.
From the self-titled opener to the closer ‘Theia’, “gargantuan” is the best descriptor: we hear huge, nebulaic guitar crunches and lethargic moans from Lunacy theirself, often packed somehow between the lattice of a drum machine’s chug. Sure, it’s easy to achieve a ‘big’ sound through the use of reverb, but a truly ‘gargantuan’ sound is a different beast altogether, and Lunacy achieves it on every track by carefully controlling the dynamic relation between beat and noise-wall. Note that few producers, even of the commercially-releasing kind, are really that good at pulling this off. The effect continues on ‘Beyond The Light’ and even the most immediate, apocalyptic-philic track ‘This Is The End’. It’s the feeling of there existing a more ‘defined’ song hidden somewhere behind the haze. But something – some cosmic horror, perhaps – is holding Lunacy’s song back, containing it in a vat of compressed universal distortion to keep it at bay, else the truth might come out. Who or what is this entity holding Lunacy down? Perhaps we’re the real “lunatics” for placing our faith in such cosmic obfuscations; or so this EP makes us feel!
JIJ
Timeblind – Verticle Disintegration (All Ears)
Chris Sattinger is a cult figure around the Midwest techno scene, closely aligned with the early wave of Woody McBride’s Communique and All Ears labels. He released the lion’s share of his work as Timeblind, progressing into the clicks and cuts era linking up with the likes of Kit Clayton but always retaining a certain rugged rave sensibility to his music. It’s music that retained a reliable weirdness, even as it barrelled into hypnotic, loopy infinity, perfectly captured on this outstanding reissue on All Ears.
‘Verticle Disintegration’ is the star of the show here, not least thanks to the disjointed snatch of an unidentified funky sample which cuts into the mix intermittently. The push and pull between this shard of light and the steely, synthetic drive of the drums creates the kind of unrelenting, funky anomaly which stands out in a set of locked-in, laser-focused techno. The offbeat voice snippet in ‘Charred’ creates a similar effect, while ‘Wander The Earth Like Cane’ goes further into the groove with some explicit swing and a mid-section that artfully pulls the threads of the beat apart without losing sight of the groove. At all times, Sattinger’s touch is restrained, coming across assured without needing to resort to cheap tricks.
OW
Colloboh – Saana Sahel (Leaving)
Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based experimental producer and composer Colloboh is described by their patrons as having “spent the last several years cultivating genre-spinning modular wizardry”, but the truth is that this statement hardly captures the real expanse of ‘Saana Sahel’ and prior releases like it.
When we hear the phrase ‘modular synthesis’ – and this is almost certainly due to our own contrivances – even open-minded reviewers such as yours truly default to imagining long-haired dweebs hunched over unnecessarily huge rack modules, constipatedly itching and straining over minute alterations in their CV control knobs, while an Analog™ techno track sputters in the background. The image is certainly not that of an incredibly cool-looking dude making what could be called jazz with the stuff, or even the possibility that modular equipment could even aid the making of it.
But this is exactly what has been achieved on ‘Saana Sahel’, which hears just six original pieces seem to bridge the gap between electro- and -acoustic, while at the same time not straining to do so, maintaining an easy footing in the theme of relaxed spiritualisms (‘Higher Ground’, ‘Full Embrace’, etc. ). ‘Mystic You’ is the track that best encapsulates this all; electronic drums sizzle with the dynamism of a real jazz drummer, while pitch-bent whistles poke at higher heights, like a mountain peak forming a sonic banner cloud constitutive of hazy arpeggiations and revelatory vocal assurances.
JIJ
Sumerian Fleet – Sumerian Fleet (Clone West Coast Series)
Sumerian Fleet is a somewhat esoteric project from Mr. Pauli and Alden Tyrell which began with this curious little 12” on Clone West Coast Series back in 2010. It’s an electro record, but it doesn’t especially adhere to dancefloor demands. Rather, it’s the sound of two seasoned producers indulging their passion for all kinds of deviant synth gear and having some fun in the studio. It might only be from the relatively recent past, but it’s a brilliant curio which deserves a little shout-out now it’s getting a second release run.
There’s a satisfying post-punk twang which you can hear lurking in the phased electric bass which underpins ‘Smack Is Back’, while ‘Neumann’ slaps down the boxiest drums and schlocky 80s synth lines as though soundtracking a low-rent cop movie. It’s not pastiche – Pauli and Tyrell have more than demonstrated their life-long devotion to vintage synthesis in their other work – but it comes with a sense of familiar fun rather than trying to probe some new or unknown sphere
‘Dark Matter’ simply confirms this feeling with its driving arp and creepy leads which feel indebted to The Twilight Zone, The X-Files and The Outer Limits amongst no doubt many other more cult TV series’ dealing in paranormal matters. Whether these tracks would be particularly useful to play out isn’t really the point – they just do a marvellous job of creating that tongue-in-cheek late-night sci-fi vibe, when the cathode rays from the television start frying your retinas and all kinds of subversive messages can seep into your brain.
OW
This week’s reviewers: Jude Iagio James, Oli Warwick.