The best new singles this week
Singles of distinction from the past seven days
SINGLE OF THE WEEK
Plant43 – Reflection/Reaction Part Two (Plant43 Recordings)
Perhaps more than any other electro arist, Plant43 has been able to consistently prove the versatility of the genre; able to accommodate everything between jackhammering overdrivers and sensitive toe-tappers. For his second of three installments of the ‘Reflection/Reaction’ series – focusing on tracks made in the winter of 2022/23, and celebrating the tenth release of the esteemed label of the same name – we hear something in between these two intensities, and find ourselves marveling at the possibilities he’s realised therein.
The first instalment in the series, released back in June, was a slow introduction to the wintry ‘scapes that would ensue over the remainder of the series. The likes of ‘Silent Core’ wrought much emotion from the formula, with the track sounding almost more like the subdued backbone of an eighties synthpop ballad (had we spent said the eighties in a magical ice age). By contrast, ‘Part Two’ assumes the listener has made it well into the three-act story. The mood of the tracks is transitory and exploratory, less focused on casting an introductory charm on the listener than it is with indulging new sonic challenges and curiosities. For example, ‘Eccentric Elliptic Orbit’ treats its offbeat organ pulses like glimmering gems in a crystalline cave; miss them and they’re gone. ‘Encased’ surrounds the ears in arpeggiating cascades, like waterfalls of code overwhelming a rookie holodeck adventurer.
The tracks all develop subtly, but also more extensively than meets the ear. New, leaping synth patches often barely come in beyond the halfway mark, before they drift out of audible range again. What’s more, the most underlying subtleties are less pronounced than first listens reveal: ‘Submolecular Shifting’ achieves this most with its backing chords, which constantly change in a descending progression, as if to imply the very cellular constitution of our own bodies were merging to form an increasingly solid mass. As on every track, closer ‘The Forgotten Storm’ rounds up the entire EP’s essence – of being protectively encased inside an atmospheric, planetary-surface-scouring pod, which as it progresses, detects and sonically reveals new and undiscovered mineral compounds on its alien surface.
JIJ
Baby Ford & The Ifach Collective (Ifach)
Baby Ford (Peter Adshead) is often recognised as a pioneer of minimal techno, a crown which was nonetheless collectively earned in collaboration, one of many of which included the supergroup / label / collective / whatever-you-want-to-call-it, Ifach. The Ifach collective at times included other such dance music monarchs as Dave Hill, Mark Broom, Thomas Melchior and Ian Loveday, and the overarching label initiated an extended family of greats, from Richie Hawtin to El Mal.
Now – just in case all you Motor City-dwelling denizens have forgotten to whom you owe your yearly tithes – the Ifach collective make a surprise return, just when you least expected it. Effectively a reminder of “who paved the way” for minimal, now comes the reissued ‘The Healing’ EP, a super-hat-trick of experimentations from the year 2000. It might be said to chart the collective’s venturings out of the world of acid house and into the refuge of minimal.
The A-side is mechanistic enough, with ‘Tea Party’ from Eon, M-Core and Baby Ford sounding like anything but, instead coming as a dubious undulator in which mysterious, beaty assembly lines chug away, and wonky seesaw-like sounds are heard creaking away in the interstitial abyss. We must admit the opener would make for a less exciting EP if all the next tunes sounded like it. Thankfully, there’s some great contrast: Ford and Mark Broom’s ‘On The Floor’ sounds ahead of its time, almost predicting something like Subsouly jackin’ house, with dotted-sixteenthy FMs coming thick and fast. The B, meanwhile, relights a certain creative spark, with the title track giving effervescent, chemical sounds, as if its maker had simply recorded a casual night spent in a mad apothecary’s lab – its soul-snared laughter and gaseous vial bubblings being the sonic yield. Finally, the closer ‘Word For Word’ is again one of those awesome techno tunes that predicts or at least pays homage the rise of dubstep, with muted rimshots and distant Reeses playing out over the course of a half-timed steppers’ beat, far too unusual to be considered “just” minimal.
JIJ
Dead Heat – Endless Torment (Triple B)
Hailing from Oxnard, California, crossover thrash hardcore mob Dead Heat are yet another in a long line of new school revivalists to channel influences from seminal acts such as Suicidal Tendencies and Leeway into their resurgent compositions.
Following a similar path to the likes of Drain, Mindwar, Exhibition and Mindforce (who the band put out a split with back in 2017), their latest EP Endless Torment comes courtesy of Triple B Records; easily one of the most vital labels in the hardcore scene today along with Revelation and Flatspot.
Combining Slayer and Megadeth 80’s indebted thrash riffage with New York beatdown grooves, the cuts on display here stay firmly rooted in the minimal breakdown chaos of hardcore punk, yet possess enough virtuosic lead flourishes to make their metallic inspirations abundantly clear. While 2019’s debut full-length Certain Death and its 2021 successor World At War, took strides to balance this concoction, these five new cuts display the group in their most self-assured, confident and utterly pissed off manner to date.
From the visceral opening title-track to the frenetic breakneck pace of ‘Smite Thee’ to the grooving yet violent swagger of single ‘Eyes Of The Real’; this is retro-fitted hardcore for those constantly uncertain as to where their sonic loyalties lie, and provides ample helpings of both to make one realise, it doesn’t really matter as long as it slaps and can be moshed to, and Dead Heat check both boxes with endless grit and finesse.
ZB
If a new release springs up on 1432 R, it’s always worth stopping by to check it out. From Soso Tharpa to Analog Tara, there have been some knockout variations on house and techno standards from Joyce Sim’s label since it began, forming a vital tenet in the Washington DC strain of misfit club music with guts and guile to spare. Sami has popped up on the label intermittently, as well as dropping some heat on neighbouring label Future Times back in 2017. He might not be prolific, but his releases warrant an attentive ear.
‘Aydin’s Theme’ sets the tone for the Elevate EP in clear terms, using a beautifully sculpted pad shimmer to set an aqueous mood and threading a tough but supple rhythmic undercarriage through the bottom of the track. The bass has a grungy, hand-played quality, and the dexterous organ lines across the top are pure DC heat, striking that cool-headed but hella-fun note which imbues the city’s output with such distinctive club gear.
At the outset, ‘Way Up’ is a shade more direct by comparison, but still the particulars of the discoid techno thrust have wayward pockmarks, and the occasional flute chops (Sami is in fact billed as a flutist on his Discogs profile) offset the daggering synth chords artfully. By the time the string harmonies slide in with understated poise, it’s abundantly clear we’re dealing with an elevated kind of techno here.
Sami doesn’t stick to one mode either. ‘Twin’ ups the tempo and focuses on needlepoint percussion with a hand-played, ritualistic quality. ‘Deep Blue’ offers a chrome-plated perspective on deep house in the Luomo vein, and unsurprisingly nails it. Those shorter descriptions skip over the abundance of detail, intrigue and surprised lurking in every corner of these opulent constructions, but what’s more remarkable is they never feel overwrought. At this point, such quality feels like a given from 1432 R.
OW
DJ Boneyard – Steel City Dance Discs Volume 29 (Steel City Dance Discs)
Not to be confused with the far more committed alias, and longtime electro extraordinaire, DJ Bone, DJ Boneyard is a comparatively lesser-known figure in the electro genre. Some speculators out there consider Boneyard to the moniker of one Jordon Alexander aka. Mall Grab, and a quick look at the Spotify credits of the artist’s past releases would indeed confirm the claim. Though, if you weren’t so inclined to care as to who is behind these tunes, then Boneyard could be anyone; a sort of anonymizing figure of death and eternity, and the ostensible brutality that comes with it.
Clearly, Boneyard’s music is a project intended for the fleshing-out of a usually unindulgeable set of emotions. Perhaps these are feelings not so readily expressible in a ‘normie’ club environment, though some outside need to express them certainly still needs to be indulged. Coming to Aussie import label Steel City Dance Discs for their 29th release, we now hear what is effectively a mini-album of six tracks resurrected from the grave, ‘Bonestyle’. The deathly rallying cry on the title track marks the severity of this resurrection; every grim reaper-esque figure in popular culture – from Gravelord Nito to Ghost Rider to the chess-playing Personification of Death from The Seventh Seal – is called to mind, as a bombastic punklectro number blares from the motorbike woofers. An impassioned rap shrieks, “it’s the motherf*cking bonestyle!”, or something to that effect.
The ensuing cuts are just as dungeony and macabre, and sound to treat life as if it really weren’t that valuable at all. ‘Flutter’ revels in the “fluttering” sound of rapid melodic delays and compression artifacts, cleverly basking in the distorted stasis, like the momentary feeling of teetering on the edge of death after huffing an illicit substance. References to tapeside thug rap abound, as on the techy ‘Toting A Gun’, whereupon a vocal sample of a man repeatedly insisting to the listener that he has just pistol-whipped an acquaintance to death, come amid crunchy and unswung kick stomps. We’ll leave some of the EP to imagination, but must also conclude that the closer ‘Pump’ succeeds in making the classic, stock 909 clave sound effect sound more horrifying than it has ever sounded before.
JIJ
Mathew Jonson – Into The 5D (Km 4.5)
Kilometro 4.5 is a fledgling label from Tulum in Mexico which has already formed a modest presence within the contemporary minimal scene thanks to releases from Snad and Molly. In many ways this is a scene which is running on tickover, maintaining a successful sound which keeps dancers happy at parties and festivals the world over, but that doesn’t negate the chance for memorable music to emerge from within. Mathew Jonson is exactly the kind of artist who can still bring a sense of excitement to a tech house track with a virtuoso touch which comes from his decades working as a devoted live performer.
‘Into The 5d’ comes in two forms on this record, and both draw on a similar set of sounds. Whether you opt for the original mix or the ‘Space Dub’, there’s a reliable sensuality to the rhythm section which instantly beds into your consciousness. It’s the kind of rolling, subliminal groove which a minimal dancefloor loves, but it’s much more detailed and elegant than a straight up kick-hat shuffle, opening up to more interesting pathways for the DJs who prefer to mix their drums with a bit more flair.
Jonson doesn’t just make tools though, and his melodic flourishes are where the stand out moments happen in his tracks. The lead lick which spirals out of ‘Into The 5d’ could reasonably be called a textbook Mathew Jonson move, capturing a little of the exotic lilt you might have heard in ‘Freedom Engine’ or Cobblestone Jazz’s ‘India In Me’. When his music is so often framed by conventional, tracky fare, it’s just those sorts of phrases which poke through the mix and sprinkle a little excitement into a set. It’s worth saying it’s not a lazy rehashing of a past idea, either. There’s a delicate, plucked quality to the sound and the melodic phrasing has its own unique, outernational quality, taking the track out of obvious pigeon holes and leaving it unbetrothed to any particular place or time.
OW
DJ Lifegoals / Larry Neverheard – Braindancing (Cold Blow)
Cold Blow continues its committed championing of braindance in no uncertain terms with this split release from a crop of Finnish producers gathered together under the Braindancing banner. As with recent releases from Digital Justice, Halvtrak and Mono Junk, there are no exact boundaries on the label’s sound and DJ Lifegoals opens up this record with something akin to cavernous ambient techno. There is a detectable whiff of Selected Ambient Works 85-92 about the looming, smoky pads which instantly qualifies it for braindance material, though.
‘November Grain’ is more explicitly aligned with the electro-acid SH-101 jamming which you might more readily associate with braindance, although he also gives the track a grainy, knackered feel which stands apart from the warm, rounded sound more commonly heard in the genre. As ever, it’s the subtle tweaks to any formula which result in memorable tunes.
Forehard and Larry Neverheard team up on the B side and take a subtler approach to braindance on ‘Gary49’, a mellow, punchy trip which comes on like a Sunday morning inversion to the usual twitchy frolics you might expect. There’s still a pleasingly wobbly acid line and crispy drum machine funk coursing underneath, but the thick blanket of synth up top lends a different flavour to proceedings. ‘Pickelhaube’ is the Saturday night foil to such laconic pleasantries, with a nasty bassline pulse aiming for maximum strut and a quasi-synth-pop tone to the chord drops as though Martin Gore walked into the wrong studio and got tangled up in a electro-techno altercation. In case you’re not sure, that’s a good thing.
JIJ
WaqWaq Kingdom – Dokkoisho (Phantom Limb)
Ahead of their new album dropping in the Autumn, Phantom Limb are reissuing this incendiary EP from WaqWaq Kingdom. The duo of Kiki Hitomi (formerly of King Midas Sound et al) and Shigeru Ishihara (aka DJ Scotch Egg) have found a project which provides the perfect conduit for their wildest creative ideas, and with each subsequent release they seem emboldened to go further in every direction. After their standout album Essaka Hoisa in 2019 they returned with this five track EP the following year.
Dokkoisho maintains the dizzying whip through styles they’ve staked their reputation on, which is best encapsulated on ‘Mr Two Face’, travelling as it does from pitched-up moombahton via pop-laced, proggy tech to half-step melancholia and on to an unexpected organ drone out. That’s one of the mellower tracks on the album – you’re more likely to hear jacked up rhythms, lurid synth lines and Hitomi’s vocodered voice battling with all kinds of interference. What’s also noticeable is how long the tracks feel as they twist and turn through ideas in a matter of moments, all strapped to the untamed WaqWaq logic board and prone to unexpected short circuits.
For all the energy though, it’s never sloppy or accidental. Hitomi and Ishihara know exactly what they want to achieve with WaqWaq Kingdom, and it’s a sound like no one else’s.
OW
Zoid – The Pin Row Acid EP (Winthorpe Electronics)
Much like Cold Blow Records being reviewed above, Winthorpe Electronics has taken shape as a reliable source of contemporary braindance from artists who can edge their own quirks into an already quirky area of electronica. As an All City sub label it’s largely focused on Irish artists like DeFeKT and Cignol, and now comes the turn of Zoid, aka Daniel Jacobson. You might have last spotted him on Dan Curtin’s excellent Metamorphic Recordings, which is a stamp of approval worth taking notice of.
Jacobson takes a particularly wonky approach to his box jams, letting the beats fall in drunken arrays which feel refreshing in the world of perfectly gridded precision, and the arrangements slip and slide into messy fills, edits and FX splats which give you a sense of someone really jamming the material out. ‘2-Oh-Techno’ is as sweet as it is sloppy, and all the stronger for it. The fills and tangents are intrinsic to the Zoid approach, and that’s precisely what makes it such peak braindance material. Just slip into ‘Winthorpe Acrid’ and you’ll find those same qualities driven by a springy 303 which slowly filters upwards as the track gets progressively scattier.
From the slurring, chewy anthem ‘Sunrise Acid’ to the skipping, meandering chord progression of ‘Megajazz Acidchops’, Jacobson sneaks a past life as a jazz musician into his hardware practice with every flourish of really playing the gear, giving his tracks an irrepressible vitality as fun as it is impressive.
JIJ
Nominally house and deep house maestro Pépe (Jose Bernat) throws another drum & bass curveball for Dutch friends Myor, making up the two-track wondercraft that is ‘Angels’. Though plenty of Pépe’s prior releases have been much written-about, little has been mentioned beforehand of this particular record, leaving a mysterious interpretive void which we can hopefully fill.
Pépe’s last EP was in 2020, a joint smorgasbord of sounds shared on wax shared with the no-effs-givenly-named artist, gayphextwin. Then came a three-year hiatus, presumably to make time for making this year’s new LP Reclaim. Both releases marked Pépe’s upped ante into the realms of breaks, angelics and airy junglism. The LP especially marked his preference for atmospherics over hard hits, conjuring thoughts of hydroponic gardens tended by city-dwelling seraphim; strange contrasts of brutalism and engineered nature, channeled through endless breaks variations. ‘Angels’ and ‘Birdfeed’ are ostensibly different; for all intents they may have been lifted from the original Reclaim sessions, but their special selection by label heads Coco Bryce and Goddezz seems to reflect an added bangerification.
The first is a subtly, but deeply, layered track, the perfect synaptic accompaniment, and imaginable as an alt-soundtrack for the acclaimed ethereal video game Journey, seguing through many floaty twists and mutedly aetheric turns. The second track dazzles just as much with its Groove Armada-esque half-stretchings of the beat; then come its salty-aired moments of downtime before each drop, heralding the stabby chord incisions, which play across the mix like notched angels’ blades, as seen on the inner label.
JIJ
Raise/Sgt Risk – Sport 8000 (Sport)
Released last year, the vinyl version of the apparently eight-thousandth release (it’s actually the eight) on the label Sport Is Great, by label heads Raise and Sgt. Risk, finally lands in our laps. Since 2017, the Basel imprint has been a prime mover, aiming for, and landing square hits upon, the ever-moving target that is contemporary darkside techno, electro and minimal.
We’ll preface this review with a little-known fact: a very small subset of early 90s releases, in genres said to be techno, broken beat and electro, sound a lot like modern-day dubstep. Lesser known example, for instance, might be Bandulu’s ‘Non-Stop’ or Dego’s ‘Dumped Funk’ (we urge you to look them up). It’s easy to hear why the characteristic sound of dubstep might crop up before it came into “official” being; the truth is that bass music is an umbrella style, of which techno and electro could be considered loose parts. All these styles are based on gradations of four beats per bar, and are made on DAW-based grid systems – if you think about it, this really doesn’t lead to that many rhythmic possibilities. There is bound to be some crossover.
The twist is, we thought we were less likely to encounter this kind of sonic coincidence in 2023. But even though the two artists behind these tunes are unlikely to have not heard of dubstep, Sgt. Risk and Raise don’t sound like they’ve started with dubstep at all here, despite also sounding like it. It seems more that they’ve begun with electro in mind, followed its logic to its wonkiest conclusions, and ended up with a dubstep-ish result. ‘Scrollers’ is as compelling, riveting and as evocative of a dystopian cyberpunk factoryscape as the aforementioned Bandulu tune, working in phat womps, pistoning hat toppers and bar-resolving gnarls. ‘Circuit Breaker’, meanwhile, recalls the Dego tune, opting for a well-rounded but broken-up tribal dance. Genre-minded coincidence aside, these two are nothing short of masterful additions to the Sport catalogue, not to be missed.
JIJ
This week’s reviewers: Jude Iago James, Zach Buggy, Oli Warwick.