Scratching the Surface: New forms against sonic entrenchment

Scott Wilson looks at music from Vaghe Stelle, Thug Entrancer, Pinch & Mumdance and more in this month’s column.

Undoubtedly the most provocative thing I’ve read in the past month or so would have to be the first column of Pittsburgh Track Authority’s Thomas Cox for the Attack site, commencing a regular series in which he promises to “pull no punches” regarding “music, the industry, the business, the media, or really any facet of underground dance music.” I don’t know if I’m what Cox refers to as one of a “rotating cast of less experienced players”, who has evidently been “drinking the same Kool Aid” as all the other music writers as he so provocatively puts it, but I did find some of his points in the piece to tally with a few I’ve been having of late.

Chief among them is one of Cox’s main targets, what he refers to as “lo-fi ‘outsider’ house”. Although I agree with his fears that it seems to be part of a trend that will lead to an inevitable creative dead end, I get the impression here that Cox is generalising somewhat; “lo-fi” dance music is nothing new – just listen to any classic Dance Mania 12″ for proof of that – and it certainly isn’t “limited in scope and definitely more limited in dancefloor usefulness” as he puts it. I’d point to the live sets of Svengalisghost or Container for proof of that. The point at which we should be worried – and we may be at this point now – is when “lo-fi” aesthetic is used as an affectation, or as the very fabric of the music itself. No amount of surface noise can hide a dearth of ideas.

This is something that seems to have been explored in much of the response to Actress’ Ghettoville album across the media. Until Darren Cunningham released Ghettoville, there was probably a feeling that he was one of electronic music’s critically untouchable figures, but the divided response to the muddy, compressed, crumbling vision of music presented on the album goes some way to proving that electronic music journalism perhaps isn’t the huge conspiracy Cox might think it is. Both Resident Advisor and Pitchfork found it to be largely average for its gruelling tone, while FACT and Spin embraced its more downtrodden qualities.

Even though I disagree with its approach, Joe Kennedy’s review of Ghettoville for The Quietus was one of the more interesting critiques, largely allowing the unforgiving nature of the music by framing it as the output of Cunningham’s exhaustion at making music. Talking of “Rims”, Kennedy wrote: “The piece works as a structural allegory for trying – trying to think, trying to plan, trying to make, trying to resist – but being too tired: it’s a brilliantly sculpted justification for feeling half-arsed.”

Personally, I don’t think we should be applauding any kind of justification for laziness in music. It’s not the relentlessly grainy textures of Ghettoville that I have an issue with – it’s the lack of musical ideas on display in comparison to Cunningham’s previous, otherworldly material. I’m happy to accept the idea that Cunningham wanted to elicit a kind of exhausted response in the listener, and that the aesthetic of Ghettoville forms a key part of the listening experience, but when all that’s there is what’s on the surface, it’s difficult to engage with it beyond a certain point.

I’ve felt similarly frustration with Untold’s debut album Black Light Spiral, which although a bracing listen just doesn’t have that slack-jawed feeling of exhilaration you’d have gotten from the producer five years ago. Again, a self-consciously rough aesthetic runs throughout the album, masking the fact that aside from a few tracks, there’s little of the structural innovation or sheer WTF moments that productions like “Anaconda” or “Stereo Freeze” would have had. Having said all this, there’s no real reason to complain. Actress and Untold certainly aren’t alone in making twisted, atmospheric music that experiments with genre and texture in unique ways, and there’s been a wealth of it over the past month. Lo-fi house music and noise-influenced techno may well have entrenched itself, but there’s more than enough contrasting material to go around.

Pinch & Mumdance – Turbo Mitzi (Tectonic)

I slept on Mumdance’s Twists & Turns mixtape last year when it came out, and more fool me – listening to it now makes me feel the same giddy excitement I did back in 2009/10 when the experimentation with dubstep, funky and grime forms seemed to reach its creative peak. The past few years have seen all but a few of those early figures flock to techno, and not always for the best. For those left cold by this mass migration, both the solo music of Mumdance and his collaborations fill the vacuum left in its place. Whether it’s the helium grime of recent UTTU jam “Springtime”, the reverse Hoover jungle aesthetic of last year’s criminally overlooked Logos collaboration “Proto” or any of the other curveballs Mumdance keeps throwing, he never seems to find new and inventive ways to disrupt the dancefloor.

Although Mumdance has been kept busy enough with his collaborations with Logos, this month sees him team up with Tectonic boss Pinch for what we can only presume will be the first of many tracks. You don’t call a track “Turbo Mitzi” without being able to live up to the title, and thankfully it doesn’t disappoint. Pairing a dystopian mood with a kind of stuttering flow and the kind of synth rushes that replicate the cheapest and nastiest kind of amphetamine high. “Whiplash” on the flip puts me in mind of Pinch’s 2010-era crusher, “Croydon House”, which with hindsight feels like one of the earliest (and best) blueprints for the now ubiquitous bass-house sound. Of course this is nothing like what is now banal tech house; Mumdance’s trademark humour is present in the whipcrack samples that make up the snares alongside the kind of devastating sonic pressure and ensuing release that feel like something different. Most of the material on Twists & Turns may now have been released in some form or another, but one gets the impression Mumdance is just getting started.

Akkord/Special Request – HTH vs HTH (Houndstooth)

This pair of tracks aren’t strictly new – they came out in December as part of a Houndstooth remix package – but pressed up to vinyl they make a lot more sense. Special Request and Akkord remixing each other is an obvious pairing, but the results are definitely not. Paul Woolford’s remix of Akkord’s “Destruction” is so fragmented and frayed that it’s hard to believe its the work of the same person who made the Special Request LP, let alone the man responsible for last year’s radio friendly summer club hit “Untitled”. His crusty remix of “Destruction” isn’t a million miles away from the increasingly prevalent lo-fi techno sound, but in this undead vision of jungle, the flesh of Woolford’s acid lines and snares seem to decay in front of your very eyes.

While there’s no denying that Akkord’s sound is precision made for club speakers, I’ve often found the duo’s sound a little too austere to genuinely excite me. This remix is another matter, combining the best of both Woolford’s tear-out jungle techno and Akkord’s more analytical qualities; there’s a Raster-Noton level of detail in the subtle white noise that simmers away in the opening moments, but when the track heads into more self-consciously clubbier territory it’s like the track gets flipped open like a pop-up book. This track is undoubtedly another combination of monochrome and occasionally distorted sonics, but here Akkord manage all kinds of structural ingenuity in the way that Actress’ Splazsh-era tracks seemed to unfold like origami.

Thug Entrancer – Death After Life (Software)

It’s difficult to know where to place the work of Ryan McRyhew. He may be one of many DIY producers from the US underground using hardware to create his own vision of techno, but unlike the likes of Container, Prostitutes and Metasplice – whose sound can be harsh and oppressive – Thug Entrancer uses his machines to create a sound defined by its clarity. Although he makes what could loosely be described as “techno”, It’s fitting then that his debut album Death After Life appears on Daniel Lopatin’s Software label, which has been cultivating an aesthetic that stands outside the noisier, more lo-fi end of homebaked experimental electronic music.

With a name like Death After Life you’d expect an album that deals with darker tones, and it does, but there’s a more sprightly quality to McRyhew’s music you don’t see among a lot of his US peers. The tone of the music seem to match the vapourous image on the cover, rarely feeling loop driven even though there’s a fair amount of repetition. Several of the tracks on the album seem to utilise tempos and rhythms lifted from footwork, albeit bereft of the hip hop and R&B samples you’d expect, while the slower moments sparkle with crystalline tones which somehow manage to be both light and dark at the same time. Death After Life certainly isn’t a perfect album, but McRyhew has at least managed to create a consistent aesthetic that shows that hardware techno doesn’t just have to be pumped full of steroids and tied together with gristle.

Vaghe Stelle – Sweet Sixteen (Astro:Dynamics)

Italian producer Daniele Mana has been producing music as Vaghe Stelle for five years now, progressing from what could loosely be described as Border Community-style melodic trance techno to a producer of much looser, yet still colourfully mechanistic sounds. While it would be easy to align Mana’s unpredictable, sunken and dramatic sound with that of Actress, it’s clear from listening to his older material that he been travelling along a similar trajectory to Cunningham for the past five years. Last year’s HOPE EP for the publicity-shy Gang of Ducks label saw his sound hit ever more angelic heights while simultaneously delivering the kind of nailgun beats that balance the more mellifluous musical elements with a satisfying amount of punch. Just as there’s a skewed amount of hip hop influence in Actress’ music, Mana’s productions are equally weighty and lopsided.

His new LP Sweet Sixteen appears on Astro:Dynamics, a label who seem to get further ahead of the game with every record. If it was possible to make music out of water, then Sweet Sixteen is probably what you’d get; tracks like “Artificial Intelligence” and “Duemila Kilometri” have the kind of melodies you can almost visualise as convection currents. The tones of “She Sometimes” and “Thanks For The Conversation” on the other hand seem to ripple the same way a hallucinogenic visual bleeds into the clouds. If Stelle has a unique strength, then its his ability to create music that sounds foggy without ever being indistinct; much like Lukid, Stelle’s music refuses to use spectrality as a surface affectation, hardwiring it into the structure of his music as if it were a hologram. If you’re worn out by the sandblasted end of experimental dance music, Sweet Sixteen is just the tonic you need.

Jack Dice – Sip Paint (Modern Love)

Walker Chambliss and Type boss John Twells’ Jack Dice collaboration might well be one of the most intriguing projects occupying Modern Love’s roster. Although the combination of Southern hip hop production and dub techno atmospherics are the kind of thing you could easily imagine sprouting out from Andy Stott and Miles Whittaker’s Millie & Andrea project, Jack Dice is less a recomposition of these styles as it is solid production in its own right. As Chambliss was previously the manager of Main Attrakionz, it’s unsurprising that the style of production crosses into the more ethereal, but even still, their second EP Sip Paint is singularly bleak stuff.

In Jack Dice’s world, cough syrup abuse is traded for paint and kerosene; the deep bassline, turbulent dub chords and spiralling arp of “Low Glo” create the kind of thing that sounds like Claro Intelecto producing hip hop, while the crushing pressure and tectonic pace of “Kerosene” could easily be something from Andy Stott’s Passed Me By. “Radium Dial” on the other hand is like a faded, washed out Clams Casino track, a maelstrom of samples and dramatic strings rendered in greyscale. Really though, the EP is all about “Stash’s Theme”, where Stash Marina proves that Jack Dice’s productions are devastating with some lyrical content, as well as having the potential to punch hard in the dance. On listening to Sip Paint, it’s hard not to think Jack Dice’s Ghettoville would have been a much more interesting place to visit.

Scott Wilson