December 2011
2 posts
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ALWAYS EVERYTHING MIX 005: MUSICK FOR MOORLAND
Musick for Moorland was inspired by two immediate events. The first was writing a feature about The Haxan Cloak, whose self-titled album from this year is one of 2011’s finest, darkest treats. The second was a late night purchase of Leyland James Kirby’s 2008 album Bleaklow, recorded and released under the name The Stranger, whose theme was one of exploring the moors around the region...
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ALWAYS EVERYTHING MIX 004: INTO THE DEEP
As dubstep’s stature accelerates to a freefall from grace, the Bristol music scene’s existential crisis has deepened. Some have stuck to the path well trodden with mixed results-see Punch Drunk’s excellent releases from Bass Clef and Kahn, and compare to Joker’s trance tinged attempt at pop dubstep crossover - whilst others have undergone slow yet radical transformations....
October 2011
1 post
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ALWAYS EVERYTHING MIX 003: SECOND SUMMER ENDING
The original plan was to record a super sunny house mix for the freak early October heatwave we just experienced, but by the time I got to my decks it had passed. Brief bloom. Blending moody autumnal bass tracks throughout definitely reinvigorated the DNA of the mix anyway, so whogivezafuk. Some stone cold house classics, a couple of underrated gems from the last couple of years and a smattering...
September 2011
1 post
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ALWAYS EVERYTHING MIX 002: GRIME FUTURISM 2
Next in our mix series, a long overdue sequel.
Austere and alien, the classic 2002-2005 era of grime instrumentals remains one of the most futuristic and alien subgenres of electronic music. Though partly attributable to coincidence- the space required for MCs disfiguring UKG into asymmetry together with naive approaches to extremely restrictive technology- with the requisite imagination it...
July 2011
1 post
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VIDEO // MARIA MINERVA - LOVECOOL
First drop from Tallinn At Dawn follow up, Cabaret Cixous. Not Not Fun enjoying one of their best runs to date right now.
June 2011
2 posts
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LAUREL HALO // HOUR LOGIC + ANTENNA
We’ve been making noise about Laurel Halo’s music for some time here at AE - last year’s King Felix was among our favourite records of 2010. But with her new EPs Hour Logic and Antenna it feels as though she’s taken a significant step forward again. There’s been a lot of talk lately around the use of synth sounds more readily associated with the beginnings of...
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LISTEN // AE RADIO JUNE 2011
Always Everything returned for our monthly radio show, live from the Hive, last night from 10-12pm - kicking off with some Bristolian house action from Baobinga, Vessel, Kowton, El Kid, Behling & Simpson and the like, with a brief diversion into Detroit-ish electro sounds about halfway through. And some excellent new music from AE favourites Laurel Halo and Hype Williams, George FitzGerald,...
May 2011
2 posts
5 tags
WATCH // LONDON, 27th MAY
For anyone around in London next weekend, Friday 27th May, we’ll be hitting up The Nest for a rather fantastic line-up of bass-heavy stylings - particularly for the London debut (as far as I’m aware) of James AE, aka. XPLDR, aka. Jimitheexploder. He’ll be spinning tunes alongside XXXY, My Panda Shall Fly, Seams, Throwing Snow, Nightwave and Anthony C, and ‘tis but a fiver....
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AE // THE GREAT ESCAPE
First update here for a while, a precursor to new things soon to come. In the meantime you can follow us on our monthly radio show, the latest instalment of which shall be soon to be available from these very pages. However, an announcement for anyone within the Brighton area this weekend: Always Everything are going to be hosting the Green Door Store at The Great Escape this Friday (13th May),...
April 2011
2 posts
5 tags
LISTEN // AE RADIO
It’s been a bit quiet on the AE front lately, a case of life getting in the way as usual (work/studies have a habit of doing that).
But last Thursday I hit up the Hivemind airwaves once again, this time on a house music tip appropriate to the sunshine blasting through the windows. There have been some really quite special house records released/reissued lately - particular props to...
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BRISTOL // MOUNTAIN OF FOUR
Following the meeting of minds that was Xiu Xiu, Former Ghosts and Mount Kimbie, Qu Junktions are hosting the latest installment in their Mountain series this Thursday. Split between Arnolfini and Start The Bus, Kevin Martin’s (of The Bug/Techno Animal/God fame) King Midas Sound collides- in a sombre, solemn kind of way of course - with new age synthesist du jour Dan Lopatin AKA Oneohtrix...
March 2011
3 posts
5 tags
HYPE WILLIAMS // ONE NATION
There’s been a fair amount of suspicion surrounding Hype Williams over the last few months, as if people aren’t quite sure how to take their scattershot approach to the official signifiers of high and lowbrow culture. The fact that they’re happy to meld trashy YouTube virals with the sort of exquisite, dreamy synthscapes usually peddled by people who wear too much hemp,...
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DOWNLOAD // CLAMS CASINO MIXTAPE
Download Clams Casino mixtape
Clams Casino // Motivation
If you’ve had even cursory interaction with the unassailable amount of material coming from the camps of Lil B and Main Attrakionz there’s a good chance you’ve heard a Clams Casino beat. Living up to the Based philosophy via hopeful and strikingly sparse vocal cut ups, Clams has been behind the cream of Lil...
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OMAR-S // HERE'S YOUR TRANCE NOW DANCE
James offers his thoughts on the latest 12” from Detroit house maestro Omar-S, released on FXHE.
Well I couldn’t have put it better myself Omar: ‘Here’s Your Trance Now Dance’. It’s the first 12” from FXHE for 2011 and the title says it all. Omar-S does his thing with another slab of raw, vibey techno. He’s let loose another slightly electro infused number, not unlike a happy-go-lucky...
February 2011
17 posts
6 tags
BRISTOL // DARKSTAR, JOHN ROBERTS + FLEX MENTALLO
Just a heads up for Bristol people, this Friday 25th I’ll be joining the very excellent bill of Darkstar [Hyperdub/Warp] and John Roberts [Dial] at Start The Bus. Its gonna be a live show for the two of them, but its still 10pm-Late. I’ll be spinning records inbetween and afterwards. Facebook Event.
Always Everything 001: Flex Mentallo by Always Everything on Mixcloud
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LISTEN // PINCH - RA MIX
So after our shouts about Swamp81’s dissolution of the boundaries of tempo and style (while still remaining at heart in thrall to dubstep’s heady combination of sub-bass and wide open, sprawling space), Pinch’s new mix for RA today furthers what we heard in his Boiler Room set, beginning with a heartbeat house thud and escalating to his usual 140bpm pace. And it’s...
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INTERVIEW // DEMDIKE STARE
“It can be explained really basically: if you look at what witches did, which was conjure spells out of certain ingredients, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Hopefully we can inject some form of hidden factor that makes the end result more than the sum of its parts. It’s almost like a spell in that sense, where you get a load of ingredients, throw them all into a...
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SHACKLETON // FURTHER DOWN THE SPIRAL
With every release Sam Shackleton refines his music further, each new batch of tracks one more in a series of distillations that increasingly approach some sort of imaginary endpoint – silence, perhaps, or white noise, or sheer rhythm. In that I mean it’s becoming purer: further down his own unique wormhole, ever more distant from concerns of genre (using either dubstep or techno at this point...
BRISTOL // HONEST JON'S TAKEOVER
More great stuff happening in Bristol this weekend - Berlin pioneer Moritz Von Oswald is touching down for two dates as part of Honest Jons’ mini-takeover. The first event, on Friday, has Von Oswald booked to play a rare 45s session alongside longtime vocal collaborator Paul St. Hilaire/Tikiman (the mercurial, steady voice behind Rhythm & Sound’s ocean deep ‘Jah...
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FALTYDL // YOU STANDIN' CERTAIN
“[LTJ Bukem’s] ’Atlantis’ showed that speeding up the beat until it bypassed the body altogether could transform hardcore into relaxing music; rhythm itself becomes a susurrating, soothing stream of ambience, a fluid medium in which you immerse yourself, while the body responds to the half-speed, heart-murmur bassline.” [Simon Reynolds, The Wire, 1994] After writing some fairly extensive thoughts...
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LISTEN // DRO CAREY
Some pretty cool new tracks from Sydney’s new uber-synthesist Dro Carey have appeared over the last couple of weeks (not a rare thing, admittedly - the guy’s almost terrifyingly prolific), including these two. The first, ‘Leary Blips’ perfectly accompanies the Pierre Magneto video that accompanies it, a deeply weird, wired slab of electronic psychedelia....
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12"s YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
11. Bakey Ustl - EP1 [Unthank] Although strictly a 10” (cheating on the rules here), AE collaborator and all round blog/bass badman Xpldr offers his thoughts on Bakey Ustl’s twisted vision of modern house. Altogether now: ”Clap your hands if you want to fuck”…
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This track isn’t right: ‘A Tender Place’ is all kinds of wrong. So wrong it comes out the other...
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BRISTOL // SWAMPLOADED
If you’re in Bristol, aren’t otherwise incapacitated and don’t come to this, I don’t know what to say buddy. Two titans of bass music join forces like Voltron for the best midweek line up you’re ever likely to get. If you even needed convincing, the whole line up plus Boddika tore The Boiler Room to pieces last week, and the videos are available to stream from...
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DOWNLOAD // AE RADIO 005
Always Everything was back on Hivemind for your listening pleasure last Thursday, hosted by Eighteen, with an armful of new bits and pieces, alongside a first hour of (mostly) older dubstep sounds from the last few years. If you missed the show, you can pick it up at Hivemind.fm, or download it directly from here. Tracklist’s as follows…
October & Appleblim – Fountains Of...
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PEVERELIST // HESSLE'S RINSE ANNIVERSARY
And another swift post to draw your attention to a couple of hours of music well worth your time. As befits one of the more diverse and consistently great shows on Rinse FM, Hessle Audio’s first anniversary show last Thursday was a bit of a special one. As well as featuring mostly 140bpm styled material – an increasingly rare development - from Ben UFO, Pearson Sound/Ramadanman and Brackles...
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LISTEN // ENSEMBLE ECONOMIQUE
Just a quick one to have a little shout about Brian Pyle’s new Ensemble Economique single, ‘To Feel The Night As It Really Is’. It’s far less dread-filled than his fantastic Not Not Fun album from last year, Psychical, instead heading down dreamy, slow-mo astral avenues. And it’s unsurprisingly lovely.
You can buy it from here, digi download, just a quid, bargain....
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NEW SOUNDS // 100% SILK
Here at AE we’re awaiting an impending net-assisted musical singularity with all the fervour of a wild-eyed evangelical preacher screaming himself hoarse on a city street corner. So considering we’ve been tracking an increasingly obvious crossover point between (largely US-based) lo-fi/experimental/noise sounds and club headspaces, it’s been interesting – and unsurprising, I...
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LISTEN // TOASTY
It’s been a week of chats and discussions about dubstep and its current state, shifting towards the mainstream in a way that’s not entirely representative of its history as a musical form in its own right. Or something.
Anyway, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks going backward through heaps of records, and this pair of Toasty tracks from the mid-2000’s has re-established...
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LISTEN // ILLUM SPHERE - DREAMSTEALIN'
Bit of a curveball for Tectonic, this one. Manchester’s Illum Sphere has been building wonderful, ethereal beats for a while now (his Long Live The Plan EP from early last year was lovely, heading down the kind of astral vortex you’d typically associate with his LA bass/hip-hop contemporaries), but nothing quite like ‘Dreamstealin’. Rather than allowing his synths to...
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WATCH // ONEMAN'S 502 PSYCH-BASS
The eighties dreamscape aesthetic of Oneman’s 502 Recordings label continues to align it perfectly with the outre psychedelics of peeps like Olde English Spelling Bee and Not Not Fun. Once again, exciting sounds, mackin’ boundaries between genres like silly putty.
See: upcoming single and videos from TEETH, ‘Shawty’ and its brilliant FaltyDL remix.
See also:...
January 2011
3 posts
15 tags
ALWAYS EVERYTHING MIX 001: FLEX MENTALLO
We know, we know.. The internet’s somewhat.. overdetermined for mix series these days. With this in mind, Always Everything is keeping it intimate, these mixes are gonna be irregular and come solely from people we’re close to, in active dialogue with or otherwise. First off the bat comes from within the AE family itself, a set of doomy synth maximalism and booty jams from Flex...
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LISTEN // AE RADIO 003
AE were back, live from the Hive, for our first show of 2011 last Thursday. If you didn’t manage to tune in at the time, you can stream it back now in two parts on Mixcloud, or download the whole show from Hivemind’s link at the bottom of the page. The show started off on a heavy, bumpin’ house/techno tip, before moving into new broken house and garage sounds (including bits...
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A ROUND UP // SOME RECORDS WE LIKE
So we’re in 2011 now, and it’s been a while since we’ve written much. That’s set to change in the next few months, subject to the usual life-based delays… At least until the (belated, as ever) move to a proper ‘non-beta’ phase, we’ll keep acting as a space for thoughts and words on the same sounds as ever. More musings, links, free stuff and discussion to come.
In the interim period, here are...
December 2010
3 posts
6 tags
WATCH // ERSTLAUB - SLEEPWALKING INTO THE...
Another new release from Highpoint Lowlife that locks directly into the Always Everything axis, this time from Broken20 co-conspirator Dave Fyans, who records ambient drone as Erstlaub:
Sleepwalking Into The Underworld was sent to me billed as a full audio/visual piece, exploring the malleability of time and chaos theory. If that all sounds a little arch and conceptual, the piece itself – and...
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12"s YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
10. October – Vanamonde EP [Misericord]
In case the last edition of this series and our recent interview feature weren’t evidence enough we’re big fans of Bristol’s analogue hero October. As well as running the consistently impressive Caravan label – which has been responsible for some of the oddest but most compelling house and techno tracks of the year (October’s own lopsided vision of...
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MIX // PEVERELIST - FUTUREPROOFING
So it’s been a quiet few weeks here at AE, what with time spent taking stock of the year’s developments and the almighty stumbling block/distraction that was Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s ATP weekend (Oneida’s Ocropolis installation – a ten hour performance with a revolving door cast that included Deerhoof, Mike Watt and Chris Corsano – is worth a particular mention, a casually psychedelic,...
November 2010
9 posts
8 tags
BRISTOL // FRIDAY NIGHT FUN
Repping for Always Everything tonight, Rory “Eighteen” Gibbs is going to be spinning records in support of Eglo Records boss and Rinse FM DJ Alexander Nut at Dojo. Hosted by the ever excellent Kelly Twins, UFO covers niches bizarrely unrepresented in Bristol: cosmic boogie, tweeked out hip hop jams and everything even tangentially related. Tonight sees one of their best headliners in...
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FORTHCOMING // RAIME "IF ANYWHERE WERE HERE..."
Raime - If Anywhere was here he would know where we are (SHORT CLIP) by Blackest Ever Black
Forthcoming Dec 6th, Blackest Ever Black
Following an unbelievable debut that infiltrated everywhere from scene leading techno contingent, mnml ssgs, to Pitchfork blog collective Altered Zones, Raime returns on Kiran Sande’s Blackest Ever Black imprint with a follow up: If Anywhere Was Here He...
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BRISTOL // SUN ARAW DOUBLE WHAMMY
Lucky Bristol! Two, yes, TWO Sun Araw shows are taking place this week thanks to the two realest musical outposts in the city, the Arnolfini and Qu Junktions. For the uninitiated, Sun Araw is the solo project of Cameron Stallones, founder of stoner slow jammers Magic Lantern. Think sprawling, semi-improvisional psychedelic swamp music and you might be half way there. Evocative at once of...
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DUSTIN WONG // INFINITE LOVE
Dustin Wong // Live at The Hideout
Solo Guitar Record. Makes you shudder, doesn’t it? As I’m sure many others do, while reading descriptions of music I’ve got a mental shit-list that automatically kicks in when I see particular phrases: Future Garage. Five string bass. Twee. I know its gonna be a bumpy ride when one of these pops up. Solo Guitar Record is as a good a...
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ALWAYS EVERYTHING RADIO 002
Beaming out from the mighty Hivemind.fm straight to your laptops! Eighteen B2B Flex Mentallo smash up the dance the first Thursday of every month, 6pm-8pm.
Part One
Always Everything Radio 002.1 by Always Everything on Mixcloud
Part Two:
Always Everything Radio 002.2 by Always Everything on Mixcloud
Split into two parts because we went on a bit longer than usual, new bits from...
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SHACKLETON 'MAN ON A STRING PT1 & 2'
Forthcoming Woe To The Septic Heart
It’s testament to the all encompassing attitude of dubstep pre-implosion that Shackleton is considered one of the all time pillars of the scene. Whilst its true that his Skull Disco label co-run with Appleblim stands up as one of the most well realised artistic statements related to the world of bass pressure- and indeed, the personnel and geography...
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BECOMING REAL // LIKE ME [VIDEO]
We’ve been championing this one for a while now - quite incredible abstract Eski stylings from Becoming Real with Trim on the mic. Their upcoming 12” sees both on firey form, Trim working his usual laconic, perversely humorous side (“We’ve got nothing in common/She had hayfever/So I made her smoke pollen”) while Becoming Real sets off melodic fireworks in the...
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HIVEMIND RADIO 002 TONIGHT
We’re going to be rolling on Hivemind.fm again tonight, 6-8pm GMT. Get locked for new and unreleased bits from Untold, Marcel Dettmann, Ikonika, Girl Unit, Dro Carey, Gucci Mane, SBTRKT, Kowton and much much much more.
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CARAVAN // JOURNEYS IN 4/4
Mention Bristol’s current musical landscape to most people and dubstep tends to crop up pretty quickly. It’s unsurprising really, in the sense that the last few years have seen the city’s profile skyrocket, largely off the back of that genre’s expansion. But they’ve also seen some of its original and most celebrated practitioners take further steps away from the original template: Headhunter’s...
October 2010
19 posts
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DOWNLOAD // OUTER LIMITS RECORDINGS 'SUGAR PIE'
OUTER LIMITS RECORDINGS - SUGAR PIE (DEMO) by OESB
With November 15th’s spectacular Sam Meringue double header almost upon us- Julie & I Need My TV 7”s on Olde English Spelling Bee and Transparent respectively- the kind people at the OESB Hits Factory have made a brand new Outer Limits Recordings demo downloadable to commemorate the occasion. Just click that lil arrow on the...
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MIX // GRAPES "KLC MIX" FOR BASS MUSIC BLOG
Stream/Download Grapes “KLC Mix” at Bass Music Blog
Tracklist:
01 Tru - No Limit Soldiers 02 Fiend - Mr Whomp Whomp 03 Mac - We Don’t Love Em 04 Master P - Swamp Nigga 05 Prime Suspects - Tweekin’ 06 Mystikal - That’s The Nigga 07 Soulja Slim - What’s Up, What’s Happening 08 Mia X - Mama’s Tribute 09 Fiend - For The N.O. 10 Mystikal - Round Out...
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GIRL UNIT // WUT
Oh man, another one… It feels like we’ve been throwing around ‘… of the year!’ statements an awful lot lately, which I suppose is testament to the amount of great music being made at the moment. In just the last couple of months we’ve had an endless stream of material from Ramadanman, Jam City’s ‘Ecstasy Refix’, Hyetal’s ‘Phoenix’, his collaborative 12” with Peverelist and the murky funk of...
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VIDEO // STELLAR OM SOURCE 'MAGNETIC DEPTH/RITES...
STELLAR OM SOURCE “MAGNETIC DEPTHS/RITES OF FUSION” from OLDE ENGLISH SPELLING BEE on Vimeo.
Another month, another haul of new Olde English Spelling Bee releases, proving time and time again to be way ahead of the curve. Heading up November’s batch comes synth sorceress Stellar OM Source’s excellent space odysessy Trilogy Select. Centred around gorgeous, unending...