February 2011
17 posts
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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:...