"IF YOU WANT A VISION OF THE FUTURE, IMAGINE CRAP 808 SAMPLES STAMPING ON A HUMAN FACE- FOREVER"
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 B’s back catalogue including the amazing “Im God” and “Motivation”.
On this mixape, Clams Casino collects 12 of his hottest beats: from the mighty Illest Ever piecing a swag call to arms out of Bjork’s Bachellorette to the cavernous She’s Hot, the breadth on display is incredible. Clams’ instrumentals are amazingly emotive, juxtaposing ethereal serenity with satisfying lo fi grit. If that description didn’t make it clear, the tape will definitely do things for people into recent abstract work by the likes of Hype Williams*, Dro Carey and the Olde English Spelling Bee contingent. Legendary stuff.
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Simon
*For the sake of the ambiguous context (and so it doesn’t sound like I think the 6”7” video is “abstract work” or some such) this is the increasingly excellent London/Berlin not-hypnagogic duo Hype Williams, not the increasingly lame hip hop video director Hype Williams
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 transformation into Addison Groove smoothed out the bumpier edges in favour of a driving house backbone; Appleblim’s sets and collaborative productions progressively dropped the tempo and upped the groove; Peverelist and Hyetal’s recent joint 12” was characterized by the subtly glowing warmth of early Detroit and Chicago. This transition occurred gradually, mirroring dubstep’s gradual dissolution into a host of new shapes. But throughout the time these shifts have been taking shape, fellow Bristolian Julian Raymond Smith’s own music as October, and the output of his Caravan label, has ploughed a steady path through some of the more outré ends of four-to-the-floor club music.
This Friday sees Caravan take over Timbuk2 for their first club night, featuring Berlin’s analogue fiend Kassem Mosse alongside October himself, Idle Hands label boss Chris Farrell, Kowton and Emptyset. It’s a mark within a period of transition, a musical climate where Commix’s remix album on Metalheadz can feature reimaginings by Mosse and Marcel Dettmann alongside Instra:mental and Pangaea, where broken beats are slipping further into straight 4/4, and where it’s ever easier to mix classic house and techno with modern UK bass mutations. So it seemed appropriate to snag some of those involved for a chat beforehand: here, Smith, Farrell and Joe Cowton chat to AE about plans for the Caravan night, and the state of Bristol’s house and techno scene.
The idea for the night began with a call from Glasgow techno head Marco Bernardi, after he had taken over the running of Timbuk2, begins Smith. “Initially I was quite apprehensive,” he explains, worried about the difficulties of promoting, “ but after some hounding it kind of made sense. And it spiralled from there really.” A few years ago, Farrell muses, they’d look up to Glasgow’s scene with envy, but at this point there’s a sense of change within Bristol’s own community. “Although there hasn’t been such a strong 4/4 tradition in this city, I think in this landscape after dubstep – I’m not saying post-dubstep! – a lot of things are a lot more open. I think more people are open to things like techno.”
And that change is perhaps less a seismic shift than part of an ongoing progression. “All music is evolutionary, very little music is revolutionary,” Farrell continues. “I think there’s now a slightly younger crowd than ourselves that are really receptive to it, which I think probably leads out of the dubstep thing. One of the interesting things about the dubstep scene in Bristol was that every single producer, every single DJ was doing something different. And now it’s settled in the groove of what the mainstream perceives it to be, the more esoteric ends, the people who are striving for something new, I think all come back to techno really.” He pauses to think for a moment. “You’ve got Hyperdub putting out Kyle Hall. Hyperdub, one of the dubstep labels, is putting out what’s essentially Detroit techno. And that’s brought a lot of people round to it.”
Somewhere within all this lies some of Bristol’s most forward thinking music. October’s own tracks cover a fair stylistic range, but the most compulsive – ‘Euro Dance Hit’, ‘Flat Top Muscle’, recent 12” ‘That Placid’ – sound like tense dialogues between sighing analogue equipment and the modern landscape’s digital sheen. The cavernous descent of ‘Memory Man’, meanwhile, takes dubstep’s spacious form and relocates it to Detroit, stretching it into a rattling wormhole through derelict factory spaces and static foreboding. Labelmates Emptyset’s music is stripped back even further, techno reduced to its absolute bare essentials: kick drum, resonant space and acres of sub-bass.
Cowton’s music under his Kowton alias is primarily associated with UK bass thanks to releasing on Keysound and Idle Hands, but his brooding, asymmetrical house jams are something else again. While they share early dubstep’s sense of swing, sub and space, they move in striplit slow motion: ‘Stasis (G Mix)’ is a flickering take on two-step, and upcoming Idle Hands release ‘She Don’t Jack’ is the best thing he’s yet put together, sending scraps of voice skating across a gleaming surface. And then there are also the likes of Addison Groove, Julio Bashmore, and his Velour project with Hyetal, who have sprung far more directly from bass-heavy heritage, leaping into the gaps provided by UK funky and footwork/juke.
“It’s not a huge step from what a lot of people in the funky scene do,” ponders Cowton. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s taking influence from sounds right across the 4/4 landscape and putting a UK twist on them. Altered Natives is a big example of how to do it – it’s rooted in house, but it’s got a fucking ton of bass under it! You can play it straight after so many old tracks and it doesn’t feel like an awkward transition.” A little later we come back to the same subject. “[It’s] a blurring of the genres,” he continues, “but not in the sense that anything’s watered down. And with labels too, more and more, like Kassem Mosse releasing on [Instra:mental and dBridge’s label] Nonplus+”
Mosse’s debut Bristol appearance has certainly turned our heads here at AE. His music on Workshop, all shattered drum machines and synths that are liable to disintegrate at any moment, remains some of the most compelling to have emerged from Berlin in quite some time. And recent releases on Laid and Nonplus+ have seen him travel in a number of different directions, from bracing 150bpm workouts to sumptuous, shimmering deep house. It’s something all three are very excited about, having been fans of his for quite some time. And alongside his appearance, they are as keen about the club’s second room. “We’re getting into this idea of the experience,” laughs Farrell. “What was it they used to call it in the sixties? A happening. We’re putting on some more esoteric stuff in the back room.” Smith pipes in: “Ambient cinema! We’ve got three friends, [who are] going to work with visuals – all three are going to pick a movie of their choice and do a soundtrack to it.”
Then perhaps inevitably, given the raw, decaying nature of Mosse’s music, conversation turns to the analogue/digital debate: vinyl, the resurgence of cassette tape in US lo-fi circles, and the process of generating unique sounds through analogue synthesis and processing. It’s something October, a self-confessed audiophile, has always focused on for his own tracks. “With digital clipping, you have a bar that’s set at zero dB,” he explains, “and anything that goes over that is going to distort. That can be used to good effect when you’re making your tracks with separate channels on your desk. But tape - being the material that it is - is obviously flexible, and you have tape heads pressing against it. Distortion is basically the amount of pressure the tape head is putting onto the tape. That creates harmonic distortion, this amazing sound that’s not even really there or audible to the ear – it’s boosting it, and layering it on top. With digital though, it just goes straight through. When you process things to tape machines, it sounds infinitely better – and then you master it, and it sounds even better, everything’s level!”
But despite his attitudes towards his own production, Smith still stresses that the Caravan label’s own aesthetic has been the result of natural development rather than conscious choice. “It’s just your own ears,” agrees Cowton. “It’s like when you’re making a mix. You pick the tunes that go together in your own head.”
“We haven’t said ‘we want every record we put out to be made with real gear’,” Smith muses. “It’s called Caravan because you move a caravan around. You don’t want to release one kind of thing specifically. That was the initial ethos of the label, and it’s worked, considering we have no internet presence.” He laughs. “The label’s called Caravan, I’m called October, you type that into Google you get caravan parks that are open in October! I’m quite astonished I’ve managed to get this far with so little…”
Beyond this point our chatter begins to follow slightly more fragmented paths; social networking, Sonic Youth, the trials and tribulations of the music business and post-punk feature heavily. And near the evening’s end, while discussing how musically open-minded many of the Bristol scene’s key players tend to be, Farrell manages to sum up much of its appeal pretty succinctly. “If I’m talking to someone about techno, and they’re like ‘Yeah, I’m into Sonic Youth’, then you know what? We are on a wavelength.” It’s that spirit of hybridization, that process of dissolving boundaries, which forms a great deal of the city’s identity. And if all music is indeed evolutionary, it stands to scientific reason that the odd injection of fresh musical genes from outside sources can only lead to stronger results.
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Caravan is this Friday 5th November at Timbuk2, featuring music from Kassem Mosse, October, Kowton, Emptyset and Chris Farrell.
In advance of the night, October has recorded this characteristically excellent mix - a little taster of what to expect on Friday. You can also directly download it here.
October Dj Mix :: Caravan Presents…. Promo by Caravan on Mixcloud
1. Kenny Larkin Presents Dark Comedy Pt 1 - ‘Without Sound’ [Art Of Dance]
2. Octave One - ‘Dema’ [430 West]
3. Terrance McDonald - ‘Mind Over Matter’ [Mos Deep]
4. MCMLXXXVII - ‘Choice’ [Unknown Label]
5. Tazz - ‘Unrestrained’ [Underground Quality]
6. Kraftwerk - ‘Robots - Unknown Acid Rework’ [Unknown Label]
7. Da Sampla - ‘Digital System’ [Puzzlebox]
8. Infiniti - ‘Game On’ [Metroplex]
9. Mike Dehnert - ‘Umlaut 2 Levon Vincent’s NY Basement MIx’ [Clone Basement Series]
10. Incogdo - ‘Simply Just A Ventage’ [Blame America]
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Rory
Given our Bristol location, we’re occasionally driven to ramble about how many excellent things are going on in our fair city. Almost every evening this week is taken up by something worth spending time at, from Murcof’s electro-acoustic experimentation (following on from his excellent secret gig at the Arnolfini in the spring) all the way to Qu Junktions’ massive Mountain Of Nine event on Saturday night. So these are the places you’re likely to spot us milling around over the next five or six days…
Tuesday 26th October // Beak> + Murcof & Francesco Tristano – The Old Vic
This is a worthwhile trip even to catch Murcof in the surroundings of the Old Vic theatre; while AE managed to accidentally miss out on his Oceano tour a couple of years ago, Fernando Corona’s experimental electronica has taken a turn for the celestial since the release of his career-best Cosmos on The Leaf Label - one of our very favourite albums of any genre - and his performances typically combine improvisation and live performance with beautiful/terrifying visuals. In this case pianist Francesco Tristano - whose allegiance to the shapeshifting Infine label has aligned him with the likes of Moritz Von Oswald - will be playing in collaboration. Geoff Barrow and Team Brick’s stripped-back Beak> will also be playing. It’s a pretty appropriate set of sounds for this week’s freezing temperature.
Wednesday 27th October // Flying Lotus – Trinity Centre
Part of the beauty of Steven Ellison’s sprawling Cosmogramma album is its ambiguity, the ongoing push and pull between electronic and acoustic, analogue and digital. Over the last few years his music has taken great evolutionary leaps and bounds as his family’s jazz legacy has –consciously or subconsciously? – crept further into its very DNA, and the Bristol debut for his full live ‘Infinity’ show is something we’ve had a beady eye on for a while now. Judging from reports of the London show earlier this year, and featuring Ravi Coltrane on sax and Thundercat on bass, it’s likely to further dissolve the barriers between the different sides of his sound, and as such is thoroughly recommended. And if that’s not enough, this video of the band performing their take on DJ Roc’s footwork anthem ‘One Blood’ should at least provide some food for thought and action.
It’s nigh on sold out though, so it’s probably about hurrying to Rooted if you don’t already have a ticket.
Thursday 28th October // Terry Riley – St. George’s
This one somehow managed to skirt under our radar until this week – minimalist pioneer Terry Riley, alongside George Brooks and Talvin Singh, is performing a series of ragas by Pandit Pran Nath, arranged for sax, voice and percussion. Needless to say, given Riley’s impressive legacy, and the ways in which Pran Nath’s music has influenced the current musical landscape (just last month former student Catherine Christer Hennix’s mindbending The Electric Harpsichord was finally rereleased), it should be at the very least fascinating, and at best a totally hypnotic way to spend a couple of hours.
Friday 29th October // Subloaded 6th Birthday – Motion
Pinch’s Subloaded and Dubloaded nights have essentially formed the axis for the Bristol dubstep scene since the sound first found its way here. After April’s Dubkasm remixes launch, which was one of the best (and loudest) nights out AE had this year, the sixth birthday event at Motion is looking even bigger. For a start they’ve poached scene pioneers Digital Mystikz along for a three hour set – with the arsenal of unreleased dubs that implies – alongside Pinch, Peverelist, RSD and Doc Scott, plus housier bits from Altered Natives and Atki2 & Dub Boy. Earplugs, as ever, may prove necessary. Venture this way for a warm up session mixed by Pinch; it’s pretty deadly.
Saturday 30th October // Mountain Of 9 – Arnolfini
Now this is something that’s tapped pretty much directly into what we’re about. Qu Junktions‘ Mountain Of 9 event is immediately reminiscent of their sorely missed Venn Festival: an insanely diverse set of musicians crammed into the Arnolfini for one evening, again joining the dots between different strains of underground sound. Heading up the roster are Xiu Xiu (about whom Simon is probably far more qualified than I to rant) and Mount Kimbie, who have steadily honed their live show over the last few months into something both delicate and physically overpowering; alongside them are friends of AE and general keyboard abusers Munch Munch, whose debut album is finally due out next month. Their ‘Wedding’ single, released way back when in 2008, remains a firm favourite, channelling Deerhoof and The Blood Brothers into a slab of shimmering doom-pop. Oh, and on top of that they’ve snagged Lichens, Paul Metzger, Jamie Stewart collaborators Former Ghosts, Position Normal, bfax, Hesomagari and Field Agent Slow Learner. All in all, one of those things it’d be genuinely painful to miss.
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Rory
Tonight Bristol’s most on point, club-destroying collective is playing host to one of UK bass music’s most beguiling labels: a ship-sinking Hessle Audio hook up on the Thekla courtesy of Crazylegs. The combination of Untold, James Blake, Ramadanman, Ben UFO and Pangaea probably make this the party of the summer, if not the year thus far (well, until Crazylegs unveil details of their next party.. all I’m saying is DJ EZ..). For those not yet down with the label, an Always Everything trip through Hessle history and beyond..
Formed on the inconspicuous Hessle Avenue- the Hyde Park base of operations for their time at Leeds University- David “Ramadanman” Kennedy, “Ben UFO” Thomson and Kev “Pangaea” McAuley set the wheels in motion for one of dubstep’s most world conquering labels with a scant £300 investment a piece. Fast forward to today and some of the most prominent dancefloor narratives of the last two years come via their now well established penchant for percussive muscle and tunnel vision selections from bass music’s outer limits. Always Everything co-editor Rory continues to push the idea that in the future their idiosyncratic sound will simply be known as “Hessle music” which, far from being a catchy slogan, describes their unique position in the UK dance music scene pretty concisely. Pulled for by figures as far flung as techno don Ricardo Villalobos and pushing the boundaries of what can burn up a ‘floor with every release, Hessle steady rise throughout the last three years has been one of the most satisfying in bass music.
TRG // Put You Down [2007 Hessle Audio]
But taking it back to the beginning, it was the debut release from TRG that launched the label in 2007. Arranged in part by the exchange of messages on former scene hub (now wobble dystopia) Dubstep Forum, TRG sent across Put You Down and Broken Heart to be played on the trio’s Sub.FM show, Ruffage Sessions. Now defunct (but happily replaced by a Hessle slot on Rinse), the ten best sets are archived >here<. I recommend the second birthday show featuring Night Slugs boss Bok Bok, badman DJ extrordinaire Oneman, Blunted Robots CEO Brackles and newest signing Elgato. The slick double header resurrected UK Garage on a devastingly weighty, sombre tip, hijacking a Detroit-esque middle distance stare to augment the vintage grooves. Vitally, this was at a time when very few could escape the pull of cavernous half step. This wasn’t just a minor flirtation for the label either. With Pangaea’s opening salvo of Coiled/Nest/Deviant following, Hessle set out a firm statement of intent to salvage the rhythm patterns of UKG from a Craig David grave. This time round things were different though. The beats still pulsed and swung, but in quasi-robotic way; armour plated and metallic. Six Million Dollar Man style, Garage had been rebuilt: stronger this time, bolstered by new technology and futuristic circuitry that could defy a So Soild-soundtracked shanking. Culminating in Pangaea’s gargantuan Memories white label, the Hessle crew were instrumental in the resurgence of UK Garage. Ben UFO’s incomparable DJ chops have set him up as something as a UKG foot soldier: in the same style as Oneman, Ben bolsters his impossibly tight sets with a hefty proportion long slept on rolling 2 Step.
Pangaea // Memories [2009 White]
Comparing and contrasting these 12”s with some present day “future” garage suggests that perhaps the bold marketing that propels strains of the 2010 movement masks the fact that a couple of steps have been taken backwards in certain corners. That TRG record would find itself having a second wind the next year with an exquisite remix 12”. HES 004 contains what should certainly go down as one of the finest moments of dubstep’s lifespan: Martyn’s incredible Broken Heart Remix. Quite rightly an anthem on arrival, Martyn stretched the sorrow implicit in the original to breaking point, creating one of the most well realised of 2008’s techno x dubstep hybrids.
TRG // Broken Heart (Martyn’s DCM Remix) [2008 Hessle Audio]
And TRG and Pangaea weren’t the only ones to have their first outing on Hessle. Untold, the man who cut an eski shaped path through 2009, was unearthed by the Hessle boys for a triple header of mongrel bass abstractions long before he started playing with old Musical Mob and Wiley instrumentals. Unlike later work, the Test Signal 12” was far from functional, full of dizzyingly long bass drops and Peverelist-style rhythmic tics. Purify married squelchy acid bass to insane tribal shapes, featuring galloping Karizma rhythms that have to double back on themselves lest they fall of the rhythm grid. Although he’s honed his inimitable dance floor destroying style to a fine point now, listening to the prototypes is pretty fascinating. None so much than follow up Hessle plate Anaconda, a 12” I’ve written about so many times over the last year and a half its hard to produce new permutations of my love for it: particularly given how minimal yet morish the track is. Ruling 2009 bass music and turning up as far as the crate of Italian nonsense-mongers Crookers, the track’s ridiculous bass drops, dying elephants and disjointed, ritualistic riddim conjured up WTFs that quickly subsided into intense dancefloor destruction. Like pulling Wiley’s Ice Rink into the jungle (lower and upper case ”j”), the track was (and still is) unlike anything else anyone was doing: the Hessle magic pulling another anthem from the unlikeliest of places.
Untold // Anaconda [2009 Hessle Audio]
At this point the label was pretty firmly established as an outlet for some of the most innovative and compelling dubstep mutations, and its only natural that one character would rise to embody that personality in his productions: Ramadanman. If 2010 has belonged to any one artist, its undoubtably David Kennedy; and considering the fecundity of the musical landscape right now, that’s no small praise. Utilising a rhythmic prowess utterly unmatched anywhere else in dance music, Ramadanman’s productions exist at an amazing nexus point between everything good in house, techno, dubstep, juke, grime, hardcore and more. And these aren’t obvious headnods to particular signifiers either, the power and structures of each are abstracted away and absorbed into a totally unique new whole. 2010 club anthem Work Them changes at every angle you look at it: is it a love letter to Chicago juke? A blistering techno blitzkrieg? An overdue Bmore banger? And what about those emotive synths that enter at the half way point? The skittering drum patterns are obscenely complex, but not as a sexless, chin stroking IDM workout: this is music to get down to, music to sweat to. Throughout the year Ramadanman records have weaved in and out of different dance music narratives with staggering ease. Whether its the breaksy junglist energy peaking out of the Ramadanman EP, the heady, Swamp 81-allying 808 work on Glut or the sheer indefinability-through-reference Fall Short rides on, the productions sound 100% floor ready and 100% David Kennedy.
Ramadanman // Work Them [Swamp 81]
Whilst earlier work wasn’t quite as effective, it did heavily lay out the template for Hessle A&R: unusually rhythmic and sub heavy dance music that lies just out of scenes. It was Ramadanman’s Blimey that the aforementioned Villalobos pulled for to open his 2008 sets, and further work under the Pearson Sound alias further blurred the boundaries and made more pronounced the awe-inspiring percussive might Hessle is now renown for.
Joe // Rut [2009 Hessle Audio]
This has been solidified by releases from two unknowns - Hessle seems to effortlessly pluck these guys from thin air - Joe and Blawan. The first Joe 12” was a revelation when it dropped, one that has seen imitation from all corners of the Funky & Grime liberated, ultra-rhythmic mini scenes splintering out of dubstep. Showcasing exactly how much character you can coerce out of minimal parts, both sides were drum pattern masterclasses and deceptively sub heavy. Established rhythmic tropes had holes punched out of them until they became so abstract as to erase all lineage; Todd Edwards vocals, a natural swing and weighty low end the only hints to what came before.
Blawan // Fram [2010 Hessle Audio]
The Blawan 12” goes one better, taking the label full circle back to release No. 1 whilst embodying the awe-inspiring power Ramadanman unlocked. Centred around the most gnarled 2-step beat imaginable, Fram’s acrid synths and paranoid whispers combine to create an unholily claustrophobic inversion of all of UKG’s core values, whilst, amazingly, embodying its best swing unlike anything else on the label to date.
If we’re going to talk about newcomers though, there’s one name that’s been conspicuously absent thus far: peerless man of the moment James Blake. If there’s anybody related to the Hessle camp that’s going to go overground in a dramatic way, Blake’s the man. Its barely been 12 months and the fevered anticipation for Blake’s every new movement is palpable. A string of bizarrely compelling releases have solidified a bizarre and abstract take on 90s RnB that is refracted through the prism of present day UK bass music into totally alien and unique new shapes. Far from falling out as some experimental art school experiment gone wrong, the results have been so convincing as to unite nearly every section of the music world in praise.
James Blake // The Bells Sketch [2010 Hessle Audio]
One such 12” was the brilliant Bells Sketch EP put out through- you guessed it- Hessle Audio. With a title track centred on the most mournful reimagining of G-Funk you’re ever likely to hear- and if Dre were to suffer an untimely death any time soon, his funeral would more than adequately be soundtracked by this’un - its hard to imagine it having much dancefloor success. But like the best of classic pre-wobble dubstep, it sits above a bottomless chasm of sub-bass. Whilst the synth heavy approach might seem out of step with the Hessle catalogue, the ethos behind it is well in keeping. His latest release, CMYK, has gone overground in a way even his most ardent admirers wouldn’t have guessed, receiving the kinds of plaudits- Pitchfork Best New Musics and BBC Radio Hottest Records- its completely unheard of for anybody in the scene to even be considered for. All’s set for Blake to go supernova, but anyone expecting some easy jams on his next EP should prepare themselves for another leftfield turn, as its probably his most obtuse outing to date. Characteristically brilliant, of course, but further still down the rabbit hole.
James Blake // CMYK [2010 R&S]
With all this said and done, don’t let this long, arduous prose and insistence for innovation make you think the Crazylegs party won’t be a wild one. Far from being a bunch of obtuse chinstrokers, the Hessle crew are dynamite DJs and have more than enough experience of duppying dancefloors to demolish any hopes of using your Bank Holiday Monday productively. To whet your appetite, the majority of the Hessle catalogue can be streamed from their youtube account >here<.
Simon
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