Vessels – Descent (Remix)

Vessels are one of my local bands, I say local they are based in Leeds and I’m a bit out of the way but I just count Leeds as a bit of a musical home town for me as it’s so damn vibrant.

This is a remix of Descent by guitarist and electronics wizard from the band Lee Malcolm. And I think he does an excellent job, I’ve not heard much else from the band but this track is just so sublime. I’m glad it dropped into my inbox for me to share with you guys.

The track has a beautiful mellow kind of electronica meets post-rock feel to it not unlike the wonderful Leeds band Worriedaboutsatan who do a similar mixture with great success and who are also fond of a remix. More about them another time though this is Vessels time.

Descent is an addictive track that makes me feel a little bit warm and fuzzy on the inside. The subtle builds grow into sweeping soundscapes before dropping into a mellow acoustic breakdown with beautiful plucking and mesmerising electronics. This loops and loops to make the second half of the track a true gem. Check it for your self bellow…

Thank you Cuckundoo Records for hooking me up so I could share some Vessels.

Download: Vessels – Descent (Remix)

Check this video out to see what they sound like in none-remixed form it’s a super slow-mo relaxing trip until they get all brutal on our asses and whip out the post-rock guitars, good stuff.



http://www.myspace.com/vesselsband

Kirameki – A Fit Of The Jerks (Bearsuit)

Kirameki is a very strange beast indeed I first came across them (them being the oddly named _ & *) yes you read that right it’s a double team collaboration effort made by a guy called _ and a guy called * more on them in good time. Anyway I came across them on the excellent free net label Rack & Ruin Records, I was really taken by the madness that was lurking within. So I was so pleased for them when Bearsuit picked them up for a full album release. A Fit Of The Jerks is that album.

It’s really hard to explain what the hell is going on with Kirameki they shift and move through many styles often within seconds. I guess it’s a cut’n’paste sort of affair a bit like what Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow would cook up if they both went a bit insane one night. You have no idea what so ever what’s coming next it could be a full on spazzed out blast of breakcore beats or a mellow meandering through field recordings and strings. It’s all so playful it just pulls you into its strange little world.

_ is an artist from Japan and that’s about all we know of him really, his partner in crime doesn’t even know his name so to join in the anonymous fun * was born I can only really tell you that he’s from Scotland and is probably just as insane as _. They collaborate entirely over the Internet by sending tracks and files back and forth until some noise comes out. I’m not sure they have ever met at all face to face, it’s an interesting way of working and the results kind of reflect that.

Where to start with highlights? Well it all flows so well even with all the mad twists and terns so the tracks feel less like songs and more like segments, surges and soundtracks to pretty much everything all at once.

Exercises in Style is a deranged almost circus like opening track, you can imagine a ringmaster drunkenly stumbling into the ring to announce the album over the top of this. He doesn’t though that’s all pretty much just in my head. The next track lures you into a blissful jazzy kind of place before things go haywire again with the funky guitar led breakbeat fuzz monster Sayonara, Gangsters. These two really know how to collect sounds and thread them together in such a compelling and interesting way that goes from party bangers to ambient noise.

I always seem to get Drown Yourself in my head for some reason I think it’s the mad breathy pitch-shifting laugh that does it. There is something mad about it that just draws me in. The following number My Cloud is a sublime shoe-gazer full of fuzz and chords that melt into an Aphex Twin style freak out at the end and reminds me of Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches with it’s horse samples.

The noise rock beast Morgan House-Cutter gets me going with its grating, jarring sounds and beautiful twilight chords. Just to confuse things further they throw in a track called Our Last Track part 5 right in the middle, it sounds like a long lost KLF pop trance number being played in the distance followed by a marching band running down a busy road next to a train track, but in a good way of course.

Kirameki really do know how to twist turn and generally scare the shit out of the listener by luring them in with some beautiful soundscapes then bashing them around the head with a techno / gabba beat and running off with a big cheeky grin on their faces. It’s so hard to place this in a single box, it’s like ambient hit’n’run schizophrenic techno beat music or something.

A Fit of the Jerks will not be to everyone’s taste that’s for sure but the ones that find it and cherish it will be rewarded with some wonderful, fun and compelling listens. There is so much inventive sound packed into this album that it really stands up to repeated listens when your in some sort of deranged mood for it.

Copy Haho - Bred For Skills & Magic EP (Big Scary Monsters)

Copy Haho have been in my peripheral vision for quite some time now, I could see them out the corner of my eye but I hadn’t quite got round to giving them my full attention yet. Now their time has come, I’m staring them right in the indie pop chops.

Bred For Skills & Magic is full of joyous hooks, riffs and twangs. Everything is so melodic and fun but they also manage to stray away from the cheese in fine style too. They have that playful energy that people like Pavement and Weezer had. But Copy Haho are no copycats they do it there own way. They channel their energy’s into wonderful slabs of lilting indie pop that bounce and swing like a late night in a friendly small town pub. Which is quite apt really as they hail from Stonehaven on the east coast of Scotland.

Vocalist Hearty has that Scottish twang that kind of gives a melodic drunken feel to the songs, I’m not saying all Scots are drunks or that this one is by the way, but these tracks do have a mellow boozy vibe to them that I think comes from the vocals.

Bad Blood is maybe my favourite track on Bred For Skills & Magic, it’s also the one that reminds me most of Pavement with a splash of Jonquil in the chorus. The Last Dash is in a similar vain too, both of these just sounds so cool to my ears the chord progressions give off an effortless charm that’s hard to pin down but you know just sounds damn good.

Opening track Pulling Push Ups sounds a bit like an indie anthem in the making; I could just imagine this being played in to the kids in the skinny jeans clubs all over the land. It’s a joyful sugar rush kind of tune it makes me smile. This is one of those EP’s that everyone will have a favourite track.

At first glance Copy Haho seem to make standard indie gubbins but these songs bubble under the surface in a slow burning kind of adorable manner before exploding with vibrancy and joy. There is something subtle about them that really draws you back in time after time. For a debut EP it’s a tasty treat so gobble it up like a big scary monster and enjoy.

Live Dates (all w/ The Xcerts)

02/02 - Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh
03/02 - Cafe Drummond, Aberdeen
04/02 - Mad Hatters, Inverness
05/02 - The Doghouse, Dundee
06/02 - The White Room, Sunderland
08/02 - Club 85, Hitchin
09/02 - Boiler Room, Guildford
10/02 - Hamptons, Southampton
11/02 - Old Blue Last, London
13/02 - Tap n Tin, Chatham
14/02 - Marquee, Hertford
15/02 - TBA, Glasgow (no Xcerts)

www.bsmrocks.com

www.myspace.com/copyhaho

Download: Copy Haho – Pulling Push Ups

Cooly G – DUB OrGANIzER Vol.1

Cooly G takes funky into a whole other deep direction. The bass is huge and the beats remind me of that really old minimal / stripped back Chicago house but with a mad little London skip, grime and edge to them. Awesome stuff, she is going to be huge on the dance floor this year I reckon. There are big things coming from her in the form of a Hyperdub release as well, you don't get much cooler than that!

DUB OrGANIzER Vol.1 is a wicked collection of deep and lilting funky it manages to be sophisticated and sexy sounding yet a little bit raw all at once. First track Dis Boy Pt. 4 has a low slung steel drum and trumpet vibe to it but they don’t sound like your regular drum and horn combo as all her percussion is really deepy, skippy and clicky like its made by machine and filtered through and organic funk grinder. The horns are deep in the mix and filtered low, they give it a nice grimey sound. Little soulful vocal snippets and samples give all these tracks a really nice housey style. On track two Ya Instrumental you can really hear the bass working and the African rhythm’s that are so prevalent in this vibrant funky scene at the moment, this track really reminds me of Township Funk by DJ Majuva but a lot more mellow and spacey.

If you don’t know already funky is a dirty London swung house hybrid that kind of echoes past swung and housey scenes that seem to come out of our capital city, you know the ones UK Garage / 2-Step which mutated into Grime / Dubstep. Funky is another beast though it takes elements of house that has always been a big part of UK club culture and mixes it with the rhythmic flows of Africa. Not unlike house has done in the past, I mean in the early days house from Detroit and Chicago was a lot looser than some of it is now. The strict four to the floor kick patterns kind of took over really. But anyway funky brings the funk back by adding a new variation on swing by joining the dots somewhere between house, grime, dubstep and African style drumming. It’s kind of a UK version of Kwaito but that’s a whole other kettle of fish for another time…

Back to Cooly G, Craze Refix pounds and skips while ghostly vocal snippets usher the track in and melt into an acid line. Acid has always been a big part of house things really kicked off when someone got hold of a 303 and got tweaking. So the Craze Refix follows this tradition and puts a deep and hypnotic twist onto it. What I love about this funky scene is that it’s putting the bass back into house again, it’s something that has been lost a little over time, it’s like the second coming of the bleep and bass manuva of Warp in the early 90’s but with a slight contempory flavour. The final track on the EP is Floating a mellow little number with some really cool lyrical samples that flow over the soul drenched house patterns.

There is something really compelling about Cooly G’s take on funky it strips away everything that I can find a bit annoying about the scene, which is the overly cheesey stuff with dance moves and just down right blatant rip offs of old house. She’s not as dirty and grimey as people like Lil Sillva, Apple and D Malice she has her own deeper style that puts her out on her own at the moment. Cooly is pushing it in her own little direction and it’s very refreshing indeed. I can see her getting picked up far and wide by house and minimal heads as well as funky and dubstep DJ’s.

You can buy the DUB OrGANIzER Vol.1 EP direct from her myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/coolyg

Fwd> Fwd> Skip/ Skip/

Durrty Goodz came on Logan Sama's Kiss 100 show last night for some live stuff and to promote his new CD Ultrasound (which just dropped through my door).

The guy cracks me up man, he sounds like he has a big shit-eating grin on his face the whole time. He jumps on beats from grime, hip-hop to dubstep and just comes with some fucked flow each time. He is just doing it Goodz style.

His appearance was fleeting yet he brought the hype, spoke some sense and made some jokes. Then he goes and jumps on Chase and Status’ Saxon live with some fucked bars and leaves...

God knows when he will be back he seems to pop up when ever he sees fit then leaves, so for now.

Logan Rip:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ywkntrtkzcr

Go and grab Ultrasound from UK Record Shop, I have a feeling I’m going to be playing it all day, more words to come no doubt.

http://www.ukrecordshop.com/item/durrty-goodz-ultrasound.html

http://www.myspace.com/officialdurrtygoodz

Oh yeah have a Wiley dis track while I’m at it, this is the last I heard from the war and I’m still not sure who’s winning / who to support / if it’s still going.

BSM 09 Collection

News from one of my favourite labels:

Big Scary Monsters have launched their our '2009 Collection', a series of four compilation CDs featuring new, rare, unreleased, live and remixed tracks from the BSM roster. Each CD is limited to just 365 date stamped copies and will be released seasonally, with the Spring Collection kicking things off in February. The compilations will be sold separately for £5 each or you can subscribe (via www.bsmrocks.com) to the whole series for £15 and receive a free collectors edition tin to hold all of the discs (photos coming soon), as well as other gifts and promotions through the course of the year.

Spring, The first in the series, is now available to pre-order and features 14 tracks including Mimas performing a wonderful cover of This Town Needs Guns hit, '26 Is Dancier Than 4', who return with 'Japanese Ultra Violence', a track which is previously unreleased in the UK. Other highlights include a massive dance remix of Pulled Apart By Horses, an exclusive album demo from Blakfish (as well as a track featuring members of the band singing a 'lounge' medley of Tubelord songs down the phone!), a brilliant old demo recording from Meet Me In St Louis, album/EP tracks from new boys Copy Haho, Wintermute and The Tupolev Ghost and loads more. As an added bonus, there are also two live videos including PABH and Blakfish playing some massive covers at a house party back in December. Most of these recordings won't be found anywhere else.

When purchasing/subscribing, let us know your preferred date and we'll do our best to stamp your CD(s) accordingly. The 'Summer Collection' will be released in May so look out for news and tracklistings for that one nearer the time at www.bsmrocks.com

Sounds a bit cool huh?

Hyperdub Up and Coming

Hyperdub is setting it’s self up well for the beginning of 2009 with some quality slabs of bass music. Stretching its already diverse catalogue into territories far and wide, well this time it’s going a bit funky at least. I will maybe do an article on funky soon enough but for now just check this out. It made my jaw drop.

HDB018 A. Joker - 'Digidesign' AA. 2000F & J Kamata - 'You Don't Know What Love Is'

Late February

These two tracks have been around for quite some time now but they still rock so hard. Digidesign has to be one of my favourite Joker tracks so far and the 2000F & J Kamata tune is some next level P-Funk vocoder business.

Joker

2000F

J Kamata

HDB019 LD A. Traumatic Times AA. Woodblock early 2009

I think LD played these in his Marry Ann Hobbs showcase but I’m not to sure about that. LD is blowing me away right now with his funky swinging and driving drum patterns he just has so much soul and a wicked dancy vibe. Check out an interview with LD by 3barfire’s Markle here.

LD

HDB020 Cooly G A. Narst AA. Love Dub / Love Dub refix Out in March

Cooly G is almost an unknown to me, I say almost as I found her just yesterday and thought to myself, now this is some good shit. Then I went for a peek on dubstepforum like you do and found out that Kode 9 had picked up some of her tracks for release! She makes a deep funky kind of house, you know funky as in funky. It sounds pretty different to your average funky too so may well push the sound into yet more diverse territories. She also has a self-released CD out soon that you can cop from her.

Cooly G

HYP009 A. Kode9 - Black Sun B. Kode9 - 2 Far Gone March release

I will let the video of Black Sun speak for it’s self here:





This is one fucked up funky paced wonky bleep fest from what I can gather, I’ve only really seen it on the video so we will have to wait and see what the rest is like. Big things!

Kode 9

Then:

‘don't worry . . .it all goes to shit after this one
got a double ep from this guy from bavaria playin the spoons wooden spoons, mind you, not some formulaic metal spoon sheet’
Hyperdub (2008)

Zomby – Zomby EP (Hyperdub) 12”

Zomby has to be insane just check out Gloop and Aquafre5h on this EP for starters then go and read his interview about Parrotte’s with Blackdown here.

What more proof do you want?

I have been so excited about this mad wonky / bleepy stuff coming out, loads of his tracks in this vain have been played on the radio for what seems like an age to me. Then he decided to drop a full length album of throw back rave tunes, Where Were You In ’92? that has had a lot of good press but didn’t really get me hooked. I wanted the mad stuff!

Hyperdub came up with the goods on that front by dropping the Zomby EP late last year, two times the 12” as well. Spread across its disc’s are some varied productions from Zomby he covers a lot of basses from all out fucked up bleepers to sublime 2-step rollers. He fuses some sort of Aqua-Crunk mixed with chip tune hybrid on Aquafre5h and Gloop, that just sound like nothing else I’ve ever heard.

The tracks are so inventive and messed up yet they will still keep you moving on a dance floor, that is a mean feat to achieve at times but it’s one that Zomby pulls off time after time. He comes off like a wacked out nut job even compared to his nearest contemporise like Ikonika’s deep and bleepy sounds and Rustie’s off the wall Zig Zag.

The 2-steppa’s are really soulful and melodic and the bleepers are pure swaggering badman space funk with grime and dirt all over it.

The first 12” kicks off with Spaceman, which is a sublime off-kilter bleepy track not to dissimilar to something Starkey might make if he got a pet parrot and went a bit mad. It has sci-fi bleeps and bloops, hardcore horn stabs and just a general air of spacey goings on.

Kaliko is yet another highlight a very hard to explain highlight at that, you really have to hear some of these tracks to believe them. Skipping arpeggios and electro style beats ebb and flow in strange directions making it sound like a mad grime track beamed in from space via Africa.

Test Me For A Reason finishes the first 12” in subtle rolling 2-step style with heaps of soul and melancholy. You can get lost in this one so easily it’s such a ncie departure from the fucked up tracks. Gorgeous vibes, what a sweet tune.

Flip onto 12” number two for the really deranged bangers. Aquafre5h is the track that made my ears prick up a while ago now. It flows like a digital liquid soup with grit in it that makes it all the more dirty. My head nods so hard to this track.

Gloop is also in a very similar vain to Aquafre5h with its dirty slow-mo bass and gloopy soup bleeps. This time there are some mad arpegiated synth lines that up the tension a little, badman stuff.

1 Up sounds like a gameboy gone into deep space hyper drive and its not to happy about it. Its murky, doom drenched and just generally a bit fucked up.

The final track is Diamonds and Purls and it comes across like a dirty R&B track fed through the dark side of Sluggabed and Rustie by Zomby on a dark night. The classic sample peaks through the grime and gives the track a strange detached air with a bit of soul. It’s very strange indeed I love it.

For more brilliant stuff from Zomby check out his offerings on Ramp and Werk records to name but a few.

http://www.myspace.com/zombyproductions

John Tejada – Fabric 44

Minimal and techno have been around for what seems like an age now and come to think of it so has John Tejada and Fabric. Even when sometimes as with all genres over time a formula starts to appear, Tejada has always managed to stay fresh and skip around tempos and styles at will as a DJ and producer. So a full mix from him in the excellent Fabric series is an interesting prospect.

John takes tracks new and old from all over the genre and mixes them with a hell of a lot of his own productions and material from his label Palette. This gives the mix a really cohesive sound that is unmistakably Tejada.

The mix opens with subtle and musical Detroit vibed minimal techno that builds with lush pads and creaking synth tweaks. It’s pretty hypnotic stuff for the most part but you can snippets of what’s to come as a sort of jacking European electro sound creeps in.

There is a warm timeless feel to a lot of the tracks here, it sounds like it could be mixed at anytime since techno’s inception in the 80s. It’s got all those lush, melancholic soul feelings that the early stuff had but with a really contemporary electro or minimal undertone. I guess it’s just quality in the end.

Some of the stand out tracks for me are the more subtle minimal affairs, such as the simple yet effective, ‘WAX10001’ by WAX. It just pumps along with drums not to dissimilar to old Trax On The Rocks material from Daft Punks Thomas Bangalter. But instead of kind of looped out funk vibe there is a nice dub synth hook that makes you want to move. Another track from the same label Hardwax also makes my ears prick up in the mix, this one by EQD called ‘Equalized001’ it has a similar kind of tone.

The tracks from Palette All-Stars pick the pace of the mix up a little and take it into freaked out acid state of mind with a growling bottom end and those mad acid tweaks that techno does so well.

Throwing in the Orbital classic ‘Fahrenheit 303’ is a nice touch as not only had I not heard it in a long time but it gives the mix a really old skool euphoric rave feel, which is never a bad thing.

Apparently Tejada heavily edited a lot of these tracks to make the Fabric mix a more solid flowing piece of work compared to his in club mixing. He wanted it to come across as a whole. I think he achieved this very well indeed. By the time your half way through you really locked into the vibe of it all and ready to get taken where ever Tejada feels, and he doesn’t disappoint with the final third which is maybe the best. Tejada himself with Arian Leviste kill it with the subtle raver ‘Forbiden Planet’ before a nice Shed remix brings it down a bit in his own wonderful dubbed out style.

Fabric mixes are always quality and John Tejada really doesn’t disappoint, grab this if you’re a fan of the more subtle end of electro, techno and minimal. I doubt very much you will be disappointed.

Flying Lotus – Los Angeles

I wrote this originaly for DiS so go and check it out over there, this is the DVD extra version before the edit. Here you go!

This year has been dominated by beats and bass for me, it’s come in many different shapes and forms from dubstep to hip-hop through a bit of minimal and back again. Warp’s Flying Lotus kind of fits somewhere between the dubstep and hip-hop, he has been firmly embraced by the two anyway.

Flying Lotus AKA Steven Ellison comes from a musical dynasty that has spawned the likes of Jazz legends Alice Coltrane and John Coltrane. He continues this legacy in fine style but in his own way of course. By melting together J Dilla style off kilter hip-hop instrumentals, some deep bass and the sampling skills of one top class crate digger, some people like to call it ‘Wonky’ others ‘Aquacrunk’ I kind of like the latter.

He is not alone in making this ‘Aquacrunk’ either there is a young and talent scene emerging with the likes of Glasgow’s Rustie, London’s Bullion and LA’s Samiyam who is singed to FlyLo’s Brainfeeder label. Hell this strange music is even breaking out of it’s BPM shackles and infecting dubstep, people like Joker, Peverelist and Kode 9 are showing signs of this sound in their own work. Kode is even working with FlyLo on some tracks on his own album, but I digress…

On with the album! Los Angeles is a delight to listen to as a whole the pieces surge into one another in a crackly soup of liquid beats and soulful vibes. Off-kilter synths play off the wonky beats to make an organic and warm sounding piece of work.

Some people may find it all quite ambient and relaxing but if your lucky enough to have caught him live on a big soundsystem then it’s very likely you have felt the full sonic force of his work and then been compelled to dance in strange new shapes that you didn’t quite know you could do.

You can’t really contain his sound in mere youtube form though to be fair, but you get the idea.

Highlights from Los Angeles include the little opener Brainfeeder which comes at you like a warm crackle drenched Burial remix of something from Kid A. Beginners Falafel is a dreamy bass ridden larva lamp of a track with a subtle and gloopy groove. Others are more beat driven like the eastern jangle of Melt! Or Camel, which also layers strings and vocal snippets to great effect. His use of drum samples really are inspired, you get electro booms offset with organic djembe or other percussion that creates a world of it’s own. GNG BNG sounds like a old school gangster film soundtrack mixed with a more subtle version of Public Enemy’s wall of noise approach. Parisian Goldfish continues in this vain too. If I had to choose one track though and only one it would be the beautiful Robertaflak, which features the vocal talents of Dolly in a moving slice of laidback jazz reminiscent of his family’s past and his hip-hop present.

There is no Post J Dilla Filla here.

Check out that very wrong video of Parisian Goldfish by Tim & Eric of Adult Swim Fame, who coincidently FlyLo makes a lot of the music for can be found here (WARNING NOT SAFE FOR EYES LET ALONE WORK! May contain nuts):

http://www.dancefloordale.com/

If you have been enjoying Flying Lotus and need another fix you could do worse than check out his LA EP’s one to three. The first is a collection of the odd album track and new material and the second is a killer set of remixes highlights of which include Mike Slott’s wonky monster and Martyn’s sublime version of Robbertaflak. EP three will be out next year I would imagine and I have no idea what will be on it.

P U R P L E

Joker – Gemmy – Guido

These three are doing it for me right now; they are bringing a mad Dr. Dre style funk to the 140 bpm dubstep / grime template. They have been at it for quite a while now but hell they are kicking this year off well.

First up is Joker for a start he has one of his sickest productions Digidesign dropping on Hyperdub next month but then what really got my ear was this mix:

‘Hope y’all all like it about 45 mins of wow sound MIXED MY ME http://www.zshare.net/download/5344464594dfa8be/ Track listening coming soon no hype ting just good muzik’

Heny G - Delayed Style

Silkie - 7-1

Joker & Ginz - Purple City

Joker - Psychedelic Runway

Joker - Gullybrook Plain

Joker - Digidesign

Guido - Tango 140

Gemmy - Espaniola (SOMETHING LIKE THAT )

Gemmy - The box Remix no.2

Gemmy - BT Tower

Gemmy - Back 2 the future 2012

Gemmy - ........

Joker - Do it

Joker - Early Morning

Benga - Buzzin

RSD - Naked Mario Kart

Skream - Unknown

Silkie - Weird Piano Quest - The Unknown

Rude kid - Are You Ready (instrumental)

Maniac - Three Crows

Joker & Rustie -Play Doe

Joker - Untitled.rsn

NELLY FERTARDO -SHOW TIME YA GETTT ME! LOL

That’s how he described it anyway. It’s maybe the best mix I’ve heard him do apart from his Bristol Rise Up and Generation Bass sessions on Marry Ann Hobbs Experimental on Radio One. So many bangers and so much great music it has to be heard.

Gemmy next, he is Joker’s mate (these three are all from Bristol) they have been making tracks for quite some time together and they are still young’uns. Joker’s mix nicely showcases a lot of Gemmy beats for you to check out so do that… What’s exciting me the most though is the fact that Gemmy will be dropping the Supligen EP on Planet Mu pretty damn soon.

Guido is the third part of the puzzle, he is rooted in a mad grime based future R&B kind of area, not unlike Joker and Gemmy but then has a sound all of his own too. Check this out:

‘yo whats poppin peeps just joined the forum, heres a 29 minute mix ive done... hope u like it http://www.sendspace.com/file/yrv8pk PEACE guido’

Tantalized - Guido

Beautiful Complication - Guido, Aarya & Ruthless

Chakra - Guido

You Do It Right - Guido

Orchestral Lab- Guido J

ohnny 5 - Gemmy

Mad Sax - Guido

Do It! - Joker

Tango - Guido

Digidesign – Joker

It’s one of the most addictive mixes I’ve heard in a while, I must have listened to it about 5 times the day I downloaded it. The stand out tracks for me are; the amazing Beautiful Complication as it really adds some sexy vocal soul that is sometimes lacking in dubstep and grime beats. Orchestral Lab is another beauty that needs a shout out, I’ve heard rumours that it’s going to come out on Peverelist’s Punch Drunk label but I have no idea how true that is.

So there you go the Purple Trilogy, check them out.

http://www.myspace.com/guidoproductions

www.myspace.com/thejokerproductions

www.myspace.com/djgemmy

S P A C I A L

http://infrasonics.net/

If you enjoy your 2-step in a ghostly kind of skeletal style not unlike the still pretty damn anonymous Burial then Spatial is going to be right up your street. Now, now don’t be going ape-shit over the Burial comparison this is just some more futuristic garage in a slightly atmospheric vibe for you to enjoy.

He dropped a 10” recently that Boomkat fell over it’s self to feature as it’s single of the week, which all at once makes me a bit weary and a bit proud. Weary because Boomkat have a habit of hyping a lot of things that just sound like basic channel and / or Burial when the mood takes them, but proud in that I had seen Spatial’s name before on dubstepforum and really dug his dubs well before I saw the wax was pressed.

Spatial kind of came out of know here with me, I just heard the dubs and though to myself now that would be nice to see on wax. Then low and behold here they come on Infrasound, which I’m pretty sure is his own venture. A nice bit of marketing maybe? Who cares you have to check out these tracks…

The 10” has the same sort of sound as the two free tracks he is giving away on his website. One is really minimal like a skeleton knocking out a 2-step beat, no I don’t mean like Skull Disco I mean like someone did a job on Horsepower and left them for glue. Then the other is like a mixture of said garage and pure soulful Detroit techno all mixed up, you know for kicks. People like Pangaea, Untold and Ramadanman do something similar at times, but Spacial has his own slant on it.

Your mind will not be blown by these tunes; they are far too subtle for that. They will just kind of fit into your listening habits with ease whether you are a DJ or a casual listener. I for one am looking forward to fitting them into a mix; they just sound like house and 2-step history combining in one 10” future garage platter.

Pick up 70707 & 80723 free of charge from here…

http://infrasonics.net/dubs/infra001

ill.gates – Autopirate

Autopirate is one diverse album that skips from dubstep, hip-hop, breakbeat and allsorts in-between not unlike someone like Si Begg (who he has done remixes for so I just read). It’s the second album from the former Phat Conductor from Toronto and it’s a lot of fun, pure dance floor vibes all the way.

Ill.gates knows how to make some big bass that’s for sure every track is a phat as fuck bass bin shaker. So if your looking for an album that covers pretty much all urban street bass angles in a fun and interesting way then you have come to the right place. I like to hear this kind of thing from outside of the UK as it brings different flavours to the table, especially a nice hip-hop / breakbeat angle from the people over the water in Canada and the US. I use to be a bit of a Nu-Skool breaks nut, I mean I learnt to DJ with that, so this stuff hits that part of me that has been sleeping for a while and updates it with some fresh flavours in the form of dubstep and all that good stuff.

If I had to choose one stand out track it would be the massive head banger that is Sweatshop, which is a grizzly buzz steppa with some big time swagger and it’s pure filth to listen to, the beats punch a hole in your skull while the bass tenderises your bowls. Sweatshop is also available on an EP with some really good remixes as well just so you know.

There are plenty of other highlights too don’t you worry about that ill.gates is far from a one trick pony. The vocalists riding some of these bombs are a nice touch, you hear so much instrumental dance music it’s nice to hear vocals once in a while, especially when they are done this well.

Still however good the production and execution of each track is there is something missing for me anyway or something a bit to familiar. I feel like I have trod this path before in some form or another at the tail end of big beat and the start of nu-skool breaks. There’s not much wrong with that of course especially when Autopirate is a nice listen.

Coleco – Campfire Funk / Sharmaji Feat. Maggie Horn – Break Your Heart 12” (Soul Motive)

This is 12” number three from Bristol’s Soul Motive and once again they are really pushing the dubstep sound into strange and wonderful territories. SMR001 was a fantastic 12” featuring TRG and Joker it’s the one with the legendary beast that is Snake Eater on it, you now the one it sounds like the dirty south of hiphop meats grime down an ally and has a big fight. SMR002 was just as insane yet on a completely different tip it featured spaghetti western style dubstep from Forsaken and Ben Blackmoor. I really haven’t heard much like that before in my life, country and western honky ton style guitar and piano’s over some serious bass. So we come to the third release SMR003 and again they bring the different vibes along.

The A-side features a broken beat meets euphoric funk number Campfire Funk by Coleco, it comes on like a deep bassy Chemical Brothers or something and it fits in so well with the Soul Motive collective sound. The crackle of a campfire brings the track in as organic percussion builds into melodic guitar riffs. It’s nice to hear some really big break beats in dubstep as well, these ones sound huge and you could easily imagain a full band playing this track. It really lives up to Soul Motives moto of Emotive, Innovative and Timeless Music.

Onto the flip now and you are in for a real treat from Brooklyn producer Sharmaji and the vocal talents of Maggie Horn. Break Your Heart is a soulful, spooky 2-stepper with an emotive vocal hook that rides effortlessly on top of skipping garage beats and some big punchy funky bongo rhythms. This has to be my favourite track on the 12” I can’t get the hook out of my head. It’s all so dark and uplifting like a melancholic shuffle on a dark and dirty dance floor. The bass is deep and driving with a bit of a growl to add some extra dirt, it really finishes off the 12” nicely.

Soul Motive bring it to the table yet again with some very different vibes, oh yeah I forgot to mention that the artwork for each record is awesome. I mean check out the first one for some old skool style jazz posses from Joker or the second for Forsaken posing with a police horse while dressed as cowboys. This one features a nice campfire scene inside a dirty wearhouse that has now been torn down. You also get a password to email to the label, which lets you get some nice 320 mp3’s so you can listen from the comfort of your computer. What more could you want from a label, I look forward to seeing what they drop next.

www.soulmotive.co.uk