glowingson-blog

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Pascäal - Fragile EP

<a href="http://vresh.bandcamp.com/album/fragile" data-mce-href="http://vresh.bandcamp.com/album/fragile">Fragile by Pascäal</a>

A solid recommendation from a friend got me into Pascäal. The Austin based producer's Fragile EP is an outstanding package of woozy bass tracks that deserves recognition. Fans of Shlohmo's late-night, hazy atmospheres and drum palettes will delight in "Drowning in You" and "Rain Jacket". There is dancefloor potential in the release, too, with stepping rhythms in "Hunna" and "I Like The Way You Talk". Pascäal offers plenty of soul alongside his glitchy textures, with omnipresent floating synths reminiscent of Fantastic Mr Fox's alien organs. The production is immaculate and makes for perfect late night listening or selection in a soulful bass inclined mix.

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Tim Hecker - Black Refraction

Beautiful disintegrating piano ambience from Tim Hecker with a suitably disorientating lo-fi video by Sabrina Ratté. Hecker's new album Virgins is out on October 14th on Kranky, and if it's anywhere near as powerful as Ravedeath, 1972 it promises to be something quite special. A stream is available of another album track "Virginal II" on Kranky's Soundcloud 

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5 x electronic uplifters

Mutant Disco & Soulful Electronic

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5 x 4/4 meditations

5 tracks on the deeper side of 4/4 

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A new mix from myself suited to the early hours. Or late hours. All a matter of perspective. I tried to incorporate diverse takes on the late-night house and techno template, including some more ambient pieces to punctuate the mix.

Radiohead – Little By Little (Caribou Remix) Bambounou – Challenger Omar S & Theo Parrish – Who’s in Key Deadboy – On Your Mind Levon Vincent – Late Night Jam The Mole – Ain’t The Way It’s Supposed To Be Untold – Breathe (Nautiluss Remix) Joe – REJ Bit Lusine – Cirrus Centrifusion – Biscuits & Gravy Lando Kal – Rhythm Sektion Truncate – Focus Slam – Vespula Phillip Glass & Pantha Du Prince – Mad Rush Organ Bop – Intercontinental Meltdown Heiko Laux – Moved (Ricardo Villalobos Remix) Marek Hemmann – Gemini Martyn – Miniluv Ricardo Villalobos – Que Bel Epoque Floorplan – Altered Ego Falty DL - Straight & Arrow (Mike Q & Divoli S'vere Remix) Monobox – Trade (Ricardo Villalobos Remix) Diana – Perpetual Surrender (Four Tet Remix)

More follows.

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Check out my interview with Boeboe over at ClapYourFeet

http://clapyourfeet.de/2013/07/11/an-interview-with-boeboe-saturate-records-basserk-22tracks/

A super nice dude with a great EP dropping in a few days on the ever building, ever strong Saturate Records.

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XLR8R's In the Studio features are a constant source of insightful goodness. This one in particular is with Jon Hopkins, whose excellent and emotonally heavy recent album Immunity is sure to be cropping up on best-lists all over the place.

A very unique setup and process for a very unique producer, featured in an excellent article.

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Desto - 'Ink Pit'

Personal highlight from Desto’s new full-length on Dutch bass powerhouse Rwina. Clattering drums, forward-thinking arrangement and a tense, dangerous atmosphere push this track into realms we’ve seen before from Eprom. Garbling synths scatter themselves in very Eprom-esque style, while trademark dark-alley-on-a-dark night Desto key stabs provide some grimey hallmark continuities to the proceedings. Desto's tempo manipulation masterful – left turns are abundant, with injections of footworking half/double time rhythms making this a truly killer cut.

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Check out my interview with Saturate's Main artwork man Thomas Wahle over at Clap Your Feet!

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Serotonin euphoria from Fort Romeau, getting a digital release on Ghostly International on the 24th of June.

This piece is all summer vibes with a blissful crescendo; watch out for the dubbed out piano exchanging centre-stage with stretching chords and searching vocal snips.

Release info: http://ghostly.com/releases/jetee-desire

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BRAND NEW MORRI$

Following up the incredible "White Hood", the dude Morri$ is pushing the sublimest juxtapositions: big booty bass trap with the lightest, deftest touches of melody. Skipping the machismo of the worst that trap has to offer, Morri$ has a winning formula. Melodic weight at its best.

Morris - The Warning

AUDIO: MORRIS • THE WARNING

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Rustie - Slasherr

Out of the blue, Rustie's turned up with a brand new one. Slasher is taken from his upcoming Slasher/Triadzz 12" for Numbers.  In the same vein as 2011's Glass Swords, this one's buzzing off its own peculiar juices. It's trademark Rustie: big shiny synths slap you silly, big alien swooshes and big rave-a-saurus rex build ups come with the classic Rustie plink and plonk. It's bloody big.

He has his imitators but no one does it like him. Personally very much anticipating this one heating up summer festival floors.

Buy it here: https://bleep.com/release/42235-rustie-triadzz-slasherr?utm_source=Bleep&utm_campaign=10830f0c06-Rustie_Tip_Off3_3_2013&utm_medium=email

and hold tight for the full release on Numbers on March 18

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Which came out today on Om Unit's ever growing and blossoming Civil Music imprint.

I saw Ital Tek play a great set last month in Berlin's St Georg club. These new ones sound mighty fresh on a good system. Ital Tek has been associated with a whole manner of forward thinking bass musics over the last few years. From off kilter, wonky hip hop to mechanised, industrial dubstep - the man has dabbled and mastered many crafts.

These last couple of years has seen Ital Tek's productions take big excursions into juke and footwork territory. Nebula Dance was atmospheric and felt, in the same way as Kuedo's Severant, like sonic landscaping from the future.

"Hyper Real" picks up where Nebula Dance left off. Simultaneously melodically and rhythmically oriented, Ital Tek isn't merely making out-of-context Chicago footwork trax. EP highlights "The Flood" and "Hyper Real" skitter and spider along at lightning pace with plenty of low end swagger. It's real soundsystem business, it's hard to imagine them not going off on the right dancefloor.

Two big remixes included: Deft ups the aggro on "Hyper Real" to great effect, with heaps of dread and eerie energy. "The Flood" is remixed by Throwing Snow who transforms the original's juking madness into a rolling hip hop bouncer with his trademark silvery loftiness.

Buy here and check out the rest of Civil Music's awesome catologue:

http://www.civilmusic.com/buy/hyper-real/

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Parisian - 'Sean' (free download @ XLR8R)

http://www.xlr8r.com/mp3/2013/01/sean

everyone likes free music, and XLR8R are champions of providing good quality electronic downloads absolutely gratis.

'Sean' by Parisian is recommended listening for anyone into slow-mo house/ downtempo hip hop hybrids along the lines of Holy Other. Stretched out vocals are layered thick, clanging bells add a tasty crunch at the centre of the spectrum and a deep groove adds just the right amount of weight to the experience. As the guys at XLR8R point out in their short accompanying extract, just after the half-way mark Parisian shifts 'Sean' up a notch with an unexpected synth twist that does much to elevate the track's loftiness. 

This one's a headphone slow burner, one for taking in solo. Good things to come from Parisian for sure, 'Sean' is out soon on a split 7" with Phaseone on Lefse next week. 

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Night Slugs Allstars Volume 2 is due for release on Monday, the compilation culminating with the buzz-accumulating 'White Hood' by stateside trap hero Morri$. Daedelus spoke brightly of Morri$ in his Fact Magazine 2012 end of the year list, praising his and several other notable fresh-faced producers avoidances of the "Real Trap Shit" hype. 

Rightly so, 'White Hood' is a masterful orchestration of all the hallmarks of trap, but with so much more flavour. Where the droves of Lex Luger and TNGHT imitators seem hell bent on making trap for trap sake - all sounding much the same - Morri$ is taking the game to a whole new level here. The whole thing feels ornately orchestral, like a digital orchestra on the rise. Bubbling arpeggiations are submersed under a thick layer of varied percussive elements, including the hallmark trap hi-hat rolls (employed here to great effect as Morri$' melodies reach apex). 'White Hood' has a definite atmosphere that will stay with the listener far longer than that other tune that can only boast a 'fat drop'. It's emotive, melodic and propulsive in all the right ways. Give it a go.

Ever since I heard it in Bok Bok's NSMIX001 I've been eagerly awaiting this one, it's available on glorious vinyl 12" and digital formats on Night Slugs come the 28th of January.

FOR WAX CLICK HERE

http://boomkat.com/vinyl/631587-girl-unit-morri-night-slugs-allstars-vol-2-sampler

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Talking To People Who Do Stuff Episode 1: KRAMPFHAFT

(VIA clapyourfeet.de - big up to these guys for hosting my first interview)

Krampfhaft talks about his new EP on Rwina, Studio Takt and escaping genre. 

Joris Van Grunsven is the man. In the domain of experimental electronic music, many know him as Krampfhaft. A purveyor of clinical, bass heavy explorations that suit both the palette of headphone concentration and dancefloor decimation… so to speak. He juggles his creative output asKrampfhaft with sound design under his Studio Takt guise, turning his musical hand to soundscaping moving picture.

This October I visited Joris at his studio in Utrecht on the wharfs of the Oudegracht. We talked about his forthcoming EP, avoiding falling in the ‘trap’ trap, Kate Bush, good composing and the state of electronic music among many other things.

The new Kramphaft EP drops next month on RWINA, what kind of aesthetic were you going for this time?

Making Magic is almost a year old now, so it’s been a long wait for this one. I’ve been making a lot of new stuff over the last year, but I just wasn’t feeling any of it. We even postponed the release date. Then I made ‘Marram’ and really felt it. So I decided to start over and made a whole new EP. I guess the theme with this one was to solidify my name as ‘crazy experimental dancefloor producer guy’. First Threshold is even madder than the last one. There’s some trap influence, but I didn’t want it to just be trap.

What’s your take on that by the way?

I like a lot of the tunes, it works. People go nuts, it’s crazy, it has a certain vibe and a momentum that’s inspiring.

The sound goes back to guys like Lex Luger making instrumentals, but now it seems like they took out the vocals and people really start dancing.

Yeah definitely, although I didn’t know it was called ‘trap’ until a few months ago. It’s been popping up in the electronic music scene for a while now. You could even call Making Magic trap, but I didn’t know, I just thought it was hip hop, like ‘dirty south’ beats. I feel like nowadays something gets picked up super quickly and gets popular, so everyone starts doing it and it becomes mediocre really fast. It gets moulded into a pretty strict formula and it just gets boring. Which is a shame.

It’s going the way of dubstep, everything’s getting treated to a trap remix.

Yeah you get the same snares, fast high hats. Everyone makes it a bit more mediocre than the last. “Boom, eee, boom, psch” … everyone goes nuts. It’s a shame there aren’t a lot of producers that incorporated it into their own thing, taking it a different direction. With dubstep it took like five years to get stale, but with trap, it’s become a thing way too quickly.

This EP, Making Magic and Spit Thunder have tracks speeding along at 160bpm with juke/footwork influences. There’s been a lot of talk about how an essentially Chicago street battle sound has been exported and warped all around the world. How did you get into that?

I think it was one of those Planet Mu releases. I saw it on Boomkat and found it really strange… it gave me a feeling of possibility, and I thought I could do something else with it. I could take the framework they created and put my own stuff in it. I compare it to the beginnings of jungle and drum & bass, everyone did it their own way. There’s this fundamental fast, rhythmic quality to it, so I thought, what can I do with this? I don’t make tracks for people to footwork to, it’s cool though, but my sound doesn’t really have anything to do with Chicago. Big up to the pioneers though!

What other music did you find influencing you growing up?

I don’t really keep a list! So many little things have influenced me; I’ve been making music for so long. When I first started making electronic music – Aphex Twin. With his older stuff he was good at making music that was very melodic, meaningful, harsh, strange, otherworldly. I like this combination of heavy and emotional, it’s something I still try and do – give it meaning, give it weight.

The last time I saw you playing out you were wearing a Slayer t-shirt. Do you still listen to a lot of metal?

Not so much anymore. But man, I’ve been into everything. Metal, hip hop, electronic stuff, a lot of Pink Floyd, Yes, Kate Bush, The Beatles, Jeff Buckley . . . Cannibal Corpse (laughs).

You know though, every genre has something about it that’s amazing. I think everyone could like one track from every type of music. There must be some schlager tune YOU like. Metal has this inner frustration thing going on, it all builds up in this pressure cooker way, it really resonated with me when I was a teenager. Electronic music is all about exploration, symphonic synth music is all about space. I try to open my mind to all of it and take elements I like to make something new and crazy. 

How did you end up making music?

I started playing guitar when I was 13. I had a year of lessons with this blues dude at the local music college. Basically consisted of acoustic guitar, a foot pedal and a book with ugly songs in it. He saw this definitely wasn’t what I wanted to do, so we just focused on improvising. Instead of reading notes we just jammed for a year – having fun with it. He saw music meant more to me than just learning to play an instrument; he wanted to nurture it as a form of expression.

One day I came in and he was gone. He’d always said he was sick of teaching kids to play stiff acoustic guitar and wanted to become a truck driver. So then I got a new teacher, this other guy, who said, “let’s open the book” again. So I said, “fuck it.” My first teacher gave me confidence and really taught me that this is something you use to express yourself. That’s what’s beautiful about it, and that stuck with me until now.

 What’s your studio set up like now?

I have a computer, Ableton, some speakers. Nothing special, I use what everyone has.As few plug-ins as possible, some samples, some synths. I keep it really simple. Depth comes from knowing how to put together simple sounds to make it more complex; it’s all about the composition.

Modern technology basically means anyone can start producing electronic music, if they get their hands on a computer. What does someone need to do to stick out from the masses, to really progress?

It’s handy to have learnt piano, and have some background in music. I mean, in the end you have to learn it anyway. If you don’t have any musical knowledge you can’t make music. I’m not saying you need 10 years of classical training to make beats, but you have to be able to dig deep. If things like dynamics and chord progression remain a mystery, you won’t be making good music. So research is really important.

People talk a lot about what software it is they use, what tricks they have, and all that. The only important trick for me isn’t a trick. Malcolm Gladwell said you have to spend 10,000 hours on a craft to become an expert, and I really believe in this. I’ve been making music for more than ten years. Of which four years professionally – So my ability to make clear mixes, knowing where to go next; it’s taken time. You have to train your ears and your understanding, and I guess it’s this that puts people off.

You put in the hours and you will still make a lot of crap. You just get better and more creative. Just because something sounds interesting it doesn’t make it good, maybe you need to make 10 others like it. So quality control is also very important.

 How do you test your new stuff? Is the best test playing it out?

Yeah sometimes. With this new EP there’s two tracks I’d never played out before it went to mastering. You never really know for sure, it’s always a gamble. But with experience you get the feeling…  this will probably work.

So we’re in Krampfhaft HQ, but this is also Studio Takt. What does your work with that involve? How do you find yourself balancing the two?

I do music and sound design for animation and film projects – for moving image. I went to art school, began working as a motion designer, what I really wanted to do was direct films. So I did that for a while, and got back into making music. I realised I could also integrate music into my work as an animator.

It’s a difficult scene to get into. I did a lot of freelance stuff to get my foot in the door. But these days, I’d say I’m as well known around the world as a sound designer as I am for my music. Although my personal music is taking up more and more time so balancing things becomes pretty tough.

Do you want your work to take you towards scoring full-length material?

I might not be ready for that yet, but I did do a documentary, called Money & Speed: Inside the Black Box. It’s an hour-long feature about a stock market crash a few years back where the whole thing built back up within the space of a couple of hours. These days the whole thing is controlled by AI. Stuff worth millions sells in just seconds. The documentary is about glitches in the algorithms and the dangers of the digital financial world. I also did the sound for a pretty cool app that came along with the documentary.

Speaking of film, where did the inspiration for the opening ambient piece on the new EP come from?

The sample comes from Adam Curtis’ Century of Self; which is pretty good by the way, you should check it out. There’s this group therapy scene where people are encouraged to let go of their anger. This little guy in a suit, who’s not really convincing is saying, “If my demon comes out, it will destroy you all. It’s scary, but a little bit funny; he’s sheepish with it. I think it holds true for making music, you try and transfer your thoughts with a piece of music to someone else.

Are there any other stories being told by the other tracks?

‘Marram’ has a nice story, but that one’s personal. The three harder tracks in the middle of the EP don’t really have a story. They’re about experimentation; I tried to give them a certain vibe. ‘In a Dream’ and ‘Twin Prime’ have the trap thing going on, but go at 160 bpm, and come from the same kind of place as the heavier ones on the last EP. The EP as a whole doesn’t have a big story; I just wanted it to do well on the dancefloor and still be experimental and surprising. Just really good quality productions.

 So what’s next for Krampfhaft and ‘bass music’?

I don’t know exactly but I think I want to do an album next. I want to make an album that’s a complete experience, start to finish. Definitely something beautiful, less about making crowds dance.

I think every electronic producer faces the same conundrum when it comes to making an album – there’s a dancefloor vs. home listening experience balance or compromise to be made. How will you approach that?

Well this EP has a mix of both. If I make an album that isn’t suited to the dancefloor at all, people will say “what the fuck happened to Krampfhaft?!” 12 bangers also isn’t an album. It has to be a combination, taking it up and down. I want to make something you can just put on and lose yourself in.

Oh… so it won’t be called Trap Bangerz?

(laughs) Maybe I’ve set myself up right in that respect, not just making tracks like ‘Carl Sagan’!

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First Threshold EP is out on digital and vinyl 12” format on Rwina Records, with artwork by Menno Fokma and Floris Vos.

Check out Joris’ Facebook, and of course also Soundcloud

Krampfhaft’s latest tune is out now on SATURATED! VOL. 3 which you can download for free from here http://saturaterecords.bandcamp.com/