[Issue #1]
various artists - Fabriclive 61: Pinch
London establishment Fabric secures Pinch on all-vinyl deck duties, and he duly opens and closes with two parts of the same track, rendering his mix “playable on loop”. Whether just plain clever idea or sheer marketing brilliance, there’s no denying the quality on display. From a surprising introductory stretch of backwater house/techno to a second half of craggy, hulking 140bpm bass, we’re privy to why it’s become all the rage for DJs to whisk both continuums together. Pinch’s singularity, however, is clear. No matter the tempo or genre, his message remains indelibly shrouded in doom and gloom, to the brink of suffocation. And this is darkness required more than ever in a time of neon-sheathed, wobbling mid-range excess.
London establishment Fabric secures Pinch on all-vinyl deck duties, and he duly opens and closes with two parts of the same track, rendering his mix “playable on loop”. Whether just plain clever idea or sheer marketing brilliance, there’s no denying the quality on display. From a surprising introductory stretch of backwater house/techno to a second half of craggy, hulking 140bpm bass, we’re privy to why it’s become all the rage for DJs to whisk both continuums together. Pinch’s singularity, however, is clear. No matter the tempo or genre, his message remains indelibly shrouded in doom and gloom, to the brink of suffocation. And this is darkness required more than ever in a time of neon-sheathed, wobbling mid-range excess.
goth-trad - new epoch
The mohawked samurai armed with subs for swords springs an on-form, full-length assault, brandishing his trademark futurist tech/roots abstractions. Goth-Trad still rides atop a muscular behemoth of a bass template, albeit a strictly purist one, but few of his peers wield equivalent low-end sleight of hand. Bone-shuddering lead singles Babylon Fall and Air Breaker best prove the point, and here they sit in good company. Man in the Maze opens with disconcerting filmic suspense; shades of Underground Resistance sparkle on the marvellousCosmos; and Anti Grid pummels home via Raster-Noton physics. It’s no “new epoch”, yet the album’s victory lies in a hyper exuberance acquired by scything through to the very crux of the junglist ethos.
The mohawked samurai armed with subs for swords springs an on-form, full-length assault, brandishing his trademark futurist tech/roots abstractions. Goth-Trad still rides atop a muscular behemoth of a bass template, albeit a strictly purist one, but few of his peers wield equivalent low-end sleight of hand. Bone-shuddering lead singles Babylon Fall and Air Breaker best prove the point, and here they sit in good company. Man in the Maze opens with disconcerting filmic suspense; shades of Underground Resistance sparkle on the marvellousCosmos; and Anti Grid pummels home via Raster-Noton physics. It’s no “new epoch”, yet the album’s victory lies in a hyper exuberance acquired by scything through to the very crux of the junglist ethos.
[Issue #2]
loops of your heart - and never ending nights
The original Scandinavian tragic, more famously known as The Field, unchains a pseudonym in tribute to his heroes of the storied krautrock-psychedelia scene. But unlike other throwback contemporaries, his compositions, while initially anointed with bucolic serenity, only serve to unfurl a fog of stifling, near-Kafkaesque tension. Even album highlight Cries, in its sprawling, rippling austerity, suspends ominous filaments of far-off footsteps, sputtering fireworks, and stray guitar dirges. But don’t take our overthinking for it. The track’s natural melancholy feels all too commonplace but yet irresistible, much like the kosmische classics of the day. By the time it winds to a close, a moniker like “Loops Of Your Heart” begins to make perfect sense.
The original Scandinavian tragic, more famously known as The Field, unchains a pseudonym in tribute to his heroes of the storied krautrock-psychedelia scene. But unlike other throwback contemporaries, his compositions, while initially anointed with bucolic serenity, only serve to unfurl a fog of stifling, near-Kafkaesque tension. Even album highlight Cries, in its sprawling, rippling austerity, suspends ominous filaments of far-off footsteps, sputtering fireworks, and stray guitar dirges. But don’t take our overthinking for it. The track’s natural melancholy feels all too commonplace but yet irresistible, much like the kosmische classics of the day. By the time it winds to a close, a moniker like “Loops Of Your Heart” begins to make perfect sense.
[Issue #4]
yppah - eighty one
Is it ‘happy’ turned on its head, or ‘yippee’ meets ‘hurrah’? Listen to Eighty One and the answer is clear. Yppah’s music is powered by sheer bliss, flexing lust for life as it bathes in serotonin-addled sunrise. Shoegaze, trip-hop, big beat, post-punk etc. along with unabashed sentimentality are the ingredients, stirred and brewed to a balmy 90’s reverie of exquisite and exuberant form. While gleaming with playfulness, the songs are far removed from naiveté, for in their depths lies heartfelt emotional weight, rapturously brought to fruition without being overly excessive. Upbeat, positive and all-round HAPPY, this is music forsaking 2012’s prophesied end of days. Choose your side wisely.
Is it ‘happy’ turned on its head, or ‘yippee’ meets ‘hurrah’? Listen to Eighty One and the answer is clear. Yppah’s music is powered by sheer bliss, flexing lust for life as it bathes in serotonin-addled sunrise. Shoegaze, trip-hop, big beat, post-punk etc. along with unabashed sentimentality are the ingredients, stirred and brewed to a balmy 90’s reverie of exquisite and exuberant form. While gleaming with playfulness, the songs are far removed from naiveté, for in their depths lies heartfelt emotional weight, rapturously brought to fruition without being overly excessive. Upbeat, positive and all-round HAPPY, this is music forsaking 2012’s prophesied end of days. Choose your side wisely.
beaumont - never love me
Never Love Me sounds exactly and unapologetically as you might imagine it to be upon seeing the record’s cover art. It’s the soundtrack to a supercool 80s throwback indie-thriller, with the music more veritable than any Kavinsky, the movie way hipper than any Drive or Gosling. Beaumont marries retro-futuristic drum programming with radiant synth swells in composing his rather forlorn yet remarkably alluring sweet nothings. Here, the suave kitsch of Tangerine Dream circa Miami Vice encounters the stepping rhythms of UK contemporary boogie, as the two lovers blush and skip along a neon-lit path into their cheap but honest motel. The notoriously gaudy 80s sound rendered serenely enjoyable by heartfelt sincerity alone - who would have thought?
Never Love Me sounds exactly and unapologetically as you might imagine it to be upon seeing the record’s cover art. It’s the soundtrack to a supercool 80s throwback indie-thriller, with the music more veritable than any Kavinsky, the movie way hipper than any Drive or Gosling. Beaumont marries retro-futuristic drum programming with radiant synth swells in composing his rather forlorn yet remarkably alluring sweet nothings. Here, the suave kitsch of Tangerine Dream circa Miami Vice encounters the stepping rhythms of UK contemporary boogie, as the two lovers blush and skip along a neon-lit path into their cheap but honest motel. The notoriously gaudy 80s sound rendered serenely enjoyable by heartfelt sincerity alone - who would have thought?
squarepusher - ufabulum
What is electronic music not supposed to do? It’s a question that Squarepusher seems to endeavour to answer in each of his 13 albums over a 16 year-old career. On Ufabulum, he continues to agitate the limits of human listening and exasperation with time signatures so curious and genres so fractured to the point of sheer unrecognition. Like a journey into narc-fueled consciousness, the music cocoons and laps away slowly, only to simultaneously and selectively break into hyperenergetic hysteria. The classic brand of Squarepusher jest and perversion endures - listen out for hints to anything from turn-of-Y2K trance to Skrillex. While his constant fidgetiness and harsh modus operandi might make for somewhat difficult appreciation, above all, the incredibly ornate quality of Squarepusher’s songwriting technique remains a truly otherworld spectacle.
What is electronic music not supposed to do? It’s a question that Squarepusher seems to endeavour to answer in each of his 13 albums over a 16 year-old career. On Ufabulum, he continues to agitate the limits of human listening and exasperation with time signatures so curious and genres so fractured to the point of sheer unrecognition. Like a journey into narc-fueled consciousness, the music cocoons and laps away slowly, only to simultaneously and selectively break into hyperenergetic hysteria. The classic brand of Squarepusher jest and perversion endures - listen out for hints to anything from turn-of-Y2K trance to Skrillex. While his constant fidgetiness and harsh modus operandi might make for somewhat difficult appreciation, above all, the incredibly ornate quality of Squarepusher’s songwriting technique remains a truly otherworld spectacle.
nicholas szczepanik - we make life sad
We make life sad – with our memories, as this compelling excursion in hauntology suggests. Flakish found sounds, unheimlich electronics and concave loops loiter and wither wraithlike against the dark, turbid recesses of the mind. Yet the real sorcery lies in how the artist imbues half-life into his samples, sparingly exhuming their timbral subtleties in a bid to resist full-blown focus. This very formlessness defines the ten tracks on offer, and their lack of structural start, finish and progression. Evoking our cached recollections, they playback like ghosts of original events: faded, haphazard, near unrecognisable and downright depressing. For when there’s simply no way to regain that which is lost, all we have left is nostalgia and the charade of remembering how to remember.
We make life sad – with our memories, as this compelling excursion in hauntology suggests. Flakish found sounds, unheimlich electronics and concave loops loiter and wither wraithlike against the dark, turbid recesses of the mind. Yet the real sorcery lies in how the artist imbues half-life into his samples, sparingly exhuming their timbral subtleties in a bid to resist full-blown focus. This very formlessness defines the ten tracks on offer, and their lack of structural start, finish and progression. Evoking our cached recollections, they playback like ghosts of original events: faded, haphazard, near unrecognisable and downright depressing. For when there’s simply no way to regain that which is lost, all we have left is nostalgia and the charade of remembering how to remember.
[Issue #5]
shackleton - music for the quiet hour / the drawbar organ eps
Electronic music’s Zen master of macabre publishes his most ambitious sermon yet in this over 2 hour-long boxset of rumbling, grumbling psalms. On its own, Quiet Hour comprises an uninterrupted stretch of five movements strung together by distinctive doomsday prose. Waves of straggling, amorphous sound escalate to a poignantly uneasy bricolage as the listener plunges down a cursed well insulated by throbbing sub-bass. These lower frequencies ripple to the surface and spurt perforated across the nine tracks that make up the Drawbar EPs. Here, midrange features more prominently, compacted amidst Shackleton’s theatrical use of the eponymous instrument that proves a sumptuous fit for his darkly grim aesthetic. It will take longer than usual to court such a lavish invention - as it often does to unearth the rarest of treasures.
Electronic music’s Zen master of macabre publishes his most ambitious sermon yet in this over 2 hour-long boxset of rumbling, grumbling psalms. On its own, Quiet Hour comprises an uninterrupted stretch of five movements strung together by distinctive doomsday prose. Waves of straggling, amorphous sound escalate to a poignantly uneasy bricolage as the listener plunges down a cursed well insulated by throbbing sub-bass. These lower frequencies ripple to the surface and spurt perforated across the nine tracks that make up the Drawbar EPs. Here, midrange features more prominently, compacted amidst Shackleton’s theatrical use of the eponymous instrument that proves a sumptuous fit for his darkly grim aesthetic. It will take longer than usual to court such a lavish invention - as it often does to unearth the rarest of treasures.
forward strategy group - labour division
Although not an article of communist spiel as its title might suggest, Labour Division is no less militant in wearing its post-punk and industrial influences on ripped leather sleeve. That the album is obligated to the 70s/80s factory aesthetic is strummed through at both its start and end with decidedly sentimental, strikingly enigmatic guitar lines. In between, the record’s meat remains techno: a working unit of unsmiling, hardbodied builders battering steel structures with tenacious drilling potency. Everything is bluntly hypnotic, with tracks often premised on entire loops, yet this is matched pound-for-pound with terrifically ruptured beat artistry. Labour is quite the aural microcosm of British geography in its full monochrome, decrepit glory - but with the people still living, breathing and head-banging.
Although not an article of communist spiel as its title might suggest, Labour Division is no less militant in wearing its post-punk and industrial influences on ripped leather sleeve. That the album is obligated to the 70s/80s factory aesthetic is strummed through at both its start and end with decidedly sentimental, strikingly enigmatic guitar lines. In between, the record’s meat remains techno: a working unit of unsmiling, hardbodied builders battering steel structures with tenacious drilling potency. Everything is bluntly hypnotic, with tracks often premised on entire loops, yet this is matched pound-for-pound with terrifically ruptured beat artistry. Labour is quite the aural microcosm of British geography in its full monochrome, decrepit glory - but with the people still living, breathing and head-banging.
[Issue #5]
beak> - beak>>
holy other - held
mala - mala in cuba
