Urlaubshits

Autumn listening: Reel by Real, xxxy, Lando Kal, CCC, Sully
November 14, 2011, 1:12 pm

I thought that the time was ripe for another post outlining a few things I’ve been particularly enjoying over the last few months as the summer leaves us and we make the inevitable move into winter; albums and tracks filled with cold sounds with occasional hints of warmth. At risk of confusing casual readers and making this sound like a food blog, I’ll quickly move on to the music itself.

One of Autumn’s unexpected surprises has been Surkit Chamber: The Melding, the new album from underrated Detroit techno producer Reel By Real, otherwise known as Martin Bonds, one which has been rather criminally slept on by the wider world of music journalism. He’s one of the largely forgotten masters of Detroit techno’s second wave, and if you have even just a passing interest in anything coming out of the Motor City from the last 30 or so years then it comes highly recommended. I wrote a full review for Juno Plus which can be read here, so I don’t need to take up too much space on the blog, but Actress and Kyle Hall have been raving about it on Twitter, and if that isn’t high praise then I don’t know what is.

Reel by Real – Fate

If I was judging the latest 12″ from xxxy on the strength of the sleeve alone then it would be release of the last few months hands down for it’s Lichtenstein referencing cover. Entitled Kerpow, it’s another winner for Irish label All City who released the brilliant FaltyDL 12″ Make It Difficult. It would be easy to dismiss xxxy as another “buzz” act; his music is almost unspeakably trendy, and you can easily argue that he’s not doing anything that his peers in the future/post garage continuum aren’t doing just as well, but if there’s a more tightly produced example of this kind of stuff that anyone else has done this year, I’d like to hear it. It’s clear that his style has matured somewhat over the last year; “Kerpow” is arguably one his most balanced productions to date; largely forgoing the day-glo garage of his ubiquitous “Ordinary Things”, he utilises warmer tones and crunchy beats to create a track with a little more subtlety, but no less punch, especially in the rhythm department. Similarly great is the B-side, “Down Wit U” which is some pretty fine 808 juke-techno in a Boddika vein.

xxxy – Kerpow

Another great single comes in the form of the recent release from Lando Kal (who released a similarly excellent EP on Hotflush earlier this year) on Rush Hour’s Direct Currents imprint. There’s almost no need to decide whether or not I want to buy RHDC records -  the quality control level is so high that the decision is pretty much made for me as soon as a new release is announced, and this new 12″ from Lando Kal may well be my favourite release in the series since Cosmin TRG’s See Other People, with both “Maneuver”, and “Run It” having the same kind of schizoid charm as that track. “Run It” sounds like ketamine soaked electro – it basically has no idea where it’s taking you; constantly wrong footing you at every turn, it’s basically impossible to remember once you’ve heard it, making each subsequent listen as thrilling as the last.

Lando Kal – Run It

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while will know how much of a fan I am of Night Plane aka William Rauscher. Last year’s “Str8 2 Ur Heart” was one of my favourite tracks of last year, and he has just released a new EP under the CCC moniker (comprised of Rauscher and production partner Harry Bennett); entitled Acid Snow, it’s every bit as good as his solo material. The title track is an acid-driven psychedelic noise freakout that reminds me of Gavin Russom’s Crystal Ark project – high praise indeed. There’s also a Night Plane remix which is on a similarly Russom-esque tip, dragging the original further into nightmare territory. My personal highlight of the EP is undoubtedly the B-side track “Vibrations”, a hypnotic acid workout with vocal samples taken from, among other places, scientific experiments on LSD. It sounds like the kind of thing that just won’t work, but somehow, along with the oddball keys that sound like they’ve been lifted from some crazed public information film, they create one of the most weirdly satisfying and bumping house tracks I’ve heard in a long time.

CCC – Vibrations by CCC

The garage revival is undoubtedly the trendiest thing to be getting involved in this year, but the fact remains that a lot of the proper old school garage hasn’t dated all that well, and a lot of the revival stuff just seems to be taking things too far with the pitched vocals and day-glo synths. Thankfully Sully’s new album on Keysound, Carrier has come along to show people how it should be done. Sully’s been producing for a few years now, and frankly he wasn’t on my radar until I heard this last month, but this is potential end of year list stuff. He’s managed to take the tight structure of 2-step garage and add some intellectual meat to it without compromising any of what makes it real, which is not something that’s easy to manage by any means. The whole album is a winner from start to finish, but “2 Hearts” is a highlight. Comprising of essentially the same 16 bar loop which simply repeats itself with tiny degrees of progression, each movement is signalled by the same trilling telephone synth which would become annoying if each change up wasn’t so utterly thrilling.

Sully – 2 Hearts

Last month also saw the release of the absolutely essential album from Martyn, Ghost People. It may not be the most innovative album of the year, but it does as good a job as anyone at distilling the essence of bass and expertly applying it to a house and techno template, and the production on display is incredible, and more to the point, it’s just really enjoyable. It also has two bonafide track of the year contenders in “Masks” and the incredible “We Are You in the Future”. Also unmissable is the recent Floating Points 7″, Danger. Yes, it’s a 7″, but used in the right context this will have the power to ignite a dancefloor, though its title as Floating Points production of the year looks set to be taken by “Arp3″, on the forthcoming Shadows doublepack coming in a week or so on Eglo. I’ll let Benji B do the talking on this one.

Floating Points – Arp3