Record Reviews (07/10/22)
Monthly reviews of the records I’ve been playing out or listening to while doing the washing up.
Dana Kuehr - BM 18 LP [Basic Moves]
Dana Kuehr, besides being a great DJ and producer, is a wonderful friend. I had the immense satisfaction of playing some of the tunes off her debut LP at her own birthday party in Brussels earlier this year, and then again a few weeks later when we were both at Renate in Berlin. Our friendship is perhaps a confounding factor when it comes to objectively reviewing her music, but no one ever said this newsletter was objective.
‘How Do We Continue’ – previously released digitally on an Ojoo VA as ‘e.piffany’ – is here brought down a good 4bpm to lead the LP off. It’s a choice presumably intended to align the track with the pace of the rest of the album, making it more accessible to Basic Moves’ general DJ demographic (in which I include myself), but I always thought there was something charming about how fast the original was, even as I pitched it down significantly every time. Never mind, as I wrote in my 2020 end-of-year review, it remains an effortless Detroit-by-way-of-Brussels banger that balances drive with levity, structure with flow, variation with coherence.
Contrasting with that meticulously arranged A1 are a handful of less (obviously) structured outings, like ‘Cloud B’ and ‘Realm 8’, which meander and drift, inviting us to focus more on the ebb and flow of the groove than on any expectation of what will happen next. As someone quite wedded to song structure, it has been an edifying challenge to see where these tracks can fit into my sets, and when I have managed it - like on the Dimensions boat with Gwenan in September - it has been to great effect.
One curious feature common to several of these tracks is the unconventional way in which they unfurl, sometimes beginning mid-phrase (or appearing to), and giving us a brief moment of lostness before our brains join the dots and the contour of the music falls into place. Others end abruptly, seemingly cut short before they have fully run their course. Although these are rather DJ-unfriendly choices (I speak from the experience of trying – and failing – multiple times to mix certain tracks in on-beat), they lend the album a sense of flow and spontaneity that speaks to Dana the person.
Then there is the emotion palpable in the two tearjerkers on disc two. ‘Great Lakes Empty’ is a man-meets-machine symphony for today, its shifting layers of harmony drawing out all the feels in a manner worthy of Jamie Reade. ‘Because’ - one of the sad bangers I played at that Renate gig - is the recipient of the LP’s final side, closing things in a swirl of dissonant updrafts, pounding drums and chorused Janets singing the refrain: “It’s cos of love/That I feel so high.” It’s the most out-there track on the album, yet I have a tentative hope that it will find its way on to the biggest of stages.
Xiaolin – Tower Moment EP [Mihn Records]
Following her contribution to Volume 5 of FuFu Records’ 88 - Double Happiness series — the maximalist ‘Dance Of The Jungle Moon’, which I played many times in the first half of this year — Hong Kong-based producer Xiaolin returns with her debut vinyl EP on the in-house imprint of the city’s respected Mihn Club. The Tower Moment EP, named after the tarot card, may strike a less exuberant and more wistful tone, but it retains the earlier track’s sense of propulsion and deft touch with harmony. If this record comes across as highly musical it’s hardly a surprise – Xiaolin’s training is in classical and jazz.
‘Dark Night’ is aptly named, its 140bpm electro-techno pulse and minor-key synth trails evoking a high-speed night-time drive through a rainy city, the smeared light from neon signs glimmering through the windscreen. ‘Safe With Me’ deploys a rubbery new-Italo bassline familiar from ‘Jungle Moon’, but here tempered with minor harmonies and almost naïve keyboard motifs. The original of ‘Lemuria’ rolls along in the way that much of today’s breaksy techno tends to, making it the least interesting to me musically but nevertheless eminently playable – though I imagine most DJs will pitch it up. Or they’ll simply play the remix, in which British producer Blue Hour takes the pace back up to 140bpm and heaps on some Dave Angel techno swagger.
CT Kidobó – Malaise EP [Nocta Numerica]
The two pieces of efficient electro-techno on the A side start to sound a little conventional once you’ve heard the exhilarating stuff on the B. The snare and acid bassline on ‘Time Dilation’ have razor sharp edges, giving it a cool 8-bit vibe, while ‘Infophysix Dub’, a squelchy acid epic at 137bpm, simply slams. Play this to me in Bergs!
I wrote the promo blurb for this EP so I won’t add much here, other than to say A Psychic Yes is one of the most exciting producers around right now. This detailed, crafty music inhabits a space that’s both cerebral and instinctive, otherworldly and familiar, and it works a slow but sure charm.
Adrianne - Taking My Time To Dance [Kaptcha Fail]
The standout for me from the new Xenolith 2.0 compilation on Kaptcha Fail, ‘Taking My Time To Dance’ by Adrianne (from the Philippines) is about as far as I will dip my toe into the raging tidal wave of trance that, it would seem, shows no signs of abating. It’s a reduced kind of trance, though, along the lines of Effective Force or ‘Eternal Light’ by Microwave Prince, and the couple of times I’ve played it so far it’s created a gently euphoric vibe on the dancefloor.
Spandrel – Geolectrics EP [TerraFirm]
A new alias of Snad, Spandrel is a name to look out for not only on this poised EP for Tony Fairchild’s TerraFirm label, but also on an upcoming LP the artist is releasing himself. The Geolectrics EP kicks off with my favourite cut, ‘Floaterz’, a patient and effortless-sounding breaks-meets-techno afterparty banger that does exactly what it says on the tin: it floats. There’s a touch of 1999 era tech/deep/dubby house to these tracks – Steve O’Sullivan, Savvas Ysatis, Swayzak – with a more classic US accent on ‘Ornithological Studies’, which is something you’ll also hear on that upcoming LP.