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Here's a list of music I picked up today at Throb, an excellent dance disc shop in Manhattan specializing in electro and tech-house tracks:
Drexciya Grava 4 2LP. Electro, begat by Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaataa and New Order and still thriving in the digital age, is dance music at its most defiantly synthetic (as Kodwo Eshun puts it, "there are no snares--just waveforms being altered. There are no bass drums---just attack velocities"), and Drexciya is the Detroit variety at its most beautiful and pure. The following may be the world's wordiest sample: "Use the star chart to fix the celestial navigation point and from there you should be able to plot a path back to earth using rudimentary astronomical guideposts." (From the track "Astronomical Guidepost.") Amazingly, the Drexciyans make this sound incredibly funky.
DJ Assault Jefferson Ave CD. Not as hard-sounding or vital as the singles in Belle Isle Tech. A kind of studio concept album, with skits, like a potty-mouthed 3 Ft High and Rising. The sexual imagination on display is strictly Vivid Video, and the misogyny wears thin, but there are nice melodies sprinkled throughout.
Herbert Bodily Functions CD. More lovely vocals from Dani Siciliano. I'm indifferent to Herbert's clicks and coughs and clattering dishes as percussion, but they don't ruin his music for me either. I like 1998's Around the House better as a whole, but both that and this one are worth owning.
Ultrasound, Hospital Records compilation CD. Jazz hooks intertwined with drum-and-bass beats in this 1997 collection of UK artists: predominantly tracks by London Electricity and The Peter Nice Trio (how could anyone dislike something called "The Peter Nice Trio"?). I go back and forth on this stuff: when it sounds like fuzak (or has flutes) I hate it, but when it's a nervous, staccato, techy revisiting of Canterbury-style prog/rock/jazz ideas from the early '70s (Soft Machine, Hatfields, Caravan) (which is often), I'm completely on board.
Volumes C-D, G-H of Berlin 2001 Compilation Bpitch Control label (2LPs). Speaking of electro, here's some great Berlin variants. Favorite tracks so far: White Dolemite "Nice Acid (2001)," Toktok "Sekker," Barbara Morgenstern "Dr. Mr." (the latter with Michael Nyman-esque strings--most odd).
Marin-Go-Round. Derek Marin "Inhale/Wanna Get Wit" EP. Marin works at Throb and also djs. He's got the tech-house thang down cold. Not sure if Lap Dance Records (with graphic of dancer losing bikini bottom) is the right look/label/image for sounds this lofty. Platonik "Don't Look" EP. Marin again, on Intrinsic Design, a label whose previous releases include the "Galactic Schematix" EP by Entity (aka Lucas James Rodenbush aka EBE). This is total class. Here's what djonline.com, out of the UK, had to say about the disc: "This torrid tech houser comes from Derek Marin under the Platonik moniker. Here are three bonafide stompers that will fire up your dance floor in a hurry. "Don't Look", "Skeptic (Was It Good For You?)" and my personal favorite, "Friction" should be included in ANY dj's set. Deep, dark and tribal...doesn't come any better." Clock Punchers "In-Just" EP. Marin and dj/fellow Throbster Carter Reece remix tracks. I really like Reece's contribution. Very minimal; kind of simple and mysterious at the same time. it makes me think a bit of Trike's "Country 3000" but with a lot more pep.
[Addendum: Here's a review I found (cached) from the starbass website describing the Clockpunchers disc--I love this writing.]
carter reece and derek Marin (known for his work as platonik and modest d on the plastic city, intrinsic design, red menace, and a touch of class labels) drop their latest release supplying three cuts of potent tribal tech-house. the ep kicks off with a full-sided mix that works a driving progressive house edge as resonant percussion and bass-driven atmospherics intertwine to form a building, flexing groove echoed with hypnotic vocal snippets in a heavy 4/4 flow. the b-side kicks off on a morphing liquid tech-house tip rippling with dubby fx and tuned log-drum percussion, finishing with a slick minimal thumper building up a focused percussive format and layers of radiant loop manipulation.
My listening has been bipolar lately, alternating between fairly pristine German minimalist house and florid, funky, latter-day manifestations of kozmigroov.
In the former, stripped down vein, I recommend 3 recent mix compilations: Michael Mayer's IMMER (Kompakt), Steve Bug's The Flow (Cocoon Recordings) and Swayzak's Groovetechnology v1.3 (Studio !K7). All are DJ'd by musicians who also make their own tracks, and all have a strong point of view. "Self styled dub techno house blokes" David Brown and James S. Taylor (aka Swayzak) have assembled cuts with an audible bearing on their own music, with hints of electro, reggae and postpunk (e.g. Wire) sniggling in and around the mid-tempo beats. Some of my favorite tracks are Wolfgang Voigt (as Studio 1) doing robot Bob Marley on "Lila," the 60-second moogasm of CIM's "RNA," and the Mike-Ratledge-on-Angel-Dust keyboards of Pile's "World Record Holder." On the Bug CD, I like the rave-up ending of Hakan Libdo's "Kiki de Montparnasse" fading into the pulse of Antonelli Electr.'s "Nachtclub Pavement," the cheerfully out-of-phase wah-wah of SWAG's "The Soundworks," and have even grown to like Marshall Jefferson's spoken-word account of playing "tongue hockey" with an unknown female while on 'shrooms. On the Mayer comp, A Rocket in Dub's "Rocket No. 3" (that's Antonelli under another name) flanges along nicely, and John Selway's "Flying Far" is ecstatic and poignant without getting corny. The only track I DO NOT like is Phantom/Ghost's "Perfect Lovers (Unperfect Love Mix)": "Ve are 2 perfect lovers/besides zuh fect dat ve're not there..." UGGGH. One more techno CD (not a comp) that should be mentioned in passing: Bolz Bolz's Human Race is a complete hoot. The spirit of Krautrock thrives in these chugging analog loops and goofy samples ("take a walk/take a bath/take pains/to take an exam"), but this is nevertheless not what I would play if I was trying to turn someone on to recent electronic music. It's pretty close to metal.
On the Nu-Kozmigroov tip (my own coinage?) I recommend Cardiology, by Carl Craig protege Recloose (Planet E), AtJazz's Labfunk (Mantis Recordings), and every volume of Michael Reinboth's ongoing series The Future Sounds of Jazz (be sure it's on Compost, not the other label doing a series with the same name). This is music to make street-purist Simon Reynolds curl up in the fetal position, but f*ck it, I'm older than he is, I collected a lot of Kozmigroov the first time around, and I'm really excited it's back and being done so well. A fundamental, keystone work for these recordings, IMHO, is Herbie Hancock's Thrust, augmented by new loops-and-breaks technology, so if you're into that Rhodes/Clavinet/Bass-synthesizer vibe, and wonder, like I do, how jazz kept taking wrong turns after the '70s (first fuzak, then the formaldehyde classicism of Wynton Marsalis, et al), you'll be glad to know that there's a new crew breathing life, energy, and science into the form.
Geogaddi, the new Boards of Canada CD, is good, but I actually prefer their four-track release from 2000, in a beautiful place out in the country, with its herky jerky rhythms and subtle allusions to David Koresh. The standout track from the new CD is "1969," with its Stephen Sondheim-like vocoder duet, ending on the repeated phrase "1969 in the sunshine." Meaning "1969 basking in the cathode rays cast by a dreary after-school special from the Canadian Film Board, waiting for the Big One to drop." Picked up three late ('97-'98) CDs by Larry Heard, "house music's one true bona fide genius"--an assessment from Mixmag I'm inclined to agree with. Heard processes Sly Stone, Pat Metheny, and Happy the Man's Kit Watkins through house's 4/4 thump and arpeggiated loops, pulling the warmest imaginable sounds from those machines of his in Memphis. Heard rules! Finally getting around to early '90s Alec Empire, when he was still a My Bloody Valentine-meets-ambient groove machine. Limited Editions 1990-94 is highly recommended and still available. The first third of John Tejada's Backstock is a nice self-mix of his own tracks; gets a little dull and then perks up at the end. More consistently exciting is Roni Size's mix of recent Full Cycle tracks on Through the Eyes. Yes, I still like Drum and Bass. Some stuff bought blind off Forced Exposure: Electronic Cosmetics on Salo (a nice comp of recent, tuneful Berlin techno) and Monolight's Free Music, a bit more abstract but very listenable selection of three-synths-and-an-effects-deck chittering.