Stockholm

Jesper Dahlbäck's only album in his Svek nord-house disguise as The Persuader, a tribute to the city of Stockholm.

Must be beautiful, from what I hear.

The Persuader - 1999 Stockholm
Info here.

Observation #1: CD selling for 40 to 50 euros? WTF???
Observation #2: Clavia's NordLead definitely ruled the scene back then.

Aufgang live

So, it's not a post about a lost Voigt project.

I've come to like InFiné more and more recently, a french label I had noticed but overlooked, until I came upon Donso's magical 'Somono Foly' EP. After a little research I found out it's Agoria's label, a guy that I totally respect and adore his music since the first time I heard it - so here I am now trying to hunt down those (elusive in Greece) 12''s whenever I can.

Releases are mostly produced/mixed by Agoria, while music comes from icons like The Hacker and Apparat, new rising stars like Danton Eeprom, Rone, Cubenx, Douglas Greed, Clara Moto and Fraction, plus the pianist Fransesco Tristano.

Every 12" is virtually different from the next one, most of them drawing from the generic techno background, yet common ground ends here. You might hear influences from IDM, italo disco, deep house, electro, neo-classical and trance - mostly combined in weird forms, in varying proportions so that each track is more or less unique. (Even more) exceptional releases are the aforementioned Donso one, combining Malinese vocals, deep beats and quirky percussions and the piano-based landscapes of the Fransesco Tristano ones, together with Rami Khalifé and Aymeric Westrich as Aufgang.

So, a live recording of a recent Aufgang concert is found at the Grandcrew site, here.
Also check earlier posted Carl Craig vs Fransesco Tristano concert here, and a collection of Infine videos here.

It's so good to feel that a label owner really cares for delivering something special and different than the rest of the current music production, breaking down commercially oriented style rules and trying weird combinations. By the way, Agoria's last album (the OST for Luc Besson's film 'Go Fast') is just incredible.

Long live InFiné, you have my total respect.

More Or Less Plastic

A new producer, apparently of Venezuelan origin, contacted me today and asked me to spread his recent EP, so give it a try. It's a cluster of (very) short IDM compositions, containing sweet and dreamy tracks along with punkish cut-up electroid bursts. No further info on him, except that he spreads his stuff for free all around through blogs. I liked the slow ones better, yet that's just me.

Wah? - 2009 More Or Less Plastic EP

I guess any comments with thoughts or suggestions on these tracks will be appreciated by him. This is a perfect chance for direct feedback with the producer.

Intergalactic FM

I decided to embed the Intergalactic FM player in the blog, four net radio stations of dirty, brown and miserable music for stoned aliens and robots. Hope you enjoy.

Berlin Outsiders Inside

Berlin Outsiders Inside from Liam Turner on Vimeo.

P.S. A Londoner visitor's view of Berlin; while the creators spend much of their time drawing comparisons between the local and their hometown's scene (typical), they visit a few places trying to grasp that special Berlin mood - ex-squat Tacheles, punk/HC store Core Tex and Tresor Club. The filming succeeds at least to portrait a part of the city's downtown, the architecture and the graffiti and all. The sound is a bit crap, though; and the Thomas Morr interview is indeed short.

P.S.2 Oops, the video is off. If I find it somewhere around it'll be posted again.

Puzzle

I had this one for a long time, left unheard in the back of some CD boxes. Classified it as a typical french 'chill-out' CD, I'd skipped through it a couple of times and forgotten about it (except the 'Camping Jazz' track). They are I:Cube, which I already knew and liked due to his harder approach and Gilb'R, owner of Versatile.

Later I bought I:Cube's 'Acid Tablet' and their 'Baroque' one, and both EPs happily surprised me musically, while the Versatile connection with Berlin's Innervisions slowly became apparent (see also here). But I was really left speechless by their 'Body Language Vol.5' compilation, the eclectic crown point of a remarkable series (that I thought had already reached its height with Dixon's 'BD Vol.4'). A collection of mostly unknown tracks combining acid, techno beats, disco and electro plus a manic Henrik Schwarz track, it urged me to dig this one out again and give it another chance, trying to understand how could I have passed by such a serious project.

The truth is that this album is a totally different affair. By 2005-2006 the label had already built their name and been going well - with the rise of the 'nu-rave' electro-rock hype and all, as well as the success of Joakim's more idiosyncratic attempts in disco- and prog-influenced electro. For good reasons, I'd say, as Versatile sounds to my ears the most quality consistent and cerebral oriented label of all the similar french ones. Back then though the french chill thing was still big, and more or less this album follow the norms of that style, in somewhat typical chill house and downtempo structures. There are many rare elements in there though, nice deepness all around, lush synths and jazz- funk inspired beats and weird ethno references, take your pick. I've spent many hours listening to it in repeat and I can assure you, even though it might not grab you at first, it slowly grows on you.

Château Flight - 2000 Puzzle
Info here.

UR band live @DEAF 2005

person 2 person

city 2 city

state 2 state

nation 2 nation

planet 2 planet

galaxy 2 galaxy


part 1 - part 2
part 3 - part 4
part 5 - part 6
part 7 - part 8

This is a video from the live performance of the UR's Galaxy 2 Galaxy band for the Dublin Electronic Arts Festival, possibly 2005, about 75' long. The camera jerks a bit, still quality's good, considering it's practically a bootleg recording.

If you don't have it already, don't even think to pass it by.

P.S. Turns out it was not a D.E.M.F., but instead a D.E.A.F. concert (never been to either, real pity). My bad, yet it was misnamed from the start. Thanx to Fan we now know, so rename the file at will. The concert is also stored in the D.E.A.F. archive (www.thearchiver.net) as audio and video in various direct download forms here.

Autobahn animation

An 13' animation from 1979, inspired by the famous Kraftwerk track.

Where I picked it up (?...) , it mentioned that it was a back-projection for the group's live shows, which I considered to be a misunderstanding - the track hails from 1974 and by 1979 they had already fallen apart. It turned out it's actually a very early work of Roger Mainwood (better known for more commercial children animations, also check here) intended for printing on those huge video laser-disks, as mentioned here. Remember those, anyone? Anyway, it's a real '70s treat, all hand-drawn psychedelic art and stuff. Not much to do with the group's futuristic aesthetics actually, but in the end it works as a whole.

Kraftwerk - 1979 Autobahn animation
by Roger Mainwood

Check their cute Flash site here.

Most of us non-German-speaking people have probably missed the original versions of their songs, especially from the later era, which is a shame as they sound even more authentic than the international ones. Voices are more expressive and fluid, even sounding sarcastic at times (in the 'Model', for example) - far from the clinical, robotic profile they projected especially in the US. A (rather pumped up) german guy I met after the one Kraftwerk concert I've attended seemed seriously bumped due to their english singing, a reaction I then interpreted as exaggerations due to habit, or even downright chauvinism. It seemed appropriate to comment now on this, since it's my first post on them, I'm not german and since then I've realized how right the guy was.

A lot of documentaries on this seminal group can be streamed from YouTube, give it a try.

Lifechange

The last Whirlpool Productions album, along with the CD EP out of it (with a Tiefschwarz remix).

For me the more mature and complete deposition of theirs, a post-everything album full of grooving house music, disco references and style wars. Voices dominate while typically surpassing the 'weird' level, making the outcome totally surreal and immediately accessible at the same time. Definitely dancefloor music, yet for extremely friendly drunks or for funky disco aliens I wouldn't know.
I don't know if they could do better than that; no wonder they split up later.

Remotely similar to the International Pony records (see *,*) and other Ladomat 2000 stuff (*,*), with more hopefully to be posted soon. Usually I classify them under the Hamburg label.

...hold your head up high...
...music is all we need to get by...



Whirlpool Productions - 2000 Lifechange
Info here.



Whirlpool Productions - 2001 Lifechange CD EP
Info here.

Ghost In The Shell (Playstation Soundtrack)

Soundtrack from the PS game (never played it) based on the legendary anime (see here).

CD 1 is a collection of hard bangers with extra minimalistic tendencies (I guess they thought simple track structures help the gameplay), while CD 2 goes into weirder territories - not always with the best results, I might add, yet its good times are the most interesting.

All players are top notch artists, most of them at the peak of their time, see the info page. Still, I wouldn't call it really special as a compilation, just a sample of the tendencies of the time. Includes some rare mixes and good tracks.

VA - 1997 Ghost In The Shell (Playstation OST)
CD 1 - CD 2
Info here.

Btw, on my CD cover the last tracks of each CD are remixes of the Derrick May track 'To Be Or Not To Be'.