41-48
μ-Ziq Vs The Auteurs - S/T (Astralwerks) 1994
There are a handful of people who broke away from early rave culture electronics to make more easily accessible music for the curious but rock-centric masses (Chemical Bros., Prodigy, Moby). Then there are a handful who stayed closer to the dancefloor but f@#^ed things up with harder beats, unstable ADD tempos and the noise of machines straining. Mike Paradinas (μ-Ziq) is one of the latter. On this outing he takes the music of fellow UK curmudgeons The Auteurs and keeps things fairly chill... think of recent remixes by Four Tet or Caribou and you'd be on the right track. Pardinas also runs the Planet Mu label to continue spreading the drum and bass culture of bedroom geekdom. I actually bought this from Haley's Pawn Shop near the stone bridge on Main St. Believe it or not.
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0/R - Varied (12k) 2001
*0 is Nosei Sakata, a Japanese artist whose alias indicates the process of rendering nothingness, i.e. anything multiplied to zero equals zero. R is Richard Chartier, another stylist in the realm of near-silence. This collaboration is fairly "audible" for them, working in the soundscape of digital edit clicks and clouds... by the last of the seven tracks a fair amount of density has accrued. This whole field of microscopic digital sound is definitely an acquired taste and built in "bullshit" reflexes need to be turned waaaaay down so as not to dart away. It requires extreme patience and closeness of attention, but down in there is a language of music that is often buried when hooks and melody are driving things.
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12twelve - Speritismo (Boa) 2003
Another aspect of Exclaim! reviewing, especially over the long term, is that once you review a few things with particular characteristics you can easily become the "go to guy" for that subgenre. I apparently have unwittingly become the "go to guy" for instrumental post-rock. The problem with this mantle is that 75-80% of all instrumental post-rock is derivative and/or inane, and you can only really talk about how long the tracks are or whether they use more effects than group X. These so-so groups are usually burdened by an excess of technical prowess with an inverse relationship to musical ideas. Occasionally a group like 12twelve make being the "go to guy" ok, though. They are a Spanish four piece that know their way around the weird time signatures and stop/start attacks, but also fill things out with a swing on the beats and some horn fills to elevate it above an algebra project.
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13 & God - S/T (Anticon) 2005
As much as you try to keep up on everything (everything hip, anway), occasionally whole streams pass you by without so much of a dip of the toes. The whole Anticon thing is one of those streams for me, having pigeonholed it as hip-hop and turned both my cheeks. This album pairs up label veterans Themselves (Jel and Doseone) with members of German acoustic/electronic group The Notwist, of whom I've been a fan for awhile and so grabbed it. Not only does the collaboration work, but I found myself gravitating to the tracks that featured Doseone (Adam Drucker) most prominently. Since then I've reacquainted myself with other projects like cLOUDEAD and Why? to hopefully get my toes belatedly wet.
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1-Speed Bike - Droopy Butt Begone! (Constellation) 2000
If the Godspeed You! Black Emperor come across as a little humourless, then drummer/percussionist Aidan Girt could be their darkly sarcastic court jester. His solo project mixes looped and live rhythm pieces that smudge the line between electronic and acoustic music. His manifestos for a post-consumerist quasi-socialist society peek through in the song titles and brief spoken word passages that expound the merits of big business collapse, good french fries and gin. You gotta get behind it.
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23 Skidoo - Culling is Coming (Boutique) 2003
This British group was part of a scene that flourished where particularly mutated strains of dub, funk and industrial music collided back in the late 70s and early 80s. They were often mentioned alongside fellow travelers such as This Heat and A Certain Ratio. They combined elements of noise with rubbery bass-lines and drumming derived from their interest in Burundi, Kodo and Gamelan percussion. This album was originally released in 1983 with each side representing performances at World Music festivals... which was all fine and well, except that at some point they veer away from their gamelan and tape loops and start whacking on amplified metal no doubt disturbing the people who'd come to groove to Peter Gabriel at WOMAD.
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833-45 - Collected No Type e.p.s (No Type) 2001
This one's a bit of a cheat since it was not really officially released. No Type was one of the most prolific and best run electronics netlabels (Canadian to boot) of the early "noughties," releasing nearly 100 mp3 mini-albums to date, all free to download off their site. Some early site regulars, such as Tomas Jirku, went on to release several well respected CDs on international labels. Another favourite of mine was Kevin M. Krebs, or 833-45, who works with manipulated radio noise/signals and environmental sounds to create a thick soup of ambient sound. This disc compiles the four releases on the website from 1999-2001.
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87 Central - Saxmower (Jdk) 2001
This one is a little shadowy. One of a couple things I received from the label back in 2001... 87 Central is Jeff Carey, and he works in a style that blends elements of the first release mentioned in this post (0/R), and the one just preceding (833-45). It takes environmental noise and squashes things down into resonant slabs of tone that hover in the heard/felt zone of sound. Equal parts relaxing and unsettling.
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