“A night where it doesn’t get dark for the lightning”

Am reading Thomas Mann’s “Doctor Faustus” (1947) at the moment, the story of a tortured musical genius Adrian Leverkühn who sells his soul to the devil for success at the price of love.

 

“A night where it doesn’t get dark for the lightning”

 

quips Adrian towards the books end. Such a price.

 

The book is a thinly veiled critique of the German psyche and the rise of the second world war. My translation is H. T. Lowe-Porter’s original one from a 1968 Penguin edition with yellowed pages, typewriter font and lines pressed so severely together. Not as enjoyable as I had hoped. Nonethless, the books greatest feat is to run three parallel times together. It begins with Adrian’s life lasting from the late 19^th century to the outbreak of war. It also covers almost journalistically the closing phases of the war when the book was written, as if it was being written s it was read, with Mann injecting himself into the pages via the character and narrator Serenus Zeitblom PhD. The third time is of course the present, which is where we find ourselves now.

 

Some small updates about some recent comings and goings. Many will have seen the recent updates of artists for three of Spains upcoming music festivals.

 

Sonar: Darkstar, Paul Kalkbrenner, Sherwood + Pinch, and Karenn (Blawan + Pariah) among other artists join the show in June.

 

L.E.V. Festival: Plenty of good names on the roster for L.E.V. this year in Gijon on the north coast of Spain (low cost flights do go there). Music is great and beer is cheap, food plentiful and who can beat the line-up of Oneohtrix Point Never, Raime, Andy Stott, Tim Hecker, Pole and more.

Micro Mutek: Micro Mutek is now only two weeks away and obviously everything is now in place so its time to make plans and get tickets. Jeff Mills, Monolake, Laurel Halo, Jon Hopkins, Kuedo, Deadbeat and more. There will also be the usual Q&A sessions with artists, workshops and discussions. Click on the link for full schedule.

 

Speaking of Mutek, here is a link to a recent interview I did for Mutek with Jon Hopkins  who will play a live set at this year’s festival to promote his new album that is coming out on Domino.

2012 round-up

 

This year was plagued from beginning to end with images of Armageddon, the apocalypse and the end of the world. It began essentially in the Micro Mutek festival back in February and appeared and reappeared at various intervals until last week’s poor and/or misunderstood prediction of the end of time by the ancient Mayan civilization. Check out three end-of.the-world science videos at The Guardian.

Part 1

 

Part 2


Part 3

Check out the free 11 track Pseudogeddon compilation  with the likes of Machinedrum and Chrissy Murderfoot over at XLR8R.

 

Kicking off this feeling musically was Lucrecia Dalt playing at Mutek to an edited Werner Herzog film of oil fields on fire in Iraq. Her intriguing album "Commotus" followed with its beautifully poised and intense cover image of dust storms in great depression era America. Although she claims it has no significance to the crisis, the influence of the crisis and its sinister Thatcher-esque methodology on Spanish culture in particular was heavy and profound (and still looms like the picture frozen in time). Personally, Lucrecia became and unwilling symbol of the apocalypse for this and more: when I did a still unfinished interview with her back in July (apologies Lucrecia) I had been told the same day that I would lose my job by the end of the year. We were bitten intensely by mosquitoes up in the park and then I had an attack of jealousy from my girlfriend as a result that was also another unnecessary blow. All resolved now, except for the interview, but for me then, it was hard to separate Lucrecia from the feeling of doom and certainly for this and more her music carried a strong personal resonance throughout the year.

 

It is somewhat ironic then that my career did finish only days before the Mayan apocalypse was predicted, coming to an ugly head on the 19^th. I will post more ideas on this in the coming weeks as there is a number of general issues related to science that are important for me to express and for a broader public to begin to understand. In looking for a music to represent this I am drawn again and again to Oppenheimer Analysis who are one of the few artists I have encountered to deal directly with the idea of science as a theme, and not just a symbol. Their track “Radiance” comes to mind particularly when thinking of Armageddon.

 

It shouldn’t need much context in terms of modern politics with plenty of tension between Israel and Palestine and their neighbours that will not go unnoticed in Iran especially, and the forever unstable Egypt, whereas the bizarre North Korean government continues to test missiles capable of attacking invisible enemies. In the same year we also had continuing fall-out (sic) from the nuclear disaster provoked by the Tsunami in Japan. I noticed that Fushitsusha’s Keiji Haino was complaining about the Japanese protestors with an anti-nuclear agenda who were still content to go home and plug in to their electrical world afterwards. The key here is lifestyle. We have reached, in my opinion, the point of turning back. The future does not exist without a change in lifestyle, or a cultural recognition of wrong and wholesale changes to the pace of living. Time to slow down.

 

Musically then it is possible to relate all this anger, repression, protest, hopelessness and absurdity to the dominance of noise in techno music this year. This is a phenomenon that had a first flutter back in 2010 with artists like Ancient Methods, Traversable Wormhole and the like, but seemed to grow quiet in 2011 before achieving an explosive fusion in 2012. The two defining incidents must be Dominic Fernow’s Vatican Shadow project releasing an acclaimed album “Ornamented Walls” on Modern Love, although to many the “September Cell” EP on Bed of Nails was perhaps even more of a highlight. The marriage in reverse saw Sandwell District’s Juan Mendez aka Silent Servant release his exceptional and concise “Negative Fascination” album on Fernow’s own Hospital Productions label.

 

That many of the artists pushing such a harder and more industrial sound should be UK artists is also curious and deserves attention in the year that also saw the final death of Throbbing Gristle. Highlights from the UK scene are clearly Shifted, who combined elegance with brute force, AnD from Manchester, Blawan for crudity and Pariah for balance (his remix of Lucy on the recent Curle single is as sublime as the original). One cannot also forget Ren Schofield’s second untitled album for Spectrum Spools as Container. 2012 also saw the return of the British Murder Boys (Surgeon and Regis) as well as the most vocal praise for the Birmingham Downwards imprint, completing the cycle that Sandwell District initiated many years ago. Speaking of Sandwell District, while many of their offspring went harder and harder, many also continued to adopt and develop, while others merely imitated their sound. While many of the influenced artists produced great albums, like Spanish producer Oscar Mulero, there were many more that faded into the background while not necessarily being bad. It is also worth mentioning that US art rockers The Swans seem to have exerted a particularly profound influence over both guitar and electronic music over the last 18 months. One reason is the growing fame of their live show which works off noise, power and transformation, similar ingredients to the success of good psychedelic techno, whereas their noisy and lengthy album “The Seer” carries a similar torch of inspiration to the noise-techno artists. A critical aspect of their image and performance is the idea that Michael Gira is also some sort of shaman, or indeed, has taken the Seer role of the album name. This is a concept that was lightly flirted with in techno as well, particularly on the Prologue label with Dino Sabatini being most obvious, whereas Voices from the Lake clearly aimed for and achieved a trance state of mind. African rhythms and magic also snuck their way into fringes of other releases from Cut Hands “Black mamba”, Demdike Stare, Shackleton, Emptyset, Innervisions (last year as well) and perhaps even Juju and Jordash’s “Techno primitivism”.

 

Industrial and noise music has always somehow been the political arm of electronic music, particularly to techno as house has always had a proximity to protest, just as it has its side far removed in the realms of triviality. It is tempting to interpret this rise in noise/industrial techno as a parallel to the ascendance of the protest movement (Time’s Person of the year 2011) and the dissatisfaction with the current political system and the political class. However, the dancefloor and a party are still not the best places to have intellectual discussions and even the idea of this incites scorn in many people whereas others still complain that clubs are for escapism and not confrontation. But the absence of an intelligent dance floor is a hell too frightening to consider: just listen to Teengirl Fantasy’s “Do it” with vocals by Romanthony released on R&S this year and you will be in that bad place.

 

The groups name should tell you all you need to know, but the cringey and vacuous autotuned lyrics could be Black Eyed Peas or Rebecca Black they are as bad as the plodding and comfortable music. Besides, if I am unemployed and lucky enough to afford entry into a club, I do not want to escape my life by listening to something as trivial as that. I would rather some positive reinforcement in hearing noise and industrial techno, turning the machines against themselves and against society for its own good.

 

A less social association of this trend may also be in the improvements to sound design across the board and the possibilities that noise, force and silence have to play in the listening experience. Bedroom studio production has now reached an important and perhaps critical level of quality. While there is still a plethora of by-the-numbers producers, who still seem to top all the charts, there has clearly been an exponential growth in quality and diversity of production stimulated at first by dubstep and now in the post-dubstep era where genres blur more than ever, it informs all fields and genres of production. While not considered industrial or noise, the work of Rene Pawlowitz is certainly only one step away. The bigger numbers off “The Killer” like “Ride on” and “I come by night” are a case in point, gruff, granular and forceful.

 

Many other artists have also created their own sound world where high fidelity and texture is just as important as volume or functionality. The success of Ricardo Villalobos’s “Dependent and Happy” across the board, from Resident Advisor to The Wire is the most obvious example (remember last year they also had Margaret Dygas’s under-appreciated album as well, also from Perlon). Still close to the dancefloor, Andy Stott and Claro Intelecto made plenty of space by slowing things down a lot whereas It is also interesting to note that many albums making the top of the best of lists are fairly experimental as well as packing good sound design, suggesting that (a) the critics are ahead of the game or that (b) the audience has finally caught up (more on this point below). Actress is well known now, but he still stands apart from so many for his vivid imagination. Raime as well as Emptyset can feel like very dry music at times, and yet their appeal seems fairly universal. Plenty of other artists made an impact without hitting the lists: Ricardo Donoso’s second electronic album rightly caused a bit of fever on its release, whereas Bee Mask must be poised for greater things too. Australian Oren Ambarchi seemed everywhere in 2012 and many of his releases have become essential and on occasion left me reeling with surprise at their invention and execution, the long track “Knots” on “Audience for one” on Touch being a particular delight. Another man who seemed everywhere and anywhere in 2012 was Mark Fell, who just played an amazing night here in Barcelona with Lee Gamble who, alongside his colleagues in the PAN label, seemed to somehow reinvent electronica late on in the year. Fell in particular pushed the boundaries of experimentation and the dancefloor like no other and will hopefully have a show of his own soon on Cabeza de Vaca.

 

We also have heard over the last year or two about how Mike Dehnert and others have forced people to consider upgrading their Hi Fi set up in car or home to get the most out of their music. Ben Klock also stated recently that DJing can be hit and miss for some artists depending on the capacity of the sound system and requires an open mind to tailor the set accordingly and to tease out the best frequencies. Many artists also still make music and tailor their sound for the legendary Berghain sound system, amongst them the aforementioned duo AnD. Given this, and after seeing the aforementioned Fell/Gamble show and still feeling the positive effects of the LEV Festival this year it seems more and more clear that club culture is at a juncture. While volume is essential and while it is also true that many artists do not strictly need high fidelity, there is a nagging sense that sound systems in clubs are becoming incredibly inadequate. One reason is their apparent and alleged lack of sensitivity and directionality for reproducing such beautifully constructed and intricate music in a special manner. The other is space and architecture. Electronic music still feels obliged to exist in the club setting, but somehow a club feels like a ball and chain as well. Where are the venues for ambient music? Why does the club have to always be a party at night time and not earlier or during the day (at least for older people like me?) Why are there no high fidelity listening places for concerts and even “reproduction parties” for new releases, for example? Listening to music live is about sensation and experience, not only hedonism. Why is it not possible to invent a Hi Fi Lounge where people would pay to go and hear a new album, for example, in all its stereo glory at volume as well as a live show?

 

This brings us to the next concept which is the live performance in electronic music. Two issues came to the fore in 2012, one an old one and a never ending one it seems, which is the issue of playing live versus pressing play. Back in June Deadmau5 made the allegation in Rolling Stone  that many artists are pressing play and there is less live performance in electronic music than appears. This may be true for some and more so for those who involve the use of complicated visual elements in their shows, like Amon Tobin, Squarepusher etc who require complicated synchronization to make the show work. Indeed, this brings us to the second point which is the tendency for over reliance on a visual element to make an impact as a live electronic show. Sure, there is nothing worse than watching a person hunched over a laptop during a performance, but there is something not right about seeing an artist swamped by an overblown and over conceptualized set up. My thoughts go to Tom Jenkinson aka Squarepusher who had his huge banks of LEDs and his custom designed helmet at Sonar to accompany his neo-rave IDM, but a paltry audience, who were all sadly at Fatboy Slim, a mere DJ with no special live show, or indeed music, at all. Intriguingly, the best live show of all at Sonar this year was Mouse on Mars who clearly do not press play, jamming on stage as a three piece and even changing instruments. They use only a minimal, but effective visual display. The LEV Festival clearly aims to fuse the visual and audio elements of electronic music with as much an artistic approach as they can allow and can afford. Yet there appears to be a tendency, perhaps growing, for the visual to trivialize the music or at least supersede it in importance. 2013 could be a critical year for this phenomenon in which it may arrive at one step too far or become inseparable forever. The subtext of this is a growing divide between the classic club and the festival, where the former can work just as effectively with a red light in a room whereas the later seems to depend on visual spectacle.

 

A parallel element this year has been the return of the real vocalist. The impact of Burial over the last few years has been profound, but his trope of the pitch shifted and cut-up vocal had reached epidemic proportions in recent times and now feels hideously overdone (Holy Other’s album had one foot in this trap while also somehow managing to break free of it). Thankfully then, 2012 saw the predominance of real singing. Highlights were Cooly G’s sensual album “Playing Me” and her astute and captivating performance at Sonar. Laurel Halo’s “Quarantine” album seemed to finish in all the lists. While it didn’t quite do it for me as much as the rest of the world, its sung vocals were nonetheless an important touchstone of the year. Jessie Ware was a personal favourite for her voice but also for the sheer surprise I had in myself for finding so much in music that on surface I should not be so close to. The myriad of excellent remixes also helped to cement “Devotion” as stand out for the year. There was also Brackles, Julia Holter, Nina Kraviz album with guests, San Proper going it alone with mixed results on “Animal”, Lucrecia Dalt (of course; I say her here as well since I think she would be a great collaborator for a dance project too) and more.

 

Looking through the best of lists in the different media sites it seems clear that there is almost a consensus as to what was the best in 2012. Furthermore, if you scroll through the comments lists you also get the sense that the public agrees, with a certain exception (see below). First thought would be to say that these were indeed the best albums of 2012, but perhaps the consensus also comes down to the fact that they were in many ways the only good albums of 2012. This is harsh and a bit of an over statement, but it did feel that this year took a long, long time to get going and then it all seemed to get exciting in a flurry at the end of the year. The albums making the list are also hardly ground breaking in many ways, although good, and there were also plenty of decent, but not amazing albums by big artists. I am thinking of Redshape, Christopher Rau (I would also add Smallpeople although they did end up on the proper lists), Tinman, Emeralds, Forward Strategy Group (great in moments, but a little stilted at times), Holy Other, Juju and Jordash (intriguing and worth going back to, but somehow unfulfilling or a bit clumsy at times), Sigha and Scuba amongst others. One noticeable trend was the absent of many real (or should I say classical) dubstep albums in the final lists with the exception of perhaps Jam City. Peter van Hoesen’s “Perceiver” is a good example of a totally cohesive and well-made album that really doesn’t add much more to the IDM-styled techno that has been prevalent for the last two years or so. The Prologue label stuff seemed a breakthrough this year as it combined home listening depth as well as dancefloor functionality without sounding like this IDM-techno or post-Sandwell District techno. Similarly, PAN really caught the imagination by reconciling complex experimentation with the compelling urge to listen. Their emphasis as well on collector records and design was also fundamental. As an aside, there was a modest trend for picture discs to emerge as well, with the CLR label doing it for the Motor releases and also the Deepchord “Summer night versions EP”.

 

L.I.E.S. was by far the best label for quantity and quality. Their importance as well comes from breaking Rush Hour’s stranglehold over the retro house sound, now moved from Chicago to New Jersey. Using the same palette they somehow broke through to the other side and in the process expanded their A&R remit to dislodge the label from any simple classification. Just look at Torn Hawk’s filthy space rock sound or Professor Genius’s hashish inspired ambient album “Hassan” to see how far the label has gone. It is also worth mentioning how much of this stuff sounds like "hipster house" and gets closer again to the dirtier, lo fi sounds of the Not Not Fun underground. The caveat of this is that judging by the comments pages, many listeners were strangely unaware of many of these labels even until the end. This is perhaps no surprise looking at what charts and what DJs made the top of the list suggesting that there is a great divide between critical acclaim and the real audience.

 

In short, 2012 was not the vintage year that 2011 was and saw more a stabilization of current trends than important advances. Predictions for 2013: I predicted the return of drum n bass this year and was almost right. Certainly it returned to the consciousness, but still lacked a really big cross over album or single. Lee Gamble’s “Diversions 1994-1996” was probably the closest. But the trend will continue and drum n bass to keep making a bigger impact in 2013. I also predict a big increase in the number of Asian producers influencing the scene next year. Resident Advisor has been in Japan since 2011, but it might be time to see some rewards from that connection. Techno will continue to get louder, faster and harder on one side, but on the other will develop into a more elaborate, long-form electro style as the continued influence of the Drexciya reissues becomes consciously apparent while the urge to copy the Sandwell District style diminishes (see Delta Funktionen and the recent Killekill label compilation for the first steps). House music will pursue the New Jersey garage line, but take up Mark Fell’s cut up vocal line style and angular melody structure from the Sensate Focus series to another level, like Huxley and Bicep gone hypercolour (sic) and hyper geometric.

 

Peace and tranquillity.

 

Cabeza de Vaca P009 – Deadbeat and Danuel Tate interview

A new Cabeza de Vaca show already at Scanner FM!!! This week a short interview backstage of BeCool with Scott Monteith aka Deadbeat and Danuel Tate aka Danuel Tate. The focus on the interview is on playing live and a little at the end on being Canadian since the rest of the show is some newish Canadian music and also the show was to celebrate the new Micro Mutek line-up which is partially announced. More details can be found at the Official Mutek Site.

Click here for a partial transcript of the interview.

 

Some points of discussion arose from several things that appeared on Resident Advisor recently. Scott mentions the Blawan interview and was aghast in particular at the following answer from Blawan:

 

“Q: You made the move from using a laptop at first on this project, then on to a completely analogue set-up, right? Why? What is the appeal?

A: We were so frustrated by the writing process on a computer, I think I was coming to the limits of what I could do with a computer because I felt like, not in a big-headed way, but that I knew the software that I was using, Ableton, well enough that I could do anything. I didn't really like that.”

 

I also mention a few comments from the recent Critics Round Table podcast  with guest Kirk Degiorgio who mentions something that Scott interprets to be Alexkid’s Insta-Haus a Max for Ableton device while one of the other journalists enthuses over the recent set of Bass Clef at The Wire Magazine’s recent Rewired night at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

There are several contradictions here, rightly pointed out by Scottt and Danuel all to do with the technology fetish. Bass Clef plays without a computer and it is credited as amazing when many groups made electronic music for many years with no computers. Similarly, Blawan’s comments come across as somewhat extreme too, ditching the computer for lack of creative potential when it is likely that it is his use of the computer that has become static. However, the other side of this is that the analogue machines these people use are essentially “stupid computers” as Scott says. So what is the difference? Alexkid shows here how his Insta-Haus set up for Ableton works and indeed it seems quite a simple set-up but one could easily find limiting creativity at a certain point.

 

However, it may be that Kirk Degiorgio was also talking about something like this Vintage House Construction Kit which has helped all the Rush Hour et al. artists to sound the way they do. I am most definitely not familiar enough with the technology to know its limitations and how it really works, but having thought more about it in the interview, it does seem true that the man vs machine debate is far from over, but it nonetheless has been a hot topic in 2012 especially after Deadmau5’s comments earlier in the year  in Rolling Stone  about pressing play.

Scott and Danuel also talk about the Pure Data (PD) visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette for making music.

 

Peter Brinkmann has also been credited with bringing PD to Android devices that I also do not fully understand, but it is perhaps these kind of things that Scott was saying that Mathias Aguayo was using?

 

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Recent Gigs: Micro Mutek 2012 - Party like its the end of the world

My official round up of the action at this year’s Micro Mutek festival can be found here at Resident Advisor, but to complement it a little, some extra ideas and some audio-visual cues.

First up is the last: the end of the world. Something in the air lately has given me this overwhelming Armageddon feeling. A lot has to do with global politics, economics and unemployment, but there is something else. I am sure there is some fall out from seeing Lars von Trier's confusing film ”Melancholia” last year and its extraordinary climax (warning: spoiler in video).

And I know 2012 is supposed to bring the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar and Roland Emmerich’s film, but I don’t believe that (though it might be nice to think it will be the end for some people in particular).

Coincidentally, days before the festival I saw for the first time one of Emmerich’s other films, the environmental disaster blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow” which also left an impression. Perhaps this was more to do with having spent the previous two days in the south of France where the Mistral of Marseille and the Provence region drove deep the chill of temperatures that were maxing out at midday around -1ºC. Flurries of hail engulfed the car at certain points of the Pyrenees mountains on the way there and by Sunday afternoon the south west corner was engulfed in snowfall. Arriving back at home in time for the movie, I found the flat which had been left unheated for two days was impossible to warm again. In this atmosphere I watched Emmerich’s film and went to and from the Mutek festival and it wasn’t until after Theo Parrish closed proceedings that I found it possible to get warm again.

Apart from the weather, it was funny how this theme seemed to pass through the festival . The first night we had two eco-disaster movies with more than a hint of the end of the world about them. The first was Werner Herzog’s “Lessons in darkness”, a 1992 poetic documentary about the Iraqi’s setting fire to the oil wells to prevent the Americans getting them in the First Gulf War.

The film mythologises the workers attempts to extinguish the flames and their lust for fire. Lucrecia Dalt’s live soundtrack performance was one of the best of the festival, being unexpected, sympathetic to the movie, dramatic and technically proficient. Apparently an album is coming out soon and maybe an interview if I am lucky. The post punk sprawl of her music was in marked contrast to the films classical and operatic drama.

Vladislav Delay also played against the backdrop of Michael Madsen’s “Into Eternity” about the vain attempt to build a labyrinth of tunnels and sinkholes to store and hide radioactive waste for 100 000 years, away from nature, people and those who might exploit it.

One of the themes of the film was again work, at least in the sense of showing the miners digging the tunnels, just like Herzog’s film gets in close to the oil tanned faces of the fire-fighters. Ripatti gave the interviewees of the film, usually the “decision makers”, a hard time with abrasive patterns and machine noise, but allowed the workers to do their thing in more peaceful tones. The class stratification is noticeable visually too, with the actions of work often slowed to a dream, just as the forest, the tunnels and the diagrams are rendered in slow motion. It is only people who react and communicate in real (immediate) time as if rushing to eternity.

The last day saw two other groups of artists extend the theme. Argentinian ambient/IDM producer Why with VJ AV-K mixed lights and geometric patterns with newsreel images of war, skulls, conflict and faces, whereas the last group Ragul and Blowshe presented a work called “Frio” (cold) which was a kind of live edited fairy tale set to an icy backdrop. Later that evening it snowed, a rarity for Barcelona. It’s a shame there is no media for some of these shows, especially Ragul and Blowshe as their show really was charming. The combination of youth and curiosity was simply over whelming and it was great to see them get a chance to do such a big show.

Regardless, here is a little footage of Ragul playing in the Miscelanea gallery last year:

Some more on some of the other acts: on Thursday night I caught Argentinian DJ Dilo at Moog. He only played for an hour, but he crammed a lot into a short set, singing over the top of some tracks and generally playing at break neck speed with a decadent air. This track is a little minimal (he has also worked with M-nus’s Argentinian producer Barem) and there is some other live footage of him playing a slower, housier set, but nothing quite like the Mutek show.

I hate giving negative reviews, but Venezuelan DJ Moreon got a little stick from me in the above RA review. I think to be fair it just wasn’t his night in the end, maybe two and a half hours was just too long for him with the wrong crowd as he was playing some nice tech-house at the beginning. His summer image was also maybe somehow against the grain of the unexpected theme.

I was looking forward to Shackelton a lot on Friday night, but in the end he didn’t quite do it for me. Last year at Sonar it had been a buzzing and tribal performance, but at Mutek he had troubles with the sound system which didn’t help create intimacy or immersion, whereas he also seems to have verged a little bit towards noise over spaciousness and atomic details. Perhaps it is a consequence of his collaboration with Pinch from last year or an artefact of the sound system? In any case, maybe Shackleton is at a certain cross roads now as he sound is so distinct (just look how he dominated the collaboration last year) and has been for so long it is harder to evolve?

Falty DL had given a live interview earlier in the day on Friday where he had demonstrated a lot of eccentricity and charisma, but buried within all this was a really clear headed ambition. A snippet of interview:

But he almost blew his gig a little, train wrecking the start of his set amid the bad sound of the system, but he pulled it together nicely. In a kind of contrast with Moreon above, he had a really clear set design he wanted to follow that worked well, giving a lot of variation, different beat styles as well as a chance to show off some skills during the slightly hasty IDM finish. Indeed, one of the things that surprised me about the whole festival was how IDM a lot of it was. Part of the surprise was that I should be surprised, but sometimes it does seem that IDM is a past music, rather than a present one, though there are many labels and release who would disagree, like Planet Mu and particularly Stroboscopic Artefacts from last year. Ragul for instance was wearing an Aphex Twin shirt while Falty DL also name dropped him during the interview.

In the live interview with Deadbeat I asked him about the Reggae sample he used in several recent tracks (see also this previous post). Even though I said it was not necessarily fitting in his track to put the whole quote as it would have undermined the vampire impression of the “speaker”, he nonetheless seemed a little annoyed when I suggested there should be more politics in dance music. Sure, as he refuted, the crowd is drug addled revellers and not thinking people, at least in the club, but this is also not the point. Is there not a dangerous decadence at play here with longer-than-ever parties in the rich enclaves of Berlin and Germany while the rest of Europe sinks into financial oblivion, slowly unable to afford a night out at the disco or a new album? I am reminded of David Bowie’s track “Aladdin Sane” based on the 1930 Evelyn Waugh novel “Vile Bodies” about the “passionate bright young things” who live a decadent life despite a realization of the oncoming threat of war. It is important to point out the obvious which is that night club shows are not called “concerts”, but “parties” just as say, the Communist Party or the Tea Party. Not many have seemed interested in these issues since Achim Szepanski’s (as opposed to the recreated) Mille Plateau label folded:

“The point is that music or sound design not only takes place on the level of symbolisation and signification, but that significant material, i.e. non-coded forms of expression and elements, as well play a role in the production of sound. Then, ´Machinisation´ means that, in the production process, in the combination of music and composition, things have to be considered, circumstances which concern the artist but also exceed him, e.g. all the social-political implications in which music and electricity are made available.”

To download full article by Andreas Busche click here.

Brandt Brauer Frick tread a fine line between artistry and thievery. Dressed in Kraftwerk-esque salaryman clothes and jamming out fast minimal house based on Steve Reich patterns you could be excused for dismissing them as derivative. But results in the end speak louder than images and the group can pull it off with energy, enthusiasm and craft, with special praise for the drummer for commitment and endurance.

Theo Parrish’s musical philosophy can best be described by a line from the following track:

“Black music: when yesterday becomes tomorrow”

Parrish’s set, and by extension his music and elegant edits, continues a tradition of Afrofuturism in 20^th Century music, from Sun Ra and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in jazz to Drexciya and Underground Resistance in electronica, and more. Perhaps the principle difference is Parrish’s lesser reliance on technology to represent the future. Instead, his music conjures up the image of the future and hope as seen from the past and that has sustained in the music throughout generations. There is a real sense that Parrish is telling a story, bringing the past into the present and using the moment to launch into an unknown future. What was particularly impressive about his performance was the amount of design and thought behind it and yet the natural, spontaneous unravelling of the pieces. Parrish used volume control, long overlays and a winding road through black musical styles to reach the end. But more than anything else, he maintained the music with a continuous flow of vocals and breath-based instruments as if the literal voice was speaking through the music.

Finally, as mentioned,  there were also a couple of live interviews with the Luomo/Vladislav Delay, Deadbeat, Falty DL, Guillamino and San Proper at the local Bar 33/45 run by the guys at Struments Radios that can be seen in video format by clicking here.

Thanks again to Nerone, Carles, Bianca de Vilar for photos (take more next year please!), Laura, the Struments guys for the carajillo at 33/45.

Party like its the end of the world!!!