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!!!

Plastic dub and the new musical revolution

A quick round-up of some of the recent electronic releases and news.

The vinyl vs MP3 revolution

First up, props to the people at Lost in Musik  for an interesting and clear minded analysis of the economics of producing and releasing electronic music. There are many important revelations in the article, not all of them surprising. The obvious one is that nobody is making money in these days of piracy and downloads. The other being that releases are essentially meaningless agglomerations of songs as most people are buying music by the individual track. This is kind of funny and sad as it represents a conceptual chasm between more traditional music fans and the younger generation and is essentially an indictment on the immediate and over supplied market of modern music. That is to say, that what was once the next level of the musical creative process, binding a collection of tracks together by theme, flow, artwork, mood etc into an album or ep now seems an antiquated and pointless gesture as it will now be less and less appreciated as a whole and reduced to the “essential” elements.

Part 2 of the essay is due to go up on their site as this is posted, but there are still a few questions remaining.

Firstly, there is a slow gathering of momentum in dance music to give the right to download MP3 versions of the tracks when you purchase a vinyl album or single. Some labels doing this at the moment are Kompakt (at least with albums), Kontra Musik and Delsin (see below), to name a few. How is this effecting vinyl sales? When will we see more of this as it is frustrating having a nice record sitting at home, but being unable to put it on your mobile device without paying for it again or making an illegal download.

Another side of this is why some albums come out with such a greatly reduced number of tracks on the vinyl format than the CD/digital release? Is this really for improved audio quality as often stated or is it to promote sales of the remaining tracks by download? A few examples of this might be the Kontext album “Dissociate” on Immerse, Martyn’s “Great Lengths” (see also below) and Conforce’s “Machine Conspiracy” on Meanwhile, to name but three. Here the example is Conforce “Stop hold”, present on the CD, but absent from the vinyl.

Secondly, in all genres and not just electronic music, there has been another slow evolution where both vinyl and CD releases are being remarked as box sets or luxury products to increase desire for ownership. Some examples of this might be the recent Plastikman or David Bowie “Station to Station” box sets, the recent 4 vinyl sets on Styrax and Ann Aimee (see pictures and below), and the luxury versions of singles by Theo Parrish, Tensnake or Burial with Massive Attack, usually by the Vinyl Factory.

The latter is described lovingly by Fact in record geek speak:

“‘Four Walls’ / ‘Paradise Circus’ will be available exclusively as a limited vinyl edition of 1000 copies worldwide, pressed on heavyweight 180 gram 12″ vinyl, and housed in a hand-numbered, gold glitter screen-printed sleeve  featuring artwork by Massive Attack’s Robert ’3D’ Del Naja. Fans can pre-order it right now through vfeditions.com – this has now sold out. The edition will be released on October 17.”

This brings us to another issue of availability: such low runs of highly desirable products means only the nimble will make the purchase and the rest will be left with their MP3s, legal or otherwise. Anyone who ever received mail order catalogues like Boomkat will know what I mean. If you don’t get straight in to get what you want, you find everything sold out, often within hours. Just look at the chaos  surrounding the release of the Sandwell District album back in January as one example and check the current price on Discogs.



Martyn – Ghost People

Given the trend for buying individual tracks, it raises the question as to which track you would go for on an album or single if you could only have one? In the case of Martyn’s new album “Ghost people” on Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label, the answer is a no brainer. The only track you need here is the last one “We are you in the future”.

This is not to say the rest of the album is a turkey, far from it, but there is so much drive and vitality on this track that it stands apart from what comes before. However, Fact mag  while also singling out this track and praising it as “the most composed, well-produced record of his career” they also claimed the lack of surprises sunk the ship despite all the quality production. While I agree completely with the reviewers assessment, I would put a positive spin to the lack of surprises. It is true that “Ghost People” is kind of mindless in a way, but I actually enjoy that side of Martyn’s music as a positive: great well-made tracks that just work and no nonsense. “Great Lengths” for me was something of a disappointment, partly given that the vinyl version stripped away so many tracks and broke the flow (see comments above), but partly because the full length recycled a few tracks and almost added too many. Which was the real album in the end? So while it did signpost a big genre swing, for me the swing was already underway and the album, as good as it was, was too overblown and undefined to catalyse another step forward.

Scuba and Hot Flush

I have often used Paul Rose aka Scuba as an example of house revivalism and its betrayal of dubstep that could seem quite negative, but my intentions have always been against the vacuousness of trends with nothing but respect for scuba’s music and label. The latest run from both man and label only goes to continue my sense of awe at his work ethic, creative capacity and quality control. Not to mention the continuing sense of the house invasion into bass music, evident again on Scuba’s excellent new 12” “Adrenalin”

In a certain way I find both Hotflush and Scuba approaching a sound reminiscent of Martyn, but at the same time on another level. There is a certain plastic sound to the production, where the sounds seem smooth and fluidly moulded and colourful in matt or brilliant sheens. But where Martyn keeps it simple, Hotflush and Scuba seem to complicate it by mixing the pleasure principles and chemical production values of labels like Innervisions with the avante garde leanings of labels like Hyperdub and the deeply rooted urban spirit of post-Burial electronica. A kind of plastic dub if you like.

Curiously, one of the B-sides to the “Adrenalin” single, “Everywhere” resembles the Luomo track “Could be like this” from the 2003 “Present Lover” album.

On the eve of the release of Luomo’s new album “Plus” on Moodmusic, this example perhaps goes to show where Luomo might have ended up following different trends and instincts. In several interviews over the years, Sasu Ripatti has claimed to be tormented or frustrated by the press harking back to his landmark debut “Vocalcity”. Since then, Ripatti has embarked on a long odyssey to avoid repeating himself as if to undermine the press. But having arrived at “Plus” I am left with the thought that Ripatti’s anxiety on this issue has cost him dearly. So much of “Plus” sounds forced, clumsy even. It is not so much the technique that is gone (Ripatti has always impressed under his Vladislav Delay moniker and parts of “Plus” really shine brightly), but rather it is perhaps the spirit that is lacking. House music is essentially soul music and the presence or absence of such sentiments is essential for success or failure.

In addition to some average vocals Ripatti also makes life difficult for himself on “Plus” by trying to marry the smoothness of house with the fragmented angles of electro and the results do not always pay off.

But back to Hotflush and the one track idea: only a brave man would go for one or the other of the two vinyl (and additional digital) tracks on the new Paul Woolford and Psycatron 12” “Stolen”. Absolutely mind-blowing. If having to choose I would go for the first dub mix as it contains one of the best synth hooks I have heard all year. The build ups are feisty and the heavy weight drum programming adds an inescapable momentum. Here the first (vinyl) dub mix is presented in edited form as part of a recent Fact mix by Woolford.

Finally, the Hotflush duo Sepalcure of Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) and Pravin Sharma (Braille) are set to release their debut album in November. The album is a mesmerising blend of Hotflush’s plastic dub sound, the more grounded breakbeat styles and warm synth washes of earlier Hotflush releases like Joy Orbison and Mount Kimbie and the complicated, paranoid collage elements of the new Flying Lotus school of sound.

The Dutch oven

Finally to Holland where there is plenty cooking inside the Dutch oven. Delsin sister label Ann Aimee has released the first two of four limited colour 12”s in the Inertia series (pictured above). The music is forceful and distinguished with the line-up of the 16 artists drawn from the local pool of Dutch producers and several international guests. Local DJ and producer Niels Luinenburg aka Delta Funktionen has also reassembled the set into the labels first commercial mix CD called “Inertia: Resisting Routine”. The mix will not be released until December, but in an intriguing move, buying the CD  will also give access to the individual tracks.

Also from Amsterdam will come the Rush Hour “Amsterdam Allstars” compilation which will sample the current (high) state of the art of the Dutch capital. A taster 12” has just come out with one exclusive track by Young Marco not to be included in the upcoming 2 volume set of double vinyl! A slightly different business model then to Delsin/Ann Aimee.

Young Marco - Hoodoo(Not available on 2xLP) by rushhourrecords

The other sampler track is by Amsterdam-based, but not Dutch born producers Juju and Jordash. This will appear on the albums, returning to the question of whether this needs a vinyl release at all for what is essentially one track.