Robert Hood’s Dancer, An Ass Shaking Classic

October 26, 2014 / David James / 8 Comments

I’ve been a fan of Robert Hood‘s brand of sensually minimal techno since hearing a reissue of his classic Minimal Nation double 12″ in 2009, falling in love with the beyond-lush Motor: Nighttime World 3 a few years later. Somehow I’d never dug through his vast collection of singles until last Friday. I was working at my desk when Dancer queued up, and immediately had to stomp my feet along, slapping the desk with my open palms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iXKuPsfzt8

This track is a 4/4 monster, piling grand piano and a hairy sax groove on top of a throbbing beat, with just the slightest hint of guitar sprinkled around. The mixture of pure electronics and live instrumentation works in a way most hybrids could only dream of. It’s the kind of song Daft Punk would kill to make; the sound feels like peeling their recent album Random Access Memories down to its beating heart.

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Only a handful of Detroit masters craft techno with such soul, such a playful jazz sensibility, as Robert Hood. I’m thinking of Carl Craig, Kenny Larkin, and of course Underground Resistance, where Hood began his musical odyssey. While this tune is obviously more of a house thumper, I’m happy to share it as another example of the playful, jazzy core of what makes Detroit techno one of my favorite sounds of all time.

Kendrick Lamar – i [music video!!]

September 23, 2014November 13, 2014 / David James / Leave a comment

And so it begins. Kendrick Lamar consumed months of my listening life, two years ago. Now he’s about to drop his follow up to one of the greatest albums of the past decade, good kid, m.A.A.d. City. The first single is called i.

[This post has been updated to include the striking music video for i]

The intro music is apparently a preview of some Flying Lotus beats on the upcoming album!

After hearing his collaboration with Flying Lotus on Never Catch Me, I was primed for more material. It’s been two years since his last album released, but only one year since the CD left constant rotation in my car. I probably listened to that album more than any other released in the past 5 years, in any genre. It’s not just a hip-hop landmark; it’s a colossus of popular music in general. Suffice it to say that my expectations are flying high.

“We got a young brother that stands for something! We got a young brother that believes in all of us! Brother Kendrick Lamar. He’s not a rapper, he’s a writer!”

An announcer opens the song with these words, before the inimitable guitar line of “That Lady” by the Isley Brothers leaps into action. Kendrick comes in with another fresh vocal inflection and the tune is off and running. Bouncy, bright, funky, psychedelic, energetic: it’s a bold proclamation that the young master is back in top form. I dig it. The song obliterated my fear of a sophomore slump in exactly 4:20.

Don’t take my word for it. You should already be listening.

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The upcoming album is “soon” and has yet to be titled, so that’s all the information I’ve got today!

Flying Lotus – Coronus, The Terminator

September 18, 2014July 9, 2016 / David James / 2 Comments

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Just now, Flying Lotus dropped a second preview track for next month’s long anticipated album, You’re Dead! The song is titled Coronus, The Terminator, and you can listen right here:

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First Thoughts on Aphex Twin’s Syro

September 17, 2014September 18, 2014 / David James / 4 Comments

On Wednesday, September 17, 2014 at some point after 7pm, Aphex Twin‘s first album in 13 years leaked. Syro is playing right now, and I have a grin as big as the one below.

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Just as I start typing well past the halfway point of this album, a sudden dynamic bloom splits CIRCLONT14 wide open. Wordless female vocals seem to come from below and around me, before erupting a cyberpunk break straight from future-Detroit. This is one of many moments so far to truly surprise me and dilate my eyes, and it’s the biggest so far.

Somehow time seems to be stretching forever. The songs appear to go beyond their track lengths. This is a wildly unnatural sensation. Fun times usually pass in a flash. I’m definitely having fun.

A boogie funk line just hijacked the proceedings. I’m now unable to think of what came before. Wait, no. Let’s jump back to the beginning.

It begins with minipops 67. We know how grand this is, how warm and sensuous it is, referencing the first Aphex Twin album and his boldest pop moment at once. Next..

Now I’m hearing a synth ghost chorus, high speed jazzy drum programming, and what can only be described at this moment as an equatorial oscillation. Maybe that should be a question? It sounds like nonsense. I’m not going for anything profound right now. This isn’t going to end that thoughtfully. I just wanted to lay my excitement down in words, as it happens. Gonzo style. Of course, I’m safe, alone, and in my apartment, but all the same: this is me experiencing an album I never knew I wanted so badly for so many years.

As the final track, aisatsana (Anastasia in reverse, incidentally) winds down in Gymnopédie-like ecstacy, I’m reminded of nothing so gentle and haunting as Virginia Astley‘s 1983 song A Summer Long Since Passed. I’d rather not spoil anything, so just listen to this song if you want a metaphorical preview of Syro’s ending.

I feel like maybe the title is appropriate, somehow.

I’m starting it over. Track two now, and I’m realizing how tactile this thing feels. I may get the cybernetic dream sequence feeling from Selected Ambient Works 85-92, but it’s far more alive. I can’t wait for the the arrival of my 3LP next Monday.

The leak is out there. I won’t share links because anyone interested enough can find them. Besides: buy this. Buy it now. I did before hearing even the first single, and now I’m cemented in my belief that it was a Good Choice. If you’re a fan of the man at all, this is a sure shot. Check the Warp page for links to purchase.

Andy Stott – “Numb”

December 21, 2012March 31, 2016 / David James / 1 Comment

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I can’t stop this ringing in my head.

With new album Luxury Problems, Andy Stott effectively rendered his previous pair of groundbreaking dark techno EPs irrelevant. It takes all of ten seconds for this, the opening track, to signify a giant leap. Siren vocals cut into shards and raining from above, resonating like a Tibetan singing-bowl. A Mariana trench of low-end crunch erupts like a basket of poisonous snakes, twisting through every crack in every direction. It feels like a glass house shattering from the round up, each piece hanging in the air a little too long.

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Flying Lotus – Tiny Tortures (video featuring Elijah Woods)

November 30, 2012 / David James / 3 Comments

This arrived today and it is beautiful. Echoing Akira (and Tetsuo) and some of the brilliant, creepy videos from Aphex Twin, it’s a dark, cinematic corkscrew in psychedelic miniature. There are few videos so evocative of their namesake, working as a perfect thematic foil to the song. Now watch, as Elijah Wood has a fucked up night.

Despite the fact that I haven’t done a full “album post” about Flying Lotus‘ latest opus, Until The Quiet Comes is easily one of my biggest repeat listens of the year. It’s the living, breathing incarnation of what I’d always kind of hoped his work was pointing towards. Its growth from 2010’s Cosmogramma is more organic and inevitable than the sudden leap that album made from its predecessor, breathrough lp Los Angeles; naturally, it’s less surprising how radically good this is. I feel like I took it for granted at first: “Of course this is good. Well there it goes in my car to stay in rotation for weeks.” Only a handful of albums have spent so much time as regular, near-daily listen this year, and if it weren’t for Kendrick Lamar’s new release, I could have, possibly, worn it out.

Thankfully this video came along today. Not only my favorite track, Tiny Tortures was due for some recognition. On an album crowded with standout moments between sublime guest vocals and dizzying synth work, its sparkling meditative cascade can be mistaken as a gentle interlude. It’s more like a brief exposure of Quiet‘s spiritual heartbeat. It reaches transcendence in the emotive dance of its guitar and bass (by second time MVP Thundercat) over a pulse hinting at great-aunt Alice Coltrane’s organ work on one of her masterpieces. If you haven’t listened to the album yet, here’s your chance to embrace one of the warmest electronic albums in years, a possible masterpiece of jazz and electronic music.

Shabazz Palaces – Live on KEXP

November 3, 2012November 3, 2012 / David James / 3 Comments

I must begin with a heartfelt thank-you to Kevin for sharing this with me. Thanks, Kevin!

Shabazz Palaces crafted possibly the best hiphop album of the new millennium with Black Up, something I’ve documented here and here. Aside its status as a masterpiece of songwriting and innovative production, engaging places of the heart and mind which hiphop rarely acknowledges, the album serves as the blueprint for increasingly thoughtful and fun live appearances. This particular video is the most professional and high fidelity recording I’ve seen, so despite its brevity there’s no better place to start expanding your view of the group. Familiarity with the songs is not required for enjoyment – they’re evocative, head-nodding creations in any format – yet the pleasures multiply when contrasting the live interpretations of such meticulously sculpted album cuts. The hiphop I’ve seen in person tends toward one end or another: preformed backing tracks to emulate the recorded experience, or stripped down live-band approaches. The latter are often more fun yet distance the performers from what we hear at home. Shabazz Palaces seem to cut not a middle ground, but a third path to live nirvana, mixing the laptop histrionics and physical instrumentation with an experimental eye toward carving the feeling into something as disorienting and psychedelic as the album itself.