Central brings a pair of brief but incredible 12″ vinyls that explore the deep, weird ends of techno and house in a way that few artists in 2016 are even attempting. The density of quality here is breathtaking, and sets a high bar for any eventual full-length. Together, this hour of music is some of the freshest sounds I’ve heard all year.
With his 2015 debut LP Elaenia, Floating Points made a startling leap from purely electronic composition to hybrid jazz mastery, using a full band to bring his creations to life for the first time. The album should have been on my best of 2015 list, but I’m doing my best to spread the word going forward.
It’s been a violent week in America. Violence by police. Violence against police. The country’s long gone mad. All I can offer is a quote from one of my favorite films, Days of Heaven:
The whole earth is goin’ up in flames. Flames’ll come out of here and there and they’ll just rise up. The mountains are gonna go up in big flames, the water’s gonna rise in flames. There’s gonna be creatures running every which way, some of them burnt, half their wings burning. People are gonna be screaming and hollerin’ for help. See, the people that have been good, they’re gonna go to heaven and escape all that fire. But if you’ve been bad God don’t even hear you. He don’t even hear you talking.
It’s the summer of 2016 and I’ve felt more energized than I have in years. In addition to writing more frequently than ever, I’ve rediscovered my passion for mixing and recontextualizing music.
I make mixtapes that I’d want to listen to, sharing music the way I hear it. This one is a night drive for future ghosts.
6 is the second album from FP-oner, the latest alias of techno legend Fred P, aka Black Jazz Consortium. While his deep house and techno releases under that name became some of the best work I’ve heard all year, I was unaware that he’d dropped a followup to last year’s incredible but under the radar 5, under the new name.
Reform Club is the real deal: all sumptuous dark dub techno splashed with rubbery bass and halting percussion, sealed with a vacuum whoosh drift. Before last month, Claro Intelecto wasn’t even on my radar. Now I can’t wait to see if he ever returns.
The past two weeks rolled with dark gravity, anchored by the massacre in Orlando that saw 49 people killed in an LGBT dance club. It may be only the latest in a nearly constant string of mass shootings in the US, but it’s the most devastating in my lifetime. I’ll never forget the gut punch of hearing the news.
It’s important to seize on the image of us at our worst, not just to examine how and why, but so we can truly appreciate us at our best. Still, it’s just as important to grasp the good news when we have it. With that in mind, I want to share the great musical discoveries I made in the past couple weeks.
Optimistic Underground 