weekly look into the world of electronic musics...




Sleeparchive
Infrared Glow
[Sleeparchive, 2005]

I didn’t realize the appeal of Sleeparchive very much until I had the pleasure of hearing “Elephant Island” for the first time. That’s when their sonic bleep techno began to make obvious and banging sense. But, for the most part, their (?) (people say it’s Hawtin and I can believe that) releases have been too abstract and obfuscatory to warrant the salivating that some quarters have lavished on the product thus far. “Infrared Glow” continues along in this vein, sadly, with “Galactic Chaos” and “Galactic Blob” languishing in a place that can only be worthwhile when used as augmentation for other tracks. “Dusty Galaxies,” though, gets closest to the sublime in rehashing much of “Elephant Island”’s groove to great effect. If you’re a fan, it’ll be more brilliance. But not a place to start.

Lawrence
The Night Will Last Forever
[Ladomat2000, 2005]

Lawrence’s second single from his latest album gets the remix treatment here by John Tejada and L’usine bookending the original mix with a B-side thrown in for good measure. L’usine’s mix is the preferred, working some micro cuts and putting a slamming bass underneath. In fact, it might even trump the original. “Happy Sometimes” is the aforementioned B-side, and it’s business as usual for Kersten, riding a morse code backing to guide its two-pronged melodic attack. Sublime romanticism as always.

Steadycam
Ding
[K2, 2005]

New Kompakt label K2 marks its inaugural release with, uh, Steadycam. No worries, though, the label is intended to showcase up-and-coming producers. And while none of the tracks are exactly stand-outs, they’re all of the sort of Kompakt quality that makes their releases hardly worth mentioning anymore. The A-side is “Caress”’ micro-edits and propulsive bass and “Stay There”’s abstracto-dub-house which owes more than a little bit to Mikkel Metal. On the flipside, “Ding” gets more acidic as the track rolls along, while “Allvar” takes some knifing synth stabs and runs them through the sequencer for the majority of its rhythmic and melodic elements.

Hug
The Angry Ghost
[K2, 2005]

The more well-known than you might think is useful for an “unknowns” label, John Dahlbäck brings out his new Hug alias for the second K2 release. Predictably, it’s quite a bit more self-assured and cohesive. “Fluteorgie” is not exactly what it promises (sadly), but it does eventually climax after an orgy of synth lines congregate around the five-minute mark. “The Angry Ghost” gets a little bit closer to its title, while “Pip” thankfully avoids the issue entirely by just acting as the great forgotten B-side.

Minlogue
Certain Things EP
[Traum Schallplatten, 2005]

Traum continues its win streak with a duo I’ve never heard of before taking on “Everything In Its Right Place” on the opener and matching it with a slowly modulating gospel vocal that nearly breaks out of its self-imposed obfuscation by track’s end. “Part 2” trades pop song familiarity for dance music move familiarity, by utilizing acid squiggles and synth pads to nicely clichéd effect. Steve Barnes pops in for a third portion that splits the difference between the two, melding the atmospherics and emphatically dance-centric second part. Needless to say, recommended.
[Todd Burns]

NEWS AND NOTES
—The Philly micro label foundsound will be celebrating its one year anniversary imminently and they’ll be celebrating with two new releases before the end of the year and an mp3 release on their (un)foundsound mp3 imprint that will feature unreleased tracks by Jeff Milligan, Frivolous, Bruno Pronsato, Sarah Goldfarb, Quenum, Jeremy P. Caulfield, and a whole host of others…

—Israeli DJ/producer Glitterbug will be making his US debut on Friday night in New York City. Glitter (Till Rohmann) told BBTP about his unique set-up. “…I work with three turntables, two for analogue records, and one for Ms. Pinky (http://www.mspinky.com) to control two additional digital files, (which makes my sets) something between a live set and a DJ set, since I work a lot with my own materials, cuts, loops, own bootlegs, and whatever I can get my hands on and like, wherever it is coming from (in a sense of the musical background), and I somehow quite often cross the borders of techno and really like giving pop a straight bass drum. In an article I once was called a post-colognealist, and I really liked that description.” Should be interesting…

—We’ll have a tough choice between that and the stellar line-up for Erstquake 2, which will be running throughout the weekend at 279 Church St., despite the probable distinct lack of beats:

Friday, September 23, 8pm
Mark Wastell/Tim Barnes
Keith Rowe/Tomas Korber
Julien Ottavi/Dion Workman
Joe Colley/Jason Lescalleet
Keith Rowe/Toshimaru Nakamura

Saturday, September 24, 8pm
Joe Colley solo
Toshimaru Nakamura/Taku Unami/Sean Meehan
Tomas Korber/Tim Barnes
nmperign/Jason Lescalleet
Keith Rowe/Julien Ottavi

Sunday, September 25, 7pm
Greg Kelley/David Daniell/Sean Meehan
Keith Rowe/Mark Wastell
Taku Unami/Margarida Garcia
Tomas Korber/Julien Ottavi
Toshimaru Nakamura/Mark Wastell/Tim Barnes