Beatz By The Pound has moved to its new home, located at http://www.bbtp.net. Hope to see you over there!

Stylus editor Todd Burns presents a mix of electronic music…

Tracklist
01: Dennis Ferrer - Son of Raw (Loco Dice’s Brooklyn Roll) [buy]
02: Martin Buttrich - Hunter [buy]
03: Tiger Stripes - Survivor [buy]
04: Claude Von Stroke - Seven Deadly Strokes (Patrick Chardronnet Remix) [buy]
05: Roland Appel - Dark Soldier [buy]

Subscribe to the Stycast.
Subscribe to Beatz By The Pound.

Stylus editor Todd Burns presents a mix of electronic music…

Tracklist
01: Kylie Minogue - 2 Hearts (Studio Mix) [buy]
02: Farah - Law of Life (Midnite Remix) [buy]
03: Nick Sole - Children (Crambe Repetita Deep Mix) [buy]
04: Daniele Baldelli - Cosmic Parsley [buy]
05: Fuckpony - Lady Judy (Crambe Repetita Screw Mix) [buy]

Subscribe to the Stycast.
Subscribe to Beatz By The Pound.

Stylus editor Todd Burns presents a mix of electronic music…

Tracklist
01: Anja Schneider - Gimley [buy]
02: Radio Slave - Dedication, Part Three [buy]
03: Adultnapper - Tewa (Matt Tolfrey and Inxec Remix) [buy]
04: Sven UK and Andomat 3000 - Tribute [buy]
05: Stefan Goldmann - Lunatic Fringe [buy]
06: LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (C2 Remix) [buy]
07: Jan Driver - Kardamoon [buy]

Subscribe to the Stycast.
Subscribe to Beatz By The Pound.

Stylus editor Todd Burns presents a mix of electronic music…

Tracklist
01: Underground Resistance - Kill My Radio Station (Acapella) [buy]
02: Einzelkind vs. Meat - Hear the Man [buy]
03: Red Robin & Jakob Hilden - Lazy Jack [buy]
04: Kollektiv Turmstrasse - Eskapade [buy]
05: Underworld - Glam Bucket [buy]
06: Sennh - I Am With You [buy]
06: Baby Oliver - Feelings 2 [buy]

Subscribe to the Stycast.
Subscribe to Beatz By The Pound.

For their first single as Soul Capsule in six years, Thomas Melchior and Peter “Baby Ford” Adshead deliver not so much a set of DJ tools but something similar to an “open source code” of minimal techno. It’s wonderful to hear an EP that builds out of its own heritage, bringing the warm waves straight out of the depths of the circuits they’ve been coursing through for almost fifteen years.

Like a lot of his recent solo tracks, Baby Ford’s voice comperes the whole event – he’s a quiet master of ceremonies who murmurs, whispers, and coaxes you through the auroral atmosphere like some kind of positively charged Leonard Cohen. As evidenced on the long and winding title cut, Ford’s influence on Melchior’s style is akin to the flattening of a wiggling arc - he basically gets Tommy to turn the brightness of his space-dusted melodies inwards. B-Side “Beauty and the Beat” brings the sound closer to the epic, deep minimal techno explored at length on Ford’s Sacred Machine – a machine that wills the eternal return of a perfectly pitched and filtered kick drum. A repetition without gravity. Welcome back, guys.

Perlon / PERL 63
[Listen]
[Peter Chambers]

Stylus editor Todd Burns presents a mix of electronic music…

Tracklist
01: Break SL - Flow [buy]
02: Matias Aguayo - Papel [buy]
03: Sascha Funke - The Acrobat [buy]
04: Einmusik - Fleur De Lis [buy]
05: Lawrence - Compulsion [buy]
06: Petre Inspirescu - Galantar [buy]

Subscribe to the Stycast.
Subscribe to Beatz By The Pound.

Fabric 36—announced years ago—has become the venerated mix series’ most anticipated disc. But in the announcement, Ricardo slipped in that he “prefers for it to be treated like a normal mix CD, with no hype.” Sure. Right. But, then again, take a quick listen to it: because despite the inevitable hype and a cover only a goth could love, Fabric 36 sounds almost carefree enough to actually live up to his modest hopes.

There’s been no lack of swipes at Ricardo Villalobos’ self-indulgence (cue this review’s gratuitous mention of Fizheuer Zieheuer), but Villalobos may be trying to save “self-indulgence” from derogatory connotations one release at a time. In his latest, what’s difficult to miss isn’t that he scraps the DJ mix as an outpouring of free publicity (for other artists) but that the mix is the rare modern entity that forces you to listen to an album as a whole. Fabric 36 has highlights but no singles—a series of tracks with only one order. And as imposing as that sounds, it only becomes an obvious fact when you try to listen to parts outside the mix itself.

Thankfully, it’s easy to get lost in the actual mix of the CD. There’s a lightness of touch throughout, leaving sections where Villalobos can transition from the introductory yelps of “Farenzer House” into the taut bass stabs of “Mecker” without batting an eye. In the midst of that section, there’s also a nudging synthpad that fleshes itself out five minutes later in the anthemic pop-rush of “4 Wheel Drive.” With Fabric 36, Villalobos has refined the volatile tangents of “Achso”—tracks are just as rambunctious and twisting, but also ebb with a purpose and destination.

That’s also a pretty apt description for this year’s earlier “album-mix” from False. But 2007, despite its breadth of textures, sounds one-note compared to the variety of rhythm and idiosyncrasies here. If 2007 was busy stumbling and scraping itself on concrete sidewalks, then Fabric 36 is a drunken party-host that introduces herself as “Moist.” And she’s not alone on the album’s centerpiece, “Andruic & Japan.” Accompanied by a personal Japanese drummer who blows his nose through a harmonica, she spouts anecdotes (about marriage, dead chickens, etc.) to either invisible guests or to herself—it depends on how demented you think she is.

Either way, she, like Villalobos, doesn’t seem to take herself too seriously here. Ricardo doesn’t ham it up on Fabric 36, but with tracks like the joyful splinter of “You Won’t Tell Me” and the celebratory finale of “Premier Encuentro Latino-Americano,” he sounds all but ready to throw away his cultivated mystique for something a little more pleasurable. And I’m still ready to indulge him a little more.

Fabric / FABRIC 71
[Listen]
[Nate DeYoung]

Stylus editor Todd Burns presents a mix of electronic music…

Tracklist
01: Maxime Dangles - Love Water [buy]
02: Shlomi Aber & Itamar Sagi - Blonda [buy]
03: Schaeben & Voss feat. Schad Privat - Put Up Job [buy]
04: Pan-Pot - Charly [buy]
05: Einmusik - Wave Scanner [buy]
06: REshuffle - Paparatzi [buy]
07: Kevin Saunderson - Till We Meet Again (Carl Craig Remix) [buy]

Subscribe to the Stycast.
Subscribe to Beatz By The Pound.

Space is techno’s key fantasy. From Detroit to Moscow (via lower earth orbit), this is a music whose bedroomed machines have relentlessly beat out rhythms that dream of comet tales and gas giants. Starship Smith-N-Hack hits hyperspace blur right at this point, just as an eight bit melody rings out, and proceeds to do battle with the space invaders in a ship that looks like the Death Star gone disco – Darth’s daft mirror ball turned planetary assault machine.

“Space Warrior” begins with an ascending/descending eight-bit synth line which breaks into a pixelated rhythm just as the neon pads hit. When I play it loud, it makes the neighbour’s tomcat mewl in a way that suggests (as some have suspected) that cats are aliens after all. Or just horny and confused. Then the bassline grounds everything, colouring everything three shades more Italo for a moment until the lo-fi shenanigans of the “rayguns” start blasting away. There’s a touch of Legowelt at work in the madness, but none of the ironisation apparent in the work that Danny Wolfers relegates to the comments he makes around his music

If you can’t get the local felines going with “Space Warrior”, try them on the “Scratchapella” – without the drums holding all those rayguns carefully in place, the effect is the techno/laser-beam equivalent of an unmanned garden hose set to stun. “Falling Stars” begins very much like Roman Flügel’s remix of Audion’s “Just Fucking”, but quickly traverses any sexual fantasy to find itself among distant heavenly bodies. It glides beautifully, making it right across the galaxy in a little over nine minutes. Not bad for two geeks and their machines, is it? Forget all that new age twaddle, if you want to experience astral travel from the comfort of your own headphones/nightclub, this is just the (space) ticket.

Smith N Hack / Smith N Hack 03
[Listen]
[Peter Chambers]