club music
joe.muggs
Jan St Werner, half of German duo Mouse On Mars, recently held forth on their inspirations, citing the tension between metrical freedom and metronomic funk in the work of Sun Ra and Funkadelic as their key motivator. And while it might seem odd to compare two synth-twiddlers from Cologne and Düsseldorf with the great mavericks of mid-century American Afrofuturism, when you hear their music it makes complete sense.Watch the video for "Polaroyced":St Werner and his partner Andi Toma have been making weird music solidly for two decades now. Often they've seemed like the absolute cliché Read more ...
joe.muggs
A mea culpa from me: I never gave Sbtrkt's records the attention they deserved. I always thought they were a capitulation, a softening of the radical developments of the post grime and dubstep generation with more traditional musicality and indie affectations to reach out to a more generalist, NME reading audience... and in a way they are – but, I came to realise, that's not a bad thing, and certainly not cynically done.Having listened to last year's self-titled debut album more thoroughly, it became clear that there is a distinct and often deliciously absorbing character to Aaron Jerome's Read more ...
joe.muggs
Tonight on Channel 4, a new music series begins with a fantastic premise. A group of music obsessives drive around the USA in a London black cab, finding interesting musicians and recording them performing and talking in the back of the cab. Sounds a little bit like the 2008 Stephen Fry in America series, doesn't it? Well maybe, except Black Cab Sessions has been broadcast online since 2007.Watch the Black Cab Sessions trailer:And there's the rub. BCS has now featured hundreds of acts in various cabs, from complete unknowns to top ten-bothering popstars, from gangsta rappers to Brian Read more ...
joe.muggs
Londoner Yemi Olagbaiye is the model of a new generation musician for whom the dissolution of genre categories means not homogenisation but an opportunity for greater individuality. Olagbaiye grew up playing guitar music, then moved on to drum'n'bass, but really found his voice when he moved into a fusion of electronic and organic instruments, inspired on the one hand by UK garage and its offspring (dubstep, grime, funky), and on the other by the neo-psychedelia of Radiohead, Four Tet and Caribou. Watch Blacksmif's "...And the Sun Rose Out"His productions are lush and immersive, but Read more ...
joe.muggs
Justice – pronounce it “Joosteece”, for they are as French as they come – deconstruct the opposition between style and substance. Everything about them is preposterous, from the hipster facial hair via the rock-pig antics in their A Cross The Universe tour “documentary” DVD to the way that almost the entirety of their musical palette is cribbed from their countrymen and close associates Daft Punk. They are masters of the big, empty gesture taken to ridiculous extremes, of blustering noise and gut-punching beats made strangely friendly, of the reduction of both rock and rave music to a Read more ...
joe.muggs
I first heard Zed Bias's Biasonic Hot Sauce – Birth of the Nanocloud last autumn. He may have been one of the key players in the London-centric sound of UK garage, but he was never of that scene. Based in Milton Keynes through the first phase of his career, he releases through a Brighton label and is now resident in Manchester. This is key to understanding the connections in his tracks, which reflect the clubs in those cities that sidestep metropolitan scene micro-delineation and rave parochialism and lock into a wider soulboy set of connections.His sprawling album as Maddslinky earlier in Read more ...
joe.muggs
I almost feel duty bound to make a declaration of interest here. I have done several pieces of paid writing for the Red Bull Music Academy, including a piece of course material for this year's Academy, and a few days ago I went to Madrid to see the Academy for the first time on their tab. But here's the thing: music writers rarely, if ever, feel the need to say that they have written sleeve notes or other material for a major record label when writing about an artist on that label, let alone that the label is paying their expenses for a story (which they generally do, as magazine and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A decade and a half ago I was junglist correspondent for Eternity magazine, a long since defunct organ that catered to the then thriving print press for rave devotees. This was how I ran into Aquasky, a trio of studenty, long-haired guys from Bournemouth making chill-out drum and bass. A lot has happened to them since then. Most notably - apart from being much less hirsute - they long ago dumped the marijuana’n’jazz approach and make, under the radar, contagiously ballsy rave music that takes no prisoners but also welcomes anyone with a party bone in their body to their party.Their new album Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's understandable that people get put off leftfield dance music, given how much micro-genre delineation and dog-in-a-manger protectionism there can be in underground scenes. It can seem a shame sometimes, but then again, these are part and parcel of the fertile creativity and passion that exists around the music, so it's swings and roundabouts. However, there are some areas you're guaranteed not to find frowning chin-strokers, and one of those is inhabited by Brighton label Tru Thoughts, which consistently produces music that's friendly, welcoming and veritably insists you forget nitpicky Read more ...
joe.muggs
If there's one electronic sub-genre that is not worth approaching blind it's “tech-house”. Since the late Nineties, it has tended to be the most functional and generic of club soundtracks, a steady, decadent plod, all clean lines and predictable shifts: nothing to frighten the horses or interrupt the steady progress of weekend hedonism. In short, boring. However, there are practitioners who have raised its slowly evolving repetitions to an art form that has life outside the club: the Kompakt label, Chilean maverick Ricardo Villalobos, and Brightonian in Berlin Matt “Radio Slave” Edwards.This Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As artificial spaces, clubs struggle to embrace the organic environment. The music and arts collective Noise of Art are bridging the gap by working with the charity Trees for Cities, with DJs donating their time to raise funds for planting trees in London. On 17 September, Noise of Art is working with Trees for Cities at Battersea Park and taking over the Village Underground for a fundraising event.The events are supported by the Cultural Programme of the European Union and are part of the pan-European Metiss’age street art festival. During the day (between 10am and 3pm), Battersea Park will Read more ...