Parts of this album has sounds that remind me of the X-files theme (possibly one of the best tv show themes of all times – certainly one of the most instantly recognisable) and bits from my own collection. I fell in love with Manfred Eicher’s ECM label back in the 70′s. The label had a wonderful collection of excellent jazz guitarists, Ralph Towner and John Abercrombie (who I really must talk about one day) being the main attractions for me.

What really sealed the deal though was the recording. Clean, clinical, stark, you were left with the impression that there was nothing between you and the performance. Back before CD and digital, this really was as good as it got (yes, yes – Windham Hill were doing it as well but they were a few years later). Oh and I am not getting involved with the “analog V didgital” stoush either. I signed on for music and performance. ECM gave me both.

BUT all of this is a digression by way of giving you some background as to why I am having such a ball listening to Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer’s Re: ECM

Now here’s some hype from the ECM website

Berlin-based DJs and composers Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer – two of the best-known names in contemporary electronica – share their admiration for music on ECM in a unique double-album of specially-created “sound-structures”. Their project “Re: ECM” will bring the label’s music to a new listenership. It is certain to be one of the most talked-about albums of the season. Using original ECM recordings as a starting point, Villalobos and Loderbauer create new music that bridges several worlds, including ECM’s world of space-conscious improvisation and composition and the worlds of ambient electronics and minimal techno. Source materials on “Re: ECM” include recordings of Christian Wallumrød, Alexander Knaifel, Louis Sclavis, John Abercrombie, Bennie Maupin, Arvo Pärt, Wolfert Brederode, Paul Giger and more – looped, sampled, remixed and reworked in evocative new treatments. Pleased with the duo’s creative response to his productions Manfred Eicher gave them carte blanche to carry on experimenting with the ECM titles of their choice. Eicher subsequently supervised the mastering of “Re: ECM” in Munich, completing a unique sonic experience.

You can listen to a track here @ Youtube (while it lasts)

Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer — Rekondakion

If you scored a CD voucher for Christmas from your favourite aunt and by some strange quirk of fate you still have it left, let me suggest that there are lot worse albums out there you could cash it in on.

I have already ordered my copy.

Listen to the album at Miasmah

Late last  year a friend rang up in the middle of the night (well that’s what it seemed like) and played some music down the phone and asked me “who the hell is this”.

The answer turned out to be Rafael Anton Irisarri’s album “Daydreaming“. I hadn’t heard of him then (that took an hour or two’s research) but I have listened to him a hell of a lot since then.

“Daydreaming” is a mix of piano, electronics and some of the most gorgeous production you are likly to hear for a while. This is one of those works that just go straight for the emotional jugular and will have you transfixed.

OK I can hear you out there going “Piano, electonic, production – been there. What else you got?”

Well as it turns out around seven beautifully executed ideas. Don’t believe me?  Just Click on player just below and see what you think. We’ll wait

This album is all about the piano, all the other stuff surrounding it provide a context for the piano’s notes. In places murky and in others the acoustic palletes used are so stark and stripped back, you will wonder how Rafael is able to eke out such a deep emotional response.

I remember the first time I heard George Winston playing piano on a Windham Hill recording a long, long time ago. The music he created stayed with me, here is another artist and album that will do the same.

Highly Recommended

[UPDATE]
There is some new material over at Soundcloud soundcloud.com/studio-irisarri

Listen to the album at Bandcamp

It’s Saturday night and I have been listening to Crux, Emmalee Crane’s debut album. It seems to inhabit the same sort of place that Rafael Anton Irassari is occupying.  A curious mix of textural washes, real instruments, circuit bent electronics, found sounds and a ton of imagination. It is helping me lose my birthday blues. Or at least move them to a better place,

Emmalee calls her music “drone” but she is kidding herself. There is wonderful melody, clever arrangement and more than a passing nod to analog electronic music pioneers.

Here is the hype from her website

Like most children, Emmalee’s first experience of making music was with a plastic recorder and a number of other ill-advised toy whistles and trumpets. It was from here that she followed a not unpredictable but quite successful progression to the oboe, clarinet, and English and French horns. She studied (and is a great lover of) Romantic and Modern classical music, with a particular fondness for Debussy.

Perhaps the most important twist in this so far dull history involves Emmalee’s other fascination: electronics. Being adept at dismantling all manner of gadgets from an early age, she naturally developed a secondary musical affinity for analog synthesizers and other voltage-driven trinkets of noise making. She is now equally at home with a soldering iron as a woodwind, and is a great believer in circuit-bending*. Today, Emmalee blends woodwinds, horns and analog synthesizers with found sounds and bent circuits to create ambient, orchestral drone music reminiscent of Mark Hollis and Stars Of The Lid. Emmalee Crane was born in Toronto in 1983. She now lives in San Francisco with an unruly collection of instruments and her dog, Bash.

* as long as you don’t mention the time she totally wrecked a Juno 106

I have a soft spot for music like this (big suprise there) and look forward to hearing more from Emmalee (I believe her new one is due shortly). Highly recommended – have a listen here

For more information visit her at www.emmaleecrane.com/ or her Bandcamp site music.emmaleecrane.com/

(gotta love bandcamp)

[UPDATE]

Gold Teeth

www.myspace.com/goldteeth only fired up last year (2008. Their MySpace site seems to be doing all the heavy lifting of getting them noticed.

Hey it worked for me.

Electronics, Afrobeat, great rythms and yummy guitars. Think Madness meets Blu… “Everybody” and “Confused Blue” are my faves.

“Confused Blue” feels rythmically like a rework of  Bob Marley’s Jammin’, lyrically though it’s a lot lot darker. Lots of paranoia, alienation and suburban dark corners.

“Everybody” is just fabulous the direction of the music, all bright and poppy is totally at odds with the lyrics.I love the weird guitar though.

Give this band half a chance and they will suck you totally in. Highly Recommended

Website atwww.myspace.com/goldteeth

Two Lone Swordsmen

Two Lone Swordsmen are British DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall and studio engineer Keith Tenniswood. They fired up in the mid Ninetie’s and have over the years have played with a multitude of styles, from electro to post-punk to idm (intelligent dance music?). To give you an idea of just how much stuff they have done have a look at their page at Last.fm.

So with all the myriad bands available for us all  to listen to, why these dudes?

Texture, have a listen to “Born Bad Born Beautiful” or “No Girl In My Plan”. Both are full of just the best bass and drums and guitars that I have had fun with for ages. These are songs full of strut and attitude. It’s not so much a “would you like to have a listen to these tracks? Maybe?” so much a splintering of the door as it is kicked in and  you are grabbed by the lapels. With a voice in your face saying – “Good Innit!”

Here is some hype about a recent album

With elements of garage and rockabilly, but also the more familiar layer of electronica, this double album promises a whole new direction. What is particularly striking is Andrew Weatherall’s growth in stature, not only as a singer and frontman but also as a sharp wordsmith. Here we find tales of love and rejection that rip open a seething underbelly of mistrust, tension, revenge, and redemption along the way. Like Robert Johnson’s appointment with the devil, Two Lone Swordsmen find themselves in a clandestine engagement at Dante’s Inferno, pulling up a stool while St. Nick pours from the bottle and take a hearty swig.

The best thing is that over the years their focus seems to have moved to making music WITH machines, rather making music by machines.

Highly Recommended

Websites at www.myspace.com/twoloneswordsmen and www.twoloneswordsmen.com/

The Submarines

Oh bugger, Apple have side swiped me yet again with their latest iPhone ad. This time it’s The Submarines, damn the APple ad dudes know how to pick a catchy tune. At least this time they gave the band an actual credit in the ad.

A quick trip to Google and before you knew it I was listening to “You, Me and the Bourgeoisie” and slightly in awe of the lyrics, they explore the dichotomy of our need for social consciousness and the hypocrisies inherent in our own lives – sort of like writing a really good song and then selling it tio Apple for an ad campaign. (Art imitating life)

John Dragonetti and Blake Hazard recorded HONEYSUCKLE WEEKS, their second album as THE SUBMARINES, as summer vines blossomed and the sun coaxed green grasses up around the stones leading from their East LA home to their garage-turned-home-studio. Honeysuckle Weeks weaves together themes drawn from their immediate surroundings and experience: the garden outside, and the push and pull of life and love inside.

The tracks available at www.myspace.com/thesubmarinesmusic sound just wonderful. Here is a band that knows there influences and embraces them. From the evil dub groove in “1940″through 60′s pop and then on into their own individual feel. I really like this duo, they are wonderfully comfortable on the ear and with repeated listings you discover just how clever they are.

Highly recommended

Websites at www.myspace.com/thesubmarinesmusic

Tim Hecker

Tim Hecker is an electronic/ambient artist based in Montreal, Canada. He mad a name for himself as Jetone creating techno/dance music, but his ambient works have garnered him a heap more interest.

His music has been described as “structured ambient,” and “cathedral electronic music” (I like that one), his soundscapes dance along the line that separates noise and melody and he creates complex, truly beautiful and thought-provoking songs.

So lets chat a bit about his album “An Imaginary Country“, the best way to approach this is possibly imagine Tim as a tour guide through a aural landscape. Each of the tracks is a different region and he is pointing out some of the interesting possibilities that are available.

“Borderlands”  sounds like a huge cathedral like space, populated with shimmering , piano-like synths and  samples of organic noise that just wander around. The sounds are so wonderfully rendered that you cant see how it was done, the illusion is just perfect. The combination of fantasy and natural sounds make this a really enjoyable experience.

Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it has been definitely entertaining me.

Recommended

Websites at  sunblind.net/ and www.myspace.com/rainbowbloodx

I mean when you think about it, how hard can it be to find a song with big wooofy kick drums, Scritti Politti vocals done with tons of helium (well that’s what I thought it sounded like- it was a 30 sec grab – give me a break), hand claps galore and some of the yummiest retro synth lead breaks I have heard for ages. But best of all, it has a hook that is related to the song title (thank god).

It’s short (way to short in my opinion, but if you get the loop points just right … I digress).

There are only three tracks over at au.myspace.com/passionpitjams but they are all pretty good. For me though, Sleepyhead is just a stand out piece of pop. The other standout is “I’ve Got Your Number”, it starts out all coy and quiet, lots of subtle work playing with synths and the melodies and then about halfway through it kicks in and transforms into something new and it is really well done. I am quite envious.

Here is “Sleepyhead” from over at YouTube…

The band songs are just so full of energy and their melodies are so well crafted that they sneak up on you, but like all good pop music they are as infectious as hell and you will find then still stuck in your head a week later.

Highly Recommended
au.myspace.com/passionpitjamspassionpit_sleepyhead

Aural Vampire

We haven’t had a Japanese band for a while now, but recently I have been listening to Aural Vampire. They are a strange “Electro / New Wave / Industrial” Japanese electronic band which consists of Exo-Chika and Raveman. They hail from Tokyo and work a dark ,mainly electropopand synthpop music (lots of yummy industrial noises in places).

Exo-Chika and Raveman have known each other since highschool, where they were classmates and shared their interests in western horror movies and peculiar art.

After they finished school, both started making music.
Later they decided to form Aural Vampire, where Exo-Chika is in the role of a vampire and Raveman in the role of a butcher.

The track that is still on my MP3 player is “murealism”, it’s   seriously intense.  It just barrels along at a million miles hour. I think it reminds me of the theme music to “Bubble Gum Crisis”

This is how I found them, in my inbox…

Move over Gwen Stefani! Get ready to be dazzled when the real Harajuku posse takes over EBC. Japan’s flamboyant synth-pop duo, Aural Vampire, teams up with Melbourne’s own gender-bending trance master GPKISM on a showcase of Tokyo’s vibrant subcultures and the city’s dance music scene. A mixture of diva du jour, Lady Gaga, and the ABBA-inspired Madonna effort, Aural Vampire is sure to tickle the fancy of pop fans who like their music with a twist. Joining them is the explosion of crazy colours and trance that is Tokyo DJ SISEN.

Yep, they are playing here in Melbourne at the East on Saturday
18 April 2009.

Website at www.myspace.com/auralvampire

Laura B

I spotted Laura B over at the Guardian – Band Of The Day back in September. The line that caught my attention was

:Laura B (The Fantastic to her friends) is that rarity, a woman who not only writes, sings and performs her own material but also handles all the gadgetry in the studio and does the production

I am pretty sure that Imogen Heap might want to have a chat with Paul Lester about that. But all that not withstanding Laura B is making really interesting music.

From the website…

LAURA B is a french solo artist living in London, who produces a unique style of innovative electronica that Paul Oakenfold, Laurent Garnier and Pete Tong play out and on the radio. She goes solo, sings, plays bass guitar and tweeks electronics live and is one of the main artists of the Big Chill roster. She is remixing for Positiva, Oakenfold and Big Chill Recordings and performs as far as Japan and the caribbean. She co-writes and sings with BJ Cole in the UK and The Verbrilli Sound and Telefuzz in Canada, her music is performed worldwide, from Virgin Atlantic in flight entertainment to The Museum Of Modern Art in San Francisco. Recently interviewed by Chris Coco (BBC Radio1 The Blue Room) for his History of Chillout program on BBC Radio2, she is fast becoming one of the most talked about, up-and-coming artist/DJ/producer in today’s quality-seeking, increasingly eclectic London.

My pick from the three tracks at her MySpace site would have to be “Midi A Minuit “, it’s a really effective piece of chill, that has wonderfully deft production and a remarkable sense of space.

Highly Recommended.

Website at www.myspace.com/fantasticlaurab and www.thefantasticlaurab.com/