Dallas native Gerald Hanson originally released “Miranda” as an untitled cut way back in 1995, as the first release on Sean Deason’s Matrix label. As it was a small pressing and unavailable for many years, it has grown and grown in stature exponentially since then, buoyed by lots of club play from famous jocks. Now, Hanson finally cashes in by repressing the original mix and adding three new remixes in a very limited (1,200 copies worldwide) double pack. The hype has been ridonkulous, and after waiting for months and through several delays (apparently there was a pressing-plant/mastering issue or something) that served only to stoke the flames even further, I felt lucky as hell just to get a copy. So the question on everybody’s lips is, of course: is the hype justified?

Well, no, of course not. The original mix is a damn fine piece of second-wave Detroit techno, all jumping rhythms, dubbed-out keyboard stabs, and ring-modulated riffage, but fuck, this ain’t the second coming of “Strings of Life” or something. I mean, it’s good, and I can say from experience that it sounds great in a club through the big system, but it hardly makes the top 10 Detroit techno tracks of all time—maybe top 30.

The remixes by Deason (as Psykofuk), Deep Chord, and Echospace are a bit of a letdown too. Deason doesn’t do nearly enough with it (sounds like he just turned up the kick drum, sped up the tempo a bit, and added a fairly useless vocal sample, none of which the original needed), and ends up with what amounts to a decent Jeff Mills-esque track. Deep Chord and Echospace both turn in 12-minute Basic Channel-style cosmic dub versions that are quite nice for what they are, but are hardly the stuff of legend. So in the final tally, rather than move heaven and earth (or knock over an ATM) to get one, you might be better advised to wait for the inevitable single-plate reissue that is sure to come around eventually. In the meantime, I’m quite sure you can hear the original in clubs all year round and likely on some mix CDs in no time.

Matrix / MATRIX 1.5
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[Todd Hutlock]

Generally speaking: a second slab of Basic Channel-style minimal dub-techno from Scion heads DJ Pete (Substance) and Rene Lowe (Vainqueur). Particularly: Stays the course, but the course is great, so who can blame them. The first side’s really laid back, just one slippery groove sublimated into wisps of smoky reverb, again and again though never repeating its transformation exactly, with a steady non-intrusive subbass kick moving things along. Ground-zero sound with some rhythm behind it; you either hate this stuff or you absolutely love it. The busier backside progresses more quickly and into a number of different textures too, a slightly higher tempo and more prominent kick both helping matters.

Scion Versions / SV 02
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[Nick Sylvester]

Marge Simpson’s quote about wanting to see the Japanese take on the club sandwich (“I’ll bet it’d be smaller, and more efficient”) can be perversely re-badged for a lot of Andy Stott’s work in its developmental stages—the guy had an unmatched talent for “Lexusing” the classics of Detroit, minimal, and dub techno, re-casting them in a form that seemed to run smoother, go further, and work better than the originals it “imitated.” But Merciless, and the other recent, magnificent Replace EP saw Stott breaking out of imitative molds and leaping off on sonic lines of flight, developing a sound signature that finally offered not a rationalization, but a sublimation of its influences.

If Handle with Care does have an inspiration, then it’s in the echo-chamber dub-techno of Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, and Deadbeat’s less melodically “Jamaican” works. There’s an undercurrent of other sound continuums here too, a little taken from car sound system culture with the sub-rattling bassline that seems written to test the chest hairs of the gruntiest woofers, or the sound of dubstep heard through the floor of the apartment above. But to me at least, it’s the fragile melody that appears atop the mountains of bass just for a moment, then disappears that marks this as Stott’s work. It’s a real personal touch. “See in Me” again pits an enormous sub-bassline against haunting atmospheres and front-to-back percussive patterns which embed the melody which, unlike the A, progresses to a resolution, suggesting a kind of hope amid all the gloom. This is beautiful, haunting work—but more disquieting still is the thought that Andy Stott has only just found his unique voice. Which means the best is probably yet to come.

Modern Love / Love027
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[Peter Chambers]

A download-only release from Russian imprint Between Us, Audision returns with more dubby, brooding melancholia that sounds like an outtake from the first quarter of Michael Mayer’s Immer mix. While the original is best suited for a headphone listen or perhaps to create atmosphere early on in a set, the remix by Pablo Bolivar pushes things down further down the filtered-down, Basic Channel path to enlightenment, also adding a bit more swing and animated drum programming to make it slightly more floor friendly. Recommended.

Between Us / BTWN 07
[Colin James Nagy]

Following up on his Basic Channel partner Mark Ernestus’ 2006 reworkings of “Moyege,” Moritz von Oswald takes former Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen on a 12-minute voyage into the land of dub techno. Over his signature lazy, phasey synth pads and steadily rolling rhythm, von Oswald fuses Allen’s killer percussion groove and just soaks in it. Simple, warm, soothing, and utterly sublime, “Ole” will have you wondering where the time went—just long enough for you to move the needle back to the beginning and start it all over again. It’s a perfect fusion of the German dub techno sound with Afrobeat, resulting in a real “you put your peanut butter in my chocolate” sort of moment. Remember this one at the end-of-year poll time—it will be on my list. On the flip, Wareika Hill Sounds go the more traditional space dub route with their reworking of “Ise Nla,” which would be worth the price of admission alone if it weren’t totally overshadowed by von Oswald’s side. Run, don’t walk, then prepare yourself to float.

Honest Jon’s / HJP 36
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[Todd Hutlock]

Welcome to the Beatz By The Pound year-end roundup for 2006, a veritable smorgasbord of lists, thoughts, and reflections about the current state of dance music. And while all of our writers handed in very diverse ballots, we were able to come to a consensus on a couple of key releases, producers, and labels. Let the madness begin…

(more…)

With longer singles coming back into vogue again, a glance back at the longest chart single in UK history seemed in order. Cleverly timed at exactly 39:58 to get under the 40 minute limitation on UK singles chart entries at the time—it reached number 8 in the summer of 1992—Dr. Alex Patterson and Co.’s “Blue Room” stands as a monolithic signpost for the ambient house movement and remains surprisingly listenable today. It may seem odd to refer to a 40-minute track as anyone’s finest “moment,” but if the moon boot fits…

In direct comparison to the Villalobos’ track, which concentrates on working a single basic idea into an infinite amount of mutations and permutations, “Blue Room” is a relative explosion of musical textures and spaces. If “Fizheuer” is a journey to the inner spaces of one’s mind via beat transmogrification, “Blue Room” is a trip to the dark side of the moon and back, complete with all the sci-fi noises and relevant vocal samples and sound effects you might expect. The track isn’t tight in the least—it’s a free-flowing mélange of sounds (Steve Hillage’s spaced-out guitar licks and bubbling percussive sounds chief among them) and textures, but it’s tethered down by the rock-solid anchors of Jah Wobble’s throbbing bass groove and the gently popping backbeat. The rhythm tracks start around the 6-minute mark, giving the track enough time to establish a mood but not to reach boredom threshold, and Patterson mixes things up from there. With such a wide palette of sounds to mix up and years of experience in this modified ambient-dub style (check back to the KLF’s masterful Chill Out album to hear Patterson cutting his teeth on a similarly long-form piece), “Blue Room” never gets old, never sits still, never blows its cool. It honestly doesn’t sound a second too long. And that bassline… oh, that bassline. It makes you see trails. The sonic detritus is interesting enough to maintain the ear’s interest; the groove is strong enough to keep heads nodding and toes tapping. “Ambient house” may have been coined a few years prior, but one could argue that this single track should play on the term’s Wikipedia page, perhaps over a shifting kaleidoscope of colors and astronomical images.

“Fizheuer” and “Blue Room” take very different paths to get where they are going, and outside of the length, there is very little in common between the two recordings on the surface—in fact, the comparison is a study of contrasts. While the Orb leave more space in their track, they also use far more sounds. While Villalobos uses only two basic pieces to construct his track (horns and drums), he is just as much of a manipulator and his track actually sounds far more dense. While criticisms may abound about both (generally from those with short attention spans), you’d certainly never hear “Blue Room” referred to as an overgrown DJ tool. Still, examining how two very different producers tackle epic-length electronic tracks can be a fun and enlightening exercise, assuming you have an afternoon to kill. Get comfy.

[Todd Hutlock]

Colin James Nagy: In terms of sound and style, there’s nothing particularly new or groundbreaking here, and that’s fine by me. The tried-and-true formula of Basic Channel-style dub techno doesn’t get old to these ears, and this instalment on Scion-seen as a successor to the Chain Reaction imprint-consists of two impossibly deep constructions created from a restricted palate of sounds. Per the style of the sub-genre, there are no clearly defined tones (i.e. discernible hi-hat) in the sound field, but rather everything is blurred together in a wet, spinning haze. “Surface” is the more up-tempo of the two tracks on the release, anchored by a deep, driving kick and space-echo drenched static clips and tones. On the flip, “Immersion” is absolutely essential. It is much more dynamic, building into a swirling crescendo with pointed, golden synth stabs and a bass line that keeps driving deeper and deeper then you thought it could possibly head.

Peter Chambers: There’s a rumbling about in the dubbier parts of the Berlin techno underground: first the See Mi Yah remixes, then the recent Monolake “Alaska Melting” reworks, and now this puppy. Are we witnessing the productive rebirth of Basic Channel, or perhaps even a new sound alliance between the deepest of minimal techno and the maturing dubstep sound? René Löwe and Peter Kuschnereit may still be preoccupied with “nothing much,” but what a wonderful “nothing much!” Ten years on, and nobody (except the rest of the Basic Channel crew) produces dub techno that sounds so beautiful, deep, and timeless. Working with the barest of palettes and the sharpest of ears, the duo have here managed to blend Vainquer’s sound (which tends to a liquidity, the sound equivalent of a pint of Guinness slowly developing on the bar) and Substance’s clangier, mineral/metallic tone palette. The audible result is another two pieces of time-and-space conquering heaven, the very essence of techno stripped of all its tinsel and glowsticks. Amazing, once again.

Surface / Immersion
Scion / SV 01
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Haze is one of those producers whose persistence and willingness to experiment promises to yield occasional gems and eventual masterworks. His compositions, with an emphasis on atmospheric space juxtaposed with interestingly used vocals and well programmed, slightly off-kilter beats have created floor friendly dubspaces and murky pearls for Karloff, 240 Vaults, and his own Contexterrior imprint. “Soul in a Bottle” sees all these formative elements in full-flight—the tension between playfulness and sincerity is brushed smooth and shiny, and the huge kick, interesting static and “incidental” sounds lend a marvellous opening for the hypnotic “three keys from Chicago” melody that carries the wonderful vocal, which seems to float over it all. Following Holger Zilke and Dave Dk’s great Midishower EP reviewed last week, this one is thoroughly ecstatic, summer sunshine music, skillful enough to give the headz goosebumps and make the pretty girls yelp delightfully. The irony of the EP is that even, as the lyrics suggest, “you can’t put soul in a bottle,” it seems like, occasionally, it finds its way frozen into the scratched surface of records.

Kindisch / KD 002
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[Peter Chambers]

Mark Ernestus takes two stabs at afrobeat legend Tony Allen’s “Moyege,” with a vocal mix and a dub. One of his simmering (and I hesitate to call ‘em this) slow jams, the star here is the bass, full-bodied and shaking like a voluptuous maiden at sunset. Offset by Allen’s usual sparkling polyrhythmic percussion work, it’s really the kind of thing one feels almost ashamed to be listening to at home—it warrants a cold drink, the feeling of sand in your toes and such buoyancy of your body that you could swear you just hovered in mid-air for a full second. The “Disco Dub” widens out the bass and pushes it to the point where it’s more a part of your body than a conscious sound. Warmth personified.

Honest Jon’s / HJP32
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[Mallory O’Donnell]