Curiouser and curiouser. It never ceases to amaze me how t(r)endencies in dance music collide, mutate, and spawn new monsters. If one of the key refrains of producers (against music journalists) is that we keep on pigeonholing them against their will, then the reply should be a demand for some sympathy—how else are we to get a handle on all this flux? This EP is so thoroughly under the influences that it staggers—there’s crunk, hip-hop, house (bouncy French, disco, micro, electro, whore), plus nods to rave, all packaged with lashings of snappy pop.

First listen reminded me of my mother, telling me that Big Black was “headache music.” I didn’t think Songs About Fucking was, but this EP is colorful like a mouthful of gummies, high like your surging blood sugar, and sickly like your stomach after the binge is over. The original has got the cut, paste, and bounce of Akufen’s old classics like “Deck the House” and “Quebec Nightclub.” The problem with the track (to these ears at least) is the minor-key string sample over the top of the mix, which abrades the party below.

Riton’s mix is the übermanic wedding of the original’s housey parts to full-bore synth-electro madness. Like Alter Ego’s remix of Partial Arts a few months back, if the kids in your club don’t dance to this, they’re dead. That’s not a threat, it’s a medical fact. The “Drowning” mix by Surkin continues with the cut and spazz, but this time is matched with sirens, rave atmospheres and big-room house ass. Headache music! (Dear god, I’m turning into my mother.) Finally, Beckett and Taylor take their hands off the plow long enough to outclass their fellows with a mix that sounds surprisingly adult and sophisticated by comparison, while still keeping things well hectic.

It feels odd to praise an EP I have difficulty listening to from start to finish, but this is exemplary, and if you’re a “working gal” (in the DJ sense) this is a warhorse for the whore-house.

Naive France / Institubes / NV 809166/ INS 12017
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[Peter Chambers]

“Personality” is often a codeword for “obnoxious”—but even when it is, there’s an affectionate connotation that tacitly states that it’s no bad thing. With this in mind, let me tell you: this EP has personality. Both Sid (Pan/Tone) le Rock and DJ (Adolf Noise) Koze take a “one eyebrow and a brimming glass raised” approach to production—if their methods of mayhem intersect, it’s at a point where irreverence meets festivity to do the wild thang on your mixer.

And boy are they hard at it here—the original manages to conjugate a moody tech-house number to an attack-ready electroid track with the kind of lubricated ease that fractionalises all its friction. Koze’s remix grabs the quirky parts by their love handles and wrestles them into a wheezing microhouse groover that sounds like Moodymann dreaming of pre-millenium Herbert. There’s even a vocal sample that sounds like ‘80s Iggy Pop. The track just keeps growing and morphing, even featuring a signature Koze anti-climax breakdown and breaking strings falling into the abyss with all the vocal snippets. Just these two tracks would be enough to give this work a big thumbs up, but wait kids, there’s more.

“Es Scheppert Wie Def Leppard” reveals the entire vocal from Koze’s remix, but here it leads a wonky-ass pop number that rocks like a baby elephant on a rowboat. Then there’s “Keep it simple, stupid” which shows both producers back in their Kompakt Extra/Sender mode and about to saw shit up. I nearly killed my own cereal playing this over a hungover breakfast this morning. Interestingly, Koze and le Rok’s noise tendencies combined seem to make something like a Basteroid. But that’s what happens when people this depraved get naked.

Cereal/Killers / c/k02
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[Peter Chambers]

I’d always thought that Narcotic Syntax was nothing more than Marcus Nikolai’s “silly side”—the kind of tracks that might have resulted when the dentist/label owner reached for his sampler not a moment after taking his snout out of the gas mask. I mean, “Reptile Sweat Accelerator”? “Muff Diver?” Whose madness is this? Punning Germans? Really?! Well, as it turns out, Narcotic Syntax is actually Yapacc and James Dean Brown, with the ribald puns being the work of the latter. Narcotic Syntax have been popping up on the Superlongevity compilations since the word go, and their Latinized, percussive microhouse jumped a zany inch out at you after the sometimes flatlining funk of other überminimal trackmakers.

“Provocative Percussion” takes you from this context to where the title would suggest, with four drum swamped tracks that would work wonderfully well as tools, provide the raw materials for a whole batteria of loops, or carve things up on their own. “Blast Excavation” sets the agenda, with a slow building heave of hits which add, conjugate, and multiply as the track unfolds. A background listen lends the impression of a straight-ahead barrage, but closer ears expose endlessly proliferating layers of grooves, breaking down, breaking apart, reforming, but always marching onward.

“Descarca Narcotica” is a re-presentation of their track “Ping Pong Voodoo” from Superlongevity 3 which introduces the old versions groove to the melodic equivalent of a leopard-skin couch in a mondo cocktail lounge. While somehow not as directly satisfying as their work incorporating vocals (check the hilarious “Raptor’s Delight”), this is an engaging and useful EP for anyone who wants to add more than a pinch more drums to their box.

Wir / WIR 005
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[Peter Chambers]

I first met Laszlo on the dancefloor, in December. I think I was a bit bored, maybe a little tired—and definitely quite drunk. I felt that sudden urge to find a corner and curl up into a ball. But then this outrageous track faded into the mix. Wowzers. I whooped, gripped my hair, then did what any drunk trainspotting idiot would do—I marched right up to the DJ and asked “What the fuck is this?”

Turns out I was listening to “Bleep Me Daddy,” the A1 on Laszlo Beckett’s Plowtrax Volume 1 EP. And what a sound, too—something of the rambunctious “oompah” of the old Wishmountain tracks, but with the hypercollage sensibility of Akufen or Ark, and a little something extra. On the ‘phones, the density and diversity of the samples used is conspicuous—live drums, real hand claps, pitched-up toms—and over that, the crazy, malfunctioning synth equivalent of a bad balloon someone just let go of. The long track on the B continues the madness, with a frenzied, shouted vocal over the top of a ridiculously intricate collage of live drums and bass, sounding like nothing much except Beige or Lump. “Keep on Counting,” the B2, takes things down a few pegs intensity wise, continuing the same sampledelic approach, but in a more atmospheric vein not dissimilar to moments on the recent Audio Werner EP reviewed here a few weeks back.

A lot of cut-up microhouse can suffer through its inherent boisterousness (or cause suffering at least)—like a four-year old stuffed full of gummy bears, things can get really annoying really quickly. But this is easily one of the more accomplished EPs in this vein for a while. Fun fun fun ‘til your daddy takes your farming implement away. Keep you’re eyes on Laszlo, and just hope he keeps his Hand on the Plow.

Hand on the Plow / HOTP006
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[Peter Chambers]

The first offering from Mathew Jonson and his drum ‘n’ bassier brother Nathan (aka Hrdvision) doesn’t sound too different from what you’d imagine it to be—squelching, menacing bass melodies set against housey breakbeats—but there is a warped sense of structure and an abundance of quick and filtered edits that makes it hard to fully grasp. Make no mistake, this is involving head music, but perhaps too involving for dancefloors.

The convoluted funk of the title track, which could be snuck into an adventurous dubstep set, would rather run in circles instead of leading you somewhere. On the B-side, a cut up of Mathew’s “Revenge of the Zombie Bikers” becomes more detached and solemn than the original, the famous bassline sounding closer to Kode 9 than Carl Craig. Worth investigating.

Wagon Repair / WAG 021
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[Michael F Gill]

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…)

Tadd Mullinix has revealed himself to be one of the most remarkable and idiosyncratic producers this side of Ann Arbor, effortlessly alternating between dense, smoky hip-hop grounded beatz under his Dabrye alias and acidic jack tracks, either cleaner (as James T. Cotton) or filthier than an aging rock-star’s hard drive (as TNT, with Osborne, or here, as JTC). This is some of the most seriously monged, script-flipping munt music out there folks. Watch your pets run yelping from the room as you put it on. Hell, play it at a party and watch everyone except the dude on mushrooms completely lose their shiznit. To me, “The Sound of Winedrinking” is more like the sound of a dreaming drum machine with all the freakquencies of its unconscious thoughts streaming freely across its dozy circuits. “Psychedelic Mindtrip”? Well, mind the title, then dig right in. This side gradually piles on the hits and effects until the whole swirling mélange finally goes off like a howl from a bent head. Freaky stuff, indeed.

Crème Organization / Crème 12-29
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[Peter Chambers]

Sean O’Neal (Someone Else) comes to Sender with the label’s most interesting release in quite a while. “Thirty One Times” is based around a chopped up guitar riff and a weird vocal sample, with a tight jacking groove. This record will work on any floor—minimal, electro, house—it doesn’t matter, this is infectious and brilliant. “Larry’s Circus” meanwhile is deeper but keeps the enjoyable and slightly wacky feel of this 12” going, with great random stabs of sampled vocals and piano keys. Definitely a change of pace for everyone involved, but still great dancefloor music.

Sender / send061
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[Ronan Fitzgerald]

If there’s one thing London based Soul Jazz Records knows, it’s how to keep their collective fingers in a multiplicity of pies. Though best known for insanely high-quality compilations of classic and obscure reggae, funk, jazz, and soul, over the past few years they’ve been quietly building a stable of solid artists of their own—the great Matt Edwards project Rekid, awesome electro from Bell, and afro-house from Osunslade are just a few of the acts that have seen release. Tetine are a Sao Paolo-based duo that were instrumental in both the recent Mr. Bongo Funk Carioca compilation and the outstanding Brasilian post-punk collection The Sexual Life of the Savages. “A Historia De Garca” draws more on the latter sound than the former, with a slight, almost menacing down-tempo groove that cuts swathes of unease before breaking into a clean 80’s DX-7 synth lead that evokes the mid-period sound of Cabaret Voltaire. Though the gurgling bassline is cold Northern minimalism at its finest, the drums are a pure shot of baile funk. A startling combination of influences and ideas that I’m still working out. Definitely one to watch.

Soul Jazz / SJR 150-12
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[Mallory O’Donnell]

Before I begin my gushing again for another Hands on the Plow release, I’d like to take a quick moment to wipe off the drool and give a quick criticism that has marred the label so far. That is, “where you gonna hide” Beckett and Taylor? With each passing year between releases, I’ve only been able to carry these tumbling tracks with the sad fact, like a hole in my pocket, that I’d have another year to wait for the next. No more, damn it. With Todd Burn’s recent Influx profile on the label, there’s no asterisk that footnotes my impatience for the label’s next release after (Hired New Hands). The opening cut “Where There You Been Gone Find It” takes bare-bone house structure and tickling voice-tweaks while adding the one thing that might describe the Hand on the Plow phenomenon in a short sampled nutshell: the sound of a screw twisting into a knot of wood. For all the group’s accumulated descriptions as loose or haphazard, their samples find that specific texture that is able to be twisted to the point that the underpinning screw will never fall out. Caro amplifies it, remixing the duo’s earlier track, “Hand on the Plow” with a sure touch. B-side “Hoody” might contort less, but the track’s slow burn makes up for any absence of revolution and finishes out another solid single.

Hand On The Plow / hotp003
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[Nate DeYoung]