techno
joe.muggs
There couldn't be much that's more techno than for a musician to have had a quarter-century career, only just be releasing his second solo album, and making it a quadruple. David Sumner aka Function is a true scene trouper: starting out in New York in the mid-90s, moving – inevitably – to Berlin in the 2000s, releasing dozens of 12”s, collaborating successfully with other key names like Dominick “Vatican Shadow” Fernow and, for quite some time, with Karl “Regis” O'Connor, and DJing for more nights than the imagination can comfortably encompass in various dark caverns and catacombs.These 17 Read more ...
joe.muggs
In the eight years since theartsdesk last spoke to Carl Craig, a lot has happened. He moved from his native Detroit for a sojourn in Barcelona (partly for ease of access to his summer DJ residencies in Ibiza), then recently returned. He's reinvented tracks from his back catalogue for orchestra, in a style he dubbed "action and adventure" - certainly more John Williams than Debussy - and has performed them as such around the world. He's successfully built the Detroit Love brand for compilations and club nights via his Planet E label, featuring the city's unsung heroes like Stacey Pullen, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Underworld’s first album in three years comes in two versions: a seven-CD box set with a disc of Blu-ray visuals and an 80-page full-colour book or a stand-alone ten-track sampler, which is also included in the gargantuan release. As theartsdesk has only been sent the single disc, we can only comment on the condensed version. This is, however, more than enough to excite interest in the present activities of a band that for a generation of old ravers provided the high point of many evenings on the dancefloor, shouting “lager, lager, lager, lager”. For while DRIFT Series 1 slips comfortably Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Prior to the UK dance music explosion of summer 1988, house and techno were American micro-scenes, geographically restricted to Chicago, Detroit and New York. Small coteries showed interest in the UK, but few thought of making the stuff. Mancunian producers 808 State, however, were early adopters, recording an album that year and later charting with iconic 1989 hit “Pacific State”, a futuristic, Balearic instrumental. 30 years on, their seventh album is both forward-looking and a tribute to old analogue technologies.808 State, once a four-piece, is now the duo of long-term members Graham Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s reckoned that this time next year vinyl sales will have overtaken CDs. It’s still a small market and anyone who thinks vinyl will one day replace streaming is living on Planet Lah-lah. There’s so much coming out even theartsdesk on Vinyl cannot review it all, but what we can do is devote 7500 words to what grabs our attention. We are not limited by genre or by new vs reissue. We eat it all up and want more. So check below for the juice on what’s out there. Dive on.VINYL OF THE MONTHMambo Noir Trio Mambo Noir Trio (Oona)If you see the name Matti Bye on anything, check it out. His 2017 Read more ...
caspar.gomez
As ever theartsdesk’s Glastonbury report arrives after all other media coverage. Despite management pressure Caspar Gomez refuses earlier deadlines. He told Editorial, “The press tent is like an office, a place of work, full of laptops and coffee. Who needs that?” His annual saga doesn’t attempt to compete with Tweeted micro-reviews or ever-available BBC iPlayer festival highlights. It takes a winding road, explores the scenery, the musical-chemical highs and body-worn lows, capturing in fuller form than anywhere else a most singular plunge into Glastonbury 2019.THURSDAY 27th JUNEIt’s been Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Due to exciting matters beyond theartsdesk on Vinyl’s control there’s been a slight delay to this month’s edition but, never fear, to ensure we cover all that’s juicy, we’re doing a special two-volume version, with Part 2 coming next week. Watch this space. As ever, all life on plastic is here, from new to re-issued, from pop to techno to Northern soul and far, far beyond. Dive in.VINYL OF THE MONTHBlack Flower Future Flora (SDBAN/N.E.W.S.)Here at theartsdesk on Vinyl we’re fans of knitwear-loving Belgian five-piece Black Flower. Why wouldn’t you be? Their output so far, three albums and a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Five years ago, the Swedish tech company Elektron began marketing the first version of the Analog Four, an all-in-one instrument marrying analogue oscillators with a digital sequencer, digital processing and a multi-track capability. That past-present interface had been done before but with its integral keyboard this was, at that point, the most user-friendly piece of kit to do so. K-X-P’s IV is built around compositions created on the Analog Four by the band’s main-man Timo Kaukolampi.Notwithstanding the way of formulating the music, those keeping an eye on the idiosyncratic Finns’ oeuvre Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Chemical Brothers just keep on coming. No Geography could as well be called No Surrender. It’s the sound of two men approaching 50 but still keenly attuned to making feet move on the dancefloor. Partly made using old synths relegated to a dusty corner since the duo’s defining first couple of albums, the pair’s ninth (tenth, if you count the sountrack to the 2011 film Hanna) is segued into a flowing whole and, as intended, sweeps the listener off on its beat-driven magic carpet ride.Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons’ initial success came on the back of gigantic hip hop drum-fuelled party tunes Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Let’s cut straight to the chase. Here are reviews of 48 records, running riot across genre boundaries and categorizations, from preposterous pop metal to woodland-themed classical piano pieces. It’s the wildest vinyl ride in review-land, an adventure for the ears. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHVula Viel Do Not Be Afraid (Vula Viel)To describe this record is not to do it justice: Vula Viel are a three-piece investigating the possibilities of the Ghanaian xylophone (the gyil), using it to explore minimalist Afro-jazz potential of the traditional music of Africa’s Dagaaba people. So far so dusty and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Monzen Nakacho is an old and distinguished part of Tokyo that’s renowned for its nightlife. It’s also the moniker that Worthing musician Gary Short has given himself for his 21st century keyboard wizard persona. Short’s output has been called “giallo synthwave” because it owes a certain something to the music of 1970s Italian horror films, most especially prog band Goblin’s synth-driven soundtracks to the movies of Dario Argento. With his second album, however, he has upped the ante and moved well beyond his influences.Almost entirely instrumental, except for light vocoder vocals layered into Read more ...
joe.muggs
The cliché of hard times making for good culture is a distinctly dodgy, even dangerous, one. But there's no doubting at all that the era of Trump, Brexit and all the rest has added an urgency particularly to underground culture, which is leading both to some searching questions about what the music and all its trappings are actually for, and to some blisteringly good music. In particular it's led to club music in certain quarters regaining its sense that putting on a good party that is welcoming to the broadest possible range of people is a political act in itself.There are venues and Read more ...