These Are Powers has been crafting claustrophobic, paranoid dance music for a while now, but it is with the group's next release on RVNG that the sonic assault really comes to its apex. "World Class Peoples" features a stomping house beat, rumbling bass, Middle Eastern war synths, and truly menacing multi-layered vocals. The sound is something like the perfect mix of the confrontational sexuality of mid-period Gang Gang Dance, the leftfield house aesthetics of Excepter, and a healthy dose of mid-'90s European electro. In fact, one of the track's main synth lines has the feel of a weird reconfiguring of Robin S.'s "Show Me Love." Sweaty basement dance parties will be blaring this for months to come.
Mike Slott's remix of "AM System" by American Men eschews the original's sleepy vocal lines and replaces them with bright, lush synths, radiophonic wobblings, and a dry, steady beat. Though a vocal line still closes the track, its appearance is short enough to allow Slott's dense rework to really shine beyond the original's straight-up indie-rock appeal.
Seven years in the making, Massive Attack's Heligoland doesn't quite carry the comeback expectations their Bristolian trip-hop compatriots from Portishead faced when releasing Third, but that's probably as good thing, as Heligoland isn't in the same league. Although it's better than their 2003 disappointment, 100th Window, and also sees the return of founding member Daddy G, the album is more of a continuation than a reinvention. Read more »
In the mid-'90s, Kompakt head Wolfgang Voigt launched Profan, a sub-label dedicated to the more abstract side of techno and minimal electronics. But with only one release since 2000, it seemed as if the label had gone the way of minimal itself ...until now! Read more »
"The way I work and try to use different styles and mediums is based on a solid restlessness," says Michael Thorsby, best known as graphic-design force PMKFA, from his parents' house in the deep forests of Småland, Sweden. And considering that the country has just been blanketed by a snowstorm, the air there is nearing single-digit temperatures, and Thorsby has spent the day waiting on platforms for severely delayed trains, that restlessness is palpable. Read more »
It seems like Dublin's Donnacha Costello has had a rough time of it in recent years; luckily, he has channeled these emotional peaks and troughs into wildly dense tech-house on his upcoming Poker Flat release, Before We Say Goodbye. Read more »
Artists on the LuckyMe roster most definitely have a thing for R&B divas. First there's Hudson Mohawke's remix of Tweet's "Ooops (Oh My)" single, and now we have Dema hijacking the vocal track from Aaliyah's "One in a Million" for his own rendition of the song. The producer's instrumental is a pleasantly crunk track, complete with a crunchy head-nodding beat and simple synth melodies, that updates Aaliyah's archived acapella for today's dancefloors.
