For The Electronica Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001

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FTEL 007 - January 2013

Fanu - Breakbeat Brew EP - guest review by noisemonkey
Lightless Digital download

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"A Matter Of Life And Death" commences proceedings with some stylish breaks driven grooves and chanting. Blending in a bit of 80's style synth work which is almost reminiscent of M83 is a nice change of pace before the drums strike up again and groove the track in to full effect before warped acid lines conclude things like the end of the world.

"Monkey Got Choked" has even more manic stylings on the drums as a triple espresso is kicking in at Fanu's studio. A variety of weird vocal samples emphasise the frenetic mood.

"My Drumming Sucks" is surely an oxymoron in the world of Fanu so let's see what craziness is in store. A cinematic opening salvo of sampledelia regarding drumming abilties moves your feet before the bass gets to work on your bowels. A classic hip hop strut is the main feature of this one precluding more acidic melodies for laser reaching antics.

"Slack And Roll" is a rare excursion into 2 Step for Fanu, bringing with it some classic hip hop samplage and police sirens. Oh for the days of 1995 Emotif and late period Deejay recordings although the bonkers last minute or so of the track reminds you that arrangements and production standards have come a long long way since then.

The "Rescue" remix of "Slack And Roll" casts a sheen of Bass Music and shimmering synth work over proceedings that is pure candy to your ears. Further tunefullness to round off an EP that really showcases a further progression in Fanu's sound to care take care of skillfull notation as well as the expected rhythmical dexterity we've come to know and love from the Finnish breakbeat maestro.

http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthre...reviews%29

Dense & Pika - Crispy Duck EP
Hotflush Recordings 12' / download

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This is diversive and bracing in a technoid kind of way, and for all its Techno rudiments - handclaps; breathing vox; crowd noise; grinding-gears synth streams - it still manages to unsettle. "The fear of negative evaluation may reflect underlying beliefs about being less good than others, different, or not quite up to scratch, and it usually goes with assumptions such as thinking that 'you've got to do things right to be acceptable." commented Gillian Butler in the "Overcoming Social Anxiety" handbook. The reason I mention that is, for one thing, I'd almost freak out negatively if I heard this EP clubwise, yet its elusion is part of the appeal. It feels like poison as I listen to it, letting it into my consciousness, yet at the same time it's great work in the genre which is usually all too much homogenised and saturated by minimal fake-orgasm-steppers. Dense & Pika have carved worthy echoes into Techno.

http://boomkat.com/vinyl/596758-dense-pi...py-duck-ep

Bat For Lashes - The Haunted Man
Parlophone CD / download

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It’s high timing for another Bat For Lashes album after three long years – the storytelling lure of Khan’s “Two Suns” had started to wear off, and “The Haunted Man” definitely continues on a high note, cajoling as many as 5 different soundsets as ‘genre’ contradistinctions together in one track, so they form a clean rhythmic sheet: something Natasha always muses in. Journalists may finally start to see Khan as a female artist with her own musical identity, with her own sense of storytelling as a promising entry on the End Of Year 2012 list. Blending her Pakistani ethnic roots into and beyond the trite Kate Bush comparisons, she does more than “running up hills”; rather, you’re “running too slow” by the time communication and splendour of this album is over. Piano ballad “Laura” is the real tearjerker, a song of heartbreak where the listener is left to fill in the gaps regarding the pain. That filling-in-gaps is a befitting phrase for what I’ll call “occultasms” – the expulsion of emotion at times you don’t even have to hear to place. Haunting indeed, and the best Bat For Lashes album, by far, to date.

http://www.batforlashes.com/

Messages In This Thread
For The Electronica Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001 - by Muttley - 6th January 2013, 17:11

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