ALBUMSREVIEWS 9.0
Altered Natives Tenement Yard Vol.3 Eye 4 Eye
Sonic suicide
Danny Yorke aka Altered Natives brings plenty of DIY punk attitude to house and bass music. As outspoken as the man behind it, the sounds of ‘Tenement Yard Vol.3’ — the final installment in this excellent series, or a “suicide note” as he calls it — brim with personality. Each track tells a story, whether it’s about being nice to fellow clubbers or about being hurt by a loved one. On the surface his dirty beats are brash and coated in aggression, but at their heart are idiosyncratic messages all too often forgotten in electronic music. From grimy R&B to tightly syncopated, rushing garage, bass-heavy house to raved-up disco, it’s all there, sprinkled with raw melody or punctuated by ethereal female vocals. It makes for an engaging and arresting ride that’ll have you immediately wondering just what the man will get up to
next.Kristan J Caryl
Legowelt
The Paranormal Soul Clone
9.0 Dutch dance masterpiece
DUTCH producer Danny ‘Legowelt’ Wolfers is one of those no-sell-out veteran cats who consistently create stunning music but never really blow up. It’s probably more by design than accident — he seems happier being a cult concern, feted by the underground, rather than being a darling of the mainstream. Startlingly prolific since 1996, he’s released tunes under a wild array of pseudonyms, ranging from bodypopping Detroit electro space jams to sleazy synth-pop via jacked-up Chicago house/Italo disco hybrids — the latter of which saw him allied to the “Hague sound” that compatriot I-F made famous. All flavours of true electronic funk have permeated his productions, but what is apparent through much of his work is a love of melody, bass and intricate structure. Even his basest booty cuts contain a complexity of arrangement difficult not to marvel at. ‘The Paranormal Soul’ sees him continue the good fight, offering
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up jewels that would make most of his peers shrink with inadequacy. ‘Elements Of Houz Music’ is a crisp, airy Chicago beauty, anchored by slicing snares and tight drums, its central melody heart-tuggingly nostalgic: tears on the dancefloor. ‘Rave Till Dawn’ changes tack, techy stabs rolling out from the off, breakbeats sliding and pivoting in the slipstream of the 4/4: a flashback to strobelit mid ‘90s white labels. ‘On The Tiger Train’ is all warm analog bass and overlapping, cascading Motor City computer jazz, again pulled into relief by a pure dancefloor house beat. ‘I Only Move For U’ could be the crowning achievement, though: a deliriously uplifting acid percolator, with huge chords and breakbeats; the ultimate rush, caught in the moment. All these tracks draw from different eras, different genres of dance music past and present. In Legowelt’s hands they become all his own, and timeless. Ramona Robinson
9.0
Sigha Living With Ghosts Hotflush Ghosts in the machine
While the shift of UK producers towards techno owes more than a nod to Berlin’s caverns of iniquity, Sigha is one who’s stood out by embodying a distinctly British aversion to purity. Avoiding the pitfall of completely ripping off the Berghain aesthetic, the London producer, much like contemporaries Shifted, Truss, and Untold, has instead bolted together an elaborate amalgamation of sounds around this teutonic core, drawing from shoegaze, post-punk and industrial leanings. The undefined atmospheres and clangs of ‘Puritan’ and ‘Translate’ immediately bring to mind the experimental complexity of the Sandwell District and Perc Trax families. Sigha’s varied palette is perhaps most apparent on the album’s final track, ‘Aokigahara’, which builds from silence into a loping series of hazy, distant layers. A techno album swathed with external influences, ‘Living With Ghosts’ does enough to conjure a fantastic and compelling debut. Zara Wladawsky
www.djmag.com
Crosson & Merveille DRM Visionquest DownRightMusical
Ryan Crosson and Cadenza alumnus Cesar Merveille double up for this off-kilter collection of alt-house on Crosson, Seth Troxler, Shaun Reeves and Lee Curtiss’s Michigan imprint, with Classic boss Luke Solomon kindly providing the mixing down duties. There’s little to no adherence to the club incarnation of house music here. Things are considerably less structured than that. The largely beatless ‘Pending’, featuring assistance from Arthur Simonini and Kate Simko, loops and swells. ‘No Hassle’ is jazz house from the Miles Davis school, filling your head with haunted saxophone and off-key piano chords. Title track ‘DRM’ is a 13-minute, trance- inducing epic, an unsettling vibraphone- laden dark house jam, while ‘At The Seams’, once again with Simonini and the dreamlike vocals of Montreal’s Banana Lazuli, is all Steve Reich repetition building to a rapturous climax. Beguiling and quite possibly brilliant. Ben Arnold
8.0 8.0
The Digital Kid vs The World A Minor Digital Experiment The Classic Music Company World-beater
One of two LPs coming from Camp Luke Solomon over the coming six months on the recently revived Classic imprint he runs alongside Derrick Carter, ‘A Minor Digital Experiment’ is a swansong to the moniker he left behind during the ‘90s. Surprising as it is to see it revisited, from first listen it’s easy to hear why — if only for its oddball diversity. Opener ‘Human Bean’, with its pitch-bent frequencies, is an industrial slice of loopy house conversing with the future via a circuit board of analogue machinery. ‘(VERTIGO)’ is a clattering piece of rabid disco-funk, while ‘Shooting Star’ (feat Pezzner) is wholesome melodic deep house. ‘Pass The Toothpaste’ might be quirky beatnik techno, but the most trippy moment is saved for the end, with weird, wonky vagabond blues ballad ‘All The Love You Gave To Me’. Madder than a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party on nitrous oxide, Solomon’s sense of humour is running a royal riot here. Adam Saville
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