Catching The Waves

Buried treasure

Here's yet another great release from iD.EOLOGY - one perfectly formed EP of finely produced breakbeat, DnB (sort of), trance and chilled dance. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to follow the vocal instruction in the first track, Columbo in Africa, and "dig this". It's pretty easy when a growling bass helps push you along to confront the tense atmosphere created by some subtle cinematic-ish synths that hum gently in the background.

Move on to Who the F is Tyler Durden (a question I often ask myself) and you'll find a rolling, jazzy bassline backed by some very satisfying breakbeats, echoing pianos and horns and a cool descending synth melody.

Imagine changes the mood and style with a very slick and seductive trance track (I think it's trance - forgive my inexperience) that contrasts quick arpeggios with a throbbing synth that tries to get out of time but doesn't, forming a pleasing contrast.

Those tracks are my highlights but all the other tracks sound just as good. In Relectronic, NK has made a very satisfying album - polished, professional and full of little touches that reward the listener.

Tracks: Columbo in Africa , Who the F is Tyler Durden , Imagine 

Album: [iD.032] NK - Relectronic EP

Songs floating over grassland

[Originally posted Aug '06. This is the last of the confusing updates, I hope.]

The name's Tundra. Karaoke Tundra.

Karaoke Tundra is a Ukraine-born musician currently living in Bratislava (Slovakia). When you hear KT, if I may be so familiar, you know you're in safe hands. He knows what he's doing. But I don't think anyone else does. He can certainly drop what I believe is known as a "dope" hip-hop beat, he knows his way around electronica, and his music introduced me to the "experimental" genre. Sometimes Karaoke Tundra goes...out there. Really...out..........there. Like I said, he knows what he's doing, even if nobody else does.

He's very talented and there's a lot of sly humour in his work. Most of the tracks are two minutes or less. It's all great stuff. Recommended tracks:

For Reservoir Dogs fans: Mr Pink, one of two free tracks on his Gastarbeiter album from Mufonic.

Getting a little freaky: Damn You from his album Residence on the kikapu netlabel.

Hold my hand now: Audiosmog from Schizopanorama on Surreal Madrid netlabel.

Don't forget his Killing Balls EP, which features a few more tracks from Gastarbeiter.

Everyone knows that free music is rubbish...

[Originally posted August '06 - CTW's first recommendation!]

Enough wittering. You came here for the music. Wait, didn't anyone tell you that there isn't any good free music on the internet? If it was any good you'd have to pay for it, right? Right?

This first track might come as a pleasant surprise.

The first track to be mentioned on Catching The Waves isn't actually from an internet label...*blush*...but from a band's website. The Young Punx offer some catchy fun on their website but this offering is a cut above the rest of their output, in my humble and ignorant opinion. It's a really smart blend of 60s pop and drumandbass (I think). It's witty and dynamic. If you like Fatboy Slim this will be right up your alley. [No, it won't. The YPx have removed the track from their website! Fear not, there's plenty of other free and for sale stuff there. The Young Punx are on the way up; my Fatboy Slim comment was on the money - he's a big fan...]

Track: Drum and Bacharach 

Artist: The Young Punx

Helium-Hop

[Originally posted August '06.]

Q: What do Shakespeare's "Scottish play", Grandmaster Flash and Frank Sinatra (I think) have in common?

A: They're all used to great effect by The Broke Gringos on today's CTW recommendation, From Day to Day. The BGs (see what I did there?) are from Cologne, are rather fond of rap and are rather good at it. You'll find a lot of their stuff at the excellent Ideology, a netlabel doing sterling work in Germany.

Most of the Gringos' lyrics are lisped in German and some French, but as luck would have it the track I like the most (and they're all good) is in English. Some clever sampling and spot-on timing results in a unique version of a famous soliloquy. It's immediately funny yet ultimately touching, and I bet it's the most memorable song you'll hear today. So there. And the rest of the album is so hip it's hop. Ouch. Sorry.

Track: From Day To Day

Album: Junk EP by The Broke Gringos

Label: Ideology

Drier Than Dry

[Originally posted Aug '06.] One of my pet hates is the word "funky" because it's almost never used properly. Proper funk has a catchy groove - but it also slips and slides. Funk pauses, trips you up, keeps you waiting and then smacks you upside (but of course) the head with the returning groove. Think James Brown. Yes, I know, I sound old-fashioned; that's because I am. Anyway, I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a track described as funky only to hear a four-to-the-floor dance/trance/techno track. Nothing wrong with that type of music, but I think funk should make you say "Unh!" and "Yeah!" as you dance excruciatingly badly. It's all about antici...UNH!...pation.

Which is why at first I disliked today's CTW selection, Naughty Broken Drums. It didn't claim to be funk but that didn't stop me asking: Where were the horns, the phat bass, the drum breaks and the healthy vinyl crackle that showed that it was recorded in a tiny, clammy Philly studio in the early 70s? (I should point out that I know nothing about funk or indeed pop music in general, m'lud.) But why was it making my posterior wiggle?

Then I had a second listen and invented a new name for the genre: Dry Funk. This music is stripped-down, minimalist funk that is *dons fedora* tight. It's stiff and it doesn't flow - but it's funky. Very clever. Dapayk has come up with a track that keeps adding to a plain beat until the listener is in danger of dislocating something. He builds an outrageously thick, dry rhythm that deserves to be played through huge speakers at unsuspecting socialites. The rest of Dapayk's EP is up to the same high standard.

Recommended Track: Naughty Broken Drums

Album: Black, White, Orange, Lines by Dapayk

Label: Textone

Is there an echo in here?

[Original post from Aug '06]  Yup, I had trouble sizing the picture. Ahem. I gather that tracks that use a huge amount of echo and reverb are often dubbed as...dub. So it is with some confidence that I state that today's first recommendation, Concentration Dub, is a dub track. Plus it has the word "dub" in the title, thus cleverly reinforcing my ice-cold logic in these matters. Anyway, it's a treat for the ears.

My second recommendation, Single Bullet Theory, is an atmospheric recounting of the Kennedy assassination. Any song that can do that and also mention the discrepancies between the official report and eye-witness accounts, while being both spooky and groovy, man, is definitely providing value for money. Especially when it's free, courtesy of Wavespan (a duo from Santa Cruz, California), their eponymous album, and the Monotonik netlabel. The whole album sounds terrific but you may want to try my recommendations first to see if you like it. If you really like it you could always buy a copy of the CD or make a donation to Wavespan here.

Tracks: Concentration Dub and Single Bullet Theory

Album: Wavespan  (by Wavespan)

Label: Monotonik

Test Post

Let's see if this uploading image thing works:

*grunt*

Yay. Don't get excited - it's not me...

"Clear!"...bzzz..."Clear!"...crackle...

....after six months in a coma this blog has sprung to life - after life got in this blog's way.

*Sigh*

I'm so unreliable. Never mind - nobody's watching. Right, I'm giving this place a spring clean, hence the "2007" dates on the more recent posts even though they were actually posted in 2006. Computers are the devil's spawn.

*Another sigh*

Once I work out how to post album covers/pics I shall add them to the previous posts and then forge on with yakking about some of the fantastic free music that the net is currently spraying about like...like...like the sun venting solar flares. Ooh, literary.

If some of you computer nerds wizards out there could tell me how to post pictures I would be most grateful. At the moment I'm right-clicking images and saving them as jpegs but Typepad, the esteemed host of this tempestuous blog, doesn't seem to want to upload the images. If I can solve this problem then Catching the Waves might be marginally less boring in the future.

Right, off you go. A new post will appear any day now. *crosses fingers*