Catching The Waves

Slightly Intricate

Pixel Mixel by Bitbasic has been festering on my hard drive for quite a while. You see, I've already reviewed two of his albums and so I'm wary of appearing blinkered in my choices. In my defence, I declined to review his most recent free outing, Sprinkling Rainbows, because I found it lacklustre. However, talent will out. (Google Translation: I love this and hope you will too.) Released two months ago by Cologne's Rec72, one of the best CC netlabels around, Pixel Mixel offers 11 tracks of bluesy, glitchy, swinging, drill-and-bass goodness, and confirms the Bitster's status as a musician to follow. That doesn't mean you can stalk him or search his dustbins.

Now, I hope I don't offend anyone, but it seems to me that quite a lot of IDM/jungle/electronica seems intent on making listeners' headphones flap like a crane who's just aborted a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Over-excited by the heady glitching and sampling possibilities of computer music, some artists tend to throw glitch after squawk after screech at their tracks and, understandably, can forget some of the compositional (Bit)basics, although I readily admit that that is their prerogative, and good luck to them. However, Pixel Mixel, like the previously reviewed Grating Rainbows and Leonard, contains melodies and riffs and, blessed relief, remembers to ring the changes with different tempi and a broad palette(SP) of sounds.

To continue this deadly dull riveting line of reason, your Honour, I should add that there are three main strands to Bitbasic's music and all of them are on display here. I give you exhibits A, B and C (and recommend that your Wigness give special attention to the jazz guitar-infused, mesmerising and schizophrenic title track):

(A) Lullaby-like melodies, often formed from bell-like tones: Bitbasic - An Opener

(B) Blistering, jungle-cum-breakbeat glitchy workouts and (C) swinging, swaggering, snap-your-hips downtempo blues riffs (I refer you to the sections at 1:53 & 4:05): Bitbasic - Pixel Mixel

But all that is irrelevant. What matters is that Bitbasic's music is melodic, funky and entertaining. His tracks are well-structured, varied in both texture and tempo (this is not as prevalent in electronica as one might think) and contain tunes that will spring from your lips while you're in the bath/supermarket/jail.

Fish Restaurant combines soothing and soaring synth arcs with an utterly mad glitch breakdown about two-thirds of the way through; Milk is as mellow and atmospheric as a Pink Floyd/Lemon Jelly mash-up (I love the stabs of distorted noise that sound like a shorting electricity sub-station); and Oily Slither will appeal to the millions tens of you out there who like to hear roughed-up synths swing in a downtempo, bluesy manner. I must also mention Sift If You Like, whose wildly panning, now-it's-clean-now-it's-dirty bass is joyfully funky. All of the tracks mentioned are stuffed to the gunnels with extraneous noises, but these are slotted in so skilfully that they enhance the listening experience.

If Pixel Mixel had turned up at the weigh-in with a nice round figure of, say, eight tracks, it would be a knock-out, an almost certain winner of the yet-to-be-invented "Netlabel Album of the Year" award. As it is, it's still a marvellous release (I like all the tracks, really) and makes me thankful, yet again, that artists like Bitbasic are having such fun with the Creative Commons model. On second thoughts, it would still get my vote. I'm so soft.

(This may come as a surprise to newcomers to netlabel land, but fans of CC music often have to dodge a double-edged sword wielded by, no, not record label executives, but the artists themselves, lusting madly after triple-CD concept albums and the chance to release 18 of their best tracks in one shiny package. Many CC releases would be all the stronger if artists could refrain from spreading themselves too thinly.)

If you like the album, try Leonard and Grating Rainbows and put together what will be a very entertaining playlist that will make your friends considerably less trendy than you. Then please do your good deed for the day and send Bitbasic and/or Rec72 a thank you email.

Bitbasic - Pixel Mixel (link to individual files and zipped album)

Rec72 netlabel (So cool es schmerzt.)

Bye. What? No, I'm going. I need a crate of beer salad. What do you mean you can't get enough of Bitbasic's creamy, crunchy goodness? (Ewww.) All right, here's what I'm going to do. Just for you, I'm going to ruin my reputation for impartiality and welcome another old friend back to CTW. It just so happens that there's a stonkingly good Bitbasic track on another Rec72 release and it comes with a beautifully relaxing album picture that any ambient artist would treasure.

Heh. Yes, Professor Kliq is back in town and this time he's brought his lab rats. I'll be brief because my brain is tired and so are your eyes. Download this and you'll own All Control, a funking Big Beat track as only the Prof knows how to do it (woody synth leads ahoy!) and four remixes of said track (one of which will confirm that Bitbasic has just as distinctive a style as PK's). The remaining tracks get three thumbs up - I must see the doctor about that - and a "We're not worthy" bow to Funkmeister Zentraal, otherwise known as Rec72. (I'm sure they're following me down the street. I must secure my dustbins.) Anyway, wrap your shell-likes around this:

Professor Kliq - All Control (Harder Than the Hard Version)

The man's not ready for the bathchair just yet, is he?

Sincere apologies to the obviously talented Pisu, Akashic Grenade and RoybOt for not bothering to write a proper review of their, and I quote, "perfectly sutured gabba techno dubstepped breakbeats" but my laptop has run out of ink. All Control is good, clean fun and packs a punch. It's also free. Enjoy the weekend.

Evil Kliq - All Control Remix EP (link to individual tracks and zipped album)

Rec72 netlabel (again)

No Doubting Thomas

Regular readers will know that it's my long-term ambition to make CTW redundant, superfluous and generally as irrelevant as BP's PR department. To that end, I sometimes add similar websites to my "General Netlabel Sites" category, an honour so highly regarded in the Creative Commons music world that it reacts as though a new star had ascended to the heavens. (Yeah, right.) And lo, it came to pass that yours truly looked upon the works of one Thomas Rauskamp and was well pleased.

Thomas is the editor of Germany's Beat magazine (it's similar to the UK's Computer Music Magazine), the only Hauptstraße periodical I know of that devotes time and space (reviews, interviews and roundtables) to the Creative Commons netlabel scene. Germany's position, Cologne's in particular, as Netlabel Zentraal makes me wonder, in a chicken-meets-egg analogy, if Beat spurred on the CC music movement there or vice versa. It's rare for a commercial publication to take the free music scene so seriously, but Beat does so because it realises that it's fun, refreshing and reflects the changes that the internet has wrought upon popular culture.

Thomas's enthusiasm for the scene is so great that he has forsaken all notions of propriety and started blogging reviews of CC albums, an idea which, as we all know, is monumentally stupid. More to the point, he reviews frequently and with great insight, and invariably explains various aspects of the netlabel scene while doing so. As such, I urge you to turn your traitorous backs on CTW and slake your thirst for good, legally free music by visiting Thomas' Posterous as soon as you can. If you do, you'll wonder why you ever turned to heroin and crack to obliterate the yawning mental chasms that opened while you waited...and waited...for the next CTW post. No, don't thank me, meine leiblinge, thank Thomas: he's the one doing all the heavy lifting.

What's that? You don't believe that there are much better free music sites than this one? Are you telling me that you are...

*digs deep into my vault of puns*

...doubting Thomas? (Sorry, sorry. That was a particularly egregious joke, a low blow in the fight for Creative Commons credibility. I won't do it again.) If you visit his website, you'll find lots of lovely netlabels to explore, and you'll have found a great new resource for squeezing enjoyment out of this magical online world we call Duhweb, or Dasveb, as my German friends refer to it. Look, trust me. I should know all about these things, having been reviewing free music for a few years. After all, I've been at it for so long, I'm preposterous.

*rimshot*

Suck it, bitches.

Thomas' Posterous

Eat This, Facial Recognition Software

 

Once upon a time, it was fashionable among the music press to denigrate heavy rock, prog rock and heavy metal (think Led Zep, Deep Purple, Yes, Rush, Motorhead) as boringly repetitive. The mantra went that rock relied too much on a single riff played over and over again ad nauseam, with endless guitar and, save us, O Lord, drum solos for light relief. Where was the innovation, the rebelliousness, the spunk? Hence, said the poet, punk. Almost overnight, the Gods of Rock were kicked upstairs to Valhalla, from where they grimaced at the usurpers who had saved music from the tyranny of repetition by thrashing out three-chord riffs at four beats to the bar. No, I don't quite understand it either.

Which brings me to electro. Or house. Or fidget house. Or fuss-budget techno doodah or whatever new genre has spawned on the sticky floors of European nightclubs. Today's slab of sound hails from Italy's Sostanze netlabel and features - how shocking - repetitive riffs in a four-to-the-floor situation. Why don't the critics stamp on such music as they did for whiskery rock? Three reasons:

1. The sonic variation inherent in intensely filtered synth riffs sustains listeners' aural interest. (Impressed? Yes, my brain is a sponge of pleasure.)
2. For all its repetition, electro contains more rhythmic variety than the average 70s rock song, due to breakdowns and glitches, although prog rock has a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card. Rush is/are exempt from this discussion anyway 'cos they are fab.
3. Rockers, bless 'em, can't dance. Q.E.D.

Raver Boom by Bebop The Dog is a five-track EP that minds its manners. Most of the tracks are less than five minutes long and all start quite sedately before dropping an electro bomb a minute or two later. My recommended track features no intellectual fibre whatosever (it rhymes "Aztecer" with "ass-kicker") but has a considerable amount of what car fans call "grunt". Two minutes in and your undercrackers will thank you.

Illstm - Moctezuma (Bepop remix)

It's a little raw in places, but it's energy on a stick, isn't it? And it's free.

The start of Intro is deceptive - keep a finger on the volume control or else the absolutely monstrous rising tone will pop something dear to you, be it speakers, eardrums or other body parts. Bebop The Dog gives you 60 seconds to recover before unleashing a riff that's stickier than toffee candy floss. The same could be said for the second track (which might actually be the EP's highpoint) Come Back and, er, all the other songs. (Who mentioned repetition?) I'm curious as to how the dancefloor will receive these tracks - they lack the pristine production of a top studio and producer - but I'm sure they'd provoke one or two hipsters to bust a move and flutter their eyebrows at the DJ.

Right, onwards. The title track (Raver Boom, for those who aren't taking the smart drugs) bounces cheerfully under a ragga vocal and some Daft Punk low-pass filtering. Bad Boy has fun swapping its introductory pitch-wobbling synth riff, dropping it for a fairly mellow electro bass riff (if there is such a thing) and thus embarking on a stop-start odyssey that gives poor dancers some cue points with which to regain their dignity. I laughed at the dog bark that bursts into one break. The dub-like siren is the icing on the wobbly cake.

The EP ends with Loop a Looza, the highlight of which is the dive-bombing bass line. It's not the most memorable of tracks, mainly because the dive-bombing bass line will interfere with your short-term memory.

In short, Raver Boom will supply electro, fidget and (my eyes!) nu rave fans with the recommended daily intake of breakdowns, white noise sweeps, bouncing kick drums and gritty bass lines. I am therefore grateful to Bebop The Dog and Sostanza netlabel for the free CC fun. If you enjoyed the album, please show your gratitude by sending them a "thank you" email or a donation or a bill for your new hearing aids.

Bebop The Dog - Raver Boom (individual files & zipped album at archive.org)

Bebop The Dog - Raver Boom (ditto, direct from Sostanze netlabel).

Sostanze netlabel