Catching The Waves

Spring Clean 4: Going Out On A Limb

This site is known around the globe* for its venerable dictum regarding dance music:

All dance tracks are a third too long.

Yes, I realise that dance tracks traditionally include extended, rather plain intros and outros so that DJs can beatmatch their sets, but the fact remains that most dance tracks, like terrorists, carry excess baggage. However, after intensive research on the subject, CTW can now announce with some certainty that there is a corollary to my (in)famous axiom:

All dance tracks are a third too long unless I say so.

I think that's reasonable. *cough* Anyway, today's Spring Clean gasps over the finishing line at a not-going-to-the-Olympics time of 8'33". Why on earth is it worth hearing? Well, there are two types of dance tracks in this world:

1. Bangers
2. Groovers

Ask Wikipedia if you don't believe me.** Bangers are generally aggressive, high-tempo, and replete with risers and drops designed to prompt wrecked nightclubbers to expose their armpits like they just don't care. Groovers are the beta males of the dance music world: they observe from afar and then quietly seduce the nubile blonde whilst the alpha male is combing his chest hair. In other words, they start off fairly sedately, gradually adding percussive (and percussively melodic) elements until they achieve an irresistibly catchy rhythm.  

Too Much Botox by Alex Medina, a talented and busy DJ-producer originally from Las Palmas in Las Islas Canarias (the Canary Islands if you English speakers insist on getting all Falklandish about it) is an object lesson in squeezing disparate elements into a rapid groove. For example, the first things other than percussion to appear on the track are some lovely, slow synth chords that you'd expect to hear in downtempo jazz. When those same chords are then distorted, panned and moved back in the mix while some bass pops up, your ears will start to twitch.

Seductive things keep appearing throughout: at the two-minute mark, what sounds like a sitar chord acts as an unexpected bridge; tablas/congos drop in at 3.12; vocal snippets punctuate the track here and there, and at 5.50 a simple bassline just squats on the dance floor and digs in. In fact, there are numerous moments when the listener will feel that the bass and/or the main rhythm has kicked in, only to be surprised when it keeps getting just that little bit funkier. As I said: a groover.

Alex Medina - Too Much Botox

This skilful and pleasurable funky minimal comes in a pack of five, the Punos Punof EP, and derives from the credit-to-the-internet Unfoundsound/foundsound netlabel. CTW is not unfamiliar with this excellent supplier of Creative Commons music, as you can read here and here.

You want the album, don't you? Hmm. You'll need to concentrate. In its wisdom, Unfoundsound does not have separate pages for each album in its catalogue. Instead you must visit its "Un releases" section, select albums "39-45" and then choose "unfound42", where you will finally alight on a little place reserved for the Punos Punof EP. Individual mp3s and flacs, and a zipped album will then be yours to keep. Should you need more of Sr. Medina's music, look for his Octupus Vulgaris EP in Unfoundsound's catalogue: it's number 45.

If you enjoy the free music, please consider thanking Alex Medina/Unfoundsound for their efforts or buying something from Unfoundsound's commercial wing, Foundsound.

Alex Medina - Punos Punof EP (download zipped mp3 album)

Unfoundsound "un releases" album catalogue.

Unfoundsound netlabel

*I'm on the internet so technically this is true.

**So gullible. Heh.

Change at Charing Cross for the Bakerloo Line

To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any Broque netlabel album cover painted any colour you want so long as it is black and white. This, the latest in an unbroquen line of drab album covers, does its best to dissuade listeners from exploring Applause Phenomena, a classy minimal EP by Dennis Korsunski (A.K.A. Clapan, otherwise known as Information Ghetto), but Catching The Waves is made of stupid stern stuff. Advanced electronic rhythms from the Russian Black Sea coast via a Bavarian netlabel? Pah. It's all in a day's work for CTW. Chancellor Merkel, put your fat ankles up on a cushion and enjoy some multikulti.

The opener, About Chords, begins with skipping, scratching percussion that forms a spiky bed for the titular synth chords, which are either cold and distant, slathered in reverb and high-pitched delay, or upfront and cuddly. The contrast makes for an enjoyable listen. Yes, a driving hi-hat appears halfway through the track, as agreed in UN Resolution 1998 (Minimal Tropes Being For The Benefit Of Dancefloors), but that's merely there to keep your head nodding: the real interest lies in the off-stage noises and clever use of reverb and echoing pads that tar-and-feather the basic rhythm.

At eight minutes long, today's recommended track is a flagrant violation of CTW's renowned First Law of Dance Music (in short, two's company; three's a crowd), but I forgive it in the same spirit in which I forgive @stephenfry for jawing on and on: to quibble in the face of such good-natured entertainment would be churlish.

Applause Phenomena contains a number of Good Things: beautifully fashioned granular ticks and flecks; a rolling but polite kick drum; a splashy snare; groovy, good-natured vocal phrases; a bass line that sounds like an ogre turning over in his sleep; bursts of applause that are more like white-noise interjections than the usual hackneyed attempt to inject atmosphere; gentle pads and spooky lead synths that almost imperceptibly guide the ear through the plethora of sounds that tease the eardrum from left and right, near and far; and the dawning realisation that the track is unerringly getting groovier and yet more profound while at the same time kicking out like a potato-faced English footballer confronted by a wily continental.

Let me catch my breath for a minute. I'm not used to writing paragraphs. *puff* Right, onwards.

At its best, minimal/techno/dance/insert-suitable-genre-name-here transcends its repetitive origins to become electronica or fast-paced ambient; something that has depth. It's not just about endlessly repeating a four-bar loop and hoping that listeners will dance around a pile of handbags and manbags on a nightclub floor. Enough of my pseudery. Press the little love triangle below and draw your own conclusions:

Information Ghetto - Applause Phenomena (feat. Modul)

You're allowed to dislike it. But you'll have to return my spare snuggie and we can no longer be friends.

After that comes the "Less Softbeat" remix of the same track. It relies heavily on the goodwill engendered by the appearance of familiar elements. Sad to say, it's a competent but rather anonymous track that would have benefited from more melodic or percussive variety.

The "support" in Old Cool Support refers, I think, to the Amen Break-type rhythm underpinning the crunchy and distorted pads and stabs that ready you for a dance-floor banger. However, the appearance of a simple and slow three-note bassline confounds expectations, as does the appearance of a wildly panning and repitching pseudo-harpsichord. Once another synth pops in with a rhythmic hook and is joined by a shower of clicks and high-pitched pops and crackles, the track veers between funky profundity and profound funkiness. It came a very close second to today's recommended selection and is still hoping that drug tests will reveal that it was cheated of glory.

The last track, Snow Report, threatens to disappoint with its extremely unoriginal four-to-the-floor kick intro until superb, machine-tooled incidental noises flesh out the rhythm and warm synths float in from on high to reassure you that time spent listening to this album is time well spent. I'm fond of the brief stop-start breaks made from diamond-hard percussive elements that are dropped in a sea of reverb and then high-passed and panned out to the extreme edge of the stereo field.

Speaking of which, the whole album is a testament to Dennis Korsunki's production wizardry; in places he has squeezed the proverbial quart into a stereo pint pot, relying heavily on the fact that you've probably got two ears. (A mono recording wouldn't be nearly as impressive.) Imagine you're back at your schooldesk and enjoying (ha!) a maths lesson. Forget your pimples and your crush on the teacher, and concentrate on the protractor spread out in front of you. Now imagine a click, pop, burble, snap, drum, synth and bass placed on each line of the 180 degree arch. Each element has its own niche. Imagine further that each sound sits comfortably in its own spatial reverb and has had all its superfluous frequencies cut away. Suddenly, your ears can make sense of the dozens of sounds thrown at you. You can solve quadratic equations. You will go to Harvard and bang as many students with superb teeth as possible. Life is good, all thanks to free CC-licensed music supplied by a hard-working netlabel and a maverick Russkie.

Write 100 times: I must send a thank-you email to Broque netlabel. And comb your hair.

Information Ghetto - Applause Phenomena EP (link to zipped album & individual files)

Broque netlabel (Ich danke Ihnen, meine Kameraden Bayerischen. Bitte können wir etwas Farbe? )

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