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.

Soap Opera

Listening to the various tracks from a newly-discovered good album is like seeing familiar numbers pop up in the first few seconds of a national lottery draw. The first appearance is pleasing and so is the second; the third gives you a sense of satisfaction and achievement; two more good ones appear and you jump on your chair; one more pops up and you scream at the TV/stereo/neighbourhood that you'll devote your life to living in a huge chateau others less fortunate than you if the last two numbers are the ones you want. If you're like me, you'll end up with a lingering sense of the futility of life and a muddy sofa. But fear not - at least CTW has some free CC music for you to hear after you've stopped shaking your fists at fickle Fate.

Your post-lottery placebo takes the form of Bu-Bu-Bubbles by Foam, an English musician about whom I know little, for which I blame Wikileaks. If only he'd insulted a potenate or two.

There aren't many traditional musical elements (melody, harmony, development) herein. The eight tracks might best be described as beatless minimal and melodic ambient; parts of it are certainly experimental. Foam has a habit of combining featherlight tics and swirls with knocks and bangs that push up hard against loudspeaker cones. The good news is that his productions skills make his EP a palatable listen.

I'll start with the album's seventh track, Widget, because I'm a hip-swinging mo-fo who can't count. The first thirty seconds of Widget are nigh-on silent; the next minute consists of a metallic sound (the widget?) carrying out Chinese water torture (not quite the same as American waterboarding, my pedantic and politically correct chums) on the listener's frontal lobes before an answering beep pans back and forth. The only other element is a lo-fi organ sound that plays a couple of chords before the track (and the listener's lust for life) peters out. I've decided via a process of elimination that it's an experimental meditative piece - because you certainly can't whistle it, sing it or dance to it. (And I'm running out of brackets.)

Next up is a new piece of technology that will augment the planet's already over-intrusive surveillance systems. Gum is full of synths that are pitched so high and, towards the end of the track, become so shrill that only people under forty will be able to hear them. If you can't hear them, you're too old or a Motorhead fan or you play banging techno in your tarted-up hatchback. Or all three. I'd like to see that Venn diagram.

That's got the two most challenging tracks out of the way. You'll have noticed, particularly with Gum, that the sound quality is superb. So it is with the first track on the album, Day-To-Day, where the toy-like sound of a looping nine-note melody forms a musical backbone, around which is wrapped Geiger Counter-ish glitches, and percussive one-shots that sound like out-takes from Wall-E. It's a happy track.

Crab Attack is not a musical description of a naval doctor's waiting room on a Monday morning.  Instead, you'll be faced with low-passed, bubbling sine waves, noises reminiscent of a fridge that's been left open, and some glitchy percussion that Riverdances right up against your eardrums.

The two minutes of Trouble remind me of the relentless music used to brainwash Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. Play it while switching your kitchen lights on and off and the reverberating, ambient washes will have you under the KGB's thumb in no time. By the way, Caine + 1960s + John Barry are widely acknowledged as a very good thing indeed. Resistance is futile: you're now under Jeff Bezos's thumb.

Bumbleebee is the type of track that's starting to pop up on the soundtracks of indie puzzle games: a half-formed melody from an inoffensive synth with lots of glitches and bells popping up now and then to keep you awake. Like many such tracks, they will burble away in the background so that you can concentrate on other matters - but if you sit down and listen to them, they will mesmerise.

I've left Offthesky's remix of Madness until last to reward your perseverance. It improves on the well-built but bland original (think Jane Russell) by blending minimal with ambient to become something more enticing (think Sophia Loren). Your clapped-out Nokia/it-looked-ok-in-the-catalogue Panasonic/of-course-I-didn't-mortgage-the-house Bang & Olufsen will enjoy it.

Foam - Madness (offthesky reinterpretation)

I must explain to the trendier of my listeners that Archipel netlabel released Bu-Bu-Bubbles when wing collars and monocles were the height of fashion. My apologies to the label (and its enlightened policy of making their commercial albums available for free after a few months on sale) for taking so long to leave the Sea of Despond, crawl onto the beach, walk upright and develop ears.

I've tagged the album as "experimental" because CTW doesn't have a paradoxical category. There aren't many albums that could be described as "easy to listen to" but not "easy listening". Foam has a spiritual, transcendent quality. If you're looking for a non-theological musical path to spirituality/nirvana/chocolate/becoming a hipster emo, you could do a lot worse than listen to Bu-Bu-Bubbles, contemplate the ineluctable modalities of life and wonder whether it might help to use a different set of lottery numbers next week. Or you could send a thank-you email to Archipel or - the horror! the horror! - buy one of their commercial albums.

Foam - Bu-Bu-Bubbles (link to individual files & zipped album)

Archipel netlabel

 

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? )

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

Priceless Music

It's official: Catching The Waves is the world's first zombie Creative Commons music blog. Yes, I've killed it, buried it and sowed the grave with lime, but here it is, ready to rake its filthy, jagged fingernails across the ears throat of anyone it meets. Honestly, it's not my fault.  I've finished with the damned thing but something I did in December has just raised its ugly head (out of the grave, as it were) and needs hitting with a sharp-edged spade. Besides, I know you're keening with grief at the demise of CTW, and this post will recommend a place where you can find free tunes aplenty. I'm so lovely.

Let me take you to a board meeting circa 2006. Around the polished oak table are heavies from WFMU, an American free-form non-commercial radio station that has been broadasting from New Jersey since 1958, and legal beagles from the Office of the New York State Attorney General. Think ceiling fans, drawn blinds and cigar smoke.

The chief lawyer twangs his red braces and announces that WFMU is to make contemporary music of all genres available to everyone across the state and compile a podsafe online music library.

"What am I, chopped liver?" asks a sweating radio luminary who has seen too many Woody Allen movies. "Who's going to pay for this smorgasbord?" he adds, hoping to sound sophisticated.

"Fugeddabout it," responds the lawyer, doing his best Chazz Palminteri impression. "Da Noo Yawk State Music Fund...

*CTW ignores the "You are offending millions of people" pop-up warning*

...is gonna ante up the dough. Da big record companies have been running a payola racket and we're giving youse somma da court settlements."

Hands are shaken and brows are mopped. But what to call this new archive of free music, this music archive that is free? Cigars are chomped, generic Italian dishes digested (as is one Chinese take-away, ordered by a newbie lawyer who hasn't yet been hazed at the local Masonic lodge), and legal pads filled with possible titles. At 3am, they have it: the Free Music Archive.

Bada-bing bada-boom.

In April 2009, the website went live under the joint management of WFMU and some non-profit community radio stations and venues. Go there and you'll find a constantly growing library of free music that you can listen to and download. There are also short artist biographies and links to the musicians' websites should you wish to investigate further. If you're a little overwhelmed by the volume of music and not sure where to start, investigate the curators' recommendations or take a look at the FMA's constantly updated charts. I'll let the site itself take over:

Inspired by Creative Commons and the open source software movement, the FMA provides a legal and technological framework for curators, artists, and listeners to harness the potential of music sharing. Every artist page will have a bio and links to the artists’ home page for users to learn more about the music they discover via the Free Music Archive. We also seek to compensate artists directly. Artist, album and song profiles will contain links to buy the full album from the artist and/or label’s preferred vendor(s).  Users can also “tip” an artist if they like what they hear, sending a donation directly to the artists’ PayPal account.  Artist profiles include tourdates, encouraging users to step away from the glowing computer screen and see some real live music.

Legally free music is still in for a bumpy ride, in my opinion, especially if it becomes truly popular. It remains to be seen whether the Creative Commons approach and the similar format adopted by the FMA can withstand the rigours of the internet. It's early days for the FMA (which will be refined as it grows in popularity), but it clearly has the potential to be a superb asset for fans of legally free music. Fingers crossed, everyone.

Anyone can visit and use the site, although music and editorial content is posted on an invitational basis - which brings me to the December stuff I mentioned.

*switches on megaphone*

AND NOW, AT LAST, SOME MUSIC. BUT FIRST, WITH THANKS TO ENGADGET, A JAPANESE ROBOT WILL PERFORM AN INTERPRETATIVE BREAK-DANCE SEQUENCE TO CONVEY MY JOY AT FINALLY KILLING CTW. TAKE IT AWAY, MANOI GO:

Yeah, baby.

The FMA were idiotic kind enough to invite me to put together a compilation cum playlist of tracks. They'll be familiar to regular visitors to CTW, but I hope they will serve as a good antidote to the "All free music is rubbish" argument. To whit: some free music is superb. I am most grateful to Cameron Perkins, the Culture Program Assistant at creativecommons.org, and Jason Sigal, FMA Managing Director, who were very patient with me.

To give you a taste: Karaoke Mouse - Shanghai Reggae (DJ Side's alternate take)

The Catching The Waves FMA "Mix" (I'll make you go via the Creative Commons so you can bask in the glory of the CTW logo, which is made of plasticine and a lot of swearing.)

The Free Music Archive

Eurotunnel! Thou Shouldst Be Living At This Hour

Last month, 1.2 million Norwegians sat down and watched Bergensbanen, a documentary showing ...wait for it...seven and a half hours of the beautiful snow-laden, mountainous train journey from Bergen, on the west coast of Norway, to Oslo, spiritual hometown of Earth's leggy blondes.

The NRK, the state-owned broadcasting company, has released the entire documentary under a 3.0 CC licence, meaning anyone can download, copy, remix and transmit the result, as long as they  provide full attribution. (Please refer to the site for relevant details.)

Ambient artists across the world are now flipping out. But the video is not just for cuddly, tea-drinking, sandal-wearing ocarina players. Meat-eaters are allowed to slice and dice Bergensbanen. Please do so.

What, not interested? Are you trying to tell me that nearly eight hours of a train journey might be less interesting than navel fluff? Shame on you. Here's a snippet of the journey through Finse, which doubled as the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Look, if George Lucas decided that the place was exciting, that's good enough for me.

*thinks about the prequel Star Wars trilogy*

It's still worth watching. Three cheers for imaginative Scandinavian state-run broadcasting systems and national rail networks!

*thinks about last sentence*

I need to get out more.

Found via Wired. I'm so cheap.

The Glue Factory Beckons

It has long been my intention to make Catching The Waves superfluous to requirements. Some of the snarkier of you out there may have thought that that day was reached at least a couple of years ago, but it has come to my attention that there are now quite a few folks who are actively promoting the cause of CC music, whether they be musicians, netlabels or CC portals. I'll keep CTW going for a bit longer, but I think it's only fair to remind my rabid, locust-like readership that there are plenty of people who do what CTW does and more, only far more frequently and much more professionally.

*Millions of voices cry out: "Freedom!"*

Not convinced? I give you Exhibit A: Phlow's Advent calendar. (I've burbled on about Phlow before, and about how they're a force for good. If CC music ever joins the mainstream, Phlow will hopefully be at the heart of it.) Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that if you're interested in Creative Commons music and would like to know more, you could do a lot worse than pop over to Phlow right now and open a few windows in their beautiful Advent calendar, which contains various netmusic luminaries' "Best Creative Commons Music Moments in 2009". Hidden behind each window are five-track mixtapes, five recommended netlabels and five recommended albums for 2009. In short, you'll find many interesting things to hear and explore, thus helping to make CTW less relevant and more redundant, something that my bed and sore ears are only too happy to admit.

But be warned: Phlow's standards slip sometimes. Don't believe me? I give you Exhibit B: click on the outmoded recording format and enter a world of pain.

That Wallpaper Has Got To Go

To Baaaarcelona, in celebration of a top-class football club netlabel that has been banging in the goals pumping out excellent releases for quite some time and has now achieved the miraculous and got Carles Puyol to cut his hair reached number 50 in their release schedule. End of football jokes.*

InoQuo has come over all giddy and released a nine-track compilation of top-class minimal/techno. Like just about every other netlabel album in this genre, Kvindek doesn't conform to CTW's infamous first law of dance music (the first of my minions to post a comment stating what it is will receive a free CC track from CTW's vaults), but that doesn't stop it from containing studio wizardry and buttock-seducing rhythms. To demonstrate, I'll recommend the first track as I'm fond of the aural tricks it plays. You get classical guitar, reverbed and chopped voices, and tooting synths - and that's just in the first few seconds, before a ridiculously close-up high/low frequency stab is plopped in your ear. It then proceeds to groove with the help of the aforementioned elements and the addition of pitch-shifted tubular bell-like...oh, hell, why am I burbling on? Suck it and see:

Sr. Click - Tamagotchi

Hermético's Nueva Fórmula doesn't actually break new ground, but what it does it does very well. A bumping bass, abrasive snare, tannoy-like vocals, tiny little glitches (a feature of the entire EP - there's nary a moment that hasn't been worked to within an inch of its life) and a fast pace ensure that this will burn the calories. Turn up the volume and it comes to life - as does En Casa De Paola by Monokao, whose kick-snare-repeat-till-unconscious mantra drives the minimal nail into the ground with a big techno hammer, restrained only by the occasional speak-and-spell vocal. The excellent mastering overcomes the compositional simplicity through sheer power. It's a banger.

But it's not all dark dancefloors and sticky t-shirts. Modular by Saccobros is one of those minimal tracks that, if you squint a bit, could be described as electronica or even ambient, because the usual percussive framework is swamped by a Nintendo-ish flurry of triplets that swells and contracts with hypnotic rhythm. It's like listening to an electronic seashore.

Mercurio by Manuel Romero starts off ordinarily enough, but little glitches, snatches of conversations, electronic growls and whatever else he can conjure up with, at a guess, Ableton software soon alerts the listener that here is an amazingly dense track that flourishes when heard through headphones. Take it home, loosen its dancefloor clothes and you'll find that it's wearing a glitchy bra and ambient knickers.

Apologies for that last sentence and to Project Swirl and Licuadora System, whose tracks, though well worth hearing, have been brushed over because I'm about to hit my mental Twitter word limit. It's nothing personal. And despite some rather delicious jazz electric piano, Grau's Miles is, well, miles too long.

Everything apart from the hi-hats in Mikel Mendia's Takumar seems low-passed, giving it a suitably understated feel for Kvindek's last track. I liked the drop about a minute and a half in, where the track comes to a halt only to restart with an echoing snare drum flam and tiny snippets of ...cutlery. Such moments are sprinkled throughout the album. Like a hairy wart anything with hidden depths, Kvindek took time to grow on me. Turn up the volume to let the excellent recording quality shine, give it a few spins and see if the same happens to you.

InoQuo - Kvindek (Various Artists) (link to zipped album & individual files)

InoQuo netlabel

*Ah, mes amis. Le Coupe du Monde. Quel dommage, hein? By the way, if you're wondering about how musicians and netlabels react to getting prodded by CTW's smelly finger, here's a reaction shot from the inoQuo staff (I may be lying about this). Can't you feel the love? CC music: you know it makes sense.

Four Seasons In One Play

A description of this very modern EP requires a word that was fashionable 40 years ago: mellow. Humeka's Temperate Climate, out on Argentinean netlabel Miniatura, might well be a collection of minimal and thus lead the listener to expect nightclub exertions, but in fact it's more suitable for relaxing and cooling down. In fact, were one being extremely pretentious, m'darlings, one might describe it as "high chill". (All rights reserved. Any unlicensed use of this term is liable to prosecution and the enforced middle parting of your hair.)

The kernel of the album is Humeka's four tracks, each representing one of the four seasons. It starts with Summer Ends, whose low-passed synth and gentle crackles and pops should alert you that this is indeed temperate minimal, as in mild-mannered and restrained. It's like supper jazz for electronica fans. Innumerable snippets of sound are scattered across all four of Humeka's tracks and panned through the full 180 degree aural field, though I'm sure that some sneak round the back of the head, too.

The first minute or so of Fall Arises toys with experimental electronica before easing into an 80s-type bass line and very modern clicks 'n' cuts. You'll hear an interesting bridge of rhythmical ambient before the track meanders back to relatively down-tempo electronica. A Late Spring is a fairly anaemic six minutes of dance that needs more variety to sustain my interest.

However, Sol Sistere, Humeka's last track of his four, has a bit more fibre to it. Check out the insistent sing-song background synths and a barely discernible pad for that lovely intellectual depth that minimal fans - well, the ones that are prone to self-deception - insist exists in their outwardly plain and simple snare/kick art form. (My blushes.) Its marvellously warm yet coldly digital synth riff, subdued percussion and scrambled background vocals will aid the contemplation of life's conundrums, namely: will our first contact with one of the countless civilisations residing amongst the universe's 100 billion galaxies be benign or bellicose, and does a cure for hangovers exist outside of the fantasy world of P.G. Wodehouse?

Humeka - Sol Sistere

Cuddly, isn't it? It's got that indefinable "something" that grabs the ear and won't let go.

But Temperate Climate doesn't stop there. Humeka (a Frenchman – there goes the neighbourhood) has recruited some minimal netlabel gangsters founders to add mixes, namely Christian Walt, co-founder of Interdisco; Tilman (Klamauk), choenyi (Stereo-Type, Random Access, Kreislauf, Miniatura); Sven Laux (everything, but especially Tisch, Insectorama, Tropic, Meerestief, MV, Archipel, Miniatura, Mischievous); Grifin (Silicate) and our old friend Keinzweiter (spontanMusik), who got subpoenaed with a CTW review a few months ago. You have my permission to explore those links and see how deep the netlabel rabbithole goes.

These capocannonieri have indulged themselves, meaning that the mixes are fine examples of minimal-techno but completely oblivious to CTW's world-famous dictum re. overlong dance tracks. It falls to me to convert the First Law of Dance Music into algebraic form, where y = dance track and x = bliss.

y - 0.333r = x

Despite this, there's enough good stuff here to get you through the working week. There are no less than three mixes of Summer Ends: Christian Walt adds a subtle bass that pulses very nicely under Roll-Royce glitches; Tilman's mix features some nicely treated acoustic percussion, and Keinzweiter just can't help adding some funky global warming and his trademark dusty vibe to Humeka's calm essay. All three up the tempo and aggression, though nothing that shakes the leaves from the trees.

The choenyi Orangophilic remix of Fall Arises drops the minimal tag and threatens to be a boring house-ish workout, but redeems itself by shoving pops, burps and clanging percussion at your ears, which will flex and warp to the hypnotic, driving rhythm. Sven Laux's reworking of A Late Spring improves on the original; the swelling synths remind me strongly of the terrific Cactus Y Volcanes by Alta Infidelidad. A funky bassline that's a cross between a clavier and a slap bass injects some adrenalin into Grifin's mix of Sol Sister, but it's one of those mixes that renders the original unrecognisable and replaces it with a serviceable dance track...which, on reflection, is growing on me.

Nearly every synthesiser on this album sounds low-passed, if not muffled, providing a subdued bed of sound for the minimalist percussion that dominate the higher frequencies.* It's the most well-mannered album I've heard in a while, only grabbing your interest when you decide to give it. All in all, Temperate Climate is one of the many jewels on display in the Creative Commons shop window. I suggest you throw a brick through that window, but first make sure you wrap a “Thank you, Humeka and his cronies” email around it.

Humeka - Temperate Climate EP

Humeka on MySpace

Miniatura Records

*I have my thumbs in my waistcoat pockets and am projecting confidence in my opinions. We both know I'm bluffing.

Nice Legs; Shame About The Face

Yes, that is an actual (and full-size) album cover. Yikes. Moving swiftly on, pray place your head between two large loudspeakers and say “wibble”, for Max Cavalerra is here to shatter your earwax with five tracks of bangin' techno.

The majority of Cavalerra's The Bigger, The Better EP eschews the groovy complexity of minimal for more straightforward dance beats: the holy trinity of snare, kick and hi-hat stick closely together and move in a group from “fast” down to “take a breather” and back up to “crush the dance floor”. To illustrate, allow me to recommend  the immensely heavy opening track, Impact, wherein various noises off reverberate around a lone synth stab and a simple yet irresistibly catchy kick/snare/bass combo. Play it on a meaty sound system and watch your windows wobble.

Max Cavalerra - Impact

Similarly, the follow-up, Function, uses a "melody" consisting of just the one bass note repeated endlessly. Swathes of white noise and high-speed flummery threaten to swamp the relentless techno beat but that aforementioned religious trio keeps on keeping on. Hey, it's techminimalhousedance. What did you expect, a fugue?

In Memory of Violett is actually more, er, minimal than techno. (Self-contradiction is my speciality. It's not. It is, really. No, it ain't.) Some synths waft about in a chilled-out manner and make good use of the aural spatial field, although the intricate percussion still runs on rails. Like the rest of the album, it confirms CTW's well-known First Law of Dance Music.*

Energetic, forthright, insistent: all adjectives that apply not only to CTW's manly odour but also to 1000ccm's six and a half minutes. I must report that this tech-house track is full of the usual culprits. Yep, expect bass drops, low-passed breakdowns, hi-hats that move your noggin back and forth and the odd piquant vocal snippet. It's not overly original, but nor are olives - and I love olives.

Using the same punctuation-notation as a questionable but interesting chess move⁺, What The Bell?! is a track that shows Cavalerra's production chops. Surprise, surprise, there's some delicate chimey stuff nestling in the background of the seemingly well-mannered minimal-tech that constitutes the track's first half, but the chief attraction is the introduction of a chewy, electro-acid synth line that gets all glitchy over its bad self. It reminds me of the electro badass rather super Tom Neville. This is a good thing.

Right, it's time for me to skip gaily through the daisy-drenched uplands of free netmusic only to return  at an unspecified time and waistline measurement. In the meantime, I suggest you dump The Bigger, The Better in your mp3 player, swap its egregious album cover for a picture of Beyoncé/Britney/The Hoff/Alastair Sim, and wait for your headphones to flap up like the ears of a surprised basset hound. Netlabel music can have that effect.

Please think about sending a "thank you" email to Max, who is probably busy DJ-ing Munich to a standstill, and/or Broque.de netlabel, which should be thinking hard about adding a PayPal "tips" button to its whiter-than-white website. Thank them for all the lovely sounds. But not the pictures.

Max Cavalerra - The Bigger, The Better (link to zipped album & individual files)

Maxcavalerra.com

Broque.de netlabel

*All dance tracks are a third too long. You know it's true.

+Knowledge of this stuff has not affected my love-god status in the slightest.

There's no beer and everyone is ugly

I've a good reason for recommending Erdbeerschnitzel's Pathetik Party so soon after reviewing his Tracknames I Can't Pronounce EP. Party was supposed to have been released by a record label, but the label apparently dragged its heels so much that Erdy (Tim Keiling from Mainz) decided to release it himself under a Creative Commons licence. So, why did these ten tracks not find favour? What will you find if you go to this party? Well, the Schnitzel claims it will be dubstep, electronica, freakhouse, and "whatever", though I could easily describe it as glitch-hop, drone, electronica, minimal and "you're not the boss of me". It certainly has a far wider scope than the excellent Tracknames EP. Indeed, the Schnitz admits the album is his personal goodbye to genre-specific music.

The title track is an atmospheric and dubby piece of electronica whose gold-plated production should convince you that you're on to a good thing - just like most parties I attend. Heh. Ein Tag Namens Higke is a swinging piece of, er, freakhouse(?) where the chops come fast and funky. Now, let's have a glass of cassis to clear the palate. One and a half minutes of a curiously uplifting drone should do the trick. Thank you, Kurzer Einwand Nummer Eins.

Distantanz starts off as a fairly standard piece of minimal until it almost stops and some gorgeous synth chords gently ring out amid processed vocals; it then moves back up the gears to become a relaxed dance track with grade-A production skills. Think of it as an aural Bentley.

Some of these tracks are simply prime electronica. Air, Groove Armada, Björk and particularly Leftfield could release Wogenbeugel and you'd think, "Hmm, they're on form." Its woody synths take their own sweet time in getting to the end, thanks in no small part to chopped vocals and popping and snapping percussion coming out to play, but you honestly won't mind. In the less than three minutes of Kurzer Einwand Nummer Zwei's robotic glitch-hop, you'll find yourself trying to work out how much work went into making it, but you'll probably get distracted by its insistent swing.

By the time you've regained control of your body, it's time to let your brain loose on Die Leiden des Jungen S, where the next eleven minutes - a wild guess, but perhaps it's at this point that the record label got nervous - go some way to creating a minimal equivalent of Dark Side of the Moon. Yes, I quailed at the idea of this track. Now I love it. Erdbeerschnitzel has the ability to develop his musical ideas and does so via a reverberating soundscape, swooping, otherwordly synths, a groove that won't quit (except where Erdy decides that we all need to chillout) and a genuine sense of development. Die Leiden des Jungen S is eleven minutes long because it needs to be. It's not dance and it's not thoughtful electronica: it's both. That's a rare thing.

The last of the ten tracks, Singular, is noteworthy for warm, spliced vocals and a reminder, as if the listener needed it, that Pathetik Party is an unpredictable collection. Each fresh outing of this album reveals something new to enjoy; it has more unpredictable chops and ideas than a drunk sushi chef.

Did I say ten? I'm such a tease. You came here to earn the praise of your friends and a pay rise from your newly impressed boss by becoming Mr Cool, thanks to your discovery of the musical equivalent of a Stealth Fighter. Right. See if this gets your earlobes flapping:

Erdbeerschnitzel - Walkampfchampagne

Yes, you are now a sex god. This transformation has been achieved by a hollowed-out, distorted bass line that rolls like a loaded dice, lazy processed brass stabs, honky-tonk synths and some of the most beguiling glitchy percussion you'll hear this side of a scratched "Drums on 45" record. It's a trippy, jazzy funkout. Play it loud and you'll lose weight through involuntary movement and cut a swathe through your profession/college/nightclub/underpants. (I think the track on the Soundcloud release page is a slightly different edit to the zipped album track. I much prefer the latter so that's the one on CTW's cuddly media player.)

Why was this album not taken on by a record label? You tell me, because I don't know.

There's a prominent Paypal icon on the album's release page. Please think about pressing it or at least sending Erdy a "thank you" email. He's even been so generous as to provide you with an action figure. You could turn it into a piggy bank and save some cash for him. Just be careful where you put the slot.

Erdbeerschnitzel - Pathetik Party (link to zipped album and individual files)

Erdbeerschnitzel website

Dial M For Mmmarvellous

Here's a short but sweet package: M, a three-track EP released by British netlabel Minordust, is full of aural goodness for chillout and minimal fans alike.

Tobias Lorsbach, alias Keinzweiter, must be one of those strange beings who haunt record shops, working their fingers to the bone as they search for a rare vinyl cut, taking home nothing but the choicest grooves - only to disregard everything on them apart from the dusty crackles between the tracks. This perverse discard-the-fruit-but-keep-the-peel attitude is especially evident on the first track, Magnolia, where close-up pops and crackles are spliced with field recordings and slotted into a cool rhythm to the accompaniment of slowly alternating cool chords. A jazzy hi-hat drops in to keep things ticking along until Keinzweiter, unable to resist displaying his production chops, plays with its pitch and filtering. Like the other two tracks, Magnolia is ostensibly a restrained exploration of "noises off" and clicks 'n' cuts, but if you turn the volume up your cranium will belatedly discover that the rest of you is sitting on the washing machine and enjoying the spin cycle. See what you think:

Keinzweiter - Magnolia

Now you know what to expect - namely pops, crackles, a dash of jazz topped off with field recordings and nougaty vinyl static - you can relax, safe in the knowledge that you're now trendier than everyone else in your social circle. Put that hand-mirror down. Things get even funkier with Mircoobee, wherein a swinging jazz drum rhythm kicks off a beautiful minimal–techhouse track. Speaking of jazz/be-bop, who'd have thought, back in the '50s, that music production would advance so far that a talented producer like Keinzweiter could add myriad rhythmic clicks 'n' cuts to a fast drum beat without swamping it? Take any ten seconds from this and count the number of things going on: there's echoing conversations, crackles, synth embellishments, a bumping bass, the aforementioned jazz drumming, a lovely high-pitched synth run, and numerous tics and pops, yet they all blend together perfectly in a light stew that instantly makes Mainz, where Keinzweiter has his Batcave, one of the cooler places in Germany. Oh, all right. You all know you can twist me round your little finger:

Keinzweiter - Mircoobee

Now, off to bed with you, stopping only to give Moriaan a goodnight kiss. Let the adults dance to its funky and cheerful style. No, you can't stop to listen to its upbeat crackly goodness. And don't poke your tongue at me, you young scamp.

M is a free Creative Commons-licensed taster of a talented electronica artist. Should you wish to hear more of Keinzweiter's stuff, his new album Globus Cassus is now available for free (at an ear-shreddingly low 128 Kbps) from spontanMusik netlabel or you can buy it (at an ear-caressingly high 320 Kbps) from Beatport. My thanks to Mike Gregoire of Blocsonic for releasing netBloc Vol. 22, Life On Ceres, where I first heard Mircoobee. By the way, Vol. 23 is out today and it's utterly free, hipsters. Yes, I'm good. Daddy loves you too. Now run along.

Keinzweiter – M (link to individual files & zipped album - click on the album title when you get there)

Keinzweiter website and MySpace

Minordust netlabel

Funkenclickengeschlagzeugenpoppen

 

I've read somewhere that Bach's Brandenburg Concerti are considered the ideal musical accompaniment for students who can't study unless there is some form of music playing as they read. (My terrible memory hints that this may have been the opinion of Peter Jay, the former British Ambassador to the United States, but the same terrible memory is so untrustworthy that I'm willing to concede, just this once, that I may be spectacularly wrong. Perhaps I shouldn't have been listening to music when I first read that anecdote.)

Tracknames I Can't Pronounce by Erdbeerschnitzel, the latest release from Alt Recordings, is a bipolar album that goes one better than old Johann Sebastian: you may use its five tracks for background music while you study for exams or paint a fence, or you could turn up the volume and reveal that your nethers are, in fact, the long-thought-mythical perpetual motion machine. How so? Well, there are no great dynamic flourishes in these tracks; they sound like well-oiled machines that get funky when no one is looking. Yes, there are myriad thumps and bumps but no great melodic or percussive swellings to scorch your eardrums. As such, they're like my trousers: understated but ready to rumble.

Normally, I would recommend the first track, Drehundangelpunk, and its use of everyday minimalist motifs such as ...elephants, chickens, horses and cows, but its successor Klaus Kroete is a pristine example of groovin' German minimal. The triangle clinches it for me, so now it gets one of mine:

Erdbeerschnitzel - Klaus Kroete

Potentiopeter gets down and grooves, courtesy of a flanging snippet of white noise that provides the pitch-shifting meat in the bass and electronic drum sandwich. (Metaphors fear me.)

Miez und Muskel veers dangerously near my patented Theory of Dance Music: "all dance tracks are a third too long", but gets away with it because, like the rest of this very classy EP, it's stuffed with beautifully panned and mixed ticks, pops, clicks, scratches, snipped vocals and warm bass lines, the last being similar to oxygen in that you notice them only when there's no more.

The Tone Def remix of Drehundangelpunk is the most kick-heavy of the five tracks. Worry not: its sparseness is interrupted by an insistent bass line and leavened by the occasional angry elephant. (I'm not making this up.)

In Tracknames I can't Pronounce, Tim Keiling of Mainz (for it is he) has manipulated micro-samples with Teutonic aplomb and no little ingenuity to produce a superb free album of joyful funky minimal that will occupy your ears while your fingers leave a fervent "thank you" on his MySpace and Facebook pages. You can use your toes to leave offers of money and no-strings sex in CTW's comments section. I'm waiting.

Tracknames I Can't Pronounce – Erdbeerschnitzel (link to individual mp3s & zipped album)

Erdbeerschnitzel's home page and MySpace & Facebook thingies.

Alt Recordings

The gamut of emotions from Q to Z

The 5th Qwartz Electronic Music Awards ceremony was held in Paris on 3rd April. It was quite a gathering, full of electronica bigwigs. Unfortunately, I couldn't honour my gilt-edged invitation and attend the glittering ceremony in the Cirque d'Hiver because my Learjet was grounded in the Caymans, awaiting a new crunk juice cup. But it wasn't all bad news. Professor Lawrence Lessig, creator of the Creative Commons licence concept, received a well-deserved Qwartz d'Honneur pour l'Innovation for enabling artists to take part in a global sharing culture and know-nothing music blogs to sully it.

All right, sez you, scratching your string vest while pausing momentarily in your search for hamster porn, what's that got to do with the price of fish?

I'll tell you, scruffsters: in October 2007, this greasy corner of the net reviewed and recommended an utterly superb album, Urlaub auf Balkonien by Krill.minima. Lo and behold, after sifting through 430 albums (I know the feeling) the Qwartz jury, with the aid of the public's votes, gave the "Best Album" Qwartz to the very same. Congratulations to both Krill.minima and Thinner netlabel. Other nominees included Autechre (yes, that Autechre), so both artist and label should be very proud of themselves and have an extra slice of cake with their tea.

Over 3 million people have visited the Qwartz website over the last five years - it's exciting to think that many thousands of people have heard/watched the nominees in the various categories and taken the trouble to vote. Roll on the 6th awards!

Such great news deserves another attempt by me to try and get the album cover to appear without mucking up its dimensions/pixel quality:

         

Sigh. So much for opposable thumbs. To make up for my technological shortcomings, here's the opening track. It will have you running baths and lighting candles in no time:

Krill.minima - Somerdellen

Ah, that's better.

I can tell you're itching (literally) to get back to your search for dirty movies involving small fluffy things, so I'll bring this to an end. Find mp3/album links to this superb slice of ambient electronica in my original review, deep in the sepulchral bowels of Catching The Waves. Remember to wash your hands when leaving.

One Meadow To The Gallon

Begone, rancid guitars! Kneel to the power of non-melodic mechanistic rhythm. Herewith five tracks of cheerful tech-house minimal, each guilty of ignoring CTW's most hallowed mantra: all dance tracks are a third too long. Sigh. Never mind. Right, grab a plastic bottle of water and a too-tight t-shirt. We're going in.

Your first outing on the dance floor is set to Check My Cumbia, an experimental groover that features a jazzy, pitch-shifted and stuttering organ solo whose carryings-on are quite cheerful and experimental for danceland. (Unless I'm sadly mistaken, cumbia is a type of Argentine dance and music responsible for gyrating pelvises in that corner of the world.) I suggest you turn off the lights and play this one loud. You will need elbow room.

Santos Resiak - Check My Cumbia

Well done. You're already a nightclub legend.

Next up is Enduido, a roller with incessant hi-hats, pattering bongoes and a Latin feel to its bassline. Instead of using build-ups, breakdowns, drum rolls, reversed cymbals and all the other tricks of the trade used to drop a bassline, Santos just turns it on and off as the fancy takes him. It's crude but effective and must be a floor-slayer in the clubs. Less crude but equally effective are the noises off and vocal puckishness that keeps the track fresh.

Miércoles is a spooky house track that keeps trying to be minimal thanks to the loud, whispered vocals and background ticks. But that clap and hi-hat rhythm won't have it. House it is. Or is it? Genres: the reviewer's curse.

Timba is good but not great. It has all the requisite ingredients: glutinous bass, ethnic percussion, endlessly echoing vocals, high tempo, etc. - but I fear it needs to be surrounded by nubile young things before CTW can truly get his groove on. (Before you ask - it's an awesome sight, like a cargo plane lumbering into the air.)

Lost Weekend is what you'll have had if you make it to the end of the looong final track. But you'll also find yourself suffering from Stockholm Syndrome thanks to what is a paradoxically uptempo trip-hoppish second half. It makes for a good chill-out track while you eye up the exits.

This EP feels cheerful, its upbeat nature less a consequence of its high tempo and more a result of the jaunty basslines and electronic flourishes. There are some strong minimal influences (Richie Hawtin wants his reverb-drenched vocal snippets back) and some melodic and rhythmic influences that wouldn't be out of place in jazzy electronica. The sound quality is a little "thick" in places, but all in all this five-tracker is a slab of fun. Send it to your friends - you know, those slim, fashionable, permanently sunglass-wearing friends of yours - and prepare to get invited to rooftop parties.

Santos Resiak a.k.a. Dante Costantini, an Argentine hipster who spends a lot of time in Berlin, is on tour at the moment (he's no stranger to extensive touring in Europe and North and South America) and has commercial albums available from Immigrant Records and Gluckskind Schallplaten as well as this Creative Commons release from the good people at Unfoundsound. He is possibly probably no doubt celebrating his fellow countryman Angel Cabrera's victory at the US Masters. Ah, golf and dance music: two titans of dress sense. Mind you, it's no surprise Cabrera won - have you seen the putting green on that album cover?

Incidentally, there's a shiny blue Paypal icon on the album's release page that is just aching to be fondled. Please have a roll in the hay with it.

Santos Resiak - Miércoles EP (link to individual mp3s, flacs and zipped album)

Santos Resiak on MySpace and Facebook

Unfoundsoundrecords.com

Yes, I'm Buff

Photo: Lewis Hine (1920) 

Just a quick note to say that Choc, the talented but naughty French electronica artist, made some extensive changes to the two of his albums reviewed here at CTW, which resulted in my links going haywire and other assorted nastiness. You'll be glad to hear that I fearlessly donned my dungarees and tinkered about; all has now been resolved. My apologies for any inconvenience and confusion. Fortunately, the backstage swearing and screaming repairs have presented an opportunity to remind CTW's readers that Choc has made some beautiful electronica. Have a look for yourself:

Choc - Sound Object Deconditioning

Choc - Urban Solstice

To answer your questions:

1. Yes, I am that toned. Especially my beer belly.

2. Another review is *gasp* imminent. Well, I say imminent. What I really mean is: it might crawl on to the net tomorrow if I can be bothered to twiddle my forefinger and depress the return key in an Oliver Hardy styleee.

Going Cheap

 

Andrey Malshchukoff (or A7, if you prefer) comes from Kirov - the city, not the famous theatre/ballet company. He might not be able to essay a grand jeté or wear a tutu, but he can certainly strut the stage. He is far too young an exponent of music production to be able to, say, replace a snare drum with a click of his fingers, but nevertheless he's done it, quite literally; Thaebis, his thumpingly good display of Russian minimalism, often uses the sound of finger clicks to keep the beat instead of trotting out the inevitable and therefore boring snare drum. The album's kick drum/bass combo is beautifully equalised; so much so that it hoofs like a Republican supporter taking aim at a stray balloon the morning after Barack Obama's inauguration.

Today's sound-fest is Mechanika, which wittily uses the sound of a ping-pong ball pinging from side to side as though it had been subjected to... a ping-pong delay. (It's technical stuff, kids. Let Uncle CTW worry about that stuff.) A rasping, rave-ish synth line leavens the funky hi-hats and robust rhythm, ensuring that Mechanika doesn't become too mechanical. Look, just press the little triangle and turn the volume up. Music will ensue. Drink some paint-stripper and turn the lights off - there we are, instant nightclub!

A7 - Mechanika

The other offerings in this four-tracker all exhibit the same painstaking production skills: every pop, click and burble sounds close to the eardrum, despite the previously mentioned fulsome bass elements. Thaebis's mix will permit a quick outing on cheap headphones; I suspect that it will also allow a thong-meltingly loud blast through a nightclub system. The first track, Eartrick, tricks the ear with numerous panned and chorused clicks 'n' cuts; the second, Empty Box, makes good use of low-passed reverberating bits 'n' bobs (copyright Grove Dictionary of Music), and the final track, Metronoise, is one of those minimal tracks whose incessant noises off drag the listener into head-nodding nirvana.

If you enjoy this album, please think about sending (the outrageously cool) Inoquo netlabel and Andrey/A7 a "thank you" email. While you're at it, ask them why they haven't got a Paypal donation box. Perhaps it's because the best things in life are free.

It's a shame that Thaebis isn't a CD instead of purely a netlabel release. If it were, you could enjoy the front cover and then, eager to see the rear of the jewel case, flip the bird. Ahem. I'll shut up now.

A7 - Thaebis (link to zipped album and individual files)

Andrey Malshchukoff on MySpace (this link is now correct)

Andrey Malshchukoff at Promo DJ

Inoquo netlabel

Yes Dot Happy

Those of you who have seen Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond film, will know that it drops the unsuspecting viewer slap-bang in the middle of a frenetic action sequence. Kriss's No.Mad does the same to the innocent listener. Press "play" and you're plunged into Adventures in Jax, a dose of bass-heavy, all-enveloping, minimal-ish house in which Kriss favours build-ups over breakdowns only to discard them suddenly, thus increasing the groove, if you get my drift. It's relentless and cooler than anything else - just like 007.

After that comes Undersun, the loudest musical element of which is a rasping hi-hat that batters the track into submission until halfway in, when swooping strings, electro eruptions and a massive trumpet stab arrive to add movement, tonal variety and pelvic gyrations. It took a few plays to get into this, but now when I listen to Undersun I seem to lose nine(!) minutes from my day. It's sneakily hypnotic.

All you'll get from the third track, Jazz Club, is a jazz piano workout pushed along by nothing more than a kick drum, hi-hat, bass and an occasional drum roll. In other words, it's standard 1950s jazz, except that the modern kick and bass have hitched a ride in the Tardis and transformed a swinging jazz session into a dance track that skips along very pleasantly. Snippets of conversation intrude and reinforce the party atmosphere. A snare drum joins in near the end - hey, it's traditional: even a classically trained pianist like Kriss can't resist the pull of the four to the floor. Apart from being righteously funky, it's also the EP's shortest track and so gets the honour of having a little triangle planted in front of it:

Kriss - Jazz Club

Still interested? Check out Check In and you'll find an understated groover with a breakdown courtesy of an airport tannoy announcement. Like most things to do with airports it takes a little too long, but it's still a decent listen that gave me the opportunity to write "tannoy".

The final effort, Stereophonic Sound, is a slow-starter that threatens to be the runt of the musical litter until Kriss uses running water as an instrument (electronica never lets you down, does it?) and essays some swirling synths and sundry reverberating noises. Defying the po-faced voiceover, Stereophonic Sound becomes a hip-swinger. Play this loud and watch your granny bust a move. Or her hip.

No.Mad validates CTW's First Law of Dance Music: all dance tracks are a third too long. The trouble is, once you become familiar with the album's five tracks, time passes rather quickly in a theory-of-relativity kind of way, undermining my mathematical construct concerning music that ventures above 120 beats per minute. The sooner CERN gets fixed, the better; Science is laughing in my face. Luckily, I can't hear Science because I'm listening to this thumpingly good EP.

It's the festive season, in case you haven't noticed. Kriss (A.K.A. Bari native Cristian Pugliese), the owner of Undercut Records, is probably not expecting any reward for his free musical efforts, other than an emailed grazie. But if you adore No.Mad, give a thought to pressing his Paypal button and sending him something of good cheer.

All that remains is to wish my millions of readers a very merry Krissmas.

[/Dickens]

Kriss - No.Mad (link to individual files and zipped album)

Kriss on MySpace (the video to Jazz Club will raise a smile)

Unfoundsoundrecords (from Philly, baby)

And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint...

CTW interrupts its gentleman's-calling-card-on-a-silver-platter service to announce a credit crunch antidote for all you cheapskates peasants lovers of music who find themselves unable to fill the spare corners of your 1trnGB iPods due to the global economic downturn. Fret not - today, thanks to the hard-working people of netlabel land, CTW can recline with a cool drink and reap the benefits, as can you. It's a parasitical relationship, admittedly. Well, if bankers and bond traders can get away with it...anyway, here's a few morsels for you:

Ideology, fluffy German purveyor of hip/trip/dub-hop & dance, celebrates its 50th release with the unsnappily titled Re-iD.d 2, a remix compilation by the iD.EOLOGY Allstars. This slice of jazzy cinematic noir-hop should give you the idea: Zengineers - Un Taxi la Nuit (Dub One! la première fois). The office party must have been a good one, because Ideology has also released...

...the much more palatably titled Frühwerk, a compilation of tracks from the label's early years, when Ideology's artists were dipping their collective toes in the water.

Regular readers will already know of Phlow's Finest Hour compilations (Vols One, Two & Three):

   

...but might not know that fab Phlow has also given us Destination Cologne, a taste of the burgeoning Cologne (I nearly said Colonic) netlabel scene. Here's a track from it that's tighter than a cat's bottom: Phonout - Jutro. But Phlow haven't stopped there. Because they're rather good at what they do, and because they're evangelists for the netlabel cause, there's also...

 

...their latest compilation: Nivel del Mar - Sounds for Soulsurfers, a chill-out compilation that's well worth listening to, especially as it features some tracks from poor suckers who've already endured a CTW review. This one escaped a review thanks to my extreme laziness, the lucky blighter: Crookram - Hostile. Did Erik Satie know he could get his groove on? I like to think so.

 

Netlabelism, Belgian keeper of the Creative Commons flame, has unleashed the first in a new series of compilations based on genres. The new baby is called Netwaves Bytes: Electro 1 and concentrates on, er, electro. Try this and see if it's to your taste: Pero - El Ghost.

 

You could always join the never-ending story that is BlocSonic, who now offer 17 free compilation albums and will keep adding to this number until the internet explodes. No. 17 is entitled Refined Excursions For The Discriminating Listener.

 

 

If that isn't exciting enough for you, how about the very latest in netlabel chic, the hot-off-the-electronic-press Netaudio London 2008 Festival Compilation from the trendiest music event on the planet? (Apart from this blog, obviously.) Download the low-fi 128 Kbps mp3s from Last.fm and, if you find something you like, grab the high-quality FLAC files from archive.org.

I have yet more music for you, but I think this post has already veered dangerously close to "OMG, CTW is blowing my tiny little mind with the near-infinite possibilities of free netmusic and I shall have to propose marriage if this post goes on much longer" territory. Don't worry, my nubile slaves - CTW will let you recover for a while before providing another dose of netaudio lurve. In the meantime, to preserve the general public's morality...

*dons bow-tie and tuxedo, adopts BBC received pronunciation*

If you'd like to thank the netlabel community for the above offerings, please consider crossing their palms with silver - or copper, wheat, sugar or any other sellable commodity now that the world's financial system is kaput. Even a simple "thank you" goes a long way. Remember the unofficial motto of Creative Commons buskers:

"Netmusician - will work for praise, but money helps."

You're watching BBC 2. For our last programme of the evening, we invite you to sit back and enjoy a weighty philosophical dialogue that posits the significance of an innocent after-dinner mint. Goodnight.

The Caribbean Century

 

Most financial and political pundits opine that the 21st century will belong to China. Now, I have nothing against the fine people of China but I can't say that the current regime's mix of oligarchical communism and untrammelled capitalism fills me with much joy. Wouldn't it be better if the dominant political force was tempered by a, how can I say this without offending anyone, a more relaxed culture that takes a less aggressive attitude to life, realising that, as Wittgenstein Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton once sang, we are islands in the stream?

Karaoke Mouse must have had the same idea for their EP, Shanghai Reggae, which is a thick brew of the Far East and the Far Out. The three tracks here are the work of the highly talented Karaoke Tundra, one of the very first unfortunates to appear at CTW, and MM^TM, a psychedelic cum experimental cum tropical sound-mangler from Ireland. You lucky people also get to hear three wonderful remixes, should you choose.

To celebrate CTW's new CERN particle collider/media player, and in a bid to get you to download the EP, today I'm recommending double the usual quota of "today, I'm recommending a single track in a bid to get you to download the EP" recommendations. (Ah, the English language - nature's Moebius strip.) First up, I give you:

Banjo Boy, which begins with glitchy, breathy percussion and ends with the same, though somewhere in the middle it turns from beautifully realised minimalist glitch into a jolly, bouncy dance track that got me pogoing up and down. It's a quite stunning piece of electronica.

Secondly, DJ Side, victim of a previous CTW review, has chipped in with a remix, Shanghai Reggae (DJ Side's alternate take). There's nothing special about it except that it's three minutes of pounding hip-hop reggae bliss. Tell your friends about this and watch your Cool rating rise by a factor of Fonz.

The title track itself, Shanghai Reggae, is a reggaeish, ambient blend of Far East city life that features a wonderfully sampled treatment of babies giggling, mangled so as to sound like car horns. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd write.) I've listened to Takže Tak quite a bit and have concluded that it's a beatbox sampling masterclass - rarely will you hear vocal noises manipulated with such dexterity; its Krátkodobá Pamět remix by Watesino passes two minutes pleasantly enough. Michal Mariánek's click 'n' cut remix of Banjo Boy is hypnotically funky, and is a strong contender for the title of "Best Track".

Finally, the undersized album cover picture is a recurrence of my traditional difficulties with inserting images correctly. Tsk. The next hundred years certainly won't be named the CTW Century...

Karaoke Mouse - Shanghai Reggae (link to individual mp3s)

Karaoke Tundra, MM^TM

Surreal Madrid netlabel (no "Tip Box" but you could always wear a lobster on your head in gratitude)