Gangleri – musicreviews

Last week I stumbled upon the French distro and label Steelwork Maschine. I never heard of them, nor have I heard of most projects they release and sell. Not having enough time to carefully look through their catalogues, I got a copy of this split cdr. Neon Rain offers some alright to nice rhythmical industrial tracks, HP Unit 14 has more tranquil IDM or drum’n'bass sounds which are not too good. It is always nice to run into new music, but I will have to check if Steelwork also sells really good stuff.
Links: Neonrain, Steelwork Maschine

Like I wrote earlier, HeilsKabaal is an “ambient/ noise/ drone/ audio-collage/ fieldrecording” label. In my opinion AvoidAudio does not really fit that picture. What I hear is good old “idm“, or “intelligent dance music”. The more tranquil projects in this style have always used stretched sounds on the background of their cut-up rhythms and the same goes for AvoidAudio. IDM, wasn’t that somthing of 8 years ago? I haven’t really followed it and I don’t know if the projects of back then still have the same sound, but the way I see it, AvoidAudio is at best a “vintage” IDM project. Not that “The Idea…” is a bad album, it’s just not very original and I don’t even have such a big IDM discotheque. I guess I expected more of an “ambient/ noise/ drone/ audio-collage/ fieldrecording” album with IDM elements. Oh well, let’s say: “for vintage sake”.
AvoidAudio, HeilsKabaal

I don’t think that I heard of the label before they sent me an email to notify me about their free compilation. “IDM” I am not sure if this is still the name this music goes under these days. In the beginning I called it “abstract techno” by lack of a tag, later terms used in the media were “cuts and clicks”, “dub”, “electronica” and later “intelligent dance music”. The most funny thing is, is that the music isn’t really danceable (in my opinion). The music seems to go back to weird electronic acts such as Autechre and Aphex Twin, but it seems that in the evolution of this cut-up breakbeat music seems to have gone in two directions. One is a more soft and melodic sound (Funckstörung, Funckarma), the other fucked-up and violent (following Venetian Snares). The first then is “IDM”, the latter “breakcore”. Of course there are numerous crossbreeds and novelties. What -for example- to do with a weirdo such as Kid 606? Anyway, in the beginning I had the idea that the music is still the same as seven years ago when it was still new. Soft music, crazy rhythms/beats, a bit of orchestrations. But as the cd continues there come some harder tracks and some tracks with new elements. There are some very nice tracks on the compilation and you can heard the sound of both old and new.

Well, I already liked the cooperation between the Wu-Tang Clan and Funkstörung (see Funkstörung “Additional Productions” review) which is a crazy mix between difficult electronic music (it seems that some people decided to call it “idm” or “intelligent dance music”) and hiphop; crazy music with funny rapping. However Antipop isn’t as crazy as the mentioned track, this is still pretty funny! Actually the insane rhythms and sampled go very well with a fast kind of rapping and the combination here sounds pretty damn good! There is already a new Antipop album called “Arrythmic” which I hope to hear some time soon.

The new Aphex is a “30 Track Double CD” with about 100 minutes of music. I suppose I don’t have to tell you that this is a pretty crazy release? Anyway, in some tracks Richard D. James proves that he is the inspiration for bands like Funckarma, Funkstörung or Plaid (all see below) with fairly atmospheric music with strange rhythms, in other tracks James goes berzerk as usual and all this is alternated with piano music or short pieces of strange sounds. As always this Aphex isn’t for anyone and personally I have never been a very big fan of this project, but some tracks are undoubtely very good and from these two cds you can get one good one of about an hour, so maybe it is a good buy!

When I was looking for a copy of the new Venetian Snares (which I found) my eye fell on a new cd of Autechre. Autechre is one of these “pioneers of weird electronic dance music” like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. It is always interesting to hear what guys like that came up with, but in particular Autechre has never been my favourite artist and it seems that this new album is even one of the less accessible ones (compared to himself!). There is no structure or melody or whatever in these tracks. This makes the music not suitable to just listen to sitting on a couch, you can’t dance to it, so what then? Well one thing is listening to the electronic skills of the artist is one thing or maybe playing it as background music (however you and/or your guests may get nerves of it). Autechre is sure worth to listen to, but not really music to play. So just get a copy of the cd to find out if things can get more crazy, but maybe even you like this kind of stuff! A small word to those then: this album is rather slowpaced / tranquil with a few faster tracks towards the end.

I don’t think I had ever heard of Christian Fennesz before I saw this cd. When I put it on, it soon became clear that this is one of the most abstract “electronica” act that I have ever heard. In the review of Funckarma’s “Parts” (see below) I wrote that they have hardly definable rhythms, but I can asure you that Funckarma sounds like disco in comparison to Fennesz! “Endless Summer” contains the strangest and abstract soundscapes with completely cut-up sounds, sometimes something that I can only call “rhythm” by lack of a better word and not really any melody even. Only for the advanced listeners I guess.

It seems that abstract techno is slowly becoming more and more popular. Aphex Twin has hits on MTV and Funckarma won some kind of popprice. They seem to be the talk of the day, this project. When I rented “Parts” at the cd-rental shop, there were only two more people in the shop who were both ‘fans’.
Anyway, what you will hear when playing “Parts” is slow and rather tranquil, but very abstract techno with hardly a definable rhythm, cut-up beats and strange sounds with here and there a clear tone or some melody. Sometimes I get the idea of listening to someone playing a computer game, so little structure is there to be heard.
To speak for myself, I prefer some energy and structure. For others I can say that when you are not irritated by experiments of Aphex Twin or Speedy J, you may want to listen to this cd some time as well.

Second cd of the Dutch brothers Funcken. “Solid State” sounds pretty much like “Parts” (see above), pretty melodious, fairly accessible (when you get used to the style of music), but with some more abstract tracks than previously. I don’t think this is the best project in the genre and I still prefer more energy and structure, but listening to Funckarma you get an idea of what is going on with techno music these days. But maybe you want to listen to the recently released dub compilation first.

Funkstörung is another techno act making what I call “abstract techno” like Funckarma (see above). The booklet is so vague that I’m not sure about the cd-title, label name or release year, but above you can see what I made of it.
On this cd Funkstörung cooperated with different artists being Björk, DJ Craze, the Wu-Tang Clan and S’Apex resulting is fairly accessible but at times totally insane and unstructured techno. Here and there the music sounds quite ‘hiphopish’, but at other times Funkstöring ignore all laws of logic and these are actually the best tracks from this album. I expect that an album of Funkstörung alone will only contain ‘technonense’. I’ll let you know when I find such an album.