Gerry Read creats Patterns

'Patterns'

Instra:metal helped build the bridge between techno and dubstep that, at this point, seems completely natural.  By refining the marriage of techno’s forceful impetus with dubstep’s brooding ethos, Instra:mental (along with Martyn, Shed ect.) helped unite the German and British electronic music scenes, epitomized by tracks like “Vicodine”.  The muffed out, humble kick drum, and the insistent pulse that urges you toward the floor, capture the numb sensation one feels at a party you know you ought to be having fun at but simply cannot.  The occasional clav echoes into nothingness and you remember why you’ve been refusing to join the vacuous party that surrounds you.

Gerry Read’s “Patterns” begins by navigating that same space.  Muffled pulses surround.  Humid textures abound. But rather than submitting to the claustrophobic emptiness of the club, the track walks over to the bar, politely places its drink back onto the bar, straightens up its tie, and jumps headlong into the party.  The synths surge to the top of the mix, thrashing wildly.  It’s difficult to tell whether these are happy or violent movements but one suspects that such distinctions are besides the point.

A plucked melody soon follows, confining that childlike joy one gets from dancing alone and setting it to song.  Discreet depression gives way to dastardly delirium so seamlessly, one wonders why every wallflower beat-head isn’t thrashing about.

Download the latest Dark Arx podcast below.

Lone - Emerald Fantasy Tracks

Lone started showing up on a lot of people's radar earlier this year because of his association with Werk Discs.  His sound was slow in tempo and gauzy in texture—not unlike label head Actress's music, albeit with more hip hop flare.  Sometime between now and then, someone smacked the blunt out of this kid's hand and gave him some ecstasy.  Lone's sound has grown into a 90s inspired rave-House throw-down with one foot in the warehouse and one foot in the modern UK bass music scene.

Cloud 909 opens Emarald Fantasy Tracks—his latest mini album on his own Magic Wire Recordings—with Lone's familiar barrage of bing-bong rave stabs and it seems things are off to a good start.  4/4 kicks thump, naturally.  Fat snares swipe across the midsection.  Everything is so goddamn swung!  And not the post-Dilla, chugalug kind of awkward hobble.  Lones tracks swagger across the floor with a self assured exuberance that is all but absent in much of the beat-music created in the late-great J Dilla's wake.

Cloud 909 demonstrates a sound that Lone has been exploring for a while now.  He's taken cues from Aphex Twin, borrowing his affinity for vintage synths and long, stretched out melodies that seem to harmonize with themselves.  But where Aphex Twin's fractured masterpieces' synth-lines creep out of some dark paranoid corner, sobbing for attention, Lone's drop from the sky.  The sunny calls rest on top of the beat until the rhythm is so enveloped in hazy joy that it lets go in a fit of hand claps and cowbell hits.

Whether House is just a pitstop along Lone's ever-evolving style, or if its here to stay, Lone has become a producer to watch.

Download the whole EP here. (pw: nodata.tv)

Bok Bok - Say Stupid Things

Bok Bok and L-Vis 1990, who run the London based Night Slugs label, occupy the same super-swag, of-the-moment-cool that Diplo and A-track sported so well during the latter half of the noughties.

These two don't do much that is sonically groundbreaking, but their approach to dance music rocks that same fuck-all, if-it-has-a-beat-then-I-can-dance-to-it inclusiveness that defined Mad Decent's releases for so long.  Night Slugs releases are looked forward to with eager anticipation in the Bass music world because each carefully curated track has an air of carefree abandon, loaded with upbeat charm and teenage vigor.

It makes sense then, why Modeselektor, the German dance music powerhouse duo, would recruit Bok Bok along with fellow UK bass-bandit Ramadanman, for their first installation of the new Monkey Town Records compilation series entitled Modeselektion.  Although 2010 has arguably been Ramadanman's, Bok Bok, probably the least well known of the three, makes a fierce showing. 

Modeselektor shows up in typical fashion—all fat synths and pimp-slap snares—on VW Jetta.  Ramadanman deploys an admirable attempt at aping the Modeselektor sound, but by definition, that kind of endeavor will always fall short of the real thing.  It’s Bok Bok's Say Stupid Things, with its bothered lyric and twitchy shuffle that steals the show.  On what is one of his most serious outings yet, Bok Bok one-ups the veteran (Modeselektor) and the newfound darling (Ramadanman) without ever leaving his ever-growing comfort zone.

Download James Blake — Klavierwerke

Over the past year James Blake has been quietly wooing music critics the world over.  (That sentence began and ended with the same word, ha)  With his singular production aesthetic and wildly accessible body of work, Blake has fast become one of the most important producers around.

The things he does sonically betray every genre they suggest without seeming disobedient or showy.  UK bass music's signifiers decorate Blake's most basic tendencies, but the core of his music is some soul and funk-music quagmire that he navigates via carefully chosen left turns.  Passing associations with dubstep are relevant only insofar as they provide context from whence this music came—a scene characterized by a mile-a-minute progression of new sounds and artists that, in spite of its documented ability to absorb and incorporate its peers' sounds into re-appropriated new forms, has been unable to hold a candle to Blake's unmistakable authority.

Blake's sound is both playfully naive and at times heftily glum.  He tickles his tracks until they let out a flash of uncontrolled emotion, a shriek from say, one of late R&B star Aaliyah's tracks, and your not sure whether to clap or cry so you just press repeat.

Texturally, his music is full of similar contradictions.  Witness dehydrated fuzz blast to the surface for just a moment as liquid bass hugs the bottom end of the mix—both of which operate rhythmically and atmospherically—albeit running in opposite directions.  Experience the vast expanses of his claustrophobic mixing technique or the way in which his tracks breath deeply with life while at the same time choke for air.



Blake's latest release, entitled Klavierwerke or "piano works" (for all you non-German speakers) is, as the title suggests, based largely around his own piano playing.  Far from a classical piece, this EP is a continuation of his warmly futuristic soul contortions—albeit reigned in.  On past releases his tracks rarely raised their voices, throughout this EP they don't climb above a murmur.  Carefully sampling his own humming, hissing, breathing, Blake has created his most personal record yet.

Its a humble move for a guy on the brink of international success.  One that will no doubt encourage more critics and fans to cozy up to his work.

Download the Klavierwerke EP in its entirety here

Aeroplane vs Friendly Fires vs Flight Facilities

With about a million names on it, this track was bound for greatness.  Sunny pop for summer days.  Free mp3 download available when you click on the down arrow on the left side of the track.
I Crave Paris by Aeroplane (Official)