burial revisited. (and four tet… and other things)
Admittedly a much more chill oriented selection below… not my usual fair of loud techno ;)
Four Tet recently released “There Is Love In You”, a beautiful mixture of natural instruments and well articulated programming. Four Tet jumps many boundaries, utilizing sampling and loops in creative ways a la Amon Tobin, building new sounds using real performances and joining the end and beginnings of sounds to wonderful effect. A minimalistic approach to music (not techno minimal, classic minimal), that progressively layers sounds over a central and wonderful theme. What I find most captivating about this record are the mid song chord changes that really tell the story of each song. Though most songs will start out mysterious, or even paranoid, they end as joyful celebrations of ethereal sound. Headphone candy… to say the very least.
Once again with Four Tet, I found myself searching the interwebs for more of his music as I must admit, Four Squares was my first introduction to him from both Sasha’s Fundacion and Dave Seaman’s wonderful Renaissance 7 Mix. Woefully inadequate education I am very sorry to say. However, in this search, I happened upon a beautiful record, Burial Vs. Four Tet. This was a vinyl released last year (I missed it! I know!), an extremely limited run and has since been made available through many other sources, most of which a free (∴ you can easily find a 320kbps LAME file). Words will fail this release, where Burial and Four Tet join forces to incredibly foreign ends. But the finished product is truly brilliant, I can not overstate this; you absolutely must get this release. “Moth” is by far my favorite, but “Wolf Cub” also has an amazing groove that sounds neither like Burial or Four Tet, but a lovely fusion of the two. Collaborations don’t get more surprising, or more acoustically pleasing as this. Though always happy to be surprised by music releases, my continual discussion of Burial’s work was missing this vinyl release and I must say I am quite embarrassed.
I have tweeted and commented to many people about Bonobo’s release, “Black Sands”. Quite the departure for me; it is a sample laden, very hip hop oriented record with some brilliant, albeit subtle synth work. The bass will test any system and the music, as a whole is throughout, moving and really just beautiful. Very rarely do entire discs not make it past my chopping block much thinner than the original release, this one is from start to finish a gorgeous contribution to organized sound. Though all his releases are solid, I find this one, by far and away, to be his greatest work.
I forgot to mention in my previous post regarding Ulrich Schnauss, his latest work (though he said he was done with solo releases ;)), “Missing Deadlines” which is a compendium of his most recent and or well received remixes. Please get your paws on this one, it is further proof that Ulrich stands as one of the best producers and remixers of our day.
On a final note, and I do apologize for the self promotion, I ask only that you give a listen to a release I submitted to Dirtyradio.org’s contest for underground tracks (underground being a nice way of saying amateur producer). backchat’s “[even] From (far) Off” is my contribution, and if you enjoy it, I would appreciate your vote for it. Again though, give it a listen and any suggestions or feedback would be much appreciated. the link is thus: http://dirtyradio.org/contest
keep your headphones on (speaking of which, should anyone need headphone suggestions, let me know).
_backchat.
