Selections 004
This month’s selection pushes further into electro(nica) terrain, to the kind of music we hope translates from everyone’s pandemic home-listening habits back into a club environment. There’s always been space for leftfield grooves in a club environment, but it takes DJs with chops to bring them and, as this is an entirely symbiotic relationship, crowds with open ears and minds to receive them.We can imagine Reagenz’s classic ‘ß’ blowing people’s minds at the right early hours moment – can’t you? – or the sparse ‘Siirtää’ by Konerytmi bringing some needed funk to a linear session. J.Mono’s ‘M.aus’ and Katerina’s ‘Stay Underwater’ are more obvious floor material, though each with a curious melancholic tinge that speaks to this long year of stasis. Before all of that, DJ Mostoles’ ‘Cut’ is the kind of thing we’d be very happy to hear walking into a party early doors, an immediate indication that whoever’s in charge of the evening knows what they’re doing.
Cartulis picks up steam with their project CTRL ALT DEL, each sub-label dedicated to a different sonic domain. DEL is a space for downtempo beats, kicking off with a split EP from Russian electro producer Low Tape and Cartulis boss Unai Trotti under a new alias, DJ Mostoles.The former’s lush, laid-back electro complements the latter’s more jazz- and hip hop-leaning contributions. ‘Cut’ does what it says on the tin, marrying cut-up beats to vocal fragments, scratches and acid motifs.
Konerytmi - Siirtää' [Telomere Plastic]
A family of labels that includes Ahaad, Daybyday, La Luna, Telomere Plastic and recently Trix Trax, all under the mother label Wex, this operation out of NYC and Berlin has become a highly sought-after factory for refined, genre-splicing dance music – recommended by people like Lyo from NUT Records’ in his interview with us. To celebrate its 10th release, Telomere brings a VA double EP with some producers who are new to the label and some already with a release or two under their belts. Konerytmi falls under the latter category and comes with a spacious and elastic electro funk groove that recalls the supplest of Detroit-meets-Hague sounds (remember the lighter side of Unit Moebius?), a worthy complement to their recent album on the label.
One of the integral members of Hungarian trio Wedding Acid Group, J. Mono already has two Undersound EPs on his CV as part of that collective. Here he strikes out on his own for the first time on the London label, with four fresh takes on the interface between electro and techno.There’s a defined personal mood on the Misted EP despite the varied tones and grooves, but nowhere is this mood as exuberant as on ‘M.aus’, a bumping bassline-driven floor mover that feels about as close as you can get to Chicago while sitting in a Budapest studio.Undersound’s next release crosses the Black Sea to Georgia, with four more electro workouts from General Minerali.
Katerina - Stay Underwater [Post Sonics]
Following a string of releases on labels like Cómeme, Tigersushi and Rhythm Section, Katerína contributes a percolating groover to this crowdfunding compilation for Helsinki danceteria, Post Bar, a venue building a reputation for solid bookings and a good vibe.‘Stay Underwater’ is a driving and melodic electro-meets-techno affair that would easily fit on Katerína’s own label, Émotsiya. There’s something quintessentially Scandinavian about the vocal samples, but the track itself has an almost ghetto house quality to it that makes for an exhilarating contrast.Check out the rest of the compilation for contributions from names like Mesak, Sansibar, Samo DJ, among others.
Reagenz - ß [Musique Pour La Danse]
They’re the Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy of electronica: David (Move D, Heidelberg) and Jonah (Spacetime Continuum, Edinburgh via San Francisco) meet at an Autechre concert in 1994 and are inspired to record an album for David’s Source imprint under the alias Reagenz. They part ways, not seeing each other again for a whole 13 years until another serendipitous Autechre concert in Tokyo in 2008, after which they record a new Reagenz full-length for Workshop. Now, after another 13 years have passed, the duo are back once again for this vinyl version of that debut album, thanks to the work of those committed archivists at Musique Pour La Danse.‘ß’ exemplifies the extent to which these producers and their contemporaries were pushing genre boundaries in electronic music. Is it techno? Electro? IDM? Something else? Surely the latter is the safest option – this is wholly singular machine music that stood apart then and, frankly, still stands apart today.
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