Ongoing 2007 Electronic releases

Commander Keen

Active member
that Lawrence mix is superb. best mix i've heard in ages.

I really like Lawrence and Sten's material in set form as well as ther mixes. Even moreso than their albums which always have less of an impact on my music listening than I anticipate. You should check that Paul Keeley set upthread, it's wonderful.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
Bodzin is my fave technical producer at the mo - almost by virtue of his drums alone - but his whole mix is fairly phenomenal. I love his elegant, stripped back stuff and his darker, brooding numbers with the gurgly bits or the meaty Vangelis style babababa basslines. Some of his other bits on Herzblut sound to me like his take on the new (Detroit) trance thing... only they're quite individual and the mood is comparatively offkey. Lovely deep stuff.

A couple of other bits...

Moonbeam - Eclipse / Sunshine
Bjorn B - 20 hz
 

childrentalking

Well-known member
some favourites so far this year...

Tony Allen - Ole (Moritz von Oswald remix).
perfection from an unsurprising source, a relaxed 10+ minute 'organic' house track... very Rhythm and Sound-esque but it's more uplifting (by virtue of some beautiful chords which rise in the mix every so often)

Oracy - Mind Dance 12" / Sven Weisseman - Vivid Memento 12"
been boosting these guys for a while. Oracy in particular is one to watch... classic house inspired sounds with a slight Basic Channel tinge. very lush. the B side is the winner here.

Half Hawaii - Into You 12"
fantastic new Perlon 12". especially like the A side, sub bass driven minimal house with great live sounding percussion.

CH-Signal Laboratories - Hypnotica Scale 12"
super reduced minimal techno (old school minimal, not new). I like side A: massive sub drones with fascinating tiny pin pricking percussive shifts and fascinating hissing effects right on the edge of the mix...
 
Pantha du Prince - "This Bliss" LP (Dial)
Beautiful deepminimaltrancey house stuff, featuring live samples and great treatments, probably the best thing I've heard from the informal post-Border Community scene.

Onur Ozer - "Allegro Energico" (Vakant)
Mad minimal-yet-not-minimal-at-all track, slightly loose and heavily druggy, complete with an ill sax hook that's killing me, a bit reminiscent of Gemini's "U Know How I Feel". Off his new EP.

Motorcitysoul - "Aura" Jimpster remix (Stir 15)
Happy and clean deep house with a garagey/ravey break, really nice.

Stereo & Flatner - "Der Graf" Kiki remix
Nauseous and depressive yet bizarrely anthemic and rather funky electrohouse. Future huge track for this year? I bet.

Heroin - "Heroin" (GrandPetrol)
This is the shit : "torture-house" at its best. Love it, great programming, great structure, great curtisjonesey vocal part.
 

bruno

est malade
Pantha du Prince - "This Bliss" LP (Dial)
Beautiful deepminimaltrancey house stuff, featuring live samples and great treatments, probably the best thing I've heard from the informal post-Border Community scene.
i'm not familiar with pantha but i have gluehen 4, does it overlap in style? that was a moody record.
 
i think i dont know the record you're talking about, but i'm pretty sure he started as an electronica guy and progressively got more dancey.
 

bruno

est malade
i think it was a one-off, really, i have no idea what these people are up to now. i suppose i'll follow your tips and find out.
 

Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
that Lawrence mix is superb. best mix i've heard in ages.

Can anyone ID the tune with the bendy bassline that comes in at 38.43? I think I own this but I can't place it. This will bug me all day unless someone comes through!

I just don't know about this minimal stuff. I can see the appeal, but it really lacks something to my ears. The rhythms are so monotonous: straight 4s with a snare on the offbeat, then a hihat comes in, then it goes out again, ad infinitum. Would it kill them to use some polyrhythms?
 

dogger

Sweet Virginia
I just don't know about this minimal stuff. I can see the appeal, but it really lacks something to my ears. The rhythms are so monotonous: straight 4s with a snare on the offbeat, then a hihat comes in, then it goes out again, ad infinitum. Would it kill them to use some polyrhythms?


i think you just need to listen differently. minimal, when it is really minimal and not, say, something like matt o'brien that just happens to be placed in the "minimal" section of record shops, works by very subtle modulations over a long period of time. listen to the new thomas melchior - different places/phantom (perlon) - for a good (and extremely minimal) example of this. the positioning of each element creates an incredibly subtle yet deeply funky groove, definitely /not/ square and monotonous, but with some of the slinkiness of 2-step. through its seemingly endless repetition it hints at the infinite...so minimal can be hypnotic, trance-inducing, as sherburne pointed in one of his pitchfork articles, and it can also be suspenseful: philippe quenum, for example, is very good at creating suspense in his tracks by introducing samples and little snares at odd and unexpected moments (something villalobos of course does too) - check voodoo vision on trapez for a playfully comic post-akufen take on the above, and blackula/four seasons on toys for boys for a brooding, darker approach. all of these tracks are more than just functional club tools - they are intricate and suspenseful enough to reward close home listening.

the half hawaii record is stunning - the dark fruit of the much-touted minimal/dubstep crossover.

onur ozer's new ep is also pretty great: and as you say, etienne, minimal yet not at all minimal at the same time. similar, but i think superior, to his excellent twilight ep.

also loving the new am/pm on dreck records. lawrence played the a-side when i saw him at the rhythm factory in december (brilliant set, rounded off by his rather dapper crimson v-neck jumper and blue checked shirt), and those chords have been in my head ever since...
 

mms

sometimes
i think personally mixed with other things minimal is more than brilliant, but a mix of minimal stuff on it's own is much like any mix of european 4 / 4 minimalist techno stuff at any time, a mix of the best of djax up beats in the mid 90s would be boring too.
 

dogger

Sweet Virginia
i think personally mixed with other things minimal is more than brilliant, but a mix of minimal stuff on it's own is much like any mix of european 4 / 4 minimalist techno stuff at any time, a mix of the best of djax up beats in the mid 90s would be boring too.

well i think mixing non-minimal (but not necessarily non-4/4, or even non-techno/house) tracks into a predominantly minimal set can definitely enhance the whole thing. but using minimal tracks "out of context", in a highly eclectic set (i'm thinking here of someone like optimo) doesn't work at all for me: the minimal aesthetic requires space and time to function effectively.
 

Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
i think personally mixed with other things minimal is more than brilliant, but a mix of minimal stuff on it's own is much like any mix of european 4 / 4 minimalist techno stuff at any time, a mix of the best of djax up beats in the mid 90s would be boring too.

Yeah, I can confirm this. I went record shopping in Eindhoven recently and listened to about 40 Djax records back to back.

Dogger, I know what it's supposed to do but I don't get that deep time feeling from the current crop of producers. I was really into techno from 94 through to 2002 and I've got a fair crop of 90s minimal - and although it did get a bit dull towards the end of that period, I still love a lot of that stuff. People like Robert Hood and Steve O'Sullivan were banging out phenomenal, hypnotic tracks.

Hood's Untitled, from the first Nighttime World, is my all time favorite techno track. It's like a grid that contantly shifting - as soon as you alight on any part of it, it moves somewhere else. But I've heard people play it out, and it's a monster groove. Same with the basic channel stuff. If I was hearing tracks in the same league as that on the minimal mixes I've DLed recently then I'd track them down and buy them, but I just come away disappointed every time.

When I first got into that minimal, hypnotic groove, it seemed like there were several groups of producers coming at it from different angles - so you had classicist detroit producers like hood; much lairier minimal acid techno like woody mcbride's labels and the dutch stuff; german producers who had a big open sound that would eventually evolve into trance; and house labels like Prescription Underground that were releasing great minimal tracks offf the back of that whole sound factory/strictly rhythm dubs thing. You'd often hear records from all those scenes in a single set

Minimal got dull in the late 90s when it solidified into a genre in it's own right, with specific beats, sounds and structures. It was around then that I drifted away from it. The current round of stuff like that Lawrence mix just sounds like more of the same after a few generations of inbreeding - insular laptop techno that's afraid of it's own shadow. If I heard that in a club I'd think I'd be really bored.

Really sorry to come over as such a techno purist bore. Seriously, I typed this on a 909. It took hours.;)
 

dogger

Sweet Virginia
Yeah, I can confirm this. I went record shopping in Eindhoven recently and listened to about 40 Djax records back to back.

Dogger, I know what it's supposed to do but I don't get that deep time feeling from the current crop of producers. I was really into techno from 94 through to 2002 and I've got a fair crop of 90s minimal - and although it did get a bit dull towards the end of that period, I still love a lot of that stuff. People like Robert Hood and Steve O'Sullivan were banging out phenomenal, hypnotic tracks.

Hood's Untitled, from the first Nighttime World, is my all time favorite techno track. It's like a grid that contantly shifting - as soon as you alight on any part of it, it moves somewhere else. But I've heard people play it out, and it's a monster groove. Same with the basic channel stuff. If I was hearing tracks in the same league as that on the minimal mixes I've DLed recently then I'd track them down and buy them, but I just come away disappointed every time.

When I first got into that minimal, hypnotic groove, it seemed like there were several groups of producers coming at it from different angles - so you had classicist detroit producers like hood; much lairier minimal acid techno like woody mcbride's labels and the dutch stuff; german producers who had a big open sound that would eventually evolve into trance; and house labels like Prescription Underground that were releasing great minimal tracks offf the back of that whole sound factory/strictly rhythm dubs thing. You'd often hear records from all those scenes in a single set

Minimal got dull in the late 90s when it solidified into a genre in it's own right, with specific beats, sounds and structures. It was around then that I drifted away from it. The current round of stuff like that Lawrence mix just sounds like more of the same after a few generations of inbreeding - insular laptop techno that's afraid of it's own shadow. If I heard that in a club I'd think I'd be really bored.

Really sorry to come over as such a techno purist bore. Seriously, I typed this on a 909. It took hours.;)

:)

I know next to nothing about 90's techno, having only started seriously listening to dance music a couple of years ago...all i would say is that i get a similar sense of excitement about the current scene to that you are describing w/r/t 90's techno: the diversity of labels, producers and stylistic approaches means that sets comprised entirely of very recent releases can be incredibly varied and exciting: combining what i think of as "classic" clicky minimal techno in an early-perlon style, with contemporary deep house a la ame, a lucianean conga-driven sound, dirty, banging up-front techno like adam beyer, dial's warm, chordy sound, subs-driven stuff like the uk label future days and stand-out tracks as fresh and mind-blowing as fizheuer zieheuer or luciano's 430 U release on for disco's only.

i really don't believe it's solidified into a unified set of tired conventions...
 

Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
:)

I know next to nothing about 90's techno, having only started seriously listening to dance music a couple of years ago...

Seriously, get some Robert Hood stuff. Pretty much anything he's done is good, and there's a lot of it, but Internal Empire and Nighttime World v.1 are so essential it's not even funny.

I will persevere with minimal in it's current form. I'm checking the Bodzin mix at the moment and it's certainly an improvement on that other one. Still a bit gutless though.
 

fandango

Tiny Robot
are people (not just here) finding minimal house coming up short compared with minimal techno? it's all a bit of a big grey area but just a thought... there's polyrhythms galore in both if you look.

I sympathise with not finding minimal across-the-board exciting, I think there's a fair bit of tunnel vision amongst recent converts, and whole schools of production styles that are likeable enough (Lawrence, Minilouge etc) but hardly set the world alight. And all those post "falling up" "ooh, an slightly ascending tone for ten minutes, deeep" borefests can just fuck off already.
 

mms

sometimes
are people (not just here) finding minimal house coming up short compared with minimal techno? it's all a bit of a big grey area but just a thought... there's polyrhythms galore in both if you look.

I sympathise with not finding minimal across-the-board exciting, I think there's a fair bit of tunnel vision amongst recent converts, and whole schools of production styles that are likeable enough (Lawrence, Minilouge etc) but hardly set the world alight. And all those post "falling up" "ooh, an slightly ascending tone for ten minutes, deeep" borefests can just fuck off already.

i dunno i buy about 1/4non minimal and older house 1/4 older and non minimal techno (stuff that kinda comes under the clone records type bracket then 1/4 min house and tech. there is good stuff in all of them.
 

dogger

Sweet Virginia
Seriously, get some Robert Hood stuff. Pretty much anything he's done is good, and there's a lot of it, but Internal Empire and Nighttime World v.1 are so essential it's not even funny.

I will persevere with minimal in it's current form. I'm checking the Bodzin mix at the moment and it's certainly an improvement on that other one. Still a bit gutless though.

thanks for the tip-offs gabba - i meant to get some robert hood, kenny larkin etc when i was in hardwax last friday but i went waaay over budget just on recently released stuff!

an obvious one i know, but villalobos' mixes are generally (perhaps surprisingly) un-wanky and self-indulgent (unlike, say henrik schwarz's). r v can be a bit edgy and fast at times, perhaps, but from what i can tell that's no bad thing in your book!
 
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