Bandcloud 284

For six years, I've been saying that time is a flat circle. No longer. Now, time is a bozo.

Selected Firstperson Tracks 2017 - 2019
Pretty much what the title says. UK artist Firstperson put together a mix of tracks made over the past few years. Slinky techno, swooshy sounds, it's all quite clean and melodic. Very trippy, verging on dub techno in spots, almost trancey in others. Lovely stuff! 

Pablo's Eye - Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien
Longform Editions dropped its latest batch this week, and of particular interest was this piece by Pablo's Eye, the weird Belgian group that I couldn't possibly sum up (see here instead). It's really really beautiful. 

Opheliaxz - Psyllium
Could listen to this beautiful number all day. "My first attempt at ambi style. No rules!" the artist tweeted. It's a wonderful first attempt. Seven minutes of swirling, airy synth. 

All Times Now Nothing - Tears Voyuer
This opens with the sound of actual ads. It's horrible. They're all layered on top of each other. Like watching lots of TVs at once. The most awful daytime nonsense you can imagine. Then there's a track that's formed from that "Mmm Danone" jingle. We have lushy and hazy ambient sounds, staid vocal samples, wobbly tape sounds and more. Apparently on the vinyl there are two collages of sound, while the digital release features the various tracks that make up those collages. I do have to say that "Voyuer" irks me, but I suppose I must respect them for leaning in with that error. Is it an error if it's deliberate? Am I being a pedant/snob? Who cares? 

t/e/u/ - contact—centre (unmastered)
This is an interesting one. The artist came upon a tape in a drawer in a telecoms office he was working in a long time ago. He's slowed it down, thrown on some delay and shared a section of it here. It's weirdly haunting, the sound of the phone transformed into a kind of horrendous siren. 

Daisychain 109 - Lorelei
A super mix that genuinely takes you on a journey. It moves between styles seamlessly, it takes a while to "get going" as it were, but that's no shame. Deeply weird acid, muted, heads-down sounds, dark and smoky techno. It builds over 90 minutes and by the end it's so dark we're in serious territory, with Lorelei even reaching for a track I first heard on a Global Underground CD in 2002. 

VA - Takeover EP [TAKE001]
Early 00s techno from Dublin, this has been rereleased on Bandcloud. Shouts to Mike Darkfloor for bringing it to my attention. This was released with little fanfare yet found its way into sets from Laurent Garnier, Paula Temple and Two Lone Swordsmen, among others. It's bright and springy, with unusual sounds offsetting a more traditional approach to percussion. 

"BE MINE" ~ A VDAY MIXTAPE by ASH LAURYN
This is nice. It's a short mix, like one side of a literal mixtape, full of romantic house music from the great Ash Lauryn. People like Mr. Fingers, Romanthony (RIP), Kai Alcé, Kerri Chandler and Mr. G. Groovy. Sensuous. Fun.

The Kendal Mintcake - (always in a straight line, from centre to edge)
Ten tracks, each four minutes and eight seconds in length. Each flows into the next, all strange noise and unknowable looped sonics. The only slight qualm of mine is that there's a split-second gap between each track, but that could be the Bandcamp player. I should probably fork out the cash and hear it in mp3 format eh! The tracks are made up of samples from random CDs. There's a short blurb about how CDs will become unplayable. "Don't worry about it. Have a sandwich and hang out with people you like." Lovely. 

Scott Young - Hyper Domestication [Discos Capablanca]
I put this guy's ambient mix in the last mail of 2019, saying that he had a new release on the way. It's finally out, and Inverted Audio have the scoop with one of the tracks. This one is a slow but intense track based around a muffled drum sample, to me it sounds like Q-Tip's 'Breathe & Stop' but maybe that's just what I want to hear. It rumbles and rolls with a kind of understated ferocity, much like the whole release, which is driven by unusual approaches to percussion and sound design. Vinyl out now, digi coming soon.

haido - Just Falling
This isn't self-promo, as this mix was actually put together a decade ago. It's an hour of lush romantic sounds, probably the most ~diverse~ mix I've ever done, moving from Wilco into Ulrich Schnauss remixing Slowdive, Daft Punk and Tangerine Dream into Death Cab and The Cure, Röyksopp and Karin Dreijer, that Aeroplane remix of Friendly Fires, Spiritualized remixed by The Chems, Alan Braxe (under his The Paradise alias) and Juan MacLean, all 12 minutes of 'Happy House'. Listen! Or don't. It's had 27 plays in 10 years...