Hello there, last Bandcloud of the year. I hope you enjoyed your break, and if you're back to work already I hope you enjoy getting that money and that things aren't too stressful. 

Marlo Eggplant - Tapes Callosity
I featured a few Fracatal Meat Cuts cuts in the Christmas show, and here is their latest release. It comes from  the wonderful Marlo Eggplant, and it's a tape full of muffled ideas and thoughts wrapped in a warm, protective embrace, barely able to escape. It was recorded as a response to the awfulness of the world, and the title refers to a figurative callus. "The result is a social hardening or a shell that covers a very fragile and vulnerable space that hopefully will reveal healed and newly generated skin."

Things From The Basement - Intimacy (KANN28)
This is lush. 'No One Belongs Here More Than You' is 11 minutes long and deserves every moment of its run time. It edges along with just a single phrase, modulated and embellished slightly along its path. The title track is softer yet features more graceful movement. Sevensol's remix of 'NOBHMTY' is lovely, but I can take or leave the rest.

Chihei Hatakeyama - Above The Desert
This is so lovely. Beautiful floaty drone. It was recorded in a basement, and Hatakeyama imagined a sky above, hence the title and theme of the album. Isn't that quite lovely.

TVO - Wind Die, You Die, We Die
While the two above are beautifully redemptive, this release is not always an easy listen. It's a series of soundtracks, each performed live for the same film, a single 42 minute shot at an abandoned asylum in Lanarkshire. It started from an invitation to perform at a celebration of the centenary of the birth of Willliam S Burroughs in Manchester two years ago. TVO used table-top electronics and turntables playing and restructuring the writer's voice. The title of the work is the title of one of Burroughs' short stories, and the audio aspect also uses a recording of Ed Asner reading it - that's the crotchety old man from Up, so you know. Each version is different: dark and growling, driving techno, fuzzy stretches and so forth. If you know TVO, you know what you're getting. It's him at his best, I think.

Morah, Solid Blake, Ivna Ji, Vertical67 - [BT17] The Glowing
This caught my eye as it features Solid Blake of Apeiron Crew. Her track, 'Burns', is a swift and gnarly cut that's no doubt the highlight of this four-track comp from brokntoys. 'One Conversation with a Funny Devil' is a great starter, snarling synth arpeggios and stabs darting around menacingly. Then 'Burns'. It's super. Like Anthony Rother or something but nastier. Ivna Ji's 'Oscillating Universe' is more spacey, and it's ace, while Vertical67's 'Distortion' is slower and darker. All good though. All good.

SoundCloud playlist

Abstract Conditions AC 12/09/16: Cc
Here's a great choppy live set from Cc of Embalming Lately. It rumbles with nervous energy, twinkling synths flowing forth like a Hollywood classisc, tempos unravelling and lurching from one movement to the next. It's raw.

.mp3Neptune - To The Sky///Best Days Of My Life
Ahhhh this is so nice. It genuinely feels like space ballet music. It's from an album that's yet to be released. Maybe next year eh.

Classic Airlines: Dario Zenker - Classic Podcast # 4
You may associate Ilian Tape's Dario Zenker with tough and energetic techno, but here he fashions an ambient dream for Classic Airlines. Seventy minutes of that scorched, exposed ambience that often features in these mails. I don't recognise anything here bar Huerco S, but that's hardly the point. 

Mr. Mitch - Dru (Part 2)
You might recall the white label of Peace Edits that Gobstopper put out last year. It featured emotive tracks like 'Better Off Alone' and 'Running Up That Hill' given a weightless revision by artists like Strict Face and Loom. It opened with Mr. Mitch's take on Dru Hill's 'How Deep Is Your Love'. Here he reworks his rework, bolstering it for the floor yet retaining that heartfelt urgency. Sisqo had the range.

Factory Floor - Ya (Klara Lewis Remix)
Klara Lewis is known for dark, insular music, full of "unnerving, swollen sounds" (my words), yet this is very much a club track. Maybe early doors, maybe at a time when people can't stand any more, but it deserves to be heard loud. 

Fjäder//Månljus - Rimfrost
Searing dark ambient from Sweden. 

M37: Raam
This is also Swedish, but it's on a joyous house tip. Thick and chunky like peanute butter, it's a trip through Raam's label output to date. I first came across him through his most recent release, which came with a dark remix from Samo DJ & Alexi3d Rmx that features here. 

Vapor Lanes - aum ovata #4: end-of-year mix 2016
This is special! Vapor Lanes contributed a list to the Bandcloud EOY gala (its title is too long to repeat here), and he subsequently made this mix out of the 17 tracks he chose, adding three to make an even 20. Lots of gorgeous electronic stuff, joyful and wistful, dark and ebullient. Thank you once more, Vapor Lanes.

150 editions. Thank you so much. See you next year, ha ha ha ....