Bandcloud 226

Four-day weeks are cool, but you get nothing done.

maneater mix 02- haylo
Solid fun dancey mix from Haylo, full of funk and soul and house and techno. Some I recognise, lots I don't. 'Groove Is In The Heart' gets an outing, which is a thrill in itself, outside of the regular trappings of twee nostalgia. As I listened I thought "this is nice and summery" but stopped myself, trying to imagine silky horns in the depths of winter. A tweet from the DJ confirmed my initial suspicions, however — "100% summer bops!" 

Tenderness - Wheel of Fate
I'm utterly entranced by the work of Tenderness. I believe it's a side project from Vancouver's Baby Blue. This release is three 30-minute tracks of long simple drone, what the artist calls "a 1.5hr long meditative expanse". Pretty much. I went from there to the Tenderness SoundCloud page, where I found, among other things, a blissed-out deconstruction of Orbital's 'Halcyon'. "who can be arsed listening to hours of paulstretch noise?" someone asked me yesterday. I can be arsed. I can.

DJ Finn live at Kiss Me Again
IT'S A RIOT! Finn in action at the Kiss Me Again 2nd Birthday at the end of June. Featuring your favourite belters, screamers, rippers and anthems. 90s piano house, acid house, rave, French touch, bmore, techno, post-dubstep, grime and more. But that doesn't do it justice. Nearly 40 tracks in 90 minutes. 

indi - Transit OST
A different kind of dance here, Transit is the soundtrack to a modern dance piece of the same name performed in Singapore. Without seeing the performance I can't tell how apt it is but on its own, it's subtle, entrancing a perfect balance of found sound, strange electronic synth and vocal abstraction. The final piece is especially beautiful and emotive. The artist is from Christchurch, NZ, and is spending a year in Berlin. She also has a new album out next month called Precipice.

Mike Starr heatwave mix
Back and forth between bangers and drifters this week. Here we have a summer mix from Mike Starr that covers nice and vibey summer house. Deep, deep house with sultry vocals and squeegee keys, virtuoso solos, spoken word, bongos'n'congas and more. Big up Mike and big up Uzuri for sharing the mix.

Motoko & Myers - Basis Key
DJML and Wonja are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. They're also both wonderful musicians and DJs. Now they've teamed up for a record on Bass Clef's Open Hand Real Flames label. When 'Shio Nuite' kicks things off one might expect an album of hazy deep house, but instead it's a precursor to a collection of playful numbers that employ playful percussion and intriguing sound design, with melodies that could conceivably come from any sound source. 'Glochid Tuft' is particularly lovely, while 'Living Motif' deserves to find itself in some adventurous DJ's next SoundCloud post.

lowenstein - Opening hours at Discos Grandes part 4 - Jolene, Copenhagen
A lovely recent opening set from Morten Løwenstein, taking in nice ambient sections before introducing a groove that wavers and pauses before getting into it. There's a nice push-pull going on, as he drops in Larry Leaba's 'The Family Butter' just as you think things are kicking off. Then it's time for a steady chug, growing steadily into disco-y 80s-y pop-y fun music. Great stuff.

$3.33 - DRAFT
This one is a few years old but I came across it via a Facebook group where people share pictures of tapes they've bought (aka the sad man tape group, as my wife calls it). It's a swirling vortex of piano coated in reverb, with pluses for titles (+, ++, +++ and ++++). It's just a big load of swirling, dancing piano lines, I can't really say much more than that. A friend recently tweeted: "If every single track was as hypnotic as music writers said they were no one would get anything fucking done." Probably true. But listen deeply enough to this and you'll end up staring at the wall with your tongue hanging out.