Lil Silva - Club Constructions Vol. 2

Get it while its hot fools

Soundcloud Round-Up

We haven't posted a lot of single trax of late, but the amount of good shit popping up on soundcloud warrants an update. New material from DJ Tylermania, remixing Lao on Soukouch Ethnik - a label that has heralded many successes this year. Its internet-depressed 92 hardcore; stabs, breaks, a dark bass breakdown - reminiscent of Zomby's classic Where Were U in 92 and constantly accompanied by the sultry seduction of "I'll give you pain." Like a rave drifting into the abyss. Boylan and Jana present the perfect collaboration, the soul of Boylan merges perfectly with Jana's coldness. Woody bass notes are joined by a screaming sax lick to create a cacophonous sample, while ghetto vocals (a touch of Jana's, I'd say, considering they are largely absent in Boylan's trax) keep the track floored. Traxman has been releasing a stream of trax on soundcloud of late, both as his house moniker Corky Strong, and as footwork's Traxman. This remix seems a continuation of his album, all its warmth, deepness, wonderful intensity. Traxman proving that there really is no other life but teklife. This new Pogflipper is an absolute jam. It sounds like if LDFD in his recent phase was making wonky. Bang it out yo car all day. Meanwhile, Hippos In Tanks has released a track from Nguzunguzu's forthcoming EP Warm Pulse. The 808s elucidate an off-kilter juke, but bassweight and vocals sound more like the UK, the chimes like Ferraro. Nguzunguzu really do have an amazing capability of crystallising their internationalist aesthetic. And finally, more gold from Paisley Parks. Check out any of his recent soundcloud material, it's all great, but this probably tops it all. A twee 40s vocal sample is accompanied by some big band fanfares as Paisley Parks carries out his particular brand of madness and battleground destruction.

Diffusion Mix #2 ~ Legit

 It is an honour and a pleasure to present Diffusion Mix #2 by Austin's Legit. A member of the Wabi Sabi collective and producer of one of my personal favourite songs of the year, Legit exists in the thriving Texas scene that, as #2 demonstrates, continues to evade boundaries. It is obviously centred around trap music, but provides so much more: where a mix by Flosstradamus or Diplo, for example, focuses on all the bang of trap (and while bang is still forefront in this mix), Legit engages with the ebb and flow of the mix as a whole - sections without bass, dipping into scenes America-wide and sounds world-wide. Like clicking through radio channels, as the beginning and end suggest. From trap anthems like Harlem Shake to Cedaa to Abel to Cocobass records, Legit surveys contemporary US bass music with a fine ear for anything that'll make you lean. Starting with some real trap shit, moving into dubsteppy territory by way of the UK techno sounds (think Blawan and Objekt, but replace the pounding 4/4 or dubstep bassweight with the south's boom-bap) and finally blossoming in full, peaking glory.

The mix also reflects the trap scene's, on a wider scale, obsession with internety murkiness, kitsch soundbites and watermarks. It switches from the minimal = maximal aesthetic of the likes of TNGHT to the schizophrenic, violently restless likes of LDFD in an instant, full of the sounds of cultural deconstruction and decay. In the mix Legit is keenly aware of the effect of these bleeps and bloops - the ecstasy of the barrage, the intrigue of their absence. And thus we have a perfectly balanced mix- between restraint and overload, between minimalism and maximalism, between sparsity and density. Brilliantly, this is still full volume, 1 a.m. music and it's a free download so get listening!

Teengirl Fantasy - Motif (Actress Remix)

What a superb instant entry into every top 100 of this year. On the back of Actress' more than monumental 'R.I.P.' long player this not only fulfills the inevitable urge for more, it also is the exact kind of musical release that Actress had deliberately left off the album. R.I.P. is a work that evokes a very itchy, ambiguous, mystical atmosphere where as this remix cuts through the fog of intellectualism and gives us Actress, humbly tweaking the knobs through his psychoacoustic dancefloor workout. There is a cleanness to the bass and the hissing textures the leak out from the plunging malicious four-to-the-floor kick. Hey, if you like Actress (which you do, let's get real) this is a compulsory addition to your iTunes library.

Jlin - EU4RIA

Every track Jlin lays her hands on, she doesn't just kill, she murders. Easily one of the best in the footwork game, Jlin also has to be one of the best females in dance music altogether. This track, with its spasmodic piercing string stabs, matches the supernatural adrenalin of a footwork battle. The listener falls into a pit of tribal screams and cartoonish textures that contain the feel of outright war. Jlin's free-form song structure also complements the air of madness and chaos that is embedded in all her best tracks, and this is one of the best to date.

Jam City ~ Classical Curves

Jam City is one of the most restless, the most varied producers on the Night Slugs roster. Classical Curves is a testament to this, to the eclecticism that comes with the name. Indeed, what is beautiful about this record is not its emotive and highly accurate portrait of the present day, nor its more modern (and arguably more successful) take on the objective of Detroit Techno (to amalgamate Kraftwerk and Parliament), but its heteroglossia - that fact that any of these readings is as good as the other. In Classical Curves I hear at once the hazey postmodernity of the Ferraro/Lopatin matrix, the glamour and sex-ooze of Prince, the coldness of eskibeat, the mechanical industrialism of Underground Resistance and the vibrancy of Night Slugs. But that's just me and my musical understanding - you may see something altogether different in it, and that's the beauty of this album.

Whether true or an elaborate publicity stunt, the backstory of the album provides a fitting environment for its themes. (The story goes that JC was approached to work on some chrome "body extensions" by a high-fashion label, naturally the project turned out to be overseen by a Big Brother-esque aero-space company and was consequentially shut down. Another goes that JC was involved in some sport-label spy missions to snoop on competitors.) Elucidated are modern surveillance, the ritz and materiality of haute-couture fashion, robotics and ultramodern technotopia. This is not only communicated in the albums story, but in the album's cover art. A crash devoid of humans, golden velvet, marble, and a splintered motorbike all framed in the kind of inside-outside area one might find in dystopic Dubai. It's an excursion for Night Slugs' visual aesthetic, just as it's an excursion for their sound.

'Her' has received a bit of botox since we last heard its demo. The album version makes the song more palatable, the brutality and violence of the drums has been pacified while the injection of the vocal sample adds a vogue poppiness to it. This is a bad thing by no means, more a matter of taste, with JC equally succeeding in promoting what was a great idea to an album-worthy track. I've spoken about my love for 'Her' before, but it really does prove what Girl Unit recently said about Jam City, that he "manages to recontextualise harsh sounds and make them beautiful." 'Her' and 'The Courts' work together in an almost symbiotic manner. Not only is ther no break between them, but they are sonically (the pounding gun of Her turns into the slap-claps of The Courts) and structurally (the emphasis on tension and release) aligned.

'How We Relate to the Body' is the centrepiece for Jam City's synth work. If I had a complaint it would be this; the overuse of that synth tone. When restricted to one song it creates a hi-sheen, effulgent, chrome gloss while remaining laceratingly potent and disarmingly modern. Coupled with the steadiness of a fat kick and the emotion of decaying replicant vocals, the track delivers not only thump fit for a club but subtlety fit for the home. Tracks like 'Club Thanz' and the 'Hyatt Park' sequence are where the synth work tires and where Jam City seems happy to sit back and sustain the album's concept. Having said that, they do work for the album and are far from skippable. Unless you consider what comes next. What can I say about 'Strawberries'? It's the best song on the album? One of the best of the year? Well, yes, but that doesn't compare to the sheer joy of listening to it. It is the standout not only because it retains a bigness to behold but because it is the most fully realised example of Jam City's aesthetic. It rolls all those influences I mentioned before, with a bit of trap music and a bit of Rustie thrown in for good measure, into a firework, and goes off in full, explosive glory. 'Love is Real', with its ambient drones, kitsch soundbytes and jittery percussion, could fit right in on the most recent Ferraro work, Bodyguard's Silica Gel.

'The Nite Life' is a strange collaboration, and it is testament to both artists' creativity that this exists, let alone that it is so successful. Jam City appears to have studied the vibe of Main Attraktionz and delivered it holistically without compromising the sound of the album. It's smoked out; emotionally so. After all, Main Attraktionz have shown that they approach drug taking in a nihilistically philosophical way - 'I Smoke Because I Don't Care About Death'. Jam City's production similarly conveys an aura of 21st century surrealism and disillusionment. But where Jam really shows is skills is in the vocal-less second wind that comes at the end of the track. Skittering hi-hats and a rolling bassline are added to create a lurching, ear-worming slow jam that only sticks around for a minute before drifting into oblivion. So there you have it, a highly anticipated and typically English club album that finishes with a collaboration with the creators of cloud rap. On that note...