I get the feeling this a concept album by and large. There's an awful lot of poetry happening. And, well. Umm. There is a (versions) second disc. But, overall. This is up to you discover whether you can happen with it, or not. To cut to the chase. This is probably going to be shelved as that Brian Eno "electronica" dance record. It has that kind of programming around it. Those sound stages and the appropriate motivations and movements in sound are involved. Listening to Glitch. I can't help but think. This is FSOL. Then it expands out into something not unlike AoN (mostly not) expanding upon the Debussy catalog, but more relishing in it happening when it did; (that 98 overground putsch) as an concept based electronica music album. As a full product with its expressed and vocal content. This will take some balls, an arts background, or some kind of crafted and out of mind experience to digest. It goes into some found sound detachments. Takes its turns into a few of the spaces which are Apollo soundtracks through and through. i.e. immaculate and beautiful. I can take it as it is when I can filter it through my dj ears as something which when taken apart is imminently usable. But. God. For a listening experience as an album. This is a twatty and heady endeavor. But. Pull it apart into packets of usable content. There are a lot of ways to use this given the nature of technology and how a disc jockey can apply it for something fun to use where someone might ask, 'what is this?' and you go: 'Oh, it's Brian Eno. Did you know that crafty bugger hung out at Paradise Garage back in the day." But this is a terrible album to listen to as a whole without the aforementioned, or it getting left on in another room. I know it can sound amazing given the right filters. And I can imagine that due to nature of the content; its concepts and language within the sounds of this album. One could hope some remixing will arise from this. There will be some parts of this album getting taken and utilized an awful bit in the coming months. To great effect, or not, is up to the selector, the moment and the participants to consume, and involve themselves with and to utilize the space socially, and reflect back into the vibe of the temporary community within the aural space the song anticipates. At least that is what I would hope. In packets there are some bright moments to exploit and utilize. They will shine in the right illumination. Which, by the range of sounds, and concepts poetically rambled, expounded upon and processed into this record makes it sound pretty much like a soundtrack to Burning Man. Or, that beautiful space where something is possible. Anything, and music is involved, and people are dancing. Life is good. There is a lot of that grace and vibe coming from it where these scenarios and situations become possible and can lilt towards the special. The vocal treatments and portions of the album have a gathering of the tribes pattery heady schmaltz and detached new age hallucinatory, ephemeral random reading of bits from found literature and cut up with allusions towards greater goals and participations with the all and the we. Used well. I imagine good results.

1. I'm looking for a reason to listen to this beyond it being some guys who have done some damn fine music in their time. The nature of the recordings implies there be some faith taken on the players and the listeners part. So here we go. I'd swear as structure one expands, it's sounding more and more like the Grateful Dead circa late 80's at the interlude where Drums recedes in to a pattern and right before taking off into Space. This is drift music. 2. Jam bands can use electronic music to great effect when used with a certain regard towards what they can do to a pulse, i.e. groove. Where Structure One loses touch and increasingly goes into itself and some tangerine dream like arpeggios. Two comes alive and has some beads of sweat forming about it as it begins to wiggle and writhe underneath a hypnotizing and flashing framework that only ever, and slowly fades into the background before falling over itself into a canyon. 3. An ocean of sound slowly washing over me and taking me away into the sonic œther and brushing up against the Orb and their logness of dub influences. Play twice before listening music. 4. Guitars without some regard to their noise making and textural ability are just doomed to always just be noodly instruments. Gypsy movements and jammy spasm's in a structured German style. 5. Not sure. But there are some moments of this improv ambient get down that sound not unlike what I suspect would happen when you put a series of different effects on a set of wind chimes going off.

For a dj/producer to pull themmselves off the dancefloor as a physical space and its resultant atmospherics and mental gymnastics and into the dance floor as a purely mental space and the sound as its physical, and architectural atmosphere. Isn't that a bit indulgent? Perhaps. But. Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer are most certainly up to the task. That is perhaps where to start with as an arrival point in listening to this expansive gaze at portions and departure points from within a dive into the ECM back catalog. Pairing Villalobos with Loderbauer is a musical friendship that probably shouldn't surprise too many, and it is one that promises to open a potential for many intersections of electronic music to merge and blend into new territories. For a quick history. Thank Uwe Schmidt.
If you come into this with the expectation of it being another Odd Machine, and to able to use for a dj tool for the particularly refined, yet free, yet deep and psychedelic set and setting. You are only partially right. And it is a really small partially.
Perhaps, this is the effort Ricardo Villalobos has mentioned as his breaking point with electronic music as being that of solely a strictly functional and body based music. In that regard, listening to it for those frissures where rhythm and tempo is left behind. It doesn't ever truly break out of the pulse and get sent off to be free to roam as pure aural texture NO free range. This is sheer textural cuisine. But, Villalobos pined "If one combines the functionality of reduced electronic structures with the living textures ... it ignites new passions on a subliminal level... The most important thing is to harmonize these two worlds, without them aspiring to mutually deactivate each other, to keep both–the organic and the electronic–in balance." To listen into the album. It is still finding its roots in the march of the dancers drum, and the sequential and cyclic. That said. It takes on the funerary march, and some of its jazz.
As an album marking Villalobos growth into an album artist of listener music and one who moves outside of the dancefloor space. It is deeply rewarding in pockets. It also shows there is room for much growth. The pieces sometimes arrive at what feels like a resolution and they end satisfied. But overall, With Villalobos predilection for drawing out the groove into ports and channels unknown and very strange, the ideas inside the pieces sometimes do not really develop very much outside of there being a singular groove and it sorting itself out and falling in and out of step through a varying degree of intricate and deft application of effects and processing inside of impeccable programming, and sequencing. I.e. It's villalobos and loderbauer at their best sans a four on the floor kick clap sequence to engage the body with. For the most part the album does still retain the track and toolbox quality a dj seeks. Inside of this, and Villalobos prowess as a dance floor producer with an ear towards percussion driven by a psychedelic sense of place, and application of function of emotion and expansion via an ecstatic release driven by a political response of wtf? The well timed application into a dance floor oriented set and setting and weaving of some of these pieces would elevate the dedicated into places unknown, and indeed, very wild.

This also wouldn't sound out of place on an American label. Like say. Thrill Jockey. The quite often brittle treatment of the sounds. The listen at low volume and from another room treatment of the bristling texture of his percussion and space really has it in for fans of Tortoise, O'Rourke, or Oval.
As a track by track breakdown. Reblop (the first) is interlude art film music. The sound of a tinkling piano and lute caressing a windowsill while a faucet drips in the background. Retimeless is a one for the pile of that track. it's quirky and oozes proudly into and out of focus. Reannounce is pure party in the woods with the Tar and the Rhythm Devils Re-emergence is difficult jazz. Brooding, and the half the sound comes off as recording through a broken cone that still has the sneezes. Soundtrack and smokey. But still bristling and very volatile. There is a cast off nature where the sound kind of caves in over itself in this that is not unlike Flanger or Schnittstelle. Rensenada renders a very broken beat underneath Bernie Maupins Jewel of the Lotus. This one is touch and go for me, cos I know Jewel of the Lotus from how Harold Budd interpreted it. As a listener I have a hard time with it. The rhythm doesn't feel its sway to how the flow of the melody wants it to. Making it a listen where it might amount to an unfortunate case of some rather admirable efforts in programming and sequencing amounting to mere busy work.
Recurrence is another smokey number that comes in and out of focus and provides you a midget in every corner. It revisits a theme that also fades and recedes through out the album. The funerary march and the dance. Reshadub is a series of drum spasms falling in space. The musical equivalent of being pushed down a hill and told to play taps and a track which serves as a good example of both Villalobos strengths and his weaknesses as a producer. Requote mills about in that slightly academic and sometimes uncomfortable space of classical influenced jazz. Rebird finds an interlude to wend its way into being. It bobs in the water as a gentle foreshadowing and begs for a visual to be able to soundtrack and a story to become a part of. Retikhiy comes off as apocalyptic, like one is traveling a great distance through the jungle and up the river to meet a man.
Recat parades itself through on a riding cymbal with a snare and kick before running itself out and breaking apart into the background. Resvete is spooky vocal soundtrack sexual energy something or other music. Reblazhenstva is soundtrack music par excellance.
Since the album drapes itself over 2 hours. This is not really an album for exuberance and active listening, unless you're up for the task. Put it back in the background and let it flow. In an active setting, It does bear to be broken down into various packets of a more random listening and to involve itself within a context where the music as it works can function against another background, and other sounds. It's a soundtrack without a movie.

Solid and psychedelic dj tools! The guts of the ep visit what sounds like a broken tinkly toy piano plinking and getting laced up and messy over a ravey piano stab and their various affectable attributes. The main mix is a basically a peak hour hands in the air rave roller. The (digital exclusive) beats mix takes and subdue the rave down to a late night drift through the second room. RoRic starts off as straight up groover turf. But percussively glitchy. It's versatile to use as its essentially broken into two sections. The glitches turn towards drums as It sets you up for the second half which burrows its way into your body before closing its eyes and drifting off into the air.

Pretty tasteful approach to a dj tool of a trance gold standard. As such. It sounds nice enough. There are elements of the sound on verge of feeding back on themselves and the breakdown (when it comes) is swooning and sets up the user for going off into new and mysterious places session wise. It'll probably go down huge somewhere, but if it gets played wrong it'll probably be boring. Played well and some spangled sunburnt mess will probably see god with it. But the click track simple percussion doesn't shut up.

Pretty heavy duty early night and after-hours material. Isolee winks at the dancefloor with Well Spent Youth and the times were of creating spaces out of nowhere; and the music contained and used inside it is almost incidental and secondary to the experience of discovering eddies and currents which inhabit the flow of each groove. Heady stuff for those inclined and nicely sideways slanted house, and crafty abnormal techno. There's definitely a fine line with Well Spent Youth where a dj can make this material sing for a dancefloor, or just as easily turn it over into a more listening and social music.

Quasi Jam Band falls into a drunken k hole. This record should be like a dream come true in certain regards. What, with the respective catalogs this 3 way have in their wake. That said. DFA has released far more reality challenging and reality challenged music than this one.
Bruno Pronsato finds himself working into something like a Vampire Weekend-ish not quite African, but not quite Caribbean and not quite Birkenstock/huarache vibe. In comparison to what he's capable of and so forth. It's pretty safe stuff, and a step sideways in forward thinking dance music. It'll sound great at a festival with a lot of people who don't know much about dance music except for jam bands, and be that teaser to get into deeper weirder places for those inclined, or the sort of strange long sort of hippyish track most others will use as a bridge to get down to their more normal business. But. It's pretty safe stuff. It sounds like something Bruno would do with the hand claps percussion wise. The flutes in the front half are nice and spacious, then it begins almost a singing bowl experiment of chakra alignment in the midsection and it sort "lifts off" like its going into the trees before bringing it home with one last choral hurrah.
Ricardo turns in what I think is one of his more featureless mixes here as well. It sort of begins as it ends and has some flutes somewhere in the middle. It is hypnotic, which might be because there is a bonging type sound at the forefront of the percussion which does not quit and the vocals are muddled, discaffected, repetitious and cracked out sounding. It'll work with the otherwise enabled how it is supposed to and things separate a bit for them and the normal gets funny. But, given both their respective capabilities to whip up hairy armed eyes wide open dance floor devastating strangeness. Could this be stronger and stranger stuff? But, yes. Of course.

Deepchord Presents Echospace Liumin, Liumin Reduced
Nearly a new album of Echospace works spread out over two hours worth of music. It's not really what should be called the follow up to the Coldest Season. Liumin comes off more as a sonic travelogue, than an actual album. The sound and feel of Liumin, while retaining something of what we've come to know as the expanding yet contracting world of Echospace. Liumin has reduced the sound to a far more singular and relentless one than that of Coldest Season. It's not trying to be song like, or based in the least and as a document, I don't expect it to. The most driving and percussive are Sub-Marine, Maglev, and BCN Dub. Firefly lingers and is sustainable whereas It goes much deeper and drifting with Summer Haze, Float, and Burnt Stage.
Surface noise and artifact is assumed to be part of the vocabulary in any deepchord related product. Liumin seems to be more about the distressed document itself, and the sound overall is a lot less clear and of a more drifting and track based nature. Whether it's by design or by fact of it these being live sessions and the inclusion of the reduced extra disc of Field recording pieces to make the point clear that this is a collected document, and not really an album.
Liumin Reduced is field and incidental music. As such, it is an excellent document and almost more rewarding than Liumin for what kind of spaces it can create and be used within. It is very much something to put on at a lowered volume, or have playing in another room entirely. It is something to weave into the soundtrack for a lazy afternoon. It is something to fall asleep to.
This album is about a the sounds of a hazy and gauzy surface over a well defined content with its pristine structure and audio architecture. There are really no stops in the pieces, only passageways in between them. Each track emerges pretty much fully defined out of a field of background patter and drifts along with a few subtle shifts as sounds arc over and off of the surface. Like other sessions rendered or found by the extended Deepchord nebula. There's an interest in street percussion and everyday sounds and the specificity of location/field recording where texture and sound lingers and will shift depending on your proximity to the source which only exists until it no longer can be heard.
Due to the travelogue nature where voices play the largest part in between the cuts, one could almost surmise it's a best of 'live' compilation. In use. These are powerful pieces to work with for building and carrying a sessions movement into vast new spaces. As an album to listen to. It falls somewhat short of delivering.

 

Quality flashback capable EDM. Four tracks of after-hours music for somewhere after the night has left and a BEAST cos each track takes you there. Breathe into Light is a down tempo chugger for the barely moving but wanting set. You gotta hand it to the people that can dance to this mess. Dangerous ganes is a track for those moments when you arrive at the after hours. And the ones where you want to either stay and dance or the ones where you leave. Frequency Sex is for the onset and the lift off on the dancefloor where all is moving around you and 'everyone' is feeling good. Another Dilemma is for when you are feeling frisky, a bit confused and might want to share something with someone you've probably seen around but have never really met.

An immediate album in that it is sparse. Stripped to what is needed and nothing less.
DJ music is a secret order in sound which seeks and only desires sound as a functional device. These never really develop in a way that is rewarding for a listener as they are unless that is they are applied in a dj setting where they achieve functionality. Quality, DEEP and functional.
A placeless music. You could have heard some of it at any point and been like. I always liked that one where it is steeped in a timeless spirit. Until you heard another dj play it and it becomes something else.