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Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (74 ratings)

Subway - Subway II - 10-Aug-09 07:01 AM
What a totally mind blowing, heart felt album!!! Soul Jazz Records have done very well to pick this up, as I believe it will remain one of those hidden, slightly obscure, gems that many people will discover and rediscover time and time again...

Where to start? Well... Firstly let's check out who Subway are... They are a dynamic duo, consisting of Alan James and Michael Kirkman, who operate out of their East London play pad of a home studio. Having released a steady stream of techno/house over the last eight years or so, they now return with their first full length album since 2005's 'Empty Head' set. And its not to be overlooked!

While there's no radical departure from their previous style, they stick to what they do best with intuitive dance floor jams and their spacey head-music sound, like they could have come from any point between the late 70's and today with elements of New Yor City avant-disco, Krautrock, German electronics, Radiophonic ephemera, UK ambient dub and proto-house, all sculpted into a very unique sound.

For me, this album SPURTS a cosmic vibe that I just haven't heard, OR even felt, in a lot of modern day music for quite sometime now... While it never really gets complex in arrangements (like the Tuss' arrangements might), being mainly just constructions of simple but uplifting arpeggios, jolly synth rifts, with some pulsing patterns all interwoven with steady tempo four to the floor beats... These tracks shimmer with a heady, spaced out vibe that reminds me of the Orb's UFO album... Except this is way better! In fact, I made a mix last night for some friends, and ran the track "Lowlife" straight into "The Blue Room"... And they merged like men and women do on soft satin sheets, with pulses racing and emotions flowing.

The first three tracks ("Persuasion", "Lowlife" and "Simplex") are uptempo dance numbers that wouldn't be out of place in any house/techno set... Then the CD version of the album departs into the slightly slower, krautrock trip of an ambient track "Harmonia". Lots of delay, it throbs as a Neu vibe to the accolade of all that Can, Faust and Kraftwerk discovered. Then the little blip trip of "Jupiter" pitter/patters out into a refreshing sorbet for the mind before dipping into the deeper, darker electric sparks of "Monochrome". After this the listener is exposed to "Horizons", which is a brief but very enjoyable interlude, building up and welling over beautifully panned out sonic fluctuations...

But for me the last two tracks are the crowning pinnacle of this album. "Delta II" is a beautifully crafted downtempo wonder made up of progressive jitters of vintage analog synths, layered over a steady electro beat... This track just oozes Orb like sensibilities! Not to mention "XAM" has already rocked the three parties I've played it at, where many people have just comes up to ask me "what the hell is this tune!!!" 5 rewinds to date... And more to follow soon. Glad I got me two vinyl copies of this.

And even more impressive... Is that it's vintage roots don't just stop there... The list of equipment used to fashion this album includes an enviable roll call of Roland Jupiter 6, Korg MS20, Univox SR55, Roland MKS80, and a Moog Prodigy alongside the usual guitars, drums and tape loops proves that these guys are a fully lost in the analog outfitters of the past, merging all the best aspects of music past with their own arrangement skills.

Whether drifting languidly through ambient meters, or pulsing to house/techno grooves, this album is just so damn danceable!!! And what with the panning of some of the rhythmic elements in their respective grooves, I get lost again and again and again and again and again, never getting bored, thinking of the higher magic of our existence here on Earth.

Which is quite apt really, as I've just noticed what Sould Jazz Records wrote about this album on their website:

"This album is a cosmic progression of post-dance music, focused more on meditative thought and space than one made for the dancefloor, yet still encompassing the rhythm and constant beat at the heart."

All in all there is no doubt that this record will remain in my record box (and heart) for a very long time to come... Easily 5/5

Transllusion - L.I.F.E. - 15-Sep-08 03:45 AM
Transllusion is a solo project of James Marcel Stinson, who is in my books one of the most significant producers of the modern Detroit electro scene. Other aliases that house this pioneer's works are Drexciya, The Other People Place and Elecktroids to name but a few.

Even though this quote appears elsewhere on Discogs, I feel that it is particularly worthy of note here once again, as this album definitely delivers a minimal edge that only the razor of oppression can allow one to veritably grasp... "Now there's a whole resurgence of electro, and James was the life force of it. He had a fascination with the ocean, and aquatic things, and African-American history, and the voyage African people had to make. He was fascinated with the strength and endurance you have to have to make a voyage. His best feature was that good enough wasn't enough. He always pushed the envelope. Even at Underground Resistance, where pushing the envelope is the norm, he pushed it harder than any artist on the label. He would expect us to keep living on the edge." This quote is taken from Mike Banks (one of the founders of Underground Resistance, together with partners Jeff Mills and Robert Hood).

While this album is not exactly a tour de force of Stinson's collective works, like Aphex Twin's Drukqs was to his own back catalogue, it none the less demonstrates some very neat minimal grooves along with some tonal inflections that could well have come directly out of the late 1980s, a time when techno music's rep was being forged in the then empty industrial spaces of long forgotten promise. Sparse, heavily effected electro rhythms pulse in between yawning ambient drones, which are accompanied by somewhat "off kilter" yet relevant melodic textures. Occasionally Stinson's own voice can be heard welling up from the depths of the mangled circuitry used to create this unpolished sound, and in a way, much resembles a mantra being chanted by a buddhist monk on the nature of reality (that suffering is inevitable). And it is because of this that the album seems to be much like a meditative stance reflecting Stinson's own journey through Detroit's urban degeneration. Listening to Jogging On The Moon, I can almost hear the demolished sights of the abandoned industrial structures that were knocked down in the 1980s to unsuccessfully reduce havens for drug dealers and crime. Perhaps inspired by these sizable tracts of land that were now more reminiscent of an urban prairie than a cityscape, the central theme seems to be "holding back" in much the same way that racial oppression and economic decline in Detroit would have done to the locals at the time. No wonder that escapism was found through musical and chemical fixations in city's populous. It seems the only way one could have dealt with the collapse of social urban culture in Detroit would be to either philosophically accept and then recondition one's own perspective (possibly through musical expression), or to totally deny the reality at hand (by a drug induced bliss). Either way has its consequences.

And this brings me to my last point... One other thing that jumps out at me are some of the tracks' titles. Eluding to Drexciya's own external concepts, some of which still stand as perhaps the most exciting, the most philosophically unique and some of the most talked about in electro music today, is the question of its roots. While problems of race weighed heavily on much of Detroit's electronic music scene, Drexciya produced records explicitly within a self-conceived universe of black science-fiction, very much akin to Sun Ra's own intergalactic processes. According to legend (and album notes), the Drexciyans are an actively subversive race of superhuman, aquatically inclined beings who were born to pregnant slave-mothers brutally hurled from ships carrying human cargo over two hundred years ago. Drexciya's metaphor of the African journey through modernity is a brilliant summation of a massive history, and it serves as a poetic introduction to the issues which so many Detroit techno musicians consider central to their art and their lives.

For me this album totally oozes Detroit music... It's soundscapes are inspired by the land's vacant structural scars that hark back from a time when decay was rife in this once aspiring automotive city of industrial renown. And Stinson has masterfully captured the boogie that could have coursed through the mind's of the inhabitance to help them counter the urban degeneration that was going on around them. This is music for life in the city... A city torn apart by racial tension and economic collapse. And it's because of the accurate nature of this textural metaphor that I'm inclined to give it a 5/5.

Rest in peace James Marcel Stinson... You're vision lives on.

Freakwincey - I Farted - 08-Sep-08 01:03 PM
Some might say this is a bit of a strange act for the Rephlex tribe to have acquired. Stuffed right in between a solid back catalogue of technologically advanced breaks and beats along with some very "out there" and challenging music, at first "glance" this release may well seem like the odd note out in their musical score. With Scritti Politi like arrangements (though less cheesy and somewhat more minimal and funky in nature) and rhythms that remind me of Marvin Gaye's Sexual Feeling, it seems to mark a weird little momentary departure from Rephlex's rather hardcore and extreme sound.

I mean, while it's in no way comparable to the abstracted or aesthetically pleasing sound of the recent Analord series, or to the kick drummed out and hacked up melodical methods of Tom Jenkinson's Buzz Caner, or even the rawly acidic TB-303 iterative subtleties found in any of Kosmik Kommando's own releases... Its lyrics are damn near the funniest thing since Goldie Looking Chain and Tenacious D (in a sort of grossed out toilet humor kind of way)! I mean after all of Richard James' weirder outings (Window Licker, Come To Daddy and Rubber Johnny), when you think about it, it kind of makes itself right at home in the heady folds of Rephlex's braindance repertoire. Great rhymes interspersed with squelches of analog fleshiness (that no synthesizer will ever be able to reproduce as accurately as the real thing) and flirty lyrical dirtiness, this could be likened to being as crass an audio experience as a technophobe's first encounter with Bogdan Raczynski's drill-fuck your ears out breaks. The lyrics are crude, lewd and work well with these somewhat greatly crafted nuggets of honest everyday "too much information" musical weirdness that could only come from the kind of deprived minds that Rephlex could find. I can just see Rephlex signing this project because no one else would dare to or want to State side.

But to give it a bit more credit than just being a funny gag, the music is tight, funky and at times even romantically tender. This is probably because some of Ray Billups' (the founder and leader of Freakwincey) family relatives were involved with George Clinton's P-Funk movement, so their influence probably rubbed Billups' funky sensibilities the right way to invigorate this turgid bit of P-Funk humor!?!? Don't believe it? Check their Myspace page (tag freakwincey on the end of the Myspace URL).

To add to this memetic "nag tag", Freakwincey has also opened for many acts including: Morris Day and The Time (as seen on Prince's Purple Rain movie), H-Town, Shane' More, Colonel Abrams, and the Delfonics, among others. And according to their Myspace page "Their combination of assertive quality and high energy has helped Freakwincey become London’s and the United States’ leading provider of Funk Music." Okay... Whatever!

Personally, I think it's as honest and funny as fanny fart in middle of some good old "bump and grind" session with the misses. But then I'd leave it there. That's just me. What ever you want to believe, one thing is for sure... You'll either love it or hate it!

Neu! - Neu! '75 - 28-Aug-08 09:43 AM
I myself am not really a great Neu! fan... But none the less, the influence they have had on modern day music is legendary. Why I hear some of you ask!? Well... Something I've noticed over the years, is that their name has continually been mentioned in interviews with obscure musical artists in Wire magazine!? Having clocked this odd little fact, I couldn't help wondering why... So a friend lent me this CD the other day.

Having been thoroughly immersed in its content, I subsequently listened to their other two albums, both of which are from this period. While they are all really great, for me it's this album in particular that really jumps out. Besides the fact that it contains some really well used field recordings (there's a lush recording of the sea that takes me back to Camber Sands), it vibrated on a very nostalgic note overall. Being my first port of call with Neu!'s very limited output (they released three albums in the 70s and two in the 90s), I couldn't help but notice so many similarities between the bands I had listened to in the 80s and 90s; almost like deja vu, but what an understatement. It seems that anyone I've rated as musicians or recording artists has at some point in their career/repertoire copied Neu!'s heavily effected and somewhat danceable sound...

Neu! (which is German for New!) was a German progressive band formed by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother after they split from Kraftwerk in the early 1970s. Though the band had minimal commercial success during its existence, Neu! is retrospectively considered one of the original Krautrock bands (others being Can and Kraftwerk) that has had a significant influence on a diverse group of artists, including PiL, Joy Division, David Bowie, Stereolab, Gary Numan, Ultravox, Simple Minds, Spiritualized and The Oscillation to name but a few.

Beautifully crafted from start to finish, this release is opened with the rhythmic Isi, a number that just rolls out with light piano chords, accompanied with a stiff, simple drum rhythm leaving anyone listening helplessly tapping their feet to the rhythmication being prescribed. And it is this sort of style that Neu! became famous for... Atmospheres drenched in metronomic like rhythms with assorted uplifting/contemplative instrumentation. And I seem to totally imagine people grooving to these brooding tracks in a very German way!?

But for me Leb Wohl is the masterpiece here. Washing water on the beach opens with a nostalgic piano rift, as the sound of a clock tics into the sparse ambience of the recording, alluring consciousness to the slow passage of time's steady hands as march through these dreamlike soundscapes. Nothing more than simply beautiful, it is also rather moving. I couldn't help being somewhat reminded of Primal Scream's Screamadelica and Spiritualized's Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space.

To draw on another similarity, doesn't E-Musik's drum sound really remind you of The Cure's Primary album?

While I wouldn't give it a five, it's still worth while checking out if you are into the progressive Krautrock movement back in the late 60s and early 70s... Or even if you are curious as to how this sound progressed into bands like The Cure.

Luke Vibert - Big Soup - 28-Aug-08 04:35 AM
What a release!!! As far as I'm concerned (along with some of the Peshay remixes that were coming out about this time on James Lavelle's Oxford based home imprint, MoWax) this album is one of the best releases ever by a legend of electronica, on a label that played host to some of the most far out innovations in electric powered instrumentation back in the late 90s.

Plug, Wagon Christ, Amen Andrews, Spac Hand Luke, The Ace of Clubs and Kerrier District... All are names for this household icon of down tempo, smooth acid (go figure), lush melodic intrigue, fat chuncky beat driven numbers, Mr Luke Vibert! Born in Redruth Cornwall on January 26th in 1973, this British recording artist has since placed his feet firmly (rather than just wiggled his toes around) in pretty much all the various sub-genres of the now well over populated musical pool of electronica.

In 2003, Andrez Bergen wrote an article in Japan's Daily Yomiuri newspaper, which proclaimed that "It was under the alias of Wagon Christ (along with other equally vital monikers like Plug, Vibert & Simmonds, and later more simply in his own name) that Vibert helped to redefine the rules of electronic music in the UK in the early to mid '90s - alongside a bunch of reprehensible mates that included Richard D. James (Aphex Twin), Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher), Mike Paradinas (µ-Ziq), Chris Jeffs (Cylob), along with the labels Rephlex and Warp. Together they assimilated such diverse elements as hip hop beats and drum & bass into the more eccentric take on electronica they had tweaked, and kick-started a virtual insurrection in sound around the world." While it's quite a bold statement, one which I might not totally agree with, you can glimpse that Luke Vibert has pretty much achieved a level of recognition that goes way beyond the normal realms of space bound electronica stardom.

This album (at least in my humble opinion) demonstrates this fact beautifully, as it pretty much provides a journey into sound, much in the same way that The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld did back in the early 90s. Laden with wacky samples from some very diverse sources, this album flows beautifully from track to track, inspiring the listener to imagine an Orson Wells type future, where music literally becomes the final frontier! Populated by space cadets lifting off in their studio control rooms, plotting and charting courses to the centre of the musical galaxy to boldly go where no man has gone before, it exudes total 50s to 60s Sci-Fi. Starting out with a track entitled Welcome, we are bided "Good Evening citizens of earth, or any other planet in the solar system." Then another voice warmly proclaims "Welcome Space Cadets! Welcome to the moon! You are the first human beings under the age of 21 to ever travel so far. All the people of the solar system congratulate you!!!" I can't help but get the feeling that it is almost as if Vibert himself is congratulating us for walking aboard his newly forged musical spaced out craft. And so, having flown with Vibert Intra-Stellar Space Ways, I'm here to recount what a most relaxing yet fun filled journey one can have with Vibert's way out of this world musical space programming skills. No doubt soon we'll have a Space Cadet training camp for future musicians, and this will become part of the standard "text."

All throughout this journey into spacially sequenced musical timelines, we are presented with a somewhat bizarre but totally coherent mixture of hip hop, trip hop beats, whistled doddles, scratches and drum & bass lines that seem to energetically propel the listener on into subsequently wider and wider orbits around the Star of our origin, without ever lingering on any particular trajectory for longer than is absolutely necessary. This is obviously a mission of exploration, one that heads into unknown funky parts of musical space and time, as Voyage Into The Unknown avows... Well balanced, diverse in melody, rhythmically challenging, this rather forward thinking release almost totally avoids "Uranus", and in so doing, avoids any association with your drainage system. Nor is it tacky, for that matter... Well, maybe a bit tacky. But only in the way Jean-Jacques Perrey is tacky, as with the amount of sticky tape that he uses on his musical tape loop recordings, he obviously exudes tackiness, but in a stylistic loopy kinda way... So one can forgive that Frenchman along with Vibert! Saying that, it's worth noting here that it's really easy to hear the influence that Jean-Jacques Perrey has played on this lone crusader of far out music.

A must for anyone onto Barbarella, trip hop, MoWax, Jean-Jacques Perrey, Plug, Wagon Christ, Amen Andrews, Spac Hand Luke, The Ace of Clubs and Kerrier District or Luke Vibert.

Easily a 5/5! Vibert we salute you...

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