The one in which electronic artist Aphex Twin’s non-electronic track gets turn into an electronic track by Gravity Proof.
The track is question is Avril 14th. It comes from Aphex Twin’s 2001 release Drukqs. Given Aphex Twin’s reputation for ferocious and confrontational music this stands out. It’s a two part piano piece and has romance at its core. It’s famously been sampled by Kanye West and used in films. In fact, the original was recorded using a Disklavier, a piano with an add-on that reads MIDI data and then plays the keyboard. A perfect Aphex Twin track in that it sounds human but isn’t. It’s been covered umpteen times over the years. And this cover by Gravity Proof stands up there with the best.
Gravity Proof is Canadian-born Alex Mitchell from Brooklyn. As for why he chose to do this cover, he says, “I wanted to do a synth based version that still captured the nostalgic / peaceful vibe of the original track.” It’s played on a Sequential OB-6. And in a nice twist on the original he says, “I do a lot music programing but challenged myself to actually learn to play this piece.” There’s proof in the form of a video below. The cover of Avril 14th is really lovely. It captures the romantic but melancholic heart of the original but puts the electronics more prominently into the equation. And the slight air of reverb gives it a more hazy lush quality. Delicious.
It’s the start of the long weekend here. I’m going to ease in with the deep hip hop jazz of ElectroDragon Beats.
ElectroDragon Beats is from Pune, India. You wouldn’t know it from the music. I guess this is study beats style. Yes, there’s some surface noise crackling. There’s a bit of a warped clarinet(?). But what makes this is the deep deep thud of the bass drum and a rich treacly atmosphere. It’s all dark black velvet and brushed charcoal. It’s black and white noir films. It’s the best of times it’s the worst of times. It’s rich in emotion and utterly captivating.
The rather wonderful Andrew Rothschild is back with another lovely track. Tree Echoes is a bit less downtempo and a bit more organic house than usual but is still delightful.
Andrew Rothschild is from Denver, Colorado and has appeared here a few times. Today we have Tree Echoes taken from Season Three an uptempo/Organic House compilation on Loci Records. The track is built around a jumped up acoustic guitar break, a wordless aahing and some organic house beats. It’s relaxed and yet has a sense of dynamic pace. It’s a gambol through the forest. It’s the patterns of dappled sunlight. Everything is light and airy and yet the bass drum gives the track a sense of grounded weight. For fauna and flora everywhere.
Time to tackle hump day with some chilled beats courtesy of Tryptabeats, and Broey. x Linerwave.
Tryptabeats is from Canada but self-describes as “living abroad..” And a musical journey that, “Started out on guitar, drums and bass, rocking, playing metal/emo/screamo. Now making beats!” Maybe that path explains why From The 6 is not your usual jazz influenced set of beats. It’s richer and more complex than that.
From The 6 (perhaps a reference to Toronto) uses backwards sounds alongside low slow beats to give the track an otherworldly air. This is a woozy psychedelic disorientation of a track. It deliciously keeps you off balance and offers a bit of a K hole experience. Dive in.
Broey. x Linearwave is a US/Brazil collaboration. They say, “We’re just having fun sharing our ideas with each other and seeing what comes of it! (:””
The track is Finding The Path (The Magician). It’s a dreamy type of track. The lead is shared between piano and guitar. It’s a little jazzy but mostly just chilled daydreaming. Beats metronomically come along for the ride.
The track title is a reference to the Magician card in tarot divination. They explain that, “When the Magician appears in a spread, it points to the talents, capabilities, and resources at the querent’s disposal to succeed. The message is to tap into one’s full potential rather than holding back, especially when there is a need to transform something.” To be honest, this track less made me want to find my potential than to fritter it in a sunny haze with my feet up. It’s really that sort of delicious track.
Went to the hospital on Sunday. Brought back too many supressed memories. Monitors and bleeping and signs. Doctors and nurses and bad news. A bit shocked how easy it was to resurrect the trauma. Need something soothing. Beyond from Calcou hit the spot.
Calcou is a Berlin based producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist. He’s part of contemporary Jazz band White Noise Trio. But thankfully there’s not too much jazz in evidence here. His biog says, “Calcou is where Jazz meets Chill and Deep House blends into Electronica.” Subtract jazz from that list and that’s a pretty good description of Beyond.
What that list doesn’t do is tell you how beautiful the track is. It melds deep house with a chilled edge. It uses a simple piano line to give you a melody that tugs at heartstrings. It has a bass that has a loose limbed funk but bleeds into almost Berlin-cool IDM. It’s a deep house tale of fantastic beauty. An uplifting epiphany to better days.
The weekend left me in a dark place so let’s have some suitably dark accompaniment from Robot86.
Robot86 is currently in London but its biog says, “Robot86 is from a desolate planet where war has been raging since the beginning of time. Electronic music is his escape from reality, what makes him different from the rest of the inhabitants.”
The featured track is the dark breakbeats of Space Fly from the twin track Last Night On Earth EP. The accompanying blurb fixes Floating Point and Aphex Twin as reference points. Perhaps Floating Points with the dreamy synths. But the dark breakbeats had more of the early Chemical Brothers about them in the way that they deliver a quite precise and repeated kick in the nether regions.
This is orchestrated chaos and controlled fury. Robot86 says of the track that it’s “a release of anger with its thunderous breaks and dark cinematic soundscapes all being symbolic of the times during lockdown – frustration, loneliness and an overwhelming anxiety of being trapped.” There’s a thunderous darkness to the bass and a menacing industrial growl to it all. Synths flit across in occasional shafts of light but disappear soon enough. There’s redemption out there. But not just yet. Great track.
Not the usual Ambient Sunday today. This time it’s all awkward ambient experimentalism from Death Hags, The Heartwood Institute and Panamint Manse, and Drew Mulholland.
Death Hags is from Los Angeles and describes themselves thus, “a musical hermit flying low on super earth.” Well, luckily for us they’ve come out of the hermit’s cave or down from the column long enough to provide Life Of A Space Tree from which featured track Moonrise is taken. I suspect they won’t be best pleased at me picking one track since the album is supposed the be heard as a continuous track. The album was, “Inspired by space sounds recorded by NASA and the question – do plants grow in space?”
Anyhow, Moonrise acts as the opening to the album. It’s a spectral, slightly sinister set of Ambient sounds. All drones, tension and plucked string effects. It has an unsettling, eerie quality perfect for an unearthly dawn. Over two minutes it gradually sucks you into the album. The rest is as good a space ambient album as I’ve heard in many a long year.
And so two two albums from the rather wonderful Castles In Space label from The Heartwood Institute and Panamint Manse, and Drew Mulholland.
The Heartwood Institute and Panamint Manse offer Parapsychedelia. Jonathan Sharp of The Heartwood Institute and Wayne P. Ulmer of The Panamint Manse join forces to create this strange album of unearthly, organic electronic music. There’s a mix of post rock and electronic on featured track Clairvoyeurism. And even some of Raymond Burr’s deep reassuring voice. But also a slightly warped edge like the sounds your old tape recorder made when the tape was stretched from overuse or the batteries were going.
Listen to more here
Drew Mullholland is from Glasgow in Scotland. I’d not heard of him before but apparently, “Drew Mulholland has been hailed as the ‘avant-garde godfather of hauntology and psychogeography’. He is the creative force behind the cult band Mount Vernon Arts Lab.” Which is nice.
The album is Warminster UFO Club. It takes its name from a town in Wiltshire, England which was the scene of UFO sightings and ‘hearings’ in the 60s and 70s. There’s more about that here.
Featured track Warminster is a twenty minute excursion into the post rock electronic strangeness. Rock drums keep time, space synths ping around, and electronics fizz with SETI static. The track was written and recorded with Adrian Utley and was originally released on CD in Summer 1999. The version here has been remixed and remastered. It’s an almost symphonic experience as it takes in several movements of varying intensity. Some come with tense strings and others with low down drones.
As they say in MiB “15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
It’s a beautiful morning here and the forecast is for a nice warm day. And it’s the weekend. Thankfully. Time to relax with a lovely chilled track from the returning Aonian.
Aonian (Alkis Livathinos) is from London but the heart of his music is somewhere much more sun drenched, Greece. It’s been a while but Hideout (Edit) is a second ‘chapter’ from his forthcoming debut album. The idea of the track is that, “each of us builds their own “hideout” in times of crises, a place of inner safety and familiarity.”
This is a really lovely track. From the outset it offers soothing but intricate sounds and a solid wood block type of percussion. The focus of the track ends up being a snaking piano line that subtly dominates the electronics which gently give way. But it has a non-traditional piano form. Aonian explains that, “The motif was written on the Oud, but I then recorded it on the piano where it took a completely different form, and I ended up adding organic percussive elements built from places and memories of my motherland.”
The track is all about security of memory. Of memories past. Of memories created in the present. But all with a sepia electronic glow. A special track for your special memory place.
The sun is shining but it’s still a bit nippy out there. Makes it perfect for the sunny and warming deep house of Archie Holmes.
Archie is a producer from Aylesbury, Bucks in England. He says he, “likes to experiment when it comes to producing and DJ as he chooses not to stick to one genre, spanning a wide range from Organic House to Drum and Bass.” We’re very much in former territory on only his second release (he’s only 17) – Hollow.
Hollow is a delicious track with a maturity that belies his years. It has more than a bit of the languid warmth of Lane8’s releases about it. The beats are set to chill with an organic house feel. There’s some wordless vocal element lifting it a touch into the ethereal space. But it remains grounded enough through a solid synth line that weaves around but in so doing holds the whole track together. There’s an enveloping calm and lightness about this track. It’s like putting your hands round a warming first hot drink of the day. An anticipatory glow that delivers perfectly.
Let’s go dark for Pre-Friday techno with the return of Cookies Slayer.
Cookies Slayer is a Producer, DJ and Sound Editor/Designer for movies and video games based in Montpellier, France. Most of his stuff pitches somewhere between techno and trance. And you get a bit of that on Them but with some tribal and some breakbeats thrown in for good measure.
Them is perfectly 50s B-Movie type of title and indeed the track does deliver a fabulous movie sample of that type. But this is no cheesy techno track. This is properly a dark soundscape. It starts off all spectral and a bit spooky. Then comes the growing beats and the warning of the dystopian future. The track is self-confident enough not to need to dive straight into some powerful break, choosing to spend more time on the almost psychedelic build up.
The break does eventually come about half way through the track when the percussion goes a bit more breakbeat and things feel a bit more tribal techno. But the mood is never less than dark with no real hint of the light. If you’ve got that end-of-the-week, end-of-the-world vibe then this is just perfect for you.
