ACE TRACKS: September 2017

Five years now, and I still haven't finished going through my entire music collection. Well, technically six, since I started the listening process a year before I decided writing about the experience could turn into a blog. But the end is on the horizon for sure, the last of the large letters in 'W' now finished. Just a casual little jaunt to the finish line for the remaining three letters. Except there's that alphabetical backlog accumulated over the summer, a much heftier amount of material there. Like, nearly two months worth. I think I can get it all finished before the end of the year, but man, is it ever gonna' be tight.

Then what after that, I wonder? Do I go back to those missing albums from the start of my alphabetical arrangement? I'm starting to feel obligated to, just so it doesn't look like I'm deliberately avoiding items. Like all those ambient dub compilations, various entries in the Balance series, plus a few bona-fide classics that this blog would feel incomplete without me reviewing them (Big Men Cry, 6 Feet Deep, 604, Alter Ego, Blue Moon Station, Blade, CB4). *sigh* I'll never end this, will I? On that cheering note, here's the ACE TRACKS for September 2017.


Full track list here.


MISSING ALBUMS:
Sounds From The Ground - Widerworld

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 20%
Percentage Of Rock: 13%
Most “WTF?” Track: The live Hybrid bits, if you 'd forgotten just how dope these guys used to be.

It may feel like there's a lot of Wu-Tang Clan on here, but really it's only two album's worth – an album and half even. What can you expect from the back-end of the letter 'W' anyway? The Wu dominate that realm, no matter what type of music you listen to. A decent variety of classic rock, modern psy-chill, mid-era downtempo, and Golden Era 'electronica' rounds out the rest, with the entirety of Hybrid's Live Angle set lumped at the end. Seriously, if you haven't heard it yet, you've no excuse now! Well, unless you just don't have Spotify, which kneels the question why you're even bothering with these Ace Tracks updates in the first place.

EDM Weekly World News: December 2011

Are we all tired of DJ popularity polls yet? All the hullabaloo that marked each annual competition for biggest, bestest marketing whore seems to have simmered down in recent years, some losing all sense of credibility when non-DJs started winning, while others have fallen into repetitive ruts. Some years ago though, controversy still kept these things the talk of techno-town, and who can forget the year when we suddenly found ourselves with TWO (2) number one DJs? Even more shocking was that neither of them played trance! The poor, pathetic Trance Family was irate, flabbergasted, flummoxed, and not very polite either, raining on that year's champions like a wet fart. No, wait that was the actual celebration and its weak-ass spizzler fireworks. Sad.

Of course, if you didn't care for the results of those particular #1 DJ Polls, there was always the TranceAddict #1 DJ Poll, the TranceFix #1 DJ Poll, the Mixmag #1 DJ Poll, the YourEDM #1 DJ Poll, the DI #1 DJ Poll, the Beatport #1 DJ Poll, the mmnlssg #1 DJ Poll, the Pitchfork #1 DJ Poll, the CokeMachineGlow #1 DJ Poll, the TinyMixTapes #1 DJ Poll, the FACT #1 DJ Poll, the Vice #1 DJ Poll, the XXL #1 DJ Poll, the Rolling Stone #1 DJ Poll (I think Chemical Brothers won it that year... and every year), the Guardian #1 DJ Poll, the Billboard #1 DJ Poll, the BBC #1 DJ Poll, the NBC #1 DJ Poll, the CNN #1 DJ Poll, the CSPAN #1 DJ Poll, the FoxNews #1 DJ Poll (their result made Glenn Beck cry), the MTV #1 DJ Poll, the MuchMusic #1 DJ Poll, the Channel Awesome #1 DJ Poll, the Escapist #1 DJ Poll, the ScrewAttack #1 DJ Poll, the MetaCritic #1 DJ Poll, the IGN #1 DJ Poll, the EGM #1 DJ Poll, or Ishkur's Worst DJs poll.

Various - Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture

Babygrande Music: 2005

When I was in the throes of my hip-hop honeymoon, two groups ruled supreme as all that was great within the genre. You know who these two groups are, because I've constantly name-dropped them for as long as this blog's been active again (five years, oh good God...). And as any 'young rap fan' can attest to, when you start following groups, you start thinking up potential pair-offs between them, like comic super-team cross-overs. How dope, thought Year 2000 Sykonee, would it be for Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and Inspectah Deck to trade lyrical atomic bombs! Casual and ODB riding a warped rhythm with their rugged, warbling flows! Souls Of Mischief sharing street tales with Ghostface and Raekwon! A-Plus and True Mathematics blending samples! Never mind the Wu and Hiero ran in such drastically different hip-hop spheres that these pairings could never to happen - I could at least dream of them.

And then it did happen! ...kind of. While not a full-on collaboration, the fact I'm holding a CD that includes Del, Casual, GZA, RZA, and U-God in the tracklist feels like a minor miracle in of itself. I guess having MF Doom, Ras Kass, Aesop Rock, Prodigal Sunn, R.A. The Rugged Man, J-Live, plus others is a nice bonus, if you're down for such acts too.

Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture is the brainchild of Dreddy Kruger, who appeared on a couple Wu affiliated tracks, but settled into an A&R role for the franchise, producing compilations and the like. When he launched his own print in Think Differently, he wished to bring more underground acts to the light, and figured mixing 'backpacker' rap acts with Wu-Tang stars was a good way of doing so. Providing the bulk of beats for all these MCs to spit their bars over is Bronze Nazareth, who's had a decent career in his own right following this record. He certainly gets the Wu aesthetic as laid out by The Abbot, funk and soul samples looping over gritty or smooth rhythms, as per each cut's lyrical context. Oh, and RZA handled his own 'blaxpoitation' beat for his team-up with MF Doom in Biochemical Equation, though the infamous masked MC lacks much spark in his verse. Kinda' happens when the 'collaboration' doesn't require everyone to be present in a studio.

That's unfortunately the vibe I get from Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture - a lot of disparate acts doing their minimum best for the project before they moved on to their own interests. There isn't anything wack on this CD, but nor does it elevate much higher than whatever excited ideas were probably germinating in your mind from the core concept.

Still, Dreddy Kruger believed in it enough to get enough recognizable names involved, his enthusiasm coming through in the paragraphs of liner notes. The highest praise I can give this is Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture is it's the best 'third tier' Wu project I've ever heard, though my sample-size is minuscule.

Wu-Tang Clan - Wu-Tang Forever

Loud Records: 1997

The Wu-Tang Clan's sophomore album couldn't help but be a double-LP. I mean, it was already The Thing to do for most rappers of note in the mid-'90s (Tupac, Biggie, Bone Thugs, Master P), but at least it made sense for this dynamic group. Their debut Enter The Wu-Tang was as perfect an album as any dropped in hip-hop's history, and the half-dozen solo records from various members after proved there was no lack of dope material in their ranks. After so much unprecedented success as a rap conglomerate, they absolutely deserved more room to breathe, letting all these MCs have more opportunities to shine on the mic, and celebrate The RZA's five year plan coming to fruition. Concerns about filler and bloat? Oh come on, how could the Wu Empire falter in their moment of triumph, especially after such a glorious lead single in Triumph?

And CD1 doesn't disappoint, almost a strong album experience in of itself. Yeah, the overlong Wu-Revolution opener reeks of pretentious hubris, that the Wu nation is willing to sit through a nearly seven-minute long sermon from Papa Wu. On the other hand, it does set a tone that the Clan is aware of social issues impacting black communities, and that they aren't gonna' just be another bunch of rappers glamorizing gangsta' lifestyles. Cool, but now that you've cleared your conscience, RZA, how about bringing the motha'fuckin' ruckus again? He done does that, Reunited showing off his newfound twitchy-soul production chops, follow-up For Heaven's Sake bringing the ghetto-grime to the fore, As High As Wu-Tang Get a fun bit of bouncy funk, Maria a boozy-woozy fest, and It's Yourz a good ol' stompin' crowd anthem.

And the rest of the Clan bring killer material to CD1 too, some of their all-time greatest lines ever dropped here (GZA: “Too many songs with weak rhymes is mad long; Make it brief, son - half short, twice strong.”). MCs that didn't much get spotlight in 36 Chambers have equal opportunities among the established stars, and a decent range of topics are covered among the ten tracks (lyrical showcases, street tales, conscious slabs, slum love, etc.). The only thing missing from CD1 is a definitive, stone-cold classic cut, but then they had to save something for CD2.

Disc number two starts off strong as well, Triumph the kick-off, followed by Impossible containing what RZA considers “one of the illest verses of all time”, Ghostface Killah vividly narrating the last moments spent with a dying friend on the street. Unfortunately, this is where that anticipated bloat starts to settle in, a run of average, oddball tracks leading to a slog of hip-hop between the islands of right dope shit (harrowing Little Ghetto Boys, ODB's wonderfully unhinged Dog Sh*t, the orchestral punch of Heaterz). Cheekily, the closing ghetto-soul of Second Coming is strictly handled by vocalist Tekitha, with nary a Clan member in sight.

CD2 is essentially a glorified B-side, but as mentioned, Wu-Tang Forever is easily worth the admission price for CD1.

Snap! - World Power

Arista: 1990

They hadn't planned on it. Sure, they were having some fun dabbling in productions and all, but Michael Münzing already had a tidy career running clubs out of Frankfurt, all the while doing a little DJing on the side. And while he had some synth-pop success with Papa Sven and Luca Anzilotti as OFF, most of Münzing's productions were in service for the clubs he played at, even using sampling gear in his shows.

Still, any European DJ worth their salt at the turn of the decade couldn't help but notice the sounds coming out of clubs from Italy and Belgium (not to mention how sample-happy everything had gotten), American styled hip-hop and house music the new hotness. Never mind that such genres had never charted in Germany. Misters Münzing and Anzilotti figured they'd adopt an American-sounding alias, make a record or two for their own clubs and leave it at that. Only trouble is the resulting record became an international smash, a tune rinsed out at clubs, on radio, at sporting events, during high-school dances... and still does to this day. To imagine a world without The Power is to imagine a darkest timeline indeed.

There's more to the story surrounding that single of course (oh is there ever more!), but I've an album to get through here. Point is Münzing and Anzilotti had to follow that sudden anthem up with an LP, the duo and their newly minted 'Snap!' moniker going from strength to strength in the singles department. Ooops Up turned into another winner (though not quite as big in The US), and Cult Of Snap! showed they weren't afraid of injecting a little Afro-funk into their jams. And while “Benito Benites” and “John 'Virgo' Garrett III” had undoubtedly tapped into a nascent european-fusion of hip-house few others could replicate, it was rapper Turbo B who gave them their unmistakable charisma, Darren Butler's deep, aggressive American inflection often coming off like a Chuck D clone. Yeah yeah, he'd never be as politically charged as the Public Enemy frontman, but between his tone and Snap!'s wilful incorporation of Afrocentric music (in Germany!), it was enough to get Mr. Butler inducted into Afrika Bambaataa's Zulu Nation. Yes, really.

We all know the big hits off here, not to mention the charming house hit Mary Had A Little Boy (oh God, the high-school memories with this one!). The rest of World Power amounts to a little better than filler, and is probably quite wonderful if you dig those early '90s hip-house jams. Most of the tracks are just excuses for to Turbo B drop a bunch of brag raps (Believe The Hype, Witness The Strength), with Blasé Blasé the most charming with its strict Funky-Drummer throwback vibe and off-ball asides from a faux Flavor Flav (plus, that bassline!). The mid-album ballad I'm Gonna Get You probably sounds all kinds of corny on the surface, but I've no doubt 'friend-zoned' dudes everywhere play this as their anthem.

Carbon Based Lifeforms - World Of Sleepers

Ultimae: 2006/2011

I love Carbon Based Lifeforms. Adore their ambient grace, their manipulations with little TB-303 knobs, their sense of open spaces both outer and inner. And yet, even after a half-decade of nabbing a copy of World Of Sleepers (thanks, re-issues!), it's never quite clicked for me the same way all their other records have. Heck, despite hearing Interloper for the first time just this year, it stuck with me stronger than most music off here. Right, that album was almost blatantly immediate and obvious in its songcraft, but Twentythree was pure synth-pad drone, and even that's taken more residence in my brain-pan than World Of Sleepers. Believe you me, it's getting ever more crowded up there, though I get the sense a little memory degradation has set in. Like, I can only recall about three out of fifteen tracks from 1993's D.J. Club Mix Vol. 2 from Polytel, one of which being a lame cover of Mr. Vain by 'Club Beat'. Oh dear, I'm doing that old man thing of ridiculously long anecdotal tangents, aren't I.

Naturally, this isn't a problem when I'm playing CBL's sophomore album. After the slow, gradual build of opener Abiogenesis, where soft ambient pads, ethereal tones, bleepy electronics, and digital voices guide your synapses to 'wake up', you're damn skippy my body's ready for the thumping beats and burbling acid after. If there was any doubt that Misters Segerstad and Hedberg weren't worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Ultimae's other key acts of the time (Solar Fields, Aes Dana, Asura), that opener should have quelled them.

And World Of Sleepers doesn't let down from there, follow-up Vortex a haunting piece of ambient techno once again playing to CBL's strengths (dubby pads, acid!), and Photosynthesis working another wonderful builder containing a melody that's on par with the classic MOS 6581. Three tracks, three winners! But after that, World Of Sleepers starts losing me.

The music remains all fine in of itself, it just feels as though CBL are retreading similar ideas already explored in the openers. More burbling acid, more lovely synths, more dubby percussion, more filtered 'science' lyrics, all of which kinda' blends together as World Of Sleepers plays through. Yet when I hear the crunchy acid work from Proton/Electron, the soft chill-out of Gryning, the gentle piano tones of the titular cut, or the geek-hop rhythms of Erratic Patterns out of context, I always do a double-take of “whoa, why haven't I heard this CBL track before?” I have, every time I've thrown World Of Sleepers on for a playthrough and unconsciously let it slip into the background of my attention span. Why does my brain keep doing that!?

The final track of Betula Pendula does draw me back in though, a gorgeous ten-minute piece of space ambient. Always gives me the uber-feels after, which keeps World Of Sleepers high on my 'Great Ultimae Albums' list. Why yes this 'list' is ridiculously big, why do you ask?

King Midas Sound - Without You

Hyperdub: 2011

How odd is it that this Kevin Martin project immediately got a remix album, but none of his Bug material has. Even the critically lauded London Zoo only got a few token EP rubs, and that was undoubtedly his most successful album ever. King Midas Sound, on the other hand, passed by with less buzz, quite a few folks not even aware it was another project from The Bug. Still, I sense it gained something of a 'musician's musician' following, where the savviest of UK Bass ears couldn't help but zero in on King Midas Sound's developments. I doubt Martin, Roger Robinson, and Kiki Hitomi planned it as such, but when I see a crap-ton of obscure, esoteric artists 'reworking' tunes for Without You, it makes me wonder exactly who's the target audience here. Like, were so many acts anxious to lend their aesthetic to the King Midas sound that Hyperdub had no choice but to release a remix album like this?

Actually, Without You is something of a mish-mash of older stuff and new material. If you missed out on the King Midas Sound debut record Cool Out, fret not for you get the wonk-jazz of Flying Lotus' rub on Lost (eh, I'll pass) and Dabrye's weirdo synth-pop stab at One Ting as a hidden track (noice!). Both remixes on the Goodbye Girl single also show up, Without You kicking off with Kuedo's ker-lumpity bass-clump of G.G., plus Mala's tribal dubstep of Earth A Kill Ya. It ain't bad, but compare it to the bizarre place art-poppers Gang Gang Dance take the original moody number - I'm left speechless! The original was a fairly minimalist, menacing piece of spoken word dub music, whereas Gang Gang turn it into something you might expect from an Orb and Youth collaboration: all chipper, flighty, and filled with silly sounds. And yet Roger's words remain just as poignant in this setting as the other. How'd Gang Gang do d'at?

All the new songs are given 'revoice' credits, including the titular cut with a D-Bridge rub that's almost ambient dub. Kiki gets to showcase a little Japanese knowledge with Tears, Cooly G brings some R&B sultriness to the fray in Spin Me Around, and Joel Ford does his own croon in Say Somethin'. Not to let all these urban voices dominate, Green Gartside of the indie band Scritti Politti shows up in Come And Behold. It's... an odd contrast to the rest of Without You's thick haze of grimy dub ol' Kevin drenches his productions in.

In case that's not enough, other remixes go for weird abstraction (Robert Aiki; Ras G & Afrikan Space Program; ooh Deep Chord!), or familiar Hyperdub future garage (hey Kode 9; yo' Hype Williams). In all, Without You is a warped trip through the disparate muses of various musicians, the only thing holding it together being Kevin Martin's faith in letting all those invited stretch wherever they want. Well no wonder so many wanted in on this 'remix' album!

Cryobiosis - Within Ruins

Cryo Chamber: 2013

Another day, another artist on the ever expanding Cryo Chamber roster. Seems I can't go a few months without talking about someone for the first time on this label. Heck, in a way, I've already covered nearly all of them in one of those Cryo Chamber Collaboration albums, but it seems I'm on an unconscious task to give Every. Single. Artist. on Simon Heath's print their own special spotlight too. Including this one, I've now talked up twenty-three artists with music on Cryo Chamber, and there's still a bunch more I've never mentioned (Aseptic Void, Dark Matter, Wordclock, Metatron Omega, Paleowolf, Hoshin, and more... oh God, are there ever more!). Is this dark ambient outlet becoming its own version of a black hole, seemingly sucking in all manner of musicians into its bleak gravity well? No, that can't be right – I've come across quite a few other labels with just as massive of contributors to their discographies. Cryo just has something that keeps me poking about more, wondering how this new name or that overlooked producer might offer a different spin on the genre's morbid aesthetics. Also, sweet, sweet CDs to buy. Gotta' have ma' physicals!

Cryobiosis isn't exactly new to the Cryo family, in fact one of Mr. Heath's earliest recruits to the Chamber house. Cristian Voicu first debuted with From The Depths on GV Sound, yet another dark ambient/drone/experimental net label that's harboured such talents as SiJ, Songs From A Tomb, Morbid Silence, Astral & Shit, Radio Noiseville, and... Primus? Uh, anyway, ol' Simon liked Mr. Voicu's voice enough to invite him over for an album deal. He's released two since then, Within Ruins the first of them. It's fairly easy to hear why the Cryobiosis stylee caught on with Mr. Atrium Carceri, both having an ear for those post-apocalyptic tones and atmosphere, exploring abandoned dwellings in decayed husks of civilization. It's just, going by this album, Cryobiosis doesn't quite have the same sense of narrative flow as Atrium Carceri does.

For sure his craftsmanship with each track is easily on par. Opener Enthrall has all the morbid drones, discordant pads, and skritchy sound-effects that have you feeling like your wandering the broken rubble of old buildings. Some tracks offer piano calm while fumbling through dripping ceilings and puddles of black water (Frigid Silence, Recollection, Forgotten). Others ramp up the claustrophobic field-recordings and forlorn tone (The Corridors Beneath, Corroded, As The World Decays, Departure). And some pieces are pure depressive drone as you wander aimlessly through the dark (Murkfall, Through Debris).

Where am I going with this though? What exactly am I seeing? Is there a story behind the scenery, or does it exist only for its own sake? There's merit in such an approach to the genre, but I cannot deny being spoiled by many Cryo Chamber releases crafting distinct stories guiding me through more than vivid, unrelated imagery. If that's all Cryobiosis set out to make though, then Within Ruins definitely succeeds there.

The Beatles - With The Beatles

Parlaphone: 1963/2009

The only Beatles album you're supposed to have, even if you're not a Beatles fan. It's got the iconic cover photo, after all, one even The B-Sharps ripped off. It's also the 'indie' option of their first two albums, lacking the instantly recognizable hit singles of Please Please Me, like I Saw Her Standing There, Love Me Do, and Lennon's famous throat-wrecking rendition of Twist And Shout. Instead, you get almost-as instantly recognizable hits like All My Loving, I Wanna Be Your Man, and Starr's tub-thump rendition of Please Mister Postman. Okay, they're both chocked full of vintage Beatlemania 'choons', but With The Beatles has the iconic cover and the slightly lesser-known classics, critical factors in building music hipster cred. Plus, it was the last album released before America caught on to their music, butchering their releases into nothing like the UK versions in the process. Basically, you'd be a true O.G. vinyl God if you had With The Beatles in America - or was Canadian. Yeah, my country got With The Beatles months before them yankees had any official music from the Liverpool-Four. Having ties to the Commonwealth was still reaping some benefits.

As always, it's nigh impossible for me to review an album that's been psychoanalyzed to death by music scribes nearly twice as old as I. The Beatles' story is so etched in Western culture that it'll likely last far into the future, when rock music is but a distant memory, but tales of troubadours conquering the globe endure. So it's rather quaint coming back to these early records when they were still mostly a British phenomenon, rockin' the billy, Merseying the beat, and coverin' the cross-Atlantic classics. No Bob Dylan folksy influences found here yet, my friends.

If you're wondering just how these lads managed to sell over a million copies of With The Beatles (a feat previously accomplished once in Britain, via the South Pacific soundtrack - haven't heard it either), it wasn't just their snappy duds and puckish charms. These guys really were good musicians, already finding ways of mixing things up as a record played through. Little Child has harmonica! Till There Was You has bongos! Please Mister Postman has cowbell! I Wanna Be Your Man has Ringo singing! And yes, it's the same song The Rolling Stones did too. Lennon and McCartney wrote the tune, then figured maybe Jagger and his band might have better use of it. Mickey and the Stoners definitely did, but then them Beatles went and did their own version of it anyway, each being released within weeks of the other. What's funny is Lennon figured the tune just a throw-away, because like Hell he'd give the Stones or Ringo the spotlight on a good song.

Even if you're just a fan of the Number-One hits, it's hard denying all the charming melodies and vocal harmonies throughout With The Beatles. These guys had the look, the sound, and the drive for something unprecedented in rock music: global domination.

Ladytron - Witching Hour

Island Records/Nettwerk: 2005/2011

Hard to believe this is only my second Ladytron review, but it's not like the foursome have made a ton of music over the years. To date, they've released five albums (though a sixth is in the works), their last one coming out way back in ye' olde year of 2011. I suppose that hectic touring schedule caused a bit of the ol' burn-out, plus they aren't the quirky young electro-pop chickens of the early '00s anymore. I'm sure members now have families to tend to, side-projects to cultivate, and whatever else that can keep a four-piece with as disparate backgrounds as these lads and lasses have from reuniting with consistency. Maybe that's why, for as much as I adore Ladytron's sound, I've always been hesitant in buying up their albums in one big splurge. I want to savour the ones that do come out for as long as humanely possible, never risking my own burn-out.

After yet another round of label troubles, Ladytron released their third album Witching Hour in 2005, one of the worst years for electronic music since the initial rave explosion. Fortunately, the group somehow stands outside time and space, the record just as sonically timeless as their previous work, yet also pertinent to the trends happening in the here (there) and now (then). It's a very good album, is what I'm saying, in a year when finding very good albums was a ridiculous feat of excavation that would make Indiana Jones and Globetrotting Batman quiver in the knees.

It was also a radical departure from the pure synth-heavy sound the group had in their early work, bringing in added drums and guitar work to complement their electro-pop. Some attributed it to latching onto the disco-punk wave of the time (LCD Soundsystem was the hippest band about), but I don't hear it. Rather, it simply sounds like Ladytron spent some of their hard-earned cash on new musical toys, thus letting them expand their aesthetic beyond pure retro work. Unless you figure 'post-punk new wave' just as retro as synth-pop.

It worked to some extent, Witching Hour scoring the band some of their first chart action, lead singles Destroy Everything You Touch and Sugar some of their best-selling songs. They weren't gang-busters, mind you, but considering their label troubles, it's remarkable they got on the Billboards at all. Then again, breaking the 'boards was never their M.O. I think their fans are perfectly content keeping Ladytron's impossibly earwormy choruses to themselves anyway. Saves room at the live shows.

And there's plenty more to enjoy from this album. The peppy 'rockers' (High Rise, AMTV, Weekend, Whitelightgenerator), the dreamy synth-poppers (International Dateline, Soft Power, The Last One Standing), and the moody downbeat pieces (CMYK, Beauty*2, All The Way). Throw in all the charmingly catchy, yet oddly tragic lyrics you've come to expect from Helen Marnie's satin lisp (...*swoon*), and Witching Hour remains one of Ladytron's best records. Just ignore the rubbish remixes at the end of the re-issues though.