Planetary Assault Systems - The Messenger

Ostgut Ton: 2011

I recall a fair bit of joy when Luke Slater announced he was dusting off his Planetary Assault Systems project a decade ago. We were in peak 'minimal', see, and fans of that ol' school, 4am bangin' techno were left wanting. Their former heroes were chasing 'class' and 'sophistication' (and big bank) in fancy Ibizan clubs and European lofts rather than tearing that shit out in grimy warehouses and dank basement clubs, the former glory of techno's renegade roots all but a historical footnote. Why, even psy trance had more underground cred in the late '00s, despite crossover stars like Infected Mushroom in their camps! Of course, things would eventually work their way back to the Dungeons of Detroit Doof, but it needed someone with some clout to start the mass migration back to the holy land. Or an abandoned power station in Berlin, that'll do.

Ostgut Ton and their various DJs and producers (Shed, Dettmann, Klock) got the ball rolling, but when Luke Slater joined their roster with a returning Planetary Assault Systems album (Temporary Suspension), it gave the young label that all-important veteran cred purists demand. Already responsible for some of techno's toughest classic records of the '90s, Slater had seemingly mothballed the project in favour of seeking his own limelight. That didn't turn out as he planned though, so what better way to reassess one's career than to go back to the scene that nurtured your rise in the first place? Lucky for him there was a fledgling label and club that had an ear for that type of techno already going.

I did check out Temporary Suspension, initially coming away thinking there wasn't that much different in there than was going on with 'minimal' techno abroad. I have no idea what daft nonsense was going through my head at that point though, 'cause taking another listen recently, that would totally have been the type of techno I'd be down for in ye' olde year of 2009.

Fast forward a couple years, and the cavernous Berghain sound has overtaken all forms of techno as the One True Techno all others must follow (suck it, m_nus!). Yeah, it's still technically 'minimal', but not so dry and sterile as before – at worst, you could say it's just functional 4am weapons. And that's what The Messenger comes off as to me, another collection of utility tools for the 2011 crowds. Save a couple chill explorations (opener Railer, Movement 12), these tracks are all business, establishing mood and atmosphere straight away, and riding their established rhythms over spaced-out blips 'n bell tones, dubby effects, and percolating drum kits. The first half is the headier portion of the album, while the back-end unleashes a few feral beasts for the sweatiest moments of a night out. Like a lot of this brand of techno though, it all makes better sense while in the throes of massive sound-system reverberating off concrete walls rather than a typical apartment setting. High-end headphones help in a pinch.

Atrium Carceri, Cities Last Broadcast, God Body Disconnect - Miles To Midnight

Cryo Chamber: 2018

I knew a Cryo Chamber release would be among my 'earliest' 2018 reviews, if not the first. Not the one I was figuring though. In fact, I forgot about this one. This isn't meant as a slight against the players involved, but Miles To Midnight didn't light my interest a'fire the way other Cryo releases do. I've found Mr. Heath's material as Atrium Caceri interesting for the most part, but it hasn't captured my imagination the same way Sabled Sun has. Pär Boström has quite a bit of respect throughout the dark ambient scene, mostly through his Kammarheit project, but I haven't taken in enough of that to gauge much of an impression - the lone album I've heard from Pär as Cities Last Broadcast was creepy as all Hell though. Still, when the two teamed up together last year for an album called Black Corner Den, featuring a cloaked man sitting in said black corner, smoking a long pipe with the pale glow of a crescent moon filtering through an open window, I gave it a temporary pass (d'at cover art, tho'!). I'm sure it was, again, at least an interesting album, but with so many options in the Cryo Chamber discography now, I need a little more than 'interesting' to scope a new record out.

And lo', they done did it, catching some interest by including Bruce Moallem in a collaborative effort. Mr. Moallem's work as God Body Disconnect has been among my favourite albums in the Cryo tale, bringing a gritty noir angle to a scene that generally gets its jollies from themes of the occult and abhorrent (also: deepest blackest space). While I've no doubt Misters Heath and Boström have no problem crafting a bleak soundtrack to city existence, adding Bruce's muse to the mix gets me itchin' to hear a tale about someone specific on the verge of collapse as a community crumbles around him. Or maybe a hard-boiled detective encountering something more than expected at the scene of a murder, that might do too.

There goes my imagination again, expecting things that the artists involved may or may not have intended. What I can, unequivocally, proclaim, is that what God Body Disconnect brings to Miles To Midnight, is drums. Like, it's right there in the credits, but Bruce's drum work does lend this album a slow, bluesy, jazzy vibe that does fit the noir theme he's provided in much of his work under the alias (oh man, imagine a Phonothek inclusion too!). Track titles like A Thousand Empty Rooms, Scene Of The Crime, The Other Lobby, and Sorry Sir, You Are In The Wrong Room, suggests a viewpoint character stumbling about a strange hotel, so all that detective stuff is pure impression on my part.

Mostly, Miles To Midnight plays out as a small, contained lonesome narrative, a moody melancholy atmosphere hanging in the air, as strange voices and sounds echo through haunted walls. The Hotel California sounds like a more inviting place.

Groove Armada - Lovebox

Jive Electro: 2002

This may be Groove Armada's fourth album, but I always think it's their second. Once again, I blame my Canadian exposure to the band Andy Cato and Tom Findlay built. Their first album, Northern Star, was a non-entity in my hemisphere of the globe, such that we all figured Vertigo was their debut (only the Brits knew better anyway). And while Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub) was the hotly anticipated follow-up to Vertigo, I can't say it made much of an impression in these here parts, for two reasons. One, the cover-art was kinda' drab, a homely thing that looked more like any dozen of chill-out compilations floating about at the time (reminds me of something off Late Night Tales), thus easily lost on store shelves. Two, the album had the unfortunate timing to be released on September 10, 2001. Uh, yeah, North American folks were gonna' be a tad more preoccupied than scoping out a new Groove Armada record.

Lovebox though, there was no missing that, what with it's big neon artwork against a stark black backdrop, released a year after most nations had regathered their wits. The quick turnaround into another LP caught many off guard, figuring the Armada lads would have wanted their Goodbye Country material to gestate a little longer. On the other hand, with I See You Baby and At The River still getting more airplay than anything in their current discography, it wouldn't surprise me if Misters Cato and Findlay were hit with a surge of inspiration to make music as far removed from those tunes as quickly as possible. Even they had to be tired of hearing about sandy dunes and salty air.

Aside from hot neon colours, you know what else was creeping into clubland around this time? Good ol' fashion 'rawk', the sort of drunken, rowdy business new wavers so often indulged in Back In The Day. Disco punk was peeking its head outside of New York City enclaves, and there was something irresistibly trashy about this new-fangled 'electro-house' biz'. Groove Armada must have noticed these underground developments, as Lovebox features some of the rockiest dance music I've heard from the year 2002 (very small sample size).

Like, there's no denying where their heads are at opening an album with a song called Purple Haze. It's a suitably heavy, thumping groover that doesn't sully the Hendrix song at all, while Groove Is On gets more on that funk action for your all-night festivities. And if those weren't enough to let your hair down, Madder is a fun head-banger tune. Then there's some obligatory house jams (Final Shakedown going a little garage, Easy going a little disco, Lovebox going a little deep, and But I Feel Good going a little ...reggae?), and some soulful downtempo cuts too. Oh, and Remember reminds us that, yes, if Groove Armada wanted to keep rehashing At The River forever after, they could easily do so with skill and finesse. They just, like, don't want to, that's all.

The Field - Looping State Of Mind

Kompakt: 2011

It shouldn't have taken me this long to get myself another album from The Field, but you know me. A darling techno act, lauded by indie media who don't usually fuss with 'techno', and here's ol' Sykonee, giving it that 'Drake Pass meme' pose, all the while pointing with a smile at some obscure ambient techno item. Not an out-and-out rejection, mind you, but I can't help but let these sort of releases sit on the back-burner for a few years, the hype passing long enough to approach it with fresh ears, unsullied by what Very Important People tell me I should be listening to. Though I do wonder, why have I still not gotten Mr. Willner's debut From Here We Go Sublime? Like, for sure I've heard it (yay streaming), but it's been over a decade since it first came out, more than enough time having passed such that I shouldn't feel like I'm just hoping on a hype bandwagon.

And it's not like this particular album of Looping State Of Mind wasn't equally hailed when it dropped. Right, maybe not quite the same Metacritic heights as Sublime, but still a darn good response from the usual suspects. Yet whereas Sublime continues to be held in reverence, Looping has kinda' fallen the way of Yesterday & Today, simply seen as just another record in The Field's discography that ever so gradually evolved his songcraft. Maybe it didn't help that it carried the white cover art from Sublime, so it's forever compared to that one (sure didn't help Yesterday's cause). Not to mention Axel flipped the cover-art switch in his next couple records, sub-consciously making us believe those albums were of more importance than supposed retreads. Crafty and diabolical, those cover artists.

Ah well, that just means I get to enjoy it more for the album that it is, and not some Very Important, genre-defining, upper-echelon work of techno mastery (or something). And me, I dig Mr. Willner fearlessness in utilizing more instruments into his brand of 'shoegaze techno'. The bassline in opener Is This Power is one of the grooviest I've heard out of The Field camps, while follow-up It's Up There coaxes out a suitably heavenly techno loop-fest before changing lanes for a lengthy, funk outro (well, as funky as white Germans doing techno can get). Elsewhere, Axel proves he could continue crafting epic, escalating, wall-of-sound techno beasts like Arpeggiated Love and the titular cut till the end of days without a hitch if he so chose.

Fortunately, he has a little more ambition than that, the final two tracks mellowing things right the f' down. Then It's White feels almost jazzy despite being no less loopy than his other techno works, while Sweet Slow Baby treads into abstract territory, its overlapping short loops having something of an ambient drone tone about them. Makes me want to check out where The Field went after this. Eh, what about that first album? Man, that's all in the past.

Kubinski - Life Boy

Werkstatt Recordings: 2015

I think I'm about ready to tap out with regards to Werkstatt material. Don't get me wrong, I'm by no means turning my back on the synth label, and I'll keep tabs on the artists on their roster I've enjoyed. In buying up so many of their bulk deals, however, I fear I've burned myself out on their general aesthetic. There's only so much anonymous, amateur music production I can take before the novelty of it all wears down, and one thing has become clear, Werkstatt head Toxic Razor takes a 'toss every dart at the board' approach with whom he releases. When he hits that bull's-eye, *chef's kiss*, but I've come across a number of artists hugging the outer ring numbers too.

This Life Boy from Kubinski lands somewhere in those big open spaces between the double and triple point rings, possibly in the eight or nine slot, the dart at a slightly askew angle, as thrown by an individual with at least a half-dozen pints previously consumed. Man, is that ever a specific metaphor. One of the unique things about this chap is he hails from Porto Alegre, a city on the southern end of Brazil. Or Rio De Janeiro, depending on which source you go with (forever battling, are Lord Discogs and King Bandcamp). Regardless, it's cool Werkstatt will give a little shine to what's undoubtedly a completely neglected scene. When we think of Brazilian music, it's hyper-sexual Latin dance music, or whatever quirky jazz offspring has sprung up (there's always a new one every decade). And with regards to electronic dance music in South America, it's always the Chilean tech-haus dudes who get the glory. Kubinski proves there's more music in that region than what gets all the sexy exposes.

Man though, could this album have used another once-over on the production department. We're firmly in chipper synth-pop territory here, with splashes of synthwave for good measure, but I can barely hear Kubinksi's lyrics over the big 'n gaudy synths. His vocals are drenched in echo and reverb, capturing that vintage '80s feel where everything was drenched in echo and reverb, but at least I could understand what those singers were saying, even when obscured by thick accents and broken English. Even on the more stripped-back tunes like Baroque and M.O.V.I.N. though, I've difficulty understanding much of what he's saying. Matter Of Time fares better, where the lyrics are clear and upfront, displaying a Tiga charm that only sparingly peaks through in the other songs. D.Day is also fun, in that the musical muscle behind it is strong enough to override the buried vocals.

I dunno. The ideas are there, but the execution on Life Boy is just off to my ears. I kinda' preferred his previous, pure synthwave EPs. Like, how can you not dig the retro-charm of Blade Revenge, a ninja overlooking a 16-bit skyline? Or Reach featuring a glorious beauty-shot of Saturn looming over a vector grid? *chef's kiss*

Neil Young - A Letter Home

Reprise Records: 2014

With all the agreed-upon classics and intriguing second-tier albums already in my collection, I've grown fussier over which Neil Young projects I'm interested in laying down fresh cash for. A new album needs something unique about it if I'm gonna' check it out. Like, I have plenty 'nuff of his standard folksy-rocksy music – give me something on a conceptual level, like a mini rock opera (Greendale), or a different recording session with a famed producer (Le Noise). Playing music inside an ancient recording booth, refurbished by Jack White, as though it's a transmitter to his deceased mum? That'll do.

First, the technology. Always a hound for quirky recording equipment, Mr. White found himself a 1947 Voice-O-Graph to toy around with. For some reason, the specific year was important – maybe he saw a photo of famed blues musician inside one? Whatever the case, these units were more a novelty than anything, where you could go inside and record your very own words or music to vinyl and play back at home, kinda' like those CD booths you'd find in malls throughout the '90s. Obviously, the recording quality of these booths were rather shite, folks more pleased with just having their own material on a record than any practical use of them, though some in the army found them handy ways of sending spoken letters to family back home. Also, bootlegs, especially of banned music in communist countries.

Anyhow, Jack White got himself one (a 1947 one!), and invited Neil over to his studio to check it out. Seeing the archaic contraption got ol' Shakey's muse all a'twitter, and never one to waste a moment of inspiration, got in the booth and started recording some cover tunes. I'm not sure whether he intended the 'letter to mom' idea to be as though he was sending it to heaven, or to the past. Why not both?

And I know what you're thinking: “wait, isn't Neil Young that old coot who's always complaining about sound quality, even taking his music off streaming services because it didn't match the fidelity of his failed Pono project? Why on earth would he make a record that sounds as cruddy as this?” Ah, therein lies the trick. A Letter Home isn't about making some folk covers sound as pristine as modern production can make them, but making them sound as authentic to the recording process that was used. And if that recording process contains all manner of weird warping noises, swooshing sounds, pops and crackles, then that, by g'ar, is what you're gonna' hear.

Oh, the music? Charming, I guess, with covers from Dylan, Lightfoot, Nelson, Springsteen, and a few others I'm not familiar with. This probably would have been an utterly forgotten album were it not for the Voice-O-Graph gimmick, but it does add a strange, otherworldly vibe to the whole process. You can almost imagine this is how music would sound if you could transmit it to another plane of existence.

Dead Melodies - Legends Of The Wood

Cryo Chamber: 2017

Simon Heath may have rejected the Far-Flung Sons Of Camden Town's Dead Cities concept, but perhaps that completely fabricated recounting of mine implanted the seed for a need of artists with 'Dead' in their handle. Yes, surprisingly, Cryo Chamber has lacked any such aliases. For a dark ambient label, that just won't do! How can you have a print wheelin' an' dealin' in the macabre-fantastica without at least one musician explicitly dedicated to the dead. It doesn't have to be dead organism or the like - even conceptual death will do, like the death of civilizations, or the death of rational thought. It's touched upon here and there in albums, but Tom Moore finally brings a straight-up, no bullshit handle where music goes to die. So, he's a brostep producer?

But seriously, if you're looking to make 'anti-music' of a sort, where melodies are intentionally deconstructed into a moribund state, drone in its purest sense is one of the genres that does the trick nicely. Experimental IDM wank too, and whatever noise arsonists are up to as well, but I highly doubt we'll ever see such stuff on Cryo Chamber. Well, maybe a few noise moments, if the concept calls for it. Nothing like scaring the bejeezees out of someone like a screaming banshee after a long period of disquieting pads.

Tom Moore had released a couple albums under the Dead Melodies moniker prior to this debut with Cryo Chamber, and is part of a post-rock drone duo called Understated Theory, mostly releasing material on the Norwegian print Sparkwood Records. No guesses as to what music they peddle, though some of the artist names there do bring a smile to my face (Nuclear Whale; The Elephant Frame; [MIIIIM]; Above, Convenience Store!). Dronny Darko has also released a collaborative album on Sparkwood, so perhaps that's where the Cryo connection comes into play. Or maybe not, but having all these disparate dark ambient labels interwoven like Lolth's web is something I quite enjoy believing.

Legends Of The Wood is as clear a concept title for an album as you'll ever find, Mr. Moore intent on taking you on a tour through some ancient, old-growth foliage. From A Trial Of Crows And Blood, upward upon On Devil's Hill, past The Hooded Nine (always cloaked figures, always), bear witness to A Malevolent Rising and a Wretched Masquerade, though finally all ebbing into a Beautiful Coalesce. Great titles, all of 'em!

The music itself, such as it is, mostly relies on sustained guitar tones, drawn out into moody dirges as various field recordings provide context in this journey, especially sounds of water sloshing about. Huh, are we in a forest, or a swamp? Some of these tracks are even rather calm and soothing, such as the opener with a fire crackling and spacious ambient timbre making me recall way-early Vangelis. Overall, Legends Of The Wood is a very droney album, but more than makes up for it in pure atmosphere.

ACE TRACKS: August 2018

This past month, I finally had the opportunity to put something to test I've long wanted to: the practicality of my ACE TRACKS: Ultimate Master List!! playlist as a road trip experience. For the first time in my dozen years of going, I was gonna' drive myself to the Shambhala Music Festival, which meant sole control over the music selection! Right, that one bus sojourn could technically count too, and my many trips with Ishkur as the driver left me mostly in charge of music selection along the way (it helps that we both take perverse glee in torturing other passengers with italo disco sets), but this was a solo road trip for yours truly. As I've long claimed my Ultimate Master List!! should make for a useful aid in ultra-long road trips (9-10 hours, one-way), this was my chance to see if my hype lived up to provable facts.

I, uh, forgot to take one thing into consideration: the lack of cell coverage throughout most of British Columbia's mountain highways. By the time I'd gotten out of the Fraser Valley, all streaming came to an abrupt end, the only signal still attainable within the sporadic towns that dot the Crow's Nest Highway. I fortunately also packed with me an ample supply of CDs (just in case), but man, was I ever looking forward to hearing all those tunes on the road, even the dark ambient ones (nothing sets the mood of a province on fire better than dreary, ominous tones). Maybe next time I'll just download a couple of the monthly playlists instead, like this one for this past month of August 2018.


Full track list here.


MISSING ALBUMS:
Various - A Journey Into Ambient Groove
Porya Hatami & Darren McClure - In-Between Spaces

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 3%
Percentage of Rock: 8%

Whenever I make one of these shortened playlists, they tend to turn out a rather jumbled listening experience. The lack of selection causes frequent genre clashes, especially so when I just go with an alphabetical arrangement. I was expecting the same with this month's playlist, what with music from quite the disparate range of music (UK garage, techno, house, punk, psy, synthwave, ambient). Yet somehow, this turned out a remarkably smooth play-through. Even the jumps into Green Day or Etnica weren't as jarring as I was expecting. Funny how that works out sometimes.

Eat Static - Last Ship To Paradise

Interchill Records: 2017

Whenever a new Eat Static album drops now, I can't help but wonder, “Is this the one? Is this where Merv finally succumbs to all the trendy shit, losing that distinct feel that makes Eat Static the unique entity I enjoy?” In many albums I've heard out of the project, they've drifted remarkably close many times. The nods to drum 'n' bass in Science Of The Gods during that genre's first commercial heyday. The adoption of plastic Israeli full-on psy production in De-Classified. Even a build or two that had me expecting grotesque brostep monstrosities before pulling back from the brink and delivering the tear-out psy I mash my head to (are we so different, bros and I?). It's been a strange, skillful tightrope trick Merv has pulled these past two decades, but there has to be a point where he just says, “Ah, nuts to this, I'm leaping off with my parachute in place, haha!” This metaphor made more sense in my head before committing it to typeface.

I should know better than to lack such faith the Eat Static brand would ever do me so wrong, Yet once again, with their latest album in Last Ship To Paradise, and in the opening track of Eerie Nothingness, upon hearing a glitch-hop beat, that same ol' worry snuck up on me again. I couldn't help but think I was gonna' be in for an album's worth of tired, gibbering, random, nonsensical 'glitch' effects with hammy builds and drops as too many festival 'bangers' are wont to do. Then I remembered, “wait, that random, glitchiness has been an Eat Static staple for ages - they were among the first to ever do it within the psy scene, much less all of electronic music? Why would I complain about something I've always liked about them in the first place?” And besides, beyond a brief bit late, Eerie Nothingness is played comparatively straight for a psy-dub outing in the Eat Static canon, even getting Juno Reactor opulent for the track's climax. Hot damn.

As this album comes care of Interchill Records once again, Last Ship To Paradise is a more chill outing from Eat Static – the most ' uptempo psy' things get here is the proggy number Shadow Locked. We also get another indulgence of jungle's attributes in Fallen Angel, after half the track does the standard psy-dub thing. I'll take a little more of Merv's sci-fi d'n'b anyday tho'! Even the more questionably odd, trendy moments like mid-range glitchy bass noises in the titular cut and The Swamp right themselves by track's end, as if I needed further reminders that no matter how off-the-path Eat Static can go, they always find themselves right back where I like 'em. The remaining tracks don't offer much else in surprises, making Last Ship To Paradise a strangely middle-of-the-road downbeat album from Eat Static, but so long as they never lose those cheeky spaced-out sounds and samples, they'll forever have that lane all to themselves.

Etnica - The Juggeling Alchemists Under The Black Light

High Society/DAT Records: 1995/2018

No, seriously, is there a better time to be a music fan than this past half-decade? Like, beyond just the unprecedented abundance of selection, even old, obscure stuff is now frequently unearthed and reissued in ultra-deluxe collector's packages. I've always wanted to pick up an Etnica album, one of the O.G. goa trance acts that lured me into the genre's weird, twisted sonic possibilities. Alien Protein was the obvious choice, released on the familiar print Blue Room Released – be easiest to find, is what I'm sayin' (plus, Party Droid!). I never considered their debut album, released on the far smaller label High Society, an item almost certainly lost to the dustbins of an overpriced collector's market. Not only has DAT Records rescued The Juggling Alchemists Under The Black Light from such a fate, but included a second CD of assorted remixes and single material from the same period of Etnica's career. And then they convinced the band to unleash a pile of unreleased early works for a third disc of material. Dang, son, I would have been satisfied just with a standard re-issue, but all that and chicken soup too?

Describing exactly what makes Etnica click in such a way that so few other psy trance acts do is difficult to detail. Yeah, they have just as much wiggly noises and squiggly sounds as any other act of the era, but there's something uniquely identifiable about their particular method. They have just as much freeform songcraft as other respected acts of the era like Kox Box, but always show enough restraint in not getting lost in random, go-nowhere tangents. There's the obligatory goa tonal scales, but it never sounds like Etnica is completely dependant upon them either, trippy tribal trance sounding just as comfortable cruising the cosmos as it does getting crusties flailing about on Indian beaches. And while the original Juggeling Alchemists Under The Black Light album was a tidy seven track outing, all the additional material in this mega-package doesn't dilute the experience in the slightest, Etnica's sound hardly growing stale even as the hours of music pile on. Well, okay, there are a couple quibbles I must point out.

One, due to a mislabeled DAT being sent to DAT, a lone track isn't even an Etnica cut; rather, it's a tune called Alien Phenomenon by another High Society act called Evolution. Whoops. But to make matters worse, this was supposed to be a remix of Party Droid. Aagh! Also, The Early Years disc definitely shows Etnica still in their developmental stage, tracks on there comparatively unpolished when contrasted with the stuff they properly released. It's all serviceable old-school trance, but not terribly different from much of what else was available out there. A fun bonus, then, though when mixed among the wicked-awesome coolio cuts that Etnica started churning out on the regular (as the digital version of this collection does due to alphabetizing the whole playlist) ...yeah, I can hear why they initially sat on it.