Various - Hed Kandi World Series: Miami

Hed Kandi: 2011

Someone must have told the Hed Kandi offices they done fucked up on the London volume of World Series, because is this ever an improvement. It's still not great, mind you, but Miami at least feels like a Hed Kandi release, unlike the generic, soulless Ministry Of Sound bandwagon jump London was. Even a glance at the tracklist shows the music steering back to the tried, tested and true vibes of days gone by. Wally Lopez! Olav Basoski! The Shapeshifters! Funkagenda! StoneBridge! Like, seriously, StoneBridge is one of the stalwarts of Hed Kandi, always getting repped in their compilations, and London had him not. That alone proves how full of fail those CDs were (no offence to Avicii, but c'mon).

All hyperbole aside, I should bring y'all up to speed on what the World Series was all about. Far as I can tell, it was Ministry Of Sound Hed Kandi's attempt at a Global Underground styled globe-trotting DJ mix series, though focusing on top-tier fashion locales as well as clubbing hot spots. Not an entirely daft idea for a series, and the Hed Kandi of old certainly branded itself as something of a trendy taste-maker within that particular scene.

Thus the inlays are filled with spiffy write-ups about hot clubs, cool restaurants, and must-visit boutique shops (why yes, Ministry Of Sound was the first club mentioned in the London inlay, why do you ask?). Again, not a bad idea for extra promotional branding, but it seems the series wasn't long for the world (arf), folding shortly after this volume. Interestingly, Miami is the only locale with a sequel. Just can't beat those Latin jams, eh? Or those WMC perks.

To be critically honest though, both discs are filled with big builds and anthems and all that rot I bitched about in the London mixes (different local DJs handle each disc, but their styles are so similar, it's a moot point who they are). The difference is how they deliver though, how many of the peaks actually thrust forward with enthusiasm, not drop into a plodding anti-anthem. Oh, this build lasts over a minute? Don't matter, 'cause that peak with the bellowing diva is gonna' have you flailing like a junglist! Okay, maybe not that enthusiastically, but more than whatever those dopes on ketamine are up to.

Granted, it's not all forward-momentum goodness all the time. There are stretches where the builds are too gratuitous or don't deliver what they promise or don't serve any purpose other than having a build for build's sake because you gotta' have a build in every single track in a Ministry Of Sound mandated release. In a way though, it almost works, the lesser builds highlighting how good the great builds are. Plus, the fact it all sounds like Hed Kandi music (except that one McProg track, wha'da'fuq?), shameless and shallow but disco-y and fun, that's good too. Look, after the abysmal showing in the previous World Series collection, I'll take it.

Various - Hed Kandi World Series: London

Hed Kandi: 2010

I've heard the tales of Hed Kandi's turn toward shameless bandwagon chasing so often repeated that I couldn't help but repeat them myself. Surely the folks that were following the label since its inception would be knowledgeable in those matters, such that I could trust their opinions on it. Still, always that lingering doubt in my head, wondering if it was a classic case of a fandom growing jaded as their favoured thing drifts from that which they so initially enjoyed. I know I've been guilty of such notions, and while the Hed Kandi brand wasn't a super-underground franchise, it did carve out a particular niche in the clubbing consciousness by adhering to a certain aesthetic that appealed to a certain demographic: classy, funky, soulful disco and house for those who liked classy, funky, soulful disco and house.

So I can imagine with great sympathy the pain and sense of betrayal the Hed Kandi faithful felt upon hearing a triple-CD outing such as this. Like, I get why the label would take such a turn, the allure of big festival fuck-off money too tempting to resist. And sure, Timothy Berg had hit upon a successful formula that was super-easy to copy and paste for others to capitalize on, such that you could whip up your own Avicii clones to fill out a CD or three. That was never really Hed Kandi's M.O. though, was it? Yeah, their brand of disco house was commercial at times, something you'd hear in boutique clothing stores at the mall. Never the main mall speakers though.

CD 1 of World Series: London is all anthem house (re: 'big room EDM'), all the way through. And while Avicii only appears a few times in this set, his impact can be felt throughout. It's utterly banal and tiring and the sort of stop-start nonsense you'd have expected from the eurotrance scene. Nope, this is now what house music also is, and what Hed Kandi's pushing, so fuck all those who held the label with any sort of regard for class. Funk and soul is dead.

“Hey, now, Bitter Boy, that's just CD 1, the clubbing fodder used to lure impulse buyers in,” some may claim. “CD 2 is where the real tunes are, right?” Sure, if you fancy yourself anthemic 'deep' house – a bunch of big builds, but crashing out into monotonous tech-house anti-grooves. You can hear flashes of Hed Kandi of old, little pieces of singing soul sista's and booty-shakin' rhythms, but come off like teasing nostalgia triggers to remind you of what once was, but no longer is.

Honestly, were it not for the unmixed third CD, with awesome names like Tiga, Peaches, Röyksopp, and Silicone Soul included, World Series: London would have been a total write-off for yours truly. This was the sort of music that caused my 'crisis of faith' back in 2010 (among others), and I wasn't even a Hed Kandi follower then! Those poor, unfortunate souls...

The Winterhouse - Winter Gardens

dataObscura: 2012

I assume my fascination with winter's clime' stems from the fact I live in a region that doesn't experience winter in the 'traditional' sense. Sure, we get snow once or thrice a season, but to be perpetually blanketed in a white layer of quieting frozen water is incredibly rare. Thus, when constantly bombarded with romantic imagery of such seasonal situations, it makes one fonder for that which we need not deal with. Maybe I need to go snow-shoeing around the local ski hills to get it out of my system.

When ambient music tackles wintery aesthetics, it's often as bleak and desolate drone. Sometimes we'll get shimmery, crystalline moments, but as brief respites of glistening beauty among the suffocating, icy gloom. It's uncommon finding albums that explore frigid environments as someplace mysterious and magical; a 'wonderland', if you may. Or there's a huge sub-sub genre-market for it out there, and I'm wandering the wrong wastelands. The artists are probably all Japanese too.

Anyhow, this is a roundabout way of me justifying my purchase of Winter Gardens from The Winterhouse. Something evocative about that cover art, y'know, luring me in into a tranquil, hibernating forest, exploring nooks and crannies sheltering small, sleeping mammals. As I say, perfect settings to indulge a little snow-shoeing, but a suitable soundtrack for such an endeavor?

The Winterhouse is a collaborative project from Anthony Kerby and Robert Davies. The former I've talked up plenty now, since diving into dataObscura meant diving into a lot of his musical output. Mr. Davies I haven't touched upon yet, though his story isn't much different from Mr. Kerby's: some two dozen albums, mostly all released on dataObscura as well, with Winterhouse being his lone outside project. So, does that make him the Solar Fields to Kerby's Aes Dana, with Winterhouse being dataObscura's H.U.V.A. Project? Doubtful, but it's a fun notion nonetheless.

While I wasn't expecting some cheery, chipper, New Age outing with Winter Gardens, I was expecting a little less of the pure drone that I've heard from dataObscura thus far. 'Tis not to be, this one just as layered and minimalist as most of the music I've heard from Kerby and co'. Which isn't such a bad thing if I'm in the mood for moody pad work and sparse melodic movements. I dunno' tho', seeing so much stark white in the cover had me thinking Winter Gardens would be a bit... brighter. Silly me, overlooking the greyscale forest from the shadowy trees.

Winter Hymn does provide a pleasant, tranquil opener, but the foreboding tones of dark ambient are quick to make their presence felt in follow-up The Depths Of Winter. The murky mood mostly permeates the rest of the album, with We Walk Through Glass offering some of those shimmering, glistening sounds I alluded to albums of this nature so often containing. Feel Winter Gardens could have used more moments like that. Isn't a garden supposed to highlight the beauty of nature, not the suppression of it?

Spielerei & Mantacoup - Wichman And Other Pieces

Databloem: 2004

I started this current, nigh-endless alphabetical backlog on a Spielerei & Mantacoup release. Seems appropriate that, as I come to its end, I finish with a Spielerei & Mantacoup release. Not quite the end, mind, still a couple more items below here, but man, what a journey it's been, eh? I reviewed Cold War all the way back in, gosh, March? And here we are, around one hundred reviews later, not to mention multiple weeks of vacation thrown in (plus, um, other 'stuff'). All acceptable factors in taking as long as I have in getting through it, but man, it sure felt a slog at some points. Just a tad too much of the noodly, droning ambient, methinks.

What's even funnier about (nearly) ending this run on this particular album is its place in the Spielerei & Mantacoup discography, as this was the first one they released together. Keep in mind that Cold War was their last collaborative work, and was the first CD I reviewed in this stretch. Never would I have thought the sequencing in this project of mine would contain an actual ouroboros; at least, not until I reach Model 500's Classics again.

Wichman And Other Pieces may be the first album these two released together, though they each had some work out on dataObscura in that time too. So the two crossed paths, vibed on the synergy, and made some music – not an uncommon occurrence in the going-ons of musicians. What makes this particular CD so funny-weird is the fact it's mostly a live album. Yes, their 'debut' release mostly includes recordings taken from The Wichman Concert, which is a rather ballsy move on Databloem's part. The young label hadn't even reached it's tenth release yet, but hey, here's a live session from a couple artists making their debut on our print. I joke, but truthfully, Databloem had been releasing a few of these 'Databloem In Concert' CDs already, including one from Saul Stokes, plus another due from The Circular Ruins (because of course).

For the purposes of this CD, The Wichman Concert is divided up into seven parts, though it is a continuous long-play with various movements and sections throughout. So lots of segments of synth drone, pad washes, burbly electronics, and soft, dubby ambient techno rhythms. Part 4 gets surprisingly aggressive, its chugging, groovy beats sounding like they're being dragged through dub-mud, while Part 7 provides the requisite uptempo closure to a live set (paging Dr. Jarre on that one), though nothing that'll have folks rioting in their zoot suits.

As the album title implies, there wasn't enough material in the concert for a full-fledged album, so four additional pieces are added. These mostly follow upon the same moody, dubby ambient techno vibes as the live stuff, while Sfunato treads startlingly close to the domain of psy-dub. It's all quite good and all, though really mostly just confirms Databloem a class label throughout its lifespan than anything on the artists' part.

Harold Budd - The White Arcades

Opal Records/All Saints: 1988/2018

I've noticed some folks pointing to this particular album as the point Harold Budd broke out from being thought of as just 'that guy who provides piano on Brian Eno's ambient', which is funny since Brian Eno produced this album. I get where they're coming from though, Harold's most prominent records prior to this still his Eno collaborations (Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirrors and The Pearl). He'd released at least a half-dozen other LPs in that time, but remained rather obscure compared to those – forced to basically self-release some of them didn't help Budd's efforts in getting noticed outside Eno's shadow.

Still, Harold found other musicians to work with throughout his budding '80s career, including the folks over in the Cocteau Twins camp. He even made an album with them, The Moon And The Melodies, though for some reason, it wasn't credited as an album with the Cocteau Twins. Rather, each member of the band was credited separately, as though they were musicians on par with Harold Budd in this particular recording session. Odd, is all I'm saying, though it did give Mr. Budd access to their studio for future projects, plus a little extra bump of prestige beyond the ambient art world.

The effects of that collaboration could definitely be felt in Lovely Thunder, released the same year as The Moon And The Melody, and might have even been included in this Budd Box, if it had been out on a different label. But nay, the purpose of this set was to round up Harold's albums on minor prints, from which the follow-up to that was The White Arcades, released on Opal Records. In fact, it was among the print's launching releases, established by, of course, Brian Eno. Well, something had to take the place of the defunct Editions EG. Again, it just seems odd seeing folks pointing here as Harold's major turning point outside Eno's influence with so much of Brian's hand still in the pot.

What I think is meant is that The White Arcades is a handy summation of what Budd was doing throughout the '80s, a nice capper on a decade's worth of music making. For sure it's got the gentle piano tones about, but moody, atmospheric pad work with modern classical flourishes too. Yeah, we're still in the era when ambient was still mostly abstract art music, so you wouldn't imagine this stuff being out of place in museum galleries or the like, but it's also quite nice and soothing and relaxing to hear too. We're still a year or two off from when the scene would take a sharp turn towards the ravey-psychedelic stuff.

The White Arcades might be among Harold Budd's best solo albums of the '80s, but as I've already talked about so many of his albums from that period, I'm not left with much else to say than that. You should know what to expect from a Budd joint by now, and this record delivers it wonderfully.

Hexstatic - When Robots Go Bad!

Ninja Tune: 2007

When stacked against commercial success, Hexstatic might be one of Ninja Tune's most successful, though almost entirely due to their breakout single. Which was a collaboration with Coldcut. Of course, I'm talking about Timber, and whether it was Hexstatic or Coldcut that actually had more to do with the single, it remains one of the label's most famous hits, one that would be difficult to follow upon. Not that Coldcut had much need to, their legacy in dance music's history firmly entrenched. Hexstatic though, they may have had some pressure in creating another chart topper, lest they be thought of just a flash in the pan wonder. Would explain the bandwagon jumping on When Robots Go Bad!

Or maybe I'm thinking too much into this. Hexstatic did spend their initial album efforts doing quirky cut-up electro and traditional Ninja-hop (including a supremely cheekily titled track called Ninja Tune - it has chop-socky samples). When listening to this LP though, with half the tunes such blatant cross-over attempts compared to their past discography, I can't help but make such assumptions. Like, I know 'electro' was big and all in the mid-'00s, but they didn't have to go this far and obvious with it, did they? Surely Coldcut's failed 'pop' singles from Sound Mirrors should have clued them in this wasn't a lane Ninja Tune could easily adapt to?

The best way I can describe When Robots Go Bad! is it's an album I would have absolutely loathed in the year it came out, and probably have written a scathing, snarky, embarrassing review for TranceCritic on it. I was so done with trashy club fodder trying to pass itself as cool and hip that I'd basically deny whatever good tunes might come paired with it. It wasn't a very good stance to have on music, but eh, we're all rather immature in our opinions when we've yet to reach thirty, amirite?

I can't say tracks like Red Laser Beam, Freak Me, Prom Night Party, and Move On have aged well because you couldn't imagine them being made at any other time; the Ed Banger aesthetic was almost as prevalent as 'minimal' was. To say nothing of Bust, so desperately trying to be Boys Noize it hurts.

Fortunately, they're the most egregious examples of Hexstatic 'going bad', the rest of the album moving between classier stabs at mainstream electro (Tokyo Traffic), and right-proper electro jams. Man, if only the whole CD had been like the smashing Newton's Cradle, or smooth-cruisin' Newwaves and TLC (that one's almost atmospheric jungle). Meanwhile, tunes like Roll Over and A Different Place provide enough soul-sista' finesse for the requisite vocal needs, if Hexstatic were so insistent on having them.

So an album with some good, some bad, some middling, and a rather odd entry into the Ninja Tune catalogue. Can't say the Ninja faithful would have been pleased with it, but I imagine they were more interested in new Amon Tobin or Cinematic Orchestra that year anyway.

ACE TRACKS: September 2019

And this month started out so well too.

Like, I'm feeling a good clip. The words are coming to my head just fine, I'm articulating my points as cleverly as I ever have, no screen is left blank for more than a second before I start committing letters to fingers to keyboard. And yet, it all suddenly went crashing down on me, like a total and complete mental failure that needed not just a reboot or defrag, but a hard drive replacement too (or however this metaphor goes). I've had 'issues' before, sure, but this took me quite by surprise in just how swift and absolute it did me in.

Naturally there are a number of things that contributed to this, much of which needn't nor should be brought up here. One thing that really stands out to me though, in how it should have been a warning sign something wasn't quite right with the ol' brain chemistry, is when I discovered I'd lost two CDs of mine. And I only noticed they were missing because they were supposed to be part of this current run of reviews: Autumn Of Communion's Reservoir Of Video Souls and Biosphere's Shenzhou.

It strangely and scarily unnerved me just how much losing these two CDs (one of which comes in a DVD-sized package, no less) affected me. It felt like I'd lost control over something I knew, with absolute certainty, I had total control over: the state of my music collection. And if not this, what else was I losing control over? It started a very vicious, hyper-critical mental cycle that took some time getting out of, especially when you know 'taking time for yourself' is only putting you behind the schedule you demand of yourself. I know, logically, I have very little to worry about, so why does everything feel like crap?

So it goes when the sun starts retreating further and further onto the southern horizon. Meanwhile, here's the ACE TRACKS that did make it into the month of September:


Full track list here.


MISSING ALBUMS:
Ylid - Transcend!
Le Moors - Tendrils
Crystal Moon - Temple
Various - A Taste Of Kandi Summer 2007

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 0%
Percentage Of Rock: 7%
Most “WTF?” Track: One of the Ezdanitoff tracks, if for nothing else than seeing the cover art.

Fun fact: usually when I'm compiling these playlists, it's in one fell swoop, going in reverse from newest to oldest reviews. While making this one, I noticed how I wasn't skipping any due to a lack of Spotify presence. As I inched closer to the end, I wondered, could this be it? Could this, finally, be the ACE TRACKS playlist that doesn't have a single missing album? Like, there's certainly a smaller selection than most months, so it could happen, right?

Then came the obscure ambient/experimental stuff. Yes, even more obscure than Ezdanitoff, somehow. Strange how so many older Hed Kandi releases never made their way to Spotify though. Yeah, the licensing of those old comps would be a bitch to go through nowadays, but surely the mighty Ministry Of Sound has enough scene clout to pull it off?

Ezdanitoff - We Bring Light

Silentes Minimal Editions: 2011

This was included in Databloem's 'mystery bundle', and did it ever cement my suspicion the offer was little more than a dumping ground of dead stock. No fault of the contents within, mind you, but cover art such as this hardly inspires impulse buys. Maybe if the photo was washed-out, adding aged grit and grime, you might convince a passer-by of it being some Boards Of Canada knock-off. As it stands though, your first impression is either an utterly twee electro-pop outing, or an incomprehensible experimental collection, using charming family photos as an ironic contrast to the anti-sounds you're about to experience.

If you're at all familiar with the players involved with this one-off project, you'd know it to be the latter case. One half is Wouter Jaspers, who hasn't done much beyond collaborations here and there, his work with Steffan de Turck as Preliminary Saturation probably the most fruitful of his pairings. The other half of Ezdanitoff, however, is Frans de Waard, who's been making experimental music as Kapotte Muziek since, gosh, the '80s? A very long time, to say the least, with around a dozen more aliases and group projects to his name. Not to mention running a handful of labels such as Bake Records, Korm Plastics, and ...Plinkity Plonk Records? Haha, and that was established in the late '90s too? Not that I'm saying he could have predicted such a term becoming synonymous with the worst of minimal-tech, but leave it to an experimental outfit coining it well before the curve.

We Bring Light first emerged on Waard's My Own Little Label print as a mini-album, but was expanded to a full-length LP with three additional tracks a year later. Some of them are welcome additions, others... well, it is an experimental album, featuring a pair of chaps quite enamoured with field recordings and transistor tweets.

Opener Gentle Men starts innocuously enough, with gentle bleepy noises, rushed footsteps, and children playing, but man, do those harsh 'melodies' ever grate at the end. The titular follow-up features what sounds like someone sucking and blowing through a straw into a glass or bowl of... I want to say water, but really, it could be any sort of liquid. Maybe I don't want to know.

I was almost ready to write this album off when third track First Circle offers an actual, true-blue warbly melody that almost brings to mind the 'hauntology' vibes you might have expected from the cover art. The rest of the album kinda' flits between abstract sound experiments and twitchy-analogue melodies, which at least maintains the weirdo atmosphere of the whole thing. Then, in the final five seconds, you hear the beeping of an alarm clock, shaking you out of whatever bizarre, lucid dreamstate you've endured for the past little while, leaving you wondering if you even experienced it at all. Can't deny it's an effective way of wrapping We Bring Light up, almost making it worth your while to listen to the album in full. Almost.

Hot Chip - The Warning

EMI: 2006

I can't look at this album and not think of a totally different release called The Warning. This particular Warning is a classic tech-step cut from Grooverider, operating under his Codename John alias, released on Metalheadz at the peak of tech-step's dominance. With its spacious sonics, flanged-out surf sounds, low-riding rhythms, and bass reverberating from the depths of oceanic halls, it's a perfect mood setter for a session of prop'ah underground t'ings. Oh, and a repeated vocal of “This is... the warning”, forever lodging itself inside your brain, such that you can't see any other iteration of “the warning” without having that voice saying it for you.

Not that Hot Chip could have known this when they named their sophomore album The Warning (are any of them closet junglists?). Like, the titular song opens with twinkly bells and twee electro-pop rhythms, about as far removed from the rugged 'n' ruff jungle scene as one can ever get. To say nothing of Alexis Taylor's gentle croon at total odds with an ominous sampled voice. Still, there's something to be said for the unnerving way they calmly sing the chorus here: “Hot Chip will break your legs; Snap off your head.” And you know they will too!

Anyhow, I've been meaning to get back into Hot Chip, as the occasional replay of Made In The Dark leaves me yearning to hear more of the group's electro-pop disco-punk palette. I just can't bring myself to revisit One Life Stand though, for reasons I needn't bring up here (damn you, 2010). If I can't go forward, then I must go backward, to the record that truly broke the five-piece out from indie obscurity into... well, indie stardom at least. Despite the DFA association, it'd still be a little longer before dance music followers truly caught onto them (*cough*).

So The Warning, the album that basically cemented what we'd expect to hear out of Hot Chip forever after. The record that fuses so many idiosyncratic musical genres into a charming electro-soup. The LP that let every indie rag flex their name-dropping ability of all the various other bands Hot Chip reminded them of. I kinda' want to avoid doing that, but I honestly understand why they initially did. Very few sounded like what Hot Chip were doing, including Hot Chip themselves. By now though, their style is so distinct, I can easily say, “Yeah, it's a Hot Chip album, from back in the day,” and y'all know exactly what that sounds like. Makes for a poor review on my part though, doesn't it.

I think the trouble I'm having with The Warning is it hasn't quite sunk into me yet, lacking the immediacy Made In The Dark had. This is for the better though, as I'm quite certain I'll get more out of this record the more I return to it. And I will return to it indeed. Just, um, after some other music I need to hear is dealt with first.

SadGirl - Vol. 3 - Head To The Mountains

self release: 2016

You gotta' hand it to Bandcamp newsletters: they are committed to deep dives within the website's archives, unearthing potential up-and-comers so you don't have to. I can't imagine the soul-sucking experience it must be, sifting through so many amateur musicians, some of which have clearly just cracked open their first freeware producing studio and uploaded their first sessions onto the website in the hopes of a few takes. Not that Bandcamp is anywhere near as bad as Soundcloud in this regard – I'd like to think Bandcamp is where artists release the material they at least believe has some potential of actual money being earned from it – but how many mediocre items must the newsletter writers go through before stumbling upon something worth consideration of a spotlight? Why, it's just like the street 'zines of old!

For sure I'd never have had SadGirl brought to my attention without one such Bandcamp newsletter. Indie rock with influences of archaic surf rock is so far outside my usual wheelhouse, I wouldn't have any clue where to start looking for a fix, much less the commitment to do the necessary digging. If a Bandcamp newsletter promoting surf rockers on their website claims this is a band worth checking out though, then by g'ar I'll check 'em out. Or a tidy little EP on the cheap at least.

And had I first heard the opening song Going Down without that recommendation, I probably would have skipped on by. There's nothing wrong with it, of course, indie rock that's enamoured with the scraggly aesthetics of '60s garage rock and all the punky attributes that'd be adopted in later decades. There's even some nifty echo and reverb on those guitar tones, though nothing that gives me those 'surf' feels, y'know? What's always drawn me to this genre is the open vista it creates with its sonics, and Going Down feels like its still sprung from the tiny rock halls SadGirl cut their mustard in. But hey, they're at least Californian, so some ties to the surf and all.

Nothing sells the punk vibe more than a one-minute ten follow-up in Drowning though, and Someone Else's Skin is a right noisy little number too. I like it fine, I guess, and there's some cool, wavy, echoing solo action, but still not really what I was expecting out of a surf rock newsletter recommendation. Fortunately, we have The Hand That Did The Deed, one of those jangly instrumental ditties that's as much spaghetti Western rock as it is surf rock – the two were synonymous back in the day anyway. Up to this day too, come to think of it. Desperado rock. That's the name it should be called. Someone should make a guide to classic rock to make the name authoritative.

So this EP wasn't what I expected or hoped for, not really convincing me SadGirl was actually a contemporary surf rock band. And yet, I still went and ordered their debut album, Water. Go figure.