Category: Electronica (Page 7 of 34)

Mackintosh Braun: Where We Are

September 20, 2010 /


RIYL: Dissociatives, Air, E.L.O.

It’s good to see that there is someone at the major league level who remembers the importance of having a label with a personality, and that someone is Chop Shop Records’ Alexandra Patsavas. If Patsavas has your back, odds are you are a contemporary pop act with an offbeat approach and throwback sensibilities, i.e. you write songs like they were written before Rob Thomas fucked everything up, and this describes Patsavas’ latest signing, Mackintosh Braun, to a ‘T.’ The Portland duo’s debut album Where We Are is blissful synth pop song after blissful synth pop song, filled with breathy, manipulated vocals and washes of sound that envelop the listener like a wave from the oceans of Xanadu. The band could definitely use a second operating speed, but when they’re on, like the fab opening track “Could It Be” and the ringing “Line in the Sand,” it’s damn near irresistible. Most of the album, though, falls into the pleasant-but-slight category, and the robotic vocals leave the proceedings a little cold, but you can tell from the chord sequences that Mackintosh Braun have the right idea. With any luck, they’ll come up with more of those right ideas next time around. (Chop Shop/Atlantic 2010)

Download Mackintosh Braun’s “Could It Be” here

Mackintosh Braun MySpace page
Click to buy Where We Are from Amazon

Artists, CD Reviews, Electronica, Pop

Big Gigantic: A Place Behind the Moon

September 9, 2010 /

stars:
RIYL: Sound Tribe Sector 9, Pretty Lights, EOTO

This Colorado-based electronic duo has been honing their skills with heavy road work – including some touring with electronic rock masters and label mates Sound Tribe Sector 9 – and it shows here on their sophomore release. Saxophonist/synth man/producer Dominic Lalli and drummer Jeremy Salken bring their own organic skills to the electronic genre, and having real instruments involved always propels electronic-oriented music higher.

The album is a high-energy affair all the way, packed with slamming beats, psychedelic synths and big phat grooves that are guaranteed to get a dance party going. Tracks like “Sky High,” “Step Up,” “Shine” and “Cloud Nine” all crackle with a fresh sound that is often missing in electronic music that relies too heavily on drum machines. “Driftin” drops the tempo just a bit, which makes its tight groove stand out even more. “High and Rising” might be the top highlight with the way the track keeps ascending through a swirling succession of ecstatic peaks.

Lalli’s sax also adds a jazzy improv flavor throughout, especially on tunes like “Lucid Dreams,” “Breaking Point” and “Shine.” His synth skills are some of the best in the biz, mixing a variety of otherworldly sonic flavors to create unique soundscapes. Members of STS9 join in on the bonus title track for another highlight tune that recalls some of their seminal work like “Breathe” and their newer “Between 6th and 7th,” on which Lalli has collaborated with the band.

The electronic genre has seen a lot of new contenders in the past few years, which can make it hard to stand out when so many acts are following a similar vision. But A Place Behind the Moon shows that Big Gigantic are in it to win it. The duo’s combination of jazzy melodies with pulsating beats and dazzling electronic undertones creates one of the tastiest flavors the evolving genre has seen in recent times.
(1320 Records 2010)

Big Gigantic MySpace page (Contains link to download A Place Behind the Moon for free)

CD Reviews, Dance, Electronica, Instrumental, Jam Band, Psychedelic

Underworld: Barking

September 8, 2010 /


RIYL: The Chemical Brothers, The Future Sound Of London, everyone on Hospital Records

Barking is the third Underworld album since Darren Emerson left the the duo of Karl Hyde and Mark Smith in 2002, and the first since then that is worth a damn.

A Hundred Days Off was a forgettable mess and the nicest thing that can be said about Oblivion With Bells was that its album title was an apt descriptor of the music. It’s probably no coincidence that this, the first good Underworld album since 1999’s Beaucoup Fish, is a collaborative effort between the group and a series of high-profile and up-and-coming producers.

Drum and bass producer High Contrast contributes the two highlights of the album, the very High Contrast-like sounding “Scribble” and the oddly sedate “Moon in Water,” which features some truly inventive vocal manipulations over a simplistic, but effective beat.

Other tracks are less surprising, but still good. D. Ramirez and Paul Van Dyk both specialize in dance-ready house and trance music, so it’s no surprise that their tracks, especially Ramirez’s “Always Loved a Film,” make Underworld sound like classic Underworld again, with frantic beats and epic synths serving as a perfect backdrop to Hyde’s distorted and manic vocal delivery. Van Dyk’s “Diamond Jigsaw” is so damned uplifting it should be played in rehab centers, and its peaks of Everest proportions pretty much ensures you’ll hear it on every mix by the DJ for the next few years. Minimal techno producer Dubfire is a little off with the slightly-too-slow “Grace” but makes up with it by delivering “Bird 1,” the opener to the album that builds in a way reminiscent of Beacoup Fish‘s “Shudder/King Of Snake.”

The only contributors to seemingly miss the point of the exercise are Appleblim and Al Tourettes, who never rise out of the dubstep doldrums they’re so comfortable in, with “Hamburg Hotel,” a barely-there collection of looping beats and boring bass lines. But hey, it’s dubstep, so you get what you ask for.

Maybe Hyde and Smith need someone else to bounce ideas off of in order to truly be great? Whatever the reason, here’s hoping their collaborative streak doesn’t stop with Barking. They just need to avoid any additional “dubstep” artists. (Om Records 2010)

Underworld MySpace Page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Dub, Electronica

Midnight Juggernauts: The Crystal Axis

August 25, 2010 /


RIYL: Future Sound of London, Flaming Lips, Air

After an all-too-brief stay at Astralwerks, where they dropped one of 2008’s finest with their dizzying alt-dance debut Dystopia, Australia’s Midnight Juggernauts return from the desert – or whatever planet houses their recording studio – with The Crystal Axis, currently available in the States as an iTunes exclusive but should see the light of day on CD in September. The band’s philosophy has not changed between albums, though the approach this time around is a bit different. Kicking the four-on-the-floor Daft Punk beats to the curb, The Crystal Axis downplays the Gothic vibe of Dystopia in favor of some technicolor psychedelia. “This New Technology” reimagines Love & Rockets as an electronic act, down to singer Vincent Vendetta’s Daniel Ash-like breathy vocal. Then, just to be perverse, they finish the track with a Moog-kissed breakdown that Air would have killed for circa Moon Safari. “The Great Beyond” has a great honest-to-goodness jam in the outro (always nice to see synth-driven bands put musicianship first), but the album’s clear highlight is “Lara Versus the Savage Pack,” a driving pop track with an explosive finale that will send the club kids climbing up the walls.

The production isn’t as clean as it was on Dystopia (they paid for this one themselves, which might explain why they stopped trying to sound like Daft Punk), and the songs overall are a bit more challenging than instantly accessible Dystopia tracks like “Road to Recovery” and “Into the Galaxy.” But that’s part of growing up, isn’t it? Eventually you’re on your own, and you can’t afford to do the same stuff you could when you still lived with your parents. Think of The Crystal Axis as the Midnight Juggernauts’ first apartment out of school; even the most talented people live in pretty dingy places when they first strike out on their own. It will not be long before the band’s budget catches back up with their talent. (Siberia Records 2010)

Midnight Juggernauts MySpace page

Alternative, Artists, CD Reviews, Dance, Electronica, Pop, Psychedelic

!!!: Strange Weather, Isn’t It?

August 24, 2010 /


RIYL: LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, Hot Chip

The indie rock/electronic collective !!! doesn’t make things easy on themselves, or music reviewers. A Google search of the band name, for instance, reveals no matches at all, much less lyrics or a band Web site. (Including the name of the new album, however, nets you lyrics of Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull and Glenn Frey songs.) Of course with a little more extensive searching you can find pretty much anything about the band you might want to know like, say, how to pronounce the name – any repeating hard consonant sound, apparently, usually represented by ‘chk chk chk’.

I’m guessing this is a sly comment on the repetitive nature of much electronic music, but it was probably unnecessary. These guys rise above the noise without much problem with an effective mix of rock guitar, pounding beats and swirling electronica. There are plenty of other acts doing this, of course, but not many have been around since 1996 and garnered the critical praise heaped on !!!. They have not reached the commercial heights of other similar bands, and that probably won’t change with their fourth album Strange Weather, Isn’t It? Not because it’s not an excellent album (it is) but if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s not likely to. Strange Weather is actually the perfect party soundtrack for your late summer, with propulsive tracks like the album opener “AM/FM,” “Jump Back” and “Hammer.” The entire album flows well and goes by surprisingly fast, even when things get a bit disco-y on “Even Judas Gave Jesus a Kiss.”

Lyrically the album seems to land somewhere between the politically-minded “Louden Up Now” and the more booty-shaking “Myth Takes.” In truth the words mainly pass right through, not making as much of an impression as the music’s tempo and mood. You just keep nodding your head and shaking your butt and, before you know it, it’s over. Actually the easiest thing about the band is listening to them. (Warp Records 2010)

Alternative, CD Reviews, Electronica

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