Cismarine (2008)

Great compilation from the cism netlabel containing some tracks from bvdub, Mr. Cloudy, Grit and a host of others who continue to populate the dub techno universe.

Enjoy

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Mr. Cloudy ‎– Long Wandering (2008)

I've been living in the dub techno universe for a few years now. Sometimes you just find a style of music that speaks to you.  While I do mix it up with a variety (as my mother in law used to say in her thick Jamaican Patois accent, "Too much of one thing good for nothing"), it dominates my headspace.

Mr. Cloudy is running neck and neck with bvdub and Quantec in terms of musical output.  Like most dub tech there is a certain consistency and design in his work but it continues to evolve over time.  This is a good intro to his early work.

Mr. Cloudy's original "Long Wandering" track runs a hypnotic 16 minutes.  Marko Fürstenberg and Grad_U, both names you will become familiar with as you dig deeper into the sound, remix the track and put their own touch on it.

A great introduction to Mr. Cloudy and the modern evolution of dub techno.  This track remains one of my favorites to this day.

Originally found on cismsound.net (which appears to be in transition), you can download it below:

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Changes to the blog...

The world has changed in four years.  

I was going back through old posts and the vast majority of the links are dead.  Most are due to various file hosts (one in particular) being taken down or restricting access to I.P. addresses in the U.S. 

I've gone back through almost all posts and have placed them in draft status.  

I attribute the change to the world of blogging to a few things.

Obviously this is only scratching the surface.

People's tastes in music is evolving exponentially.  The classic rock of my youth is no longer required listening (and it is no longer relevant to me except as a time keeper of my past).  Albums such as The Dark Side of the Moon - an essential album, mind you - were basically issued at birth but cease to be as relevant as they were.  In fact, their relevance is often only in a re-interpretive sense (e.g. Dub Side of the Moon).

Genres have exploded and music has become as personal as it's ever been.  Artists and communities are continually creating and re-creating outside of the mainstream and the Web is the medium connecting everyone.  Shows such as The Voice and American Idol represent the last gasps of the "pop" artist and the big label.

Blogging has proliferated to the point that people no longer need a central resource such as a blog.  Links to albums are embedded in the Web and a simple search will reveal them.  

Other sites such as invite only sites, for those who are members, provide, quite literally, an unlimited medium in which to find any album.  This is community at its best.  

The efforts of the RIAA and the whole copyright mess has merely driven folks underground.  It has basically caused people to hate record labels even more and to avoid the artists represented on the majors.  Until the death of the independent artist and label (often by being consumed by a major label), this is the future.  

This may not be the big money future of, say, the 70s and 80s, but it may just be that middle ground that allows artists to subsist or even make a living doing music.  It also allows more intimate contact with music lovers and is more participatory in nature.  And who knows, as it evolves it may lead to an entirely different musical universe that we can not currently envision.

I have noticed dozens and dozens of blogs dropping over the past few months.  Perhaps they were shut down, perhaps the blog owners moved on to other things for whatever the reason.

As for this blog, it continues.  

Over four years there have been almost 1,500 posts (currently at under 150) and well over 300,000 hits on the blog.  Let's face it, anyone who blogs thrives on the hits whether out of vanity or from the practical reality of the need when it comes to running a blog.  

I intend, over time, to revisit the important posts and re-up them. I hated to put them in draft status because even in draft status they still show the depth of where this blog (and I) have been.

But I decided to take a bit more control of the blog and keep it personal.

For those who are here and for those who have been here throughout the four years, I thank you.

Intrusion ‎– RA.153 (320 kbps) (2009)

About a year or so ago, right in the midst of a slew of releases from the echospace [detroit] label  (on which I invested silly amounts of cash) that were driven by demand from folks on a discogs dub techno forum this upgrade was dropped, also shared by the label.

If you haven't heard this mix, it's one of the standouts in the series and is perhaps the best introduction to the dub techno sound.

Originally issued at 128 kbps, here's the scoop (from the label) on this rip:

"I took it right from [the] hard drive...and converted it from an AIFF to a 320 MP3 using Pro Tools, I don't think there is a better way."

May just be dub techno's Goa Mix, this style of music at its peak as it veered off into new directions leaving imitators in the dust.

Here

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Quietus Recordings (2007-2011)

Though his music quietly grips your soul, bvdub exploded into the musical universe on his own label, for the most part releasing his own works but also capturing some early releases from Quantec and Arc Of Doves.

For those who may not be familiar with bvdub (aka Brock Van Wey) that is difficult to believe considering the incredible volume of musical output (8 albums in 2011 and 5 so far in 2012 not to mention EPs, remixes and other musical adventures).

His White Clouds Drift On And On is one of the best releases of this century and is one of those rare albums that ushered in a sound that is unmistakably his and his alone.  In fact, it caught the ear of Steven Hitchell who not only released it on his echospace [detroit] label but who was moved to create a series of remixes under his Intrusion moniker for Disc 2 of the release.

While this label is currently in hiatus and the albums long out of print (and going for lots of cash in the resale market) the quality of the releases continue to stand the test of time.

The label, the artist(s) and the music all get the highest recommendation.

Explore

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Quantec - Journey Of Mind (2009)

One more great release from Quantec.

As befits the Silent Season label, this one is on the quiet tip, something of a change-up from his normal association with the dub techno sound.

Another limited edition, now long out of print.

This is one to get lost in and warrants repeat immersion.

Don't forget to check out the podcasts on Silent Season's home page.

This is easily one of the best labels out there right now, a genuine labor of love.

Info

Now finally available digitally at Silent Season

HERE

Quantec - Distant Space (2008)

Just revisiting an old post posted back in December of 2009 here (well, at EOMI for those who remember...warm fuzzies anyone?).  Trying to filter through some of the older posts and bring them up to date.

Though there is a certain sameness to Quantec's sound and dub techno in general (and for fans of the genre this is not necessarily a negative thing), there have been some standouts that represent the genre well.

This series of EPs still remains some of my favorites from the early days of my discovery of dub techno when it began to reach a larger audience.

I enjoy them so much I purchased the vinyl.  It really is a beautiful series of records.  And, for digital fans, FLAC is available at various outlets.

Part 1

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Part 2

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Part 3

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Desolate - The Invisible Insurrection (2011)

Must be the onset of winter that's got me in a mood...

One of the best albums of 2011 from Sven Weisemann's Desolate moniker.

Comparisons to Burial are inevitable but aside from surface similarities this album sets off on its own trajectory into beautiful, haunting isolation.

His Celestial Light Beings release from this year is also worth picking up.

Perfect for those long, dark nights when introversion yields appreciation for the beauty hidden only in winter.

[Tucked in here is the bonus track only available on the vinyl release.]

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astrangelyisolatedplace - The Place Series

Couple of my favorite things - music (of course) from a variety of artists from around the world all set in the context of abandoned places, urban decay and isolation.

Currently up to 20 releases with plenty more on the horizon, if you haven't visited this site - and contributed - you are missing out on some amazing music.

There is also an amazing selection of mixes available from an amazing roster of artists.

Highest recommendation.  Dive in and get lost.  Links will keep you busy for days...

I know things are tough all over but please try and donate to keep this music alive.  Doesn't matter how little; small amounts spread across many adds up quickly.

Information, artist info and downloads (all free):

HERE

Living In The Ice Age Vols. 1 and 2

Two really good collections of downtempo tunes, some familiar, some not.

Guaranteed to help you chill

The first one can be found easily on the web, the second, while certainly not rare, is exclusive to HTCIS.

Living In The Ice Age - An Introduction To The Psychedelic Beat (1997)

Enjoy

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Living In The Ice Age Vol. 2 - Stamps, Headphone Music & Lazy Penpals (2000)

Enjoy

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Andy Stott ‎– Luxury Problems (2012)

Andy Stott is back with a new album that is, quite simply, epic.

His Passed Me By/We Stay Together set was one of 2011's best and took "techno" to new depths.

Big, big sound.  Taking slow, stripped down bass to deeper levels, this time with vocals.  And it works spectacularly.

Teaser (M.M. is the perfect fit):

Too new to post the whole album but track it down...one of 2012's best.

Info

Ukkonen - Detroit (Alternate Reality) (2012)

As often happens, there are tracks that keep popping up in my shuffle and I am constantly stopping to find out who it is...

Ukkonen.  Something different about this one.

This isn't the release on the shuffle (more about that one here) but this mix will give you a taste of where he's coming from...it's a great throwback move forward mix into the roots of Detroit techno.

"Finnish electronic musician Ukkonen has restructured and reimagined a range of house classics in this inventive mix for No Pain in Pop. Often familiar but not often identifiable, even the biggest club bangers half-implied and fleeting, while it’s dark and intense rather than straightforwardly arms-in-the-air euphoric."

“I had a vision, or a dream...in which I saw and heard a Detroit from an alternate reality, where the only difference was in the music: odd numbers were the norm, nothing was ever in 4/4, nothing ever sounded quite right or wrong. People were going wild for it, the music and dancing couples spilling into the street. It was the early 90’s and a new sound had been developing, a multi-layered swirling mass of rhythm, never quite lining up, never quite falling apart. Simple melodies, that when played together created mind boggling and and ever evolving combinations. I could hear the music like I was actually there, but I think it was just a dream..” (Source)

You can find the mix here (right click, 'Save As'):

HERE

Tracklist

Got Music?

Finally arrived.  Overall it's a quality product.

Won't be drying it for about a dozen washes though so it doesn't shrink since it's 80% cotton and size 'large' seems to be a relative thing.

Made in Cambodia, printed in the Ukraine and shipped to the heart of the Midwest.

Music, uniting the world.

Thanks again to all who made and continue to make this happen.

Music unites the world...

Just a cool thing I noticed:

Visitors to the site from around the world.

Pretty amazing.

Thanks for the support!

Kangding Ray - Pruitt Igoe (2010)

Speaking of Pruitt Igoe...

Machine music.  Big, enveloping sound.  Definitely recommended.

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Volor Flex - My Story (Trailer) (2012)

Speaking of Burial...

If you like his sound there is no denying the influence on this artist.

This really isn't a cheap knockoff, it's good in its own right.  It's just that it sounds like Burial.

Plus, as much as I am a huge fan of the Philip Glass score, this brings a fresh take on the Pruitt-Igoe scenes from Koyaanisqasti.

Everything...Full Circle...

 
Volor Flex - My Story (Album Trailer) from Origami Sound on Vimeo.

Massive Attack vs Burial ‎– Four Walls / Paradise Circus (2011)

Speaking of inflated prices, this one came out late last year and just exploded on the resale market.

Limited to 1,000 slabs of wax, these sold out immediately and prices shot upwards of $500 within a few days.  It's since settle down a bit but prices are still up there if you want a physical copy.

When it first came out, it was just a 'Eh, it sounds like Burial and Massive Attack.'

But as the months have rolled on and the hype has died down, I now realize that these are two of the finest tracks to hit in a long time.

Burial, Massive Attack and Hope Sandoval.

Stunning.

Highly recommended full immersion experience.

Info

Part1//Part2

Sandwell District ‎– Feed-Forward (2010)

This one generated quite a bit of buzz when it came out not only for the quality of the music but for the limited 2 x LP that was issued and the immediate inflation of the price on the resale market (such is the state of vinyl today...).

It's a collective, a label, a cult.  

They effectively ended all physical releases and communication in January of this year with this note and this mix on their blog.

Truth be told I only stumbled across them because of the hype but it's been fun going back and discovering what I missed.  

It's "just" techno but... 

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Shinsuke Matsumoto ‎– Lantern (2011)

Dub techno done right...

Part1//Part2

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Mon0 and B Mus (2012)

Sublime Porte, out of Istanbul, Turkey, is one of the many netlabels around that offer up amazing releases for  free or donation only.  

There is so much incredible music being made these days that it is impossible to keep up and so many artists just do not get the audience they deserve.  Sensory overload on all fronts.

However, from the din some artists float to the top.

The two artists below are of the dub techno variety but have a sonic depth that you don't hear too often.  

Highly recommended.  Please support them and the label(s) in any way you can.

B Mus - Nothing Is As It Seems (2012)

Contains remixes from Grad_U and Zzzzra. 

Info + Link

Mon0 - Monolog (2012)

This one bleeds into drone territory and will take you deep.  With tracks all around the 10 minute mark, that's plenty of time to get lost.

Info + Link

The Art Of War: Who Dares Wins (2000)

For some reason, not many people really know about this compilation.

Over time, it's turned in to one of my favorites of the Mo' Wax era as it really encapsulates that sound that made the label so fresh.

Toy's Factory out of Japan had an early association with Mo' Wax and brought out some early gems along with some tracks exclusive to their releases (e.g. Urban Tribe's Collapse of Culture).

And, for some reason, there has only been a 256 kbps and/or a v0 floating around the web for years.

So, for your listening pleasure, another HTCIS exclusive: FLAC.

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Mexico Unmixed

Last trip to Mexico, a few songs popped up in the mix associated with "Mexico" which seemed quite serendipitous. One of the tracks was from this compilation.

I lost a boatload of music (GBs in the 100s) when the computer crashed and I now have a dead hard drive that I can read but am still unable to retrieve the files.  Maddening.

At least I was able to retrieve the 70 GB of tunes on the mp3 player and move them back to the new computer.  Unfortunately, I only had 10 of the songs from this compilation.  

Info and the entire tracklist can be found here.

Over the course of my travels a few of these songs have entered the shuffle and they always stand out.

For a taste...

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The Dorobo/Demdike Stare connection

As anyone who's been here awhile knows, one of my favorite labels is the now defunct Dorobo label out of Australia. Some great, mid-90s experimental music.

This is a cool video by Richard Grant (aka I+T=R) whose artwork and video work is part of the labels' identity. Cool concept that works well with the song...

"This was the first experiment I did with my first video camera in 1991. Made by recording the short loop onto VHS then playing it back on the VHS player whilst shooting it again on camera, then playing the camera tape on the VHS player and re-shooting, I repeated this process until I couldn't discern the start of the loop anymore. I slightly edited this experiment to the Loggerhead track in 1994, it was meant to appear on the Dorobo video compilation but the running time was too long.

Loggerhead released one album 'Demons in Rapture' in 1994.

Viewing advice: fullscreen, dark room, loud sound."

 

Then I stumbled across a cool site called Vidgrids which lists a bunch of his other videos.

Much to my pleasure he has an "unofficial" video for Demdike Stare:

 

Everything's connected.

Will be back soon with some more tunes...

Coffeeshop

As anyone who has been following for a while knows, I've lately been just putting the mp3 player on shuffle and letting it go.

There are a few "filler" things I've got in there that really add to a good shuffle.  A lot of them are compilations with an endless variety of songs I'd never otherwise listen to (and, since compilations are a dime a dozen, a shuffle mix is probably the best purpose for them).

The Coffeeshop compilations below provide a seemingly endless variety of good, frequently well known, downtempo tunes.  Every so often I'm surprised by a track that I've never heard before and am glad to know it's from these compilations.

There are many other compilations that could be added but the key is to make sure and add different genres and other weirdness you might not otherwise intentionally listen to.  In fact, the weirdness (Demdike Stare, Alan Lamb's wire music, etc.) is a key to keeping it interesting.

Even the audio book of Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" (broken into segments) fits in.  As you open yourself up to listening freely, you learn that this connects easily to the skits in The Art of War: Who Dares Wins) which are taken directly from Sunzi's "Art of War."

Like life, it all ties together.  

All but volume one are at 192 kbps so if anyone has better rip rates, please feel free to share.

Volume 1

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Volume 2

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Volume 3

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Volume 4

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Volume 5

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Demdike Stare - Live

Went and saw Demdike Stare do a live re-score of the film 'La Vampire Nue' (aka 'The Nude Vampire') last night in Pittsburgh.  No, it's not porn.  It's one of those films that only the 70s could have produced.  The original is, perhaps obviously, in French (the film we viewed was dubbed in English).  

Here's the trailer:

In light of 70s zeitgeist I'm sure the director was trying to get across some deeper metaphysical or philosophical point of view.  For an in-depth analysis of the film you may find that meaning here.

The ticket?  A far cry from the keepsakes of old.

As for the show itself there was a quick, softspoken intro and, with no fanfare or sensationalism, Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty casually took a seat in from of their gear and got down to work.  Their gear - some analogue equipment and a turntable - was right under the screen. 

The photo below is from after the show but gives an idea of the setting.  Miles Whittaker was talking to, I believe, Andy Stott (who had a show later that evening at a different venue).  Sean Canty, who manned the turntable, had stepped out.  On a side note, while they both used Apple laptops, Miles Whittaker's had a sticker of some kind over the glowing logo.  

With the lights out, it looked like this:

The end of the show was the same.  Some applause and a quick highlight of other events happening throughout the week and that was it.  It was perfect, just two guys who dig music playing for a group of people who dig their music.  No drama.  

The show itself was around an hour or so long.  The film itself was edited and the music worked in sync with the film.  It was shortened and at least one of these scenes got an extended remix which was both comical and eventually quite hypnotic.  Not sure anything was lost in the shorter version or not.  

As for the music, below is a performance of them live at The Boiler Room which gives a taste of the sound.

By the way, check out some of their videos online and you'll get a clue of how they can take what is otherwise a campy film and give it some real creep value.  Remix culture is alive and well.