LUKE WYATT SAD STONEWASH - A Video Mulch

The video Luke Wyatt made for his Torn Hawk Tarifa track has been calling me, and en route for another gawp at it on Youtube I came across another amazing video he's done with the Tarifa track. It's a promo for a full length DVD called - best name ever - Sad Stonewash. Its VHS sentimentality is totally kitsch and surprsingly poignant, and major visual disintegration FX push it as far towards pixellated meltdown as it's possible to go without completely destroying the meaningful looks, sunsets and 80s dance moves. And the harsh metallic beats in the track, balanced by the balearic sunset melody, perfectly complement the sentimental/destructive feel of the video.

Luke Wyatt explained to AAVV how he works and what inspired Sad Stonewash:

 “I select video to appropriate based on its mood resonance or compositional zing. My VCR gets beat up with a size 13 docksider until it makes errors and the VHS tape spits up on itself. While digitizing the video I induce the computer to make mistakes by not telling it the truth about the data it is ingesting. I isolate the mistakes I like best, outline them, and send them back to my VCR, resuming the docksider attack, repeating this process until things attain an anti-sheen, losing any crisp edge, as if they had always belonged together. I then arrange the images in an order that must appear equally inevitable. I term the results of this technique Video Mulch. For this work, the following was on my mind: languid linen-suit sadness via the stylish poignancy of Michael Mann sunsets. A cold weather cousin sadness to that: the dour, grey, gothic sadness of a few old bands who played chiming delay guitar. Sixth grade sword obsessions (a dream of the sky), meet adult shoe and leg love (hangups of the earth). Both crowns and castles point to the sky (or space), pinnacles and minarets announcing heaven as the place kings should shoot for. Remember how the Voltron castle became a spaceship and lifted off the earth?”

check Luke Wyatt's website

Stream brand-freaking-new tripped-out space shit from Jamal Moss's Music from Mathematics

These three tracks are off a forthcoming Music from Mathematics release. I'm actually listening to them as I write. It's great 'artnoise' (as it calls itself). No 5 is a low-end squelch fest with tinny space keysboards drifting in out and of pitch above.. No 6 is a massively wigged out intergalatic battle jam and No 8 so far is full of tense deep space synth patterns and unsettling vibes. Check it!

Listen to new Willie Burns tracks, out soon on The Trilogy Tapes

Willie Burns (geddit?) is one alias of a certain William T Burnett (of the excellent NY-based W.T. Records). He's got some new tracks coming out on The Trilogy Tapes, a London record label run by Will Bankhead (Honest Jons and Hyperdub graphic designer, the man behind those famed Actress record sleeves amongst many other things). Willie Burn's also released well decent  stuff in a similar housed-off vein on L.I.E.S. and Creme Organization (although the L.I.E.S. release is the one to look out for).

The Trilogy Tapes seems to be a satisfying secretive label. There's not a great deal of information about them which is unusually cryptic and very very appealing in this day and age. TTT has been home to some really ace releases, Joy Orbison's massive 'Ellipsis' and Dean Blunt (from Hype Williams)'s limited cassette tape release of late last year, 'Jill Scott Herring OST'. There's also a new Blawan out on there, a Madteo cassette and a punk compilation. Loads of good stuff.

Anyway, back to these Willie Burns tracks. The two that have gone up on Soundcloud already are both nice but my favourite is Duh Duh Dunk, below. The EP will be called The Overlord, and is due out soon. Check out The Trilogy Tapes website.

Forthcoming on L.I.E.S - Delroy Edwards - 4 Club Use Only

It said 'ghetto house' in the corner of the soundcloud page but it's far more sedate than that would lead you to think. (Note however the font saying 'DELROY EDWARDS' on the record sleeve is pure Dance Mania).

 

It pushes along, sure, but rather than a peak hour banger it's more PURE ATMOSPHERE POWER. Shimmery and meandering, it's super raw and soulful. It makes me shut my eyes a little and zone out at my desk. Mmm. It's not a million miles from some of the OASIS Collaborating stuff. Just listen to those beats - whatever they're run through they've got an incredible textured surface area that just sounds so cool. Serious FXHE vibes (which is a very good thing. I can't be bothered to defend Omar S against people who think only wankers like him, as far as I'm concerned he's a don). Incredible track.

Pug Life

Came across the lookbook for this sweet & tuff collection and fell in love. The sparkly pastel, hip-hop-oversized menswear is Natalija Mencej's Central St Martins graduate collection. It's gathered her a fair bit of attention as well as spawning her very own meme and is pretty damn irresistible. 2damncute.

New Future Times - Steve Moore 'Zen Spiders'

Spacious, beautiful, new-age & balearic house from NYC based producer Steve Moore on Washington DC's Future Times label.

Steve Moore does a whole bunch of musical projects including Zombi, has been known to play with Sun 0))) and has released on L.I.E.S, Kompakt, Moon Glyph and Mexican Summer. A busy guy. Check out this stunning track.

John Heckle

Fresh-faced Scouser John Heckle is really quite an astonishing producer of carpet-burn-raw house and techno. His tripped-out-to-fuck music sounds like he takes a lot of hallucinogenic drugs but I'm assured he's a clean cut kind of guy.

'Ahead of Time', below, from a 2011 Mathematics release, is enthusiastically unhinged and deeply unstable. Definitely veering into the interesting end of the experimental spectrum. His debut album has grown-up a touch and stabilised somewhat (the right meds, perhaps). It's got the most incredible lo-fi production and astonishing tracks all. over. it. I wanted to upload 'Atomic Response' but it's not on Youtube so here are the hypnotic 'Red Defender' and the surprisingly uplifting,synthy disco-y (French-Kiss-ey) 'The Voyageur (Voyeur)', both from the album (which I've actually already written about for the blog but I just wanted to post about his stuff again).

The story of getting to signed to Mathematics Recordings, apparently - he went up to Jamal Moss/Hieroglyphic Being in a club with a demo, HB was less than interested but took the tape without saying anything. A few months later, an A4 envelope arrived at Mr Heckle's residence, inside - Mathematics Recordings contracts for signing. No fucking about, then!

(disclaim-- John Heckle's done loads of other tracks, these are just some that I particularly like)

Paved with Gold - ISYS and NTS at Tate Tanks

Earlier this evening ISYS and NTS got their London thing on at the Tate's new Tanks space. There were five films screened and soundtracked live, and some poetry from host James Massiah.  The videos were really lovely, with an impeccable ISYS eye for London's beauty and style. Footage of crowds, the city streets, people and fashion were edited and soundtracked so well it made me kind of see the city again and this time catch the aliveness and the energy...



The music was varied and pretty great too - My Panda Shall Fly did an improvised sitar, electronics and vocals set and Dark Sky played a kind-of-heavy but still poignant dubstepish-bass-ish track complete with London sound recordings. Okay, so that didn't make it sound all that great but actually, it really was.

Revealing the soul and beauty in the everyday life of city without getting sentimental is a lot easier said than done, but the films and music tonight pulled it off perfectly. It was like being shown the city afresh, and it was really touching.

If you haven't already, check out ISYS and NTS, two banging websites. 

We Can Elude Control @ Bold Tendencies 6

Saturday night was the second of Paul Purgas' 'We Can Elude Control' sound-art night at Peckham's Bold Tendencies. Despite the sweltering heat the lower level of the car park was packed with the art-school kids, extreme-beard hipsters, black-garmed NHS Specs intellectual types and sandal-and-sock wearing Gruniad readers who make up the core South London art crowd.

I arrived in time to hear the end of Bill Kouligas (the man behind Berlin's PAN Records). The bass and power of the sound were making the concrete throb, which was both cool and kind of worrying. Inside the thunderous wall of noise sharp sounds played off each other, matching power and knife-edge precision. 

After a cooling breather on the roof, it was back into the carpark for Roly Porter, who played an improvised experimental electronics set with Cynthia Miller (they're keeping it in the family apparently, as she's his Aunt). Their heavy set was nicely primal, with unsettling rumblings and deep dark undercurrents. 

Out one side of the crowded dark carpark you could see the lights of the London skyline and overground trains which perfectly complemented the tough electronics noisily rumbled past on the other. Roly Porter and Cynthia Miller seriously cranked it up in the final minutes for an especially brutal onslaught, then that was it - time to bolt upstairs for fresh air and Camparis. 

New L.I.E.S. - MUTANT BEAT DANCE - SKETCH III

New on the lovely Brooklyn-based L.I.E.S. label is this track from Mutant Beat Dance, aka Beau Wanzer and Melvin Oliphant (who is also known as Traxx). As with all the Mutant Beat Dance stuff I've heard, the beats are just pretty damn tough. Not hard, mind, they just ooze dancefloor rawness. And the rest of the track is nicely unhinged, there's a looped keyboard sound in there that's menacing like a Goblin soundtrack, some incomprehensible vocal samples and lots of raw jacking vibes. It's heavy and it's weird and it'll make you jack, it's mutant beat dance.

 

Holy Mountain

Trailer for the Jodorowsky film.

Heroin in Tahiti

Surf-drone? Kraut-surf? Whatever, Heroin in Tahiti are two guys from Rome and they make heavy, whacked-out, heavenly kitsch.