Electronic sound issue 09 sample issue

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5 0 N E W A R T I S T S F O R 2 0 1 5 . M o o g S u b 3 7 r e v i e w.

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING. Wolfgang Fl端r .

Editor: Push Deputy Editor: Mark Roland Art Editor: Mark Hall Sub Editor: Neil Mason Artworker: Jordan Bezants

Contributors: Andrew Holmes, Bethan Cole, Carl Griffin, Chi Ming Lai, Danny Turner, David Stubbs, Fat Roland, Finlay Milligan, George Bass, Grace Lake, Harriet Bliss, Heidegger Smith, Jack Dangers, Jason Bradbury, Johnny Mobius, Kieran Wyatt, Luke Sanger, Mark Baker, Mat Smith, Miles Picard, Neil Kulkarni, Ngaire Ruth, Patrick Nicholson, Paul Browne, Paul Thompson, Sam Smith, Simon Price, Steve Appleton, Tom Violence, Velimir Ilic, Vik Shirley, Wyndham Wallace Sales and Marketing: Yvette Chivers Published by PAM Communications Limited Š Electronic Sound 2015. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any way without the prior written consent of the publisher. We may occasionally use material we believe has been placed in the public domain. Sometimes it is not possible to identify and contact the copyright holder. If you claim ownership of something published by us, we will be happy to make the correct acknowledgement. All information is believed to be correct at the time of publication and we cannot accept responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies there may be in that information.

HELLO

welcome to Electronic Sound 09 There’s a strong association between electronic music and space. In 1964, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop sliced up tape and manipulated sound with filters and effects to create the sort of spooky atmospheres that perfectly matched the outof-this-world visuals of ‘Dr Who’. As the 1960s progressed, so did synthesiser technology, the machines made by the likes of Moog enabling faster sound processing. And while this sonic revolution was underway, America and Russia were plunging untold amounts of cash into one goal – to conquer space.

Another major feature in this issue is something we’ve called 50 For 15, for which we have selected half a ton of bands and artists we think will be shaping the coming year’s electronic soundscape. From the outré avant garde to the mainstream and all points between, it’s clear that electronic music is in rude health. As Noddy Holder said in Slade’s evergreen Christmas hit ‘Merry Xmas Everyone’, a song you will have no doubt heard about 487 times as 2014 burned out, “Look to the future now, it’s only just begun”.

In the world of film, meanwhile, Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, was released in 1968. While the soundtrack was not electronic, it did feature the work of modernist composer Ligeti and HAL singing ‘Daisy Bell’ was inspired by a performance Arthur C Clarke witnessed of an IBM speech synthesiser six years earlier. A couple of years on, Kubrick commissioned Walter Carlos to create synthesiser arrangements for ‘A Clockwork Orange’, the soundtrack of which remains an electronic music touchstone. The cover of Walter Carlos’ 1973 album, ‘Switched On Bach’ has Bach floating through space, attached to a Moog modular by a lifeline (or a patch cord).

Heady times for the futurist.

As ever, there’s lots more inside. We’ve also interviewed Roedelius (catching him on the eve of his 80th birthday), Adamski, Felix Kubin, Stefan Schneider & Sven Kacirek, Cerrone and Polly Scattergood. We have some new regular features too, like Synthesiser Dave, who shows us around the innards of a Roland SH-101 he is fixing, and 60 Seconds, which is an exclusive one-minute video portrait. Our first subject is none other than Wolfgang Flür, the one-time Kraftwerker.

It’s been fun to see this issue of Electronic Sound come together, echoing some of these coincidences of technology and sound. The release of Public Service Broadcasting’s second album, ‘The Race For Space’, along with the Moog’s new Sub 37 synthesiser puts a 21st century glaze onto the space/Kubrick/ Moog intersection. The day after PSB told us about their thinking behind the decision to base an album around the key moments in what is arguably mankind’s greatest achievement, Moog sent us a review model of their new Sub 37 synth.

The Moog is a beautiful thing indeed, destined to become a classic, and we took it to suitably ‘Clockwork Orange’ location to photograph it. As for the PSB album, its retro-futurism seems entirely in step with the founding principles of popular electronic music as laid down by Kraftwerk: that the past still sounds like the future when electronic music is at its best.

Forward into 2015, then. There’s big news in the pipeline for Electronic Sound, which we be sharing soon, and we’re looking forward to having you along with us as we pile headlong into an exciting future.

Electronically yours, Push & Mark

FE ATUR E S PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

50 FOR 15 In which we hand-pick 50 electronic artists you should be keeping an ear open for this year.

From industrial techno to sublime electropop, we’ve got all of our musical bases covered

ROEDELIUS

ADAMSKI

The extraordinary life of krautrock pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius includes tales of Nazis, nudists, psychotherapy, the Stasi, home births and a leaky nuclear power station. It’s quite a story

Adamski unleashes his first album in 15 years. What’s more, he’s gone waltz. Or “future waltz’, as he’s calling it. Yes, it sounds bonkers, but just you wait until you hear it

SCHNEIDER KACIREK

FELIX KUBIN

African rhythms meet dark synths as Stefan Schneider and Sven Kacirek unroll one serious sense of adventure and turn the field recordings they made in Kenya in an electronic soundscape

Everyone loves the cassette tape, right? Felix Kubin championed Germany’s tape underground in the 1980s. For such a little thing, the cassette held a great deal of power

TECH

MOOG SUB 37

SYNTHESISER DAVE

Moog’s long-announced but yetto-ship paraphonic synthsesiser is destined to become a classic. We liked it so much we ordered one

When you need a synthesiser wizard to fix your poorly machine, Synthesiser Dave is your man.

We suspect he actually is a wizard

ARTURIA/BITWIG PRODUCER PACK

HANS ZIMMER PERCUSSION LONDON SOLOS

This French/German collaboration is a hardware/software all-in-one solution and a massive bargain to boot

Hans Zimmer’s sample pack of exotic percussion, recorded equally exotically and delivered by those lovely Spitfire Audio folk

ALBUM R EV I EWS BRIAN ENO, ADAMSKI, ROBERT HOOD, ARCHIVE, MOOD WIRING CLUB, SCHNEIDER KACIREK... and more in the full edition!

EC TO T R O B G N U C ET IC Y O T S N H O TE E U N FU N D TS L L 09

With their mind-blowingly excellent new album tackling the rather large subject of space (the final frontier), PSB’s Mr J Willgoose Esq discusses life, the universe and everything

EL

CONTENTS

WHAT’S INSIDE UP THE FRONT

60 SECONDS

TIME MACHINE

We’re launching our new series of exclusive minute-long video portraits with former Kraftwerker WOLFGANG FLÜR, complete with his famous World War One helmet

Let us take you back to 1937, when JOHN CAGE delivered a lecture which rather spookily predicted the future sounds that would come via electronic instruments. Yup

CIRCUIT BOARD In which we explore some of the curious and often mindboggling connections that hold the electronic music world together.

We really are just one big happy N ABOUT! family YOU GO O MAD SHIT

09 D N L Y OU UL BU C S E F S I T N TH N O E T TE TR G O N E C TO C

Have we been eating cheese before bedtime again? The story of CERRONE’s 1978 hit ‘Supernature’ really does involve Kraftwerk, Paul McCartney, Lene Lovich and an unstoppable ARP Odyssey

EL

LANDMARKS

D ’T SING AN EEH! I CAN LAND 100M RO E TH AY PL E TIME AT THE SAM

A parallel world in which addled brains are allowed to run free. This time, Mr Numan and Mr Oakey meet Mr Smith (from popular beat combo The Fall)

We invite the very excellent POLLY SCATTERGOOD to share her downtime pleasures with us

Unearthing the incredible tale of PAUL PIGNON and the SYNTHI 100. Pay attention class because Mr Dangers will be asking questions later

Premier league DJs with USB sticks for goalposts, you know who you are. Our Fats would like a word

SYNTH TOWN

WHAT’S GOING ON

JACK DANGERS

FAT ROLAND

ANATOMY OF A RECORD SLEEVE We decipher the hidden messages in YELLO’s “Look at the stars, see how they shine for you…” Oh hang on, wrong ‘Yellow’

Two days of electronic & live performances, parties, installations, masterclasses, screenings and happenings across London Tobacco Dock, London E1 Individual or weekend tickets available from: Second Edition

Friday 6th 10.00am–7.00pm —

Conversation

+ More to be announced

Friday 6th 7.00pm–10.30pm —

Concert

Tickettannoy.com | Gigsandtours.com Residentadvisor.net | LEAFLondon.net 0844 811 0061

Nile Rodgers: Unmoderated/Uncensored/Unlimited The Rise and Rise of Black Butter Records The Rob da Bank Interview: DJ Harvey ELAM (East London Arts and Music) Explained Charlie + Will Kennard from Chase & Status B.Traits: State of Mind Meet Team RAM Records Point Blank Music College: Performance Masterclasses The Ambient Revival

Modeselektor (live)

Kate Simko & London Electronic Orchestra + More to be announced

Saturday 7th 12.00pm–10.30pm —

Club

In alphabetical order

Anja Schneider | Chris Liebing DJ Harvey | Luciano Modeselektor (DJ) | Pan–Pot Rob da Bank | Sasha | Tale of Us BEC | Clint Stewart | Enzo Tedeschi | Stephan Hinz (live)

facebook.com/LEAFLondon @LEAFelectronic @LEAFLondon #LEAF2015

60 SECONDS

00:00:60

sixtySECONDS Take a minute to enjoy this video portrait of the man who was one quarter of the classic Kraftwerk line-up and take in some facts about his life in music

NAME: Wolfgang Flür BORN: 17 July 1947, Frankfurt Am Main, Germany INSTRUMENT(S): Drums, synthesiser, voice BANDS: The Beathovens, Fruit, Spirits Of Sound, Kraftwerk, Yamo HIGHEST UK CHART POSITION: Number One (‘The Model’ single, released December 1981) HIGHEST US CHART POSITION: Number Five (‘Autobahn’ album, released November 1974)

QUOTE: “Subsequent musicians have replicated the entire concept [of Kraftwerk] again and again and profited from the futuristic image that we built together – Ralf, Karl, Florian, Wolfgang. Back then, we understood each other well and had fun together. We displayed the joy and the pride that we felt playing together by having our names in neon writing in front of us on stage. The current Kraftwerk line-up wouldn’t want to do anything like that.“ (Electronic Sound interview transcript, 2014)

CIRCUIT BOARD

THE ELECTRONIC SOUND CIRCUIT BOARD EXPLORING THE LINKS BETWEEN THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS, NEW ORDER, FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, MIKE OLDFIELD, DIE KRUPPS AND, ERM, JOHN CLEESE 1

‘Electronic Sound’ was the title of George Harrison’s second solo album, which was released in 1969 on the short-lived Apple offshoot Zapple

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Mike Pickering’s formed his first band, Quando Quango, with Dutch electronic music programmer Gonnie Rietveld in 1981

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George Harrison’s ‘Electronic Sound’ was recently reissued with a CD booklet featuring an essay by Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers

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Three of Ariel’s tracks were remixed by Justin Robertson, who Tom Rowlands knew from Manchester University

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Justin Robertson’s ridiculously long list of production and remix credits includes New Order’s ‘1963’

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The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands played drums in a band called Ariel, who released several singles on DeConstruction Records

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Rolling Stone put ‘Breaking Bad’ stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul on the cover of the magazine under the title ‘Chemical Brothers’ One of Aaron Paul’s earliest TV appearances was in a 2001 episode of ‘The X-Files’ called ‘Lord Of The Flies’ One of The Dust Brothers’ few credits as artists is a 14-minute version of Mark Snow’s ‘The X-Files Theme’ on the 1998 ‘The X-Files’ film soundtrack The Chemical Brothers started life as The Dust Brothers, until the US production team also known as The Dust Brothers threatened legal action Mike Pickering, the Hacienda DJ and the driving force behind M People, was as an A&R man at DeConstruction Records James Barton, the founder of the legendary Liverpool nightclub Cream, was as an AR man at DeConstruction Records James Barton was last year named as “the most important person in the world of electronic dance music” by Rolling Stone magazine

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Cream celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2002 with a lavish book entitled ‘Cream X10’ written by clubland impressario Ben Turner

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Monty Python’s John Cleese replaced Vivian Stanshall as the narrator for Mike Oldfield’s 2003 re-make of ‘Tubular Bells’

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Mike Oldfield recorded a version of Mark Snow’s ‘The X-Files Theme’ called ’Tubular X’, which included snippets of ‘Tubular Bells’

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Ivo Watts-Russell took the name This Mortal Coil from Monty Python’s classic ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch

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The only two constant members of This Mortal Coil were 4AD label boss Ivo Watts-Russell and producer John Fryer

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Jane Horrocks, a long-time fan of New Order, plays the leading role in the band’s video for ’1963’ The original line-up of Die Krupps included Ralf Dörper, who left the band to form Propaganda in 1982 John Fryer’s ridiculously long list of production credits includes Die Krupps’ ‘Tribute To Metallica’ EP New Order’s most recent album is ‘Live At Bestival 2012’, which was released on Rob Da Bank’s Sunday Best record label Ben Turner is the manager of Rob Da Bank, the Radio One DJ and the man behind the Bestival festival Rob Da Bank’s Sunday Best club nights started in a pub in Clapham and the entrance fee was 99p Jayne Casey’s cohorts in cult Liverpool band Big In Japan included Bill Drummond (The KLF) and Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes To Hollywood) Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Propaganda were label-mates at Trevor Horn and Paul Morley’s seminal ZZT label Cream’s media director was Jayne Casey, who was once the singer with cult Liverpool band Big In Japan

The Dust Brothers’ first single, ‘Song To The Siren’, includes samples of This Mortal Coil’s song of the same name, which is 30 Holly Johnson’s Frankie Goes To itself a Jeff Buckley cover Hollywood bandmate Brian Nash is an excellent impressionist, his specialities Quando Quango were early adopters being John Cleese and Frankie Howerd of the Roland TR-808, which Gonnie Rietveld bought on the advice of Bernard Sumner from New Order

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WHAT’S GOING ON

WHAT’S GOING ON…

POLLY SCATTERGOOD takes us on a tour of the contents of her various gadgety bits and bobs

…Your iPod? Right now I’m listening to Chet Faker’s ‘Built On Glass’ album, which came out last year. It’s experimental electronica and he sings very slowly over the top of these ambient beats. I thought it had Aphex Twin elements, but he’s very heavily influenced by Motown, so it’s quite an interesting mix of different styles. When I’m not writing, I listen to a whole

spectrum of music – from brand new stuff like ‘Built On Glass’ all the way back to people like David Bowie. Randomly, I’ve been listening to a lot of Motown stuff recently as well, which is why I was quite interested to read that Chet Faker was inspired by that. Motown is like a universal language.

Everyone loves it.

…Your TV? I’ve got through ‘The Bridge’ and ‘The Killing’ recently and now I’m on the original Swedish version of ‘Wallander’.

It’s quite slow and very intense. Every episode is an hour

and a half and it’s all subtitled, but it’s really worth the commitment.

…Your iPad? My favourite iPad app at the moment is Animoog. It’s a very versatile synthesiser and I’m also a big fan of Moogs. It’s fun to use and has got quite a traditional look to it. I also love DM1, which is a drum machine, and SoundPrism. I tend to use my iPad when I’m recording because you can make some incredible noises and sounds, but also because I don’t read music. With the SoundPrism app, it’s a very creative way of

using colours and shapes to come up with sounds. It’s totally visual, so it works for musicians like me who have never really been taught “the rules”. It allows you to come up with things you wouldn’t be able to do in the same way if you weren’t able to see the soundwaves on a screen. I can’t read music, but I can read soundwaves.

…Your DVD player?

My favourite box set is ‘Twin Peaks’. The idea of a third series is very exciting. I hope it’s going to be incredible. It’s one of those programmes I’ve gone back to time and time again.

When I first signed to Mute, they sent me the box set and told me to watch it. I was like, “Wow, it’s kind of crazy”, but it’s

very beautiful, every part of it, and it makes no more sense the more times you watch it. It just gives you more and more questions and that’s what I love about it. I love going to the cinema too. It’s the best thing in the world. My favourite film of last year was ‘Boyhood’. I really enjoyed watching that.

…Your games console?

This is a bit awkward really because I don’t play games. I don’t own a games console. I’d love to, but it’s just something I’ve never spent my money on. I tend to spend it on geeky

music apps for my iPad instead. I did the track ‘New York New York’ for ‘Crysis 2’, so if I was to play a game it would probably be that.

…Your bedside table?

I’m reading a book by Tim Burton called ‘The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy’, which is a collection of short stories and poems. I’m really into poetry. Sylvia Plath’s ‘Ariel’ or one of my Leonard Cohen books would be my favourites. The most precious book I own is one I bought from an antique shop

years and years ago. It is a handwritten diary of a soldier from World War I, but he wrote it as poetry. It is beautiful, but it just stops midway through. That’s one of my most treasured books. It’s completely unique.

THE VERY BEST IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC AVAILABLE ON ALL SMARTPHONES & TABLETS

DOWNLOAD THE ELECTRONICSOUND APP FOR FREE AT www.electronicsound.co.uk

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

inter stellaR over drive PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING are one of the most exciting and unusual bands in the electronic music universe.

On the eve of the release of their stellar second album, ‘The Race For Space’, PSB main man J Willgoose Esq explains his fascination for inspirational samples, cascading melodies, thumping beats and sending rockets to the moon Words: MARK ROLAND

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

Public Service Broadcasting are a peculiar phenomenon and a peculiarly English one at that. Are they a band? Are they an art project? PSB certainly have Arts Council funding – and that in itself is an indication of the changing face of the music industry.

It’s heartening to know that the Arts Council will consider putting lottery dollars into a couple of guys who have set about creating an electronic music project initially based on sampling the nation’s film archive of the Second World War. “The Guardian said we’re more a concept than a band,” says J Willgoose Esq, Public Service Broadcasting’s corduroy-andbow-tie-wearing main man, over a pot of tea for two at what is possibly the only pub in south London owned by the National Trust. “I see where they’re coming from, and I don’t think they meant it in a derogatory way, but people have since thrown it at us as an accusation. I kind of disagree. People don’t go to gigs to see concepts, they go to see bands. And if we weren’t a band back then, we are now.”

Whatever PSB might be, J Willgoose Esq and his partner Wrigglesworth are popular. The pair have built up a considerable following over the last couple of years with a mix of electronics and live instrumentation in the shape of guitars, drums and even a banjo, packaged up and fronted by a kind of languid Oxbridge BBC presenter, circa 1950. And all of this without a record company flexing a marketing muscle.

“That’s not something a lot of people have picked up on,” notes Willgoose. “I can’t think of any other group playing at the Roundhouse who’ve got there without a label behind them.

Maybe things are changing. We were lucky to get a bit of funding from the Arts Council, though, which definitely paid for some of the more expensive things on our new album.”

‘The Race For Space’, Public Service Broadcasting’s second album, is replete with expensive things. Thirty five singers and musicians, including dream pop duo Smoke Fairies, cello

and viola players, and a sizeable choir, have helped to create what is a musical tribute to the 15 years between the launch of Sputnik in 1958 and the end of the Apollo programme in 1972, 15 years of the USA and Russia duking it out for supremacy in space.

It seems like an obvious step for a band whose music so far has taken its inspiration from the exploits of the Second World War and the conquest of Everest. Their breakthrough record was the stirring ‘Spitfire’ single. Ironically pressing into service a decidedly krautrock sensibility in order to celebrate that most British of wartime iconography, it’s the song that sends the crowds crazy when PSB play live, with its nagging guitar hook and cascading melodies. J Willgoose Esq and Wrigglesworth perform it with archive footage of the fighter planes twirling through the sky behind them, giving an impression of flat-out admiration for the heroes of the 20th century.

“It’s not something I’d have said was that big a deal for me before Public Service Broadcasting,” says Willgoose. “It’s really weird what making music teaches you about yourself. You get asked in interviews why you did things a certain way and you have to think of proper academic reasons. What’s pleased me most about what we do is that there is a positivity to it, even in the darker times, and anybody who knows me well would definitely not say I was a positive person. I’m one of the most pessimistic, self-doubting, self-deprecating people you could possibly meet, so I find it really weird that our music comes out with this feeling of belief in the world to come, a feeling that everything’s going to be alright.”

Maybe pessimists are just thwarted optimists?

“Maybe I’ve found a way for my optimism to come out. Then again, my view of the album is shrouded in doubt and negativity.”

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

The samples have nothing to do with the music!

It makes no sense!

Agh!

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

With ‘The Race For Space’, PSB certainly haven’t plumped for the easy option. They haven’t re-written ‘Spitfire’ 10 different ways and released a collection of crowd-pleasing big tunes.

While there is at least one such track on the album, the purposeful ‘Go’, which is about the Apollo 11 moon landing, ‘The Race For Space’ as a whole demands a little more of its listeners. It’s perhaps worth noting the response to the first single from the album, the horn-driven ‘Gagarin’, named after Yuri Garagrin, the first man in space. It seems that not everyone wants their favourite tweedy electronic geeks going all funk on them.

But ‘The Race For Space’ is a more nuanced and carefully constructed work than ‘Gagarin’ and its brassy swagger suggests. It takes several of the significant moments and achievements of the space race era as leaping off points for creating new pieces of music that combine an earnest sense of admiration for their subject matter with what is now a recognisable PSB musical landscape, albeit matured.

The album is almost teasingly slow off the mark. The opening title track samples JFK’s 1961 speech, in which he sets out his plans for America’s space programme, with a backing track of a heavenly choir. ‘Sputnik’ is a seven-minute orbit of mostly subtle metronomic pulses and bleeps and blurts before building into a crescendo that is actually never quite resolved. And then ‘Gagarin’ kicks in. It’s quite a jolt to the system. A superfly funk blast.

“It came out that way,” says Willgoose. “Going back to the first album, we did fairly well with the critics, but there were some who couldn’t get their heads around us using samples and writing new music around them. They said things like [adopts enraged critic voice], ‘The samples have nothing to do with the music! It makes no sense! Agh!’. It seemed to really annoy them. With this record, I wanted to continue the non-literal relationship between the music and the samples, rather than go down a sci-fi, 60s-sounding, original Radiophonic Workshop route, which I think is what some people might have expected.

“Looking at the footage from the time and listening to some of the quotes, Yuri Gagarin seemed a larger-than-life figure, even though he was only about five-foot-two. He was the

most famous man in the world. He was on the front of every newspaper everywhere. He blazed a trail to the stars and he was the ultimate hero, the symbol of mankind’s triumph over nature. It struck me that the song should try to capture some of his exuberance and energy and somehow translate that into music. I like the way it’s not quite what you’d expect. It’s not for nothing that the horn blast is so in-your-face. It’s supposed to be a bit of a statement, it’s saying that we’re not going to just do the same old same old. There’s more to us than that.”

A few weeks before this interview took place, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crashed in the Mojave Desert, with the loss of one pilot. The Apollo programme had its own tragedy in 1967, with a fire on a test launch for Apollo 1 which killed the three astronauts on board. Journeying into space is a dangerous pursuit and Mr Willgoose felt he had to acknowledge that. The result is a track called ‘Fire In The Cockpit’.

“I had massive doubts about us trying to deal with that,” he admits. “But every astronaut account I’ve read and some of the other books I’ve read all seem to suggest that, terrible as those deaths were, they saved more lives than they cost.

They probably saved the lives of nine to 12 astronauts. So it was a big event in terms of the implications it had for the whole Apollo project, including Apollo 8 going to the moon earlier than it was supposed to have done and the gamble they took on doing that, and it seemed it would have been more disrespectful to leave it out.”

The elegiac cello lines of ‘Fire In The Cockpit’ emerge from a white noise of radio signals and dark electronic tones, providing a suitably sombre backdrop for the sampled voice announcing the Apollo 1 accident.

“There’s no way you could take a different approach,” says Willgoose. “But I didn’t want it to be too maudlin, too melodramatic. I remember when we were recording the cellos, one of viola players who’d just played on ‘Gagarin’ leaned over to me and said, ‘Don’t you want to add to some vibrato?’, but I didn’t want it to be pushed too far. I wanted it to be a straight and terrifying treatment of what was an awful event.”

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

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PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

Overall, ‘The Race For Space’ is an understated album. It bypasses the obvious neon sci-fi approach for a more reflective take on the subject. Even the mastering of the record itself is restrained.

“It’s not ludicrously loud, not a square wave assaulting you for 45 minutes,” explains Willgoose. “That just tires your ears and I didn’t want it to be like that. You want there to be a reason to come back to the album. I was thinking about Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’, in the texture of it as much as anything else, and I was trying to get somewhere towards that.”

specs, the general air of the Enigma code breaker – certainly lends itself to dressing up.

Thinking about it, it’s all rather prog rock, isn’t it? In a knowing, de-contextualised (so without the long hair, Roger Dean artwork and horrible solos) and 21st century way, that is.

“I’m not a fan of 70s prog,” declares Willgoose. “Not even early Genesis, which might be widely accepted, I suppose. Definitely nothing with flutes on. Concept albums always used to terrify me a bit, and we’ve ended up making at least one, probably two. It’s a very strange situation to find yourself in.

He remains nervous about the album’s reception, though.

“I’d be quite upset if the people we’ve brought with us to this point suddenly went, ‘This is terrible, you’re idiots’, and walked away. Deep down, I don’t believe they will. I think the album is quite good, even if it is possibly not what people expect. But that’s deliberate. It’s designed to surprise and challenge in a couple of areas, it’s not designed to be safe.”

Willgoose and Wrigglesworth haven’t yet revealed what they’re planning for their live show when they tour ‘The Race For Space’ (“We’re keeping it under our hats, although it will be space specific”), but the astronaut suits they wear for the ‘Gagarin’ video cost £2,000, so if they’re not employed in some way then they’re not getting their money’s worth. And the campy theatricality at the heart of the Public Service Broadcasting aesthetic – the pseudonyms, the bow tie and

“In terms of the live show, it’s based on bands that I’ve seen who have put something different into their sets, rather than the ones where the gig sounds exactly the same as the album and the presentation’s boring and it feels like you’re supposed to be grateful for even being in the same room as them. It’s not a reason to go and spend £30. A lot of it comes from a formative experience watching The Flaming Lips. That’s more the performance side of things and it’s a way of compensating for the fact that we’re not very charismatic people on stage, we’re not jumping around like Biffy Clyro. It’s about wanting to put on a good show, wanting to entertain people, and turning your weaknesses into strengths.”

‘The Race For Space’ is released on Test Card Recordings

We reckon 2015 is going to be a fantastic year for electronic music, not least because of the huge number of exciting new artists around at the moment. To prove the point, the Electronic Sound team have picked 50 acts we’re tipping for big things and interesting things over the next 12 months. The future starts right here, right now.

Are you listening, 2015?

Words: NEIL MASON With a little help from PUSH, MARK ROLAND, BETHAN COLE, CARL GRIFFIN, DANNY TURNER, DAVID STUBBS, FAT ROLAND, FINLAY MILLIGAN, HARRIET BLISS, MAT SMITH, MILES PICARD, NEIL KULKARNI, PATRICK NICHOLSON, VIK SHIRLEY and WYNDHAM WALLACE

MEGA E MOT I O N

TE E E L

Turning the sequencer up to 11

1980s synthpop revivalists off the port bow

When Norwich-based Peel favourites Bearsuit hung up their furry coats, three of their number – Lisa Horton, Jan Robertson and Iain Ross – reconfigured as Mega Emotion. A hectic ball of energy, they come on with a sort of Depeche Mode meets Pixies vibe, while others have them chalked as New Order signed to 4AD. Going about the business of getting a leg up since 2013, this month sees their first single proper, ‘Uncomfortable’, released as a limited edition cassette on the Post/Pop label. It’s a total belter in a Human League goes lo-fi kind of way, complete with delicious female backing vocals, a big sing-along chorus and some truly neat old school sounds marching away underneath. Should do that leg up job, all things being equal.

Jim Smith – New Jersey-based producer, Synth Records label boss and founder of the excellent iheartsynths.com website – debuted Teeel back in 2011 with the ‘Amulet’ album, but last year’s third long-playing outing, ‘Hydrostatic’, landed him firmly back on the map when it comes to hauling 80s synthpop front and centre. It’s a rich vein that bears repeated mining – and mine it Smith does with some aplomb. There’s the Pet Shop Boys-ish ‘Temple Of The Sun’ and the Cure-like ‘Party?’, for instance, but there’s a deft Daft Punk funk sensibility at work here too, as evidenced on ‘Disk Go’ in particular. We’re liking your work, sir. We’re liking your work a lot.

JAY DAN I EL

I FAN DAFYD D

Deep house with extra friction

Four to the floor, right across the world

Credentials? Detroit DJ/producer Jay Daniel has a bucketload of those. His mum is Naomi Daniel, who sang on some of Carl Craig’s early Planet E tracks, and he has just overhauled Four Tet’s ‘Aerial’ for the ‘Beautiful Rewind Remixes’ set. He has released two EPs of his own over the last couple of years, the most recent being the ‘Karmatic Equations’ 12-inch double pack on Wild Oats (Kyle Hall’s ultra-hip Detroit imprint), which featured five rugged and crunchy deep house cuts, all suggesting he has a particular fondness for extra heft in the bottom end. There’s no word on him releasing an album as yet, but he’s launching his own label shortly, so further batches of interesting tuneage are on their way.

House music comes in all shapes and sizes – and that now includes Ifan Dafydd’s corking world house hybrid. The enigmatic Welshman, who broke a year-long hiatus with his recent ‘Eclipse’ single on the excellent Push & Run label, counts Gilles Peterson as a fan and you can hear why. With a jazz undertow and a warm groove underfoot, Dafydd chucks Middle Eastern strings into his somewhat leftfield floorfillers. One other thing we should mention is that while the name James Blake is thrown around like confetti in the electronic music world, with every other artist supposedly sounding like the Mercury Prize winner, how many can say he was their former flatmate? Dafydd is working in a totally different musical zone, but some of Blake’s magic has clearly rubbed off on his one-time roomie.

N E W BUI L D Blissed-out Hot Chip side project WHO THEY?

Al Doyle and Felix Martin of Hot Chip fame needed an outlet for the surfeit of songs they were creating in their day job. Et voila, New Build.

WHY NEW BUILD?

Their second album, ‘Pour It On’, cropped up on Sunday Best last October to across-the-board gushing – and no wonder.

Shrugging off the 80s sheen of their 2012 debut, ‘Yesterday Was Lived And Lost’, it’s a delightful slab of bright and breezy mellowness that fingers the hem of both Chicago and Detroit.

As sleek as panthers, as warm as duvets.

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‘Pour It On’ was produced by Mark Ralph who, as those paying attention will know, is the co-owner of Conny Plank’s original customised 56-channel MCI desk, which has pride of place in Ralph’s West London studio. Hot Chip have already made full use of the desk and channelling the ghosts of Kraftwerk et al is clearly no bad thing – as New Build prove. Side projects often get badly overshadowed by the main attractions, but New Build’s two long-players to date have already bucked that trend and the signs are that Al and Felix will be stepping into some limelight of their own this year.

50 FOR 15

T RUSS Hard as nails underground techno WHO THEY?

Truss is London-based Tom Russell. A stalwart of the exceptional Perc Trax label, it’s high time his underground existence got slightly less subterranean.

WHY TRUSS?

We recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Perc Trax label, reviewing their fine compilation ‘Slowly Exploding. “You can get high BPM tracks on any street corner in any city – tracks made for drug-buckets by drug-buckets – but rarely will you get them done with such style,” said our man Andrew Holmes. And leading that charge is Mr Truss. We particularly recommend his Blacknecks collab with Bleaching Agent, which laughs in the po-face of “serious” techno. The cover and song titles alone will make you blush.

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Another good starting point for Truss is the brutal assault that is ‘Brockweir’. With a borstal riff and one devil of a kick-drum, it will give your ears a right old bashing. This stuff, as we’ve pointed out before, nods firmly in the direction of the golden age of techno – Cox, Mills, Clarke, Tresor at its peak – while at the same time casting a line into the future of the genre.

Marvellous stuff.

L AICA

SO UT HWAY

Pulled-apart-pieced-back-together experimental darkness Instead of building his music from the ground up, Laica man Dave Fleet smashes it into tiny pieces and crafts it into a murky ensemble of sounds. Incredibly refreshing, it’s hard not to appreciate the meticulous production values of his work.

While many elements have been changed to the extent that they’re only a vague resemblance of what they once were, Laica approaches his brand of industrial grime with finesse and logic.

Like some new Dr Frankenstein, he offers us a glimpse into the soul of a sound before knitting the pieces back together and the result is an amalgam of imagination, invention and darkness.

Laica will intrigue, excite and haunt you, but also keep you coming back to see what’s next on the musical butcher’s table.

Dark-edged indie-electro synthpop Initially conceptualised as a solo project, Southway became a two-piece when Bristol-born Shaun Jason met Shiun Kim in Seoul on Christmas Eve in 2008. Their pulsing electro beats set against synthesisers, guitars and all manner of percussion were aired extensively when they went on an international tour (from Asia to the USA) that lasted two years. Finally settling in London, they’ve been working on the fourth Southway studio album (their first as a duo) ever since. Armed with a developed sound full of synthy guts and new wave-influenced rock, they play live whenever they can and are continually promoting themselves around the UK. Catch ‘em quick.

FL IES + FL I ES

SE AFL O O R

Need someone to soundtrack the apocalypse?

Mildly bonkers lightbulb-bright drum ‘n’ bass

Describing themselves as “emerging half-formed from the wreckage of an art project gone wrong”, London trio flies+flies are as unpredictable as they are foreboding. A combination of strings and guitar mixed with electronics and vocals creates an unsettling, dark undercurrent to their “rhizomatic pop”, but there’s a melodic edge too that softens the menace. It seems that the art project element hasn’t entirely been abandoned, as the recent launch party for their first single, ‘Bad Crab Hand’/’Sufi’, saw the audience guided through a three-dimensional installation and the band performing inside a “plastic projection cube”. Carefully making sure they lean towards artistic rather than pretentious, flies+flies deliver on a number of levels and even make the apocalypse look like fun.

Fairly mental and pretty brilliant, that’s Seafloor. Brooklyn’s Matthew Young makes a sharp, bright racket that harks back to the glory days of drum ‘n’ bass and, on occasion, daringly tipping toes into happy hardcore and even into housier waters.

Check out his Soundcloud if our mere words don’t do him justice. It’s here you’ll find last autumn’s ‘The Noise’ EP, featuring sirens, scratches, blips, beats, breaks galore, thrums, snares, breakdowns, vocal samples, rapping, a bit of helium.

Over its four tracks – all killers, no fillers – it feels like the same kind of invention that the Beastie Boys were shot through with.

Look out for Seafloor’s new ‘Drift’ EP on the Infinite Machine label too. You won’t be disappointed.

D E PT F O R D G O T H Not a goth, not from Deptford WHO THEY?

One Daniel Woolhouse (wonder what his distant ancestors did for a living?), who hails from Peckham rather than down the road in Deptford. Begs the obvious question.

WHY DEPTFORD GOTH?

Because, not to put too fine a point on it, this shizz is little short of a bloody marvel. The name Deptford Goth conjures images of brooding back alley depravity, but what’s served up is nothing of the sort. It’s actually twinkling and delicate synthpop that sucks up some low-key R&B and soul along the way. Sure, it’s splashed in the dark, but it’s nice dark. In short, the sort of stuff that turning the lights down low was made for.

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Woolhouse first pinged on the radar back in October 2011 with his ‘Youth II’ EP, followed by a well-received first longplayer, ‘Life After Defo’, in 2013. With ‘Songs’, last November’s sophomore album on 37 Adventures, things just got better and better as he added a songwriterly quality to his smouldering, slow-burn backings. Quite why Deptford Goth isn’t up there with the name most often mentioned in the same breath, James Blake, is beyond us. Come on 2015, it’s time to put things right, right?

50 FOR 15

Z OL A J E SUS Down and dirty dead-of-night stuff WHO THEY?

Hailing from Phoenix, Arizona, Zola Jesus is one Nika Roza Danilova. She may only be 25, but by crikey she has already packed a lot in. Her fifth studio long-player, ‘Taiga’, landed last October on Mute Records.

WHY ZOL A JESUS?

It’s not hard to see why the world and all its furry friends are suggesting big things for ZJ in the one-five. Call it classical industrial, call it goth-grime, call it dead-of-night electronica, call it what you like, Zola Jesus has been a best-kept secret for far too long. Heck, even Jools Holland is getting in on the act, inviting her onto his show last year.

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The list of comparisons is dizzying. Kate Bush is on there, as are Siouxsie And The Banshees, Dead Can Dance and, naturally, the Cocteau Twins. It’s all this and yet so much more. Growing up, Danilova’s diet was strictly Dead Kennedys, The Residents, Throbbing Gristle – in fact, anything down and dirty – and it certainly shows.

SH AB A Z Z PA L AC E S

K RI STA PAPI STA

Experimental hip hop, anyone?

Riot grrrl machine music

The Seattle duo of Palaceer Lazaro and Tendai Maraire have a rich musical heritage. The former was once of jazz-hop outfit Digable Planets, the latter’s late father was mbira don Dumisani Maraire. Which might explain Tendai’s exquisite multi-musical skills. While the flow here is smooth, it’s what’s underneath that wows. Musically, the Shabazz shake it up with a box of electronic tinkles, rolling b-lines, synth runs and all manner of sonic loveliness. They do like to do things a little different, which would explain a hip hop act signing to legendary grunge label Sub Pop. On the face of it, not the most sensible of moves, but it does seem to have reaped rewards for these guys. Last summer’s ‘Lese Majesty’ ended up on a number of the more discerning albums of 2014 lists, while the pair continue to wow audiences with their hectic live shows.

This. Is. Bonkers. Krista Papista, in her very own words, is a “Cypriot/Australian multidisciplinary sordid pop artist”, which is nail on the head, fair and square. Ms Papista also says that her signature sound “unravels elements of riot grrrl chicness, euphoric-meltdown synth melodies, requiem ballads, homo-euro electro beats, film noir trumpets and rabbit hole transitions”. Quite so. Tracks like ‘Pomoiselle’ have a wonderfully simple, DIY ethos, the tinny sequences reminiscent of early over-the-counter kit like, say, a Casio VL-Tone. It’s hard to beat and her deadpan vocal only adds to the automated machine music feel. While ‘Pomoiselle’ appeared in 2013, the much more recent ‘Bad F’ is a proper belter. Marching along clapping hands, its warmer 80s-ish vibe is a leap and a bound for one grrrl we’ll be keeping a close eye on this year.

MR M I TCH

TOUR I ST

Dark synth ‘n’ drum-smattered grime

Old school garage, 21st century style

Haunting, experimental beats ooze from the mind of Mr Mitch, a London grime artist whose music has a claustrophobic, alienlike quality. His ‘Don’t Leave’ four-tracker, his debut for Mike Paradinas’ Planet Mu label, evokes a sense of menace and terror through repetitive drum loops and melancholic synthesisers. The title track is like being sucked into a black hole, the repeated line “Don’t leave me, girl” accompanied by wailing synths, dragging you ever deeper, but strangely leaving you wanting more. With his recently released first album, the often ominous ‘Parallel Memories’, Mr Mitch twists grime into a genre of his own making that will thrill and disturb in equal measure.

Brightonian William Phillips, for he is Tourist, posted a picture of a recent vinyl haul on his Facebook page – J Dilla’s ‘Donuts’, Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’, Caribou’s ‘Our Love’ and Miles Davis’ ‘Kind Of Blue’. Before you’ve heard a note you already like the fella, right?

Growing up with older sisters bang into their garage and then picking his path escorted by the likes of LTJ Bukem, MJ Cole, Roni Size and The Streets, it’s little surprise his own take is garagey in flavour, albeit with an electropop tinge. Tourist is signed to Disclosure’s Method Records (home to Sam Smith, whose chart shagging ‘Stay With Me’ he co-wrote) and has been moving in the right direction since his 2012 debut ‘Tourist’ EP. His latest offering, ‘Illuminate’ (featuring fellow hotshots Years & Years), hit the shelves at the end of last year. And if the our musical divining rod works proper, that’s a lethal 2015 combo if ever we saw one.

I BE Y I Where electronica meets organica WHO THEY?

Born in Cuba and upping sticks to France at the age of two, 19-year-old twin sisters Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz serve up emotionally charged, sparse, percussion-led missives.

WHY IBEYI?

Their sound is a potent brew, with Naomi’s love of hip hop and all things electronica meeting Lisa-Kiandé’s soul and jazz influences head on. What’s more, Ibeyi further mix things up by singing in English and Yoruba, a Nigerian language brought to Cuba by their father’s descendants via chants that rang out on slave ships in the 18th century – the very same chants that, hundreds of years later, their Venezuelan mother would sing when the girls were little.

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Hang on, Cuba? Their father was none other than Anga Díaz, the legendary Buena Vista Social Club percussionist who sadly died in 2006. He lives on through his daughters’ music, which makes good use of his weapon of choice, the cajón. The girls’ eponymous debut album is released by XL Recordings in February, by which time they’ll already be owning 2015. Oh, “Ibeyi”? Yoruban for “twins”.

‘Future Days does not capture Krautrock so much as unleash it. At long last, the definitive book on the ultimate music.’ Simon Reynolds ‘His book is so well researched and filled with such enthusiasm for its subject that it absorbs from start to finish.’ The Observer

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B UT T E RI NG T RI O Top-notch cosmic jammin’ Buttering Trio originally met in Berlin, but KerenDun, Rejoicer and Beno Hendler only got down to the serious business of moulding their diverse and cultured sound once they had reconvened to Tel Aviv. Their debut album, ‘Toast’, which appeared last year on Raw Tapes Records, firmly embraces the spirit of trip hop, taking its lead from Portishead and smearing it with all sorts of goodies. There’s so much to like here – the Aphex squelches and helium chants of ‘Falafel’, the warm Farfisa swirls and louche beats of ‘Tired Love’, the different languages and found sounds, the dubstep touches and infectious grooves – you really won’t know where to begin.

Y E A R S & Y E ARS Chart-bound electropop WHO THEY?

London-based electropop trio Olly Alexander, Mikey Goldsworthy and Emre Turkmen, who are quietly making waves with their soulful, 1980s-tinged, house-influenced upbeat belters.

WHY YE ARS & YE ARS?

Singles all the way since their 2012 debut ‘I Wish I Knew’, Y&Y arrived proper late last summer when their fourth outing, the ‘Take Shelter’ EP, crashed the iTunes Electronic Singles Chart at Number One. A major label deal with Polydor should ensure further rungs are climbed sharpish in 2015.

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Who you know is always a good gauge. Olly is well equipped for his role of frontman, what with him being an actor and that.

He’s been treading the West End boards alongside Dame Judy Dench in ‘Peter & Alice’ (‘Peter Pan’ meets ‘Alice In Wonderland’ – it’s complicated) and his co-star Ben Whishaw (most recently the voice of Paddington Bear) appeared in the video for Y&Y’s third single, ‘Real’, as did Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, who you may know from Channel 4’s ‘Misfits’ and ‘Etopia’. Y&Y are good pals with Tourist, another of our 50 For 15 tips, too.

FK A T WI GS Slow and low, that is the tempo WHO THEY?

Tahliah Barnett should, by rights, romp home this year. Tipped as one to watch in 2014 by everybody who ought to know about such things, we really don’t need to be doing it all over again in 2015. But we will anyway.

WHY FK A T WIGS?

Moving to London from Gloucestershire at the age of 17, Twigs earned a buck cutting a rug as a dancer for the likes of Minogue (Snr) and Jessie J, before elbowing her way into the spotlight with the Bandcamp-released ‘EP1’ in December 2012. While it’s neat and tidy to tag this as R&B, what we’re actually looking at here is a very neat slight of hand, resulting in something much more up our street. The beats and backing are wildly inventive, verging on the experimental, the voice is fragile and captivating.

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Last August’s ‘LP1’ – her debut album, in case you can’t work it out – on XL offshoot Young Turks picked up a Mercury nomination. It won across-the-board acclaim too. When this properly blows up, and surely it will, the Top 40 massive will be wondering what’s hit them.

This is Bjork-grade squonkiness that also appears to be heading for the charts. No mean feat for something that is so delightfully leftfield you’ll need to be looking the other way to see it coming.

E X PLOR ERS

S AM ARI S

Taking electropop to the stars

Icelandic witch house

It’s hard not to smile while listening to Explorers, a duo consisting of Sheffield native Jeremy Dennis and Chesterfieldborn/Portuguese-bred Robert Bannister. Drawing influences from their childhood, they craft dreamy and upbeat electropop that drips with adventure and nostalgia. Heavily inspired by the 1980s (they’re named after the 1985 John Carpenter film), their use of synths and drums perfectly match the journey they want to take you on. They’re not completely retro-fuelled, mind, with hints of Hot Chip and snippets of Empire Of The Sun seeping through. Anyone going to a disco that starts in the clouds and ends on an undiscovered planet will need this lot along for the ride in 2015.

One Little Indian has long been a home from home for the esoteric. This is the label that signed Björk, after all. Formed in 2011, Samaris have the same leftfield Icelandic heritage as Björk and they deal out double quirk like playing cards. They go straight for the downtempo jugular with the soothing chant-like vocals of Jófríður Ákadóttir, her lyrics whipped from 19th century folk poems and weaved into their songs, while Áslaug Brún Magnúsdóttir adds moody clarinet and Þórður Kári Steinþórsson underpins the lot with bold, bruised and swollen thrums and rumbles and infectious skip-along beats. It really shouldn’t work.

Acker Bilk did much to knacker the clarinet’s rep, but Samaris are determined to redress the balance as ‘Silkidrangar’, their debut long-player released last spring, triumphantly shows.

50 FOR 15

APRI L T O WE RS Soaring 80s-style electropop WHO THEY?

Nottingham duo Charles Burley and Alexander Noble. Pals for a decade, they began writing as April Towers last June, when their previous band (indie outfit The Frontiers) fizzled out. Cue a smart change of direction, the first fruit of which was duly unleashed online last August.

WHY APRIL TOWERS?

Their sound thumbs a ride from 80s electropop, through 90s house, and with a smidge of breakbeat chucked in along the way. Their first single, ‘Arcadia’, made all the right noises.

Literally. That dang-dang-der-dang-dang Human League synth rumble, the fit-to-pop percussion (drum machine set to ‘bursting’, tom-tom rolls galore), a Depeche Mode vocal twang here, a huge sing-along chorus there...

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Nottingham, it would appear, is something of an electronic hotbed – Indiana, Ronika and Shelter Point at the sharp end and a host of whippersnappers coming up on the rails, including OneGirlOneBoy, Owyl, Frolikks and Loophole Project. And April Towers are more than doing their bit, having already secured some Radio One daytime play. A new single is on the cards for early this year.

Y ELLE R KIN

FR ANK I E K NI GHT

Strings meet synths folktronica

Late-night soulful electropop

New York duo Adrian Galvin (folk sensibilities) and Luca Buccellati (electronic know-how) do a neat hybrid of moody folktronica/floorflilling goodness, which gives them a refreshing edge when stacked up against your run-of-the-mill synthpop bands. Debuting in 2013 with an EP called ‘Solar Laws’, Yellerkin combine ambient leanings with uptempo tracks that jar against somewhat sombre lyrics (see ‘Vines’, on which they gently intone, “Because the days, they feel like murder”). But don’t be fooled by the many brooding moments, because cuts like the banjo-toting ‘Tools’, which builds to a dramatic, synth-heavy climax, shows Yellerkin aren’t devoid of energy. They have already wowed the crowds at SXSW and their earthy howl is set to grow ever louder this year.

If you like the soulful end of this electronic business, Brighton’s Frankie Knight is going to be pushing all of your buttons this year. Check out her ‘Wade’ EP on the London/Vancouver XVI label. Bloc Party and Rob Da Bank are among her fans. With a voice like kittens, it must have been tempting to push those dulcet tones right up in the mix, but Knight does things a little different and lets the music do some of the talking too – from warm keys to deep bass rumbles to bright blips and bleeps. And she’s by no means the only act on XVI Records worth keeping an eye on. Watch out for the return of fellow Brightoner Ruby Taylor and her seaside electronica and ethereal popsters Yumi & The Weather, who have new stuff ready to drop.

B RETON

D NK L

Perfectly formed electro powerpop

Classy Scandinavian noir-pop

After releasing their debut album, ‘Other People’s Problems’, on Fat Cat in 2012, last year’s ‘War Room Stories’ on their own Cut Tooth imprint firmed up the thinking that Breton deserve a bit more love. And 2015 might just deliver that love in buckets for the London five-piece. Frontman Roman Rappak and drummer Adam Ainger have been tinkering for a good while, clocking up mixes for the likes of Lana Del Rey and Alt J, but Breton aren’t some remixers’ sidey. That they use those skills to serve up delicious pop infused with electronic jiggery is mighty pleasing and what they say about it all makes it doubly so. “One of the things we love about guitars is they are pure chaos and never sound the same way twice,” notes Rappak. “So a sampled guitar is this exact moment of chaos, repeated perfectly.”

With a mountain of brooding synths and the gentle, breathy, Pet Shop Boys-ish tones of singer Claes Erik Strängberg, it’s not surprising that Swedish three-piece DNKL have been enjoying big dollops of attention of late, collecting a full hand of supportive thumbs-ups from magazines, websites and blogs all over the place. The Gothenburg outfit released their debut EP, ‘Wolfhour’, towards the end of last year which cemented their growing reputation as one of Scandinavia’s most hotly tipped new acts. Their debut album is well on its way and they’ve got a series of UK dates booked, so expect the kerfuffle to continue well into 2015.

S H A D S H A D OWS Dark throwback electronica Italian style WHO THEY?

Italian duo Luca Bandini and Alessandra Gismondi claim their skit is “dark and gloomy”. Perhaps not the most convincing sell, but this is something that should thrill those who appreciate the early pioneering sounds of outfits like Cabaret Voltaire and The Human League.

WHY SHAD SHADOWS?

Details are sketchy because we’re going in very early doors here, along with the other 158 sensible-eared folk who have hooked on to Shad Shadows on Soundcloud. With a following wind, we fancy a lot more of you will be hearing a lot more from them as this year unfolds. That they’re inspired by all things experimental, industrial and film soundtracky will give you an idea of the direction of travel. We particularly like their neat line in distant, deadpan vocals. Dark it might be, gloomy it most certainly isn’t.

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They’ve put out just two tracks so far – the hypnotic, psychedelic, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ goes electronic drone of ‘Down’ and the insistent, street-lit, midnight analogue pulse of ‘Minor Blues’ – but we’ll be keeping a close eye on what Shad Shadows serve up next. A close eye? Shadows? Do you see what we did there?

50 FOR 15

FAB L E Full-throttle electronica WHO THEY?

There’s been just the one release so far, but if there’s a toldyou-so moment to be had with a new artist in 2015, we’d like to go large on the 19-year-old Devon-born and Brightondwelling Fable. ‘I Speak Words’, from her ‘Parasite’ threetracker, veers from gentle and delicate to frighteningly fierce and frantic. It’s like shouting at a butterfly.

WHY FABLE?

Fable sounds ready-made to make waves. Big ones. ‘Parasite’ saw her backed by prolific London/Brighton symphonic trip hop collective Archive and the Brighton connection has also led to her working with fellow South Coaster Paul Hartnoll, once one half of Orbital, lending her pipes to Hartnoll’s new 8.58 project (which also involved a stint with A-league uber producer Flood).

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She’s continuing to work with Archive and that bodes very well for her debut album, which is expected to drop early this spring. With Archive’s own new album out around about now (‘Restriction’ is their 10th studio outing) you really shouldn’t underestimate how good Fable’s first long-player is likely to be.

While she’s currently unsigned, we would like another wager. A crisp 20 pound note says that won’t be the case for very long.

DEAT H IN T H E A F T E R N O O N

E L D E RB RO O K

Swedish pop, 1980s stylee

Laidback beats redefining the word “subtle”

As you may well have noticed, echoing ye olde 80s sound is never a bad thing around these parts. Swedish two-piece Death In The Afternoon (Linda Lomelino and Christian Nanzell) add sleek vocal stylings and snazzy guitar licks to their rounded pop schtick, all of which sometimes makes them come on a little like a humanoid Daft Punk. Their most recent outing, ‘Let’s Talk’, has enough of a kick to get even the most static listener tapping a toe. But warm and groovy isn’t Death In The Afternoon’s only flavour, showing off their range with the unsettling, alien-like ‘John Who’, while ‘Kino’ wouldn’t be out of place at your local disco dancing emporium. Sit back and relax or get up and jump about? You choose.

Twenty-year-old Londoner Alex Kotz makes the kind of music that would warm the cockles of even the stoniest of hearts.

His distinctively lazy vocal is an absolute delight, but it’s what lurks beneath that sets him up very nicely for potentially big things this year. Even more impressive is the fact that he’s a self-taught musician. His recent single, ‘Simmer Down’, entered the world pretty much purring via Black Butter Records, home to the likes of Rudimental, Jessie Ware and Gorgon City, and as his people so eloquently put it, shows his “ability to create brooding productions that fleck with light as if it’s about to blossom brightly”. And we really wouldn’t bet against it.

H A R R Y EDWA R D S

AL SO

A sprinkling of gentle electronica

Off-kilter techno ahoy

Every now and again, an artist turns up who totally stops you in your tracks. Meet Harry Edwards, a teenager from the small market town of Aylsham in Norfolk, whose deft musical touch will do just that. That someone so young already possesses this sort of understanding of sonic light and shade is what makes him such a find. If this is what he can do now, the unsigned Edwards shouldn’t remain unsigned for long. He’s been compared to James Blake (isn’t everyone who drops the bpms?), but more knowingly he’s also getting nods in the direction of Ifan Dafydd (who we go on about elsewhere in these pages).

There are smatterings of Radiohead and Talk Talk at work.

In an ideal world, if you were a music maker who counted techno as your bag, where would you like to stick your chops?

R&S? Yes please. This collaborative outing from the Bristolbased duo of dubstep luminary Laurie Osborne (aka Appleblim) and rave maestro Alec Storey (Al Tourettes and Second Storey) earns its place in the legendary Belgian label’s stable with their tentatively experimental but perfectly formed ‘EP01’ debut.

Dubstep meets rave clearly equals rather mellow techno judging by this three-track offering. Especially good is ‘Ashford Swaiths’, on which deep Kraftwerkain keys and ‘Autobahn’ revving a-plenty ripple along rather nicely over what sounds like an old typewriter being used as a drum machine. More in 2015 please.

T H E S V E NS Sunny morning future house Not Swedish, which is a line that’s going to soon wear pretty thin because, on the strength of The Svens’ Greco-Roman debut ‘Odéon’, their rise this year is inevitable. Hailing from Strasbourg, France, but residing in Paris, the story goes that Xavier and Eric wandered along to a Greco-Roman night in the French capital, handed over a freshly-burned CD and, one listen later, were signed on the spot. You can hear why. The Svens’ deep, joy-fuelled grooves fit the G-R blueprint like it was made for them. So if ‘Odéon’ is an indication of where they’re going, hunt down their ‘SPATIALLOVEVORTEX’ mix so you can hear where they’re coming from… Primal Scream, Air, Sebastian Teller, 10cc... There’s much to like about these two.

YA ARRO HS Ethereal and otherworldly storytelling A self-proclaimed “New York native, Los Angeles covert”, Ms Yaarrohs combines celestial vocals with drawn-out synths and crashing snares in an intoxicating marriage of otherworldly storytelling and emotional music. She’s a close associate of The Glitch Mob, her voice helping to charm the West Coast trio’s ‘Love, Death, Immortality’ to Number One on both Billboard’s Independent Album and Electronic Album charts, and she’s just released an excellent six-tracker called ‘Flesh & Blood’ on the Mob’s Glass Air imprint. Yaarrohs is a witchy siren from the furtherest reaches of outer space, ready to guide you through the galaxies.

S H E L T E R P O I NT Hazy downtempo wooziness WHO THEY?

What are they putting in the water in Nottingham? Whatever it is, it’s clearly enough for Coventry-born duo Robin Hearn and Liam Arnold to call it home these days.

WH Y SHE LT E R P OIN T ?

If delicious low-key electronica is your bag, you’re going to have very happy ears with these guys. Debuting in 2012 with the ‘Forever For Now’ EP, they took their sweet time following it up, but last year’s reappearance with a brace of tracks – the smooth, soulful ‘Serenity’ and ‘Cut Me Loose’ – proved more than worth the wait.

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Already onboard the good ship Shelter Point are the likes of Annie Mac, Huw Stephens and Zane Lowe, as well as Notts hotshot Indiana, who invited the pair to support her on her last UK tour. With the ink still drying on a deal with the Space & Time label and having remixed the likes of Mø and Laura Doggett, Shelter Point say that further collaborations should be expected on their debut album. They’re busy working on that as you read.

L XURY Playful house music goes deep WHO THEY?

Londoner Andy Smith, known to turntables across the land as Lxury, makes delicious deep-ish house. And everyone could do with a bit of deep-ish house in their life, if you ask us.

WHY L XURY?

Following on from last year’s excellent ‘Playground’ EP, take a listen to ‘Pick You Up’, a taster for Lxury’s forthcoming ‘Into The Everywhere’ EP. It’s such a solidly refreshing blast of nononsense four-to-the-floor, complete with a repetitive “I’ll pick you up” hook that swirls round and round your head. It’s a stunner, make no mistake. Better still, the stamp of approval comes courtesy of Joe “Hot Chip” Goddard and pals at the most excellent Greco-Roman label.

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Did we mention that Andy Smith is mates with Disclosure?

We didn’t? And have we said anything about Greco-Roman being a most excellent label? We have? OK, how about a tip within a tip? We’d thoroughly recommend checking out Lxury’s labelmate Roosevelt, aka Cologne-based producer Marius Lauber, who does a very neat line in infectious 80s-style electropop.

KITE ST RI NG TA N G L E

M-B AND

Daft name, sleek tunage

Icelandic experimental electropop

Brisbane’s Danny Harley is one popular artist if Soundcloud plays are your yardstick – 711,926 plays here, 980,162 there, 1,588,401 over yonder. And while numbers are just numbers, bear in mind that his debut EP, ‘Vessel’, is but a few months old. Oh, and he’s sold out two national tours down under. From the garagey ‘Stone Cold’ (featuring Tiana Khasi) to the delicate electropop of ‘Arcadia’ and on into the “driving synth-wave epic” that is ‘What’s The Point?’, the EP shows he’s a pretty versatile chap to boot. With all this up his sleeve, we’re in little doubt that you are going to be hearing a lot more of his bright and breezy talents this year.

M-Band is not a band, but a solo project born from the mind of classically trained pianist Hörður Már Bjarnason, who creates dreamy, melodic electronica dripping with atmosphere. Starting in his rural hometown in the southern part of Iceland, the 23-year-old ended up joining indie outfit Retrobot (who won the Icelandic Battle of the Bands competition in 2012) before moving on to synthpop group Nolo. He’s been working as M-Band for a couple of years, releasing his debut EP (literally entitled ‘EP’) to widespread critical acclaim. A debut album, ‘Haust’ (meaning ‘Autumn’), followed last summer on the Icelandic Raftónar label.

50 FOR 15

PO RT I CO Former jazz darlings rebranded WHO THEY?

On the map as Portico Quartet since their debut album, ‘Knee-Deep In The North Sea’, landed them a Mercury Prize nomination in 2008. Saxophonist Jack Wyllie, bassist Milo Fitzpatrick and drummer Duncan Bellamy have now slimmed to a trio, dropped the “Quartet”, and completed an electronic metamorphosis.

WHY PORTICO?

Embraced as the future of modern jazz, PQ clearly had other ideas. When original member Nick Mulvey left in 2011, they were joined by keyboarder and old pal Keir Vine, a synth obsessive who opened up an increasingly electronic box of tricks for the band. Their third album, ‘Portico Quartet’, released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label in 2012, finally saw a musical swerve.

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Vine himself split from the group last autumn. The subsequent name change and a new deal with Ninja Tune probably tells you all you need to know. Their fourth album, due in March, is not so much a swerve as a complete handbrake U-turn, screeching rubber and everything.

G LASS ANI M A L S

MGUN

A tropical electro-indie storm

Where punk meets techno

Oxford four-piece Glass Animals come into 2015 on a high.

They’re building up a fair head of steam through an exotic synth brew that wears its pop sensibilities with pride and, as if to prove the point, they’ve just completed a successful tour of America.

Their debut album, ‘Zaba’, released last summer, flaunts a distinctly tropical vibe, intertwining soulful vocals with electronic and ambient rumbles. Chuck in hints of Flying Lotus and Jamie xx here and there and it starts to become a very intoxicating potion. Assuming they can keep turning out material that’s on a par with ‘Zaba’, you can expect to hear a lot more of a rumble about Glass Animals in the coming months.

As MGUN, Detroiter Manuel Gonzales is bringing an almost punk spirit to the world of techno. He developed an interest in making music when he was given a Casio at the age of 11 and remains an analogue hardware freak. He’s a big fan of industrial and avant-garde music, citing influences such as Frank Zappa and Sun Ra, and he’s toured as a DJ with the Underground Resistance crew. He’s never going to be a pop star, of course, which is something else in his favour. MGUN’s most recent release is ‘Filth’, a punishing three-tracker on the Ukraine-based Wicked Bass label which he purposely recorded for the East European market. “It’s hard as fuck,” says Gonzales. “I believe I have a lot to offer those folks.”

V ISI ON F OR T U N E

UMM AGM A

A different kind of experimentalism

Dreamy soundscape potpourri

Recorded during what they insist was an “intense two-month research residency” in a spacious villa in a remote region of Tuscany, Vision Fortune’s second album, ‘Country’, is about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world via ATP Recordings. “The group had no choice but to forgo their simple daily routines of sampling local gastronomic delicacies and honing their horseriding skills in order to complete the album,” say their people.

It’s a bit of a swerve from their 2013 debut, ‘Mas Fiestas Con El Grupo Vision Fortune’, adding an undercurrent of gentle electronica to their locked down and hypnotic sound. This might be where guitar music ends and electronic music begins. Or is it the other way round?

Shoegaze has undergone a revival over recent years, and while we’re not in the market for over-effected chiming guitars and wistfully fey vocals, we will make an exception for Shauna McLarnon and Alexx Kretov. The Canadian/Ukrainian Ummagma duo operate in our region of shoegaze/dreampop/post-rock, call it what you will, and they clearly know the right end of a synth when they see it. Last year they released the excellent ‘Lama’ album on the prolific German label Emerald & Doreen Recordings, as well as producing the debut LP from their Russian pal Roma Kalitkin (‘New Born’ by Sounds Of Sputnik on Ear To Ear Records). They also put out a single called ‘Kiev’ and a collection of remixes. Promised for this spring are two more remixes that should act as a further stamp of approval, one by Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie and the other from OMD’s Malcolm Holmes.

G H O S T C U L TURE Sinister and sinuous synthscapes WHO THEY?

Ghost Culture is sole trader James Greenwood. Actually, he might be a soul trader too. There’s definitely something a bit netherworldly about this 20-something Londoner. He has the air of a fella who’s seen and heard things most of the rest of us haven’t (and probably wouldn’t want to).

WH Y G HOST CULT URE?

Because every time we play a track from Ghost Culture’s eponymous debut album in the office – and that’s something we’ve been doing regularly over the last few weeks – somebody says, “Ooh, I like this”. We’re impressed by Greenwood’s strong sense of style too. Dare we mention ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’? No, we probably shouldn’t. It’s probably just Greenwood’s red hair and far-away stare.

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Greenwood is signed to Erol Alkan’s Phantasy label and is an old pal of fellow Phantasy artist Daniel Avery. His CV includes stints as a studio engineer with Avery and also with Death In Vegas.

The ‘Ghost Culture’ album is slightly sinister and decidedly sinuous, all soft, breathy, semi-spoken vocals, luxuriously melodic synth lines and perfectly rounded beats. It’s little wonder that Lord Andrew of Weatherall is a big fan.

50 FOR 15

STR ANGE U Scuzzed up and off-kilter hip hop WHO THEY?

London duo King Kashmere IV (rapping) and Dr Zygote (producing). It’s a compelling pairing, not least because Zygote is also the hand on the tiller of Boot Records, a label crying out for a bit of love if ever there was.

WHY STR ANGE U?

When Electronic Sound’s very own Neil Kulkarni claims he hasn’t quite heard hip hop like it before, you know it’s time to sit up straight and cup your ears. Unearthing something that sounds this new isn’t an everyday occurrence. Got your attention? Over seven tracks, their ‘EP#2040’ laid down a new law not just for British hip hop, but for British music as a whole.

The follow-up, ‘Aliens In Suits’ (the ping-pong title track will slay you), rode roughshod over that same law.

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Strange U are inspired by, in their own words, “the spirits of Oshun, Vishnu, Apollo, Sobek and Jim Henson”. One listen and that’s underlined – in green pen. When the grinding, off-centre, scuzzy B-movie funk of Zygote meets the crazy world that Kashmere paints, the result is infectious, often bearing repeated listens just to check you’ve heard right. Try ‘The Cake Is A Lie’ with its choice line, “By the way, I was born of a dragon’s egg / I get my respect in the form of a clarinet”.

V UUR W ERK

D E MS

Electro-dub with extra frites

Lyrically emotional electronica

Flemish trio Vuurwerk were last spotted chucking out excellent off-kilter electronica with a brace of EPs on Mush Records. The sharper knives among you will twig that they’re also skewed, mind-tripping sonic mavericks Jealov and the sharpest of all will know the iron girders techno they make as Kwatza. Stepping up their Vuurwerk activity last year, the group enlisted singers and rappers on a debut album that sees a radical shift towards a more song-based approach, the flavour of which is decidedly Massive Attack. The first fruit from these new sessions has just fallen from the tree in the form of the excellent ‘G.R.I.P.’ EP on Lo Recordings.

Tinkering away and developing their own sound since 2011, south London trio Dems (Dan Moss, David Gardener and Duncan Mann) have produced some superbly atmospheric tracks, their hypnotic mix of vocals, synths and percussion earning them spots supporting the likes of Azealia Banks. The group carefully craft all their music in their Balham studio and have just released their debut album, ‘Muscle Memory’, on the Sew In Love label. Work on a second LP is already underway and they’re off on a UK tour shortly, the dates including a special launch bash for ‘Muscle Memory’ which they say will be “somewhere between a live show and an art exhibition, with lots of musicians and collaborators”.

EMIL I E N I CO L A S

PRI D E S

Haunting vocals plus dark synths

Sleek and slick Scottish synthpop

Clearly smarter than the average bear, Norway’s Emilie Nicolas caught the ear of commercial radio DJs in her home country with an electronic cover of ‘Pstereo’, a track by rather popular Trondheim rockers the DumDum Boys. Attention duly grabbed, she wasted little time showing off the flip side of her upbeat electropop coin. Namely chillingly beautiful vocals, slow-paced, repeated synth crescendos, and assorted clicks and whirs – all of which can be heard on her debut album, ‘Like I’m A Warrior’, which came out last year. The record was only issued in Norway, though, and that can’t possibly be right. Here’s hoping one of the smarter labels out there ensures it gets a wider reaching release over the next few months.

There’s something very sleek and professional about Prides.

Maybe it’s their bird-in-flight logo. Maybe it’s the jauntily angled “I” in their name. Or maybe it’s the smooth pop blend of cheerful melodies and buoyant beats, plus the strong sense of storytelling that runs through ‘The Seeds You Sow’, last year’s debut EP from the Scottish trio. Whatever it is, they’re already several steps ahead of many of our other 50 For 15 tips, having appeared at the closing ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, supported Blink 182 at the Brixton Academy, and headlined the BBC Introducing stage at the Reading & Leeds Festivals. So far so good, but with their sing-along anthems and energetic live shows, the chances are Prides have only just begun to scratch the surface of their bid for world domination.

TECH

TEN THINGS W E LOV E ABOUT THE MOOG S U B 37

TECH

Words: MARK ROLAND We first had a play around with Moog’s new Sub 37 at the BPM event back in September. Just a few minutes with it was enough to be pretty sure that we’d like one to be permanent fixture in the Electronic Sound office. At £1,199 a pop, it’s not an insignificant investment for a mono/paraphonic synth. Moog sent us one to evaluate, and it took about half an hour of noodling around without the distractions of a trade show for the Sub 37 to cast its spell. We want it. And we don’t want to give it back. Check out the video to see and hear why, or read the short version if you are time starved...

TECH

Watch the video review

ONE

THREE

EIGHT

Would you just look at it!

Wood side panels, that dramatically scooped back plate, the outputs and power switch panel nestling in one of the side panels. And it’s got Moog written on it. Moog.

The arpeggiator and its 64step sequencer. Hours of fun.

Interpolating waveform selector (which means it slides from one waveform to another) for some really subtle movement in sound.

T WO

Would you just look at it again! The knobs sell the thing before you’ve even switched it on. And the extra large cut-off knob, something it shares with the Sub Phatty et al, is a beauty. And when you do switch it on, all the pretty lights twinkle orangely at you and make you feel good about yourself. These are the main reasons we lust after synthesisers, aren’t they? Aesthetics - don’t ever pretend they don’t matter.

FOUR

The layout of the control panel is simple yet sophisticated.

FIVE

It’s paraphonic - you can play two notes at once!

SIX

The Multidrive knob makes everything sound edgy and intense.

SEVEN

And so does the Feedback knob! Fatness awaits.

NINE

The Mixer, which is a very simple yet powerful soundshaping section.

TEN

We haven’t even scratched the surface.

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ALBUM REVIEWS

‘Nerve Net’ (1992) was a relatively busy, bustling offering by Eno’s standards, reminiscent of some of the livelier passages of his 1977 ‘Before And After Science’ album. He himself described ‘Nerve Net’ in self-penned notes for Warners as a record that “draws on jazz, funk, rap, rock, pop, ambient and ‘world music’… what it turns out as is none of these things but a weird and selfcontradictory mess, and a mess that I love – like paella, everything I like is in there somewhere”.

BRIAN ENO

Nerve Net / Shutov Assembly Neroli / The Drop All Saints

A quartet of welcome reissues of some of Eno’s 1990s output, complete with extras The 1990s was an excellent decade for Brian Eno. He’d made his name, of course, in Roxy Music, before it turned out there was insufficient room for his and Bryan Ferry’s large personalities within the group. He did his most historically vital work in the 1970s, assisting Bowie in his European transition (which helped turn round the sensibilities of subsequent rock counterculture from American fixation to Europhilia) and producing his series of ambient recordings. However, these were considered by critics as impressive but academic, of little relevance to mainstream development.

Come the post-rave culture, ambient was now a key part of the afterglow of pop, a key usage. Eno was vindicated; furthermore, he was right at the centre of things, producing U2. He was a wealthy, revered and influential figure in a flush decade for music, but by no means complacent. The recordings he made in the early 90s showed that his unabashed thirst for new ideas about the formal possibilities for pop music and what it could potentially constitute was unabated.

Certainly, there’s a feeling of splurge and abandon about ‘Nerve Net’, on which he lets his notional hair down, with tracks like ‘I Fall Up’ reminiscent of Talking Heads (a group with whom Eno had played a mentoring/producing role).

And yet it retains a sense of formalism – that this is pop music about what pop music could be about – while ‘The Roil, The Choke’ sounds more like an artful assemblage of words juxtaposed for their phonetic effect rather than conventional self-expression.

In contrast, ‘The Shutov Assembly’, released the same year, is a collection of sound installations put together for the benefit of a Russian artist friend who’d had difficultly obtaining Eno’s music in the recently expired Soviet era. Comprising work he had created for mostly European venues, ‘The Shutov Assembly’ is hardly the soundtrack to the end of history heralded by Shutov’s freedom to listen to what he damned well pleased. It heaves and looms and rolls darkly. In its generally ominous mood, it seems to anticipate troubles in Europe ahead (Eno would later be among the few musicians to engage with and explain the fate of war-torn Bosnia and the particular tragedy of that multicultural society in a conflict driven by ethnic tension).

‘Neroli’ (1993) followed at a time when Eno was taking a lively interest in perfume – olfactory ambience and its fundamental role in the human sensory experience struck him as a potential

future for artistic endeavour. ‘Neroli’, however, subtitled ‘Music For Thinking’, comes with no scratch ’n’ sniff sleeve.

Minimal in extremis, it’s the perfect accompaniment to cerebral cogitation or, as I have found, to the writing process. It turns over its main theme patiently and repeatedly, rotating in unclouded deep mental space. It’s music for when music is too intrusive but silence too unhelpful.

‘The Drop’ (1997) is the least essential of these reissues. Its cover is also curiously perfunctory, a kitschy piece of work featuring the silhouette of a forklift driver. It’s never mediocre (Eno is constitutionally incapable of mediocrity), yet never more than an efficient collection of glacial, angled, funk-inflected sketches. But Brian Eno by this point belonged to a higher pantheon, as much a reference point as an artist, beyond reproach, a place he remains to this day.

DAVID STUBBS

Adamski has certainly been having fun with this and the opener, the fast-flowing and jumpy ‘3Step4Ever’, featuring Lee “Scratch” Perry and the aptly named MC Wildflower, is a declaration of intent. You may not like it on the first hearing – I thought it sounded like a rave tune for people who are into three-legged races – but it’s deeply embedded by the second time around.

in Melody Maker in 1990, he nods to a relationship between punk and rave, pointing to the shared attitude, sense of freedom and desire to break the rules.

These three elements are still there in his 2015 creative manifesto - and you’ve got to admit that’s something worth supporting, regardless of whether you and ‘Revolt’ become best buddies or not.

NGAIRE RUTH

ADAMSKI Revolt

Future Waltz

Rave’s original pin-up boy pops his head over the parapet with his first album for 15 years Adamski is often referred to as the first pop star of rave music. He was a leading light of the new breed of post-acid producer/performers to achieve success in the mainstream, most notably for his killer ‘Killer’ single, for which he enrolled the unique vocals of the then-unknown Seal in 1990.

When mavericks like Adamski are still recording and releasing new stuff – six albums and 25 years later – you know it’s because some big, fresh idea is tickling their fancy and they’re running with it out of curiosity or for the adrenalin rush that comes from being creatively motivated and having a personal stimulus and focus. It’s a bit like baking a cake. Everyone else benefits from your delightful indulgence.

Adamski’s big, fresh idea is making the quantum leap from 4/4 to 3/4 music. Or 3-step as he’s calling it. Which is why, as well as covering several rock and punk classics, ‘Revolt’ also includes a version of Englebert Humperdink’s ‘The Last Waltz’ (recorded with David McAlmont).

The same thing happens with a lot of these tracks. ‘Revolt’ pushes the boundaries in so many weird ways – and not only with the unusual rhythms and shifts in tempo – but it’s a great party record. If it’s confused, it’s confused in a good way, so leave your preconceptions at the door. The likes of ‘Useless Man’ (Adamski versus Minty, Leigh Bowery’s old band) and ‘Num Generation’ (”My generation has gone / I just type on my computer all day”) are tricksy, but ‘Artificial Waltz’ (a cover of ‘Art-I-Ficial’

by X-Ray Spex) and ‘London Dungeon’ with Congo Natty (once known as Rebel MC), will amuse. And OMG, how many people are going to be trying to burp along to the belching sample that’s used as a percussive instrument on ‘My Daddy Was A Rockstar’?

There are safety nets, though. The slow flow and perfect vocals of Shanki on ‘Tru Luv’ are beautiful (silly spelling also forgiven), while ‘Pump Up The Waltz’ shifts the pace, brings depth and a sense of expectation. I’ve never had Adamski down as sexy (sorry Adam), but ‘Spin’ comes very close, with its dub reverbs and sharp, snappy, whisked-in beats.

There’s the echo of an inner-city reggae basement blues bar in many of the tracks and the often dark yet always engaging lilt of something akin to a Bavarian folk dance everywhere. It’s even there in the smooth moves of Betty Adewole’s almost unrecognisable cover of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Dazed And Confused’.

Adamski’s curiosity about all types of music and his understanding and nurturing of sonic history is nothing new.

In an interview with Simon Reynolds

ALBUM REVIEWS

early Hood, not a lot happens, but what does happen is all the more exquisite for its lack of adornment. The precisely executed layers of percussion, drums and nagging-but-evocative synth loops are characteristic of a producer who combines power with space, allowing his tracks to breathe.

ROBERT HOOD

20 Years Of M-Plant Music M-Plant

To paraphrase AC/DC, if you want a three-CD retrospective from a member of techno’s founding fathers, you’ve got it A leading light of Detroit’s second wave of techno pioneers, Robert Hood is also one of the most revered, bestowing a series of sacred texts upon the faithful since around the time Taylor Swift was born.

‘20 Years Of M-Plant Music’, an almost career-spanning collection of Hood’s M-Plant output (so nothing from his Underground Resistance years), goes some way to explaining why he inspires such devotion. It sees two decades of single-minded techno distilled into three CDs – his earlier, minimal compositions on the first (very much the Detroit disc), funk and soul (the timing of which coincided with his relocation from Motor City to Alabama) on the second disc, and a third set of previously unreleased bits and new tracks. It has a combined running time of three hours and 44 minutes. Hardly a moment is wasted.

Fittingly, we open with a homage to Detroit, specifically the city skyline, in 1997’s ‘The Grey Area’. Like most

Fussy is something Hood is most certainly not. At times – on ‘Protein Valve 1’, for instance, or on ‘Untitled’, when the hi-hats don’t appear until well over halfway in – his tracks have all the potential threat of an ill-lit corridor disappearing into the blackness. It’s the reason his work is so often described as “cerebral”, despite lacking literary lyrics or dizzying key changes or any of the other accoutrements we normally associate with clever music, because it’s a right-brained kind of cerebral, leading the mind along those corridors.

Equally, Hood’s early brand of minimalism asks us to reassess what we perceive as a DJ tool – those motorised slabs of beat that bind a set, but are designed specifically as bridges between one peak and the next. On a practical level, much of his Detroit output qualifies, yet it’s that cerebral edge that demands your home-listening time. Later, on 2001’s ‘The Greatest Dancer’, Hood introduces funk chords via a Sister Sledge sample.

The consummate DJ, he’s well aware of the track’s ability to fire up a set. Indeed, anybody who’s heard it played out knows that to be the case. It’s less effective as a standalone piece, though, much more

obvious and ironically more of a DJ tool than anything you’ll find on the first of the three CDs. Even so, ‘The Greatest Dancer’ earns its place. How else could we appreciate Hood reconciling his more ascetic side with a desire to explore funk and soul, as he does on CD2? Reactivating his Floorplan alias to much acclaim in 2010, he produced an actual song in ‘We Magnify His Name’, a joyful mix of gospel and house, while ‘Baby, Baby’ is pure funk and ‘Never Grow Old’ another dose of celebratory 4/4 gospel.

Hood became a Christian in 1998 and it’s tempting to think that this and his move to Alabama somehow coalesced in the euphoric Floorplan-era tracks. That they mix so well with the straight-up techno of ‘Alpha’ or the popping acid of ‘Power To The Prophet’ is a testament to the unifying vision of the man with his hand on the tiller. Whatever the mood, however funky the chords get and however yearning the vocal, it’s still recognisably Robert Hood in charge.

What then for the future? More of the same hopefully – certainly if the new tracks and edits on CD3 are anything to go by. ‘20 Years Of M-Plant Music’ closes with ‘Minimal Minded’, a fresh cut that, by abiding to the principles of its own title, seals the knot on what is yet another essential addition to the canon.

Another sacred text.

ANDREW HOLMES

Pic: Marie Staggat

‘Shadows Documents’ takes a different tack, however, drawing inspiration from the sounds of Kenya and grafting “acoustic impressions” of the country with electronic motifs and pulses. There are no direct field recordings as such (if there are, they’re inaudible), but instead a focus on the hypnotic rhythms of tribal music – where Kenya meets krautronics.

SCHNEIDER KACIREK

Shadows Documents Bureau B

African vibes meet German engineering on these warm and absorbing soundscapes

There’s a real sense of layering as the album progress and it becomes a fully immersive experience, a scintillating listen full of warmth and charm. Rooted in analogue electronica, virtuoso percussion and soporific repetition, the whole thing feels very much like a dream sequence, enveloping you in its subtle atmospheres. The opening track, ‘Doubles’, with its rumbling groove and stratum of electronic clatters and bleeps, is like a malfunctioning ECG monitor.

The chirpy ‘Birds, Bell And Sticks’ has the bare bones of an imperceptible drum ‘n’ bass beat lurking beneath the surface.

With the sinister, creeping rattle of ‘Low Rhythm’, you sense that something

untoward is about to spring out from the undergrowth. On ‘We Will Need Each Other’, meanwhile, the background crackles like the gentle maelstrom of hundreds of scurrying insects.

Details materialise at regular intervals – the mix is littered with clicks and cuts, vaguely touching on elements of dub and even the occasional bit of improv – so there’s never a sense of vapid repetition.

It all comes to a head on the final track, ‘Spiegelmotiv’, by which point Schneider and Kacirek have really found their mojo, as an oscillating backbeat locks horns with a head-nodding array of percussive buzzes and throbs. It’s absorbing stuff, as is the entire album. Despite its reliance on synthesisers and programmed beats, it’s to the duo’s credit that ‘Shadows Documents’ feels inherently organic, rather than a perfunctory electronic afterthought.

VELIMIR ILIC

On paper, this collaboration between German musicians Stefan Schneider and Sven Kacirek is a mighty appealing and intriguing prospect. It’s a real meeting of minds: Schneider is one of the founding members of seminal krautrock outfit Kreidler and electronic postrockers To Rococo Rot, and has worked with everyone from Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Bill Wells to St Etienne and Alexander Balanescu, while indemand percussionist/producer Kacirek’s CV includes the likes of Hauschka, Nils Frahm and Marc Ribot.

Fusing African rhythms with dark electronica, ‘Shadows Documents’ sees Schneider and Kacirek indulge their obvious love and fascination for Kenya, where they have both spent a considerable amount of time in recent years. In some ways, it’s a progression from the pair’s field recordings of the Mijikenda tribes in and around Mukunguni village on the Kenyan coast (released as ‘Mukunguni’ on Damon Albarn’s Honest Jon’s label in 2013).

Pic: Peter Stumpf

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in post-modern bricolage. This makes it sound a bit too polite and wallpapery, though, which it is most definitely not.

ARCHIVE Restriction Dangervisit

Wildly diverse, sharply cinematic and post everything from rock to trip hop Despite the heterogeneous stylings of this album, which includes rock skiffle and industria as well as crepuscular neosoul torch songs, Archive’s roots lie in electronic music. Still relatively unknown in the UK but very popular in continental Europe, the core duo of this outfit, Danny Griffiths and Darius Keeler, actually started out in the obscure days of ‘ardkore. Back then, as Genaside II, they produced the cult proto-jungle 12-inch ‘Narra Mine’, which nestled in many rave DJs’ boxes during the early 90s. A few years on, in 1996, they secured Archive a deal with Island Records and made ‘Londinium’, a dark trip hop album that became something of a leftfield classic.

‘Restriction’ is Archive’s 10th longplayer and is an equally strong and confident statement of musical intent.

It’s a cohesive record, of that there is no doubt, but it’s difficult to classify. The elements are so wildly diverse – raucous guitars, smooth electronics, crunching breakbeats, lulling voices – if you were going to be damning about it (which I’m not), you might call it sophisticated 21st century dinner party music with its roots

Yes, there are tracks like ‘Black And Blue’, all sparse, haunted vocals and plaintive strings, which is redolent of London Grammar (and I mean that as a compliment). But then there’s also ‘Kid Corner’, a claustrophobic, bulletsplattered, foreboding industrial piece.

Darius Keeler says it’s inspired by a newspaper article about “this place in America where you can buy guns for kids”. The very first track, ‘Feel It’, meanwhile layers jangly guitar riffs over deconstructed beats and is described in the press release as “a mutant hybrid of skiffle and dubstep”. I can’t think of two more unlikely musical bedfellows than that. It certainly makes for original listening.

Yet however far and wide this album ranges stylistically and texturally, what knits everything together is a melodic potency that lifts it into the realms of sounds you might wish to hear on the

radio – albeit 6 Music rather than Radio 1. It’s very apt that Archive are often described as cinematic (they made a film to accompany their last album, ‘Axiom’), because many of these tracks have the feel of evolved soundtracks. With its abstract haikus and grinding, thunderous breakbeats, ‘Ride In Squares’ would be a perfect fit for a dystopic noir thriller.

If you are after some easier listening, the female vocal cuts – ‘Half Built Houses’, ‘End Of Our Days’ and the aforementioned ‘Black and Blue’ (which are sung by Holly Martin and Maria Quintile) – are perhaps the first you should think about downloading. There is an alluring reflective melancholy about them that reminds me of Portishead as well as London Grammar. But whether it’s veering to the sweet side or the dark side, ‘Restriction’ is a quality record. So how come Archive aren’t a whole lot bigger in the UK than they are? It’s a total mystery to me.

BETHAN COLE

pictures, the short films – is as arresting as the sounds. The detail, the realisation and the sheer inventive effort of it all puts much of the contemporary music industry’s output to shame.

MOON WIRING CLUB Leporine Pleasure Gardens Blank Workshop/Gecophonic

Another round of gloriously kaleidoscopic spectral electro from the mysterious hauntologists There’s something about engaging with the netherworlds conjured by Moon Wiring Club that brings to mind Edgar Allan Poe’s lines about our ability to reliably distinguish between reality and fantasy: “All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream”.

German synthpoppers Propaganda lifted Poe’s ‘Dream Within A Dream’ for the opening track of their 1985 debut album, which also included ‘Dr Mabuse’, their paean to the fabled master of disguise and telepathic hypnosis whose true identity can never be pinned down.

Almost the same could be said of Mr Paris Green and Dr Lettow-Vorbeck, the names behind the mysterious MWC, composers of electronic musical excursions that coax devotees into a distorted musical dimension of halfdreamt but fully-imagined hyper-reality.

Enter MWC’s world and you’ll discover that listening is only part of the pleasure.

For everything that emanates from the Blank Workshop – the words, the

With ‘Leporine Pleasure Gardens’, there’s also a continuity of the theme of laudanum-laced visions of Victorian England, particularly the playful delights of Lewis Carol’s hallucinatory imaginings.

Mad toppers and bonnets in 2013’s ‘A Fondness For Fancy Hats’, here it’s the hare, a leporine presence pertaining more to down-the-rabbit-hole trips than anything conceived by folklore revivalists. Musically, we’re picked up exactly where we were dropped off last time, hence the looped narcoleptic voice intoning “Here we go again…” at the start of the album. The burst of percussion and weighty synth line that follows acts as a counterpoint to this faintly unsettling welcome and sets the tone for the rest of the record.

There’s an irresistible immediacy and an occasional lightness to ‘Leporine Pleasure Gardens’ that will surely only

serve to widen the appeal of MWC. Tracks like ‘Further Down The Lawn’ and ‘Bouyancy Castle’ take knowinglyreferenced electronica into uncharted territory, on one hand bringing to mind the early dancefloor experimentalism of New York (The Latin Rascals), Chicago (Phuture) and Leeds (LFO), but on the other magicking up something else entirely, something propulsively new. You might hear echoes of Boards Of Canada or fellow hauntologists Pye Corner Audio elsewhere, but there’s never a derivative moment. This is a truly ingenious work underpinned by a percussive complexity and a powerfully dystopian low-end that sounds like the distant future. ‘Magatrix Freeze’ warrants a special mention for the way it wonks its improbable slapbass well beyond the fonk. Even Mark King won’t have ever heard anything quite like it.

All in all, this is thrillingly singular stuff from Moon Wiring Club and quite the restorative for ears that may have grown weary of identikit electronica.

CARL GRIFFIN

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