Monday 31 October 2011

Top Ten Tracks October

Bit slow on the bloggin' of late. Relocating 300 plus miles plus becoming redundant from my job takes your time up. Still been hot on music though as always and when I'm more settled in to my new home by the coast I'll hope to blog more frequently in the future. Anyway. Music.

1. Marcellus Pittman-There's Somebody Out There (buy)



Nightmarish acid stormer from Marcellus Pittman. Just in time for Halloween.

2. The Tortoise-Last Night (Genius of Time Remix) (buy)



Two of my favourite new artists combined to great effect here, with Genius of Time subtle deep remix of the Tortoise's 'Last Night', getting me up every time.

3. St. Germain- Easy to Remember (buy)



Loved this album since what seems like the beginning of time and every now then I just get right back into it. A tune of it got dropped at my leaving bash at Folk in West Didsbury. Me and a mate danced to it (theres no dancefloor), shame I was too gone to remember what the actual track was! Timeless.

4. Pal Joey-Partytime (buy)



Classic loopy house that was the beginning and the highpoint from a recent Beats in Space mix by the Junior Boys.

5. Deymare-Your Love (buy)
 your love by deymare

Bang on house tune from the excellent Boe Recordings.

6. Roots Panorama-Threee (Ripperton Mix) (buy)



Deetron and Ripperton's joint venture hit a high point with this beautiful chugging deep house track mixed by Ripperton himself.

7. Mark McGuire-Brain Storm (For Erin) (buy)



Emeralds member Mark McGuire has been releasing under many guises for a while, and on last year's full length release 'Living With Yourself', included the wonderful fuzzy and warm 'Brain Storm (For Erin)'. Thanks to simply good music blog for the heads up!

8. Goody Goody-It Looks Like Love (buy)



Disco of the highest order from Goody Goody which was the highlight of a bit of a shit night music wise during the Thom Yorke takeover of the Boiler Room. Unfortunately this is near impossible to get on vinyl unless you have deep pockets or a very sympathetic bank manager.

9. Low-Shame (buy)



Low's seminal second album 'Long Division' got repressed recently, which has sent many Low nerds (like me) into raptures. This includes their wonderfully sombre bleak mid 90s tune 'Shame'.  Rumour has it their first album 'I Could Live in Hope' is getting repressed too!

10. Smashing Pumpkins-Rocket (buy)



Heard this on 6 music the other day, what a tune, what an album, was my fave throughout high school. Im ashamed that I've not listened to this album for years.

Tuesday 11 October 2011

Tiger & Woods-Through the Green

Over what seems like period of forever, thousands of tracks and hundreds of labels have appeared on the scene offering endless amounts of edits of all kinds of 70s, 80s, 90s tunes with pretty mixed results. When the mysterious Tiger & Woods appeared, you couldn't be really criticised for being skeptical of more edit shit. However, the quality and subtle way their edits worked; using little snippets of tunes, layering beats and heavy on lots of perfectly executed repetition left the duo 'alone on the green', ahead of the pack, good quality edits with a smile.



After several white label releases an album was unsurprisingly put together, primed for release on Gerd Janson's label Running Back. I featured the Caddy Shag EP at the back end of last year and have picked a few of the releases up on wax from the even more mysterious Pop & Eye, G & W and Tiger & Woods out on their own under the moniker's 'Larry Tiger' & 'David Woods'.



The album features the majority of the white label releases, the recently repressed 'Gin Nation' (also on Running Back-together with the B-sides) and a couple of new beauties 'Curb My Heart' and 'Don't Hesitate' featuring vocalist 'Em. Pick it up!

Tiger & Woods-Through the Green (buy)

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Four Tet-Fabriclive 59

This mix has been everywhere for the last couple of weeks. Wasn't going to post about it, but whilst at a friends the other night it started a party all by itself as its that's high in quality and thought why the hell not. The concept, arrangement and ethos behind Kieran Hebden's mix was I thought a excellent forward thinking idea making it stand out from the plethora of unimaginative by the numbers mixes that flood the internet nowadays. He wanted it to be representative of his experiences of going to and djing in Fabric. I sort of got that vibe when I first heard 'Saturday Night, Sunday Morning' by the Unabombers years ago documenting the experience of former Manchester institution 'Electric Chair'. You really got a sense of what the club night was all about, the vibe, atmosphere, and what the night (admittedly it was theirs) meant to them.

This mix is littered with tracks you reflect on with a smile or really really want to investigate further. I remember listening to Four Tet's fabric podcast a couple of years back and he featured 'First Born' by Crazy Bald Heads then. I remember going on to a mate about it at the time (a self confessed garage/2 step nut), and it's was difficult to fnd anything about it (had about 25 views on youtube). Thought it was destined to be forgotten about but I was wrong. Here it makes two apperances, once in it's original form and also a Four Tet remix.



Other standouts include KMA' s classic mid 1990s garage monster 'Cape Fear', recent deep house and techno from STL and WK7, and Burial's more dancefloor driven 'Street Halo'.



This mix was always going to include original music from Four Tet and 'Pyramid' slips in comfortably to the classic, rare and vintage tones of the mix. Pyramid and the more downbeat closer 'Locked' came out on vinyl last month on his own Text imprint but blink and you would have missed em. Fortunately my girlfriend was on the money and got a order in early with Piccadilly so I sort of have access to a copy.



With Wolf and Lamb, Dixon, Motor City Drum Ensemble and now Four Tet, we have been spoilt with some excellent mix CD's this year. The format ain't dead yet!

Four Tet-Fabriclive 59 (buy)