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SHALT Mix For The Astral Plane

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September 23, 2015
Mixes
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SHALT

A little over a month ago, we decided to take a short hiatus from our weekly mix series. The series is the crown jewel of our operation and as we get busier, it gets more and more difficult to maintain. In this case, it became something of a burden and the fun of placing mixes from our favorites artists every week almost felt like a hassle. Luckily, we’ve got the verve back now and will actually be expanding the series by including interviews with as many of the mixes as we can. Hope you enjoy.

The marriage of the pristine and the rugged can be throughout the history of electronic music, everything from acid house to hardcore to bassline smashing together beatific vocal samples with clattering breakbeats, roaring sublo frequencies with exquisite keyboard work. Some of our favorite music takes that ethos to another level, blurring the lines  between traditionally beautiful sounds and unadulterated noise, forcing the listener to face the scraping, banging, dragging characteristics of computer music. Arca, Fis and Rabit achieve this with particular aplomb and it appears that a whole wave of producers are willing to not only include, but embrace, industrial characteristics, whether derived from the hardware and/or software they use, the urban environment they reside in, or the literature or film they imbibe.

Across two EPs, for Slime Recordings and Clubwerks respectively, York-residing artist SHALT has built up a strong case to be mentioned in the aforementioned conversation and his forthcoming work should only cement that place. Built around crackling, disintegrating percussion and widescreen melodic work, abetted by disembodied vocal samples, SHALT’s work has a distinctly tactile feel, building out from techno, the darker side of garage and other UK club forms into an aesthetic distinctly his own. SHALT refers to science fiction as a means to investigate themes of life extension and extraterrestrial exploration and it’s not difficult to imagine tracks like “Callisto” or his edit of Tim Hecker’s “Stab Variation” soundtracking those advancements. That being said, SHALT’s work isn’t just some bland futurist statement or appraisal, its function as much body music as it is a science fiction statement. His Astral Plane Mix acts as a prologue for future work and considering the all-encompassing nature of the originals within, alongside work from Fis, Pinch & Mumdance, Cristobal Tapia de Veer and more, SHALT’s next step will be a further example of how to match the dissonant and sonorous forms.

Hit the jump to read our interview with SHALT and to check out the full track list…

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Organ Tapes Mix For The Astral Plane (w/ interview)

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August 13, 2015
Interviews, Mixes
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While Tim Zha has worked under the Organ Tapes nom de guerre for some time now, his vocal explorations and lo-fi take on digital pop only recently entered our ear space, the result being near-immediate obsession. Growing up listening to everything from ambient and noise to 50 Cent and Eminem, musical sources drawn from friends and television, Zha split his childhood between China and the UK and now lives in London, taking his place in the sprawling, yet intimately creative cultural metropolis. Recently, the Organ Tapes project has been lapped up by Pitcheno and his machine-minded Tobago Tracks label, Zha’s best track to date “K1. Bu Ming Bai” appearing on a TT single several months ago.

Working with and taking inspiration from the sounds of dancehall, afrobeat, bop and Future, Organ Tapes sings in a low slung, sultry manner, both swimming in the pool created by his influences and taking them beyond the cloud cover into another, moon-drenched environment. Like fellow newcomers Malibu and Blaze Kidd, Zha is re-instituting the role of voice in club-not-club music, utilizing motifs from a place-less club world in his beatific covers and originals. And with a special, vocal-focused mixtape on the way, it’s easy to see that Zha is becoming increasingly confident in his voice in song writing, not to mention his acumen with roughneck club tracks that are also on the way. Throw on Organ Tapes’ Astral Plane mix and scroll below for our Skype talk with the artist, touching on the topics above as well as his thoughts on the club, ascension and his roll as a live performer. This is one of our most non-dancefloor-oriented mixes in a while so get cozy and delve in.

What were your first experiences listening to hip hop and R&B?

Pretty much as far back as I can remember I’ve been excited about hip-hop music. I remember 50 Cent and Eminem videos on MTV Asia  / Channel V really exciting me as a child, but it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I really got into rap & RnB. At the same time I was probably equally if not more into guitar music and ambient and noise music. I don’t think my environment growing up made any one musical form or set of aesthetic references feel naturally dominant or the norm. Or maybe I’ve just always been resistant to the idea that any one form or style can be function as dominant or the norm for me. There’s a lot of freedom in moving between and drawing upon a wide variety of forms and styles, but that also brings with it certain anxieties over whether I’m meaningfully or appropriately interacting with them…

How did you hook up with Pitcheno and Tobago Tracks? -What is your creative relationship with Pitcheno look like?

I met Robert (Pitcheno) and the rest of the TT squad through a friend who does the label’s graphic design work. I think not long after we met TT started gravitating away from being a more club-focused label and what I was doing kind of fit the bill for the sounds they were wanting to start expanding into. I’m super grateful for their support because before linking with TT no one really knew or gave a shit about any of the music I made – Organ Tapes is an old, old project.

As for our creative relationship, I think it’s developed quite organically. I think Robert knows that I can be quite private and controlling about the way I work but “K1. Bu Ming Bai” was made really smoothly and organically despite me being unused to much collaboration. It was definitely a different process to how I work on my own but I’m hyped on it.

There’s an interesting cohort of London artists pushing Caribbean sounds and reinterpreting R&B in interesting ways. Endgame, Kamixlo, Blaze Kidd, Malibu, etc. Do you guys get together to talk and share ideas or is it more spontaneous? -Are you excited by what’s going on around you?

Yeah, there are definitely a lot of people that are doing a lot of exciting things in London right now. I don’t really know a lot of people personally to be honest, but I’ve spoken to Endgame a bit and I have huge respect and love for everything him and the rest of the artists you just referenced are doing.

Although London is definitely a hub for this kind of cultural activity (London is a hub for cultural activity in general, tbh), it’s definitely not a geographical movement.  So many people all over the place are making music that is reflective of and responsive to our present historical moment. A lot of this music is quite political (consciously, in addition to the inherently political aspect to all music) and I don’t think that’s a coincidence… Hand in hand with the establishment of a “post-club”, “post-generic” sound and redefinition of the club as a space that so many of the artists you just mentioned are engaged in is a broader will to redefining oppressive dominant narratives and reclaiming the idea of “neutrality” from them, attempting to replace it with something broader and more inclusive.

With that being said, although I think it’s interesting and exciting to see the Internet generating these quite Utopian artistic impulses, I’m also wary of overstating its potential for instigating real positive social or political change on any broad scale…

Hit the jump to read the rest of the Organ Tapes interview and check out the track list…

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GROVESTREET Mix For The Astral Plane

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July 22, 2015
Mixes
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GROVESTREET

In an era of rapid production and even quicker consumption, it’s easy to forget that the process of delivering music, and art in general, to the public can, and often should, be a drawn out, long winded procedure. As pleasurable as the instant gratification system of Soundcloud is, it’s easy to become lost under the deluge of one offs, release previews and mixes, a crush that blogs like ourselves certainly facilitate and urge on. As far as both releases and mixes go, we’ve reached a boiling point of sorts wherein listeners can’t possibly have the time to take in every new bit and artists often feel pressured by the constant scroll to release music that either isn’t ready, or shouldn’t be released at all. On the mix front, the deluge leads to a glut of uninspired production mixes, rehashes of scene trends and efforts that somehow manage to blur lines between artists instead of defining them.

Oxford’s GROVESTREET has been an Astral Plane favorite since we premiered his track “If U Wanna Try” towards the end of 2013 and his stripped down percussion tracks and energetic grime numbers have quickly infiltrated the club massive in the years since, garnering attention from artists and journalists alike. Official releases on Tight Knit Records and Trax Couture are both excellent touchstones for entry into the GROVESTREET sound, but besides a few low bit rate uploads, the young producer has kept his release rate relatively slow. And while tracks like “Ground Zero” and “Disqualified” can be found in the mixes of many contemporaries (the former was remixed by Byrell The Great and M.E.S.H.), GROVESTREET’s most insightful work to date might be his DJ mixes, which tend to sprawl across genre, but always involve the same roughhewn, minimalist spirit.

Not that the track selection or mixing itself is minimal, drawing lines between Memphis rap, modern R&B, ballroom, Jersey club, reggaeton, industrial-tinged grime and, sometimes, trance. GROVESTREET’s productions are high energy club burners, built out in an overdrive fashion with plenty of peculiar samples and his mix work not only allows the listener to peek into his library, but also his creative subject matter. There are plenty of contemporaries involved in his Astral Plane mix, from Endless rep Lexxi to ballroom don MikeQ and up-and-comcer Sugar Shane. Sissy Nobby, Black Jonas Point and Tommy Wright III sit comfortable together as ballroom classics are mixed with tranced out hard house and earworm R&B is twisted into the intervals. And whereas the final product (a GROVESTREET production) is aesthetically singular, it’s important to delve into a musical polyglots library to work out the building blocks.

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Big Dope P Mix For The Astral Plane (+ ticket giveaway to ‘Hit Da Blokk’ London release party)

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July 15, 2015
Contest, Mixes
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big dope pIn hindsight, a small Parisian label pressing tunes from DJ Tameil, James Nasty, DJ Rashad and Traxman to vinyl in the late 2000s doesn’t come across as an especially brave or counterintuitive move, but in reality, few, if any, tastemakers were talking about or buying Bmore, Jersey club or footwork at the time. With dozens of international labels (still too few) releasing the sounds of Baltimore, Newark and Chicago now, it’s easy to look back with rose tinted glasses and assume that this was always the case, ignoring the fact that few people cared about, or even knew who the aforementioned titans of Jersey club and footwork were back in the late aughts. Founded by Big Dope P in 2007, Moveltraxx was one of the first international labels to push the sounds of Jersey club and footwork, along with other visceral house-oriented sounds from Chicago (Todd Terry, Waxmaster), and introduced many fans, 18 year old myself included, to a sound that has become hugely important to contemporary dance music at large.

As a curator, Big Dope P’s legacy is unassailable, ranging from the banging Da Movelt Posse compilation series to his work with fellow Frenchmen Canblaster and Feadz, simultaneously pushing a genre bending sound on his own productions and introducing the Continent to American club music. And with a few exceptions, Big Dope P has released all of his original music on Moveltraxx, drawing together various nodes on the rap map, footwork, ghetto house,  Bmore, Jersey and Philly, spastic funk and a multitude of other genres into his own kinetic productions. His latest release, the Hit Da Blokk EP, is one of his few excursions beyond the confines of Moveltraxx and comes on Nightwave‘s Heka Trax label. Comprised of three originals (one a collaboration with Feadz) and remixes from Rustie, Ikonika, DJ Earl and DJ Tim Dolla (vinyl exclusive), the EP trespasses across traditional dance music structure, filtering the maximalist spirit of Glass Swords into a stripped down, footwork-inspired framework. It’s huge, over-the-top club music and Big Dope P executes it perfectly, showing off a keen understanding of his source material as well as the will to go above and beyond his influences.

To celebrate the release of the white vinyl edition of Hit Da Blokk, Big Dope P is bringing out a number of friends, Feadz, Nightwave, Joseph Marinetti, Dudley Slang and Maribor, for a party in London. Going down at Birthdays in Dalston on August 7, the Moveltraxx don’s set will likely sound something like his entry to our mix series, part workout club trax, part throw your hands in the air rap fun and part clattering, factory rhythms. It’s fun as hell to run to and I can’t imagine tracks like “Ibogance” and “Hit Da Blokk” won’t sound good on the Birthdays system. Along with the mix, Big Dope P has gifted us two pairs of tickets to the release party, a can’t miss opportunity for our London readers to catch a real club music innovator with a cadre of friends and likeminded artists. Find more info on the party here and enter to win a pair of tickets after the jump. You can also find the (packed) track list after the jump and be sure to tune in to Big Dope P’s regular slot on Radar Radio.

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Mobilegirl Mix For The Astral Plane

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July 9, 2015
Mixes
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mobilegirl

If you haven’t noticed yet, we have quite a bit of love for Stockholm’s Staycore crew, featuring crew leader Dinamarca in the mix series back in May and letting loose Mechatok‘s tightly bundled contribution just a few weeks ago. In the meantime, the Ghazal and Dinamarca headed posse released the excellent Staycore Summer Jams 2K15 compilation, a mission statement of sorts, but also an introduction to the crew’s wide-ranging talents and individual components. Dembow, tarraxo, kuduro and gqom are the rhythmic forms that draw Staycore together, but across the compilation’s13 sprawling tracks, a multitude of individual aesthetics exist, tied together by an undeniable drive for percussive experimentation and, well, fucking up the dancefloor. Munich’s Mobilegirl has been a source of admiration for a good while now and when she sent a small pack of her productions over in April, we knew we had to enlist the multifaceted talent for our mix series.

Without an official release and only a handful of tracks and bootlegs available, Mobilegirl’s musical career is in an exciting nascent stage, drawing in influences at a rapid pace and churning out a kaleidoscopic take on contemporary R&B and trans-Atlantic/tresillo rhythm-based club music, all seen through a shattered mirror. Tracks like “Ice Sheets” and her take on Dinamarca’s “How About” show a measured restraint and an almost meditative quality while her remixes of TLC and Brandy show a more jagged side of the Mobilegirl sound, bringing out the bite in the vocals on top of propulsive, harsh drums. Her entry to our mix series is a wild affair, more of a collage than a traditional mix, although the untrained listener might consider it haphazard. Running through tempos, vocalists and blaring synth-based melodies, Mobilegirl touches on tracks from Staycore label members (including several tracks from Summer Jams), as well as contemporaries like DJ Nigga Fox, Angel-Ho and DJ Jio P. At times, the fabric of the mix seems to tear apart, but before the listener can adapt, a new track, chant or trance-indebted synth line has entered the picture and carried the project into the next stage. Boiled down to its individual components, It could be a party mix, but simply sticking with the beat is hard enough, let alone following the non-existing groove. And at this point, it’s difficult to foresee how Mobilegirl will sound in six months, a year, two years, etc., but the current output is tantalizing and if her Astral Plane mix is anything to go by, the future is bright for this young producer.

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OMAAR Mix For The Astral Plane

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July 2, 2015
Mixes
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Hailing from Coacalco, a city on the fringe of Mexico City’s sprawl, Omar Suarez aka OMAAR wouldn’t be thought of as an ideal candidate to star in the world of abstracted instrumental grime and jagged club music, but over the past 18 months or so that’s exactly what the young producer has done. Having already performed at Mexico’s iteration of the Mutek festival, released the jaw dropping NO! EP on D.F. staple NAAFI and graced NTS with both a production mix and a recent contribution to NAAFI’s ongoing takeover shows, fans of OMAAR know the quality of his catalogue and ingenuity of his spars aesthetic, but it takes a little more digging to delve into the heart of Suarez’s music. And like many of the relatively nascent artist we feature, digging into OMAAR’s music can largely be performed on Youtube and Soundcloud, the latter platform offering a treasure trove of genre experiments, club tools and works in progress.

Much of OMAAR’s aesthetic is born out of Wiley’s Eski formula, but few artists approach the frigid sound palette with the care for space, silence and cataclysm quite like Suarez. His approach elicits the atemporal approach of early dubstep, as well as the techno and afrofuturisms of Detroit’s greats, all run through a lo-fi filter. Last year’s NO! EP is easily OMAAR’s most club-ready record and while most of his material is readily play-out-able, Bmore-indebted tracks like “TTHHUUGG” and “Sportswear” offer a certain propulsion absent in many of his more abstract experiments. Having that breadth is exactly what makes OMAAR such an intriguing artist and what makes trawling through his past work such a fun prospect. Suarez’s Astral Plane mix is, as we like it, heavy on originals with a few nods to Logos, Mumdance and Strict Face, unsurprisingly all proponents of the weightless sound. It’s brash, sci-fi-themed and more than a little jarring at times. And like OMAAR’s other mixes, it only offers brief insight into his body of work, but that’s more than enough for us here. Turn off the lights, dust your sub of and engage with OMAAR.

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Mechatok Mix For The Astral Plane

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June 24, 2015
Mixes
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Traditionally a stronghold for house and techno forms, Northern Europe is slowly becoming fertile ground for a wide range of producers mutating Caribbean, South American and West African into their own idiosyncratic aesthetics. Even Scandinavia, hardly thought of an outpost of black or brown culture, is home to several important outposts, all part of an interminable trend that points to the mucking up of monolithic dance forms (for the better). Few individuals have managed to bridge the many gaps between the hegemonic clubs, labels and scenes that striate modern European dance music, but Munich-based artist Mechatok has, somehow, effortlessly infiltrated both worlds. A recent adoptee of Stockholm’s intoxicating Staycore crew (Dinamarca, Ghazal, Toxe, Mobilegirl etc.), Mechatok has developed a remarkable unique sound that touches on many trans-continental motifs, but rarely settles on one consistent groove. Unlike, many of his contemporaries, a Mechatok track often trots along at a leisurely pace, eschewing snares almost entirely and never giving in to an ad lib-heavy approach.

Often sitting around 120 BPM, Mechatok bases many tracks around rhythms like the tresillo and often utilizes round, wooden-sounding percussion, a welcome change from the metallic soundscapes that dominate contemporary club music. That isn’t to say that tracks like “Regio” and “Gulf Area” aren’t machinic, just that Mechatok’s sound palette offers a welcome reprieve from the monotony that marks much of the material we come across. It’s an aesthetic that can already be described as distinctly his own and one that has garnered the attention of Munich’s Public Possession, better known for Balearic-tinged releases from Bell Towers, Samo DJ and Tambien, who will release his debut later this year. Several of the tracks from that release can be found in Mechatok’s excellent Astral Plane mix, an original-heavy 30 minutes that goes a long to explaining how both he has managed to entrance figures as disparate as PP label heads Marvin & Valentino and Mssingno. Moving at a breakneck pace, the mix weaves through gqom, weirdo rap from Haleek Maul and Young Thug, implacable chants and a bevy of Mechatok originals, rarely sitting down long enough for the listener to feel comfortable, but always retaining enough percussive thrust to keep the body moving. Along with the aforementioned Public Possession release, expect plenty more to come on the release front from this promising young talent who seems to be bridging just about every sound, scene and movement we currently enjoy.

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AceMo & Color Plus Mix For The Astral Plane

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June 17, 2015
Mixes
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Like many other artists and crews coming of age, leaving university or entering the work force in the early 2010s, Brooklyn’s Swim Team first had to leave the beat scene behind. It’s easy to forget just how big the beat scene was in America circa 2011 (and still is in a certain sense), or just how many artists were drafting behind Flying Lotus and the legacy of J Dilla, but for most kids in their teens or early 20s at the time it was their initial entryway into the greater world of non-EDM dance music. Of course, AceMo, Color Plus, DJ LILMATT, Kanyon, Lord SMS, Rambow and Izy, collectively Swim Team, were lucky enough to have friends, older brothers or other mechanisms with access to dance music’s rougher forms, particularly footwork, ghetto house, jungle, garage, ballroom, etc. Household, which was inaugurated in January 2015, is the crew’s monthly night where its members flex out new material and improve their DJ chops, also bringing out similar minded folks like Juliana Huxtable, DJ New Jersey Drone and Helix. And while Brooklyn certainly has no dearth of club music producers at the moment, there’s a certain inescapably earnest, open quality to Swim Team’s approach that differentiates them from the hyper-serious masses.

Which isn’t to say that the crew’s individual members don’t take their craft seriously or don’t have mountains of heat on the way and in the works. For our 75th mix, we are lucky enough to have Swim Team’s AceMo and Color Plus on for a collaborative mix, featuring a ton of exclusive and and unreleased music from almost every artist in the team. With a release on Swim Team allies Bootleg Tapes, AceMo might be the artist with the most beat credentials out of the crew, formulating a sultry, soul-based aesthetic before delving into percussive, vocal-laden club music on tracks like “Gat In My Lap” and “Don’t Front/Run It Down”. Color Plus has, to this point, the most high profile Swim Team release, the Mangata Sequence EP on Plastician’s Terrorhythm Records, a four tracker that matches the rugged bang of Jersey club with beatific, vocal-led melodies and heaving, garage-inspired bass lines. Considering that the movement is still relatively nascent, it’s no surprise that their are so few official Swim Team releases, but that hasn’t stopped them from reaching out, collaborating and extending their reach into the US, UK and beyond.

AceMo and Color Plus’ mix is as concise of a document as we’ve received from the collective to date, a lightning quick 33 minute trip through unreleased and forthcoming Swim Team material, much of it coming out on the follow up to 2014’s Swim Trax Vol. 1 compilation. There’s all sorts of heat inside the mix, much of situated around 130 BPM and a lot of it taking cues from the likes of Pearson Sound, Jam City and French Fries, artists combining numerous localized strains of dance music into their own idiosyncratic blend. At this point, its hard to say if a Swim Team sound exists, but the groundwork is their and, through Household and their other ventures, it appears that their number one priority these days is to make you dance.

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Roller Truck Mix For The Astral Plane

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June 11, 2015
Mixes
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fisky

Enlisting aliases is also a tricky game for artists, a virtual DNA split that can have unforeseen effects on popularity, but can also elicit irrational hatred on the part of fan bases and the media. Granted, most aliases, whether kept secret or not, eventually go by the wayside and while its a pleasure to look at Girl Unit’s Hysterics or Shed’s numerous projects as successes, the truth of the matter is that these side-projects fail far more often than they work out. Russian producer Nikita Frolov aka Fisky makes the sort of post-Night Slugs, post-Hyperdub, post-Planet Mu club music that ignores genre boundaries, not as a statement, but as a basis of their understanding of the music itself. With tracks out on Helsinki-based Top Billin and Moscow-based Hyperboloid, Frolov has begun to build up his catalogue, churning out fast, mechanical efforts that draw upon Jersey club, ballroom and late era Dance Mania for inspiration. Frolov’s latest effort is out now on Infinite Machine as Roller Truck and, if anything, represents a parring down of his influences into a concise, percussive bundle.

The Roller Truck Sounds Vol. 1 EP comes in an six originals and, with a few exceptions, is almost entirely made up of drum sounds, eliciting the work of Steve Poindexter, Robert Armani and, more recently, Helix. Its unrelenting in nature and while the tracks are mostly four-on-the-floor, they borrow from myriad influences past and present. Considering that Frolov’s work as both Fisky and Roller Truck is heavily percussive, borrows from numerous eras and can widely be described as club music, it might be difficult for a non-discerning onlooker to tell the difference between the two projects, but that’s exactly what makes them so fan. Lacking a grand statement or stylistic derivation, Roller Truck is allowed to exist on its own merits and the EP is a startlingly immediate effort. Frolov’s Roller Truck mix for us draws on numerous percussive foundations, from the gqom stylings of DJ Lag to classic Detroit techno and electro from Rhythim is Rhythim. 90s style New York house, Ghanean kora music, UK funky and early Latin house also play into the mix, an enormously fun journey through era and geography that belies the stringent, utilitarian nature of Roller Truck Sounds. And while the mix could probably function just as well under the Fisky pseudonym, its fun to imagine its constituent elements making up the fabric of the Roller Truck sound.

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Astral Plane DJ Team – KCHUNG – May 25, 2015

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June 9, 2015
Mixes
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Due to some technological constraints, we spent our most recent slot in the KCHUNG studios playing individual tracks off of our laptop and while mixing is always preferred, the change of pace allowed us to play some of our favorite, less-dance-oriented tracks out to the very end. You’ll find a few tracks from our recent Don’t Watch That chart and For Club Use Only feature in FACT Mag as well as some stray Jacques Gaspard Biberkopf, Smurphy and Ana Caprix tracks. Tonight, we’re filling in for a friend and will be back on KCHUNG for a special, vinyl-only session from 9 to 10 PM Pacific Time. As always, tune into 1630 AM if you’re in Los Angeles (and near Chinatown as the reception is dodgy as hell) and stream here if you’re global.