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Jacque Gaspard Biberkopf Releases Long Form ‘Video’ Productions

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January 8, 2015
Mixes, New Music
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With an Astral Plane mix in the books and a standout track on Heterotopia still fresh in our memory, Berlin’s Jacques Gaspard Biberkopf is one of our very favorite artists, drawing lines from Lorenzo Senni to Jersey club and NBA Jam. The critical theory minded producer fascination with the voice and, in particular, sports highlight clips, has shown up throughout his mix and production work and his latest effort, long form production mix Video, a combination of the sort of crystalline trance-scapes favored by the aforementioned Senni, oft-indecipherable vocal snippets and bone crunching percussive workouts based in Jersey club, kuduro and grime. Video can be read as shrewd commentary on audial representation and the human voice or the sensationalist, machismo-focused quality of sports highlights, but both critiques take on a different quality when enmeshed in 41:56 of industrial spatial dynamics and in-your-face club music. Unlike much of Biberkopf’s previous material though, Video never really breaks through into the world of club music, remaining firmly on the periphery. It’s a thrilling listen nonetheless, an at times shocking composition (entirely Biberkopf originals) that is delightfully incoherent and aesthetically cohesive at the same time, seeming to skip across the temporal plane with reckless abandon. Biberkopf is certainly an artist of our time and along with the likes of TCF, M.E.S.H. and Why Be, appears to be reworking a critical view of the club. Find a full track list for Video after the jump.

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Saga Mix For The Astral Plane

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January 6, 2015
Mixes
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1796489_1488784468040278_8438347315891124336_nAs the instrumental grime resurgence has grown in both popularity and contributing members over the course of the past two years, many pundits have questioned the aesthetic consistency of much of what is being dubbed grime. And it’s true, tempo, sound palette and geographic location have been altered dramatically. Grime is no longer solely a London ting and its most dominant motifs have been stretched to their logical limits by artists both within and outside the genre’s traditional East London core. Geography is the most easily recognizable change as producers can be found as far flung as Houston and Malaysia and while no one is questioning London’s supremacy, the diffusion of sounds and ideas on the internet has surely allowed for many to take a tangential approach to the work of Ruff Sqwad, Iron Soul, Dot Rotten, et al. A more important critique is more broad, but integral to the make up and continuing success of the genre: without a singular locational touchstone and equally monumental origin story, can grime retain its sonic quirks and aesthetic gruffness, its ability to confound and astound in equal measure? Essentially, can grime retain what makes it grimey?

Born in Ireland and now residing in London, Saga has been producing hip hop and grime for 10+ years now, but his two most recents EPs that have as much to say about the above questions as any released in recent memory. Tempo and sound palette-wise, Saga fits right into the world of grime, taking a muted and mutated eski palette into ever-bizarre places. His two releases to date, the Crescent EP on Lost Codes and the Flight Risk EP on Lit City Trax, can both nominally be defined as grime, but they’re also deeply indebted to industrial music, ambient found sounds and a host of other intermingling threads. The fact that his snares function as scythes and his square waves seem to dance and sputter around the track bring to mind classic grime, but the structures are all off, the placement of melodies discordant enough to unsettle the most experimental minded listener.

It’s Saga’s approach that makes his output so definitively grime, an approach defined by singular vision, antisocial personality traits and a rugged approach to sonics. There’s enough detriment left on a Saga track to round up and make a whole new track, maybe a result of listening to low bit rate versions of grime classics, but can also be attributed to a childhood full of death metal. In essence, its a trait and an approach that can’t necessarily be learnt. Rabit, one of the prime outside-of-London proponents of the genre grew up inundated in Texas screw rap, for example. It’s the quality that attracted Visionist and J-Cush who run Lost Codes and Lit City respectively, an inherent grimey-ness that pervades tracks like “Crescent” and “Grains”. It’s also what makes Saga’s Astral Plane mix one of our most thrilling yet, a down and dirty tail of detuned square waves floating through the void and all out sonic warfare. J-Cush called Saga’s work “modern grime”, which it certainly is, but its modernity doesn’t subvert its essential elements. And his 34 minute contribution is as essential as they come, a loose collection of industrial blasts on one hand and an intricately constructed modern grime centrifuge on the other. Essential listening either way whether you’re invested in grime’s living history or not.

Astral Plane Radio 006

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December 19, 2014
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astralplaneradio004

It’s been quite a year from house music, both commercially and artistically, and despite the fact that the genre’s smoother, more genteel sensibilities are a bit out of our wheelhouse, we certainly dabble in the likes of Mood Hut, Lobster Theremin, Public Possession, Wild Oats and Huntleys+Palmers. From young guns in Detroit to revivalists in Amsterdam to Vancouver’s ever-growing cadre of vibe specialists, it’s been a fun year to watch the genre grow, especially outside of the confusing world of commercial EDM. The final edition of our home-compiled Astral Plane Radio series comes in at a smoother and slower pace than most of our mixes and while it;s a bit outside of our comfort zone, the Astral Plane DJ team did a more than solid job of freaking the sounds of Auntie Flo, Max Graef, Round, Pender Street Steppers and more into a glorious mid-afternoon extravaganza. Looking back on the five previous Astral Plane Radio’s, this edition might just have been the most fun to record and we hope you enjoy it equally.

JLSXND7RS Mix For The Astral Plane

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December 17, 2014
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As much as we like to pump up the experimental fringe of grime these days, it’s nearly impossible to disconnect from the essence of the ends. As Americans and late comers to the world of grime, the genre’s early years and mixtape era are still a treasure trove of inspiration and rare grooves, nestled away in Mediafire files the internet over. And while the abstraction of a square wave is a tantalizing intellectual prospect, a good old fashioned beat down is often necessary, whether at the hands of a cavalcade of Street Fighter samples or the voice of a particularly formidable MC. Dutch producer JLSXND7RS epitomizes the aforementioned attitude, balancing rank aggression with a slinky enthusiasm, ignoring convention by bringing the past decade of garage (and its various manifestations) into a single, blast of energy.

With production on Flirta D hit “The Undertaker”, a collaboration with the equally on point Trends, and radio work with the likes of Skepta, Riko Dan, Jammer and Novelist, Sanders doesn’t stray away from MC-led tunes like some of his contemporaries. This point can’t be understated, especially considering his location in the Netherlands, a location with a history of garage enthusiasm, but not one generally associated with grime history and/or culture. Without a wide collection of contemporaries in his neighborhood, it’s a feat that Sanders has not only built a career working with the aforementioned MCs, but has also garnered attention from London’s effortlessly progressive Boxed collective, gaining placement on Boxed Vol. 2. Returning to “The Undertaker”, Sanders’ best and most popular track to date, its a marvel how the producer matches so many touchstones in the same track, balancing monolithic kicks with the manic swing of El-B’s late era 2 step and the jump up freneticism of Coki’s dubstep. It doesn’t need Flirta D to function, but the beat fits like a glove, another step forward, achieved by encapsulated several moments in history, in grime’s forward motion.

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Lao & Paul Marmota Mix For The Astral Plane

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December 10, 2014
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naafiTwo and a half years into our Astral Plane mix series endeavor and we’ve reached number fifty. At first, the series was a struggle to organize and recruiting artists to contribute original work to our tiny outlet was nearly impossible, but with a little luck and endless hours scrawling through the annals of the Internet, the series took off and we’re lucky enough to receive mix submissions and to provide a brand new selection for you nearly every week. “Mixes For The Astral Plane” is really the crown jewel of our operation and while we’re slowly transitioning into label land, the mix series will continue to grow and expand as we do. Thank you all for the constant support, thanks to all the other magazines and blogs that have supported, and, most of all, thanks to the artists who make this series worth putting together.

As we’ve delved further into global club music, the feedback loop between the dozens of subcultures we study has become more and more apparent. The age old conversation about appropriation, sampling and original subject matter will never really come to an end, but as far as contemporary dance music goes, the seemingly finite borders between geographically, temporally and sonically divergent discourses have become, essentially, irrelevant. We often go on ad nauseam about the commonalities between, and within, grime, ballroom, Bmore and Jersey club, techno, hip hop, footwork, kuduro, dembow, dancehall, etc., but that’s just the result of near obsession our part. In short, the transglobal sounds being pushed by labels like Principe Discos, Her Records, Huntleys+Palmers, NAAFI and more are unlike anything we’ve come across in our, admittedly short, lives. The technological and/or digital globalization of music is a well trodden topic, but sonic experimentation can’t be reduced to greater accessibility and the polyglot inclinations of the aforementioned labels can’t be explained by Gmail or Facebook groups.

Instead, a large number of wildly talented producers, DJs, curators, writers have taken an interest in the avant-garde club, the club being a place to listen to club music, the physical manifestation of said music and a safe, heterotopic space to subvert the oft-hegemonic popular music landscape. And few outlets understand the club music dialectic better than Mexico City’s party, collective and label NAAFI, home of and for the DF’s oddballs, grime mavens and rhythmic omnivores. Co-founded by Tomás Davó, Mexican Jihad, Lao and Paul Marmota in 2010, NAAFI is something of a Mexico City institution, drawing a dedicated fan base out of the sprawling metropolis with an impossible to trace blend of dembow’s addictive syncopation, choral grime abstraction and a general willingness to shatter expectation, abrade the psyche and tear down aural preconceptions.

With an all star roster of guests, including a who’s who of Night Slugs and Fade To Mind representatives, flown out for their parties, NAAFI has turned a distinctly Mexico City phenomenon into a global happening, bringing events to their Central and South American neighbors to the south and to both of America’s coasts. On the label side of the operation, recent releases from OMAAR and Smurphy have highlighted jagged peripheral rhythms and elegiac pop respectively and the label will soon release an impressive triple disc compilation called TRIBAL featuring native Mexican music from artists like DJ Tetris, Javier Estrada and Alan Rosales. The compilation was developed in tandem with the Centro de Cultura Digital and proves that NAAFI is as adept at looking inward as they are out.

It would be near impossible to detail the many exploits of NAAFI since its inception in 2010 in a concise manner, which is why it’s time to focus on the label’s two most prominent producers, the two artists we have recruited to contribute Astral Plane Mix 050, Lao and Paul Marmota. Lao, born Lauro Robles, is almost constantly at work, whether that means churning out edits, bootlegs and blends with abandon or wracking up accolades for his dungeon dark solo productions that often draw comparison to Los Angeles’ own Nguzunguzu. The Mexico City native is perhaps the most forward member of the collective, having participated in Red Bull Music Academy’s Tokyo edition and founded another label, Extasis, but his April’s Catedral EP for NAAFI might be the label’s most complete effort and despite his grand aspirations, Lao reps for DF through and through. Marmota is actually a Mexico City transplant and a native Chilean, a connection that has seen Santiago’s Imaabs, Tomas Urquieta and others connect and perform with the crew. Marmota’s Nueva EP, released in October 2013, also has a strong claim to be the best NAAFI release, a spastic collection of shimmering beat work that traverses grime and dembow with reckless abandon.

Alongside the obvious rhythmic dexterity, both Lao and Marmota have a keen sense of melody that places them in an upper echelon of producers (Murlo, Dark0 and Strict Face come to mind) who tickle the senses and move feet with ease. It’s where classical training, DJ experience and a willingness to subvert tradition combine, a space that NAAFI as a whole succeeds in, but Lao and Marmota consistently exceed expectations. Lauro and Paul’s joint Astral Plane mix doesn’t disappoint, a kaleidoscope of contemporary sounds mixed with essential NAAFI numbers and a fair number of exclusives to boot. Boundary-less in its scope and containing a seemingly endless supply of enthusiasm, the hour of music these two laced together touches on nearly every sound, genre and subculture we cover here, but the fact that it succeeds in achieving aesthetic coherence makes it a perfect cap to our first fifty mixes.

As we as a blog/label/outlet move forward into 2015, it’s fair to say that we likely wouldn’t be around today if it weren’t for inspiration labels/figures like NAAFI, Lao and Marmota. Since the start, we set out to cover music that doesn’t fit into square holes no matter how many pills you neck or how many publicists are on the jock. This humble Mexico City crew defines that ethos and embody the spirit of what we strive to achieve.

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Astral Plane Radio 005

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December 4, 2014
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astralplaneradio004

Over the past year or so, the world of instrumental grime has slowly infiltrated dance music communities in the United States, riding on latent dubstep excitement and the tireless works of producers like Rabit and Sharp Veins. Still though, grime nights are rare at American clubs and, at best, the music is viewed as an abstract form of music from across the pond, often declared undanceable. Even more irking is the fact that the constant dialogue between American hip hop, footwork, Jersey/Bmore club and grime is often ignored, or worse, lumped together into some glossed over bass music dialectic. This edition of Astral Plane Radio is intended to function as a gateway of sorts to the world of grime for those Americans who are both unfamiliar, yet intrigued by the oft-dense, terrain of 8 bart/eskibeat/sublo. Rap refixes, hip hop blends and an arsenal of contemporary R&G hits make up the brunt of the mix, an attempt to reach both the discerning house and techno heads and maybe even a few lumpen frat bros. It’s a light hearted selection and, unlike some of the more abstract grime the aforementioned American producers push, is firmly aimed at the dancefloor. DJ Milktray, Finn, Visionist, Gundam and Mssingno all prominently feature, and Drake, Destiny’s Child, Brandy and Ginuwine are interminably woven into the fabric of the mix. Even more apparent is the impact of The Neptunes, Heatmakerz and Timabaland, three production outfits that should be comfortably accessible for those of us who aren’t fine tuned to the wonders of the Triton keyboard or the intricacies of a square wave. Anyways, it’s our hope that Astral Plane Radio 005 can function as a bridge across the Atlantic and an entryway for our American audience into London-dominated world of grime.

Astral Plane Radio 004

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November 24, 2014
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astralplaneradio004

After a lengthy hiatus and a few dozen scrapped drafts, Astral Plane Radio is back with a Heterotopia-heavy hour-plus of club-and-not-club-tunes. Initially, our DJ “team” believed this series to be an easy side track, a quick mix pounded out every other week or so. After spending hours and hours downloading MP3s, testing out mixes and recording unsatisfactory editions, we’ve gained a huge amount of respect for the deejays with weekly radio shows. Keeping it fresh, light and engrossing every once in a while takes time and preparation, but to do it on a weekly basis is an act of inhuman willpower we can only hope to attain. So this edition of Astral Plane Radio is out to the real radio deejays, the folks at Rinse, NTS, Berlin Community Radio, Radar, etc. keeping up so the rest of us don’t have to.

This edition will be track list-free for at least the first fee days. Many of the songs are recognizable, but some are from recent or upcoming releases from Yamaneko, Taskforce, Murlo, Rushmore & many others, songs, EPs and albums that deserve your attention in the singular sense. Furthermore, leaving the track list blank, especially with regards to the “track ID bro????” culture that Soundcloud has cultivated, can be fun at times, building anticipation in a manner that scanning a list of dubs just can’t do.

The Large Mix For The Astral Plane

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November 20, 2014
Mixes
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The Large July 2014 - credit Ian TillotsonAs a popular culture force, dancehall looms over the group of genres we cover here at The Astral Plane, having splurged from its homely confines in Jamaica to the rest of the Caribbean, and later the world, several decades ago. Despite having a global fan-base, true global icons and the backing of multiple major labels, there’s a general sense that bashment is constantly under attack, whether from white prime ministers in the United Kingdom, or, well, white journalists in the United States. It’s all too easy to flip an endemic culture of homophobia and violence, with its all too easily forgotten roots in colonial Britain, into cheap political points and, unfortunately, the practice has swept dancehall under an ill-begotten fuzz of mistrust, neo-colonial criticism and public-private walls prohibiting travel, performance and proselytization on the part of the bashment massive.

That being said, commenters are equally likely to paint the dancehall world in broad strokes of social activism, urban heroism and class conflict. Of course, the real picture is much more difficult to ascertain let alone paint and we here at The Astral Plane don’t profess to have the knowledge, experience or wherewithal to wield the brush. The Large aka Suze Webb, on the other hand, is doing more than just about anyone else on this side of the Atlantic to promote, curate and present dancehall to the masses, especially the discerning, dance music listening masses. Suze is the founder of London (where she used to reside) club night/website/t-shirt boutique Shimmy Shimmy and, more recently, label manager at the Dre Skull-helmed Mixpak Records, flexing her curatorial skill on both sides of the ocean. When behind the decks, Suze goes by The Large and peddles a wide variety of Caribbean, British and American riddims, specializing in the soundsystem continuum.

Which makes Suze the perfect representative of the sonic (and classical) miscegenation constantly occurring at Mixpak and Shimmy Shimmy, a process that sees dancehall embraced, altered and invested in by residents of New York, London, Bristol, Sydney and beyond. It also makes her work as The Large one of the most tantalizing deejay projects around, an unabashed journey through riddim culture that dates back to 2012. Suze’s “Gas Pedal” and “2 On” mixes, her two recent and two most accomplished efforts, are a veritable crossing and re-crossing of West African, Caribbean and American influences, drawing lines from Aidonia to Youngstar and back to Tinashe. Tempo is the obvious shared signifier in the mixes, but Suze’s deft touch at threading the schizogenetic needle through the geographical hinterland is the real accomplishment.

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Download Mala & Loefah Set From 2006

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November 3, 2014
Live, Mixes
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For years, Martin Clark aka Blackdown Soundboy’s blogspot address has functioned as both a central point for some of the most current, self-defining journalism in dance music and a treasure trove of garage, grime, dubstep (and beyond) history, including mixes, interviews and retrospectives on the scene’s seminal nights, conflicts and successes. For me, the site has offered a pin prick camera view into the demise of late 1990s garage, the rise of dubstep and the proliferation of grime. It offered a gateway into the spread, mutation and peculiarities of the music I now hold close to my heart and which, at the time, I was unable to connect with due to age, geography and a shit modem connection. Recurring characters like Skream, Kode9 and DJ Target have become familiar, despite the fact that the majority of the articles were written five-plus years ago. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the site, which will hopefully continue to function as an unofficial register of 2000s ‘nuum culture for years to come, and Clark has uploaded an absolute classic of a mix from FWD>> (@ Plastic People) featuring Mala b2b Loefah and the inimitable SFT Pokes on mic duties.

Having never been to Plastic People, attended a FWD>> night, or step foot in East London, it’s difficult to gage exactly what Clark means when he refers to this set as the “best live dubstep set I’ve ever heard recorded,” but despite the inherent cognitive dissonance of listening to a set so firmly set in a specific temporal realm, its eminence is as easily recognizable as any other “scene defining” mix, song, album or live performance. Clark included his own version of live blogging to round out the 10th anniversary celebration, offering up memories, commentary and context to Mala & Loefah’s selections. If you’re not familiar with Clark, Blackdown Soundboy or the label, Keysound Recordings, he runs in tandem with Dusk, cut a few hours from your day and browse back through the annals of the Blackdown Soundboy blogspot.

Download: Mala b2b Loefah ft SGT Pokes live at FWD>> 01.06.06

ISLAND Presents Mixtape Ahead Of Debut Crazylegs EP

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October 10, 2014
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island-joints

When Bok Bok spoke about the feel of the Night Slugs aesthetic and its relationship to architecture in an interview with FACT a few months ago, he seemed to pin point an attitude that has proliferated en masse in the club music community. Its an attitude and an aesthetic, a hyper-real structure that blends the natural with presupposed neoliberalism with breathtaking affect. It’s no surprise that graphic designer-producer hybrids have had some of the most resounding success in crafting the hyper-real. Welsh duo ISLAND have been making noise through their feverish Soundcloud oddities for several months now and have finally found a home for their incandescent productions on Bristol-based label/party Crazylegs. Like Crazylegs contemporary Gage and the Her Records fellows, ISLAND have taken the bare bones impact of classic grime and East Coast club music and melded it with their science fiction-derived grandiosity. On ISLAND Joints, a collection of originals, bootlegs, etc., the duo have grafted a polychromatic mixture of trance synths, plonking synth pop beats and ruthless club percussion into a dissociative, but highly enjoyable concoction. It’s hard to predict exactly which elements from ISLAND Joints will appear on the upcoming Crazylegs EP, or if the duo will even distill their sound at all, but their polyglot attitude is an exciting premise in the too-often-monochrome world of contemporary dance music.