DJ Marfox Just Jam Mix

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March 12, 2014
Mixes, New Music
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If you haven’t read Ryan Keeling’s long-form essay on Principe Records and the fascinating Lisbon scene it has helped foster, then you need to do yourself a solid and get up on it now. The names DJ Marfox, DJ Nigga Fox, Niagara and others have been circulating for a few years now, but it appears that the sound of Lisbon’s lusophone club scene is finally garnering the ears is deserves. Involving various aspects of kuduro, funaná, batida, tarraxinha and other genres, Lisbon-based Principe Records has gathered, pressed to vinyl and distributed the sounds of the city’s isolated outer-rim housing projects. Of course, the sounds of Lisbon have been percolating for years, but like many other minority, regional club scenes, the producers are often wary of outsiders. Regardless, the five releases Principe has pumped out to date have been wildly inventive, opening up a divide between the label and, well… just about anything else these days. For the uninitiated, Marfox recently made an appearance at the much talked about Just Jam party in London and you can check out 15 minutes of his set below.

Kingdom Remixes Glass Animals’ “Gooey”

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March 11, 2014
New Music, Remixes
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It’s still to be seen whether Glass Animals‘ signing to Paul Epworth’s Wolf Tone label will turn out, but in the meantime, it’s impossible to note the increased stature and attention the band has faced. The British act first caught my eye with the beatific “Cocoa Hooves” and have continued to hone their R&B-leaning pop compositions in the year and a half since. Most indicative of the new label is “Gooey”, a crisp, efficient arrangement that has garnered quite a bit of attention over the past few weeks. This week, the band is playing numerous dates at SXSW, including one at the vaunted Fader Fort. Despite all the hype surrounding the band and their upcoming American dates, this remix still comes as a surprise to this listener. It’s not like the song falls so far outside of Kingdom’s go-to sound palette, but culturally, it seems a far stretch from the Fade To Mind don’s regular remix subjects. Regardless, the cluttering hip hop refix adds the exact edge the original needed. The remix will appear on the Gooey EP, out April 8 on Harvest Records.

OH91 Mix For The Astral Plane

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March 11, 2014
Mixes, New Music
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oh91

The best club music possesses a certain level of immediacy. There’s a lot of squishy rhetoric surrounding the “togetherness” and shared experience of club and drug culture, but it’s undeniable that a certain sensation is widely felt when the DJ plays that song. It’s not the hand-in-the screams of festival kids or slack jaw grins of pill heads, but a quiet, resounding sense of submission among the crowd at-large. It’s the sentiment I felt when OH91‘s remix of Kahn’s “Percy” first graced my ears. It wasn’t the shear physical force of the song, or it’s head-spinning structure that struck me, but the immediate bodily submission I felt. It’s not that the song is universally adored, it’s the immediacy that those that know will almost undoubtedly feel.

Luckily for OH91, many others besides myself feel similarly and his name has been on the tongue of many a grime enthusiast over the past few years. Bred in the rich Bristol scene, the man born Omari Champagnie has only a few releases to his name, but each one has proved his talents in a different realm of UK music. He’s released fluttering, funk-infused hip hop (on Subdepth), bouncy house/garage, and roughneck, apocalyptic grime (on Coyote Records). Along the way, he’s garnered acclaim from some prime names, getting a Spooky remix on the Coyote release and receiving support from the likes of Kahn & Neek, Royal-T and Elijah & Skilliam. The “Percy” remix put his name on many a tongue, but this young Bristol representative is going to be taking his rightful place among the aforementioned tastemakers before too long. With assistance from Tomas at Coyote Records, OH91 has graced us with our 22nd Astral Plane mix. A quick glance at the track list, might lead an undiscerning listener to conclude that the mix is just an amalgamation of huge grime cuts from the past year or two, but that would be overlooking the expertly placed edits and skillful sequencing. Rather than coming off heavy-handed, the mix is one the most mellifluous 45 minutes you’ll hear all week. An unreleased collaboration with Sir Spyro doesn’t hurt either.

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New Imaabs – “Analogic Idyll”

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March 10, 2014
New Music
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Last November, Santiago, Chile-based producer Imaabs released the Baroque EP on Diamante Records, a dusty, stomping affair that ended up as one of the most striking club music releases of the year. One of the southernmost pioneers of ballroom, Jersey club and ghetto house, Imaabs (born Cristo Gavras) has released several unremitting releases to date, simmering the previously mentioned regional sounds into their most bare-bone incarnations. He’s also managed to draw in some formidable remixers/support with MikeQ and Distal both contributing reworks to Baroque. “Analogic Idyll” exemplifies Gavras’ less-is-more attitude, focusing almost entirely on an obliterating kick and the always affecting “whoop” sample so common in ballroom. Utilizing such a small sound palette, it’s Imaabs’ proficiency with classic drum machine sounds that makes him such an effective producer.

New Romare – “Jimmy”

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March 10, 2014
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London-based producer Romare has always been fascinated with the blues and polyrhythms, drawing both into his Meditations On Afrocentrism and Love Songs: Part One EPs with great aplomb. There are very producers who can draw in well-worn sample sources like the blues and flip it into something original, but the Paris-born artist manages it without faltering, creating a mélange of contemporary garage, house, techno and footwork with a decidedly rustic edge. Romare’s latest tune comes in the form of “Jimmy”, a direct track based on absurdly twangy guitar and a flexed out techno structure. “Jimmy” can be downloaded for free here and is a promotion for Romare’s upcoming Ninja Tune debut.

GFOTY Secret Mix

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March 5, 2014
New Music
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Screen Shot 2014-03-04 at 8.56.25 PM

With yesterday’s Secret Mix, GFOTY (girlfriend of the year) joins Hannah Diamond and Princess Bambi on the list of PC Music girls that I have a crush on.

Only recently emerging on to the scene, London’s PC Music label has released some of the funnest, catchiest, pop songs to be stuck in my head in the last year (<<maybe ever>>). Label head AG Cook, with a seemingly tireless work ethic, takes his collage-of-top-40-charts-drowned-in-every-pop-up-ad-you-have-ever-exited-out-of sounding production and creates digital personas for singers that he then works with. The result of these collaborations are beyond commercial pieces of work that are simultaneously simple minded and reminiscent of schizophrenia. To sum it up, AG Cook could DJ the best bar mitzvah ever. Take ten minutes out your day, stare at your computer or mobile device, and listen to six new songs from GFOTY. Stream and download the mix below.

Boxed Club Night Celebrates Anniversary With Compilation

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March 4, 2014
New Music, Remixes
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boxed-volume-one

For the last 12 months, Slackk, Mr. Mitch and Oil Gang’s Boxed club night has set the bar for what a grime night should look like, drawing in just about every instrumental grime producer of note. To celebrate their one year anniversary, which is occurring this Friday at Birthdays in Dalston, the crew has put together a wildly colorful 18 track compilation featuring some of the most exciting producers in the game. Astral Plane mix contributors Strict Face and Logos appear, as do a host of other transcendent talents including Rabit, Mumdance, DJ Milktray and Inkke. In another year, we might be looking back at Boxed Vol. 1 in a similar fashion as we do Grime 2.0 these days. There’s really no excuse not to grab this masterstroke immediately.

Bones & Money Mix For The Astral Plane

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March 4, 2014
Mixes
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BONES & MONEY ART

In a sense, Bones & Money‘s production acumen mirrors their beginnings as a DJ duo, an amalgam of innumerable dance music styles rolled up into a tightly wound ball. Hailing from Aberdeen, Scotland, otherwise known as the Granite City, DM Bones (Shaun) and O.T.O.H. (Calum) began producing as Bones & Money at the beginning of 2012, releasing a free single on Tuff Wax Records, the label they co-run with Lockah. Unlike many of their contemporaries, the duo take a less is more approach into their productions and curatorial work (Tuff Wax was founded “as a boutique label aiming to revive interest in high quality vinyl”), preferring to synthesize grime, footwork, R&B and garage into an angular, club-focused weapon that can be deployed with ease in a wide variety of sets.

From an aesthetic perspective, Bones & Money’s output recalls the more abrasive output of a Paul Johnson or Parris Mitchell in its less-is-more focus and ruthless efficiency. B&M certainly don’t make ghetto-house, but their roughneck ethos and compositional understanding certainly allow for similarities. For their Astral Plane mix, the Granite City dwellers funneled contemporary grime and classic Baltimore into 35 minutes of rapid-fire break beats and swelling sub-bass. The pacing is excellent and the mix demands several listens to pick up all of the expertly composed gems. Find the full track list after the jump.

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Download: Inkke – “Drum Hunt”

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March 3, 2014
New Music
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inkke

If names like Mixpak, LuckyMe and Big Dada hold on weight with you, then it’s likely that you’re a fan, or have at least come across Inkke over the past twelve months. The Glasgow-based producer has been making the tastemaker rounds, contributing individual tracks and mixes to a number of influential sects. As part of the interminably creative Astral Black squad, Inkke has come to be known, alongside DJ Milktray, as something of a youthful innovator in the grime field; equally likely to let loose a fearless 8 bar rendition as he is to approach the genre from a 100% left-field position. Earlier this month, Inkke posted a .Zip of edits around social media, garnering widespread curiosity and acclaim for reworks of 50 Cent, Nelly, Helix and others. Today, Astral Black is releasing Inkke’s debut EP, the Memphis-inspired Faded With Da Kittens. Drawing from much the same sound palette as Spaceghostpurrp and Tommy Kruise, Inkke has devised a beat tape that flips the Memphis script on its head as much as it offers a referential view of 90s horror-core and the 808. “Drum Hunt” offers the best example of this, a slow, chugging factory-made affair with winding, sycophantic female vocals offering the only melodic content. It’s a far stretch as a rap beat, but still retains the violent, skewed essence of the Memphis canon. Faded With Da Kittens is out now in digital and cassette form now, both of which can be found at Astral Black’s Bandcamp.

Juxta Position Vol. 1 – Juxta Position (MISTRESS02)

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February 27, 2014
New Music
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The anonymous Berlin-based producer Marquis Hawkes is primarily known for his releases on Glasgow’s Dixon Avenue Basement Jams, relatively straightforward affairs that tend to reference the sounds of classic Chicago house while also incorporating well-chosen vocal samples. He’s now arrived on DVS1’s nascent Mistress Recordings with his new Juxta Position project, presenting us with a trio of of compelling tracks that feel darker and more polished than his previous work.

The two initial standouts are “Mercy” and “The Darkness”, showcasing Hawkes’ song-crafting abilities by doing a lot with very little. “Mercy” opens up the record at a languid 118 BPM, transforming a simple and efficient drum pattern into something much greater with the addition of a captivating vocal and a duet of synthesizers. “The Darkness” employs a similar strategy – the sounds in the lower frequencies of the track march steadily along, showcasing a mesmerizing clap and hi-hat. With a smooth electro-esque drum line and acidic synths that wobble across the track, “Mazury” sounds like it would have been right at home on one of Hawkes’ previous releases. It’s an intriguing addition to the record, but ultimately feels a bit chaotic and unfocused when placed alongside the other two tracks.