Our latest look at dusty instrumental hip-hop, techno and bass includes Martyn (pictured above), HTRK, Walls, I Break Horses, and more.

By Dominic Umile

Disparate nuances and textures meet in a distinctive manner on several recent records that have had me thinking about what music I've been drawn to in 2011 overall. Just as the dour noisepop of Belong's Common Era or Andy Stott's stark, shadowy techno on Passed Me By presents a challenge to categorize other than "I've really been blown away by these," the releases discussed here - their repetition of colorful sonic themes, matched with a fusion of electronics and sampled instruments - aren't easily articulated in conversation. And there are similarly heady, much chatted-about albums on the horizon: M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming sees an October release; a "next level" Nathan Fake album is in the can, according to James Holden's interview at ClubbersGuideNewYork.com and Kompakt's catalog of experimental techno grows with albums from Gui Boratto, The Field, and, mentioned below, Walls.

In an unlikely mesh of lo-fidelity production and gripping headphone playback, HTRK (pronounced "hate rock") explores muddled electro/organic noise on Work (Work, Work). Vocalist Jonnie Standish partly talks, partly sings, with both configurations coded in watery delay on this droning, comely Ghostly International release. She's backed with dub-referencing basslines, old drum machine pops, and fraying guitar. The latter fizzes and peters out often, while the space between shitty beat claps on tracks like "Work That Body" grows miles wider by the second. Closer "Body Double" is crowded with the patter of snares and wafting organs. It's dark, lingering, and beautiful, while Standish, avoiding clarity at all costs, sings only when she feels like it. 

HTRK - Eat Yr Heart by ghostly

Walls has a similar preoccupation with delay pedals. The act's 2010 debut is loaded with blurry, equal doses live and machine-driven moments like HTRK's record, but members Alessio Natalizia and Sam Willis went for blissful techno on Coracle ala Border Community stuff or the forest-rave vibe of Caribou's Swim. With a punchy stomp taking shape midway through "Il Tedesco," this tune stuns as a two-parter. It's disorienting and strewn with bits of feedback, while the beatless end of Coracle is executed with similar tact. Check "Vacant" for just as colorful an arrangement of swells, soaring guitar fuzz, and a coda that sounds like early Pink Floyd. Elsewhere, potent kicks work to steady a sun-streaked record that feels light enough to dissolve on the turntable. 

"Sunporch" By Walls by Kompakt

Beds of keyboards and vocal layers produce a disorienting effect on Hearts, the debut full-length from Swedish duo I Break Horses on Bella Union. The battle is getting the weightless vocals from singer Maria Lindén further up into the mix - or does it matter? The title track feels like one sweeping buildup, as thick and overdriven guitar is matched with synths over a tense, unchanging rhythm. I Break Horses is shamelessly wed to the oft-cited My Bloody Valentine opus that had Creation's Alan McGee "tearfully pleading with (Kevin Shields) to deliver the record before the whole enterprise went bankrupt." On the impenetrable Heart, Lindén and Fredrik Balck come off like Loveless devotees indeed, as if Serena-Maneesh dialed back noise on No. 2: Abyss in B Minor for a more ambient end-product locked into dance music as much as it is to shoegaze. "Load Your Eyes" has Linden's slow verses floating over stuttering kicks, with nuances pulled out and tossed back in for cerebral effect. It works well, but a driving, acid-ridden "Wired" kills when it's dramatically impeded, as if the tape ribbon is backed up and snaking all over the floor. The beats (and tambourine) stay in place, but all of the syrupy tones are wound way down, yielding a stammering mess of choral bits and indiscernible instruments.

I Break Horses - Hearts by Bella Union

Most everything is prevented from advancing too quickly on Alec Koone's Wander/Wonder, a set of hallucinatory, deep-swinging beats issued under the producer's Balam Acab moniker. These eight static-rife instrumentals knock back and forth, each one swelling with sparkling loops and chilling vocal samples that seem to have been pulled from a place similar to the one tapped by Holy Other for With U, released earlier this year on Tri Angle. Koone hasn't ventured far from the spooky, lush hip hop/techno combinations on his See Birds EP, though Wander/Wonder is a more evolved set that sounds like it took careful, obsessive tinkering to finish. It incidentally only outplays his Tri Angle debut by 17 minutes or so.   

Balam Acab - Motion by TriAngleRecords

DJ/producer Max Cooper's tech house cooks gradually with bewitching flourishes. On his Empirisch EP for Cologne, Germany's Traum Schallplatten, "Echoes Reality" is layered in chimes, with screeches and an evocative melody that eventually engulfs the track. Its unpredictable flashes and speaker-cycling ticks are matched in "Qualia" (worked into an early slot on recent jarring live set "Loom"), if in a bit more clinical fashion.

Max Cooper Live - Loom (free download) by Max Cooper

The tones are quite clean on Chris "Tropics" Ward's jazz- and house-tinged jewel Parodia Flare on Planet Mu. Twinkling guitars line its cotton edges, dressed in little more than vibrato. The already warm keys on "Going Back" are padded with vocal harmonies, which slip cozily into a mellotron-rife backdrop on "Wear Out." But the record could use more juice on the percussive end. Churning glitch is welcome on "Figures," where even the dense swirl of whispered choruses can't much soften the growl of the engine beneath it.   

Wear Out (From Parodia Flare - Out Now) by Tropics

With no shortage of drum barrages, Martyn nailed it on Ghost People, a hard but intricate record for Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder label (see my  recent rundown of TOKiMONSTA's EP). The Dutch producer found an artful home on his Great Lengths for techno, dubstep, and more in a way that no one had managed before 2009, at least not on an LP. Ghost People isn't as mysterious as Martyn's Great Lengths, but it's rooted in similar ground and is as urgent as his recent Fabric 50 mix, a series standout. Aimed at the DJ booth, Martyn's sophomore album burns fast. Jungle breaks tunnel under siren synths on "Popgun," a rave banger loud enough to summon Bomb Squad noise collage references, making it a good candidate for segues into hip hop records during recent FlyLo live sets. Boxcutter-edged chords dart between vocal samples on "We Are You in the Future," but none of those ubiquitous, pitched-up MC bits land on these tracks. The voices sewn into Ghost People's convulsive party cuts sound like they're coming from behind you on the club floor, as if nearby conversation is competing with the snare shots in the monitors. Fat chance, though - it's doubtful that anyone is going to be talking when this record is on.

Martyn - Popgun by 3024world

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BLURT contributor and blogger Dominic Umile lives, writes, and drinks in Brooklyn, NY. Follow him on Twitter: @DominicUmile

Our latest look at dusty instrumental hip-hop, techno and bass includes Alex Zavala (pictured, above), Paul White, Comma and TOKiMONSTA.

By Dominic Umile

In September, instrumental hip hop pioneer DJ Shadow will issue his first artist album since 2006, and we've only just seen the release of producer/turntablist J-Rocc's debut, after more than a decade in the game. A couple of months ago, people went understandably bat shit for a chunk of Twitter-dealt rare tracks from New Jersey beatmaker extraordinaire Clams Casino, and as rapper Prodigy finishes up a prison sentence, talk of his crew Mobb Deep's landmark The Infamous is more prevalent than it's been in years, with conversation focusing on the grim, impenetrable mood of the critically revered production as often as its confrontational lyric content. The enthusiasm for intelligent new beat records is palpable, even as producers are more often nostalgic than not — referencing the hard boom bap of '90s era hip hop classics while working in nuances that contemporary production methods and an increasingly available Web trove of sample-ready nuggets will allow.

Often menacing and deceptive as to which tack he'll take next, Chicago producer Alex Zavala spun a set of mesmerizing beats for Vessel, a guest-heavy 2010 album from Dark Time Sunshine, an experimental hip hop duo featuring Zavala and rapper Onry Ozzborn from Grayskul. The Dark Time Sunshine Vessel Instrumentals is a mind-blower; while critics near and far called attention to Vessel's blueprint when the original record first surfaced, the productions have far more room to breathe on this 2011 version without emcees crowding the tracks. Perhaps the release of the beat edition will help spotlight the original, especially since more attention is being given to lesser-known hip hop artists of late (even if it's to dutifully repost press releases for predictable and tedious Odd Future projects).

Zavala's productions are lively and lush, breezy powerhouses of secondhand analog keyboard textures and dusty drum loops. "Primor" is, like a lot of the Instrumentals entries, noticeably rooted in classic hip hop sounds. There’s a tambourine/snare roll-loaded break that Zavala could've snagged from any of those heralded Dusty Fingers collections, but its flourishes are many—a vocal snippet plays through, with brass bursts, scratches from Portland, Oregon's DJ Zone and various backward-flipped clicks peppered here and there. While Def Jux luminary Ace Rock unsurprisingly proves dizzying on the original, I'm going with the instrumental, specifically for the sinister choral textures that surface upon closer listens as well as for the spiraling spaceship tweets that are nearly impossible to detect in the record's previous format. "Defender" drives in a similar fashion, with familiar classic funk breakbeats tumbling beneath it. Zavala fleshes out a playful melody with worming moogs and glitzy synth accompaniment, just as he does for a somber "All Aboard," which seems to have been built with an entire bank of drum samples. The artist has evidently spent years digging for specific pieces to weave into this hyper-melodic project, and Zavala's work ethic proves enviably robust after seven consecutive rounds of it in the headphones.

Zavala The Dark Time Sunshine Vessel Instrumentals (Fake Four, Inc./Fieldwerk)

Zavala - Run (The Dark Time Sunshine Vessel Instrumentals) by fieldwerk

For a trip that showcases a similarly fickle sampling ear, psyche-mining (actual) sound librarian and beatmaking Londoner Paul White strung together a never-better-named debut for One Handed Music in 2009. The Strange Dreams of Paul White is a weird, adventurous record for anyone who's frequently revisiting their Madlib, early RJD2, or Onra Chinoiseries vinyl. Each White-penned nugget shamelessly bears its sewn-together blueprint in familiar cult cinema samples (Wild At Heart, The Warriors) or odd bits nicked from prog LPs, fitted with b-boy drum breaks or swirling Boards of Canada-type electronics. At the end of April, the last physical copy of The Strange Dreams... was sold, so the whole thing is available for free download now. Also check out White's 2010 guest mix for BTS Radio.

Paul White The Strange Dreams of Paul White (One-Handed Music)

Paul White - One Eye Open (Extended Version) by alexchase

Much farther west of the apartment studio that Alex Zavala toils in, an artful scene of producers and DJs in California has yielded fruit through a variety of beat music experiments. San Francisco-based Ryan Gilbert goes by "Comma," and turns out clinical, digital-sounding instrumentals on his EP Colortronics, where percussive techno chirps and glassy synths meet in the style of Shigeto's recent Full Circle or the Lorn album on Brainfeeder. In fact, Comma's tendency toward more electronic textures and hollowed bass tones (hunt down a garage-rooted club track called "Coyote" he cut last year for his debut on Frite Nite, producer Salva's label) render him a better candidate for my first Beats Working column, where I discussed releases that are more closely related to bass music.

Comma Colortronics (Frite Nite)

Mezcal Hologram by Comma

There is a lot of space on Comma's "Mezcal Hologram," which is a dubstep tune in the vein of Skream's work, with heady flourishes materializing halfway through in queasy pitch shifts and vintage synths. The remix of "Mexcal Hologram" from UK producer Om Unit is fascinating and busy. Its infrequent 808 clicks line up nicely against the deep, clapping primary pulse and comparably dark undertones, as if he pulled all light that might've been emanating the original. Because of how often my mind wanders to other artists during a spin of Colortronics, it's a challenge to pick Comma out of a lineup of the folks that are rolling out similar and more often stronger material. "Evil Snag" stands out on the EP for its smart balance of hip hop and elements more often associated with bass stuff, which is the sort of thing that Los Angeles-born Jennifer Lee does under her TOKiMONSTA pseudonym.

Wispy lullabies on Lee's Creature Dreams are nostalgic and quite bewitching — "Little Pleasures" and "Darkest (Dim)" find vocalist Gavin Turek's verses rolling atop a hazy mesh of live guitars and lethargic drum loops that would hardly sound out of place alongside Tricky's "Aftermath" on the next DJ KiCKS. The rest of Lee's debut for Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder imprint is wordless, populated only by micro bleep patterns, carefully chopped organic percussion snippets, and wayward violins. An unexpected pickup in tempo or glitchy drum stretch in "Stigmatizing Sex" proves spooky and welcome. It's a combination that Lee pulls off with finesse for the EP's 29 minutes, where a sultry array of knocking beats is as suitable before you leave the apartment Friday as it is when you shuffle out of subway home, in the streetlamp-illuminated early hours of Saturday morning.

TOKiMONSTA Creature Dreams EP (Brainfeeder)

Breathe on my Contacts by TOKiMONSTA

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BLURT contributor and blogger Dominic Umile lives, writes, and drinks in Brooklyn, NY. Follow him on Twitter: @DominicUmile

New BLURT Column spotlighting "dusty instrumental hip-hop, techno and bass artists" kicks off.

By Dominic Umile

When I pitched a column idea to my patient editor at BLURT, it was with the intention of carving out a place for its readers to find an intimate discussion of electronic music, or records that are largely beats-driven, be it dusty instrumental hip hop, techno, or the subject of this first entry, happenings in various bass artist circles. My initial idea was in part informed by a reaction to the instantaneous one-offs and press release re-posts that are occurring these days with unhealthy frequency. I hope to offer what I consider a deep and more personal analysis of new (and maybe older) releases in lieu of the immediate, short-form album appraisals and so-called "criticism" of "leaked" MP3's that materialize within 15 minutes of their mass distribution. I'm calling this endeavor Beats Working because there will be a lot of talk of beats, and because consuming and thinking about music - whether it's on long subway commutes or sifting through records in my apartment - well, it beats working. I've spent a good deal of time lately thinking about the bass-oriented records that have come my way.

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The turbulent third LP from Dave "2562" Huismans (pictured, above) rattles so much, it's unlikely that you'd ever detect one of the disco samples that allegedly stirs and stutters at its foundation. The Netherlands-born, Berlin-based producer has been exploring a haunting dubstep-minimal techno sound for years, and even though his source material was limited to loops from classic disco vinyl for Fever (no additional synths or drum programming), the new tracks are far closer to hard, cold techno than the releases in his recent catalog.

2562 - Aquatic Family Affair (doubt000 A) by 2562 / A Made Up Sound

The beats are deep and pugnacious for Fever, and the base of pre-album single "Aquatic Family Affair" as well as the title track treads closely to the rhythmic patterns on Dave Huismans' 2009 LP Unbalance, where percussive thrusts of kick drums and hi-hats drive an affable mix of dubby textures and hazy techno. Fever is fascinating and difficult to digest - at times it's similar to Claro Intelecto's dim Warehouse Sessions, devoid of the melody that so frequently underpins the last 2562 outing. "Juxtaposed" is rich with fluttering sci-fi sonics and long-echoing snare rolls, while Fever's mere chunks of bass and metallic clinks are weaved into track-length machine rumbles on "Flavour Park Jam" and on the blurting "Cheater." Huismans trims dizzying textures down to half-second bits and layers them on top of hard and jumbled beats for most of the record, while tangible instances of tightly packed 4/4 dance music occasionally bubble to the fore - micro-diced synth bits and backward swirls on "Brasil Deadwalker" and "Final Frenzy" are built for a thrilling club set, but certainly nothing here sounds like disco. Instead, Huismans expands his palette with a perpetually cryptic record that's really difficult to explain to your friends. I'll take that over disco any day of the week.

Drew "FaltyDL" Lustman doesn't stray noticeably far from the temperate analog sounds that we generally associate with disco records on his second proper full-length for Planet Mu. As much play as the more prominent UK garage and house-inspired dubstep offshoots are getting these days, New Yorker Lustman has remained ahead of the pack, loading his work with consistently provocative shifts in color and rhythm. On You Stand Uncertain, Lustman exhibits a refreshing and ever-steady intention to sweeten lush, late-night house-driven dance music with strong melodies and loads of atmospherics.

To London by FaltyDL

Often as shadowy and hypnotic as the jumbled headphone opus he dubbed Bravery in 2009, You Stand Uncertain is also bright and dramatic, lined with risky moves that make for the most complete-sounding statement Lustman has issued to date. The doses of breathy, unfinished garage diva samples and spirited hi-hat exercises that run through "Voyager" and "It's All Good" look back at his well-received debut album, as well as at his flashy Endeavor EP in 2010. Vocalist Anneka (you heard her on Starkey's "Stars") figures into the You Stand... opener's captivating swirl of vintage organ keys and jangly percussion - the collaboration, along with two others here, marks a new direction for Lustman, as he's previously relied on vocal samples to establish the intimate feel of his records, rather than invite another musician into the studio. Live, untreated vocals instead of the usual pitch-mangled snippets on "Gospel of Opal" are welcome, particularly in the spots where sparse harmonies fall into place just ahead of the audible acoustic guitar loops. The harder stuff is here too, in innumerable junglist drum sources that tumble through "Lucky Luciano," reminiscent of the streamlined, breakbeat-backed Phreqaflex and the absolutely nasty "Never" remix that Lustman did for West Coast beatmaker Eprom last year. [LISTEN TO MIX: FaltyDL for Dummy Mag]

Considerably less light slips into the straight 17 and a half minutes of whooshing, rubbery techno that newer UK bass producer Jamie "Blawan" Roberts laid down for his danceable Bohla EP, released on R&S. Drums play the biggest role on this percussively robust three-songer. Roberts' musical roots are said to have sprouted behind a drum kit, and it shows, perhaps in the barrage of rimshots on "Kaz" or in the deep tribal thwacks of the title track. While Roberts deals an innovative hybrid of alien bass music and tribal house on Bohla, the Round Black Ghosts compilation on Berlin's ~scape comes to mind after his "Lavender" takes off - the 2008 collection features a set of dub and techno crossovers from artists like Untold and 2562, whose ideas back then can be compared to the plans Roberts has now.

BR #47 Blawan by BOILER ROOM

I'm more likely to return to R&S releases from James Blake and Pariah ahead of Bohla, because they're overall more aesthetically diverse, with the emphasis on UK garage sounds that I find so appealing these days, as well as on abundant melodies. Hailing from a town in Worcestershire, England, a trio called Swarms invests a lot of energy into building melody. They're producing a psychedelic but quite polished blend of bass music and chirpy midtempo techno, with heavily coded guitar lines and frequent vocal samples worked into the mix.

Flikr of ur eyes by Swarms

Old Raves End, Swarms' debut full-length for LoDubs, sits snugly alongside the label's releases from dubstep well-known Clubroot, whose sophomore LP is loaded with similarly refined choral textures, field noise, and somber, ambient 2-step tunes. Clubroot's best work is in his understated tracks, and Swarms is also strongest when they're reining it in. "Roulette" boasts broad, sweeping synth chords that move along at a syrupy pace, clashing with the sped-up, indecipherable vocal churning the background. The same batch of elements work in a slow, massive-feeling cycle for "Sky Below Sea," which is equally stirring, but the text msg-friendly "Flikr of Ur Eyes" is the most comely of the lot. Tenderly strummed guitars match measured synth swells and whispered vocal cut-ups a la Lali Puna's "Faking the Books" on "Flikr..." The beats that eventually shuffle in barely disrupt this organic stretch, and close listens summon actual fretboard slides as well as the affecting soft patter of English countryside rain. [LISTEN TO MIX: Swarms And Geiom]

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BLURT contributor and blogger Dominic Umile lives, writes, and drinks in Brooklyn, NY. Follow him on Twitter: @DominicUmile