Spent the early hours of the beginning of April playing records, primarily the Giegling Futur II collection and various records in a similar guise. Mnmlssgs raved about the label, especially Kettenkarussell and their outstanding long mix (that seems no longer to be available...?), and Giegling remains incredibly consistent, not rocking any boats but doing a steady thing very well indeed. There seems to be a few sides to their sound (granular-ambient hip-hop, granular-ambient techno) but what I favour most is the granular-ambient house, an early-Dial-esque subdued minimal deep hazy thing typified by Kettenkarussell, and of which there's great examples on Futur II:
Traumprinz aka Prince of Denmark is a Geigling regular and just put out Say or Do, his third 12" for his own Traumprinz label, and it's a doozy. The title track is fine, indeed they all are, but none better than 'Changes', which would have me gloriously melting if heard in discotheques:
He's doing similar things on 'Freedom' from Traumprinz 1 though not quite so euphorically:
And here's a fine mix from Traumprinz as Prince of Denmark from the Giegling website:
After my Maya Jane Coles appreciation/generic minimal tech-house moan , I'm going to sound hypocritical commencing a series of posts praising the very generic nature of this music, but what the hell... this is pretty darn good. Sebo K makes strong tracks, and was among those responsible, along with Efdemin, Lawrence and doubtless a bazillion lesser-known-and-unsung others, back in the mid-late naughties for championing bigger housier sounds within the pervading mnml scene of the day, and it's a sound he's hardly altered. Indeed like everyone in minimal house land its one they do nothing but refine. I first heard him on Mobilee's Back to Back comp with the still stunning 'Moved' with Prosumer, then via his podcast for RA in early 2007. This, along with Efdemin's two podcasts later, seemed to signal a shift in mainstream-underground minimal house, at least as sign-posters like RA documented it.
I saw Sebo K and Efdemin play shortly after their 'casts at RA's June '07 off-Sonar party in Barcelona, and while too wasted to actually remember anything danced my socks off from open til' close. Philip Sherburne was there too, playing to an empty room upstairs, but when he heard Sebo K he rushed to the front of the floor and danced all night too. As we see today, it's an endearing sound.
Four-and-a-half years later and the variants of minimal house have actually narrowed, with more tracks than ever trading on the basic template these - and yes many many others - housey minimalists have been hammering for years. We're at the asymptote of the development of a kind of perfect dance music, or at least a perfected form of minimal house, but one that, of course, can never be reached. It's this kind of fruitless pursuit, this Quixotic quest for the unattainable, that good generic minimal house sets capture, driving along that endless highway, on a dead-straight road, devoid of the kinds of heights and dips that come with more dynamic, and less focused, sets. Even mnml jerked and twitched in ever so annoying ways.
So, to Sebo K's mix at the 2011 Mobilee Off-Sonar Party: 3 hours of sleak, streamlined, bumpin' generic minimal tech house. All changes are slight, with each track offering subtle variants on the tools and structures of its neighbours. Like the digi-dancehall instramentals praised here these tracks are (for the most part) cookie-cutter jigsaw pieces, pure 'tools' with little identity outside of the group (but where I celebrated the isolated oddness of those dancehall tracks here there's little to get excited about individually). Where Sebo K is good is in his restraint, holding back the tension such that you're always (almost) on the edge of your seat but, it being the kind of wishy-washy genre it is, you never are, really... This teetering contradiction is the whole point and one Sebo K does well here - avoiding boredom by embracing sameness, celebrating it. Like Cage said: If something is boring for one minute do it for ten, then an hour, then two hours... Sebo K does it for 3 and it pretty much works.
In its fluid linearity this reminds me of stellar microhouse sets like those by Kettenkarussell , but with a different agenda: Sebo K - and most/all minimal tech house DJs - is more about funk, groove and sashaying movement, albeit in a compressed and blankly repetitive manner, with a shallower expression of emotion, more warmth, greater diversity, more by-rote and perfunctory (all intentional and not necessarily pejorative), whereas Kettenkarussell... is another story...
I recently received an album by Seth Horvitz in the post, Eight Studies for Automatic Piano, which is, as the title implies, eight studies for automatic piano. I recognized Horvitz's name, but it took me a while to place it - the man behind pioneering glitch and microhouse project Sutekh.
Sutekh was always about more than house, his filigree (algo)rhythms ideally suited to the conceptual playground of Mille Plateaux and Force Inc, but he was best suited to working in 4/4. He was relatively prolific in 1998-2000, when I first got into electronic music, and I picked up a stack of his 12"s from shops all over Tokyo.
His sound seemed to strike a chord with Japan at the time, certainly with me and my then-new surrounds; I felt it perfectly represented the fast-paced neon-drenched environment of the megalopolis, all sharp angles, clockwork regimentation and complex sound design.
I saw Sutekh live in 2001 in Tokyo at Club Asia, and it was an interesting set, more suited to stationary head-nodding than dancing, but that's no complaint. Far more stripped down and earnest than was usually played in Tokyo, even by with-it hipsters. Highlight was 'Untitled #3' from his Force Inc LP Periods Make Sense, a superlative example of raw, chilly microhouse, its influence audible in contemporary productions by DJ Koze, Matthew Dear's False and countless Minus cookie-cutouts, and the Giegling roster.
Now's as good a chance as any to link to this incredible live set by Kettenkarussell. I've listened to this often, and it proved a particularly stirring soundtrack to a long drive down snow covered mountains in rural Victoria. Get it from mnmlssgs here:
Back to Horvitz, it's interesting to hear him doing new stuff, especially for computer-generated piano - a favoured medium of mine. He joins Wolfgang Voigt in the pantheon of techno - computer-piano producers, and sits alongside such heavyweights as Conlon Nancarrow and Rytis Mazulis. It's not Horvitz's first foray into the 'classical' realm, last year's On Bach by Sutekh took that crown, but this hems more closely to classical instrumentation than did that digital Wendy Carlos update.
First listen revealed a simplicity and minimalism not present in any of the works by those composers listed above. As the title implies, each track explores a specific idea, Horvitz keeping these particularly narrow. Info on each track and the score can be found at the Line Imprint here.
More on this once I've given it a proper hearing...
