Alright, I started to listen to Zimmermann’s music because of Ricardo Villalobos’ praise. I mean, if you hear an artist whom you respect very much musing about another artist whom HE respects very much, it’s certainly worth listening. Especially if the recommending artist is a HE (= veeery well known), and the other a somebody you’ve never heard of before. And no, I haven’t even read the Groove magazin article about the guy yet, since - attention stereotype - his music speaks for itself.
Hypnotic, excessivley long tracks unwind in an ever repeating manner without the idea of boredom crossing one’s mind. And if it does incidentally, it’s a sweet boredom which touches us with a stripped down ennui which is far being blasé - if that’s possible… Plus there often is a reference to latin rhythms hidden somewhere. No wonder that Villalobos likes these tracks. The most astonishing thing though is, that his tracks rock the house - crackling and squeaking as they are. Maybe they awake some deeply caché animal instincts:-? To be serious again, I think it’s his excellent sense of drama that make his tracks stand out from the mass of Minimal bullshit that the club music scene has seen these last years. And the words of a HE of course.
Interesting, that most of the stuff is rather ancient though (I am not talking about release dates only, but about style). I wonder if all this melancholy is a nostalgia issue?
So, what about contemporary sadness in club music? Just a handful, arbitrarily picked from Zuckermann’s “special melancholy collection”:
-> Above all, The Juan Maclean - My shining skinned friend, for example
-> Daypak & Padberg - Black Beauty
-> Those ‘Incredibles’, Noze - Bike double U Noze
-> Carl Craig - Darkness(!) (Radio Slave remix)
Not to speak about ->DJ Hell, when he was still hip? Particularly with this incredible Piaf cliché turned from its head to its feet: She Regrets feat. Billy Ray Martin?
And so, the sadness in “electronic” music continues…
Justice - Love (or) Hate. These are the two only alternatives with those French Touch re-visited all digesting hyped-up Disco diggers. Or let’s say, sometimes it’s both. Although we loved that famous Simian Mobile Disco’s ‘Never be alone’ thing, we actually hate ‘Dance’. There is no other word for it. Although it has the same catchyness, and even a somehow similar beat, it is just pure crap. Like so often with music, doing the right beat it walking on the raser’s edge, really. So yeah, ‘Dance’ the song is just so banal, it hurts. The actually nice idea with the children choir get’s really enervating after about 20 seconds (and that’s shorter than in some other real cheesy pop tunes, let’s say by a certain Justin Timberlake, but ok, the man is being re-worked and re-musceled by a certain Mr. Timbaland, so here we are in for some musical brains). And now for something completely different:
Cause we just looove the ‘Dance’ video. It’s perfectly cool and modern, and so reduced and sooo abundant, and so CGI and so simply analogue, and all at the same same time that it hurts too. But this time because it’s so f***in’ good. Even my girlfriend who is into Björk, urgh, was instantaneously caught by it.
So there you go my friend - LOVE HATE.
Very interesting producer! Never heard of him before, but these Romanians are up and coming anyway they say;-)
I didn’t listen to “Carbon” DJ mix yet but checked his own productions on his myspace site. And yeah, his “Midnight” is a real original and kicking Minimal House track. Clever, surprising and full of interesting ideas. The future of minimal (= dead for now)?
WOW!!! What A-list. You guys must have been digging the crates deeeep…
I agree on a lot of this selection of yours, particularly on NOZE, NOZE and NOZE I saw their live in Berlin’s Panoramabar (THE Berlin club experience iykwim) and it was just miiiind…well, whistlin’ (the only thing left in the frenzy was some stagediving by the half naked artists). then the very, very elegant Alex Under, almost always a yery good bet. And yeah, Shackleton!!!!! all these exclamation marks reflect his surreal “bassyness” btw. And not to forget: DJ Koze for president!!!
On my personal “i rather not agree” list: Serafin & Roman Bruderer - i never really got all the hype about some Cadenza artist anyway (Thomas Melchior beeing the one great exception). Then Karma (forget Compost, these guys are from Munich - uh, just a Berlin joke;-).
But anyway, before this gets too long and since you have them on your list too, if you find the time you might want to read my review on this Junior Boys - Like A Child/Double Shadow (Carl Craig & Kode 9 Mixes) release, incidentally just posted on our blog: www.stalking-gogo-girls.net.
A warning before you read this review, it is written by a real fan. And although we don’t like the obvious 80ies sounds in a lot of other artists (even today, where the end of Electro Clash became history already), here they don’t appear to be mere and empty quotations but something new, fresh and original. If you don’t fear more eulogy, read on…
So, yeah, a word about those wonderful Junior Boys. Last year when their album ‘So This Is Goodbye’ came out, it probably was the most consoling experience for all those souls which had been left by their lovers. To name but one possible dimension of their truly enchanting music. Then came the Sonar Festival Barcelona 2007. And although the sound on the main stage was not the best, the Junior Boys somehow lived up to their studio recordings, giving the whole thing a bit more of a dancefloor feel in the process.
So anyway, then I just happen to stumble across a bunch of Junior Boys remixes marked Promo CDM - whatever for. So yeah cool, there we have an ingenious Hot Chip RM of my almost all-time favorite ‘In The Morning’. And although Hot Chip do a good job here (like most of the time, they’re just cool geezers themselves), they don’t make it up to the hights reached by Alex Smoke’s RM (not on this CD) of that very same song. The Smoker makes a real dance hymn out of the rather thoughtful and poppy original - he manages that by not only putting a cool, state-of-the-art beat underneath the melodic arcs, but creates a track that comes across as truly organic. As if it would be an original composition in the fist place - maybe by a yet unknown Border Community artist. The Hot Chip approach is more subtle though - more fiddly and idiosyncratic if you wish. More listening than dancing for sure, but then…
And although we have a really nice, dubby Kode 9 RM plus a quite mediocre RM by Tensnake, an artist I never heard of before, the other highlight of that particular disc certainly is Carl Craig’s adaptation. What a journey from a very simple, but endlessly hypnotic opening beat towards a clever escalation and some quite surprising turnarounds (simple voice delays on one word for example). This definitely sounds remix - unlike the Alex Smoke track. But one which is crafted to a minimalist perfection only a few people reach these days, among them Radio Slave or Ricardo Villalobos.
So listen up your DJs with a poetic disposition, get these three remixes and both, the Berlin Panoramabar minimalist geek and the Stockholm glamour girl WILL follow you.
This DJ and listening recommendation brought to you by Zuckermann
I saw their live in Berlin’s Panoramabar (THE Berlin club experience iykwim) and it was just miiiind…well, whistlin’ (the only thing left in the frenzy was some stagediving by the half naked artists). then the very, very elegant Alex Under, almost always a yery good bet. And yeah, Shackleton!!!!! all these exclamation marks reflect his surreal “bassyness” btw. And not to forget: DJ Koze for president!!!