Despite a harsh review of Bretons debut album ‘ Other People’s Problems’ on Pitchfork I had a couple of weeks since the release date in March to listen to it often and carefully. On the way to the office and back, in rotation with Claro Intelecto’s latest release ‘Reform Club’. Claro Intelecto is one of my top electronic artists and ‘Neurofibro’ from 2004 is amongst my Top-10 electronic albums ever. But in the morning in a car and in a hurry, in front pensioners in a slow Skoda blocking the roads it needs some more energetic stuff. And so I enjoyed Breton very much. The sound is young and fresh, a mixture of indie, garage and fine electronics.
Well, I don’t put too much weight into the lyrics but I disagree with Pitchforks scorching criticism about the sound and their ideas. “It’s perhaps unfair to introduce Breton’s music by way of comparison, as they do have plenty of their own ideas. Sadly, they’re not well executed.” Bollocks, exactly this is the quality of this record. Not to overstretch these new ideas and there are so many of it on the album I never heard before in that combination.
So what next? Eject the Breton CD for a while (yes in my car I still have a CD player) and let’s see what the mighty Jason Pierce has produced recently with ‘Sweet Heart, Sweet Light’ . All Spiritualized stuff is a definite must buy.
Here are what I collected about Breton’s Other People’s Problems:
Another soundtrack review on +spatze.com? Well, yes but for an imaginary film. ‘Themes For An Imaginary Film’ from Johnny Jewel aka Symmetry, co-founder of Italians Do It Better, is often described as an alternative or even lost soundtrack of the superb film ‘Drive‘ (already mentioned here). Some more background information why Johnny Jewel was not the first choice can be found here. Anyway, this is a superb piece of work over 2 hours – stream here:
I recently received two exclusive full preview tracks from Posthuman’s new EP ‘Nebula’ which is due to be released on 16th of April and followed by a series of mixes a couple of weeks later. The tracks ‘Synapses’ and ‘Tessier Ashpool’ sound promising – decent and timeless acid techno stuff. But there seem to be some more hidden jewels on this EP. ‘Marrus Environ’ even has a touch of dubstep but ‘Genetic Coders’ and ‘Nebula’ contain some of these typical and unique Posthuman tunes which I like very much.
It’s not going to be expensive I suppose. Acroplane is a small Irish netlabel with reasonable prices. I just purchased Anodyne’s latest 5-track release ‘We Decode The Future’ for fair 3,50 quid. ‘Nebula’ will be around the same. Support the small labels and independent artists!
School Of Seven Bells – Ghostory – Ghostly International
Scuba – Personality – Hotflush
Mr. 76ix – Experiment Four – Skam
MoM’s long absence is forgiven. ‘Parastrophics’ is sick as hell, it’s an 8-bit monster with some totally crazy but catchy tracks like Baku Hipster and Seaqz. Damn, can’t get Baku Hipster out of my head.
School Of Seven Bells is another superb band signed to Ghostly International. Their music reminds me very much to the Cocteau Twins. Well, I can’t deny my enthusiasm for all the Shoegaze stuff. Teaser here:
Scuba’s second album release on his own imprint Hotflush received less good critics than the predecessor ‘Triangulation’. I do like ‘Personality’ very much – it simply grooves.
And finally Mr. 76ix performs as good as usual – I’ve been following his carrier since his first appearance on Skam in 2004 and never got disappointed.
I finally found the time to listen to Tropics collection of recently unreleased tracks and it was a rather unexpected listening pleasure. ‘Nautical Clamor’ has been released at the beginning of 2012 already and consists of 10 tracks. I wonder why some of tracks didn’t make it to the official releases. Well, get it for just 3 quid.
Blondes are two guys from New York and just released their debut album on RVNG. The label says “Like, Revenge without the Es. That’s us knocking at your door.” And Blondes are their hipster house revenge with a collection of Blondes’ early EP’s, two additional tracks and a bonus disc containing some excellent mixes. My favourite tracks are Hater and the very nice and dark mix of “Pleasure” from Andy Stott.
I am big fan of soundtracks. Beside the ones of my favourite electronic artists like Plaid (with Tekkon Kinkreet OST and Heaven’s Door OST ) there are a lot of older but superb soundtracks from e.g. The Chemical aka Dust Brothers (Fight Club OST ) and Clint Mansell (Pi OST) and many new ones I enjoyed very much, like Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy OST, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ The Social Network OST, Cliff Martinez’ Drive OST etc.
Air provided a new soundtrack to a new hand coloured version of Georges Méliès 1902 silent film Le Voyage Dans La Lune (Journey To The Moon). And Air did make it a homage to this film and decided to extend the soundtrack into a full album. Air’s live performance is amazing (I’ve seen them a few years ago playing live in Mainz near Frankfurt) and expectations are high.
Listen to ‘Seven Stars’ (video from NME.com) from the new album and watch an extract of the original version of this film.
This year was really difficult. Finally Plaid’s ‘Scintilli’ fascinated me the most. It was no love at first sight but ‘Scintilli’ grows with its rather dark but crazy tunes and tasty beats. See also my post from August 2011.
Here are the runners-up:
The Fear Ratio – Light Box
M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Zomby – Dedication
Modeselektor – Monkeytown
Many other excellent albums, just to name a few which I enjoyed very much as well: Roll The Dice, The Block Dog, Walls, Tropics etc.
Last search terms:
symmetry ideas symmetry ideas scintilli Bochum Welt - R.O.B. biosphere substrata 2 blog plaid - fuzzy unreleased bits for midnight snacks download "london conversations: the best of saint etienne" 2009 global goon quonesha plaid midnight snacks spatze Tekkonkinkreet remix O.S.T.
