Meho Plaza - I Sold My Organs

Blackbelt Andersen Takes Balearic To The Motor City

Though the whole Balearic scenario has left me in a state of advanced disinterest, especially in relation to its current manifestation, — Why isn’t Chris Rea revered, or Mister Mister for that matter?— schmooveness of a Shcandinavian ilk, or so many beards, so little time, I do have a little ting for Danny Blackbelt Andersen’s self-titled debut rekkid. He most definitely deals in the same kind of breezy electro fare that has become a staple sound for the likes of Prins Thomas — on whose label he records — and Lindstrøm, but adds a little techno flair to it.

And when I say techno I mean Detroit techno, not the current glut of funkless, melody free, software demo music that we have been inundated with for too long, in fact I’m always amazed by the tendency to intellectualize about music that doesn’t really do anything that interesting or musical, call it the emperor’s new clothes of music. That said, local minimal techno maven Roman Stange needs to get his stuff out to a larger audience. It’s nasty, funky and heady stuff and I want to hear it very, very loud!!

Back to Blackbelt Andersen already. His album is a melodic sojourn in a Balearic place that is smitten with early phase Detroit techno. So what you get are nice chunky, chewy bass lines, pitch bendy strings, à la classic Derrick May, and the kind of warm, alien textures that Carl Craig used to trade in before he became the “very long remix that does the same thing forever and then changes a bit near the end and then goes back to doing the same thing” purveyor.

We know Carl’s from Detroit and a certain amount of adulation is warranted (god knows I’ve done my fair share) but please take us back to the mystery and funk injected abstraction of BFC and Psyche. Sorry, but even though The Juan MacLean and the DFA posse will wax endlessly about Carl’s mix of “Falling Up,” it was good but it was no “Elements” or “Galaxy” or "Domina" remix. I’m not trying to be a purist, but I love Detroit techno, obsessed on it and collected it forever and then edited XLR8R’s techno section when the genre wasn’t cool in SF. My techno standards are high and I hate being minimally lulled into herd-like acceptance.

Mr. Andersen takes that sense of motor city mystery, the sound ringing in Johnny Gambit’s ears as he policed Cabaret 7, and rivets it onto his Nordic/Cosmic vehicle. The results are very pleasant and the whole album listens very nicely, has a few decent dance floor cuts but sounds better in headphones while on the sofa or on the beach (with Chris Rea per’aps). If you like pretty electronic music it’s a must and if you want to romanticize and remember the old techno or scheme the next wave of galactic robot music it will come in handy for that too.

Orr

Remembering Phil on Paddy's Day.

Smash Hits did a piece on Phil Lynott in the early ‘80s, which began by positing the question, “What’s Black, Irish and has a big head?” The answer is Guinness, of course, cos Philo was a rocker par excellence but he didn’t have a big head, no sirree. In the early ‘80s in Ireland, where I grew up, Thin Lizzy were revered, usually by young fellas with AC/DC patches on their denim jackets, but those of us who were bugging out on Joy Division, The Buzzcocks and PIL revered Phil Lynott too, for many reasons. Firstly, we recognized that Thin Lizzy was a seriously good band, secondly we saw from interviews with Phil that he had a lot of love for new music; punk, new wave and even synth pop.

Ultravox member Midge Ure was Lizzy’s stand in tour guitarist in ’79 and I’m sure his friendship with Lynott opened up the Irish rocker to Kraftwerk, Moroder and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Listen to “Yellow Pearl” (the Top of the Pops opening theme for a good chunk of the '80s) from his first solo album for ample proof of that. The third reason we respected him was because he was black and Irish, the real “black Irish,” and we understood, as members of a culture that had been down-trodden, decimated and finally wrenched apart by infighting, how his race made him more vulnerable to xenophobia, stereotypes and racism. All that made us really proud of him.

We felt this because we knew how we were stereotyped as alcoholics (the Irish can and do drink a great deal though), barbaric and stupid, even though we produced thinkers and writers like Jonathon Swift, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Lady Gregory, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce. Phil Lynott was an icon for us because he could rock out with the best of them and then he could turn around and work with the likes of Steve Jones and Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols and Midge Ure from Ultravox. You could hear blues, soul, funk and Kraftwerkian electro in his solo records. Simply put, Philo was a man for all seasons, a renaissance man, the man.

It’s been twenty three years since he passed away and I can think of no better way to tip my hat to Saint Patrick — the Christian, Roman British slave who began the Christianizing process that civilized all of western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire and the barbaric slide into the Dark Ages. This is why we honor him. — than to do likewise to Phillip Parris Lynott. So drop the green beer, the corned beef and cabbage (we don’t do any of that in the old country) and slap on a tune like “Old Town,” “Girls” or “Don’t Believe A Word” and revel in one of the best Irish exports ever, black as Guinness and Irish as all get out. Go dtuga Dia suaimhneas da anam.

Orr

Gilberto Gil, Quilombo

In the ‘90s I never really spent much time listening to Latin music, not that I didn’t like it or was dismissive of it (how could you be?) but the way Afro Latin music was turned into ersatz yuppie jingles for chintzy cocktail bars and earnest nights of “serious” club music just put me off being curious about it at all. I had flirted with it briefly in the ‘80s — in a more innocent age that wasn’t replete with corn ball acid jazz casualties (please god don’t bring that back in a ‘90s revivalist manner) in dodgy hats — but somehow that didn’t resonate with me in the latter half of the next decade.

However, having gone back to Brazilian music again, only to be stunned by its beauty and sense of transcendence, and picking up Caetano Veloso’s book about the Tropicalia movement, Tropical Truth, I am newly refreshed by it. Especially when you listen to it and think about Velosos’s extremely literate, thoughtful and intellectual detailing of that turbulent period in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. One of Veloso’s many, but probably his closest, compatriots was Gilberto Gil, a legendary Brazilian musician who, like Veloso, was exiled to Britain by the military dictatorship.

On the Brazil Classics One record, which was compiled by David Byrne, Gil has a track called “Quilombo, O El Dorado Negro,” taken from the soundtrack of a 1984 Brazilian movie called Quilombo. The movie is based on the history of an independent republic set up by escaped black slaves in seventeenth century Brazil, and Gil wrote the music. I was very familiar with the title track from Byrne’s compilation but recently found a French copy of the soundtrack in great condition and discovered another beautiful track called “Chegada Em Palmares,” which is a slower and deeper reprise of “Quilombo, O El Dorado Negro.” Overall I find the album much more polished than Gil’s earlier work and thus not as interesting to me, but the two tracks mentioned above make it a worthwhile find. I think it’s still in print on CD too, so keep an eye peeled for it.

Orr

Humungoid Ghostly Party in SF Tanite!!

Ghostly International is ten years old and is having banging parties across the country to celebrate the fact. Tonight they’re throwing a shindig at Mezzanine in San Francisco. There’s no need to introduce this wicked label, it covers a vast array of exciting music from rock to heady, techy downtempo and minimal bidness, and consistently puts out quality music. Matthew Dear is on the imprint and local techno outfit Broker/Dealer is on one of Ghostly’s subsidiaries. Tonight’s line up should be a winner; it’s varied — as you would anticipate — and will undoubtedly rock from start to finish. If yer goin’ I’ll see yuz there.

Orr

DJ Hell does the Devil's work!

The guy who kicked off the whole electro deal — well I-F and Stuart Price deserve some serious props too — DJ Hell, is back with a new album, which will be released in late April. I’ll be honest I was ready to dismiss it, not because I dislike what Hell does and has done, but because that cold electronic shudder that he trades in is beginning to wear on me. However, that would be a disservice to the man’s talent, taste and reputation. Teufelswerk (Devil’s Handiwork in English) is the name of the record and it’s no tha bad (as they might say on a sunny day in Glasgow).

It’s comprised of two discs, one is devoted to day, one to night and the album features collaborations with Bryan Ferry, Peter Kruder, Billy Ray Martin, P. Diddy, Stefan Robbers and Christian Prommer. The first disc opens with “U Can Dance,” a track that features Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry and displays Hell’s tougher more techno oriented side. Legendary rap producer P. Diddy adds some vocals to “The DJ,” a bumping, techy house track with the bassline from Sandee’s “Notice Me” and the rest of this disk features six more tough work outs drawing on Hell’s Detroit techno and Chicago acid house influences.

The second CD gets a little more interesting with Hell moving back to some of his earliest influences, German Kosmiche Musik, space rock or Kraut Rock as it is more commonly known. Here he takes a more ambient and downbeat approach, with some subtle rock touches and melodic synth textures. Overall it sounds like Hell colliding with Lindstrøm, except it’s better than Lindstrøm, has more of a raw edge and retains the inherent psychedelic quality of the music. “The Angst/Angst Pt. 2” is a prime example of this, as is the masterful cover version of Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine” which closes the record and sounds like the British space rockers co-opted into a Daniele Baldelli set. Maybe Lemmy should have been asked to guest on this track.

Perhaps this will the last interesting record of the entire electro era, and who better than its innovator and originator to close it out. You have to excuse my recent prophecies of impending electro denouement, but it has to come to an end at some point or at least take a lesser role as newer (albeit probably retro leaning) music forms take centre stage for a new decade and a new generation. The thing is Hell has been around for so long and has such an encyclopedic grasp of dance music that he may fire the opening shot of that too. In the mean time Teufelswerk is well worth checking out. It drops on April 27th, so keep ears peeled.

Orr

The Coming Post-Electro Era, Exploited Records Points The Way Forward

Sorry for the delay fans, — “What fans,” I hear two random people in a phone booth in Concord ask — I’ve been suffering a block once again. But not a total block, more of a temporary impasse, the type of impasse I have when I deal with rock music — especially classic stuff — for a minute and then I feel the gravitational pull of electronic music again. I have the capacity to deal with both as there are no musical borders in my mind, but finding new electronic stuff that compares with my rock of ages is a tricky thing to do.

“So why not write about classic electronic music,” I hear you caringly ask. Well there are enough sites already doing that and though I enjoy reading them a great deal I don’t need to do what they’re doing, and furthermore I like being random with music. I’ve liked so many different genres in my life so far that I don’t want to dedicate myself to one or two types to be honest.

So to pull myself out of the hole of not being able to write about electronic music again I picked up on a German imprint called Exploited. The first record I bought on the label was the Allthegirls EP by Siriusmo back in early 2008, and I got use out of three or four tracks on there, especially the tunes “Femuscle” and Mode Selektor’s edit of “Wow,” a glitchy, dirty downtempo number that I’m sure found favor with the burner crew in SF, and on other scenes too.

The captivating thing about Exploited is that it is definitely pointing itself in the direction of the electro scene, a la Ed Banger, Crookers et al., but it also has an eye on other electronic styles and is in some ways directing us towards the post-electro era, when the genre gets over its youthful, exclusive phase and starts to fuse with other genres. Exploited’s newest release, “Motor Cortex” EP by Lorenz Rhode, is an indication that this is a likely outcome. It’s a six track affair in its vinyl version and a nine tracker in digital form.

There’s no doubt that it’s a little gem in either format simply because it touches on so many genres; from italo and electro to minimal techno, house and downtempo, glitchy bidness. Minimow & Solo’s remix is a minimal techno at its best in that it still retains a sense of fun and isn’t just another chin strokers’ delight. Ben Mono’s house mix of the same tune is another keeper and a sure way to keep the floor heavin and the hands in the air — nice fun use of a Gwen Guthrie sample too.

Add to this the original and its instrumental, a blinding fusion of electro, italo and boogie, with enough balls to get the party jumpin;’ the searing neo-Italo of “Tronic Matic,” the short but very sweet downtempo electro-funk of “A Little Something” and the chunky Italo of “Antidote — with it’s naggingly familiar bass line, and a keyboard melody that slyly hints at Kraftwerk’s “Hall Of Mirrors.” Clump all this noise together and you have a record that will never leave your box, or files that will never be deleted from your hard drive.

Scoop it on sight, it’s a doozy, and keep an eye on Exploited, as it moves electro out of its infancy and brings the fun back to all the other genres it touches on. It's much needed breath of fresh air and melody in a dance music scene numbed by banging electro, polite house and discordant minimal tech.

Orr