Anonymity is a funny game. For every shy, retiring bedroom producer who claims “it’s just about the music, man” there may well be a celebrated artist attempting to cash in on a hyped new style without the shackles of their reputation, or someone else equally well known hiding their own connections and position from plain […]
Read more
Happy fifth birthday to Donky Pitch! As any keen reader of ours will know, we’re big supporters of the Donky Pitch imprint and have continued to showcase and highlight the talent coming from their camp. To mark their fifth year of existence (congratulations guys) they’ve put together a compilation of tracks from everyone on their […]
Read more
“I think you’ve got to aspire to something more than loop techno.” So said Houndstooth-affiliated Call Super in an interview for RBMA last year. While you could never mistake JR Seaton’s three releases for the fabric offshoot label as something so reductive (yet nonetheless effective) as loop techno, they’ve still been very firmly focused on the dance […]
Read more
You probably know Travis Scott as the mysterious protege of Kanye West. You may have seen him on the 2013 XXL Freshman List and you may have seen him in the credits of Kanye’s Cruel Summer and Yeezus. You’ve probably heard controversies surrounding stolen artwork and betrayed associates. With no standout single to his name, his production […]
Read more
Context can direct the effects of art completely, and it can be a proper dastardly thing. With Punish, Honey, Sebastian Gainsborough’s second full-length as Vessel, there seems to be an asynchronous relationship between his intentions and the reception of the record. For starters, a declared intent to explore, “What does ‘Englishness’ in music really mean?” […]
Read more
Jungle has a special vibe unlike any of the sounds to come from the London. Like Ben UFO, most of us never went to Blue Note, Roast, Innersense, Thunder & Joy, A.W.O.L or Jungle Fever for that matter – guess it’s called jungle fever for a reason. The best we can do is cruise around in MA-2 jackets listening […]
Read more
We’re sat in the town square. The sound of the life around us buzzes in our ears; the coherent yet unintelligible voices of our neighbours and the townsfolk find their way to us, occasionally belonging to children, and even less so women, as men vie to place theirs above the rest; the market stalls situated […]
Read more
Two minutes into Primitive World‘s ‘Purple Caps’ there arrives a jagged, distorted guitar-like bassline. In tune with the warped synth globs that have preceded it, it points the track in a rugged, industrial direction. What follows isn’t quite expected, however, as bright, expansive synth lines hover above within a minute, an abrupt yet welcome offering […]
Read more
In a stellar couple of years Bintus‘ Power Vacuum label has established itself as one of the finest purveyors of the harder club-flattening side of techno. JoeFarr brings us the label’s ninth release; having shared a track with J.Tijn on the labels’ eighth release, the four way split Vectors EP, this one continues Power Vacuum’s […]
Read more
Chicago upstart (how many times have we heard that since 2012?) Kit is something of an anomaly. At some point along the lengthy, recreating spectrum of hip-hop and R&B the Midwest provides us with year after year (and which enthusiasts avow to pick apart), Kit is situated at a very liminal position, owing his artistic […]
Read more
If you can pry yourself away from the World Cup on TV tonight (as I write this Arjen Robben actually just scored to take the Netherlands 2-1 up against Spain so we understand if you can’t) we’ve got something interesting for you. Tuff Wax, the Aberdeen/ Brighton based label, are back on the scene and […]
Read more
Returning in a slightly disparate but no doubt fine form is Joey Butler, better known to us as atmospheric proficient Kid Smpl; this time on the label that he helped inaugurate. A Truancy Volume alum himself, Butler spoke of his sound as “super introspective” and “isolated,” at the time of our interview with him back in 2012 […]
Read more