Thank your lucky stars that Jorge Ciccioli has sent this three-track EP from Argentina to us, because ORBITAL XPRNC is a great trip into orbit, out past the moon, and then back again.
The title track opens the EP with space shop bleeps and bloops, sweaty dance floor drum beats, upper atmosphere synths, and rocket rumble synth-bass. “Dappled” ups the bass, making it like an electro-syrup oozing over the waffles you’re eating at someone’s house party at 3:14am. The final track, “Noor,” is the sound of a panicked android running from bounty hunters armed with laser rifles.
Short? Yes. Quiet? No. It’s like pushing the “launch” button on a cartoon rocket and holding on until you’re free of gravity.
Clocking in at just four tracks (with one of them being a remix), Gary Holldman‘s URA87 EP is a solid trance-dance record that will make you want to dance, kickbox, shag, or perhaps all three.
The opening title track is a slick, futuristic one with slippery synth-cymbals, heartbeat drums, and pulsing bass. The ORBE remix of it follows, turning the track more robotic and industrial.
“SAM22” floats back and forth between sweaty dance club beats and subdued make-out bass, getting you in the mood or keeping you, ahem, in the game, if you get my drift. I don’t know if “NAT20” refers to a “natural 20” roll in Dungeons & Dragons(which usually indicates at least double damage done to an opponent), but the track is naturally groovy with muted teletype-like cymbals building up to throbbing KMFDM-like bass.
Yes, it’s a short EP, but it packs a wallop about equal to the cover image.
Atlas Corporation is a killer techno-house EP from Abdul Raeva. The Duality Tax label seems to have a stellar batting average when it comes to finding talented DJs and producers and releasing material from them.
Made up of Steffan Todorović and Jonas Arro, Abdul Raeva blends house music with both psychedelic and even prog-rock elements to make a scintillating sound. The title track immediately gives you the sense that your normal, everyday life is about to break into an action film sequence at any moment. “Death Race” is an instant body-mover with its thick bass thumps and psychedelic synth chords.
The Andy Garvey remix of “Death Race” starts off the second half of the EP with a spooky intro that builds into something that sounds like a beatboxing robot working in an underground nightclub. I love how the EP ends with a mellower cut – “Guardian of the Vault.” It’s a sultry, almost tropical jam.
It’s one of the better house / techno records I’ve heard this year.
The last night of Levitation 2022 took us back to Stubb’s for more psychedelic freak-outs. It was the night before Halloween, so plenty of people were still in costume – including some rather elaborate ones such as an astronaut and multiple witches decked out in exotic costumes and makeup.
Those witches probably appreciated the wild set by Frankie and the Witch Fingers, who only get better every time I see them live. They had painted their faces like ghouls for the occasion and ripped through a lot of roaring fuzz.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers
Up next, and all the way from France, were La Femme. They played a fiery set of electro-psych mixed with a lot of sex appeal and vocals in French. The crowd wasn’t sure what to make of them at first, but they gained many fans by the end of their set.
La Femme
Closing out the Stubb’s show were The Black Angels – hometown heroes and curators of the festival. They never disappoint, and they played some extended versions of classic tracks and heavy stuff from their newest album, Wilderness of Mirrors.
The Black Angels
The end of their set wasn’t the end of the festival, however. We made the ten-minute drive to Feels So Good Records to catch Moon Duo perform a set in their “lightship” – a cube of screens that had projections coming through the back of it toward the crowd instead of the other way around with the images going onto the stage and band. Moon Duo would sometimes melt into the images. It was a hypnotizing effect and a beautiful blend of light and sound.
Moon Duo in the Lighsthip
After their set ended, a guy near us said, “Levitation’s over.” with a bit of sadness in his voice. It was for him and for us. It had been a fun weekend, as always, with good vibes all around and a lot of excellent music. It remains one of the best festivals for music lovers.
The second night of Levitation Austin 2022 started at Hotel Vegas. I hadn’t been to a show there since 2013 and was delighted to see the place hadn’t changed much. If anything, the outdoor stage area seemed a bit bigger.
Warm Dragwere the first act we saw that night, putting on the sexiest show of the weekend with their blend of electro, fuzz, and spooky rock. Lead singer Vashti Windish owned the stage in her biker leather while percussionist / beat master Paul Quattrone got to work in his tank top. The crowd was hypnotized by them both by their set’s end.
Warm Drag
Quattrone took a water break and then was back on stage with the rest of his Osees bandmates for the second night of their four-night residency at Hotel Vegas. They came out swinging, blasting through a lot of tracks in just an hour. Their raging punk set of material from their new album, A Foul Form, left the audience breathless multiple times.
Osees
We left Hotel Vegas for Elysium to catch the rare performance by The UFO Club – a sort of supergroup consisting of members of Night Beats and The Black Angels, who performed their (so far) only album from beginning to end. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to hear those songs live, so this set was one of the highlights of the festival for me.
The UFO Club
The night ended with Mexican psych-rock legends Los Dug Dug’s. They played a fun blend of psych, surf, and border rock.
Los Dug Dug’s
Up next would be a trio of Australian bands and doom metal in a blues bar.
Gloria de Oliveira and Dean Hurley share the video for “Eyes Within” from their new album, Oceans of Time (out now on Sacred Bones). The video – a “one woman operation” shot, directed, and edited by Oliveria – is a gorgeous accompaniment to her and Hurley’s evocative soundscape, featuring digital and Super 8 footage from an island in Brazil. It “reflects the introspective nature of the song, drawing inspiration from the diary-like approach to cinema of Agnés Varda, and her wandering female protagonists such as herself in her essayistic documentaries (‘The Beaches of Agnés’), or Sandrine Bonnaire in ‘Vagabond’ and Corinna Marchand in ‘Cléo from 5 to 7.’,” Oliveira says. “I also drew inspiration from the romanticism of Zeffirelli‘s 1960s version of Romeo & Juliet and the accompanying soundtrack by Nino Rota, the latter of which was also a reference point to Dean and me while we were working on the album.”
Watch “Eyes Within” With its impressionistic synths, shimmering guitars, and ethereal sonics, Oceans of Time at moments recalls the foundational dream pop of 4AD acts and early 90’s New Age pop. Frequent David Lynch collaborator Dean Hurley sets the tonal and sonic backdrop of each track on the album, lending a layered ether that envelops, frames and spotlights de Oliveira’s vocals. The album feels especially attuned to the connections between the physical and transcendental realms, and like the best dream pop, has a way of making the veil between two worlds feel just a little bit thinner. Oceans of Time is a key that has the power to release its listener from the handcuffs of reality, however briefly.
Growing out of a musical pen-pal style correspondence that took place over the course of a year, separated by the Atlantic Ocean, de Oliveira and Hurley passed thoughts and music back and forth that would eventually form their collaborative album Oceans of Time, all without ever meeting or speaking. The result is a sonic tapestry of that exchange: woven from conceptual threads of the celestial within, mortality and the realm beyond the stars. The duo’s partnership is an effortless merge, with the steady presence of de Oliveira’s vocals endowing the record with its sense of potency.
Throughout Oceans of Time, there is an innate understanding of how a lyric across a chordal color can sharpen an emotional truth. Much like a sunbeam that pierces a spiderweb to reveal its intricacy, de Oliveira’s lyrics and melody are purposely aimed in order to illuminate the truths deep within one’s self…a process that ties us all to the universal. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, a professed influence, wrote about concepts of truth and faith in a way that illuminate the hidden depths of the soul amidst an individual’s earthly trials of experience. Much of this feeds into the album and threads its quilt of themes.
Hailing from Montpellier, Klint brings hard, thumping dance grooves over five solid tracks on his debut, Le Temps. Each track is a bit over five minutes and all of them will drive your house party for almost a half-hour non-stop.
The opening title track alone gets your pulse racing and feet moving. The throb of the electro-bass is addictive. “Adrenochrome” gets into your muscles and mind like its namesake and has you dancing in order to chase away aliens who might be trying to kidnap you (as announced by the slow building space-synths).
“Adversaire” slides into your house like a shadowy figure and then proceeds to thump, bump, and jump-start you with it’s slightly fuzzy bass grooves. “Beta” has these twitchy beats that get under your clothes, then under your skin, and then settle in your hips, legs, and shoulders. Lastly, “Le Un et Deux” pops and percolates like something you’d hear in a Westward-like pleasure dome around 3am.
You could drop this whole thing into a DJ set and everyone would think you’re brilliant, but be sure to give Klint credit.
Buffalo Daughter‘s 2021 album, We Are the Times, is a good time capsule of what was happening in the band’s lives, and all our lives, in the middle of a pandemic. The band declared that we had had adapt to the times we were in or be stuck in them forever.
“Music is the vitamin to live under. Too much pressure in quarantine,” they say at the beginning of the album on “Music.” Synth-bloops and heavy electro-bass pep us up for the times to come. In fact, “Times” is the next track, and it’s bumping dance track about adapting to circumstances beyond your control – so why worry about them? They state the obvious on “Global Warming Kills Us All,” and they state it with robotic voices, possibly to emulate our eventual A.I. overlords that take over the planet to save it from us.
“Life is long, life is short. I’m not sure what time we’re in. Should I stay, or should I go?” Whatever you do, “Don’t Punk Out,” they warn on this cool post-punk jam with sharp guitars and bright synths. “Loop” lands somewhere between electro and industrial. “ET (Densha)” brings in dubstep bass, but plays it slow to create a sense of dread and danger. On “Jazz,” they encourage us to open our hearts and minds in these weird times. People might need us as much as we need them. The album ends with the quirky “Everything Valley,” which encourages us to hold onto hope
It’s another good album from Buffalo Daughter that, like a lot of their stuff, is hard to classify, but that’s okay. It’s meant to lift your spirits a bit, so let it.
As if Rochelle Jordan‘s excellent album, Play with the Changes, wasn’t cool enough, now she’s released Play with the Changes Remixed, which is just what the title implies – a full remix of the album by some of the top producers and DJs in today’s music scenes.
&ME‘s remix of “Situation” ups the synth-bass to levels that make you go, “Oh, damn…That’s hot.” DJ Minx turns “Dancing Elephants” into an after-party house jam. Sango somehow turns “Got Em” into a sexier track. KLSH speeds up “Count It” into a playful cut that borders on industrial music. Kaytranada bumps up the funk on “All Along.”
Kingdom softens “Nothing Left,” almost putting us into a happy dream so Machinedrum can wake us with wicked beats and happy thoughts to start our day on the remix of “Lay.” LSDXOXO remixes “Love U Good” into a bit of a dancehall bumper that will have your hips moving. Sinistarr, meanwhile, turns “Next 2 U” into a full-on mid-1990s rave track that is only missing a strobe light and whistles blown by scantily clad, somewhat dehydrated people.
The Things You Say remix of “Already” is sure to fill dance floors just from the bouncy bass and bartender-shaking-a-cocktail percussion. Soul Clap brings in popcorn popper drum and bass on the remix of “Broken Steel.” Byron the Aquarius sends us out on a somewhat trippy vibe with his remix of “Something” at the end of the album.
There isn’t a bad mix on here. You can slip any of these cuts into a DJ set and everyone will love you for it.
Today Porto-based harpist Angélica Salvi has announced details of her forthcoming album ‘Habitat’ for release on November 4th via Lovers & Lollypops.
Since releasing her debut record ‘Phantone’ in 2019, Salvi has worked across multiple projects, both solo and in collaborations in the fields of cinema, dance, theatre, photography and music, working with names such as Valentina Magaletti, Lafawndah, The Pyramids, Natural Information Society,Evan Parker and more.
On ‘Habitat’ she continues to deepen her sonic exploration across eight songs with the harp at the centre, supported by the use of real-time audio signal processing tools to create complex textural works – each one evoking a specific sensory memory.
Today she shares the brisk, breathlessly racing first single and accompanying video, “Crina”. “Crina” means mane or horsehair in Portuguese, and Salvi describes the song as “The feeling of riding a horse… A journey into the unknown.”
The accompanying video, directed by award-winning Portuguese filmmaker André Gil Mata, was inspired by the album’s cover. “He said he really enjoys to look at my hands when I play. He says it is like a dance” Salvi explains. “He imagined my hands mimetized with a natural habitat. I told him I was imagining a mimetic atmosphere in the whole album: with water, plants, sand… so he chose plants, moss and water.”
On ‘Habitat’, Angélica is inspired by the habitat of her own, and the way in which she relates to it in her daily life. Each of the songs is a sensory memory that can be relived over and over again, with changing nuances and subtleties. It’s a set of moments of interaction with the elements that are, or have been, part of her routine and are transformed or modified with her actions. Memories captured and reproduced infinitely through labyrinthine patterns and sound textures, ambiguous melodies and flourishing harmonies that fluctuate, coexist and interact with other beings or elements in their universe of minimal language.
The album was created and recorded in her home studio with the aim of being fully possible to reproduce and process the sound in real time, in the context of live music. On the album there is almost no post-production. All sounds that appear on it come out of the harp and the affiliated pedals.
