Coming in with a cover that looks like something by a death metal band and beats that sound like a basement club staffed by werewolves, X Club‘s Now or NeverEP is a great EDM record that combines trance, house, and jungle.
“Concentrate” challenges you to do just that – focus on the beats and dance, dammit. You need to let go and cut loose now and then, and forget about all the crap happening in the world. The perfectly titled “Inna Trance” brings early rave tracks to mind and will get you bouncing.
“Sports That Require Petrol” not only has a fun title, but some of the coolest beats on the EP. It will make you want to stamp the pedal to the metal, or at least turn up the speed and incline on your treadmill. The EP ends with the “Journey Mix” of “Elevation” – a trippy track that drifts into euphoria by the end.
I’d like to catch these two Aussies at a festival or club. I’m sure they put on a great set, if this EP is any indication.
Keep your mind open.
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Following its genesis release from the label co-founder himself, Galway native KETTAMA invites Brisbane locals and close pals X CLUB. to lay down the riddims for G-TOWN002.
Having met the lads at their GRID night in Brisbane during his Australian tour, G-TOWN Records label head KETTAMA alongside Shampain are familiar with the dutty duo. Shampain actually interviewed the pair for the VSN World website (a concept that started as a club night run by the label heads), so you could say this is a dream link up of sorts. They may be on the other side of the world but make no mistake, X CLUB. are honorary G-TOWN members.
Following releases on Steel City Dance Discs and 1Ø Pills Mate, alongside appearances on Mall Grab and Miley Serious’ Rinse FM shows, the duo of Ben Clarke & Jesse Morath have cemented their reputation as one of dance music’s most exciting doublets with their distinctively large productions – channeling influence from grime, electro, hardcore and techno – and capturing the minds and hearts of dance music fans with their big-room, uncompromising attitude. Punishingly beautiful, devastatingly cinematic; X CLUB.’s back catalogue invites a sea of oxymorons to the shore, blending euphoria and darkness – with one eye on the past and another to the future – to perfectly capture the mood of the modern-raver.
‘Concentrate’ kicks things off with a swirling blend of textured atmospherics and driving kicks that soon manipulates into a steppy electro-techno hybrid drenched in heads down energy. ‘Inna Trance’ swaps the serious for the fun with something that sounds like a blend of quintessential X CLUB. and the progressive, trance-like sounds of Radiant Love in Berlin; bouncy techno for those that like to smile while they dance.
‘Sports That Require Petrol’ incites images of joyriding youths doing donuts in parking lots and sweaty bodies bumping into one another in packed-out clubs; an ode to the hardcore era that contributed to the birth of the X CLUB. concept, before ‘Elevation (Journey Mix)’ guides us on a blissed-out trip through emo-dreamscapes and tears-in-the-club energy that wouldn’t sound out of place dropped in the middle of a Bicep performance.
Today, Marco Benevento shares his latest single, “At The End Or The Beginning” (listen/share). Diving deep down a psych-funk rabbit hole, the singer/songwriter/keyboardist captures the zeitgeist with lyrics like “we can walk and keep our distance, the whole world changed in an instant,” as he delivers a dose of blissed-out escapism where listeners can recontextualize these troubled times through a surrealistic-slanted optimism and the pure joy of an irresistible groove.
“Where are we? At the end or the beginning? It’s been a strange few years not being able to hug our close friends or play shows and to see so many people struggling from this pandemic that came out of nowhere,” says Benevento. “So the idea was inspired by what we’ve all been living through. The lyric says it all, we can’t wait for the clouds to lift up for us…this one time.”
Co-written with San Diego-based poet/lyricist Alfred Howard, “At The End Or The Beginning” hints at what’s to come from Benevento in 2022 as he puts the finishing touches on a new studio album. In the meantime, Benevento and his band featuring bassist Karina Rykman and drummer Dave Butler perform a handful of select shows to close out 2021, including a sold out two night run at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock this weekend, a three night stretch at one of his favorite rooms The Press Room in Portsmouth on November 11-13 and Brooklyn Bowl over Thanksgiving weekend.
Over the course of seven studio albums and countless shows around the world, keyboardist Marco Benevento has drawn praise from tastemakers far and wide. Los Angeles Times has written, “it’s safe to say that no one sees the keyboard quite like Marco Benevento’s genre-blind mashup of indie rock, jazz and skewed improvisation,” while NPR Music raves that Benevento combines “the thrust of rock, the questing of jazz and the experimental ecstasy of jam.”
Indeed, Marco Benevento’s music cuts a wide swath, seemingly connecting the dots in the vast space between LCD Soundsystem and Leon Russell, His songwriting is smart and earthy, yet simultaneously pulsating with dance rock energy. Benevento’s high energy live shows have led to numerous high profile appearances, ranging from CarnegieHall to Pickathon. In the studio, he’s collaborated with the likes of Richard Swift (The Shins, Nathaniel Rateliff), Leon Michels (Lee Fields, Freddie Gibbs) and Simone Felice (The Felice Brothers, The Lumineers) among others.
Upcoming Shows
November 13 – Portsmouth, NH – The Press Room (Sold Out) November 27 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Bowl December 11 – Miami, FL – North Beach Music Festival
Audiovisual artist, vocalist and experimental producer DEBBY FRIDAY is back with a new single & video, “FOCUS“. The track originally premiered on Adult Swim on their latest Digitalis compilation.
Speaking about the meaning behind the song, FRIDAY said “I wrote this song in 2019, when I first started thinking about writing an album and the possibility of pursuing my creative passions as my career was making itself known to me. I kept debating with myself, ‘do I want this? or do I not want this?’ It’s a heavy question. The video also speaks to this. The whole process was like undergoing some sort of fire baptism. It was difficult and chaotic and supernatural. I felt like I was the mountain, cracking open and spilling forth.”
The video for “FOCUS“, filmed on 35mm, opens on the astonishing scene of a live avalanche – a torrent of snow flying across a frozen mountain range. The vision behind it was created by FRIDAY herself and director Ryan Ermacora.
“The shoot took a few days, spread out over a week. First, Ryan and Jeremy went to film the avalanche in Kaslo. The avalanche crew had to take them up in a tiny helicopter with all the gear to an adjacent mountain so that they could set up the dynamite and then we could get the shot. Once that was done, myself and a skeleton crew drove out to Cache Creek to shoot in the mountains there,” said FRIDAY. Shot across various locations in British Columbia, we watch as FRIDAY runs through a deserted forest and icy woods, glitching between daytime and nighttime. The desolate frigid landscape is juxtaposed with the striking imagery of her bullwhip choreography. The blazing whip cracks in the twilight air as she stands fierce and unrelenting, decked out in futuristic winter gear. Paired together, the trumpeting bass and spellbinding images make for a vision of an apocalyptic future where FRIDAY has become the last woman on Earth.
On making the video, FRIDAY stated, “Getting the logistics of everything together was the most stressful part. It’s not everyday that you have to figure out how to make an avalanche and take fire bullwhip cracking lessons. Thankfully, I had a really supportive crew the whole way through. It took a lot but I feel like this song and video marks a turning point for me that I can’t exactly name yet.”
After finishing her Master of Fine Arts degree earlier this year, FRIDAY has set her laser focus on her forthcoming LP. With a secret title and rumoured accompanying short film, DEBBY FRIDAY is not slowing down anytime soon.
Born in Nigeria, raised in Montreal and now based in Vancouver, FRIDAY released her debut self-produced, rap adjacent EP, BITCHPUNK in 2018. In 2019, Deathbomb Arc ushered in her second, critically acclaimed EP, DEATH DRIVE, which throbbed with eroticised electropunk fervour and cleared a path for self-actualisation. FRIDAY also created and directed her “FATAL” video, which was subsequently nominated for the 2020 Prism Prize Award, as well as her first short film, “BARE BONES“. Earlier this year, FRIDAY released the video for her single, “RUNNIN“, and also shared “LINK SICK” – an audio-play written, directed and scored by FRIDAY herself. She is currently working on her debut full length, and will be appearing at Substance Fest in Los Angeles on November 28.
Keep your mind open.
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JacquesGreene announces ANTH01, a collection of tracks and out-of-print 12”’s spanning the earliest years of his career. Arriving ten years after his groundbreaking single, “Another Girl,” ANTH01 features classics that introduced Greene to the world, such as “The Look,” and also includes collaborations with Koreless and How To Dress Well, plus tracks from Greene’s releases on 3024, NightSlugs and his own Vase imprint. In conjunction with today’s announcement, Greene shares “I Won’t,” a certified live favorite and highly requested unreleased gem; one of two exclusive, previously unreleased tracks to appear on ANTH01.
Greene has been making music “about the club” for over a decade. Over the course of multiple EPs, singles, and two full-length albums – 2017’s FeelInfinite and 2019’s DawnChorus – his sound has developed into an emotional haze. Outside of his own releases, Greene has explored his relationship with the club in a variety of contexts, from remixing Radiohead to producing for KatyB, Tinashe and touring with Thexx.
“Time became quite slippery in the past year and a half,” says Greene. “As the years go it’s strange how some things feel like just yesterday while others are seemingly lifetimes away. It was equal parts challenging and fun to revisit some of this material that laid the foundation for this Jacques Greene project. ‘ANTH01’ is a form of anthology: a collection of songs meant to tell the first few chapters of that story. From bedroom studios in the Mile End in Montreal at the start of the 2010s to now. Thank you for listening.”
ANTH01 Tracklist: 01. I Won’t 02. (Baby I Don’t Know) What you Want 03. The Look 04. Tell Me 05. These Days 06. Arrow (feat. Koreless) 07. Ready 08. Faded 09. On Your Side (feat. How To Dress Well) 10. Faithful 11. Quicksand 12. Another Girl
Ela Minus’ debut album acts of rebellion, released last October via Domino, boasts “daring calls to would-be dance floor revelers and rioters alike, in both English and Spanish” (Rolling Stone). Since the album’s release, Ela has been keeping busy – she recently performed at Chanel’s Fall-Winter 2021/2022 Haute Couture show and remixed Little Dragon’s “Hold On”. This fall, Ela will tour the US in support of the album. Ahead of these dates, she today presents a remix of “close” (feat. Helado Negro) by Buscabulla, plus a live performance of the otherworldly Liminal Spaces version of the song.
Ela and Buscabulla have previously worked together, namely on Ela’s remix of their song “Vámono.” The “close” remix features vocal contributions from Buscabulla’s Raquel Berrios and expands the playful original into a murky and dreamy dance track. The “close” (Liminal Spaces Version) live performance was filmed in the Centro Historico district in Mexico City earlier this spring and marks the first time Ela performed the song live.
“‘close’ is different from the rest of the songs on my album in many ways, including that it’s the only one with a collaboration, Helado Negro. My approach to sharing this song has been different; when I imagined how to approach new versions of it, I imagined them very distinctly. I came across the concept of liminal spaces, which inspired the improvisation of this version – in one take. I always imagined hearing Raquel’s vocals on this song, so I asked Buscabulla to rework it.” – Ela Minus
Recorded in Zurich during the pandemic, Mano Le Tough‘s new album, At the Moment, is a chronicle of him dealing with lockdown while raising a family and adjusting to the reality of not touring, not seeing fans, and having to just be in the moment.
The first words on the album are “On stormy nights, if you start to pray…” The sample is from from a documentary on the remote Irish island of Aran – a place that knows and embraces isolation. “Man of Aran” swells with blips and bloops and has a peaceful quality to it, as does “Empty Room” with its lyrics about listening to bees and learning to be present instead of dwelling on how much we missed everyone in 2020.
The sparse “Snow on Bamboo” leads into the thumping, danceable “Aye Aye Mi Mi.” The smooth lyrics of of “Moment to Change” drift into the dance-synths and bright pop of “Fadó Fadó.” “Pompeii” bumps and thumps with dance floor bass and heavenly synths while the gospel handclaps elevate you higher.
I will never turn down good dub music, and “No Road without a Turn” certainly qualifies. The echoing beats, tinny synths, and heady, thick bass are a great combination. “New / Cycles” has goth touches (creepy synths and slightly industrialized beats) and lyrics like “You hollow me out and fill me in.”
“So Many So Silent” reminds me of Art of Noise tracks with its mixture of synths, warped vocals, bells and xylophones, and echoing dance beats. The acoustic guitar “Short Cuts” eventually dissolves into a dial tone, or perhaps the sound of an old modem…which nicely bridges into the futuristic dance track “Together” to close the album.
At the Moment is an interesting record. It’s difficult to categorize, but I think that’s the point. It’s something Mano Le Tough made in the moment and without much thought to fitting everything into one box. It’s an album made in the present for the present.
Irish producer and DJ Mano Le Tough releases a new single, “Aye Aye Mi Mi,” from his forthcoming album, At The Moment, out August 20th on DJ Koze’s Pampa Record, and announces new tour dates with more to come. Following lead single “No Road Without A Turn,” “Aye Aye Mi Mi” is an indie dance ear-worm that’s hard to shake, and is the only track on the record that survived his original batch of demos and sketches. Beat and bass heavy, it highlights Mano’s skills for melodies and compelling vocal inflections. Mesmerizing instrumental flourishes, like ascending keys, filter in and out. “It’s a kind of reflection on narcissism, social media saturation and the ego,” Mano says.
After more than a decade of releases and touring, Mano has spent the past year at home in Zurich, rearing his young family and focusing on the positives of 14 months without performing, amid the uncertainty of the pandemic. In the face of horror, Mano channelled inspiration. With At The Moment, the follow-up to 2015’s Trails, those struggles have produced a record which balances the ambivalence of the current moment, with wistful streaks of unguarded optimism.
At The Moment shows Mano’s modes of expression evolving too. The synths and rhythms common to earlier works are now complemented with less familiar sounds and influences. Jangling guitars and sun-bleached chords envelop his own tender, plaintive vocals in a dappled wash of summery pop. Another track grounds overlapping melodies and sci-fi soundtrack pads with hip hop beats, creating a hypnotic slice of slinky retro-futurism. Where there is reflection, there is also a sense of being unafraid. Listen to Mano Le Tough’s “Aye Aye Mi Mi”
Fri. July 23 – Las Vegas, NV @ Art of the Wild Sat. July 24 – New York, NY @ Teksupport Sun. July 25 – Miami, FL @ Space Thu July 29 – Athens, FR @ Island Sun. Aug. 15 – Bloemendaal, NL @ Woodstock Sun. Aug. 16 – Berlin, DE @ TBD Mon. Aug. 17 – Verbier, CH @ Electroclette Fri. Aug. 27 – Lincolnshire, UK @ Lost Village
Producer and musician Kelly Lee Owens is “reclaiming space for women in dance music in really powerful and important ways” (NPR Music). Last year, she released Inner Song, one of 2020’s best albums, via Smalltown Supersound. Today, she announces a UStour in support of the album — tickets are on sale. Kicking off at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg, Owens will play across the states, including appearances at Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival and Miami’s III Points Festival. Additionally, she will release the Inner Song Remix Series EP this Friday. It features remixes by Loraine James, Coby Sey, Roza Terenzi, Elkka, Breaka,Yazzus, and Haider.
Kelly Lee Owens Tour Dates Wed. Sept. 8 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg Fri. Sept. 10 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival Sat. Sept. 11 – Philadelphia, PA @ Making Time Mon. Sept. 13 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair Tue. Sept. 14 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage Thu. Sept. 16 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line Fri. Sept. 17 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall Sat. Sept. 18 – Seattle, WA @ Nuemos Sun. Sept. 19 – Portland, OR @ Holocene Wed. Sept. 22 – Oakland, CA @ Starline Sat. Sept. 25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room Fri. Oct. 22 – Sat. Oct. 23 – Miami, FL @ III Points Festival
With his new album ‘Dragons‘ set for release June 25th via Houndstooth, Throwing Snow is sharing his new single & video “Traveller“, which follows on from previous singles “Brujita“ and “Halos“.
Speaking about the track, Ross Tones, aka Throwing Snow said “The etymology of the word ‘travel’ originates in ‘to toil’ or ‘labour’.In a modern context, movement is easy for some and near impossible for others, so the word still encapsulates this duality. ‘Traveller’ is journey music and was made from recordings loaded on to the SAMPLR app then manipulated and sequenced.”
Throwing Snow’s fourth album is the audiovisually-augmented Dragons, a work that occupies the space between science and ancestral wisdom. It links music back to its prehistoric capacity for transmitting knowledge to new technology that can untangle the complexity of the contemporary world. Dragons’ ten tracks of heavy primal rhythmic productions incorporate the physicality of acoustic sources, from ancient ritual instruments to modern drum kit, and each track is accompanied by visuals generated by machine learning.
Throwing Snow, aka Ross Tones developed Dragons’ neural network with artist, designer and technologist Matt Woodham. The structures and changes in Tones’ music trigger corresponding changes in accompanying moving images, which combine life in three scales, from microscopic views of rocks to large scale maps. “Everything that happens musically triggers the algorithm to do something,” Tones explains. “This isn’t controlled or predictable, and the music becomes an instruction for the algorithm to make its own decisions about datasets, images, speed, movement and other manipulations.”
The tracks on Dragons match Tones’s ambitions for the album in weight but not complexity. They are intentionally dazzlingly simple in their means, for maximum effect, with repeating motifs, locked basslines, cosmic patterns and full-frequency mids. Often built from four or fewer elements, Tones allows sound to accumulate into his unique take on ritual music for the 21st century. Throbbing ritual dances contain half-remembered earworms revealing glittering night skies of synthesizer patterns – ‘Halos’ stabs and stutters like a dance atop a longbarrow; ‘Purr’ reverberates in silky vibrational motifs; the heavyweight ‘Brujita’ is nu-metal for a past-future ceremony of uncertain purpose.
Tones says he often uses his music as allegory and container for the concepts and theories he’s immersed in – he studied astrophysics, and is fascinated by crafts, archeoacoutics, history, evolution and psychology. In Dragons, he wanted to explore the purpose of music from the beginning of human history. “We have Palaeolithic minds but find ourselves in an increasingly complex and interconnected world,” Tones explains. “Music and art have always been ritualised as a tool for memory, knowledge and emotion, and humans make sense of existence by using tools. Songs were tools of understanding, passed down from our ancestors. Now, things are complex and interrelated, so we can’t use that ancestral knowledge, and need to invent new tools – that’s where machine learning comes into it.”
As is typical for Tones’ Throwing Snow project, the album contains a bold and eclectic mix of instruments, from a bodhrán and daf to cello, with their uses rooted in their inherent acoustic properties. Tones also essentially built his own sample pack for the percussion patterns, working with drummer Jack Baker (Bonobo, Kelis, Alice Russell, Planet Battagon) on an intensive two-day session.
Tones is a Houndstooth stalwart, and Dragons is his fourth full-length album on the label, along with a string of 12”s and EPs. His first album was Mosaic in 2014, followed by Embers in 2017, and Loma in 2018. Originally from the North Of England, for the last few years he has worked from The Castle, his studio an hour outside Bristol/Bath, where he can both forage his own food and find the headspace to make music and experiment with modern technology. He is currently recording a new album with his trio Snow Ghosts, and a soundtrack for a Netflix documentary.
Dragons is a new form of inter-disciplinary album, which is neither wholly electronic nor acoustic, sonic or visual, and pulls from an equally diverse range of inspirations, from texts such as Steven Mithin’s The Singing Neanderthals and Margo Neale and Lynn Kell’s Songlines to the 1982 animated film Flight of Dragons. “I’m into putting music back into history,” Tones explains. “I want to make you think about what music is, what its purpose has been. I’m asking about the scientific aspect to folklore and ancient knowledge, and looking at why it’s still useful. This album is a doorway – if you choose to listen like that.”
