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.”
Alberto Melloni‘s Red SirenEP was already a hot double-shot of house and trance music, and now two remixes of the EP’s title track have been released from Paradise Palm Records.
The first remix, by Berlin’s Local Suicide, bubbles with industrial bass and dark dance club synths. It’s the kind of track that will instantly awaken you from an early morning groggy state (as it did to me) and keeps you bumping and grooving.
The second remix is by Jacuzzi General, and is a great example of his poolside, luxurious, hedonistic style of house and disco. The synth-bass thuds are pretty much made for slow motion videography of glamorous women walking around, lounging in, and making out by a rooftop pool.
It’s good stuff, and Paradise Palms seems to be hitting everything up the middle for at least a double right now.
Museum Of Love – the New York-based duo of Pat Mahoney and Dennis McNany – shares the new single/video, “Marching Orders,” from their forthcoming album, Life Of Mammals, out July 9th on Skint Records. It follows lead single/video “Cluttered World” and their “Cluttered World / Marching Orders (Remixed)” EP featuring remixes by Parrot and Cocker Too and Justin Van Der Volgen. “Marching Orders” starts with an irresistible cowbell driven rhythm track. It builds with a propulsive bass riff, a casually whistled melody, and a whole studio load of chaos. Combined together, it’s a hypnotic musical invitation to join Museum of Love’s carnival procession that’s part Blackstar, part NYC block party and part after hours smash up at Mardi Gras.
The video, featuring footage deconstructed and edited by Shaun MacDonald, “is a hallucinogenic dreamscape describing the collective feelings everyone went through over the last year of the pandemic,” says Museum Of Love. “All of us feeling crammed in our tiny apartments like an elephant in a tiny tea house. Time and reality, not computing for many of us.”
Life Of Mammals is a dizzying swirl of chaotic art rock and metronomic dance music. The creative process for Life Of Mammals was approached like an art project while the lyrics throughout are delightfully elliptical, with a thousand valid interpretations. The album was recorded in bursts between Mahoney’s LCD Soundsystem touring commitments. It has been mixed in its entirety by James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem/DFA) and features guest appearances from legendary saxophonist and Arthur Russell collaborator Peter Gordon (The Love of Life Orchestra) and Matt Shaw.
If you’ve ever imagined what a band influenced by Scott Walker, John Cale, Jonathan Richman, dub, Robert Wyatt, post-punk and Krautrock might sound like, then you might finally have your answer – Museum Of Love. Weird, perhaps, but also enormous knockabout fun, at times approaching their song craft with the bombast of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the outlook of the Marx brothers and matched with the production knowledge of a Basic Channel record. A bewitching combination that rewards repeat listens, it’s doubtful anyone will release a more compelling and beguiling album this year.
Situation Chicago 2 is a fine compilation of Chicago bands and artists, and proceeds go to helping artists and venues affected by the pandemic (which, by the way, is pretty much all of them). The project is part of the CIVL SAVE fund, which needs all the help it can get to support independent music venues throughout the Windy City (full disclosure, some of these venues are my favorite venues in the country).
“Sinistry” by MIIRRORS is a fiery live rock cut with some light goth touches. Robust‘s “Dont Know Why” is a smooth example of Chicago’s vibrant rap scene. The bass line alone on it make impregnate you. Speaking of great example of Chicago’s music culture, Fess Grandiose‘s “Keep the Rhythm Goin'” is a prime one of Chicago house music (a genre that, while popular, still deserves to be better known around the globe). Umphrey’s McGee and Bela Fleck team up on the bouncy and bright “Great American.” Reduxion‘s “The Imperial Boxmen” is sweet funk jazz that will make you want to spin your lover around the room. Speaking of fun, Jeff Park delivers a great instrumental cover of WAR‘s “Slippin’ into Darkness.”
“Drowning” by Neptune’s Core starts side B of the vinyl with strong power-pop hooks. Goth country makes an appearance with The Goddamn Gallows‘ “The Maker.” V.V. Lightbody‘s “Really Do Care” is a slice of dream-pop complete with birdsong and cat’s purr-like guitar. Erin McDougald‘s lovely, sexy “The Parting Glass” is a wonderful exemplar of Chicago’s jazz club scene and makes you want to seek out her live performances.
It’s a good compilation, and proceeds go to a great cause. You can’t miss.
Moon Safari, the classic ambient / house / lounge album by Air (Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin) was pretty much an instant classic as soon as it was released. I remember reading reviews that more or less called it “cool elevator music.” It’s far beyond such a label. It’s a “mood change” record, as in it can change the mood you’re in or the mood of any room in which it’s played.
The opener, “La Femme D’Argent,” with its ultra-smooth hand percussion and keyboards, immediately shifts your brain into a meditative space and should be played in dentist offices around the world. The song is never in a hurry. It’s about a seven-minute groove beamed into your brain from aliens who might be high. The slightly menacing “Sexy Boy” tells a tale of hyper-masculinity and wanting to be “as beautiful as a god.”
“All I Need,” featuring Beth Hirsch on vocals, brings in lovely, almost Spanish, acoustic guitar as Hirsch sings to a perspective lover to let her be a light to him. “Kelly, Watch the Stars!” is mostly an instrumental (the title is repeated multiple times) that combines thick bass, Theremin, and robot vocals. “Talisman” belongs on a movie soundtrack, be it a spy thriller, a sexy comedy, or a sci-fi film.
“Remember” has electro-beats surrounded by ghostly synths as Dunckel and Godin sing about a day in the past. You can’t tell if the day was good or bad or somewhere in between, but I think that’s the point. Ms. Hirsch returns for vocals on “You Make It Easy,” a song with bossa nova touches that tells a lovely tale of love.
“Ce Matin La” reveals Air’s love of Ennio Morricone with its harmonica riffs, subtle trumpet, and, of course, guitar work. “New Star in the Sky (Chanson pour Solal)” is a mellow head-trip and perfect for relaxing on the international space station while you’re circling the Earth every ninety minutes. “Le Voyage de Penelope” closes the album with sultry synths that almost sound like a warped trumpet at first and then become a lush groove track to send you off into euphoric bliss.
Moon Safari is perfectly named because this whole album sounds like it was made in such a place – a hidden jungle deep inside the moon ruled by sexy women and weird creatures.
Scottish producer Sam Gellaitry announces his new EP, IV, out May 14th (digital) and June 11th(vinyl) via the new home to Sam’s own Viewfinder Recordings, FFRR Records/Parlophone, and shares the lead single/video, “Duo.” Between 2015 and 2017, Sam put out three EPs as a series – Escapism, Escapism II, and Escapism III. He’s always used instruments to convey voices – high pitched flute sounds to evoke falsetto sounds and female vocals, for example, or top lines made from melodics. But after taking a break for a few years since the release of his Escapism series, he decided the time was right to start singing on his own music. You can hear this for the first time on IV. Produced, written, vocalized, mixed and mastered by Sam, its name is a subtle nod to the Escapism trilogy and the work he’s released so far. More literally, it’s also called IV because it’s a collection of four songs and four emotions.
Born far away from key electronic music hubs like LA, Glasgow and London, Sam, now 24, grew up in Stirling – an old town in central Scotland that’s rich in medieval history and visually stunning views. Living here led Sam’s older brother to happy hardcore – a kind of hard dance music born from the UK and Europe’s breakbeat and rave scenes – which in turn lead to Sam learning to produce. YouTube granted unfettered access to the world’s electronic scenes, with the array of sounds pushing Sam to pick up production in his early teens. He dove into Daft Punk’s robotic space realm where looped up disco samples reigned supreme and LA producers Samiyam and Flying Lotus were early inspirations. But no matter the genre, one thing remained constant: the idea that music can take your imagination on a voyage through color, place and sound, via combinations of notes.
Sam views the world through palettes of vivid color. A C minor scale becomes purple, plum and grape. C-sharp minor is cool and blue. Night time is best evoked in dark F minor reds and D minor induces rich forest green. His music is a journey through experience, circumstance and surroundings, told through his impressive, synesthesia-informed knowledge of different musical tones. For him, songwriting and producing has always connected to a process of pairing and contrasting different tones – “using the notes to create different sensations – like tension or relief in your head.” In practice, this technique has seen him experiment with high definition club music, crisp hip hop production, dabs of orchestral instrumentation and more.
Lead single “Duo” hones in on the French house music Sam discovered in his early teens. It’s the first track ever that features his voice. Presented with high octane and eclectic visuals, the video directed by Ethan + Tom, transitions rapidly through a scene of animated and inverted clips of Sam before it takes a psychedelic-feeling thrill ride. “It feels like I’m dropping my first ever song. It’s a crazy feeling to go from hiding behind instrumentation to finally finding my voice. It’s super liberating being able to explore more refined soundscapes by using my vocals as the glue. I return to my roots with ‘Duo’ by venturing into a more funk oriented sonic and I’m going to continue to showcase all my past and present tastes that have brought me to this point musically.”
This new phase of Sam’s career is an embrace of his unparalleled and unadulterated passion for creativity. “I’m at an age now where I feel ready to talk and tell people what I’ve experienced in life. It’s perfect timing in that sense,” says Sam. “I’ve done three EPs. I’m at the point now where I’m like – I want all the smoke. Now I’m comfortable singing on my songs, I want to go back to each point in my musical journey and tap into it. I’m using the voice as my anchor, then tapping into other sonics that have influenced me.”
Earlier this year Oakland-based duo Brijean released Feelings, “an album that’s as soothing as it is grand” (Bandcamp). Today, Brijean announces the Feelings Remixes EP coming out August 13th on Ghostly International, and presents the “Moody (Buscabulla Remix).” In addition to the Buscabella remix, the EP extends the relaxed reverie of Feelings with contributions from Sam Gendel, DRAMA, and Rick Wade. Brijean Murphy and Doug Stuart’s deep roots in jazz, pop, electronic and Latin spheres inform the music they make as Brijean, and these influences are reflected in the diverse group of remixers they tapped for this project.
Puerto Rican synth-pop duo Buscabulla accentuate the percussive downtempo flair of “Moody.” Keeping Murphy’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics at the forefront, the polyrhythmic percussion is sparing and, well, moody. Sprinkles of subtle yelps, harp flutters, gauzy synths, and sinuous synth grooves give this rework a unique neo-tropicalia vibe. Murphy elaborates, “I first heard of Buscabulla from a club poster at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn. I was playing at that venue with a band I was touring with around the same time and fell in love with their music. They play with time signatures, levels and expression in an enveloping and inspiring way. They are insanely talented artists and I’m so so stoked to have their lush, experimental and moving touch on our song ‘Moody.’“
Buscabella adds, “We had plans to meet Brijean the next time we swung by San Francisco on tour before the pandemic hit. We love their vibe and doing this remix is as close as we can get to jamming together in the same place. We aimed to deconstruct the original and to explore the point where our separate influences converge. Fusing together the futuristic synthesized drums and bass with organic syncopated Caribbean percussion. Here’s to a jam in real life.”
Buscabilla photo by Quique Cabanillas
Rhythm is the driving force of Feelings; each featured remix plays with that force, adding, subtracting, and altering percussive elements to build a range of sonic environments — true to Brijean’s mission of encouraging uninhibited imagination and new possibilities. Stream “Moody (Buscabulla Remix)”
