PLUG
Back On Time
ZEN177
Ninja Tune 2012
10 Tracks. 55mins07secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

In the mid-nineties, Luke Vibert, who, beside a venture with Jeremy Simmonds, had mostly been operating as Wagon Christ, reinvented himself as Plug the time of a handful of EPs and an album on which he moved away from the hip-hop-infused electronica of his Rising High releases of the time to distill his own blend of refined Drum’n’Bass. While none of these seemed to get much attention on the D’n’B scene, they showed Vibert as the versatile musician that he is and cemented his position amongst fellow West Country mavericks of the likes of Aphex Twin or Squarepusher

Following this condensed blast of releases, between 1995 and 1997, the project has been on an indefinite hiatus, but a year ago, Luke Vibert turned up at the Ninja Tune office with a bunch of DATs containing previously unheard material recorded around that time. Back On Time collects ten of these, with an eleventh coming as a free download with the album. Like with Drum ‘N’ Bass For Papa, Vibert takes D’n’B and turns it into a malleable platform for his playful compositions, channelling his usual strands of inspiration, from hip-hop to acid and ambient, but keeping them under control as not to drastically disturb the flow of energy running through the whole record.

Back On Time is as convincing as its predecessor, and, considering that these tracks were recorded fifteen years  ago, sounds surprisingly fresh. There is quite a wide array of moods here, from the electro tones of opening track Scar City and the rave energy of A Quick Plug For A New Slot to the Middle Eastern flavours of Come On My Skeleton or the chaotic Speak & Spell-sampling Mind Bending. At times, he relieves the pressure a tad and ventures into more sophisticated grounds, on the rather soulful Feeling So Special or the stripped down Drum N Bass for instance, but even there, he continues to fuel his compositions with hefty dose of energy and humour, as he demonstrates at the end of Come On My Skeleton.

Whilst nowhere near as manic or anarchic as Squarepusher, Vibert never quite sticks to pure D’n’B, infusing it instead with his own style, yet his take on the genre is at once extremely pertinent and relevant. His approach may be unorthodox, but there is no denying his commitment to creating vibrant pieces and to freely explore the possibilities of D’n’B here. Back On Time is much more than just a companion release to its predecessor, and not only because it comes sixteen years later. How Vibert managed to ‘lose’ these tracks for this long and never considered releasing them at the time is baffling, and it would be easy to imagine that there may be more Vibert gems, as one project or another, waiting to be unearthed and given a whole new lease of life like these have.

4.6/5

  Ninja Tune
Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Thomas Strønen is undoubtedly one of the most talented drummers of his generation. A member of Food, Humcrush, Meadow, Monsters & Puppets and many more, his very diverse, yet highly recognisable style puts him is at the heart of these projects. With new albums from Monsters & Puppets, Humcrush and The Living Room, Thomas takes some time off his incredibly busy schedule to talk to themilkfactory about how he started playing drums, his long-standing collaboration with Iain Ballamy as Food, his relationship with Maria Kannegaard and how it led to Monsters & Puppets, and what his next solo project may be.

Thomas, how did come to play music, and what made you choose the drums?
At the age of five, visiting Kiel in Germany, I discovered a tin drum in a shop window and cried my eyes out to get it. That day I threw out my teddy bear and replaced it with that drum. I had it with me almost everywhere and played it till it fell to pieces. I don’t know why I chose drums, or even music. My grandfather, whom I never met, was an accordion player and violinist, and my much older brother was a DJ. I’ve always been playing and in my grade book from my first year at school (and the following ones) it said ‘Thomas keeps disturbing the other pupils by drumming on his desk all the time’.

Growing up, I was also massively into sport, actually considering a career as a sprinter (100m) Music always came first though. Living in a small place (Åsgårdstrand, where Edvard Munch painted The Scream and Girls On The Bridge) I was lucky to play a lot and got introduced to improvised music and jazz, mostly European, in my early teens.

I keep drumsticks everywhere, in all my bags and rooms and it drives my wife mad, I’m now about to drive my kids mad too.

You’ve been performing and recording with Iain Ballamy in Food for over ten years now, first as a quartet with Mats Eilertsen and Arve Henriksen, then as a duo. How did you meet Iain and how did the project start?
Iain and I meet through friends; (hold on!) Iain’s sister in law knew a friend of mine’s girlfriend… While visiting my friend (Lars Ådne) he decided to call Iain so we could meet. At the time, I was studying music and was of course happy to get to meet a well-known and experienced musician like him. I knew him from Django Bates’s band (ed: Loose Tubes) and Earthworks.

Iain played me some records and I played him a demo- cassette! He actually loved it and suggested we start a band together. I thought he was just being polite until I met him by accident at some festival a year later. When he wondered why I hadn’t stayed in contact, I decided to do something about it. It felt natural to ask Mats, as we where playing a lot together. I’d just done a project with Arve and he was also interested in continuing the relationship. One phone call later, we had two festival gigs at the Molde Jazz Festival, ending up with a live recording. We continued with this constellation for six years and did four records together as a quartet. At some stage everyone got extremely busy and instead of saying no to lots of nice opportunities, we decided to work as a duo, inviting various suitable guests for our performances.

How did you make the transition from quartet to duo when Mats and Arve left? Was it a natural process for you two to continue working together?
After Arve left the band to concentrate more on his solo career, we tried out a few different settings without being satisfied. To find why we liked playing together again, Iain and I went into the studio for almost a week in London. That resulted in us taking the music in a totally different direction and it got released as Molecular Gastronomy. It took quite a few concerts and long hours at various rehearsal spaces to come to what represents Food today though. To make the break even clearer we approached Manfred Eicher at ECM with new recorded music, and released Quiet Inlet last year. We’re now at the final stage of finishing off another record for ECM. This time there will be with more guests, including an Indian singer that will take you to another planet!

Food perform both as duo and with like-minded guests. Instead of tying the band up in one setting, depending on everybody’s availability and running the danger of get stuck musically, we invite musicians we think can contribute sounds and texture we think and hope can develop and complement our own.

As you’ve just mentioned, you regularly work with additional musicians in Food, the most recent of which is Christian Fennesz, with whom you have played live recently and who featured on Quiet Inlet. How do these collaborations happen, and are you planning on working more extensively with Fennesz or Nils Petter Molvær, with whom you were due to tour Japan last June, before the tour had to be postponed following the earthquake that devastated part of the country?
Last year, we played as a trio with Fennesz, as a quartet with Fennesz and Nils Petter, as a trio with Eivind Aarset, as a trio with Prakash Sontakke (an Indian singer and slide guitarist) and as a quartet with Aarset and Sontakke. We will be touring Japan in April 2012 with Nils Petter and we will continue to collaborate with all the others as well. Like most collaborations, they happen by listening or playing with new musicians or trying out new constellations when we get solicited.

This collaboration with Iain is one of your longest-running projects to date. How do you keep moving forward with it, especially with you living in Norway and Iain in the UK?
I work with both Iain and John Taylor from the UK, with Torben Snekkestad and Søren Kjærgaard in Denmark and other musicians living in different places. We tour everywhere, so it doesn’t really matter where you live. We rehearse ahead of touring or meet up for a few days to work. With Food, we always set off two or three weeks in a year, just to rehearse for long hours. On top of that, we record all concerts we do and sit down and go through them. Some end up on records too!

You have been part of the Maria Kannegaard Trio for quite some time, and you have just released a collaboration with Maria on Fender Rhodes and you on drums as Monsters & Puppets. How did the idea of this collaboration come up, and what is the inspiration behind the project?
Maria and I have worked together in various settings from 1997 when we started her trio. We know each other extremely well and use each other as critical voices for our own work. We send each other compositions, recordings and ideas via the net and give advice and constructive feedback. Having played together for a long time, we got asked to play a double solo concert at Molde Jazz Festival. Just before the concert, we decided to play as a duo instead. Both being a bit bored with a lot of the intellectual jazz, we wanted to be more extreme towards noise and rock music. Monster & Puppets is the result of three hours in a studio in Oslo; everything was improvised on the go.

The album was released on a new Norwegian imprint, Gigafon. What made you choose such a young label?
Maria has been releasing her records on Jazzland Recordings (Bugge Wesseltoft), while I’ve been on ECM and Rune Grammofon. In order to not mix up ongoing bands, we looked for something smaller with a lower profile. They have a good musical approach and they have very nice covers as well.

There is also a new Humcrush album, which is a collaboration between yourself and Ståle Storløkken on one side, and, on this album Sidsel Endresen on the other. Did you know Sidsel prior to working with her? How did the collaboration happen?
I’ve known Sidsel as a singer since I was twelve years old. I’ve always treasured her as one of the most exciting singers and musicians of all times. We did a concert with Humcrush and Sidsel on the initiative of Jan Ole Otnes at the Molde Jazz Festival a few years ago. (I must mention that the Molde Jazz Festival were the first to put on Food, Food with Fennesz, Monsters & Puppets and also Meadow!). It worked out very well and we’ve now toured Europe twice and played various concerts since. We’ll be out playing again in December.

Sidsel is very critical of what she does, both on stage and in music in general. I admire the way she has stayed focused, never being tempted to take shortcuts to make life easier for herself. She never compromises. It’s challenging to play with her as it is ‘almost’ never good enough. Much of the qualities I see in her are qualities I appreciate and recognise. It’s a treat to occasionally have her in Humcrush. Ståle and I have worked for many years together and she brings something new and fresh. It also changes the way we play after we’ve worked as a trio. We try to keep what’s genuine about Humcrush whilst playing with her and I don’t feel we have to compromise in the way we interact as a trio. It is not to say that it doesn’t sound different with her onboard.

Sidsel’s approach to vocals is pretty unique and often seems much closer to the relation that musicians have with their instruments than to traditional singers. Did that impact on the music you created?
I don’t think of Sidsel as a singer, in the same way as I don’t think of Ståle as a keyboard player. They are musical contributors in sounds, texture and form. Their instruments are just a way for them to express themselves. I probably would have worked with them even if they played something completely different. It feels like this with most of the musicians I’m fortunate to work with. Sidsel is creating a new musical tradition, though. When you hear singers of a younger generation in Norway today, you realise the impact she has made on the Norwegian music scene.

Humcrush started with you and Ståle Storløkken with a first album back in 2004. How did the idea of the record come up, and did you think at the time it would be developing it into the full project that it has become?
When I took my final exam at the Jazz academy, I played a concert with three keyboard – players; Maria, Ståle and Erlend Skomsvoll. After only a few minutes, Ståle and I both knew that we should play together. We’re both concerned about time, colours and texture and seem to agree on many musical matters, or even better, disagree and give each other some resistance and challenges.

Just after this, Ståle got a commission to compose for a festival and he brought together Lars Danielsson (bass/ cello) and me. Lars double- booked himself on the first tour and that left us with Humcrush!

Parish, released in 2005 on ECM, was published with you as a leader, and was recorded with Bobo Stenson on piano, Frederik Ljungkvist on sax and clarinet and Mats Eilertsen on bass, although there was an earlier album, recorded with the same formation, but this time released under the name of Parish. What was the difference between the two projects?
It is the same band and project. Manfred (ECM) wanted my name on the record to make it clear that it was my band, while the name of the band was always Parish. That was a great band and I think we all really enjoyed playing together. Unfortunately we got together at a time where we all were extremely busy with other bands and it just got difficult to keep up with it.

In 2006, you released Pohlitz on Rune Grammofon, an experimental album which you recorded alone and for which you played percussions and electronics. Pohlitz is actually listed on your website as a project in its own right, a variation of which is also mentioned with string quartet McFalls Chamber. Can you tell us more about your original inspiration for the album, and did you always envisage it as a project?
I always do a few solo concerts every year. I feel it gives me focus and it keeps challenging me. I wanted to make an album that mixed contemporary electronic composition and a minimalist melodic ‘club’ (in the widest terms) set. It was done in real time with no overdubs and was extremely challenging to create. I immediately deleted the three first days in studio. I practiced for another six months and toured in Japan, got back and did it all in almost one day.

Reviewers drew comparisons to gamelan music, but I had no inspiration from that at all. The bells and gongs are my instruments and sound. My style has been inspired by minimalist music as well as classical Japanese music, and that’s what I wanted to express with that recording. The colours and forms are detailed, small fragments change the direction of the music.

I did record a new Pohlitz record about two years ago, but as I started another project (writing for strings) it never got released and I’m not convinced that the world needs another record like that.  Some of it is used as film music, though.

After I did Pohlitz, I’d been working with bells and gongs with electronics so much that I had to do something else for a while. I started writing music for a string ensemble and was lucky enough to being offered a commission to write music for the celebration of the centenary of Edvard Grieg’s death, in the UK. I wrote about forty-five to fifty minutes of music for violin, viola, cello and contrabass and we toured in the UK. I recorded the music two years ago and ECM was going to release it this summer, until Manfred changed his mind and wanted to produce the record. I will have enough material for a new record in a few months time, so hopefully it’ll be out there soon.

Where did the idea of confronting percussions with a string formation stem from, and how did working with the McFalls Chamber impact on your own performance?
It all started many years ago playing together with a larger ensemble, Cicada, a Norwegian string quartet. In the middle of their sound check, I started playing and thought it was a beautiful feeling sitting in the middle of such nice instruments. In the early days, I played more actively, but the last pieces I’ve written leave me more out of it, doing more textures and solo parts in between the compositions. It does have a great impact on how I play, as the dynamic range is compressed and I have to try to get the drums to melt together with the quartet.

Is it easy for you to adapt to the various formations you work with, especially considering how different Food is from Humcrush, or Monsters & Puppets from your solo work? Do you fall back into the necessary mood instantly, or does it take you a while to find your feet again?
I like the combinations I do. Rather than using my whole vocabulary in one (or each) band, I like to give myself different roles in the settings I play. I love working with electronics in Food and Humcrush and then I really appreciate only having acoustic sounds in Meadow.

I like a lot of different music and I don’t like to categorise the different styles I might be touching. I feel that it just sets limitations. I’m more concerned who I play with than which segment they might belong to. I work with composition and improvisation, with texture and with melody, with beat and with ambience. Some call it jazz, others film music, whatever that is. What’s important to me is being able to be Thomas Strønen every time I play. That’s my freedom.

You spend a lot of time on the road playing live and touring. How does playing live compare to playing in the studio for you?
There is really no difference. Most of my concerts are also being recorded, so there’s really no difference, except that it’s more relaxed in the studio. Going to a studio feels almost like having a proper job, which can be a nice illusion sometimes.

With most of your work based on improvisation, was it always part of how you conceived playing music?
Back to as early as I can remember, I had problems being told what to play. I always felt I had a better solution than my teacher at school or in the school band. I must have been a nightmare to work with. I started in a modern mini big band when I was thirteen and didn’t read music very well, so I was dependent on learning things by ear. Music was also quite difficult for me to play, with a heavy-rock background, and I had to have good ideas to manage to get through it.

Even as a composer, I think it’s important that sometimes musicians have ideas that might be stronger than what’s composed, so I’m always open for that. Having said that, I actually love playing good parts, like when Food played with the London Sinfonietta. I had to read the whole score and make my own drum part visual to keep up with the orchestra.

You’ve got a very personal and recognisable style which extends far beyond conventional drumming. What or who has inspired you in your formative years and in your career since?
As mentioned above, I’ve been influence by lots of different styles, genres and people. I got into improvised music in my early teens and was lucky to play with better and more experienced musicians at an early stage. I dug into the jazz history while studying music for six years, but also got into Japanese music (koto, vocals, drum music), classical music (from Bach to Shostakovich and Cage), electronic music (From Varèse to Nordheim and Squarepusher) and also singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.

If you had to take five records with you on tour, which ones would they be?

Glenn Gould: The Goldberg Variations (Bach)

Miles Davis: Live At The Fillmore East

Arvo Pärt: Te Deum

Arne Nordheim: Dodeka
(or Biosphere & Deathprod: Nordheim Transformed)

Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartets No 2 & 8 (Beethoven Quartet)

Email interview November 2011. Thank you to Thomas.

Thomas Strønen | Rune Grammofon | ECM | Gigafon | Ilk Music

SQUAREPUSHER
Squarepusher Presents Shobaleader One: d’Demonstrator
WARP196
Warp Records 2010
09 Tracks. 44mins40secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Do you know Squarepusher? This is what Tom Jenkinson was cheekily asking almost ten years ago, and he’s since regularly deflected preconceptions on his work, which resulted most spectacularly last year with the release of the superb Solo Electric Bass 1 album, which, as its title indicated, stripped his music back down to its most basic component, Jenkinson’s electric bass. With this new album, he moves the goal post once again away from the concussed drill’n'bass playground that he has made his over the years.

This latest affair started when a bunch of kids got in touch with Jenkinson with the prospect of bringing the fictitious band he had dreamt about, which subsequently led to Just A Souvenir two years ago, to life. As preposterous as the idea was for the notoriously lone ranger Jenkinson,, he was intrigued by the audacity of his interlocutors, enough to grant them some time to work together and record some tracks, or so goes the story anyway. The result is d’Demonstrator, a collection of free jazz-infused slo-mo electro-funk tainted with big dollops of off-kilter spaced out disco, and smeared with enough vocoder frills to give Daft Punk a stellar hard on. The Daft Punk synergy goes even further with the LED-faced monk-like figure pictured on the cover of the record as to guard the entrance of a highly selective club.

Things kick off in pretty subdued style with the surprisingly luscious and sensual Plug Me In. In fact, it almost feels as if Jenkinson was simply replugging his instruments at the end of the Solo Electric Bass sessions, just to check whether they were still in working order. Watery bass, sluggish groove and a first vocoder assault, this is not precisely what Squarepusher has got us used to, but it works rather well, and it continues to do so later on on the somewhat funkier and more electrically-charged Endless Night, served by cascading eighties-style keyboard motifs and chords, something which also defines Laser Rock, its fuzzed-up electro eventually imperceptibly pushing the omnipresent vocoder out of the picture for a moment. Later on, Megazine and Maximum Planck increase the pressure, the former by simply quickening the pace, the latter by making it much heavier and greasier. Elsewhere, the mood is distinctly lighter, from the breathy tones of Into The Blue and the overly chilled Frisco Wave to the snaking electro-jazz of Abstract Lover. Far from Jenkinson’s usual incendiary beats or syncopated bass lines, these prove almost uncomfortably catchy.

As the album progresses, its restrictive scope becomes more apparent. The vocoder rapidly proves tiresome, and the album overall feels somewhat too uniform and lacking momentum to make a real impact. Over the years, Jenkinson has tried many settings, more of which have proved interesting if not all entirely successful. Yet, if Solo Electric Bass 1 was exposing Jenkinson in all his virtuosity, d’Demonstrator seems to do exactly the opposite and shows him at his least inspired. Regardless of Shobaleader One actually existing or not, d’Demonstrator ends up being too non-committal, an unfortunate first for Squarepusher

2.4/5

Squarepusher | Squarepusher (MySpace) | Warp Records
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ROTWANG
Awful
CEQ001
The Conspiracy Of Equals 2010
12 Tracks. 34mins48secs

Amazon UK: DLD US: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Putting people’s back up before you’ve even made an impression is perhaps not the best way to get noticed for all the right reasons, but it seems like it is the angle Mark Rahman, a musician from Princeton, New Jersey, chose when he dropped a little bit of white powder in the envelops accompanying the demos he sent to record labels. While it is likely that this closed him many doors, it unexpectedly opened one when one of these demos landed on the desk of Jeremiah Trudeaux and he decided to set up The Conspiracy Of Equals in order to release Rotwang’s debut album. So, it seems almost logical that, pushing the anti-promotion a step further, Rahman decided to mark the occasion by promising titling the record Awful. If this all smells a bit too much like a schoolboy prank too far, and actually feels a tad tired, the resulting record actually proves to be a more interesting slice of electronic music than one could expect coming on the back of all this.

Rotwang crams quite a lot in the half hour that this album lasts, from swirling orchestral swathes and random vocal samples to hyperactive bleepy electronica, Aphex-like stuttering beats and folk even, and it has to be said that, despite the patchwork-like approach that defines the entirety of the record, there is definitely some inspired moments to be found here. The album opens with a pretty lush cinematic orchestral sequence which is soon overcome by a pretty insistent beat while a little melody circles above. It rapidly becomes a pretty hectic template, which echoes down the rest of the record in various shapes and forms. The Savage which follows for instance appears at first like an extension of 1 Player, but, while the setting is not much different, the brushes of gritty electronics that are scattered all over it give the piece an interesting old school touch, while later on, I Am A Virus appears even more manic and disconcertingly catchy, and Cryptozoology, which is at first quite a playful little affair, sinks into much darker shades past the half way mark, and continues to descend deeper into murky grounds until its end.

At times, Rahman drifts into much harsher and more abrasive terrains. On Holiday, layers of distorted electronics are stuck against a fairly dense rhythmic section for most of the piece, while on the short and not-so-sweet An Auricle Flower, similarly warped and discordant noises are assembled into a pretty loose form before eventually mutating into a much smoother synthetic sound wave as Colorized Moving Pictures kicks in.

The album apparently originated as a pretty ambient piece of work before Rahman eventually lost interest and started play up with his machines. There are however some remains of this much more atmospheric approach, at times buried under layers of drums and sounds, at others left much more exposed, as is the case on the short shimmering Corrupted, which is not without recalling some of Clark’s more subtle soundscapes, on the opening moments of Mouseland or on the rather impressive Trim Trab, which closes the proceedings here, while on Journal Square, it is as if Rahman has slowed down the frantic pace of one of his earlier  tracks to reveal its hidden beauty.

Awful is not without its faults, its greatest being to wear its influences (Aphex, μ-ziq, a touch of Squarepusher and a hint of Vibert to sum it up) proudly on its sleeves. This at times overshadows Rotwang’s own vision and distorts the focus, but one cannot remain insensitive to the bric-a-brac aspect of the record and the sheer energy that results from it.

3.8/5

Rotwang (MySpace) | The Conspiracy Of Equals
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Tyondai Braxton is a member of supergroup Battles, one of the most celebrated bands of recent years. Their debut album, Mirrored, saw them join Warp on the back of two EPs and a single released in a matter of months throughout 2004. The son of legendary experimental jazz composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, Tyondai follows his debut solo album, released in 2002, with an extremely ambitious second record, Central Market on Warp, which combines experimental rock, electronics and full orchestral sections. We caught up with the man via email ahead of his performance, as part of Battles, for the Warp20 celebrations in New York to talk about how he made the transition from his earlier work to the vast expanses of Central Market and how he wants to take this even further.

You’re due to play with Battles for the Warp20 party in New York this Friday. What does Warp means to you? Were you a fan of the label before Battles were signed, and who are your favourite acts on the label?
I was a big fan of Warp long before we started working with them. I remember the first time a friend of mine showed me Squarepusher’s Music Is One Rotted Note and also Boards of Canada’s Music Has The Right To Children. Both of those records were revelations to me. Right now their roster is so expansive and with such quality that I don’t know where to begin really. Each artist really has their thing down and does it well. Can’t ask for more than that out of a label.

Central Market is your first solo album since History Has No Effect (2002). Have you missed working on your own music, and how did it feel to be fully in control of a whole record again?
It felt essential! Battles is a great band and I love working with them but I need to have my own music to develop and build. I couldn’t live without doing my own music.

How did the project start, and what was your vision of it before you started working on it?
I wanted to take the solo model that I had used to emulate a large amount of people playing and actually cross over and get others involved! I had been obsessed with composers throughout the last hundred years and felt that a lot of the forms and scope of what they were doing was so exciting and felt so new. I wanted to incorporate these ideas into my music.

The album is quite a massive step forward from History Has No Effect, especially since you’ve worked with an orchestra for the most part. Was it a daunting project to get your teeth in?
It was but you have to pace yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day right? Bit by bit, suddenly some ideas actually reveals itself as music and not just another directionless experiment. This is why it was important to me to not abandon the solo setup as a composition tool, but to add to the palette of what was already there. Even the early process is fun though because you’re so excited by what it has the potential to be.

The press release describes the album as inspired by Igor Stravinsky, Bernard Hermann, Brian Eno, John Adams and Swans; quite a wide scope, and the result certainly reflect this, but how would you say have you worked these influences into the record?
That’s a hard question to answer. It’s the same as when someone asks you “what are your influences?” It’s an easier question to answer when you’re younger and your scope is more limited but as you get older it’s harder to answer because you’ve had so many different tastes over time. These influences manifest themselves in your art in so many different ways. Another thing time does though is allow your tastes to be blended with more subtlety so it’s harder to explicitly say “this texture is purely this or that”. Your approach gets convoluted by all the different influences that you’ve had over time.

You’ve worked with the Wordless Music Orchestra and the Young New York City Ensemble for this album. How did you get to work with them?
My girlfriend went to see them perform in NY while I was working on this music. She came back and was blown away by their performance and said I’d have to see them play. I found a contact for them and emailed Ronen Givoney asking when they were playing next and Ronen said they didn’t have anything just yet but were looking for projects… So then I said…. “oh reeeeaaaallllyyyy….”

Your music freely feeds from jazz, classical, rock but refuses to settle on one particular genre. Was it always your vision of what you wanted to achieve, or, if it came to you progressively, what has influenced you during your formative years?
I feel it did come to me progressively. Truthfully when I was younger I really loved rock, punk, hip hop, dance and pop music. What I learned from that music that wanted to merge with the interests I have now is the immediacy, the rawness and urgency of a lot of that music. Don’t get me wrong I like patience in music and elegance too but when there’s a climax section I’m looking more towards the violence of a more raw music.

You have spent the last few years recording and touring with Battles. How did it all start with the band?
We all met at a Yankees game. Dave (Konopka) was being thrown out for yelling at the Red Sox who the Yanks were playing. In protest I walked out with him and so did a couple other guys. Those others guys were Ian (Williams) and John (Stanier).

You are currently recording the follow up to Mirrored with Battles. What can we expect of this second album?
It’s still too early to tell at this point. Plus don’t you want to be surprised?

You play live very regularly with Battles, and as a band, you have built a reputation for incredibly strong live shows. Are you planning to tour Central Market, and if yes, will you be touring with an orchestra? What will the shows be like compared to the record?
I do plan on performing this music at some point, hopefully next year. Battles is writing full throttle at the moment so I don’t have the time to organize something like that for this year.

You are also involved with a variety of other projects and commissions, including scores for ensembles like the Kronos Quartet, multi-media installations or contemporary dance troupes. Can you tell us more about some of these, and how your approach differs for these types of projects compared to your own music?
I haven’t had much time to do projects outside of Battles and then this solo music. I had written for dance troops when I first came to New York at the end of 2000 and that was really exciting to me. I used my solo set up in some situations but I also wrote a piece for six voices and six rides cymbals and another piece for tape loops of vibraphone being manipulated in real time. More recently for Kronos Quartet I got the offer from Bryce Dessner who was running the MusicNow Fest in Cincinnati. At the time I was in the studio recording Central Market and didn’t have a lot of time to turn out a new piece so I asked David Harrington if they might be interested in doing a string quartet version of Uffe’s Woodshop from Central Market. That was great to be able to try my hand at reducing one of my pieces for string quartet to see if that could work. They are an incredible group. It was a real honor to have a piece played by them. I think it’s important to have to step out of your comfort zone in a try to apply the things your interested in into an unexpected context.

You have collaborated with a lot of musicians over the years, from Thurston Moore or Jim O’Rourke to Black Dice and Oval. Is that something you particularly enjoy, and how do you approach these collaborative works?
Collaboration can be very exciting. I haven’t had the time to do much of that in the past couple of years but I hope to be able to. Playing your own music is important because once you know who you are alone you can more easily bounce off of other people when you work with them. The more defined you are the clearer the ideas for collaboration can be. Battles is a collaboration and I think it’s important to have that.

Also with the people you mentioned above I never collaborated with those guys per se – we have all played shows together on the same bill. I have played with Hisham Bharoocha who was a founding member of Black Dice.

You also collaborated with Guillermo Scott Herren on a couple of projects, first with Prefuse on Surrounded By Silence, then again with his Savath & Savalas act on Golden Pollen. How did these happen, and how did you meet him?
I met Guillermo in… 2004? He had heard some of my solo music and some of the early Battles EPs and got in touch to ask me to throw down some things on his record Surrounded By Silence. I had his records before I met him and was a fan. We really clicked and became good friends. He’s one of my heroes man. I love Guillermo. He really backed me and Battles to the point where he demanded that we be able to tour with him even when his agents were saying it was a bad idea because at the time Battles was too new to rely on a draw. He insisted and was incredibly persistent with Warp telling them “you have to work with Battles and Tyondai”. He was heaven sent for me and I’ll always be grateful that he helped me/us the way he did.

In 2003, you released a split album with hardcore/noise collective Parts & Labor. How did this come about, and why did you choose the particular format of a split album? How did you and the band work on the album?
I’ve been friends with Dan Friel from Parts & Labor since college. We lived together in college. He was a year ahead of me and moved to NY a year before me. When I got there he had started his band and I was doing my solo music. The label Narnack approached us about doing a split 7” which was a series they had been doing. I had previously released my first record, History That Has No Effect, on a small label, JMZ Records, here in NY but it had little distribution so Narnack seemed like it could be a good next step. We decided instead of a split 7” why not a split LP? We worked completely independently of each other and just forced it together. Thus my first lesson in “context”. Parts & Labor are great and I like the pieces I put on but the split between us, predictably doesn’t make much sense. It’s cool though – it’s a rite of passage to have a split release with someone right?

With the album about to be released, and a new Battles album in the pipeline, do you already have an idea of what you’re going to work on next?
I have notes on new pieces that I plan to flesh out during and after the new Battles recording. I really had a great time working on Central Market. I want to keep working like that, try some things I didn’t try and master some things I didn’t master on Central Market.

Although you are a multi-instrumentist, you’re probably best known as a guitarist, but has writing for orchestral formations made you want to develop this further, and if yes, how do you think you might take this forward?
I feel like working like this I’ve gotten closer to what I’ve always wanted to be able to create. As I mentioned above I have a bunch of ideas that I’d like to flesh out and keep pushing this forward. I remember making previous records and feeling exhausted, like I’d put everything I could say into one thing but this time I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what I want to be able to flesh out and that’s such an exciting feeling. I can’t wait to do another record.

If you had to take five albums, books or DVDs on tour with you, which ones would they be, and why?
I picked 5 records and they are:

1. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra & Marin Alsop: Takemitsu: The Flock Decsends Into The Pentagonal Garden
Honestly I always take this piece and the score with me on tour everywhere I go. It’s one of my favorite pieces.

2. Fela Kuti: Underground System
This record is a force. Infectious.

3. Black Dice: Miles Of Smiles
One of my favourites from this band. The mood it creates is wholey it’s own.

4. Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Pierre Boulez: Boulez Conducts Varèse
Varese is where my head has been for the past couple of months. Amériques is such a mind boggling piece.

5. The Bulgarian State Radio & Television Choir: Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares 1&2
Another go-to old favorite. Stop what you’re doing and order this right now.

For DVDs, the complete Six Feet Under, The Wire and Entourage. Is any other network up to the challenge to even attempt to compete with an HBO series?

Books:

Donari Braxton: The Invisible Alphabet
New novel from my brother. It’s seriously amazing. He seems to have an inexhaustible amount of ideas and has such a great sense of control in his craft. I looked to him and his work when struggling to flesh out my own.

Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
Such an incredible book. Ross fed into my already glorified view of the 20th century composers and made them into the lead characters in one of the most compelling stories I’ve ever read.

John Adams: Hallelujah Junction
It’s great to hear a very down to earth narration of a composer who you respect.

Email interview September 2009

Tyondai Braxton (MySpace) | Warp Records

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Warp20 (Box Set) / Warp20 (Recreated) / Warp20 (Chosen)
WARP20.0 / WARP201 / WARP 202
Warp Records 2009
– / 21 Tracks / 24 Tracks. – / 99mins13secs / 127mins18secs

Warp20 (Box Set)
Boomkat: BX

Warp20 (Recreated)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

Warp20 (Chosen)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

LFO. Three metallic blue letters, straddled by a ghostly shape, set on a black background. Three letters that changed things forever. The year was 1991, I was browsing through the new arrivals in my local records store, and the Designers Republic artwork of LFO’s Frequencies was standing out from the blur, calling out for my attention. An hour or so later, I was left baffled by a record which I was struggling to understand. On one side, the lush flow and shattering bass of LFO or Simon From Sydney irresistibly titillated my appetite for crisp evocative electronics, on the other, I had never experienced anything quite as bare as Mentok 1 or We Are Back. This album bore its influences on its sleeve, literally, and it took a few listens to ‘get it’. But ‘get it’ I did. More than I could have ever wished for. I was hooked. Not only on LFO, but also on Warp.

The brainchild of Steve Beckett and the late Rob Mitchell, who founded the label twenty years ago in the former metallurgic city of Sheffield, Warp found itself at a crossroad between the dying acid scene and the nascent UK techno/electronica movements, fuelled by waves of grooves and beats coming from Detroit, and soon gathered a fledging roster comprising the likes of Nightmares On Wax, Sweet Exorcist, the project of Richard ‘DJ Parrot’ Barratt and former Cabaret Voltaire member Richard H. Kirk, LFO, Tricky Disco or DJ Mink, all names who have become synonymous with this then new sound coming from the north. The first release, Forgemasters’ Track With No Name, dressed in a highly visible purple sleeve, sounded as mysterious as its title, and the following EPs, Nightmares On Wax’s Dextrous, Sweet Exorcist’s Test One, DJ Mink’s Hey! Hey! Can You Relate, Tricky Disco’s and LFO’s eponymous releases, all released within a year, started to give a much clearer idea of the label’s direction.

WARP1 came in early 1991, courtesy of Sweet Exorcist. This very first artist full length contained just seven cuts of minimal beats, bleepy electronica and hypnotic loops, and, together with the albums that followed, LFO’s seminal Frequencies and Nightmares On Wax’s A World Of Science, established the blue print of what Warp would stand for in the first half of the nineties. But, while these albums all shared a taste for beelpy house and techno, they had clear individual identities. CCCD was tinted with Afro beats, Frequencies openly referenced Kraftwerk, A World Of Science was soulful and groovy.

The next significant step, and perhaps the single most defining moment of the label’s twenty years’ history, came the following year with the release of a new compilation, entitled Artificial Intelligence, which kicked off the series of the same name. Then, names such as B12, The Black Dog or Autechre were only known to a few, but this collection, and the subsequent albums, changed all that. Six albums, by Polygon Window, The Black Dog, B12, Richie Hawtin, Speedy J and Autechre, bookended by two compilations, released over two years, would forever place Warp at the forefront of contemporary electronic music. Since, there has been the acid jazz/funk of Jimi Tenor, the retro-futuristic pop of Broadcast, the sweet folk of Gravenhurst, the progressive hip-hop of Antipop Consortium, the angular rock of Battles… but Warp remains above all a hive of forward-thinking electronic music, whether in the hands of Boards Of Canada, Squarepusher or Clark.

Twenty years is a very long time in popular music, yet going through the label’s releases, it also feels like a blink. The first outings on the label of Aphex Twin (1994), Boards of Canada (1998), Broadcast (2000), Jamie Lidell (2000) or Clark (2001), the Peel Session series, they are all still vivid markers in the label’s history. Compiling a ten track album out of such a vast and varied catalogue was always going to be an impossible task, and one that Steve Beckett couldn’t manage. His contribution to the Warp20 (Chosen) collection contains fourteen, carefully selected from thousands, lifted off albums or EPs, and often away from obvious choices (Broadcast’s Tender Buttons, Flying Lotus’s GNG BNG, Mike Ink’s Paroles or Aphex Twin’s Bocephalus Bouncing Ball) alongside slightly better known tracks (Grizzly Bear’s Colorado, Squarepusher’s My Sound or Jamie Lidell’s Daddy’s Car). By contrast, the first of the two (Chosen) CDs was selected from votes fans recorded on a special website, and expectedly features some of the most iconic and best known tracks on the labels, from Aphex Twin’s Window Licker, which opens, Squarepusher’s My Red Hot Car or Battles’ Atlas to LFO’s LFO, Luke Vibert’s I Love Acid, Autechre’s Gantz Graf or Clark’s Herzog, all neatly lined up like for an identity parade. Such an exercise is likely to cause controversy through obvious omissions (there is, for instance, no mention of Mira Calix, B12, Prefuse 73 or Two Lone Swordsmen) but covering as wide a catalogue as that of Warp in such a short formatted way is, quite, impossible.

The second half of this Warp20 selection goes much further than the traditional remix exercise, as was the case with Warp 10. Various members of the roster, past and present, were each asked to cover a track released through the label in the last twenty years. The result is, to say the least, eclectic and full of surprises, from the playful (Born Ruffians version of Aphex Twin’s Milkman, here combined with To Cure A Weakling Child, Plone’s On My Bus, as interpreted by Plaid), to the slightly odd (John Callaghan basing a composition on Autechre’s Tilapia), and the poetic (Boards Of Canada’s Kaini Industries as viewed through the eyes of Bibio or Jamie Lidell’s wonderfully impressive revision of Grizzly Bear’s Little Brother) to the insanely brilliant (Luke Vibert’s take on LFO, Mark Pritchard’s excellent 3/4 Heart, originally by The Black Dog, Mira Calix’s exquisite and orchestral In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country, Pivot’s Colorado or Gravenhurst’s magnificent reworking of Broadcast’s I Found The F).

These two collections offer just a glimpse into the first two decades of a label that has unmistakably marked its era, like Blue Note, Impulse, Motown or Island did theirs. (Chosen), with its straightforward selection provides an ideal entry point to the label and proves a worthy companion to Warp 10+2: Classics, released to celebrate the label’s tenth anniversary, while (Recreated) offers a much more oblique and novel way through the catalogue, and is more likely to appeal to fans. In addition, Warp are releasing an extremely limited box set which, besides these two compilations, will also feature a mix CD in the tradition of Blech or WarpVision, plus three 10″ comprising previously unreleased material by Autechre, Boards of Canada, Broadcast and more, plus double 10” of loops to play with, the lot encased in a stunning box and accompanied by a catalogue documenting over 400 record covers designed by some of the most exciting studios around. Now, that’s a compendium! Happy anniversary Warp. Here’s to the next 20 years.

Warp20 (Recreated): 4.7/5 / Warp20 (Chosen): 4.9/5

Warp Records

Warp20 (Box Set)
Boomkat: BX

Warp20 (Recreated)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

Warp20 (Chosen)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

SQUAREPUSHER
Solo Electric Bass 1
WARP174
Warp Records 2009
12 Tracks. 39mins20secs

CD: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Boomkat Download: Amazon UK | Amazon US | iTunes

Ever since he first appeared on the electronic scene in the mid nineties, Tom Jenkinson has injected his sound with great big slabs of live electric bass, yet this has, until now, been quite secondary in his work. Indeed, it has, at times, been buried deep down beneath crashing drums and lively acid squelches, while, at others it bubbled just below the surface, injecting healthy doses of jazz in his otherwise manic drill’n’bass. This was perhaps never truer than on his 1998 album Music Has Rotted One Note, on which he favoured for a moment a more acoustic approach, but the bass, Jenkinson’s instrument of predilection, has overall remained somewhat in the background, only gaining more attention in a live context.

Solo Electric Bass 1 is Jenkinson’s first entirely stripped down record. One electric bass, one amp, and nothing else. Recorded live at Cité De La Musique in Paris in 2007, this shows Squarepusher in a light that only a lucky few have experienced. This album is, in many ways, like nothing Jenkinson has ever released. Beautiful, sophisticated, understated and delicate, the music flows freely, smooth and melodic, at times rushing through notes like a lively torrent, at others snaking gracefully through peaceful valleys to create an evocative patchwork tainted with subtle touches of jazz fusion. The range of emotions conveyed by the music is much vaster than on pretty much any of Jenkinson’s previous work, daringly encompassing introversion and poetry in some of the finest moments of this album.

The album features twelve short pieces, grouped in clusters of three or four at a time where Jenkinson moves from one track to the next without break, accentuating the seamless undertone of the music. Each of these clusters contains pastoral moments (S.E.B. 1, 9, 5, 7) wrapped around more energetic and incisive sequences (S.E.B. 4, 8, 12), giving the whole set an interesting balance between introspection and discharges of energy. What transpires all the way through is Jenkinson’s extreme dexterity, but while this relies heavily on technique, he knows better than shoving too much skills in the face to his audience and tempers it with musical expertise. This, and the fact that the album doesn’t quite hit the forty minute mark, contributes to Solo Electric Bass 1 being one of Jenkinson’s most thoroughly enjoyable and thrilling record to date.

4.5/5

Squarepusher | Squarepusher (MySpace) | Warp Records
CD: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Boomkat Download: Amazon UK | Amazon US | iTunes

Rival Consoles first appeared two years ago with a first EP released on London-based Erased Tapes. Since, Ryan Lee West he has delivered two more EPs spanning quite a wide sound world, from Aphex-like abstract drum’n’bass to razor-sharp techno. His debut album, released on Erased Tapes once again, expands greatly on the latter by collecting eleven thumping techno cuts with enough edges to last a lifetime. We took this opportunity to talk to the man about how the album came together, how he uses beats against melody, what it feels like to have his album out in the open and which console is the one.

How did you come to make music, and what made you start Rival Consoles?
I have been making music since I was about fourteen. I’ve always been interested in the actual recording and producing aspect. Over time I got bored with working in a studio and just started making music at home with a few select pieces of kit. You can spend so much time with just one simple piece of software or hardware.

Rival Consoles started while I was at university and is pretty much an outlet for my musical ideas in a wider range of styles as opposed to Aparatec [ed. Ryan's other project].

Your early EPs were somewhat different to what you’ve come out for IO. Were you still trying to find yourself, or was it just that you want to explore various sides of electronic music?
A bit of both actually – I do like to explore different styles and always will, but I do think that the style of music and production in IO is something that I have been building towards. In ten years time I guess I will leave behind a trail of different directions and ideas.

Your early EPs, especially Helvetica, seemed to be influenced by people like Aphex Twin or Squarepusher, especially in the way the rhythms were constructed.
Yeah I think rhythmically they fall under well-known names and ideas, although I’m actually more into melody and harmony, I usually use rhythms to counterpoint melody and harmony. Helvetica has huge leaps and gaps in the piano melody because I was interested how little could exist for a sense of melody to be apparent. The fragmented drums help create the illusion that there is more of a melody.

Where does the heavy techno of IO come from? What inspired you for this album?
Surprisingly, and this is going to sound very pretentious, but I was mostly influenced by what I wasn’t hearing. In trendy indie clubs and gigs I usually get pissed of with the diluted ideas and the fact that I hear so much music shying away from bold and defined ideas. With IO I tried to use ideas that were very upfront and defined. I like techno and acid. Especially older works because although they are often very tacky and cheap, they aren’t ambiguous; every note and beat is straight to the point.

The album feels very consistent sonically, as if it had all been recorded in a pretty short period of time, although first albums are often the fruit of sometimes years of work. Was it a longer process than what the final product leads to think?
Some tracks like Agenda have existed for over a year and in that time I’ve made amendments, the rest fall within a few months.

Now that the album is finished and soon to be out, how do you feel about it being heard?
Different all the time, sometimes I think great and sometimes I’m not sure, but I think you will always be humbled by other works of music, it’s best for it to be heard, especially live. I always think music in a club or venue shows best what works and what doesn’t.

1985, from the album, is being showcased on Tom Robinson’s BBC6 Music show. What was your reaction when you found out, and is it something important for you?
Yeah, that was a nice bit of news, though I’m often sceptical about who plays what and who likes what and why because a lot of politics come with it – I’m just happy for people to listen to it.

You’re responsible for remixing a track from the British Expeditionary Force album, and you’re also said to have remixed a track by Nico Muhly. How does working on remixes differs from working on your own material, and is this something you’d like to do more?
I think I will do more remixes, despite the fact I’m always making my own music because its good to do something where you aren’t exclusively thinking about your own needs and ideas. Plus I’m a great believer in working with a constraint, having to build a piece of music around a vocal or a piano melody is a good test.

So far, you’ve released most of your music on Erased Tapes. How did you get to work with them?
I sent Robert Raths, the founder of Erased Tapes, a classic ‘unsigned’ email saying ‘check out my music…’ and the rest is history, ha, but seriously I sent a classic email and he seemed genuinely interested, as was I in his approach to the music industry. I’m fortunate to work with someone who is super-passionate about art and conception, something that I fail to encounter again and again in the industry.

You’ve recently released a split EP with Ólafur Arnalds, for the occasion in his techno guise. How did the project come up, and were your three tracks, which are on the album, done originally for this?
Milo and ARP were done some time back and we knew they should be released on an album. I make a lot of music. So Robert and me have to work out what we are going to do with it (if anything). The EP was a good test and kind of a taster for the album.

Besides recording as Rival Consoles, you also release music as Aparatec, which was described by one reviewer as ‘Kraftwerk meets Jacques Lu Cont’. Can you tell us more about it, and what you’re planning with this project?
I have a lot of stuff that could be potentially released with the Aparatec project, which is very low-fidelity but without resorting to that 8-bit genre which has just passed us by. I’m constantly making music and it’s hard to go back to stuff. I think Rival Consoles will open up some interesting doors which people aren’t expecting in the future so there is little need to resort to Aparatec any time soon.

Your biography says that you have repeatedly performed at Tate Britain. What was the occasion, and what kind of set did you work on?
The first occasion was to sonically accompany Derek Jarman’s short films, which was very weird as I felt pressured for my work to compliment the films. I ended up doing a lot of avant-garde electro-acoustic material live – using custom-built music tools I have built in MAX/MSP, which was fun! Although I couldn’t help thinking how I was disgracing the building and its history. But being a fan of Cage and Duchamp, I usually give up caring about things like that and just aim to have fun.

You are doing a handful of shows for the album release. Will you be performing live, and if yes, what can people expect? Will you be touring later on in the year?
Live music is something I’m still exploring. I’ve started using my own visuals which I’m generating using Jitter, as well as playing in parts live. I don’t want to make the gig overly technical though. I like to mix between two channels so I can cut new arrangements live in a classic turntable way. The later part of this year should become very busy with some visits to European cities that will lead into the next year. 2010 is going to be busy with festivals and loads of club shows and new music.

You describe Rival Consoles as ‘a musical project where I take ideas which are cheap and processed, and combine them with rich, unpredictable patterns’. What do you mean by that?
Electronically produced sounds usually sound plastic to me, which is a result of their timbre amongst other things. Rather than spending time recreating rich timbres and sounds I’m interested in making plastic sounds more expressive. Expression in electronic music is probably the hardest goal, and for many the ultimate goal. With IO I let the sounds be plastic but tried to organise and layer them in a way that suggested the computer was trying to be expressive.

Do you already have an idea of what you want to do with Rival Consoles after the album?
I already have a lot of material for the next album, but I will spend a while just listening and establishing a large body of work which I can then sort through later.

List five records, films, books or works of art that really matter to you, and tell us why they do.
I’m a big fan of bold, classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey which as everyone knows has some of the most elegantly constructed music and film sequences.
Gyorgy Ligeti’s Requiem in that film is one of my favourite pieces.

The Dreamers lingered with me for weeks which if you don’t know is an incredible film, the best I’ve seen in recent years.

My favourite film regarding music is Once Upon A Time In The West. All the themes sound effortless and simple – yet they are so potent and expressive.

The last book I read worth talking about is The God Delusion, which was a painfully funny, scary and sad read. I’m a big fan of [Richard] Dawkins’ wit and courage.

Finally an album that was important to me when I was growing up is NIN’s The Downward Spiral.  The production, ideas and purpose all came together on this record. I particularly love how it is often very reduced, yet it always appears rich. It shows great attention to detail by Trent and Flood.

What is next in your diary?
For the next few months everything will revolve around IO and making new music. You can expect new recordings to be released sooner rather than later. But for now I really enjoy playing IO live as it’s designed for a club sound system.

And finally, PS3, Xbox or Wee?
I have been asked this a few times now and really the Rival Consoles thing, if anything, has more of a connection with my school days when everyone was moaning about Nintendo 64 vs. Playstation – and I was in favour of the 64.

Rival Consoles (MySpace) | Erased Tapes

CLARK
Totems Flare
WARP185
Warp Records 2009
11 Tracks. 44mins53secs

Buy: CD | LP

It is almost hard to believe that Clark only released his first album eight years ago so much has he become, in that time, one of the strongest, most consistent and emblematic artists on Warp, to the point of challenging the might of heavy weights like Aphex Twin or Squarepusher. His constant deliveries, started with Clarence Park, have since considerably grown in confidence and vision, and his unashamed use of heavily electronic sounds, at a time when others seemed to move away from those, has made him one of the finest purveyors of the genre.

With Totems Flare, Clark’s follow up to last year’s Turning Dragon and his fifth full length, he continues to create strong and gritty electronic music, and he wastes no time showing off his latest dirty grooves with album opener Outside Plume and Growls Garden, the leading track to his recent EP. Although the latter feature vocals, albeit distorted and rendered incomprehensible for the best part, these two are utterly Clark in every way. But, as soon as Rainbow Voodoo kicks off, at first showered by 8-bit video bleeps, before soon turning into an electro-punk assault, the album suddenly takes a different dimension. Clark once again lays vocals on the piece, and while this is not the first time he uses his voice on a record, there is here a move toward more structured song forms, at least for a moment. While his voice also appears later on Look Into The Heart Now, Talis and Suns Of Temper, it does so in much more processed fashion, echoing in that Growls Garden.

Turning Dragon made a resolute push toward the dance floor, but with Totems Flare, Clark returns to slightly less straightforward forms. Of course, the beat is as important here as it has ever been on any of his records, but while tracks such as the acid-fuelled Look Into The Heart Now or Totem Crackerjack, with its bip-bop slant in the first part, then groovy electro in its second, certainly wouldn’t sound out of place in a club, the focus is once again more on the dense sonic spaces that Clark knows how to create so well. Later, on Future Daniel, Clark dispenses once again his trademark electro-grit and fat groove, but the drums at times evokes a more openly rock setting. On Primary Balloon Landing Clark uses heavily processed guitar sounds to create a muffled effect occasionally reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine, while a gentler and almost ethereal guitar motif on Absence brings this album to a somewhat unexpected close.

While it continues to bind a wide range of electronic textures and ideas together, Totems Flare fails to entirely impress in the way its predecessors did. While it is difficult to pinpoint with precision where this album refuses gel quite so successfully, the use of heavily processed vocals, although working pretty well on Growls Garden or Talis, doesn’t quite feel so necessary elsewhere. There is also a slight feeling of complacency here, as if Clark had momentarily lost sight of his end goal and was left running around to find his way again. This is especially true on the over-charged Rainbow Voodoo, which bends under the pressure of its many components and ends up biting its own tail. But, while Totems Flare lacks the integrity Body Riddle or Turning Dragon, it remains a strong album, still very much driven by the same vision and energy.

3.9/5

Clark (MySpace) | Warp Records
Buy: CD | LP

CLARK
Growls Garden
WAP272
Warp Records 2009
06 Tracks. 25mins18secs
Format: 12″/CD/Digital

Buy: CD

Warp’s enfant terrible returns with another devastating slice of dirty gritty electronic music. Follow up to last year’s Turning Dragon, his most upbeat record to date, Growls Garden ups the ante once again as Clark launches another digital assault on the dance floor. Counting six tracks and clocking just over the twenty five minute mark, this EP is perhaps Clark’s most eclectic release since Clarence Park, as he revisits the dark hues of Empty The Bones Of You or Body Riddle (Growls Garden, Distant Father Torch), and, as he did with Turning Dragon, cuts some fine body-jerking grooves and harsh beats (Seaweed, Gonk Roughage).

The title track is also the first to carry the man’s voice, albeit heavily twisted and processed. Written in a matter of days, filling a gap during the recording of Clark’s next album, Growls Garden, Seaweed and Distant Father Torch have the urgency and angularity of true Clark monsters; rough around the edges, heavy footed, corrosive. Elsewhere, The Magnet Mine appears more complex and tortured, with multiple layers fighting for attention, while Gonk Roughage, once again using Clark’s voice as part of its structure, sounds like a nasty 12-rounder down a back alley. Only Farewell Mining Town, with its dense ambient sound waves, shows a hint of gentle elegance here and brings this EP to a surprisingly atmospheric end.

A true Warp stalwart in the great tradition of Aphex, Autechre or Squarepusher, Clark delivers another might blow with this latest EP. Whether this is in any way shape or form representative of his next album is anybody’s guess, but Growls Garden has too much to offer for it to matter at all.

4.6/5

Clark (MySpace) | Warp Records
Buy: CD