SQUAREPUSHER — THEME FROM ERNEST BORGNINE

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⌾ LISTEN TO THEME FROM ERNEST BORGNINE ⌾

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A frenzy of drums propels ‘Theme From Ernest Borgnine’ along, metallic snares rifle and tumble over themselves, a torrent of hi-hats and cymbals splash as a backdrop. Listening to this storm and surge of percussion is like feeling the weight of a waterfall: unceasing, multifaceted, and in the tumult of both, strangely soothing.

The natural connection to Squarepusher’s track doesn’t stop there. Lead synths chirp in snippets of stave-hopping brightness like the songs of robotic birds; soft, muffled chords provide a heavy haze, the type that fogs the sky on hot days. It’s only in its coda, the final minute and a half of the track, that it feels suddenly synthetic — human, basically.

The ambience falls away, revealing the true harshness of the drums, while acid synths wobble and crack in energetic celebration. Squarepusher symphonises jungle, creates rollicking rave beats garnished with emotive washes of sound, but he also wakes the dreamer from their peaceful slumber.

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• 🔔 'Theme From Ernest Borgnine' is taken from the upcoming remastered re-release of Squarepusher's Feed Me Weird Things — his debut studio album released back in 1996. The remastered edition is due out on 4th June on Warp Records. You can pre-order it on vinyl, CD or just digitally from Bandcamp.

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DANIEL BORTZ — YOU CAN STAY FOREVER

⌾ LISTEN TO DANIEL BORTZ, YOU CAN STAY FOREVER ⌾

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With its haunting pitched croons lifted from Alicia Keys' 'No One' effusing from a backdrop of synths bleeding together and time-worn beats, 'You Can Stay Forever' by producer Daniel Bortzreads like a vestige of the past. It moves through forests of flustered elastic acid arpeggios, plumes of vox synth laying a fog over proceedings, while the stuttering echoes of thin, gleaming chords punctuate the song like strobe lights.

The faint syncopation of it all, the crushed indistinct hi-hats, the destructed snares and their harsh reverberation, the lo-fi aesthetic, its juddering dancefloor atmosphere (sticky floors; the floral tangle of beer and perfume) — all of it culminates in an unearthed relic of a track; a cassette plunged into a tape deck that conjures ghosts and memories of a grainy, unremembered time instead of sound.

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• 🔔 This is taken from the new album by Daniel Bortz, Stay, out 16th October on Permanent Vacation. You can pre-order it on Bandcamp if you like, or memorise the tracklist below for fun.

  Daniel Bortz — Stay tracklist:
  1. Grind
  2. Holding You
  3. How Far Can We Go
  4. South Beach
  5. On A Boat
  6. Smells Like CK One
  7. Stay
  8. Teenage Emotions
  9. Isolation
  10. Together
  11. You Can Stay Forever
  

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🐣 FANTASTIC MAN — REALITY CHANGE

"Change reality…" The vocal sample in this track is a fitting one, breaking through its hypnotic heart with foggy delay and reverb like an interdimensional mantra and suggesting this most wild and fantastical of notions. It fits alright, suiting the fluttering synth of the track, the way it phases in and out, the glassy sounds that fold into the track like sugar into a delicious batter for the brain. Like rain, hi-hats seem to fall golden and white-noise pitter-patter, chilled rather than agitated.

Summoned by Australian musicmaker Fantastic Man, these sounds are the thinner spiritual elements of 'Reality Change', the veil of somnolent heavy-eyed air, the spirit of sunset-gazers, leg-crossers and cocktail-drinkers, a Balearic fantasia. At the same time, acid synth wiggles in, urgent and silly and elastic; and the booming bounce of bass and the unrelenting kicks ground this rave-wise into something earthly, the visceral anchor for its flights of fancy; at its core, these two retro styles inhabiting the same groove.

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• 🔔 This is from Fantastic Man's P.M.T.C. 12" (featuring 'Reality Change' alongside one other track, 'Cool Waters'), released 8th January 2018 via Superconscious Records. You can purchase it on Bandcamp for a certain amount of currency.

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📣 LAZY INTERVIEW #34 — LOOM

What does London Ambient mean?

That's what we asked London-based producer Loom of his recently released EP. He tell us over email that it's "an imaginary musical history that's in the air in London." In fact that is almost exactly, to the finest detail, what London Ambient sounds like. Snippets of acid-inflected synths wibble and writhe throughout; rave drums crash plosive and tribal; a conjuration of the city at night, its dimly lit streets, its hidden clubs. "So much great stuff has come out on London," he continues, "so I wanted to touch on that."

It begins with 'Heavy Glow', a beatless prelude in hefty synth and sub that sets the atmosphere for what follows—but you'll have to read our review to see what else we thought (a lot of things). We may have established that it's a love-letter to the UK capital's heritage of dance and electronic sounds, but what we were really bursting to know was if he was named after Loom, the 1990 Lucasfilm graphic adventure game. Could it be? "I've got no idea what that is mate," he wrote back. "It's not really the name that matters, it's the work attached to it." Touché. But still.

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w h o   a r e   y o u ?   w h e r e   a r e   y o u   f r o m ?   w h a t   d o   y o u   d o ?

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I am a person who enjoys making music, eating kebabs and DJing. I was born in the 90s and raised in rural (farmland, raves and dogging) Suffolk. Now I live in South London with my girlfriend.

h o w   d i d   y o u   s t a r t   c r e a t i n g   m u s i c ?

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I thought So Solid Crew were really cool when I was like 11 and wanted to be DJ Oxide. I got some decks for Christmas started DJing, I was DJing in bars at 14 around Ipswich, playing old house music. I wanted to learn how to produce so I got Reason or Fruity and it went from there. 

h o w   w o u l d   y o u   d e s c r i b e   y o u r   s o u n d ?

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It changes, right now I'm really feeling a lot of house, techno & jungle, so I'm trying to work them into my music. It’s very UK sounding, but I love the older US stuff as well. 

i s   t h e r e   a   p e r f e c t   t i m e   a n d   p l a c e   f o r   l i s t e n i n g   t o   y o u r   m u s i c ?

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Club, if it's a banger, or on the motorway at night if it's one of my moody, beatless ones. „
Even if everyone hated what I was making, I don't care as long as I'm challenging myself
” w h a t   i n s p i r e s   y o u   m o s t   w h e n   m a k i n g   a   t r a c k ?

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I run purely on instinct – I enter a brain-dead state to write music and try not think at all. Certainly other music influences creep in, plus moods/atmospheres/memories.

w h a t   i s   y o u r   m o s t   m e m o r a b l e   m u s i c a l   e x p e r i e n c e ?

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Probably going to a grime/DnB rave at 14. We all knew the owners daughter and she would get us in. The first time there I felt real sub bass, saw live DJs/MCs, saw people fucked, drug dealers, gangs, plus the fear of my mum finding out made it an amazing experience. That real hit of adrenaline, fear and wonder I felt, I always try to capture in my own music and DJ sets.

w h a t   a r e   y o u r   f a v o u r i t e   t h r e e   s o n g s   a t   t h e   m o m e n t ?

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1. Or:la – Wendy Wild

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2. WK7 – Rhythm 1

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3. S.O.N.S – Acid Dreams (Trance Jungle Mix)

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w h o   d o   y o u   m o s t   a d m i r e   i n   t h e   m u s i c   w o r l d ?

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I don't admire anyone but my mum.

i n   y o u r   o p i n i o n ,   w h a t   i s   t h e   f u t u r e   o f   m u s i c ?

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New music will be released, some good, some bad, same as ever innit. I hope underground music keeps evolving. Most producers quickly become comfortable and lazy. Even if everyone hated what I was making, I don't care as long as I'm challenging myself and keeping things interesting.

w h a t ' s   t h e   f u t u r e   o f   y o u r   m u s i c   –   w h a t   d o   y o u   h o p e   t o   d o   n e x t ?

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Start a label, DJ around the world, keep releasing tracks I'm happy with.

w h a t   i s   m o s t   i m p o r t a n t   t o   y o u ?

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           Kebabs.


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• 🔔 London Ambient is out now on Gobstopper Records and can be purchased variously via this hyperlink. A site dedicated specially to the release exists, too: londonambient.com.
• 🔔 Read our review of Loom's fabulous EP.

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L  A  Z  Y    I N T E R V I E W    S E R I E S

← #33: E.M.M.A #35: ??????? →

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💽 LOOM — LONDON AMBIENT

JAAAAAA. The first big chords of producer Loom's London Ambient EP bristle with drama. The complexity of them and the progression as the opening track 'Heavy Glow' soars onward. The space between the chords and the robust sub that drops depth charges in these ambient moments. The orchestral clarity of the sampled violin hits versus the twangs of metallic synth that play syncopated melodies ending each phrase in a series of satisfyingly jarring triplets. The darkness and distortion of it. And the thing is that it feels like late-night London, the looming exterior of a club on an empty orange-lit street, and the slow-motion crowd of its interior; the camera turns slowly on its axis. It is the prelude to the three juddering tracks that follow.

First up: 'Aacccid', a track true to its name, featuring the overdriven booming kicks and handclaps that conjure warehouse dancefloors, distant smoke machine times, the vomit of strobes, the uptempo rave counterpart of house music that was born and nurtured in the UK. But over the top, in place of the squeegee elastic synths typical of this '90s style, there are clarion clusters of synth boops that cut the air glacially, less soft fizzy Refresher bar and more hardboiled tang of a melody pop; rave cymbals crash.

A slosh of crushing handclaps is the abrasive punctuation of aptly 'Dog In The Fight', combined with plasma kicks and a constant gloop anti-groove of sub-bass that gives it this urban swamp sort of feel. Beginning like an unaccompanied grime instrumental the track morphs into a UK funky sort of rhythm, complete with wobbling wah-wah synths, something closer to the acid that gives the previous track its title, a retro sound; one of the things that characterises London Ambient as a whole, these sounds of yore, a motif extracted not from nostalgia but from objective heritage and contemporaneous revivalism in electronic dance music.

Raving breakbeats thud and thump at the heart of 'Saturday Job At Laser Quest', part throwback dancefloor destiny and part heart-thumping excitement and fear of a laser quest party. The middle section is tense, poised, all the smell of the smoke machines and the strobing lights and the heavy laser gun in hand. Slimy synths drip-drop all over this one, a biohazard sort of sludge that gives this track a wonderfully dark edge to its retro-facing beats.

But ending as it began, beatless and textured, London Ambient bows out with 'Forever', a postscript to everything that's gone before. It's a touching swansong of crunched rumbling synth that fizzes with crackling decay and chugs along with a flanger effect, decorated with zipping little plasma synths resonating like echoes of the synths from the previous track in a cosmic void, chirruping like alien animals calling out to each other, and bitcrushed little trinkets. A simple melody plays on glossy blooping synth, melancholy and heartbroken but innocent in its melody, something human and emotive above the harsh electronics, the contrast of glassy clarity and the drone of the bass below, humans doing what they can in the murk of reality. A robotic voice wheezes the word "Forever…" The lights come on, the music stops, everybody has to go home.

London Ambient is both fantasy and reality, cinematic and observational, pushing forward but with a reverence to the sounds of the past. Crucially, atmospheric drops abound—even from looking at the waveforms as the tracks play on SoundCloud you can tell this. It's another relic of the past – another motif for Loom in this instance – taken carefully from the UK's earliest love affair with dance and a trope of the collection of genres that make up "rave"; the beat falls away and there is this ambient void in which sweat-jewelled dancers sway and eyes-half-open leaning on each other, an almost motionless vacuum; a chance to breathe, let the music sink in, feel. And that is London Ambient.

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• 🔔 Loom's love-letter to the dance music and culture of past and present London Ambient is out now via Gobstopper Records. You may purchase it variously here. There is also a site dedicated especially to the release in the form of londonambient.com.
• 🔔 Loom is also a founding member of club collective/party/night Acid Fantasy.

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ISABELLA – BUDGE

Sometimes the best way to whip up a frenzy whilst also creating a wholly original track is not through any special secret method, but through simple addition, subtraction and repetition. When it comes to dance music, maybe all music, this surely is the golden rule—in 'Budge', a recent standalone SoundCloud upload from Isabella – producer of, she says, "odd acid and sloppy techno" – this is, quite gloriously, the case. Full name Isabella Koen, and previously known as Sitting Adult the musicmaker is not only ultra-pro at this dynamic setting down and extraction of parts in music, but also of creating sound itself: the sounds she uses are organic, like half-machines-half-lifeforms moving in unison rather than artificial noises.

The drums start proceedings with juddering kick, thin snare and harsh handclap, overdriven toms making their way into the mix weaving in an added complexity and precision, with a series of beeping bloops and bleeps like building blocks falling into place next, a shroud of shredded plasma gradually making its way to the fore like a mechanised spiritual presence. The track then begins in earnest, a four-note refrain, a digitised sound textured with knife-cut electric treble and plunging bass at the same time, seeming to hang in the air before sheaves of open hi-hat fall and propel the track forward, percussion tumbling now, through various changes in these parts, a tunnel of cold simplicity, a futuristic Hazy Maze Cave (that's a level from Mario 64 if you didn't know), an effortless feat of atmosphere and aesthetics, ghostly and physical, mathematics and rhythm.

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• Isabella's most recent release is the self-titled Isabella (a slightly harder, harsher sound in general than this decidedly minimalist standalone track) released tape-wise on Philadelphia label Embalming Lately; listen + download on their bandcamp.

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MAT PLAYFORD – ISON

When I was thinking about this track earlier I came up with the idea that it sounded exactly the same as the music for the first stage of Captain Falcon's Twister Race on Nintendoland. Now, as I listen to this bit of soundtrack afresh, I can hear that, really, they don't sound all that similar. Where did I get that from?

I think it is the motion, the urgent, hyperactive kineticism of Mat Playford's house track 'ISON' that made me automatically associate with the speedy vibes that traditionally go with anything F-Zero related. I first heard 'ISON' one night on the radio (think it was an Annie Mac show?) and couldn't help but love it. That was months ago. Since then I've been waiting patiently for a real upload that wasn't a 2-minute teaser on Black Rock Records and HERE IT IS.

It's an odyssey of squidgy bass and a gloriously cyclical set of piano chords that gradually come into focus in the first minute of the track, where cymbals and hi-hats invade the beat – pulsing kicks and understated handclaps with the occasional snare stutter – to give it more energy. Soon, the main event: virtuoso piano. Tinkling and 7th-chording all the over the place, a kind of jazz-flavoured mania of cascading notes that should cement Mat Playford as a very decent piano player, too. Please note: 3:11, the low-note pause; the muted breakdown at about 4:08; the gradually deconstructed, bleepy outro from 5:35-ish. Dynamics are strong 'n' subtle here.

It's like, yeah, like something that might play in one of the clubs post-race on F-Zero, hanging in a slick Mute City bar and watching the future of lounge piano playing unfold before your very ears.

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• You can, if you wish, purchase 'ISON' from Traxsource, via Black Rock.
• Speaking of lounge, Peruvian DJ Viktor Torvik made an easy listening/lounge, '60s/'70s guest mix for YES/NO a few weeks ago. I urge you to check out its brilliance.

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BOBMO – IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN

Premiering on Mixmag blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah here is Parisian producer Bobmo with new track 'It Is Happening Again'. With a Twin Peaks-inspired name – "It is happening again" is what The Giant says to Detective Cooper in a nightmarish premonition – and actually sampling those very words from the cult show, it's taken from Bobmo's upcoming two-track EP, When I Look, released on Marble, a label which he calls home (also home to other French acts including Myd, Canblaster, Para One, etc.).

So what can you expect from this dancefloor-destined number? It's dark and brooding, matching the subject material of its namesake, exploding with the brutal thump of techno, each kick snare-hit bringing up distorted dust – rattling floorboards and thundering skies float in its atmosphere. Distorted squelch bass bounces along in stuttering madness as high pitched overdriven whistle saw-wave synth rises and falls in and out of earshot, sometimes chirping pulsar blips, sometimes screaming sawmill grinding. Listen for nightmares and dance-desire.

There's this wondrous mechanical fuzz to it, a cautionless evaporation of clear-cut sounds for something deathly organic, frying in dry dust darkness – a pressure cooker of noise and danceable beats. Noisy and explosive, it's techno with acidic lilt, and you can't help but let yourself become infected with its virulent pulse. So yeah, if you liked this, there's another one where this came from on the When I Look EP, out 31st March. Eat it up if you feel like it.

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BLUFRANK I FELL IN LOVE WITHOUT YOU :&: PILL FOUND / FIELDS OF NOTHING

Cairo's own indie dance producer offers up some new stuff. Maybe this time around I could just say that and that it's "sounding really good this evening" or something like that and just be done with it. I could but I won't. Good music deserves more words than you think they do. It's an extended compliment; a song-length description; accompaniment. Quick—! Steal the keyboard! Stop me waffling!

So anyway, this is a new (but not the newest) track from Egyptian musicmaker, BLUFRANK, whom I wrote about at some point last year for the first time. It's interesting to find out about someone in Egypt because, well, there was a revolution there last year (the second in as many years) and in such an atmosphere it seems that creativity continues (the internet probably helps in this respect), with BLUFRANK herself playing at a downtown-Cairo club called Vent for New Year's Eve just gone. It just surprises me.

In any case, let's have a little listen to BLUFRANK's penultimate track, 'I Fell In Love With You'.

Thumping along to a clean, allegretto hip hop beat throughout – complete with snappy snares and thud-pulse kicks – the track is a hypnotic trek through surreal club landscapes, walls dripping with sweat in slow-motion and the floor a bouncing mat of disorientation. Samples, some female vocals sung, are dropped throughout the song, as are snippets of vocal well after the halfway mark, combined with the ripping crash-crackle of water & bubbling bongwater sounds, as the drums go virtuoso with rapid-fire hi-hats. The thick jumble of sounds that creates the track's foundation gives it a heavy, mesmerising flavour, whilst the sharp drums and sample placement keeps it exceedingly fresh.

On the other hand, BLUFRANK's true latest track is a mix of acid house with a dark, almost icy disco-house tang towards the end, a mix of styles that indeed is reflected in its title, 'Pill Found / Fields Of Nothing':

Whilst in my opinion not as strong as 'I Fell In Love Without You', well actually that's not fair to say: it's not a strong STARTER but it certainly ends with a bang of disco-house beats. (Interestingly, the end of this track leads pretty much perfectly into 'I Fell In Love Without You' – a nice EP set up, perhaps…?) The second half of this track, 'Fields Of Nothing' I guess, is really great, dominated by its foot-possessing beat and muffled synth waves, enshrouding you with addictively comforting white-noise-esque sounds as you dance in a mindless fog. Void! That's why we dance yo.

So, get to know. I'm looking forward to seeing how BLUFRANK evolves in the future. Here's to creativity!

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