friday night mixes

it's hot, sticky and foreboding out, which is a good enough excuse to stay in and listen to music.

forward strategy group - electronique.it podcast E.P.079
gotta sign up up to electronique.it for this one, but it's worth it for their mix series. forward strategy group is patrick walker and smear, and they craft industrial-strength techno... smear's recent remix on zooloft records is a real earth-scorcher. this set hits it hard, fast, and noisy, with some harsh dub chords and cerebral bleeping... and the ending should leave no mind un-blown.

marcel fengler - RA.209
RA archives their mixes pretty quickly, so grab this one while it's hot! marcel fengler is a resident at berlin's berghain club, and his productions have always been worth a listen. fengler starts off this RA podcast with some really gorgeous deep dubs, then kicks it into high gear, landing magnificently onto his own 'chi twine' halfway through. check out the tracklist at RA. very nice!

marcel dettmann live @ sub club (glasgow) - 04-02-2010
only 35 minutes long, but it's packed with power! i could wish this was longer, but it's still a very tight set of diverse tracks.

xhin - electric deluxe podcast 019
lately, this guy has thrown down some relentlessly driving techno in his podcast mixes. here, xhin trades the four-on-the-floor for a bunch of off-dancefloor styles and bpm's, featuring amon tobin, squarepusher, and radiohead's jonny greenwood among many others that should tickle your brain nicely. a very thoughtful collection of heady tunes, this one... definitely a keeper.


enjoy! and thanks to those who came out to the morseland wednesday to listen to me spin my records - good times. more music and reviews soon....

monday night news/food for thought

i just enjoyed some soup and toast, and i've been reading some of this stuff:

sonar chicago
chicago heads, here's more information on this september's chicago version of spain's barcelona festival. looks like the main day events will go on at the chicago cultural center downtown. i'm really excited to learn more about the "experimental slant" of the weekend. smilecoldanatomy will secretly hope for a few favorites to make an appearance. *cough*monolake*shed*vladislav delay*cough*

juno plus interviews ben klock
check out this conversation with berghain/ostgut ton superman ben klock. very cool to see where he came from and where he's trying to go. this writer looks forward to ostgut's upcoming 5-year compilation, as well as klock's berghain 04 mix... and is still trying to forget about his heartbreaking detroit shut-down (more on that later).

FACT talks with regis
turn on a few sandwell district tracks and cozy up to this lengthy chat with karl o'connor, aka regis. the man has been making dark, visceral tracks for more than 15 years, and lately has helped grow sandwell district into one of the best techno labels in the world... his 'variance iv' is a punishingly cerebral work of art. worth your time, this one!

mathew jonson discusses his new album
read this interview with the wagon repair leader, on the heels of his solo album debut, agents of time. jonson sounds like a pretty groovy guru here, which makes sense given the trance-inducing nature of his music. from this chat, it sounds like he has a good grasp on how to work with the long-player format; i'm hoping for good things when i finally give agents of time a thorough listen.


and because i'm a huge fan of all things cosmic, i've been intrigued by these literary pieces of outer-space goodness:

hubble catches planet being devoured by its star

hints of life found on saturn moon

quantum teleportation achieved over 10 miles of free space

and in some final news for now, to any chicago north-siders out there: i'll be dj'ing at the morseland here in rogers park this wednesday night. i'm opening and only playing an hour or so but i have some fresh records to play out so i'll try to keep it deep. cheers!

sonar festival coming to chicago!

xlr8r is reporting that sonar, the annual spanish music festival, will take over chicago in september!

not much has been revealed, except that this will take place thursday-saturday, september 9-11 both during the day and at night... and "will become a regular event". check out the official SonarChicago website, where you can register your email address to get the latest news. smilecoldanatomy looks forward to yet another reason why chicago does it BIG in the summertime!

my top albums for 2010 (so far)

summer is upon us, so i think it's a good time to look back and consider the musical output of the last half-year. there's plenty to keep your ears busy, but of the stuff that i've heard so far in 2010, i keep returning to these albums:

the black dog - music for real airports
i blogged about this a few months ago, mostly intrigued by the idea of a response to brian eno's 1978 album music for airports. honestly, i have little knowledge of the black dog's music, but this album is simply brilliant, no matter the context of its creation. there's 14 tracks here with cryptic air travel references as titles, but most of them blend together to create a seamless hour-long journey that literally floats, soaring through clouds of softly pressurized but nevertheless foreboding drones. the album weaves between ambient passages and rhythmic tracks filled with sputtered, broken drumbeats, with sampled vocal clutter of airport activity sparingly applied throughout. tense, delicate, at times frightening, and always achingly deep: a captivating listen, and my current pick for album of the year.

tin man - scared
a vinyl-only release, i got my copy just last week and i've been slowly succumbing to its charms. scared showcases tin man's growing maturity as a producer and songwriter. you have more of his slow, minimal drum and 303 programming, but i see such an improvement in the delivery of lyric, melody, and ambiance as tin man continues to glide through retro and futuristic thoughts of love and isolation. my favorites tracks reveal enhancements to tin man's unique voice that i find especially gorgeous, such as 'space case' and 'self help'; there's also 'zone unknown', which features a sort of vocal melody that unexpectedly and beautifully soars skyward. if there is a weak spot among these 8 songs, i'd say it has to be 'stand by me,' a song whose relatively conventional approach sorta turns me off. otherwise, scared is full of hazy, experimental pop abstractions. disturbingly blissful, darkly romantic, but always with a sense of cozy warmth... frankly, i can't wait to see what tin man comes up with next.

pawel - pawel
paul kominek has been around dial since the beginning; after a handful of EPs, here is his first LP effort released on the hamburg-based record label. if you're familiar with the alternately playful and melancholic depth of dial's other output, this should be a welcome addition to that sound; if you're not familiar, i still recommend this as an excellent album of shimmering, summery house music. while it's not in any way mind-blowing, it doesn't have to be: there's definitely enough going on inside these tracks to warrant repeat listens. in terms of dancefloor-ready albums, i think this is the best so far this year.


so, those are my favorite albums of the early part of this year. i want to note that there have been some hugely anticipated albums, such as marcel dettmann's eponymous full-length, scuba's triangulation, and peter van hoesen's entropic city, which have felt a bit underwhelming to me so far. but with upcoming full-length releases by mathew jonson, pan sonic, donato dozzy, and niederflur, among many others, there's tons of interesting music to look forward to as we move into the second half of 2010.

matthew dear preps new album: black city

smilecoldanatomy loves matthew dear. last year, this writer was lucky enough to thrice see the centerpiece of dear's 2009 musical output: the hecatomb audio-visual live show under his audion alias. this summer, dear releases black city, his fourth album under his own name and first since asa breed in 2007.

dear's other aliases rely on his distinctively weird production, but under his own name, the man creates a sort of vocal pop music... still, of course, strung out over his hypnotically disjointed rhythms.

black city sees the light of day, and unfortunately the fading light of summer, on august 16. it will be released on ghostly international, which has, along with its sublabel spectral sound, been home to many matthew dear and audion releases. too bad this won't get released any sooner... but until then, you can go to his website to sign up to receive a freely-downloadable single from the album, the funky-weird "i can't feel"; or go to pitchfork for a stream if you're lazy.

go go gadget: matthew dear minimal pop!