Mia Koden, via Bandcamp
Recently, I’ve been asked by a couple of outlets to contribute to listicles—one of them year-end, the other for an anniversary. All of it is introducing me to lots of great stuff. Some of what I’m learning about is not only old but canonical, and much of that was not only unheard but also previously unknown to me. Another time, I promise.
I should mention, since I haven’t in a long time: These are in chronological order by upload date, not in order of preference.
You can hear all five sets at this SoundCloud playlist.
Vinvar, Whole Festival—Forest stage (Berlin, July 20; uploaded late September)
This queer-focused festival has uploaded an astounding amount of audio from this year’s edition alone. Doing some link-following, I came across another user—lost track whom, sorry—who’d favorited the sets already noted here (cf. BC145), plus two more under consideration, and also this one. It didn’t take long to see why—this is a fizzy good time that knows how to pace itself. It’s got a straightforwardly pumping aspect to it that chimes with the rise of hard house (cf. BC128) though it goes far afield of that while also glorying in it when it comes back. Maybe that’s why this stays with me more than, to mention the near-misses, Spacer Woman or DJ Holographic did.
basic chanel, Live from the Garage @ Horst Club (London, October 5)
Four hours long, impressively cohesive, and while I may prefer her Kiosk Radio hour (cf. BC143), it’s not by very much. The atmosphere is very dusty—as in dirt on the brick walls, as in fuzzed-out states of consciousness, as in hi-hats glimmering dimly through heavily filtered pads. Those groovy soft edges hold even when horns jump in or the beats break in half while the subs swell. You want deep background? Try cavernous.
Identified Patient & Mia Koden, Dekmantel Festival—The Nest stage (August 3; uploaded October 15)
I took a flier on a handful of back-to-back sets from Dekmantel Festival this year. I came across technical issues (Coki & Joker’s first few minutes are blank) or chemistry taking its time to arrive (Elena Colombi & Lena Willikens). But this one sounds like the practitioners put their heads down and surged.
I’m grateful to the festival write-up (linked on the date above) for including this description among others in describing what Identified Patient does: “wub-driven techno.” It’s great shorthand for something I’ve heard a lot of lately—a surge in early UK dubstep, which is now going under the far more utilitarian “140.” Early UK dubstep’s 140 BPM tempo was central to its appeal because it was central, meaning median, by comparison to house music (which was typically slower) and drum & bass (which was typically faster), and techno was often close 140 BPM anyway. This allowance for variation was central to the explosion of creatively deployed tracks during the late 2000s’ podcast surge, and its recent reclaiming of ground has been doing something similar with the sets I’ve been drawn to.
Sometimes the wubs here are nearly fluorescent, a rounded zap even as it seems to drag on the ground. Sometimes they dig such a trench that they evoke the psy psurge (cf. BC126) more than dubstep, but those flare-ups are brief. The pacing never falters—when they build it up and then knock it down and drag things back to light and focus slowly and with great gobs of reverb, they do it exactly right. Despite all the aural fanfare at work here, this isn’t a flashy set, per se—that’s what I mean about putting their heads down. The FX are patiently applied, and so are the segues. If you cursor drop a few times, evenly applied, you’ll notice that almost nothing sounds much alike. But everything fits snugly.
Darwin, The 6 Mix with Mary Anne Hobbs (BBC, October 17)
Does this hour of vintage-sounding 140—a guest spot for the woman who shepherded the sound to the august BBC listenership and earned second place on The Guardian’s list of greatest Beeb recordings (cf. BC007), second only to freakin’ David Bowie—have wubs? It does, but they’re part of the landscape, not the eye-melting focus. The whole hour works as one thing, it’s a mood piece—one-note if you’re not there with it, immersive backdrop if you are. I’ve been both.
Rolando, Reclaim Your City 668 (November 3)
Of course, it’s not as if techno exactly lacks for low end—the first half of this two-hour set for one of the music’s great radio outlets almost definitively answers much of the above with its head held high and not a smidgen of anything currently in vogue. The starry-eyed and swirling style you likely imagine in your mind’s ear of the guy who made “Jaguar” absolutely applies throughout here, and it finishes with a properly triumphant instrumental aria.