| #618 |
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2002 |
Perilous 618 It’s a mighty long time since there’s been a decent mix cd that has pushed the boundaries even remotely as far as Coldcut’s infamous Journeys By DJ from 1995. Surprisingly diverse and rapidly transcending genre barricades and tempo limitations Coldcut’s mix pushed the ‘eclecticism’ of 95/96 to its limits. Now reissued seven years later it still retains its charm and gives those too young to remember a chance to pick it up at a normal price. Whilst in the intervening years there have been some notable mixes – Shadow & Cut Chemist working stacks of old funk and soul sevens on Product Placement and Brainfreeze, RJD2 doing much the same on Your Face Or Your Kneecaps, even DJ Z-Trip doing his ‘live mix’ pop bootleg/mashup thing with Uneasy Listening, or David Holmes’ eclectic segueing on Come Get It I Got It – there’s not really been a release that has jumped out of the confines of a particular niche sound genre. While DJ Spooky has been theorising and getting busy making a pretty uninspiring mix CD of old (1995) releases on the US Shadow label, another New York DJ, DJ/Rupture has been putting together some pretty remarkable mixes. Rupture’s first claim to fame, other than a few records for his own Soot label, was a mix in 2001 called Gold Teeth Thief. From an extremely limited CD run, it soon appeared on the Soot website as an MP3 download it became so popular. 3 decks and 43 tracks crammed into a 60 minute mix it traversed north African music, destructive gabber-jungle, hiphop, r&b, and dub – often all at once. Stretching across time signatures and mixing together tracks at two-thirds, three-quarters, triple and double bpms, it was as seamless as this sort of thing can be. Now, Kid606’s Tigerbeat6 label has properly released the follow-up to Gold Teeth Thief called Minesweeper Suite. Minesweeper takes in 60 tracks in roughly the same number of minutes often combining four tracks simultaneously ripping mercilessly from dancehall, dub, and reggae, plundering hip hop and r&b accapellas and then running them up against everything from experimental electronics to straight up brutal jungle. Fortunately Rupture has a keen ear and knows when too much all at once can saturate the listening experience and turn wonder into “I wonder why the hell I am listening to this”. It’s a mind-boggling mix that fulfils Rupture mission to “strike against geography” by bring together German experiments with American R&B, South London junglism and Jamaican dub with North African musics, even Australian soundart with Aaliyah. Highly recommended. Moving on to all things Frigid, we come to Brisbane-based group Ponyloaf. Having spent last year supporting Stereolab and other odd visitors to Brisbane, Ponyloaf which includes the former keyboard player from Regurgitator come to town to play one show on Sunday Aug 25. Their live show is coordinated using the Ableton Live software and sees a range of live equipment battling a laptop for supremacy as the three Ponyloaf members leap around a bit. Anyway, they’ve also got an EP out on Valve Records with a lovely cover courtesy of Rinzen (collaborators with Designers Republic) which veers from Plaid-style delicate primary colours IDM to some pretty uptempo nuttiness. Live I’m not quite sure what to expect. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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