| #721 |
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2004 |
Perilous 721 I was digging through some old music over the weekend and came across my copy of Autechre’s Anti EP (Warp). It’s a bit strange to realise that this now ten years old. Originally produced as a reaction to the UK’s Criminal Justice Bill, enacted in the final years of Tory rule, it featured a lovely skittering proto-jungle track, Flutter, that had been programmed without any ‘repetitive beats’ so as to challenge the CJB’s prohibition of events with ‘repetitive beats’. This draconian 1994 regulation was just a small part of the CJB that criminalised much of the fringes of British culture – the travellers, the ravers, the hunt saboteurs, the young urban underclasses – and removed a lot of long established legal rights such as the right to silence and introduced harsh additional police powers. (Notice any similarities to today?) Anyway, the Anti EP stands up pretty well and certainly is the equal of many of its modern offspring. Along with the later Anvil Vapre EP these were the only two Autechre releases that I used to be able to drop in dancefloor sets. Amongst two recent releases heavily inspired by this early 90s Warp sound are the new EP from Apparat, Shapemodes (Neo Ouija) and Vesna’s Snow Senses (N5md). Berlin’s Apparat usually records for his own label Shitkatapult. On Shapemodes his trademark spiky splintered digital techno-influenced electronics are softened on this more melodic release for British IDM label Neo Ouija, and it comes highly recommended. Vesna’s Snow Senses for the former minidisc-only label N5md, is even more reminiscent of those older years, and this Russian group draw on some appropriately icy and frosty sounding synths over crushed hip hop beats. Also turned up from the rubble was one of my favourite picks of last year, Alva Noto and Ryuchi Sakamoto’s Vrioon (Raster-Noton). Usually the Raster-Noton stuff requires a very specific listening space – much like the releases on other ultra-minimalist labels like 12k and Line. But Vrioon perfectly matches the slow piano meditations of Sakamoto with the sub bass pulses and high frequency tones of Noto – creating a beautiful deeply stripped back ambient experience. A similarly lovely listening experience that you might expect to be far more ‘difficult’ than it turns out to be is Oren Ambarchi’s recent Grapes From The Estate (Touch) which continues his endless unravelling guitar loops this time bringing a small selection of other instruimentation into the mix as well. Both Vrioon and Grapes are highly meditative and worth tracking down. Frigid bubbles along as ever with Chocolate Industries group Via Tania (Tania Bowers and Casey Rice) play live on September 5 with new Preservation Records signing Saddleback – best described as ‘conjoined ambient’. This one should be big – the Via Tania album of last year featured productions with Tortoise and Prefuse73, and this is one of the very few live shows for Via Tania in Australia. All this for free, every Sunday, at the @Newtown. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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