Author: Matt Oliver

Album Review: Pieter Steijger / ‘Luminosity’ (Frameworx Music)

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★★★☆☆

As a can of worms looks for a tin opener, it’s 50/50 as to whether you’d deem Luminosity as ‘intelligent’ or ‘deeper’ EDM. “Elements of Life” is most indicative of muting the pyrotechnics and aiming to be more meaningful. An additional alignment to tech-house with a laboratory feed has the power and the blinkers to hit the dancefloor pretty hard, stitched together with diligent, driving digital precision. Despite being regularly mounted on rock solid beds of bass – make sure the low ends are well up actually, otherwise the likes of “Perception” will pass by and make you think that Steijger’s studio isn’t fully plugged in — a lack of excitement is spun positively as a surplus of proficiency, picturing gyroscopes rotating economically.

The Dutchman making spindly rhythms happen with full-bottomed sound will serve you well when in the middle of a marathon dancefloor session looking for something to run more club circuits to. Kind of inevitably there’s a momentary drop down in tempo, with “Interlude” providing peril as it pushes bass across a rope bridge, the cue for Steijger to start thrusting more darkly with the steely spirals of “Unconscious” and to finish the album arousing suspicions. If you want something to get you moving without pretension or hoopla and can pass Steijger’s sound as scientific, the glow of Luminosity won’t have you shielding your eyes or ears, even if its brilliance is only by name.

File under: Pig & Dan, Tom Novy, Sander Young

Album Review: Ellen Allien / ‘LISm’ (BPitch Control)

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★★★☆☆

Forty-five minutes long and based on a theatrical dance performance — probably one of the few formats Allien has yet to make her own — this single episode is ambitious next levelism taking made-for-stage music on a drama schooling through analogue and digital, indulging Allien’s inner thespian while bringing DJ culture to the boards.

Strumming acoustic premonitions from a rocking chair, under a moonlit sky in the middle of nowhere, a low-rent start feels for the tonal and abstract, laying a loose beginning-middle-end foundation. Bringing dirge drums to the wilderness, Allien’s loneliness is abundantly clear until, planed by electronics, a burgeoning curiosity splutters into life as clips and bleeps activate, turning the barren into a field of randomized LEDs.

Not a logical progression, but the ‘real’ Allien is now coming through, ever poised to spring the next wave of sounds. After a period stalking prey through fiddled frequencies, still switching between processed and organic, she goes into deep synthesized thought, beaming a free-jazz flashback future-bound. That intro already seems like a lifetime ago. Becoming industrially, then humanly pensive, the patchwork evolves evermore erratically, making the visuals to go with it hard to sketch out. Around two-thirds in, deep jackin’ house takes over in a short-lived, stage-abandoning, LSD-ready experience.

Back to brooding, Allien’s last ten minutes are spent placing leaden pulses and hopeful fragments into an electro/new wave cliffhanger. Brave, if in need of CliffsNotes to help you keep up.

File under: Apparat, Boom Bip, Roll the Dice

Compilation Review: ‘Gilles Peterson – Black Jazz Radio’ (Snow Dog Records)

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Gilles Peterson - Black Jazz Radio

★★★★☆

The reissue market is always a competitive one, but when Gilles Peterson says he’s gonna head a compilation concentrating on jazz, soul and funk masterpieces from a label to celebrate, Black Jazz Radio puts a bodyguard on the dial so that you won’t think of touching it. Exhibiting masters at work from an imprint that enjoyed a relatively short-lived existence but long-term significance, Peterson takes you right back to the watershed of the era, smartly attired with a rat race frown furrowing through the ’70s.

The show starts off sweetly and easygoing before getting into the nitty gritty, with the tired-sounding “Beauty and The Electric Tub” by Henry Franklin shaking itself out of a slump for 12 minutes. Track by track musicians start working overtime, freestyling while making a point (solos may ramble, but they still pay respect to its backers keeping up) and showing enduring influence. Rudolph Johnson’s “The Highest Pleasure” is steeped in hip-hop vibes, a little Latin peeps over Walter Bishop and Gene Russell, and Doug Carn fights the power. Rolling stone sleuthing and crimefighter compulsion from Cleveland Eaton has its quipping funk pinned by eager violins, sent slinking back further by Kellee Patterson’s soul lullaby. The entire Black Jazz catalog is to be reintegrated across a three-way mix collection/history lesson, and predictably Peterson has started the ball rolling just fine.

File under: Now-Again, Perception & Today, Freestyle

Album Review: Marc Romboy & Ken Ishii / ‘Taiyo’ (Systematic Recordings)

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★★★★☆

Holding its own like a premium tire designed to skim across black ice, two tech-house titans survey the Tao of Taiyo, cracking their knuckles and working out game-winning strategies while menace and the need to mesmerise runs through their minds. All via the middle man-cutting medium of a modem.

Cased in a sphere of wires, “Seiun” loops over and under itself while bass rises to the top like a controlled endorphin rush. “Helium” is a comedown with ache undercutting it, foraging away in an out of sight bunker while wisps of magic fill the air, though the rather too funky bassline dubbing up the still is the package’s one thorny issue.

“Dopplereffekt” hammers and heals, tech-house that has a synth rhythm jumping up and down with casual Balearic knowledge, seeing if it can cool the striking of the iron. “Suisei” is another moody worker of thrills, squirming electronics and acid infiltration plaited around a deep trance body, lifting arms and making brains connect the dots. The title track, showing awestruck tendencies before a bassline propeller tells it to quit dreaming, is your peak time rumpus or end of the night race to the finish line. Closed out by “Der Strand” bathing itself in newfound bliss, it’s an achievement to make a mini-album of only seven tracks and create logical progressions, including scene setting headers and footers. And of course, without any physical interaction.

File under: Bodzin, FLR, The Analog Session