it’s been a while since isolee’s involving full length on pampa, but finally the german returns to the label with a new ep that is just as layered and lush.
teshno
'in germany, they can't say 'techno,' they say 'teshno'' ~ seth troxler [march 2008]
isolee ~ allowance on pampa
die vögel ~ fratzengulasch / maikäferbenzin on pampa
koze’s convention crushing pampa turns back to old friends die vögel for its next 12”. and the results, unsurprisingly, are some of the label’s bravest releases all year. not just because there are only two tracks – with each close to eight minutes long – but also because of the patience required to really understand them. neither is anything like an instantaneous dancefloor hit, but rather slow-release arrangements that unfold and unfurl, wiggle and wriggle through vibrant underworlds littered variously with african drums, drunken brass bands and tortured cartoon orchestras.
robag wruhme – thora vukk on pampa
every year, there are but a handful of albums (out of thousands) which strike a pose a couple of steps left of centre, where centre is the torrid flow of ‘variation-on-a-theme’ house or techno. the reason there are only a couple is obvious… not everyone can do it. sure, being semi-decent on ableton may well mean you cough up a beatport chart topper or even a passable full length of dancefloor tracks every now and then, but it will only get you so far. it takes something else altogether to craft a truly unique record; to draw from a previously undefined sonic palette as did, say, john roberts or actress back in twenty ten.
thankfully, 2011 already has a few candidates for this year’s ‘now this, is fressssh…’ crown (blake, jaar, morposis) but with thora vukk, ex wighnomy brother robag wruhme also throws his hat into the ring. it’s an album composed of sounds that aren’t familiar, where often beats, percussion and melody come not from instruments – real or synthesized - but from the looped and effected sound of closing scissors, or the rattle of a dropped bottle top, or the knocking of wood, or the sharpening of a knife. barely separable ‘tracks’ bleed into each other via more found sounds, voices, sombre piano solos (on which, incredibly pleasingly, you can hear the player’s nostril whistle slightly as he breathes in and out; the keys moving and clunking making almost as much noise as the notes themselves and even the hitting of a few computer keys as the recording is stopped) to form a delicate, tender, sombre stream of conscious from beginning to end.
the structure-less segues (which beautifully seep to the surface between the thick, druggy, villalobos-style minimal house tracks which form the backbone) grow more and more ominous as the album goes on, eventually sucking the whole thing down into a dark and reverberating hole of sonic darkness at the midpoint. of course, you emerge once again, this time at the hands of a warbling bassline, hugely nostalgic strings and a distracted man’s museful hummings … like the album over all, it’s music that’s super animated, fascinatingly alive.
axel boman ~ interview
really feeling axel‘s stuff (and that of his label) so here comes a brief something i did for march’s issue of mixmag…
it’s hard to believe one of the underground hits of 2010 was the first record axel boman ever shared with anyone, but believe you must. “’purple drank’ was a two year old track i gave [pampa boss] dj koze after warming up for him” says axel. “i thought i made shit music so him releasing that made me get some balls!”
in his youth a hip-hop fan, it was an older brother who turned axel onto acid house and swedish techno. they are sounds he tries to emulate to this day but which, given his self-proclaimed predilection for fun, never quite work out that way. “i’m always the clown, partying” admits axel, explaining the in-suppressible charm, spontaneity and rawness of his productions to date. “because of that, i always end up adding a strange groove, a weird bassline, an odd synth” he says of his seth troxler and magda approved deep, colourful house records for ourvision and glass table.
two things give the stockholmer most pleasure at this point in his life. the first is “knowing i don’t have to step foot in another fucking art college ever again [having just completed an art masters]” whilst the second is “making music. i get so carried away!” as such, expect experimental new sounds from his own label studio barnhaus, (co-run with a friend and “the village idiot”), an album under pop moniker man tear as well as plenty of new remixes from the ever rotating talent that is axel bowan.
axel’s top 3 swedish tracks of all time
abba – lay all your love on me
dear björn & benny, please forgive me for my own “abba” project, consisting of only abba-samples, please see it as a tribute to the more obscure parts of your amazing discography. out soon on a 12″ near you!!!
the similou – all this love
is it possible to listen to this track and not get goosebumps?? i have no idea what they do today, but i hope they live in big villas on the spanish coast.
the embassy – it pays to belong
this is not the only gorgeous and timeless piece of pop music this group has released! are they known outside of sweden?
christopher rau – how are you on pampa
here comes some more pampa lovin’ on teshno: despite its infancy, the label is fast marking itself out as a go-to label for off-kilter house music in much the same way as has the man behind the imprint, dj koze. for its seventh release, the odd-ball champ enlists fellow hamburger christopher rau – the man who wrote one of 2010’s most considered house oeuvres, asper clouds, on the ever excellent and deeper-than-deep smallville. this time out, though (on at least two of the three tracks) rau seems to be intent on having some fun – he uncouples his bottom ends and lets synths interject wildly and run off at odd angles rather than button them all down in the forward rolling grooves as he did throughout the mature, studied and tethered compositions which made up the aforementioned full length…
‘pervading animal’ opens things with a spring like freshness in place of the dour autumn vibes of asper… long tailed hit-hats, a content house bump and repeatedly rippling keys build and build until they all get stripped back, bunched up and rolled out onto an expansive sonic plain once again. it’s pleasant, not-too-down-on-itself deep house, but rather pales in comparison to the other two offerings.
the first, ‘how are you’ has much more focus on freewheeling, beat driven rhythms, where busy drums pad out quickened, throbbing patterns in place of the flatter, elongated grooves which went before: they are deep but direct and, as they punch along, provide a nice vertical contrast to the aqueous, horizontal spills of the harmonics which bleed into the mix up above.
‘cfr’ is the most unhinged of the lot given the dominant characteristic – a bold, slightly discordant and roughshod synth sound which gets haphazardly layered over a broken kick drum at random intervals. it twists and turns, tunes and de-tunes and generously splatters the track with unpredictable, freaky and after hour colour that comes straight from the most sleep-deprived parts of your brain as it snakes about like an unfixed hose pipe. like all the tracks here, cohesion comes from the warm, finely grained bass pillows which envelop you from the bottom up and, like all the tracks here, it makes for lovely, basement attuned house music which is as good in ‘phones as it is booming outta ‘bins.
isolee/whrume – taktell/thora vukk on pampa
this isolee/robag whrume split release is exciting before you even hit play, simply because the two tracks included are mere pre-cursors of the respective full lengths to come (actually, isolee’s ‘well spent youth’ is already here and is already close to the top of my 2011 ‘best of’ pile). add into that pre-play excitement the fact it comes on koze’s fast flourishing pampa imprint and, despite the lack of any remixes, you have a genuinely semi-inducing prospect.
isolee takes the a side with ‘taktell’, a woozy, gently howling house number whose bottom end sways to-and-fro as diacritic strings and percussion add layer upon layer of deft intonation. its structure is so complex, unconventional and ever shifting that it’s hard to imagine the track being dropped into an average deep house set but, if it were, the way rajko müller hangs his grooves so effortlessly in murky 4/4 would have you wishing they lasted twice as long.
‘thora vukk’ is whrume’s contribution and is one which doesn’t sound out of place next to the work of isolee. it draws from the same sort of off kilter and unhinged sound palette as his, (as well as label mates axel boman and koze) but does so more sparingly. instead of constructing the track with myriad sonic flecks, the former wighnomy brother lays down a steady kick and has his quirky sounds (boingy synths, popping fx, plummeting harmonics) interlope recursively around them to make for an entrancing groove which forever seems to unravel as it goes. his full length can’t come soon enough…