Back up to mid-2004 and when I met two people who had a further reaching impact on FD than they probably ever realized. Let’s all hear it for Lee Jackson (R.I.P. – miss you buddy) and Mats Gustafsson, the first regular and serious contributors to Foxy Digitalis not named Brad or Eden. It was a big step for us, for me in particular in that I was wary of giving up any amount of control over something that was solely Eden and I’s vision. But Mats and Lee were the perfect people for the job. Their passion was contagious, their POVs unique, and their pedigree unquestionable. In some ways, them joining the FD crew legitimized what we were doing. They’d been publishing their own zine, The Broken Face, for years and it was a staple to the weirdo-music underground. For myself, it was a lesson that giving up a piece of the pie to people like Mats and Lee would only serve FD well going forward. It was the first step to FD becoming far more about the writers and contributors to the site than about anything I was doing.

Eight years later and FD has seen, literally, hundreds of writers pass through our ranks, many of which have gone on to bigger and (arguably) better things. I’ve met so many amazing people because of the site that I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Well, that’s not true – special nod to Bryon Hayes who has been contributing, regularly, to the site for over seven years now and shows no sign of stopping. But really, it’s been incredible. I still love that it provides an outlet for so many fantastic writers to ramble on about some great bands and records and labels that, generally, get ignored by much of the world. I never, ever want that to stop.

And yet, reality will always get in the way. With Eden mostly out of the Foxy Digitalis picture, it’s been on my shoulders to keep things going on a day-to-day basis. It’s also been on me to keep the label operating at the level we want it to. Add to that personal obligations and various outside work obligations and well… something has to give. The truth is that whenever my time is constrained (read: always) and there are tasks that need to be completed for both the label and the ‘zine, the label wins every time. As much as I love operating Foxy Digitalis, the label has always been my baby, it’s always first in line.

So what’s this mean? The immediate impact will be obvious and quick. This article that you are reading will be the last thing ever published here under the Foxy Digitalis banner. It’s been one hell of a run, but it’s time to put an exclamation mark at the end and move on to what comes next. What comes next, you’re wondering? Well the good news is that most of the Foxy Digitalis writing staff is staying together – the band is not breaking up. Over the past year I’ve been writing intermittently for Decoder and it’s been great. I’ve connected with all the folks over there in a lot of ways and so when the subject of Foxy Digitalis signing off came up, Dwight Pavlovic and I came up with the idea that FD and Decoder would, for all intents and purposes, merge. And that’s basically what is happening. Basically. Foxy Digitalis as a stand-alone entity is done with. Kaput. Goodnight sweet prince. But we’re in the process of completely redesigning Decoder’s website and will re-launch it sometime in late February/early March (date TBD as we work through various design & development issues). It will be a new start, in a lot of ways, for everyone. This site (much like the last incarnation of Foxy Digitalis) will remain as an archive for the foreseeable future. Decoder’s current site will do the same. We’ll continue processing promo materials through the Foxy Digitalis PO Box until further notice (and the foxyd@ email address now will reach our new reviews editor, Steve Dewhurst) – that aspect won’t change. Some content will get moved over (mainly the serialized columns so that the continuity remains), but generally it will be all new.

For me, the biggest change is that I, thankfully, won’t be at the helm anymore. I’ll still be around as a contributing editor and hope to finally do a monthly column (rather than the intermittent dumbass thing I’ve been doing for years that disappears for years at a time). From everything we’ve discussed about the new site going forward, I think it’s going to be a giant leap ahead for everyone involved. FD’s awesome writers will continue to cover all the same, weird-ass shit as always, but in conjunction with Decoder’s contributors we’ll have something a bit more well-rounded.

It’s been a hell of a run, but I’m really happy I’m not going to be in charge anymore. I miss actually writing and not worrying about the day-to-day boring stuff that keeps the site running. I look forward to actually having time to work on my own music for more than a few minutes here and there. And come July, I’m going to have a kid I’ve got to start corrupting. I can’t fucking wait.

Thanks to everyone who has read the site and followed us through the last decade – I can’t express my gratitude enough. Stick around, though, because I promise you it’s only going to get better going forward. But it’s definitely time for someone else to point the way forward, even if I won’t be able to help myself and will likely still be in the backseat badgering ‘em along the way.

I also realize I didn’t do any best of 2012 stuff here, so for that I’ll leave you with links to pieces I did elsewhere:

Top 25 Albums
Top 10 Mixtapes

And here’s my 20 favorite tapes from last year for old times’ sake:

1 Mars “Rehearsal Tapes & Alt-Takes: NYC 1976-1978″ (Anomia)
2 Foodman “Shokuhin” (Orange Milk)
3 Prinde ac Cadaver “Exercitia Spiritualia” (Tour de Garde)
4 Soft Mirage “Ionian Dream “ (Kinnta)
5 Decimus “Kemunculan” (Sangoplasmo)
6 Sagauche “Terrain” (Constellation Tatsu)
7 Inez Lightfoot “Three Weaving at the Well” (Biological Radio)
8 Perispirit “Strung Arm Brigade” (Arbor)
9 Josh Mason/Nathan McLaughlin “3440” (Tape Drift)
10 Karen Gwyer “I’ve Been You Twice” (Kaleidoscope)
11 Event Cloak “Reprogramming” (Tranquility Tapes)
12 Prayer “First Species” (Sunshine Ltd)
13 Bil Vermette “Archives I” (Catholic)
14 Eureka “Recognitions” (Avant Archive)
15 Berresheim & Thissen “SOS Kublai Khan” (Alarm)
16 Video Diaries “Watercolour Express” (Fadeaway)
17 Window Twins “Wish” (Crash Symbols)
18 Claudio “Long Weekend” (Los Discos Enfantasmes)
19 Grasshopper “The Day America Forgot” (SicSic)
20 Gunter Schickert “HaHeHiHo” (VCO)

Decoder can be found here: http://www.secretdecoder.net/
Follow me on twitter for the latest updates on the new site & when it will launch: http://twitter.com/charlatan_codex

The first reviews were written solely by Brad from CDs we had purchased ourselves. I wrote a few after awhile, but Foxy D was really Brad’s baby. The website was designed and built entirely from scratch, and each review page had to be built separately – all work that Brad did.

It took a few years before we found anyone else who was willing to write reviews.

At some point, I started to have to keep track of writers and the albums we sent them. At first, we had a few piles with each writer’s name on them. Then, we got a mail sorter. We outgrew the mail sorter in about 2008 – we had too many writers and got too many albums in the mail. Now, we have about 40 regular writers and at least 10 more occasional contributors.

Along the way, the website got more sophisticated, though it may not have been obvious to everyone else. We went from building each page individually to putting them in a database to using WordPress. Each step made things a little easier, and the last step achieved a goal that we had had for a long time but hadn’t been able to achieve before: giving the writers more control.

We may have started Foxy D as Brad’s project, but as more writers joined the team, we began to realize that it was more than Brad and I. The music community was what made it special. The musicians were already a well-known part of the community, and Foxy D helped to make label owners better-known, but Foxy D also made the third pillar of the community – the fans – more visible. Because that was where the writers came from: they were all fans first. If they hadn’t already been going to the shows, buying the albums, and doing everything else they could to support the community, the community would not exist. To give them a voice and a face through music reviews would help bring that full circle, and maybe even inspire others to support the community too.

And that’s where we stand now. Several people have told Brad and I how important Foxy D is to them, but he and I aren’t Foxy D anymore. The writers are.

In the past year, Brad and I celebrated our 10th anniversary. Digitalis has become more than we ever imagined it could, I have graduated from college, and we’re about to embark on a new adventure: parenthood. Thinking back over the trajectory of Foxy D, and forward towards our own future, we realized it was time to let go. That was the only place left to go. The writers have been doing a fantastic job, with very little direction from Brad and I. They have really made Foxy D their own. Their voices have become the voice of Foxy D.

So even though the website won’t be updated anymore, and even though we won’t be the nominal heads, I don’t doubt that Foxy D will continue. It will simply continue in a different form – hopefully (and I thoroughly believe) an even better one.

Herrmutt Lobby improvise their beats in real time using their own hardware and software invented for the purpose of “doing more with less”. There’s a straight edge-like statement on their website which professes “no loops, no sequences, no backing tracks, no groove machines” and various sites across the web show them fiddling with reappropriated games console joysticks, iPads and other home made beat machines. Their blend of jazz, funk, hip hop and dub flows organically nevertheless, albeit over some seriously screwed times signatures.

The stand out tracks on Haters Gonna Hate, which never quite matches Mind Safari for variety, are the two that bookend the EP. Both of these stretch past five minutes but they sandwich two pieces that don’t get given the same chance to make their marks. ‘Alt Of Ctrl’ opens proceedings and mines deep, reaching through the ears to rattle the brain inside its case and leading into the heavy dub bump of ‘Computer Club’, complete with excited ‘brrap!’ shout-outs. The short boom-bap track ‘Major Grubert’ sounds almost as though it’s being beat-boxed until it breaks down halfway through and slinks into a low-down funk groove, but it pales next to ‘Camel Toe Hoes & Other No-Nos’. With an underlying burble of pigeon noise mutating into a whirligig zip and a spanner-on-pipe clang of a beat there’s a pleasingly tinpot feel to the track’s percussion that encapsulates the collective’s ethos well. Having laid this rickety base down they’re free to build over the top, bringing in spacey organ stabs, zany bursts of bossa nova squiggle and myriad further thuds and pulses. A satisfying end to the EP then, but is a full length too much to ask for? Experimentation like this deserves the time and space in which to develop, so I’m hoping there might be something a little more substantial around the corner.

Eat Concrete

]]> http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?feed=rss2&p=43554 0 http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?p=43982 http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?p=43982#comments Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:48:38 +0000 David Perron http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?p=43982

On this edition of the FFFoxy Podcast, brought to you by Free Form Freakout and Foxy Digitalis, we spoke with Chris Jacques whom runs the Prairie Fire Tapes and Dub Ditch Picnic labels out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, our good neighbors to the north in Canada. Starting in 2010, these labels combined have released a wide spectrum of music, with Prairie Fire dealing in more noise and drone-based works and Dub Ditch Picnic documenting all sorts of fringe/underground sounds. As their website reads: “We like basement psych, punk rock, no wave, kraut jams, long luscious drone and, of course, Dub”.

We asked Chris to provide some more background on the labels and, mark this as a first for the show, we even discussed Canadian Black Metal at length. Throughout the rest of the show, we tried to cover as much musical ground as possible to paint a decent overview of both label’s catalogs.

For more information on the Prairie Fire Tapes and Dub Ditch Picnic labels and to order their releases click on the links provided below or go HERE.

]]> http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?feed=rss2&p=43982 0 http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?p=43765 http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?p=43765#comments Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:48:07 +0000 Steve Dewhurst http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?p=43765 ]]> Named for the historic event that was the marriage of Scott ‘Jason Donovan’ Robinson to Charlene ‘Kylie Minogue’ Mitchell, Aussie slackers Scott & Charlene’s Wedding make scrappy indie rock in a mid-nineties, early Pavement vein. ‘Footscray Station’ is a pretty old song of theirs (2011) but it’s doing the rounds again thanks to Two Weeks, their new EP on UK label Critical Heights due out March 5th.

Two Weeks

1. Two Weeks
2. Gammy Leg
3. I Wanna Die
4. My World
5. Hazy Morning

The band has a couple gigs coming up if you’re in the UK:

Marc Roberts reported on their Dwellings & Druss LP a week or so ago. That one‘s coming out in February too, through Trensmat.

Funny how personal taste can meander like a neighborhood drunk stumbling home from the pub. Before 2011 I was a hard-minimal-dub techno kind of bro. If I heard a track that either was dark/heavy or relentless/banging or psychedelic/droning, then the chances were solid I was digging it. This is really nothing more than demographics: individuals who share my listening history — noise-rock, post-punk, Kosmische Musik, industrial, tweaked hippie shit — tend to gravitate more towards techno (as well as bass music) than house. We’re a macho people who crave macho permutations of pure sonic intensity.

But in 2011, lo and behold, I contracted the house bug. Which clearly is evident if you read my annual report. A good chunk was me drooling over the fat stack of Rush Hour plates piled-up around my turntable, about Amsterdam All-Stars like Tom Trago and San Proper (now in Paris, I believe) and about the washed-out groove abstractions of BNJMN. This obsession earned me an entirely different reading of pure sonic intensity. I know realize horned-up house jams jack, jack, jacking hard (especially when blasted through real-deal sound systems) can crush my being just as violently as razors-across-the-chest techno gloom. Of course, it’s a different quality of crush — more to do with speed-fueled sexual pleasure invoking ecstatic peakage — yet equally potent nonetheless.

Going into 2012 I assumed said obsession would only intensify. But here’s the thing: it never did.

I certainly purchased — and enjoyed — several titles, with most of them once again emerging from the deep-house zone of Rush Hour/Amsterdam. San Proper’s Animal is the first that comes to mind. It’s a profoundly exploratory (but not always successful) double LP collapsing house into neo-soul into Shibuya-kei into private-press funk (think Chocolate Industries’ Personal Space Electronic Soul 1974-1984, also released in 2012). Additionally, I snapped up three volumes in Dekmantel’s anniversary series: Part 2 (featuring Awanto 3, Makam, Lone), Part 3 (Hundred20, Hunee) and Part 4 (Skudge, San Proper). In regards to successfully integrating consistency and adventurousness, the series rivals Honest Jon’s own Shangaan Electro, a string of 12-inches that feature top-shelf producers remixing select cuts from the South African genre for which it’s named.

And speaking of Awanto 3 (yet another Dutchman in Steven Van Hulle), he also participates in Alfabet, a collaboration with the aforementioned Trago. Rush Hour dropped the duo’s maniacally bopping Hell Of Samba 12-inch in January (their third to date). Not unlike BNJMN and San Proper’s most convincing output, it furtively slips weird-pop sensibilities inside straight club music.

But outside of these nuggets (as well as a few others) the last 12 months saw me meander, just like that drunk, back into what I’ve always loved. This, mind you, had nothing at all to do with the state of house. After all, Rush Hour unleashed a slew of records, and I can guarantee you I would like most of them. It’s just that it was an absolutely exceptional year for the hard stuff. So much went down, and right out the gate, that I felt as if I was consuming history with each new plate purchased. That’s something I didn’t want to miss-out on.

Let’s begin with the one release, be it single or full-length, that stood apart from all others in terms of power and personality: Milton Bradley’s Reality Is Wrong 12-inch on Prologue. Andy Stott is generally hailed as the reigning king of grandiose techno (hell, I raved about his latest Luxury Problems for Spin), yet the three tracks comprising this brute are the most immense throb-a-ronies I heard all year. They’re churning thunderheads blotting out all sun, threatening to unleash Biblical precip upon the poor saps beneath them. Not only that, they’re as humid and steamy and pressurized and suffocating as an engine room in a WWII submarine crawling across the ocean floor. As with Stott, the German producer (who also uses the alias Alien Rain) manifests whole new scales of size and depth in dub techno; so much so that his artistry has entered that rare space where it’s both evolutionary-constructive and revolutionary-destructive.

Running a close second behind Reality Is Wrong is Metasplice’s Topographical Interference EP, released via Rabih Beaini’s red hot Morphine label. Funny thing is the two titles could not be more different: where Bradley’s productions feel larger than life (i.e. the fists of god using heaven’s pillars for heavy bags), Metasplice’s are the piercing screeches and pounding meat-bops of back-alley cyborgs withdrawing from severe nitrous addiction. Though the Philadelphia duo do unleash dance grooves, their work is stridently experimental in ways that recall a lot of the artists who record for the excellent PAN label.

Shifting gears…

Back in 2010 and ’11 techno experienced a surge in producers infusing their work with the scratchy textures and obsidian hues of vintage post-punk, Neue Deutsche Welle, industrial and Goth; this growth continued unabated in 2012. I like to call such stuff “transhistorical dystopia” for its ability to melt the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s into a sound that could belong to any one of these decades yet also stands apart from them, forever spiraling through its own wormhole. The spiritual engine powering this exploration hasn’t changed: doom-n-gloom lifer Karl O’Connor (a.k.a. Regis) and the highly influential Downwards/Blackest Ever Black/Modern Love scene (more on them in a bit).

But the last 12 months also saw a new crop of musicians enter the fray. My favorite — even though the guy released but a lone 12-inch, the Body Music EP on newly minted imprint Diagonal — was (Oscar) Powell. More than simply revisiting the brooding tones and razor-wire rhythms of post-punk, he employs the electro-acoustic blend of woody timbres and junkyard clang that is such a fundamental component to the movement. His is a very human music as well. The cuts “Grand Street” and “Nude” both emit musty odors as if they are the long-lost recordings of a some obscuro group that used to hang with Dome and Metabolist back in the day.

Powell — “Grand Street”

I also include in this trend the first two plates on Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga label: Xale and Mbeuguel Dafa Nekh. Many of his longtime fans would vehemently disagree with me, and for perfectly valid reasons. Recorded in Senegal with vocalist Mbene Diatta Seck and percussion corps Jeri-Jeri, both are conventionally organic forays into African funk. That said, beneath their veneer lurks a subtle fusion; it’s all about Ernestus’ production and how its transforms the drums’ feverish polyrhythm into an enormous battering ram. As I pointed out in my review of Xale for Resident Advisor, this approach betrays the Basic Channel icon’s background in dub techno, a genre predicated upon large, architectonic rhythmic schemes. In this sense, these plates — as well as his entry in the previously mentioned Shangaan Electro series — are but 21st-century expressions of the futuro-primitive, Europe-meets-Africa, cutting-edge-dance-music-filtered-through-globalism tradition that grew out of post-punk and industrial culture, stuff like Mark Stewart & The Mafia, The Ex, Pump, 23 Skidoo, A Certain Ratio and so on.

This line of thought actually makes for a great segue into the Downwards/Blackest Ever Black/Modern Love scene. Which via a spat of showcase gigs in Europe last fall, plus several cross-label releases mentioned herein, has come to resemble something of an extended family, one nowadays centered around not only Regis, but Raime, Cut Hands, Demdike Stare, Andy Stott, Silent Servant and Vatican Shadow as well. Though each one of these artists has forged his own sound, collectively they operate in the abyss between futuro-primitivism, industrial grind and ambient techno. Of the bunch it’s William Bennett’s Cut Hands project that’s most steeped in African music. Not surprisingly, the power-electronics pioneer’s Black Mamba 12-inch on Blackest Ever Black (Susan Lawly and Very Friendly co-released the full-length) is large and imposing. But I must warn you: it skirts close to hippie-drum-circle beat. (I’m know these things; I live in a hippie mountain town.)

Dominick Fernow, on the other hand, goes for more of a north African/Middle Eastern vibe (Gothic Muslimgauze?) under his Vatican Shadow alias. The American-noise veteran and Hospital Productions/Bed Of Nails label magnate was hyper-busy, unloading a slew of full-lengths and singles, including Ornamented Walls (Modern Love), Iraqi Praetorian Guard (Blackest Ever Black), Ghosts Of Chechnya (Hospital) September Cell (Bed Of Nails) and Jordanian Descent (Hospital). He also continued Christian Cosmos, his technoid collaboration with mate Kris Lapke. Their full-length Enthronement By God As The First-Born Of The Dead, also on Hospital, is way more scuzzed-out (though no less exotic) than most Vatican Shadow material. By the way, Lapke produces his own tracks under the moniker Bronze Age. His first 12-inch, Antiquated Futurism on Bed Of Nails, is haunted by Way Down-era Robert Turman — which is a good thing.

Most of the records I’ve mentioned thus far represent a dialog between techno and industrial/post-punk that’s decidedly early ’80s in terms of its textures, tones, moods, etc. But this isn’t the case with Forward Strategy Group’s Labour Division and Sawf’s Flaws (both released via Ali Well’s London-based Perc Trax). Looking to the other end of the ’80s for inspiration, these roaring yet streamlined records (CD versions come housed in tin cases!) document permutations of minimal techno infused with EBM, electro-industrial and New Beat. And while Labour Division is more punk and Flaws club-savvy, both share a love for boiler-room menace and fist-pumping celebration, with beats that are huge and dramatic and production that’s clean and muscular. We’re talking seriously virile jams swathed in black latex and soaked in sweat. Highlights are too numerous to count, but the one, single track that makes me want to swing naked from ceiling plumbing, with one arm violently wielding a bloody monkey wrench, is the title cut from Labour Division. It sports this hammer-to-anvil percussive element that’s utterly slamming in the way it phases across the main groove.

Transitioning to the hard stuff that’s significantly less transhistorical…

Shifted is one of these producers operating under cloak and dagger. Rumor has it that his background is in noise and industrial; that, however, is yet to be confirmed. What I can confirm is that he had one hell of a 2012. In addition to the tough-as-nails Sickness By Means Of Clairvoyance 12-inch on Sigha’s Our Circula Sound, he produced two plates, the Razors E.P. and Parallel Series 2 split with Samuli Kemppi, as well as the full-length Crossed Paths, all for the Mote-Evolver label. An understanding of noise-drone’s open-ended nature certainly comes through his work. Plus, he’s quite versatile. Sickness By Means Of Clairvoyance (the cut “Aun Weor” = MECHANIZED MONSTER) is tight and focused like textbook Blueprint output. Meanwhile, a good portion of Crossed Paths has that smudgy/spacey, inner-bleeding-into-outer sound reminiscent of Luke Slater’s Planetary Assault Systems project. Certain cuts, “Lexis” and the haunting “Relict” especially, demonstrate his ability to tweak minimal groove structures in the subtlest of ways. It’s as if you’re not sure he’s actually doing something, or it’s merely your ears playing tricks on you. All in all, Shifted work’s feels resolutely current; it belongs to the now and nothing else.

The same can be said of the Token, which in my opinion was hard techno’s secret weapon all throughout 2012. While flipping through my 12-inch stacks for this column, I was shocked to discover that I had purchased nearly every one of the 10 (or so) plates the label dropped. I dug each and every one thoroughly, yet during the year I never really ruminated on the label as a force to be reckoned with. Its aesthetic, you see, is so unabashedly utilitarian that it never calls attention to itself. Unlike Downwards’ elegant despair or Perc Trax’s hyper-machismo, Token productions are exercises in sound construction, no-frills craftsmanship and uncomplicated design. Moreover, they go about their business with little drama or fanfare. But make no mistake about it: they’re fucking tough. Tokyo producer Go Hiyama’s Arc One (one of my top five 12-inches of the year) hurls daggers and gouges eyeballs while unleashing some of the most commanding syncopation — nothing save severe angles and crumbling precipices– to be found anywhere. But the label’s anchor is London badass Ashley Burchett (a.k.a. Ø [Phase]), and he whipped-up two tremendous singles: Behind The Sun / The Chasedown (the latter is pure horror techno) and Binary Opposition (which precipitated a series of remixes from Planetary Assault Systems, Ctrls, Sigha (my fave of the bunch), Peter Van Hoesen, Ben Klock and fellow Token mainstay Inigo Kennedy).

Go Hiyama — “Fallingwater”

Now, here’s the funny thing about Token: its design aesthetic (also different from Downwards, what with its “boutique dystopia” sleeve art) is the same digitally rendered, crap-stained steel look as mid-’90s industrial-rock records like The Downward Spiral (a kick-ass jam, by the way). Of course, from Reznor this style eventually degenerated into poster art for the Saw franchise. But I think it’s making a bona fide comeback. Not only does Token do it justice, so do the opening credits for American Horror Story. Have you seen this TV show? Holy fuck. The first two minutes will rip the face from your skull with its creepy, toilet-bowl industrialism and insane blast of power electronics — no shit.

Heading to Detroit…

In recent years I’ve purchased most of the new material from Robert Hood and Jeff Mills respectively. Not in 2012, however. I don’t have any real reason why. I mean, I really should own Hood’s Motor: Nighttime World 3 (on Music Man Records); I hear it’s superb. Likewise, I need to grip Mills’ The Messenger (Axis), yet another entry in his science-fiction series. The most noteworthy Detroit jams I did pick up were D’Marc Cantu’s A New World double LP on M>O>S Recordings (killer label) and Theo Parrish’s Hand Made 12-inch (Running Back). Cantu — who actually resides in Ann Arbor — has developed a very distinct style; A New World might come submerged in classic acid, techno and house, but it also reflects the producer’s love of the strange. Several stretches share a lot in common with technoise innovator Ren Schofield (a.k.a. Container), as well as the L.I.E.S. crew. As for Hand Made, it’s typical Parrish, and it rules; easily one of the year’s very best singles. The producer possesses such a singular outlook when it comes to just how exactly rhythmic geometry is meant to pass through both space and time. These tracks stutter, hiccup and jerk about in wildly abstruse patterns. The kick, snares and percussion (grainy and cheap, all of them) are stuffed into ill-fitting loops and breaks. “Wild Out” is my favorite cut; it’s lo-fi and downright broken — squiggles and chirps maddeningly consuming themselves.

Diving into the odds and ends…

Additional Titles I Enjoyed
Shackleton — Music For The Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs (Woe To The Septic Heart!). This epic — which pierces the 120-minute mark — offered me more deep-listening concentration than most albums in 2012. I’ve been here before with the guy, 2011 in fact, with the Deadman and Fireworks plates on Honest Jon’s. Both are the sonic equals of Andy’s Stott Passed Me By and We Stay Together — massive and multidimensional. The Drawbar Organ stuff (disc two) is right up there as well. Building on the icy splendor of the collaborative Pinch & Shackleton, also released on Honest Jon’s in ’11, it’s a post-everything phantasmagoria of  techno-jazz-prog-world fusion. The thing just goes, goes and goes and won’t stop until the your brain has fully dissolved in its own static-charged fluids. The other disc, Music For The Quiet Hour, is equally epic: a hour-long sci-fi story (replete with narrator) about a society (ours more or less) slipping into post-technological confusion. It reminds me of the late ’90s and all that alternative hip-hip and electronica preoccupied with similar future-shock prophecies. In all honesty, it might be too much pretense and not enough full-blown sonic psychedelia — I don’t know; the jury is still out.

Shackleton — “Touched”

Lakker — Ark E.P. (Blueprint). I didn’t snag a whole lot of Blueprint in 2012. This may be the only title, as a matter of fact. On these four tracks the duo of Ian McDonnell and Dara Smith go for a moodier and more unsettled sound than a lot of stuff from the label. Most excellent.

Skudge — Haste / Wonder Stories (Skudge Records). This plate is yet another infectious testament to Skudge’s analog techno purity. There are those who probably wouldn’t listen to the Swedish duo’s tracks outside of mixes — I’m not one of them. I love reveling in their balance and strength, as well as their ping-ponging grooves — which are always deceptively melodic.

Rrose — Wedge Of Chastity (Eaux). This is slightly tamer than the Motormouth Variations double LP on Sandwell District (my initial exposure to the mysterious Rrose). Still, the tracks comprising side b, “Wedge” and “Envy,” are eerily cavernous.

Aardvarck — Indo E.P. (Skudge Presents). Mike Kivits — even when he isn’t totally slaying me — sounds unlike anybody else in techno. And this 12-inch is no exception. From gaping holes of silence to DnB-like splashes of syncopation to glistening synth-cheese, it’s a colorful and tripped-out ride.

Silent Harbour — Silent Harbour (Echocord). I heard little critic-chatter about this set of dub/ambient techno from Boris Bunnik (a.k.a Conforce). I don’t know why that was; the record might not be as sexy as Andy Stott’s Luxury Problems, but I think I enjoyed it more — it’s intensely atmospheric and titanic.

Moritz Von Oswald Trio — Fetch (Honest Jon’s Records). Fourth full-length from these modern-day pioneers of live ensemble techno-fusion. Fetch is fairly uneven compared to previous releases. But this is only because it’s so experimental. The piece “Yangissa” is pure futuro-primitive hypnotics.

Walker & Kennedy — 3 Stacked Layers, From Macro To Meta (Inner Surface Music). Nothing too terribly ground-breaking here, yet the tweaks are incredibly nifty. Inigo Kennedy and Patrick Walker flirt with bubbling dub techno, but get a load of those toms and bass, especially on “Parity Function”… so earthy and pungent.

Orphx — Hunger Knows No Law (Sonic Groove). The Canadian production team of Rich Oddie and Christina Sealey are like the Token crew in how they quietly go about their business. Hovering precariously between industrial techno and rhythmic noise, this plate is thrilling. It’s also packed with laser effects and all manner of panning insanity. The groove powering “Preta Loka” sounds as if it exists in multiple realities concurrently.

San Proper / Aroy Dee — Perfume (M>O>S Recordings). Here’s a house plate I forgot to mention at the beginning of this piece — really cosmic and luxuriant. As with most titles on M>O>S, this is some arty stuff.

Opuswerk — Wired Connections EP (Plak Records). I look to my pal John C. at Cleveland’s Bent Crayon (my favorite specialty shop in the country) for a lot of purchasing advice. He possesses an understanding of customer taste that borders on the psychic. Every now and then he’ll call me up and implore You need this — which is exactly what he did for this stellar plate. The Swiss production team deals in gray-matter-squelched analog techno. File next to STL and John Daly. So yeah, aces high.

BNJMN — Unknown 2 (Rush Hour Recordings). In all honesty, I haven’t spun this all that much; doesn’t possess the deliciously frayed radiance of his 2011 full-length Plastic World. In fact, all three tracks are weighed down with a creeping restlessness. Not sure what that’s about, but it’s rather arresting nonetheless.

Emptyset — Collapsed (Raster-Noton). In the post-Pan Sonic world of rhythmic noise and bone-crushing minimal/glitch Emptyset stand alone. The fact that James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas reside in a hub for bass music like Bristol, England is vital considering what sets their work apart is its skeletal, low-end attack. This EP fuses the megalithic static of their 2011 full-length Demiurge and the focused throb of their self-titled debut. In other words, it’s vicious like starved hyenas let loose in a petting zoo.

STL — Flying Saucer Attack (Smallville Records). An odd, little plate for Stephan Laubner replete with vocal ticks (“Your Turn”), downtempo melodicism (“Inverted Reality”) and funky shenanigans (“Where Have You Gone”). These track maybe make more sense as mix fodder, but they’re still pretty sweet as stand-alones.

Juju & Jordash — Techno Primitivism (Dekmantel). One of 2012′s more idiosyncratic releases, it’s a double LP that traverses Kosmsiche Musik, deep house, synth-pop, neo-dub exploration, global electronica and even Container-like techno grit. All of this is unleashed with the epic sweep of a vintage progressive-rock album. Something tells me a cult-like reverence will grow-up around this strange record in the years to come.

Reissues
Regis — Ital (Downwards). The majority of the selections in this section either were released on Downwards or have some connection to its founder Karl O’Connor (a.k.a. Regis). Everything I said about the label up above (i.e. techno meets post-punk/industrial) is true of the titles I’m now writing about. This shouldn’t come as any surprise, since O’Connor has been locked into this sound for decades now; it’s his vision more than anybody else’s. With that in mind, Ital contains four tracks he produced in the mid ’90s. Compared to, say, 2011′s In A Syrian Tongue 12-inch, this material is way more nervy. The forward thrust is so relentless it’s frightening.

Russell Haswell — 5″ Vinyl Series and Remixed (Downwards). The fact that Downwards issued an LP of Haswell jams (not to mention a remix 12-inch) proves just how intent the label is on demolishing any and all divisions between techno and noise. Though not a reissue per se, 5″ Vinyl Series does collect pieces that were to have been released in 2011, thus it has a bit of an archival feel to it. Needless to say, it’s a mega-slab of harshly grinding British industrial. Remixed, meanwhile, features Regis, William Bennett and mighty Kevin Drumm each reworking a track from the full-length. Only “Chua Rave (Regis Remix)” is groove-oriented and what a groove it is: tough, tight loops with über aggression. Note: Bennett’s remix will appeal to noise dudes who prefer Whitehouse to Cut Hands.

Ike Yard — Regis / Monoton Versions (Desire Records / Blackest Ever Black). Again, another quasi-archival release. This 12-inch contains Regis and Monoton remixes of the Ike Yard tracks “Loss” and “NCR,” originally recorded in the early ’80s. For the uninitiated, Ike Yard are a post-punk group from New York City (one that has always sounded more European/English than American). With its balance of modern techno and old-school post-punk, this music falls right into my wheelhouse, bitches.

Infiniti (Juan Atkins) — The Remixes Part 3/3 (Tresor). What we have here is a classic Juan Atkins track from 1994 (“Think Quick”), plus remixes from Sleeparchive and Moritz Von Oswald respectively. Considering Von Oswald’s “remodel” also dates to the mid ’90s, the only “new” piece of music here is from Sleeparchive. Of course, it doesn’t matter when any of these tracks/remixes were produced; it all sounds beyond ageless.

Infiniti — “Think Quick (Moritz Von Oswald’s ’94 Remodel)”

Internet Mixes
PlayGround Mix 110: Metasplice Mixed By Morphosis. Truly visionary stuff. To tag this mix “industrial techno” or “technoise” doesn’t do it justice. What Morphosis (via Metasplice) forges is a new form of techno, one whose rhythmic construction is rooted in musique concrète and avant-garde electronics. We’re talking Nonesuch meets the dancefloor.

CLR Podcast 182: Perc. I’m not sure if there exists another producer who embodies the menacing histrionics of industrial as thoroughly as London’s Perc (Ali Wells). Not only is his taste impeccable, but he also makes hard-raging beats sound so majestic. But note: dude brings serious funk to the mix. He loves that era of industrial when the music intersected with the hip-hop’s wailing drum machines.

Invite’s Choice Podcast 074: Mary Velo. A Canadian-born producer now hanging in Berlin, Mary Velo is a fiend for dark, heavy techno jams and deep-space freeze. Oddly, her taste overlaps with mine, yet her mixes are packed with fantastic tracks I’ve never heard. This lends them an uncanny blend of the known and unknown.

DJ Skirt Vinyl Mix May, 2O12. Tracklist says it all: Shifted, Lakker, Powell, Ugandan Methods, Raime. But that’s only part of the story. If you don’t care about gradual build-ups or subtle narrative arcs and simply want to GET YOUR ASS KICKED, crank this mix — it’s merciless. Skirt resides in Birmingham, England, where Black Sabbath was born. Enough said.

Smoke Machine Podcast 60: Milton Bradley. Talk about your full-blown sonic journey. Mirroring the German musician’s productions on the aforementioned Reality Is Wrong 12-inch, this mix achieves a sense of scale so much larger and sublime than just about anything else out there save Ancient Methods, Andy Stott and Shackleton

Releases I’ll Need To Spend More Time With in 2013
It really was a great year for techno, but the fact remains I failed to explore all the records I wanted. Here’s a short list of those I plan to tackle. Consequently, several of these were released so late in the year that the chances are good they’ll appear in my 2013 annual report.

Delta Funktionen — Traces (Delsin)
Sigha — Living With Ghosts (Hotflush Recordings)
Raime — Quarter Turns Over A Living Line (Blackest Ever Black)
Monoton — Monotonprodukt 07 (Desire Records / Oral) [Reissue of album from 1982.]
Silent Servant — Negative Fascination (Hospital Productions)
Milton Bradley — Voices Of The Unknown (Do Not Resist The Beat!)
Lee Gamble — Dutch Tvashar Plumes (PAN)
Emptyset — Medium (Subtext)
Voices From The Lake — Voices From The Lake (Prologue)
Vladislav Delay — Kuopio (Raster-Noton)
Regis — Death Said Head (Downwards) [Reissue of '90s-era tracks.]
Monoloc — Drift (CLR)
All the amazing boxed sets on Stroboscopic Artefacts.

Six Links For Your Exploration
Perc Trax: perctrax.bandcamp.com
Downwards: wherenext.tumblr.com
Milton Bradley: donotresistthebeat.de
Bed Of Nails: bedofnailscompound.com
Token: tokenrecords.com
Ndagga: ndagga.com

Justin Farrar can be reached at justinfarrar.com, Facebook and Twitter.

I once wrote, “I’ve never been a fan of year-end list.”  This is a lie.  I like the idea of hating music lists (especially those of the year-end variety), but the reality is that I’m in lust love with her, I carry on a perverse, and secret romance with this siren: We make eyes daily, I pretend I don’t even notice her existence — sometimes I’m even openly and violently critical toward her– but, when faced with absolute privacy, I sneak her off to the break room for a good ole’ fashion…well, you know the rest.  I bookmark her locations, I hide her from my friends, she shows me things I’ve only ever heard mentioned, but never personally experienced,  hell, my girlfriends certainly have never known anything about her.  Whew, that feels good to finally say (wipes forehead, pulls on collar).  The truth hurts so good.

So, why the fascination with lists?   The famed music writer Paul Morley put it best:

“The list is a collage of hopes and wishes, of knowledge and exhibitionism…These lists tell a story of how music is the lining between us and eternity, a protection from the desolate vastness and our ability to coax any kind of meaning out of this desolation.  The lists reduce the vastness into controllable sizes, into the size of things that can fit into our mind, where they can expand again to the size of everything.  The list is the way of fitting everything in one place at one time, so that we can take it with us, so that we can fit it all inside a microchip, a chip we can then fit inside our soul…The list is often just a nice way of passing the time, of showing off the hipness of your choices, a sketchy part of a self-portrait, a way of wallowing in a bubbly nostalgia that returns you to a simpler, sweeter time, of trying to contain sheer chaos in little patches of consoling order, of making plans for a future that seems so blank and featureless you have to impose shape on it by transferring things in easily wrapped packages”

and finally,

“Lists help you believe that there will be a future — by reminding you that the things you are listing have happened, in a time that once was a future, and that therefore there will be a future where things will happen that can then be listed and taken forward to remind us of a past where stuff was generated that made us believe there is a present and so, ultimately, a future”

Right…my thoughts exactly.

If you care to see how hip I really am you can click here for my full 2012 year-end list. Otherwise, enclosed is a visual gallery of my aural experiences over the last year, a rough sketch of my sonic self-portrait.

2012 EarWorms (Excerpts):

TRANSVERSE – Carter Tutti Void

TEN FREEDOM SUMMERS - Wadada Leo Smith

MOXXY - Troyka

WHEN WE WERE EATING UNRIPE PEARS – Bee Mask

FETCH- Moritz von Oswald Trio

BENDING BRIDGES - Mary Halvorson Quintet

THE FINAL REPORT/DESERTSHORE - X-TG

PORTICO QUARTET – Portico Quartet

RECOMPOSED: VIVALDI-THE FOUR SEASONS – Max Richter

MOTOR: NIGHTTIME WORLD 3 – Robert Hood

1. Insect Factory – Broadcast Rain

Imbued with a newfound sense of hometown pride, I start my list with Silver Spring, MD’s Jeff Barsky, whose releases under the Insect Factory moniker offer soothing ambient bliss, somewhere in between the abstractness of Oren Ambarchi and the opiate sedation of Tim Hecker. Two “variations on a theme” so to speak– this free download from Zero Moon is not to be missed.

2. Hisko Detria – Static Raw Power Kraut

Back in the summer of 2012, I was so eager to start writing for Foxy Digitalis that I wrote up a quick review for this one before my package of stuff arrived. Amazing Finnish psych-rock, both nobly anachronistic as it is forward-thinking and contemporary. Check it out!

3. Human Food – The First Magnum Opus of Human Food EP

This teenage noise prodigy was the subject of my latest review, and his first release deserves to be heard by all open-minded music fans. Luckily, he’s made it quite easy for us: download it!

4. Water Torture – s/t

To Live A Lie Records’ head honcho Will Butler is all about spreading blastbeats to the masses any way he can. Aside from running a free netlabel, he also hypes Grindcore Karaoke, a grindcore label that makes most, if not all of its releases available for free. This is absolutely crushing stuff that mixes fast and slow parts, almost sounding like Spazz, but faster.

5. Abuse – Demo 2012

Speaking of that netlabel, it’s a great source for mostly Raleigh-based fast music. The one that’s been blowing my mind the most is Abuse, a sharp, deadly, noisy powerviolence outfit that reminds me of Despise You with some harsh noise tendencies, or perhaps a more hardcore version of DC grind trio Disciples Of Christ. Anyway, I shouldn’t waste my time describing this anymore, because it’s free and you should hurry up and download it now.

6. Rapturous Grief – s/t

Some more fast blasting music, this time from Atlanta, with bitter lyrics barked in Spanish—although it’s free to download, you can also purchase the 7” directly from the band.

7. Music For Restrooms

Sonic Circuits put together a compilation of tracks that were played in the bathroom (!) during the Sonic Circuits Festival in December. This collective, organized by J. Surak of Violet, is the go-to source for experimental talent in the DC area. Here you can help yourself to strange concoctions of nearly every timbre imaginable.

8. Melvins – The Bulls & The Bees EP

As much as it should rightfully irk any adherent to the independent “DIY” music scene to have a freaking car company sponsor great underground bands, someone at Scion must have legitimately good taste in music. How else can you explain Saint Vitus headlining the Scion Rock Fest, or the great Magrudergrind EP they issued for free the previous year? (In an interview, drummer Chris Moore stated, “they just gave us money to record it, and released it free for us.”) So they’re merely tarnishing the “scene” a bit with a corporate logo… well, if you download the releases for free, you can enjoy the music at no cost to you, and you don’t even have to look at the hideous corporate cover art. Such is the case with the Melvins’ EP, their latest with the powerhouse Big Business rhythm section. If you have any doubts about their two-drummer lineup (and why would you), let the first two songs kick your ass.

The two most abstract pieces bookend this cassette. “As Long as Grass Grows and Water Runs” is a shimmering miasma of unnatural percussion, while “Exiled From Presence” features layers of feedback-riddled thumb piano. “Cumbia Del Sol” drifts along a South American river bubbling with subtle electronics, while “Find Each Other” visits a loft in New York City’s free jazz heyday. Both “La Venas Abiertas” – which refers to the book exposing the exploitation of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano – and the title track feature lively flute improvisations overtop a propelling percussive beat. The expansive “Makes Choices” is quite possibly the most haunting piece featured, its treated percussion sailing on a ghostly breeze of drone.

Mas Aya, the name Valdivia chose for his solo work, is a sort of play on words. Masaya is the Nicaraguan town in which his grandmother was born, but in Spanish ‘mas allá’ means ‘the beyond.’ In a sense, Mas Aya is the perfect moniker for Valdivia’s work both solo and in Not the Wind Not the Flag. Here’s a percussionist who stretches his music beyond what could end up merely being an imitation of his influences. His own personal experiences and interests are injected into the mix to craft a singular vision, one that is an uncanny blend of the familiar and the esoteric. His is a true psychedelia – a consciousness-expanding brew of sound.

Tomaturj / Manufacture Errata