Techno/House Bobbins 2010

and there's enough good 4/4 techno out there right now that i'm not sure why anybody would concern themselves too much w/ post-wonky except as a desperate attempt to cling to anglocentrism

well i doubt there are many people whose only contact with techno is post-wonky or whatever, but i do like both of their takes on the sound (i don't follow these guys too closely but my impression is that these guys are pretty taken with the wonky aesthetic - just look at the hardwax podcasts)

maybe i should have said "album-artists pushing the post-'wonky' aesthetic" instead?

you mean the wax treatment podcasts or something else?

yeah wax treatment, i guess calling it all wonky is reductive but there are usually half a dozen dubsteppy tracks for every 4x4 techno track - unless i'm missing something and it's some kind of 'outreach' podcast? is there really that much difference between a shed set and a scuba set these days?

i only brought up actress cause for all the similarity in description between him and the hardwax camp (as in, techno copping trends from dubstep), they're pretty different - i find actress comes out most nicely in mixes, though i can't really listen to more than a few standalone tracks without getting bored with it, while once i start listening to shed the only thing stopping me from going all day is all this other damn music i meant to listen to.

but the most interesting connection here to me is fiedel/MMM's use of sprightly lil silva/emvee style uk funky in wax treatment #8 (and elsewhere?), pretty much the opposite of the disorienting slo-mo style that actress and shed take yet such a perfect complement to the MMM style - more of this please!

re: MCDE— he does have a workmanlike precision in his productions, i admit, and there is a crispness to them. i just can't get over the fact that he's a white kid biting a style and getting tons of cred for it. yes, this is a pipecock opinion, but whatever.

yeah, when i hear a pipecock opinion my opinion is "whatever" too

i'm not sure why it matters that he's white - if his name was raheem and he was a north african immigrant to stuttgart would it be cool? there's a big US army base in stuttgart, maybe he got hooked up w/ some black dudes from chicago? would it be cooler if he was a white dude with black friends? cause then i'm pretty sure he'd be approaching pipecock status.

complaining about biting styles is one thing but when you specify "white kid biting a style" it gets SUSPECT.GIF

okay, full disclosure: i want to kiss him and tousle his hair, and am jealous of him. so.

Scuba's sets are really melodic and kind of less techno than someone like Shed. Shed tends to go for the stright up dub techno dubstep sort of stuff most of the time and Scuba plays way more of the Joy Orbison, Seplacure, George Fitzgerald or even Mount Kimbie kind of stuff that has that flowing garage vibe to it with loads of warm deep house melodies and uplifting bits here and there. He does play some strught up techno as well mind, as well as some rawer dubstep. I've not heard Shed go in that direction much. I've seen some brilliant Scuba sets, he's a hell of a DJ. I dig Shed too.

http://vimeo.com/8805059

Anyone else heard Greatest Hits by dOP? Really not sure about it, kinda queasy/seasicky deep housey stuff with pretty awful vocals.

I should add that the good tracks are REALLY good, reminiscent of the new Superpitcher record actually.

jimitheexploder making the distinction i failed to make. when i hear "post-wonky" it makes me think joy orbison / mt kimbie / floating points etc and i can't really take that stuff seriously because in ten years "post-wonky" is going to scan the way "jazzy vocal jungle" does now.

as far as funky goes, remember grime?

dubstep-infused techno is one thing but really actress is like a midpoint between "post-wonky", misplaced nostalgia for the neverending lameness that is the "bass continuum" or whatever nonsense they're calling it now, and boards of canada style distorted wistful IDM. i've really been thinking the links between actress and techno have been overstated and it's just the next incarnation of IDM or whatever, look out for upcoming collaborations on planet mu or something and that's all she wrote ...

i've been thinking about t++ lately and realized he's attempting what forward strategy group is achieving on applied generics #1. if people are going to try to make bass-infused techno i hope they make it in that vein rather than some crap that ends up sounding like instra:mental.

my final shot across your bow will be to suggest that as much as i love shed i think he's a pretty crap DJ and that the wax treatment podcasts are a real bore. it's cool that these guys want to do outreach but i want to suggest that like dj maxximus or soundstream what's really great about him is actually the distance between what he is and what he wants to be, and if like dj maxximus he ever succeeds in crossing over to the other side then he'll start to actually suck.

lol post-wonky sounds like your postman has one leg shorter than the other and keeps dropping your letters

i'm not sure why it matters that he's white - if his name was raheem and he was a north african immigrant to stuttgart would it be cool? there's a big US army base in stuttgart, maybe he got hooked up w/ some black dudes from chicago? would it be cooler if he was a white dude with black friends? cause then i'm pretty sure he'd be approaching pipecock status.

It would have been cooler if he just presented himself in such a way that wasn't intentionally using other people's struggles, achievements and brand as a crutch to promote his own career.

If I were to start a Discord ripoff band with a bunch of other white people and market it as The D.C. Minor Threat Discord Project it would still be a completely shitty move that deserves to be mocked.

The other thing to remember is that he wasn't always: "hahah lolz we make cars in Stuttgard, too. Here is a picture of my face..." Those first few records were designed to mislead people and there was nothing in the marketing effort to clarify where the records were coming from.

this strikes me as putting the cart before the horse, or maybe even serious kool-aid intoxication. anybody can claim they're from detroit, it's up to us to judge whether the music is good or not. it sounds like you're arguing he doesn't have the right to pretend he's from detroit because being from detroit enriches his music in a way that he doesn't deserve. if anybody is seriously tool enough to buy a record just because it makes some reference to moodymann or detroit or whatever and then get all butthurt and faux-betrayed then ... well, you probably get my point.

i guess what i'm saying is that the whole dynamic is on YOU, not him, and you're basically just projecting your own isolationist anxiety onto some convenient european. if you're seriously trying to posit that proximity to *real life black people from detroit* - which is, if i understand you and pipecock as well as i think do, your whole game - is some sort of actual valuable commodity then the problem originates with you, not him.

truth is your and pipecock's name-dropping is much more cloying than yours, and i don't really care if he's from stuttgart and you're anthony shakir's adopted sons or whatever.

whoops, i meant "more cloying than his"

The thing though, is that people do buy records because it references moodymann or detroit or whatever, and the idea of Detroit has become an instrument of self promotion for many - for whom the reality of Detroit is often a very distant fact, replaced by an idea of Detroit founded on myth, fetishization, exoticization, etc.
While homages are all fine and good, determining the boundaries of innocuous citation and misappropriation can be difficult (e.g. how does something like Morgan Geist's Driving Memoirs compare to MCDE?) and the latter (which I think MCDE falls closer to), I'd argue, is often founded on a conception of “Detroit” founded in myth etc. Constructing a self-image based around this myth, and it's entailed obfuscation of the reality of Detroit, including aspects of race, class, and social politics that comprise it, I think is in fact a problem, one which extends beyond a strictly formal reading of music (as music can't help but be filtered through the signs with which its articulated, whether it be an 808, or putting pictures of black kids on your sleeves and putting motor city in your name). The flipside to all this, though, is that it’s just as well possible for dudes from Detroit to mythologize the past, and similarly give their own history the distance with which it can be mythologized, facilitate fetishization of it, etc.

Ultimately then, the problem isn't just who's more detroit then who, and hence who has more right to stake a claim to this idea than others. The problem is more the whole issue of claiming detroit to begin with, the various meanings that come out of it, and the ways that history is being is being used to certain ends, often of self promotion (which of course isn't exclusive to white dudes from outside of detroit, either).

Semantics aside, though, Raw Cuts 3/4 still killllllllls.

MCDE's work is at least good, I doubt I could say the same about this:

http://www.datatransmission.co.uk/images/news/5581/shlomi_cover.jpg

really actress is like a midpoint between "post-wonky", misplaced nostalgia for the neverending lameness that is the "bass continuum" or whatever nonsense they're calling it now, and boards of canada style distorted wistful IDM

so, 'post-wonky' then...? OK christ yeah it's a horrible word but i only brought it up to talk about, not to say it's the future of techno or even that shed's totally brilliant (i find his mixing pretty boring for the most part too), just that there's a point of comparison between him and actress and the similarity is in techno + 'bass music' or whatever we're calling it, despite the fact that they don't actually sound all that similar and that actress is just idm in disguise or whatever. maybe instead i should ask whether people think the short tracks on shed's new album work as well as the long tracks on his first album, because as much as i liked that one i think this album is much snappier and more listenable as an 'album' - the compromise pays off, right? i don't follow you re: grime/funky though - was there a grime/techno crossover period?? did it sound kinda like MMM? i also haven't heard forward strategy group or dj maxximus, so i might have lost you there. BUT i really like your point that what can be great about these artists is the distance between where they're at and where they want to be - like who would care if shed actually sounded like distance or 2562 or whatever boring dubstep he likes?

i guess what i'm saying is that the whole dynamic is on YOU, not him, and you're basically just projecting your own isolationist anxiety onto some convenient european. if you're seriously trying to posit that proximity to *real life black people from detroit* - which is, if i understand you and pipecock as well as i think do, your whole game - is some sort of actual valuable commodity then the problem originates with you, not him.

I think you are projecting things onto me that have nothing to do with what I actually think.

You are so tied up in trying to prove me wrong that you aren't actually listening to my point. I think it is a pretty simple one and it doesn't really have anything to do with Detroit, per se.

Here is a scenario and you can tell me if you think this is ethical or not:

I am going to start a label called Dettmann Berlin. The A sides are going to be stamped with just the name "Dettmann Berlin" and the B-side is going to be a map of Berlin. The music is going to be my version Berghain techno and the one sheet is going to be *intentionally* cryptic as to the actual provenance of this music.

Is it cool to intentionally mislead people using other people's achievements in order to gain exposure? Is that ethical?

so it be cool, say, for french people to get this butthurt over the mid 80s when detroit dudes were naming their clubs after fashion houses in paris?

anyway, yeah, i think it's cool. and it's funny that some people bought this record just because they thought it was from detroit and then got mad that it wasn't. and then some people got mad that he even pulled the trick, though i wonder if you'd have the same problem if he actually *had* been from detroit, and what that says about detroit. you're like the patriot brigade except detroit techno is your ground zero. get over it.

On this subject, what do people make of Soulphiction with all his black power vocal samples n shit?

so it be cool, say, for french people to get this butthurt over the mid 80s when detroit dudes were naming their clubs after fashion houses in paris?

It's cats and dogs and doesn't actually address my point.

anyway, yeah, i think it's cool. and it's funny that some people bought this record just because they thought it was from detroit and then got mad that it wasn't. and then some people got mad that he even pulled the trick, though i wonder if you'd have the same problem if he actually *had* been from detroit, and what that says about detroit. you're like the patriot brigade except detroit techno is your ground zero. get over it.

Vahid, for such a smart guy, you are really quick with those ad hominem attacks. You are so busy trying to prove how big your dick is that you aren't bothering to read.

It doesn't say anything about Detroit because it doesn't have anything to do with Detroit. It's lame because it is tacky shortcut marketing. Make a record, put your name on them and send it out into the market. The dance market is totally wide open, put it on wax and send it to people you like. It's really not that hard.

It might take a couple years, but if you are decent and have your own style people will pick up on it. Why not make up your own shit instead of trying to get over on work that you didn't do? It is a basic principle, it doesn't have anything to do with medium or genre.

Another to make clear is that it isn't about keeping it real vs. fantasy. I am totally cool with keeping it fake, hell, fake is better 70% of the time. It's just that if you are going to keep it fake, make it your own kind of fake. P-Funk is as fake as you can get, but they grabbed Sun Ra's fake and twisted into their own thing.

people mythologize places they haven't been and appropriate cultures they aren't apart of. it happens in every genre and i don't see what the big deal is in this particular instance. if you don't like the music that's fine, if you like the music but think the dudes a dork, thats fine too, but i think its nagl to get too serious about it.

i still don't get why that makes it okay for omar s to stamp DETROIT on the front of his records

tornado wallace is AWESOME. i love "tornado never dies"

people mythologize places they haven't been and appropriate cultures they aren't apart of. it happens in every genre and i don't see what the big deal is in this particular instance. if you don't like the music that's fine, if you like the music but think the dudes a dork, thats fine too, but i think its nagl to get too serious about it.

I agree. MCDE's promotion strategy is a cop out but the only person getting worked up about it is the imaginary militia dude in Vahid's head. There are bigger things to worry about than whether or not MCDE is a douche. Trust me, I don't lose any sleep over that guy.

i still don't get why that makes it okay for omar s to stamp DETROIT on the front of his records

I would say the difference is that Omar S has used that kind of shamelessness to build an interesting persona. The other thing is that he has built a body of work that stands on its own(from the tracky raw stuff to the deep crossover stuff), has done some good A&R work(launched careers of Kyle Hall, Luke Hess, and Jus-Ed), plus dude wears sweet ass shark tshirts

http://www.divshare.com/img/12534125-d0b.jpg

It also helps that dude grew up in and lives in Detroit.

However, I would contrast all of that with somebody like DJ Bone and Subject Detroit. Bone really plays the Detroit thing to the hilt and his production and A&R work(outside of Tears by Aaron Carl which is dope) just don't stand up. In the process, it just kind of makes him look like a tool and makes me take him and his label less seriously.

IOW If you are going to put Detroit on something, it better be really good or you are just going to look like an ass.

well i'm glad you bring up dj bone because that's exactly the sort of thing i'm talking about. it doesn't really strike me as too cool that detroit dudes get a free pass on it but MCDE doesn't.

shed's new one is fucking great! yeah!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGRUfKhrRSA

1:30 in

i'm kinda loving this, predictably

I already posted this in the mix thread, but as it's a techno mix, here's my selection for September - hope you enjoy it!

http://soundcloud.com/djkomisch/djkomischmixseptember14th2010mp3-1

Ibex: Mystery Babylon (Yore)
James Kumo: Coming Home (Curle)
Tevo Howard: Without Me (Beautiful Granville)
Juju & Jordash: Tatoo's Island (Tom Trago remix) (Philpot)
Keith Worthy:Rockit Science (Aesthetic Audio)
Quince & Benny Rodrigues: 7Up (Smallville)
XDB: Cagomi (Metrolux)
Franco Cangelli: Paper Cut (MLZ remix) (Mowar)
Kvadratklang: Pulsemotel (Deephart)
Mike Dehnert & Roman Lindau: MDRL2 (Fachwerk)
Frozen Border: 4B (Frozen Border)
Horizontal Ground: 1A (Horizontal Ground)
Monobox: Monobox (M Plant)
Orphx: Stillpoint (Sonic Groove)
Traversable Wormhole: When 2D Meets 3D (Peter Van Hoesen remix) (CLR)
Octave One: Fifteenthirteen (430 West)
Planetary Assault Systems: Gruve (Peacefrog)

does anyone know what the Marvin Gaye edit is that comes about 30 mins into the Frank Tope mix linked above? Comes after Trus'me's WAR I think. Help greatly appreciated!

okay, I'm going for the corny re-edits thing today. This mix I am enjoying;
http://www.plasmodium.net/podcast/plasmodium-radio-49-tanner-ross-decibel-festival-preview/

The tracklisting fails to mention this edit (well I think it's this one anyway). Want this on 12".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpkPneu7LVI&feature=related

I know there are some Aaron Carl fans around here and he has visited this site in the past. He was hospitalized for some pretty serious health issues in the last couple weeks and in the process he was diagnosed with cancer. If you would like to let him know that you appreciate him and his work, you can leave him a short note here:

http://www.facebook.com/aaroncarl313

jesus that's awful.

mmmm, the Marvin Gaye in that mix is Jesse Rose - "You Know It" from Sleep Less (Night Two).

thanks SSS.

new a made up sound EP out?

sick!!!

Maybe my favourite Techno/House Bobbins 2010 12" this year has to be: http://www.discogs.com/Erik-Fiedel-Nous-Sommes-MMM/release/2154929 It sounds like a long lost rave anthem that disintegrated under my shit description just then and decided to stretch itself out into a pent up dance floor beast, all while it happened to be listen to a load of grime and that, before moving off into strange new places instead of going all spooky and obvious like those nostalgic chillwav’s.

best erik or fiedel joint since donna IMO with the exception of "makin' love" and "live goes on"

"donna" and "live goes on" really shit on everything else from a very great height though

"extra time" on the new a made up sound is the shit!

get it on itunes

Maybe my favourite Techno/House Bobbins 2010 12" this year has to be: http://www.discogs.com/Erik-Fiedel-Nous-Sommes-MMM/release/2154929 It sounds like a long lost rave anthem that disintegrated under my shit description just then and decided to stretch itself out into a pent up dance floor beast, all while it happened to be listen to a load of grime and that, before moving off into strange new places instead of going all spooky and obvious like those nostalgic chillwav’s.

― jimitheexploder, Friday, October 1, 2010 6:12 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

wow this is fucking amazing!

that was on that mix that joakim and his brother did for RA a while back (az bouaziz brothers), with the UR 'transitions' speech over the top - sooo sick.

Word to the wise, the Brennan Green remix of Bubble Club's Lonely Acid is really good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdOToCMKGgQ

album Jan 2011