RFI: Border Community - Nathan Fake, James Holden, The MFA, Petter etc.

weirdly enough, that's almost EXACTLY how i feel about holden's mix, too!! i can barely get any interest going in the weird IDM / triphop shenanigans at the start of the first disc or second discs. i wish he'd edited the more propulsive parts of the mix together into one seamless whole ... i'd start w/ "anita berber" and stop again after the apparat track ... then maybe start AFTER "xtal" on the 2nd disc and go to "nazi trance fuck off".

that'd make a tight 80 minute mix.

i really want to hear this.

there is a germ of something worth pursuing here, but as a whole album it's the kind of thing you forget you even heard later it's so insubstantial. weird.

also, i dont think this is possible but somehow driving and lighter-than-air at the same time.

still waiting on this btw.

Um, school me in the ways of James Holden, if you please?

I wasn't going to stay for his whole set last night, but got totally SUCKED INTO it.

Who was it who said I would like this? Matt DC? Well, you were right. It's not even dance music so much as it's just... dronerock made with electronics. He totally does that whole "take one chord, one note, one sound, repeat until transcendence is achieved" that made me love Spacemen 3, NEU!, etc.

People were dancing, but my friend found me a chair, and I just sat on it in a kind of daze and wibbled. (The only problem is, if you sit on a chair at a dance gig, people assume you're on Ketamine and come up and spill their drugs all over you, bah.)

Where should I start with this?

went to Cluster eh? Jealous.

Nathan Fake's Album and James Holden's at the controls are the best places to start, as is their Essential Mix.

NF's Album is great for those fantastically bright days where you always seem to have the sun in your eyes but dont mind it.

Who was it who said I would like this? Matt DC? Well, you were right. It's not even dance music so much as it's just... dronerock made with electronics. He totally does that whole "take one chord, one note, one sound, repeat until transcendence is achieved" that made me love Spacemen 3, NEU!, etc.

You mean... it's dance music?

I mean, you have pretty much nailed down the appeal of minimal techno (of which Border Community is kind of a key landmark) right down in one sentance.

Umm anyway, reading the 2005-06 period of this thread would do nicely to start. Either they went off the boil or I lost interst. But anyway:

Nathan Fake - Sky Was Pink (James Holden Mix)
Fairmont - Gazebo
Petter - Six Songs (or whatever it was called)
Extrawelt - Soopertrack

Is the golden age of this stuff. For similar shit try Stephan Bodzin's album from 2007, and then read the Kompakt threads from start to finish.

Hahah I just realised this thread doesn't progress much past 2006 which pretty which tells you all you need to know.

Don't listen to Nathan Fake's album it's rubbish.

Jesse Somfay-We Breathe The Stars Through Each Other is an amazing track in this style...

My favourite Somfay track is "Lying in a Bed of Mist", and though it's a little bit different to this sound I reckon Kate would love it.

More specific to this style:

Andre Kraml - Safari (James Holden Mix)
M83 - Run Through Flowers (Jackson Remix)
The MFA - The Difference It Makes (Superpitcher Mix)
- in fact it's a fair bet that Kate would adore all of Superpitcher's dronier moments e.g. "Heroin", "More Heroin", the remix of Hell's "Je Regrette Everything", the remixes of M83 and "See What I've Become'...

...and esp. the last three tracks on Fleucht disc of Dominink Eulberg's Kreuct & Fleucht mix, being:

Holden & Thompson - Come To Me
Chaton & Hopen - An Area (Hrdvision Remix)
System 7 - Planet 7 (Holden Remix)

nobody really reps for the 'icelandic' take on 'the sky was pink'. that was my intro to border community stuff, i probably prefer it to the holden mix (which i liked a lot).

'lump' off holden's album is, as firstworldman said a few times upthread, amazing (and a bit mental).

I really really didn't like the Nathan Fake album!

I mean, it was repped to me as minimal techno meets nu-gaze and it just didn't do much for me because it was too, well... TWEE. The sounds were very rinky dinky.

As to the "you mean dance music?" - no, not all dance music has that quality. Just because something is repetitive doesn't mean that it achieves that transcendent quality. It's something in the texture shifting. For instance, Orbital's Brown Album has it. Tiga's Mind Dimension doesn't. (Though supposedly the Erol Alkan mix of that is far more psychedelic - I'm looking for that to see if it meets my criteria for transcendence.)

I will try and search out this stuff - YouTube links would really help if you know of any, but I'll go and search myself when my connection gets a bit better.

THANKS FOR ALL THIS! This is really brilliant and v. helpful.

Yeah okay fair point but a lot of minimal house has this quality (or at least did until a year or so ago), especially at this end of the spectrum.

I think what all of this stuff has in common is a sort of florid girly trancey shoegazey feel and a commitment to melody and prettiness that seems to fit the vibe you're looking for.

I haven't heard either Jesse Somfay tracks listed here but he's got another track called Small Pebbled Forest which is all kinds of lovely, albeit a bit more mournful. It kind of sounds exactly like how you expect a track called Small Pebbled Forest to sound.

Actually forests are pretty urgent and key - Dominik Eulberg's Flora & Fauna is another good starting point in that he is an actual park ranger. Although this is his finest moment and isn't on it.

I'm not sure 'florid girly' is entirely right, I dunno about kate but the appeal for me in this stuff is the harshness, the electronic buzzes and crackles, the way the drone splinters and breaks. Trancey though, yes, that exquisitely unbearable ratcheting up of the tension and the inevitable joyous release.

No, I often don't like florid and girly - I think that's specifically what I don't like about Nathan Fake. The tweeness. It's a sort of textural... slippiness. That ever so slight phase-shifting that produces a sense of tension and release, that I'm after. The aural equivalent of yes, a small forest pebble in a very shallow stream - that you can see the texture of the rock quite clearly, but you're also aware that there's a very thin sheet of water covering it and making it... slippy and shimmery. (I could just be saying that coz I'm listening to Hidden Cat remixes right now and that totally has that shimmery quality.)

I'm really liking that Dominik Eulberg track - yes, that's the sort of thing. (How can I get a job being a park ranger by day and making electronic music by night? That sounds ideal, really.)

(Also, can't remember if it was you or Ronan that posted that Psychotic Photosynthesis (?) track a while ago - that's the sort of thing I'm after.)

It's the stutters, the not-quite-perfection that really gets me. Not quite as harsh as glitch, but still... the sense of two very simple textures sliding over one another like an audio moire pattern.

You know, those lights that they always use at dronerock gigs (and I'm discovering, at certain dance clubs. I need to go to more dance clubs where they have the dronerock lights not those stupid fucking lasers.)

some of these have dated a bit worse than others. still. had forgotten how good "shinjuku" was/is. in posting all these I'm also reminded of why this stuff was so short lived, cos they all sound practically the exact same. still...good times!

It is florid and girly compared to a lot of other dance music of that particular time, but maybe not so much on its own merits. The Nathan Fake album is considerably more twee than most of the stuff mentioned in the last few posts.

I suppose "florid and girly" is only half way there really, what makes a lot of this stuff great is the tension between girly melody and more crackly clicky abraisive noises and it's similar to shoegazing in that regard.

But yeah Tim is OTM upthread about Superpitcher's two Heroin tracks, which are about as close as this strain of house music gets to dronerock in almost every aspect. Slightly different to everything else here as well in it's more, erm, smacky.

(bear in mind that dance music sounds like ass on youtube)

^ definitely, was just gonna mention that.

Dextro, Do You Need Help (Holden Noise Tool) is an excellent, 3 minute, beatless example of the fractured, filtered, howling drone.

Really you should just get any James Holden remix you can, but my fave, aside from the obvious Nathan Fake, is the Britney Spears Breathe on Me (James Holden Dub) - what he does with her voice is delicously creepy, it's almost like stalking with a sampler.

ha i was JUST GONNA post that