Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Posted: 23 Feb 2009 06:50 AM CST

Portuguese electronic producer Jill aka Projectojil introduced his laidback blend of downtempo, drum and bass and house styles last year on his independently-released debut album ‘Tales From The Native’, and now this six track EP release ‘UP’, which contains reworkings of tracks taken from that aforementioned record, sees him honing and polishing his overall approach somewhat. If opening track ‘Get It Up (New York House remix)’ succumbs to some of that preceding album’s faults in that it perhaps doesn’t really reward the listener or change very much over its sprawling ten minute running length, than the ensuing tracks here more than make up for it. The aptly-titled ‘Cinematic House’ sees Jill getting spooky and spacious by sending sinister-sounding bass pads tumbling beneath a crisp backdrop of tech-y rhythms in what’s easily one of the most inspired moments I’ve heard from him yet, while ‘Under The Carpet’ offers up a sumptuous glide through soulful Detroit-tinged tech-house that even manages to slide in a few gorgeously-placed strings and horn samples. A strong follow-up EP from Jill aka Projectojil that sees this Portuguese producer taking his approach to a considerably higher level.

Christopher McFall - All For The Terror That Sings Sweetly To You In The Night (1000fussler)

Posted: 23 Feb 2009 01:59 PM CST

for all the terror...

Blackbirds, the sedentary barnacles of innumerable downtown districts, are the stuff of sound artist Christopher McFall’s first foray on 1000fussler. In keeping with the methods found in past efforts, McFall forgoes cerebral mechanisms, suppresses his intentions just enough, and largely resists the temptation of parasitic meaning and full signification. While McFall deals in the constitutive ambiguity of everyday situations, the recordings aren’t easily reduced to a tendentious respect for the banal and desacralized elements of experience.

The noxious works presented here, lined with subterranean currents, and spun in eccentric orbits, manage to show, through their intense duration, persistent repetition, uneasy palpitations between clarity and obscurity, and avoidance of common sense and feeling, a certain fidelity to the event. Beyond this, the main appeal of the work lies in the sensitive nature of the material and the alienated perspective of its mechanical realisation. This duality remains strong throughout the albums some twenty minutes and is never wholly resolved. If anything, such shiftiness is only pushed to greater extremes, particularly on the final track, “Endurance”, where a faceless force digs like a demon and eventually descends over discarded rhythmic remnants that have yet to be picked clean whilst sly, dismal textures twist overtop.

Max Schaefer