Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Posted: 02 Mar 2009 04:07 PM PST

Paris based Gotan Project have been applying the fusion blowtorch to tango since the late 90’s, merging tango with elements of electronica, jazz, electronica and dub with a distinctly folkloric Argentine flavour. It’s quite dancey at times, club based music with the exotic flavours more often than not falling between the rigid 4/4 beats. They comprise of the core trio of Swiss electronic producer Christoph Muller, French DJ Phillipe Chen Solal and Argentinean guitarist Eduardo Makaroff, however are regularly joined joined by various live performers on this two disc set. The first is from the Forum in London in 2003 and the bandoneon (Argentine accordion) in particular is remarkable, simultaneously heartbreaking and joyful, whilst the piano and violin also take their place as featured soloists, not merely playing the expected supporting role. They were supporting their debut album La Revancha Del Tango, and the crowd are vocally appreciative. Curiously there’s even a cover of Frank Zappa’s Chunga’s Revenge, with a much more exotic and classier sound than Frank could ever have hoped to muster. The second disc meanwhile is some four years later in Switzerland. The crowd is just as vocal, however the band are definitely more nuanced, the pieces evolving slowly and the electronics not so self consciously conspicuous. This was around the time of Lunatico and much of the material stems from this album. Gotan Project are a curious proposition, they’re simultaneously traveling in two directions. Their use of the bandoneon draws you back to Buenos Aires traditions, whilst the beats scream cafe or club. The electronics are integrated incredibly effectively, however the beats at times feel like a straightjacket, preventing the music from really setting free and floating away up to the lofty heights that this combination of ingredients promises, and even occasionally delivers.

Bob Baker Fish

Various Artists - Consume: Psy -Harmonics Volume 6 (Psy-Harmonics)

Posted: 02 Mar 2009 04:07 PM PST

Psy-Harmonics are pitching themselves as the soundtrack to the 21st Century. We’ve arrived at a place where for the first time in our history our consumption is being scrutinised. Suddenly there are new forces at play. Perhaps we shouldn’t fill up our plate, perhaps we shouldn’t go back for seconds, and perhaps we shouldn’t throw out what we don’t use. Who knows perhaps the pot will be empty by the time we get back. Consume, the latest 2cd label sampler continues the prog electronica fusion thing that the label has become increasingly renowned for, and whilst there are numerous exceptions to the rule, it’s this approach that offers the biggest highlight of this set. Eye (I’m assuming from the Boredoms) and Sinkichi’s remix of Dachambo’s Conga La Gotta is the kind of ecstatic never ending tribal jam that has made the boredoms so great in recent years. Shaolin Wooden Men get all mischievous, glitchy, and electronic with the curious Error Vol.1 and Black Lung gets a punchy rework by Birmingham techno dude Sir Real. It’s a real mish mash of locals and internationals, of remixes and rarities, of cohesiveness and weirdness. Antediluvian Rocking Horse get onto a banging twanging trip, evoking some kind of hoe down stomp, perhaps creating a new dance craze. Elsewhere there’s New York psychedelic weirdoes Silver Apples with some antagonistic ambient work, Zen Paradox, Ai Yamamoto playing with glasses, Boy is Fiction getting dreamy and electro cinematic, Hesius Dome, and some inexplicable rock courtesy of a Zen Paradox remix of Black Cab and a heavy as hell Ollie Olsen remix of James Hogg. It’s diverse, weird and wonderful music, though at 25 tracks there’s a lot to take in, yet in this case gluttony doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.

Bob Baker Fish

Gui Boratto - Take My Breath Away (Kompakt)

Posted: 02 Mar 2009 03:11 AM PST

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Gui Boratto is a bit of an overachiever? Architect, Producer, Composer. He has remixed as widely as Bomb the Bass, Goldfrapp, the Pet Shop Boys and Scsi 9. In a sense all the hats are on for Take My Breath Away, it is highly structured in form and effect, purposeful and direct. Opening with the title track it shows its form, highly wrought sound display for audio effect. In a sense a description of the form it takes is almost irrelevant, the sensual and emotive effect it takes is key. However that being said it holds greatly in the realms of the emotive melodic minimal techno, plundering years of phrasing, melody and sensibility, Barrato throws back generic sound motifs and recycles them pristinely into popular form. It takes the genre to the pop world with few or no regrets. Indeed the no turning back track with it’s ‘insightful’ lyrics’ can but only truely be heard in this arena. Atomic Soda with it’s pristine sculptured beat bounces in an uneventful manner and moves hoovering bass tone variations in a manner that would massage the average dancers internal organs in the very large soundsystem space. Moments of ‘romanticism’ in sound arrive in the track colours which essentially is a combination of simple and quite annoying keyboard call and response phrases, an overplayed piano stab motif, underwritten by a retro and slightly annoying beat. On Ballroom and Eggplant Barrato is at his most honest and direct, in it’s house leaning techno roots, and in playing sound and beat to the full extent of the audiences needs, to dance.

This album is a foray into large soundsystem formalism, almost overly designed for effect, it utlises it’s sound template as an ends in itself, indeed, I can picture it’s use on 10,000 or so swaying, sweating, pounding minimal techno adherents enthralled by the emotive euphoric nature of it all. My speakers are hardly adequte enough to give the full sense of this justice. To play it at home almost questions why to have a copy, other than as a momento of the experience of audio thrills and spills of the dance floor with thousands of your closest friends. This said wryly, and it had to be, for when you know your emotions are being manipulated for full effect it does not really matter who is doing it, an advertiser, a politican or a musician, it still leaves a strange taste or effect. After all the bluster and show Gui leaves you with Godet, the come down track, to help you just to a less energetic and more thoughtful world. It almost fools you to believe that you have not just been taken for a high fidelity ride of the senses. File under high production value audio porn.