Saturday, September 12, 2009

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

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Hopen – The Shark’s Wife (Automation Records)

Posted: 12 Sep 2009 12:33 AM PDT

Imagine Black Dice have just played at their own house party. Everybody has spent the night dancing around in a happy, disjointed euphoria. It’s now about an hour before dawn, and most people have gone home. But the music continues. There’s a loneliness now creeping in, a seriousness that falls once the escapist absurdity has ended. Now there’s more of an element of dread. Welcome to Hopen’s The Shark’s Wife.

Random samples loop on themselves, answering to no-one, answering not even to other samples. While rhythms jump or fade in and out, none feel the need to stay in tempo with any of the others. The odd humourous breakbeat tries to make headway, but is always cut off by treacly bottom end blurs, darkness forever winning over. Some C-grade film dialogue samples add to the unease, always seemingly trying to escape the dread, but always cut off by a shifting drum pattern or flattened on a pulsing drone loop.

Hopen has been putting out netlabel releases for a number of years now (which are also highly recommended), but The Shark’s Wife sees the Swiss based Frenchman on cassette for the first time via Seattle’s Automation Records (there’s also a digital download available if you are thus inclined). The cassette adds to the mood of impending collapse – the analogue tape never quite feeling sturdy and stable (at least not on my beloved old Akai walkman). It makes for half an hour of listening that keeps you constantly on your toes, draws you into its world and leaves you very satisfied.

Adrian Elmer

Boxcutter – Arecibo Message (Planet Mu/Inertia)

Posted: 12 Sep 2009 12:33 AM PDT

Boxcutter – A.K.A. Barry Lynn – has generally been pigeonholed into dubstep over his career, but it’s not entirely accurate. The first problem with such a definition is that to build a successful album, a string of tracks with only one thing going for them is not going to work. But Arecibo Message clearly does work and it’s the manner in which Lynn ventures outwards from his dubstep bass that carries the album.

Roots in drum’n'bass are obvious from the outset. ‘Sidetrak’ layers sped up breakbeats under booming bass blobs, wavering synths and Metalheadz via Burial processed vocal snippets. The nods to drum’n'bass are constant, with tracks often flitting into step time rather than a reliance on dubstep’s half time. Then there are real tangents like ‘SPACEBASS’ which would sit very comfortably in a skwee set, strutting along around the 110bpm mark with squelches flying in every direction. He is also happy to shift moods – it’s not all dark corners and airlessness. ‘Otherside Remix (Earth Is My Spaceship)’ uses a more traditional dub bassline with plenty of airy, delayed melodica, ‘Lamp Post Funk’ is twittering 8-bit disco, with the odd half-time breakdown to keep it in tune with the set and ‘A Cosmic Parent’ is laidback electronic P-Funk.

The prevailing structure of the tracks on Arecibo Message is dubstep, and Lynn certainly knows his way around a build up and a bass drop. But the album works as an album precisely because nothing is ever left to just be good enough. Every track is tweaked with painstaking attention to detail to provide continuous interest. He’s proud of his drum’n'bass and acid roots as well, happy to give these space to shine. But, most importantly for this type of music, he never lets the cerebral nature of the work, which is undoubtedly important, take precedence over the ability for it to move you physically.

Adrian Elmer

at 6:05 PM