stemculture

Body Work release number three, LPZ ’1983 EP’ is in the shops now, a 3 tracker of body shocking proportions that has been getting all sorts of people from XLR8R to DJ Mag excited and now comes complete with a suitably retro video, directed by Ely Dagher of Beaver & Beaver.

Paraguay’s finest have also been busy piecing together two new DJ mixes for your pleasure, a choice selection of upfront house, garage and disco for Clash Magazine and a wonderful mix of electro boogie all from 1983 for Dazed & Confused.

Baio (aka Chris Baio, bassist for Vampire Weekend) has just released his debut solo EP on Greco-Roman, three tracks of sun kissed tropical, balearic, psychedelic loveliness. I’ve had it on repeat for a couple of weeks now and now you can buy/check it out on Soundcloud.

GREC023 – Baio ‘Sunburn EP’ by Greco-Roman

Catch Chris DJ’ing this Friday (May 25) at Le Bain in New York and in London June 15 at XOYO.

This Saturday the Fragment boys are back down at Dalston’s Alibi with a very special ‘all you can drink’ 5am licence (free drink not included).

To save us typing out the long list of what you can expect to be getting your boogie on to here’s what Time Out had to say: “a clutch of eclectic rock, ’80s and hip hop, obscure house, disco re-edits and tropical techno and more in this hipster Dalston basement” – holy christ.

DJ’s include: Anthony (God Don’t Like It/Power Lunches), Gigolo Medina (Wholemeal/Good Block), Andy (Huntleys & Palmers Audio Club) amongst the ‘owners’ Real Close & Moman.

As per usual it’s completely free – check out the Facebook event here.

Not much that needs to be said about this one which is good really as we’re out of sugar in the office so haven’t had my morning tea yet and as a result ain’t feeling too wordy. Anyway good label throws good party with good lineup in a venue yet TBA. Check it out.

Need Want label boss Sean Brosnan also recently did a mix/interview for Mixmag which you can check out now below whilst reading the associated words here.

Scene Selection: Sean Brosnan’s Needwant Introduction for Mixmag by Mixmag

Watch the invasion as it happens! If you’ve been vigilant whilst wandering any of the world’s major cities, you will have noticed the tile mosaics of arcade game characters pasted to numerous buildings and landmarks. This is the work of French artist Invader.

The short film, In Bed with Invader, spends one night following the artist around Paris as he carries out his work.

This Friday the half of Slutty Fringe that has girly hair and responds to the name John (so.. me) will be playing at The Nest in Dalston. Advance tickets have already sold out but you’ll still be able to just roll up and pay to get in on the door.

I’ll be spinning 12-1 and looking at the rest of the line-up (Plump DJs, Starsmith & More) shall be dipping into the promo pile marked chunky. Watch yer bassbins, etc etc.

We have a few tickets to give away to you our beloved readers, email here before Midday on Friday and we’ll randomly select a couple of you.

The year 1984 has always had a special appeal to me, there’s something about it that, Orwell withstanding, always felt so futuristic and brings back happy memories of Space Shuttles, Dallas, Atari consoles and bmx bikes with blue tyres and mag wheels. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

Anyway making that little intro even more irrelevant than usual the topic of this post is the new 1983 EP by LPZ, a year that up till now I could frankly take or leave. Released in May on my own Body Work label, it’s had me frantically re-evaluating my top ten years of the ’80s and is already getting lots of other people excited with everyone from Sinden, Horse Meat Disco DJs, the Disco Bloodbath crew and the likes of The Glimmers supporting it.

Three tracks ranging from the body popping business of 1983, through to Mafia (Dub)’s more stripped back beats and bass and onto the slow mo arabic dub acid of Snake & Butterfish; hailed as ‘scene changing tackle’ by Cosmic Disco it’s out May 7th but is now up on the Body Work Soundcloud to stream, and in the case of Snake & Butterfish download for free.

This is also as good a time as ever to jump back in time and revisit the DJ mix that LPZ’s Cosmo Lopez did for us back in the mists of time.

Very quick one, but if you’re in London looking for something extra fun tonight then here’s my top choices for ensuring the rest of your 4 day weekend is spent under a duvet softly moaning (whether that’s because you over indulge or pull and are mating like pandas is entirely up to you…. CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE!).

So first up therse Whoopie! tonight at The Waiting Room (nee The Drop). There’s a great lineup with Felix from Hot Chip taking top billing, swiftly followed by Sam Willis from Walls. Too hot, too strong you might say.

But there’s more Fools + Rushmore are also DJ’ing (though sorry I’m out of the loop on this one so no idea who they be), with former DC glithcy hip-hop electronica type Kelpe and the wonderful Flora Yin-Wong, who once upon a time was content to have ‘Slutty Fringe’ in brackets after her name on flyers but now has the slightly grander ‘Dazed’ appending her title.

It’s free before 10 and cheap after and here’s a DJ mix to promote the night which fittingly for today starts of with an Arthur Russell track, rest in crazy peace AR.

Right, keeping it close by, we also have Disco Bloodbath celebrating their 5th Birthday, ahh doesn’t time fly. Anyway it’s at Hysteria on Kingsland Rd which is a new one to me, but hey alongside the DB boys you also have the frankly fucking brilliant Waze & Odyssey, Nathan G Wilkins, Pete Herbert and DFA’a Tiago.

Not too shabby. Here’s the latest Waze & Odyssey release that came out last month on my own Body Work label. It’s the nuts and I’m not just saying that as your 69p purchase would keep a roof over my fictitious wife and kids head.

Finally whilst as of this weekend I may no longer be a SARF LAHNDAHNER, my heart still belongs to the area so I have to give a shout out to my furry friends The 2 Bears, who are going paw to hoof with Horse Meat Disco at The Bussey Building in Peckham for Bad Thursday. It’s going to be x-large. See you on the other side (or not).

Being a ‘buzz’ act is actually fairly easy, name me an influential alt music title and with a little work I could probably fairly easily design a band created to appeal to every one of their particular little fetishes, whether it’s the correct use of pointless symbols in the name, the ‘on trend’ referencing of sugary 90s RnB as a major influence, or some other tiresome peccadillo.

Anyway being consistently brilliant year after year after year after year is a slightly trickier proposition, and as i’ve never managed even a consecutive day of brilliance I’ll happily genuflect to those who have. People like Ed DMX for instance, who is probably responsible for more footage of vinyl in my collection than any other producer.

Seriously at some point in the future music historians are going to look back at the vast swathes of non entities raised, if even just for a week, to the status of gods and wonder why the fucking fuck there are not bronze statues of Ed, astride his electro pony, an 808 raised to the heavens in triumph, littering every street in London.

Anyway do yourself a favour, if you haven’t already aquaint yourself with his back catalogue which ranges from amazing pop, through to hardcore rave, body shocking electro, electronic dancehall, italo disco, electro funk, blissful ambient, random Eye of the Tiger bootlegs and beyond. In fact start here and now with this remix of another electronic music legend Black Devil Disco Club served up to us by those lovely folk at Lo Recordings.

Keep an eye out for an entire album of BDDC reworks by such other great and good producers as Leo Zero and Eckman.

The man, the myth, the maverick is known simply as Antoni Maiovvi has turned his gaze to Kaleid, two fellow Berlin dwellers whose passions and giallo leaning affections lie close to those of Antoni.

Together the results are this heaving slab of muscle beat presented for your eyes in the shape of a deftly edited video that might be classed as NSFW if your paymasters are conservative prudes shocked by the sight of nubile flesh.

Described as a slow wave on a boundless sea, Foreversound is the new(ish) musical project from Neil Wells who formerly recorded the Kanye West cover version as Line that opened proceedings on the Hot Pockets label that the people who include this corner of the internet on their email signatures ran for a glorious period back then.

Obviously influenced by his new surroundings in Berlin, the warbling melodic cosmiched indebted techno strains of Foreversound debuted last year with a quite sumptuous rendition of the much talked,written, “reblogged” about and remixed track “Sun” from Floating Points’ dad Caribou.

Months of studio experimentation have culminated with the release of a CDr entitled Tiles which comes adorned in the above, rather nice looking cover and is available now via bandcamp. A concerted period of ears to headphones time has revealed “Apoapsis” to be a particular highlight of this set.

Lose any fragile plans you had for Saturday night as it’s time for Fragment and The Alibi to ruin the remainder of your liver.

Fragment’s 21st party see’s Real Close, Moman and Mad as Hell bring down the tune caldron until 3am, all for free. Expect absinthe, big tunes, people dancing on things and someone flashing a camera in your face.

For more information, hit the Facebook event here or the Fragment site here.

London based dark wave artist The KVB is a shadowy figure called Klaus who prefers his music drenched in reverb. If you’ve been listening to Veronica Vasicka’s East Village Radio shows of late you might have heard the Minimal Wave boss drop some material from Klaus.

Far too prolific an artist for a slacker such as this writer to keep up to date with, The KVB has recently released an album on the Clandestine imprint and this very morning the news arrives of a remix credit on the Disco Error released Goitia Deitz Remixed digital EP alongside Tom Furse of Horrors fame.

As these words transfer from brain to computer screen via the medium of fingers, the swirling motorik patterns of Into The Night, The KVB’s 10″ release on Karl O’Connor’s Downwards label are currently willingly infecting my senses and it doesn’t take much for me to encourage the same future for you too.

Indulge fully in The KVB via his soundcloud.

Arriving on my radar via a hastily deleted tweet from a studio hovelled Mock N Toof there is little information as to who fx mchn are, but that’s not important when “jackie” is such an elastically brilliant six minutes of music

Take one of my favourite bands, chuck in one of my favourite producers, stir and then head straight to the dancefloor. Magic.

Available on a deluxe ltd edition 12″ and as a digital download now.

As you may have noticed today is BURIAL DAY, as Hyperdub have just put a new EP from the mysterious, etc, etc producer up on sale on their site and as you’d expect it’s rather good, reminding me a lot of early Black Dog Productions.

Anyway everyone will be rattling on about that so instead I wanted to direct you towards a new track that just went up from, the newly relocated to Berlin, Seams and which is available to download for free.

Those of you who like things like melodies beware as it’s fairly abstract electronica we’re dealing with here. Still whilst it may lack anything close to a tune, one you could whistle along to at least, it does provide an interesting soundscape to get lost in for a few minutes and shows off Seams increasing talent for sound design, definitely one to keep an eye on this year.

Anyway whilst we’re talking all things Seams related, you should also check out his proper website which is now offering up the chance to buy what can only be described as a fucking amazing bag. Come pay day I’m having one of those.

The debut release on my new label Body Work, ‘Footsie/Speak Easy’ by CSY & Stripes is out this week, 2 choice cuts of bass heavy garage influenced house music that’s been getting lots of support from the likes of A-Trak, Sinden, Switch, Groove Armada, Tayo and many many more.

You can stream them in full below, if you like why not consider digging deep and buying a copy, just an idea crazy as it sounds.

We also have a free download of CSY & Stripes remix of Detboi’s ‘I Got Dope’ for you, plus their February DJ mix, I think that’s enough freebies for now.

Towards the back end of 2011 we gave you the lambent haze of Essáy’s ‘Rhiannon‘, and lo it was good. Well now thanks to the freshly minted Glyph record label we can share with you the video for his new, equally amazing, single ‘Morning Mountain‘.

Available now from the likes of Juno and Bleep.

I’ve been coerced out of radio silence by the ever excellent Italian imprint Mannequin, who are on the cusp of jettisoning across the globe 500 editions of Danza Meccanica Vol 2 Italian Synth Wave 1981-1987, a quite self explanatory second volume of Italian synth wave and post punk.

Due for release imminently, the compilation is worth investigating alone for the stunning alternate silent rendition of “A Gift Of Tears” by Jeunesse D’Ivoire, one of my favourite tracks from the moment I first stumbled upon Cold Wave via the efforts of Angular Records and their excellent Cold Waves + Minimal Electronics Volume One compilation.

Mannequin will release Danza Meccanica Vol 2 Italian Synth Wave 1981-1987 across rather stush sounding LP (two inserts mate) and less exciting digital formats on February 6.

Tracklist

A1. Suicide Dada – Acque A2. Der Blaue Reiter – Through Glasses A3. Sons Of Science – Way Of Life A4. Waveform – Creep A5. Ruins – New Record B1. Jeunesse D’Ivoire – A Gift Of Tears (Silent Version) B2. LASS Crime – I’ll Merry Go Round B3. Musumeci – Harry Batasuna B4. Deca – First Frequency B5. European Stage – Subterranean Wait

*Blink*

Is it really 2012… Apparently so. Anyway I’m breaking our hibernation to share with you this dreamy, psychedelic, almost sepuchural number that has come out his week on 12″ via our beloved Optimo Music. It’s called ‘Fuckface’ and it’s by Organs of Love…

And this is the point when I realise any further commentary has been rendered superfluous, just enjoy