2008年08月17日
O SOUNDTRACK MY HEART / pivot
From Aphex Twin to Battles, Warp Records' early seismic influence on dance and pop cannot be underestimated, so it's heartening to hear that their new signing Pivot are continuing their boundary-pushing spirit.
The three-piece have created an album of sonic delights that draws influences from a gamut of genres, but with the focus on relentless grooves, from the menacing In the Blood to the epic title track, which begins like Close Encounters of the Third Kind only to take in post-rock and glam. With less focus on the ambient and more on deft nuances, this is a wild and captivating listen.
2008年06月18日
RED ,YELLOW & BLUE / born ruffians

試聽﹕http://www.myspace.com/bornruffians
Produced by Rusty Santos, the New York mixer behind Animal Collective and Panda Bear's albums, Red, Yellow & Blue exemplifies the Ruffians' brand of self-described 'hootin and hollarin'. From start to finish it's a good time, and the band knows it. With songs like the jangly ''Hedonistic Me'' and the sugary sweet ''Foxes Mate for Life'' to the foot stomping ''Badonkadonkey'', the band constantly pushes the boundaries of musical arrangements.
2008年03月19日
TURNING DRAGON / clark

試聽: Clark’s myspace
“Alongside Body Riddle I’d written a lot of full energy dance floor tracks and Turning Dragon just came from honing and building on these. It all happened pretty instinctively I hardly gave it any concious thought, other that keep wired working hours and the good stuff will come through´… Within 4 weeks I had tons of dance floor tracks… seems a bit weird to not put them out so ... Here they are” - Chris Clark.
Clark drops his excellent new album. Don't expect the lullabies and emotional epics of the last album 'Body Riddle', 'Turning Dragon' is a smasher. Hard, deep, continuously evolving and gritty tracks, aimed at contorting your body on the dance floor or just contorting your brain. This is an album that you could almost call techno, but techno with the a.d.d. detail pushed as far as it can go.
QUARISTICE / autechre

試聽: Autechre's Myspace
Autechre’s first album in nearly three years. “Quaristice” is an album that actually seems to register more or less on first listen, it seems to speak a language you can follow, even if you're not quite as fluent with it as you'd like to be.
And the effect seems to be deliberate - the album kicks off with "Altibzz", a lovely melodic soundscape that's so light and warm it could almost have been lifted straight off Incanabula or Amber, while the 20 track sequence seems to follow a kind of short-but-sweet agenda that must have had the more impatient listener in mind.
The writing process has apparently also changed, brought on by the physical necessities of a more portable recording environment and a method of track construction that has more in common with Autechre's live setup than with their more traditional studio configuration.(boomkat.com)
延伸閱讀: Review by Gridface
Review by Tiny Mix Tapes
Review by Cokemachineglow
2008年01月19日
MIRRORED / battles

The Guardian ***** - “The way repeated listens allow its unobvious rhythmic and melodic logic to take root is fantastically rewarding.”
Pitchfork “9.1”分高度評價! – “Mirrored is a breathtaking aesthetic left-turn that sounds less like rock circa 2007 than rock circa 2097, a world where Marshall stacks and micro-processing go hand in hand.”
Stylus Magazine “A” 評分 – “Battles unite process and expression, making playing that’s as quantized and mechanical as Kraftwerk sound as wild and urgent as Albert Ayler”
試聽: http://www.myspace.com/battlestheband
MIRRORED, the band's debut full-length makes its intent clear from the onset--to ingest 50 years of rock history and regurgitate it as fractilized micro-symphonies. Rhythms bounce whimsically from motorik krautrock beats to glammed up T. Rex shuffles; such stop-on-a-dime surprises seem to be offered up at every turn. Tyondai Braxton's bizarre vocal gibberish--pitched up and looped in real-time--recalls similar experiments by the Animal Collective, while simple, repetitive note progressions give way to full-on guitar bombast (courtesy of Don Caballero's Ian Williams). But the Battles-plan cannot be reduced to mere quiet verse/loud chorus formula. Featuring a generous dose of improvisatory interplay, MIRRORED is tightrope-walking post-rock with a technology-driven edge.
2006年11月1日
HELLO EVERYTHING / squarepusher
英國電音作者 Squarepusher (aka Tom Jenkinson) 第十張個人專輯。繼《Ultravisitor》後再度展現他峰迴路轉、天馬行空的音樂縫合功力,將jazz /ambient/breakbeat/drum n bass自由拼貼出絢爛奪目的音樂萬花筒!!
2006年10月8日
WARP WORKS & TWENTIETH CENTURY MASTERS / london sinfonietta

Just in case the thread connecting auteurs such as Aphex Twin and Squarepusher to the fathers of 20th Century avant-garde (Steve Reich, John Cage et al.) wasn't pronounced enough for you, this double CD will knit in any gaps...and then some. Renowned within the classical world for tackling some of the most challenging music in contemporary composition (Schoenberg, Ferneyhough etc.), the London Sinfonietta are no stranger to furrowed brows and bemused glances; a state of affairs that undoubtedly continued when they announced a hook-up with the Warp crew.
Yet whilst on the surface such a relationship seems diametrically baffling, dig a little deeper at it begins to make perfect sense - with both regarded as leading lights within their field, bringing a relatively populist touch to what are otherwise closed-gate aural communities. Originally conceived as a one-off event, the first London Sinfonieta/Warp showdown took place on March 10th 2003 and featured György Ligeti, Conlon Nancarrow, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Charles Ives rubbing shoulders with the trainer-footed masses of Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin. Considered an unqualified success, the shin-dig was resurrected in 2004 with Jamie Lidell and Jenkinson making live appearances, before the whole thing was topped off with a third show later that year.
Spread over two ample discs and accompanied by some suitably extensive sleeve notes, 'Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters' is a genuine fusion of classical sensibilities and modern techniques (both in terms of composition and production), moulded tightly around an avant-garde heart.
(延伸閱讀)