Emerging Berlin-based producer GMG will release their ‘30+ EP’ via Thirty Year Records on 30th November.
The elusive producer’s training in jazz music shines through on this EP, with each of its charming house cuts boasting nods, nuances and instrumental motifs from the style. While plenty of house artists have been toying with “jazzy” sounds in recent years – to painfully mixed results – it’s nice to hear someone doing it with a degree of expertise.
Jeff Mills has spoken about the difference between techno in the 1990s and the genre today in a recent interview with Telekom Electronic Beats, which focusses on his jazz quartet project, Spiral Deluxe.
“Techno music was this up-tempo, driving, sometimes very dark, very aggressive type of dance music that derived from electronic rock or house music or Detroit techno. This is what techno was, pretty much, in the ‘90s," he said.
Bahrani-British experimental jazz artist Yazz Ahmed left us stunned last year with her stunning LP on Naim Records. In ‘La Saboteuse’ the composer, trumpeter and flugelhorn player – who has previously worked with Radiohead and These New Puritans – pushed traditional jazz tropes to the edge, crafting a sprawling, ambitious album that was at once challenging and thrilling.
Session Victim have just left a party in L.A. It was shut down by the police, but it was “wonderful” while it lasted, they say, and spirits are high. This alone feels testament to the duo of Hauke Freer and Matthias Reiling’s musical identity; one that is rooted in the underground, and one that emanates a glowing, stoic optimism.
Dividing their time between playing live, producing and DJing the duo have released three albums on the excellent London-based label Delusions of Granduer. Not only that, but the duo have launched their own vinyl only imprint Pen & Paper – Freer has run the Retreat label with Quarion since 2009 – with a release of their own. What was the blueprint that inspired the duo to launch the label though?
“We don't want an album to be just a collection of DJ tools spread out over several records”
Soccer96 make a rare appearance at Birthdays in Dalston this month, bringing their unique synth-heavy, psychedelic, jazz-inspired sounds to the East London venue.
Also forming two thirds of The Comet Is Coming, Dan Leavers, aka Danalogue, and Max Hallett, aka Betamax, combine nostalgia-laden synths, broken-yet-groovy percussion and improvisation as Soccer96, dropping their fantastic album 'As Above See Below' last year.
Howie B has often found himself at the frontier. Whether it's been at the Africa Centre as Soul II Soul carved itself its place in British soul history. Or manning the desk while Björk became one of the most unlikely pop sensations in decades. Or forging the sound of the iconoclastic Tricky on 'Maxinquaye'. Or helping U2 to embrace bigger, more bombastic beats on their 1997 album 'Pop'. But the minute he can be categorised, or second guessed, that's it, he's off doing something else.
A HUNDRED years ago a man named Herman Poole Blount was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Although he would have disputed that, for not only did he claim to be an alien who arrived on Earth on his intergalactic journeys, he also renounced what he called his ‘slave name’ in favour of Sun Ra. “I have many names,” he once announced. “Some call me Mr Ra, others call me Mr Re. You can call me Mr Mystery.”
Signed to City Slang and DFA Records, influenced by everything from indie, krautrock and folk to psychedelic funk, electronica and reggae, Ahmed Gallab is that most modern kind of musician. Recording as Sinkane, he's impossible to pigeonhole, but his kaleidoscopic debut album 'Mean Love' is a beguiling patchwork of styles, sewn together with fluid, effortless panache and his lush croon.
London's Barbican Complex never fails to make a big impression. A combined arts and cultural centre forming a nucleus within tower blocks and the lower rise maisonettes of a — now highly prized — residential estate, it's perched like a gargantuan, imposing, concrete bird of prey on the edge of the City of London in E1.
