Kittin is high. Kittin is climbing across the decks on all fours, purring 'Rippin Kittin' and there should be fireworks going off in the sky right now above SonarPub she's so hot. The world's finest goth-techno-leopard-print-diva has devised a super-sized laptop solo show this year, but Mademoiselle Caroline could probably play broken records (which, wonderfully, she's done at previous Sonars) and still have us eating from her paws. Favourites from 'Thee Glitz' days right up to the recent 'Batbox' are multiplied and mixed live into stadium-filling, acid house anthems then overladen with those irresistibly accented lyrics. The Sonar press department might have been hyping the 'female factor' on the lineup, but every single year, the very womanly Miss Kittin unofficially headlines the festival and its reputation rides on her tattooed shoulders.
Last year Hamburg label Dial released (whisper it) 'This Bliss', the debut album by emo-minimal deity Pantha du Prince and some divine decisionmaker has put him in the sublime sunrise-slot. His live set is all surface-sparse techno, teetering on the deep side of house. Whatever it's called, this is music to make you go limp, wobble a bit and not recover your senses until several days later. Each shift in tempo or silky new sound in 'Eisbaden' or 'Saturn Strobe' is an exploding star expanding across the galaxy. When 'Florac' builds up then breaks into a mind-blowing sitar-drone apocalypse, it levels this girl to a trembling wreck, crouching on the concrete floor.
By which time the sun's up for non-stop dj/producer/legend Ricardo Villalobos. Since it's Sonar and since he's closing proceedings (for now) he appears to have undergone some kind of photosynthetic transformation in the Barcelona heat. This morning he could be on the terrace at Space, spinning what sounds Balearic house and having a very non-serious-techno time of it, so that when the glittering curtain finally falls he's grinning, hands aloft behind the decks and we're already counting down the days to Sonar09.
Showing posts with label plan b. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plan b. Show all posts
Sunday, 13 July 2008
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
OMG ELLEN ALLIEN #4. IS TERRIFYING//THE CITY IS MINE
Formidable record label head, casual fashion designer and full-on disc mistress Ellen Allien might be my hero for ever, but even the loyalty (and patience) of her biggest fans will be tested by this relentlessly sparse trip with her into the Berlin state of mind. During opening track 'Einsteigen' (enter), we glide into the incidental buzz of the city. As bustle crackles over a single note tapped out over and over again, a voice over a loudspeaker announces that the train's arrived at Alexanderplatz station, which is where we begin our journey.
This Berlinette, this Stadtkind has made a record (her fourth solo stretch) that's borne of mornings becoming afternoons behind the tinted windows at Ostbahnhof minimal institution Berghain. SOOL was dragged out of a stupor, its dot-to-dot skeleton etched like clouds onto the dawn and viewed from the banks of the Spree at parties where the phrase 'don't forget to go home' was invented. It is now and always has been the city (and what else?) that pulses through her veins, while on the outside her skin's baked in a glaze of last night's (or was it the night before?) sweat.
If Ms Allien's last solo LP Thrills was a celebratory but patchy, loved-up and danced out session, and that faultless Apparat collaboration Orchestra of Bubbles set the emo-techno standard, SOOL is a severing and a step beyond. With the help of east German sound re-structuralist (and guest producer) AGF, she racks out the electronic test tubes for some intense sonic experimentalism, to once again redefine the boundaries of her shifting soundscape. So 'Elphine' climbs to a spooky crescendo with whistles (human and tin) and the brassy thrum of trumpets and oboes; the brooding minimal of 'Its' is pinned down with a Jaws bassline and 'Bim' throbs with a blood-in-your-ears heartbeat.
Where there are vocals, they're chopped up to reverberate around the beats, as if the bones of the album have been left half bare, those clipped voices trapped in an echo chamber. 'Sprung' makes tentative, paranoid steps towards the dance floor, with an acid-deep beat and haunting fragments of a memory of a party that might have happened some time before strung out across five deliriously lost minutes.
'Frieda', then, interrupts the blissed out blips nine tracks in – it’s a swoony, semi-pastoral ballad which Ellen tenderly addresses (in English) to her 'sun', making me wonder whether she expected anyone to actually make it to the end of the album. For whoever braves it that far, closing track 'Out' is slashed through with the metallic-sounding swishes of a sword to the drip-drip rhythm of a broken tap. It's hard to recognise Ellen here at all: you have to roll back your head, switch to that rattled, addled, empty six o'clock in the morning brain and allow yourself to slip in between the sounds, contract and expand when she tells you to.
This Berlinette, this Stadtkind has made a record (her fourth solo stretch) that's borne of mornings becoming afternoons behind the tinted windows at Ostbahnhof minimal institution Berghain. SOOL was dragged out of a stupor, its dot-to-dot skeleton etched like clouds onto the dawn and viewed from the banks of the Spree at parties where the phrase 'don't forget to go home' was invented. It is now and always has been the city (and what else?) that pulses through her veins, while on the outside her skin's baked in a glaze of last night's (or was it the night before?) sweat.
If Ms Allien's last solo LP Thrills was a celebratory but patchy, loved-up and danced out session, and that faultless Apparat collaboration Orchestra of Bubbles set the emo-techno standard, SOOL is a severing and a step beyond. With the help of east German sound re-structuralist (and guest producer) AGF, she racks out the electronic test tubes for some intense sonic experimentalism, to once again redefine the boundaries of her shifting soundscape. So 'Elphine' climbs to a spooky crescendo with whistles (human and tin) and the brassy thrum of trumpets and oboes; the brooding minimal of 'Its' is pinned down with a Jaws bassline and 'Bim' throbs with a blood-in-your-ears heartbeat.
Where there are vocals, they're chopped up to reverberate around the beats, as if the bones of the album have been left half bare, those clipped voices trapped in an echo chamber. 'Sprung' makes tentative, paranoid steps towards the dance floor, with an acid-deep beat and haunting fragments of a memory of a party that might have happened some time before strung out across five deliriously lost minutes.
'Frieda', then, interrupts the blissed out blips nine tracks in – it’s a swoony, semi-pastoral ballad which Ellen tenderly addresses (in English) to her 'sun', making me wonder whether she expected anyone to actually make it to the end of the album. For whoever braves it that far, closing track 'Out' is slashed through with the metallic-sounding swishes of a sword to the drip-drip rhythm of a broken tap. It's hard to recognise Ellen here at all: you have to roll back your head, switch to that rattled, addled, empty six o'clock in the morning brain and allow yourself to slip in between the sounds, contract and expand when she tells you to.
Thursday, 6 March 2008
more hot germans for plan b under the dizzying influence of red wine
MIT - Coda
Confession: I am a total Germanic-maniac. I don't drink lattes, I sup milchkaffees. I don't do London, ich liebe Berlin. So, naturally, I snoozed to brooding Cologne electro-minstrels MIT on my headphones in some Kreuzberg hotel and drifted into bliss.
MIT are one of those acts who think they have to pretend to be an indie band just because once upon a time they learned to play some instruments. However, thanks to the still-evolving indie-dance crossover legacy of DFA, they needn't worry - no one has to feign band-ness anymore. Instead of letting the frontman sing then, I wish they'd no lyrics at all - who needs 'songs'?
The finest tracks on Coda are the post-Jeans Team almost-instrumentals (Coda, Park and Deispiel) showcasing oi-techno which pulses with zippy beats worth at least one Soulwax edit and echoing with the masters of electroclash - a bit of T. Rauschmiere here, Kittin there and Tiga all over.
Confession: I am a total Germanic-maniac. I don't drink lattes, I sup milchkaffees. I don't do London, ich liebe Berlin. So, naturally, I snoozed to brooding Cologne electro-minstrels MIT on my headphones in some Kreuzberg hotel and drifted into bliss.
MIT are one of those acts who think they have to pretend to be an indie band just because once upon a time they learned to play some instruments. However, thanks to the still-evolving indie-dance crossover legacy of DFA, they needn't worry - no one has to feign band-ness anymore. Instead of letting the frontman sing then, I wish they'd no lyrics at all - who needs 'songs'?
The finest tracks on Coda are the post-Jeans Team almost-instrumentals (Coda, Park and Deispiel) showcasing oi-techno which pulses with zippy beats worth at least one Soulwax edit and echoing with the masters of electroclash - a bit of T. Rauschmiere here, Kittin there and Tiga all over.
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