For today’s post, I have a fresh mix of sounds for you to check out, all relatively new jams for the season.  Whether you’re in the mood for something dark and dirty, something chilled out and lazy, or something wistful yet content.

Solvent – Take Me Home – Subject to Shift

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Jason Amm, otherwise known as , just released a new full-length on Ghostly International called Subject to Shift.  For those unfamiliar with the Zimbabwe-born robot music composer, his mastery of the synthetic tone is rivaled by few.  Combining his expertise with new elements on his first full-length release in some time, Subject to Shift is just what the name implies– that familiar breadth and depth of dark-yet-poppy synth techno, evolved, shifted, sharpened, honed.  While some of the album was admittedly too robotic for my human taste sensors, Take Me Home stood out as the kind of sexy/evil tune I’d expect to hear in a strip club…on a space station.  If you dig this tune, you should definitely give the whole thing a listen.

Maayan Nidam – Merry Go-Round – Greatest Tits EP

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

, who also goes by , just released a new EP entitled Greatest Tits on Wolf + Lamb.  Her beauty seems outmatched only by her intimate knowledge of the classic, soulful, funky hip hop groove.  I’m not talking about making just hip hop beats, as that’s far from all she’s doing here; rather in a track like this, she weaves those vaguely familiar sounds from tracks we grew up to, some of which are mere fragments of samples, just that little tease of a taste, bound together by that heavy-hitting bass/kick on the 1’s and 3’s.  While her other produced material is largely W+L-style discoesque sex music, I find her DJ sets I’ve heard, laden with original tracks behind our favorite hip hop and rap tunes, and tracks like this to be that unique addition to the label’s collective sound collage that keeps them where they should be: on everyone’s speakers.

Lovelife – 1994 – Lovelife

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I caught this tune at the end of the newest Think or Smile mixtape (which features a few tunes from )…I really don’t know all that much about Lovelife, it’s not like Google searching yields anything remotely appropriate.  This tune’s songwriting (in most of the track, at least) is ridiculously good, the way this guy’s voice mixes with his choice of pastel-colored 80’s synth tones is astounding.  Despite the ambiguity of information on Lovelife, those who have heard it are claiming to be “diggin b4 they become MAINSTREAM, yall.”

Pleasurekraft – Tarantula – (single)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here’s a tech house tune called Tarantula that has two very different halves, starting off slightly dubby, with a very catchy inclusion of percolating toms, and crunchy snares, the track abruptly switches gears to an effects heavy semi-tribal vocal loop that takes the lead to finish things off.  Fans of Claude VonStroke‘s strange, slightly goofy track Vocal Chords will like the latter half more.  Although I dig VonStroke, I myself wasn’t really feeling Vocal Chords, nor do I prefer this track’s second half, but you gotta hand it to for giving DJ’s the option to play either half or the entire track, widening the appeal of the tune without turning either crowd off.

Posted in Music Posted by on May 26 2010 12:00 pm

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,