Urb: Warp20 at Terminal Five

Warp 20 Celebrates with Flying Lotus, Battles, & More (Review)

Posted Tuesday, September 08, 2009 @ 01:45 in Music by Jorge Hernandez

Judging by its current anniversary tour, Warp is clearly intent on taking over the world – on time. At New York’s Terminal 5 Friday night it was “Doors at 6pm, first show at 7pm,” no joke; working stiffs and chronically fashionably late be damned.

Rather than roll out stalwarts like Aphex Twin or Squarepusher the maverick label chose this Warp20 night to show off what the next twenty years might hold: acts that were still rooted in renegade electronics but increasingly mixed up with indie rock and no-school hip hop.

The punctual and funemployed caught the US debut of Australian noise-funk provocateurs Pivot. Pushing the swinging doors open, we caught LA’s DJ Flying Lotus bobbing and weaving on stage like a praying mantis, all skinny arms and head-nodding, while lights flared around him. Signs along the entrance had warned “Strobe lights will be used”, and they were. The blow-out moment came as “Parisian Goldfish” stormed the mix. For someone kicking out such brain-rattling beats, he was all charm; taking swigs of his beer, laughing with the crowd, he seemed to be loving the moment as much as anyone on the floor.

In their “only New York gig” this year, dingy post-disco brats !!! took it one step further and actually got down on the floor with the dudes in retro-frame glasses and dread-locked blondes grooving to tunes like “Hearts of Hearts”. Beatboxing headliners Battles sounded like a melodic explosion in an instrument factory, highlighting new tracks like the oddly jazz-funky “Sweetie and Shag”.

Kudos to the techs at Terminal 5 for keeping the bombastic assault in relative check. In front of the stage, our photographer said the soundwaves were actually blowing her hair back. Six hours of full-throttle dissonance could’ve easily ended in puddles of bloody earholes, but the open roof serving up burgers and empanadas was a good place to rest fried cilia. By night’s end if someone had announced Radiohead had just signed to Warp, nobody would’ve blinked. Probably not even David Byrne, who seemed politely perplexed to be getting patted down at the door on our way out. (Just in case you like a celebrity endorsement with your sycophantic predictions).

- Photo Credit: Anna White

Earplug Q+A with GusGus’s Daniel Agust

The interview with Daniel Agust of GusGus is up at Earplug/Flavorwire. Peek below.

Exclusive: Interview With GusGus Vocalist Daníel Ágúst

As anyone who’s followed GusGus knows, surprises await with every release. But the Icelandic collective has even more surprising surprises with its latest album, 24/7. First, there’s the Jesus-on-velvet cover art; then there’s a cameo by pop-savant Jimi Tenor. And there’s the track list, just six songs long.

24/7 is the group’s first album on Cologne’s micro-house juggernaut Kompakt, so it’s filled with darker, abstract electronic tracks instead of club hits. The video for the first single, the share-friendly “Add This Song,” takes place in a morgue and includes a fetish-friendly corpse-licking scene. Despite these quirks, singer Daníel Ágúst says that this time around, the intent was to take a break from the circus vibe the group spent the last decade cultivating. “We allow the band to go through changes and develop musically,” he explains. “When I came back, it was because I felt I had something to share.” Read More »

Urb feature: Mungolian Jetset

The interview with Mungolian Jetset is up at Urb.com. There’s an excerpt below, the rest is here.

Oh, those happy-go-lucky Scandinavians and their music-loving ways, living in utopia as they presumably do, with their low crime rate, modular furniture and blue-eyed soul. It’s not hard to imagine folk, freak-jazz, funk, disco and house music flowing freely on tap. While Norwegian star-dust dandies Todd Terje, Lindstrom, Rune Lindbaek, Royksopp, and Annie are beaming their beats from a mirror-ball planet, Mungolian Jet Set’s sticky grooves sound like something that bubbles up from a mossy well in a lost forest. We Gave it All Away and Now We Are Taking It Back collects 16 remixes and collaborations of uncut internationalist, psychedelic, funk on a double CD. On “Creepy,” a lil DC Go-Go kicks through; “Original Highway Delight” sounds like a stomping Italo/Hi-NRG homage to Patrick Cowley; “Moon Song (The Gospel According To Mung)” bumps an ambient dub; and Bob Marley gets a breakbeat reset on “Could You Be Loved.”

Village Voice: Pet Shop Boys, Yes!

Pet Shop Boys kicked off their US tour in NYC last night at the Hammerstein. You can read my review for the Village Voice here. Pictures on Flickr!

Flavorwire: Danny Wang @ PS1 feature

I caught up with Danny Wang when he zipped and boogied through town this summer. The first couple photos are by the awesome Anna White, not me.

Daniel Wang: DJ, Producer, and Little Mister Sunshine

2:53 pm Wednesday Jul 29, 2009

by Jorge Hernandez

Ghostly artist Daniel Wang, a DJ who has been namechecked in Daft Punk liner notes, was on a bus to New York City, when he texted us from his German mobile: “still in boston with family…dont want pay roaming charges.” He was scheduled to play P.S.1’s Warm Up party the next day, along with Arthur’s Landing, an Arthur Russell tribute band. Like half of the East Village, earlier in the decade Wang moved to Berlin and became an instant fixture in the ex-pat broken disco scene. His visits to the States are frequent and fleeting, but giddy and anticipated affairs.

The next day was overcast and rainy. Arriving at P.S.1 early, you might have been worried by the sparse line. Would this be the weekend when New Yorkers just gave up and stayed inside? Brennan Green, a Balihu Records artist (which Wang founded back in 1993), was massaging the early birds with some no-wave and retro pop. Slowly, the crowd grew.

And then Wang arrived, dressed in color-splashed shorts and lime Day-Glo Nikes. After a quick round of hugs, kisses and pictures, he needed a moment alone: “Just give me a minute to get my music together. I can’t really concentrate on anything else when I’m thinking about my playlist.”

Photo credit: Jorge Hernandez

Laying out his CDs and vinyl in what was undoubtedly some kind of theme, he stepped out from behind the boards for a quick chat and a few more pictures. “Sorry I’ve been in such a rush,” he exclaimed. “I”m always going from one thing to another.” The occasion, this time? “It was my birthday. I wanted to see my grandmother, my family. And it’s a fun party to play. I get to spin with Brennan, see some other friends. But then, I’m off again, to California tomorrow.”

Photo credit: Joel Shaughnessy

A few tracks into his set, the motif he was assembling earlier became apparent. Patrick Juvet’s “I Love America.” Odyssey’s “Native New Yorker.” America’s “You Can Do Magic.” And one record that sent a certain writer up to the decks. “It’s called ‘Take Me to the Bridge’ by Vera,” Wang said, waving the record sleeve around a la Shirley Temple.

Later, the globetrotting, patriotic DJ’s DJ added, “I got my German/EU permanent visa in January 2009. I’m hoping to retire to a Greek Isle. USA — too many mixed feelings.”

Photo credit: Joel Shaughnessy

Whatever those were, he kept the negative ones off the 1’s and 2’s. At one point he even hopped on stage during the theme to the Star Wars cantina and did the Charleston. It was only a few days after Michael Jackson’s passing, and a poignant ode was inevitable: “Life ain’t so bad at all, if you live it off the wall.”

The clouds may have lingered, and a stray drop may have landed in a beer or two, but by night’s end, when the sky was dark and the remaining devotees were jumping around on stage, it was clear that Danny had packed sunshine to spare.

Photo credit: Anna White

Urb.com: Nouvelle Vague Live Review

From Urb.com:
Nouvelle Vague Live Review (Filmore East @ Irving Plaza NYC 6/17/2009)
Posted Monday, June 22, 2009 @ 09:01 in Music by Jorge Hernandez

In some circles, Nouvelle Vague would be heretics, likely burnt at the stake. How else to describe and dispense with a French troupe of cover lovers that turns hardcore Punk, No Wave and New Wave classics into soft-core porn Muzak? New York is not one of those circles. Here, their laissez-faire-ness with raw riffs has endeared them to the Pernod-swilling set. But if you rolled into Irving Plaza – er, “Fillmore East” – on June 17 expecting a louche cabaret you were in for a boisterous awakening.

Producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux along with singers Nadeah and Melanie Pain had something much more American Gothic in mind, turning the venue into a honky-tonk revival, complete with roughhousing and supernatural spasms. The opener, Talking Heads “Road to Nowhere” set a deceptively casual tone. By the time Nadeah introduced “Oublions L’Amerique” – “a song by old punks who knew nothing of your wonderful country; pretend we’re singing ‘We Love America’, Merci” – the crowd was getting rowdy. Later as the full house chanted along to Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck”, Nadeah, slinking in tongues, turned into Spider Woman, climbing the walls into the balcony, an act that nearly got her removed from the venue by security, unaware that she belonged onstage.

Say quoi?  Are these the same lounge lizards whose entire existence is premised on a cheeky triple-entendre on French cinema, 80’s electronica and Brazilian Bossa Nova? Yes and No. While Collin and Libaux are staples, the singers rotate. On this rare mini-tour in support of their third LP, NV3, the casting was pitch-perfect. As the musicians strummed, rattled and hummed through selections from all three albums, the singers vamped like wayward divas on the voodoo side of town. Their take on “Master and Servant” made a Depeche Mode headliner at the Grand Ole Opry seem like, you know, maybe not so crazy an idea. No matter how your fry your ‘taters, that deserves applause – and possibly a fenced-off stage. Pretty punk.

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Flavorwire: Rune Lindbaek interview

MusicExclusive Idjut Boys Interview Meanderthals Rune Lindbæk

Exclusive: Idjut Boy and Meanderthal Rune Lindbæk Talks the Substance of Size

1:13 pm Tuesday May 19, 2009

by Jorge Hernandez

In Norway, size matters. “The big clubs don’t do well. They try to bring ‘BIG’ names there and it doesn’t really work,” says Rune Lindbæk from his part-time flat in Berlin. “Most of the popular DJ’s on the scene – Todd Terje, Lindstrom, etc – are the dubby DJ’s and we all prefer the small clubs.” How small is small? “150 people or so. We just came back from the Ukraine, places you wouldn’t think of, but people are dedicated.”

Lindbæk, once part of Those Norwegians with pre-Royksopp Torbjorn Brundtland, is presently a third of Meanderthals, along with UK’s disco-not-disco dons Idjut Boys (Dan Tyler & Conrad McDonnel). While Meanderthals’ new record, Desire Lines, was recorded between Oslo and London, it sounds like something out of a Malibu slumber party. After the jump, we chat with Lindbæk about disco dalliances, the impossibility of taking studio albums on the road, and the aesthetics of the Pacific Coast Highway.

Lindbæk had very specific ideas about the new album. “When we started on this project, I said, ‘This record should be like the Pacific Coast Highway – something very California.’ It became a cliche in the studio – our hot crowded studio with the tiny window,”

The trio’s unglamorous confines could have been a set up for failure, considering their working styles. “As a team, we sort of prefer to play alone, DJ alone. I need to go into a zone. Doing a back to back DJ thing, I lose some concentration,” he confesses. While they managed to work things out in the studio, don’t expect Meanderthals to go globe-trotting any time soon. “We’re talking about touring; if we were going to do it, we’d need to bring out a whole studio, a massive amount of gear. What we have in mind would be like a rock setup, and I don’t think it would work in dingy basement clubs.”

With a tour uncertain and the album done, what’s an idle primitive to do? “A remix album is possible; Conrad (of Idjut Boys) is making dub versions of all the tracks on Desire Lines. I’m doing some remixes for Annie, a minimalist/Italo guy on Kompakt called Skateboard, and Dominique Leon from San Francisco. Lindstrom discovered Leon and set up StromLand records to put his stuff out. I’m going back to Oslo on the 14th to work on my next 12 inch ‘Odessa’”.

Reflecting on his homes away from home, the wayward Rune adds, “The area where I live in Berlin, I would be better off learning Turkish, I really love it. I also lived in NY. My heart is there – can you please kiss the pavement for me?” When I ask him what pavement, he says “I used to stay at Danny Wang’s apartment, next to my favorite East Village café, 7A.” By coincidence, I tell him I used to stay at Danny’s as well, and that it was going through Wang’s record collection that I realized Lindbæk had sampled Bill Withers’ “The Stuff” for “Junta Jaegar.” “It’s a great bass line, and when I heard it, I knew I wanted to use it. On the B-side of Junta, I used a sample from a 70’s rock band called Zoo.”

That single, and the album it came from, Sondag, was released by Repap, a left-field sister label to Paper Recordings, the now-defunct deep disco imprint out of Manchester, UK. Paper also released Kaminksy Park, by Those Norwegians. The album’s cover features a pile of melting vinyl, a reference to the Comiskey Park “Disco Sucks” bonfire of the late 70’s often cited as the unofficial birth of House music. “When I was living in London I spent a lot of time in record shops. And one of my best friends used to live in Manchester. So we knew about Paper and decided to send them a demo, just to see. When they called us up, we were like FUCK, YEAH!”

London is also where Rune first met Idjut Boys. “They were on to something with their underground sound long ago. I was always a fan.” But how did this Nordic nomad wind up a disco purist in the first place? “My mom liked Disco and when I heard the rhythm, I liked it too. People my age, we were the first rhythm generation of Norway, I was like a sponge – this was before Paradise Garage and NY radio. We had a radio station, state owned, they had one program for pop music and there was no club scene at all, just really shit discoteques.”

Fortunately for Oslo, those days are over. Kings of Convenience, Erlend Oye, Lindbæk and company have put their homeland on the global music map. “It’s not like we have one place that we all hang out in Oslo – it’s a slow burning scene, and discos come and go. People have been doing their thing for many years. The rest of the world is just catching up now…”

Flavorwire: Taming the Winter Music Conference Monster

Or, what I did on my winter vacation. Snippet below. Rest at Flavorpill, Earplug.

Taming the Winter Music Conference Monster

6:25 am Wednesday Apr 15, 2009

by Jorge Hernandez

Like most of the snowbirds, I was at Miami’s annual Winter Music Conference for some sun, beach, dancing, and schmoozing. As often happens, my first night descended into a series of mix-ups: was Gui Boratto playing or not? Was I “sorted” at Danny Tenaglia’s marathon? Fortunately, I’d caught both of them last year, so calling it a night (especially after a two-hour flight delay) came easy.

Thursday afternoon, I headed to an early meeting with NextAid, a nonprofit organization that works with DJs, musicians, and engineers to provide sustainable solutions to problems faced by Africa’s AIDS orphans. “OM Records just adopted this building,” said director Lauren Segal, pointing to a glossy photo of a modest structure. “It could be used for anything from a school to a clinic.” Asked where she got the idea, she chirped, “On the dance floor, of course!”

SOMA: Interview with MSTRKRFT

BPM: interview with N.A.S.A.

Music

6 Apr

Music, News

N.A.S.A

the Spirit of Apollo

text by Jorge Hernandez

Let’s be real: most albums featuring everyone and their mothers pretty much suck. Not because of anyone’s moms, per se, but because collaborations tend to over-reach for street cred, moving units, or redemption via some charitable gesture. So one can be forgiven for popping The Spirit of Apollo into the laptop with some trepidation. After all, how the hell are a dozen plus artists (including David Byrne, Santogold, Kool Keith, Tom Waits, RZA, M.I.A., Chuck D, Method Man) over as many tracks going to produce anything solid, let alone righteously funky? Well, shut my mouth.

The debut by NASA (North America South America) is a musical labor of love that seamlessly rolls from intro to outro, one head-scratching, head-nodding track at a time. The magic behind Sam “Squeaky E Clean” Spiegel and Ze “DJ Zegon” Gonzales’s project reveals itself within the first few moments of conversation with Spiegel. That is, once you can manage to make either of your phones work properly.
Calling back for a third time, after a day’s worth of press, he jokes, “Man, I was deep in my spiel, too. I was totally rolling. Anyway, we’d be in the studio making tracks, thinking ‘Wouldn’t so and so be great for this, or that track.’ It was basically us writing letters to people. We didn’t publicize the record, pretty much until it was done. It took about 5 and a half years to make it.”
All of the funding for Apollo came from money earned through Squeak E Clean Productions, his commercial production company. “We did enough work that we could go do whatever we wanted.” That work included “Hello Tomorrow”, a track with Karen O. that started out as music for an Adidas commercial, but wound up becoming so popular, it was eventually released as single. He’s also scored “I Heart Huckabees” director David O. Russell’s political satire, “Nailed” starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel, though he’s uncertain when the film (plagued by repeated shut downs) will be released. The range of work, he says, “Helps to work out different parts of your brain. You end up working on a variety of things that require different styles of music.”

Another ambitious investment they made was to the recording process itself. “We tried to be in the room with everyone when they recorded. And whenever possible, we recorded with everyone in the same room. So there was no emailing files, really.” In the case of “Strange Enough” featuring Karen O., Fatlip and Old Dirty Bastard, the approach was especially poignant. “We ended up recording with him a couple weeks before he passed away. Those are not pulled vocals from anywhere; they’re real, originals.”

The all-for-one spirit extends beyond the studio. There are 4 different covers for the CD, including one by the artist who created the iconic blue/red “Hope” Obama poster, Shepard Fairey. And they often recruit local artists and performers while on tour. “Since we can’t have all these people with us, we like to use locals, to keep the vibe going. It makes each show a unique experience. We always meet really cool people that way.”

In case you can’t make it to one of their upcoming gigs, including a stop at Coachella, there’s a documentary about the whole experience. Predictably, it features multiple directors. “Honestly, man, it’s always a different homeboy of mine behind the camera. We’ll just call someone and say, ‘You wanna go to Sweden and record with Lykke Li?’ There’s footage of us recording with George Clinton, chemically enhanced. There’s some animation in it, from some of our favorite visual artists that we work with. It doesn’t have any tour footage now, but you never know. We’re off to Europe to do a few dates, kind of a warm up. Maybe something will make it on there.”

Somehow, Spiegel still finds the time to interact with fans directly through a hype blog, which he updates frequently. Considering how hectic his 2009 calendar is looking, it may be the best way to keep up with him and NASA’s far-reaching mission. It promises to be one long, strange trip.

Thank You for the Music, 2008

Adele
Santogold
Faunts
Starfucker
Daedelus
Flying Lotus
Between the Pine
Fujiya & Miyagi
Dragonette
Black Ghosts
Michna
El Perro Del Mar
Lykke Li
Morgan Geist
Kelley Polar
Jaime Lidell
Annie
Kanye West
Gui Boratto
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Grace Jones
Pivot
Padded Cell
Girl Talk
Quiet Village
Prosumer & Murat
Ellen Alien
Modeselektor
Carl Cox
Portishead
Meat Beat Manifesto
Bomb the Bass
Radiohead
Underworld
Hip Hop Karaoke
Muxtape
Blip.fm
Pandora
Last.fm

BPM #94: Morgan Geist interview

Issue #94 of BPM is out now, featuring my interview with Metro Area’s Morgan Geist.

Earplug #133: Girl Talk interview

The current issue of Earplug is up, featuring my interview with Gregg “Girl Talk” Gillis, and a photo by my friend, fellow DJ-lover, Anna “Detroit” White. We make a pretty good team, I think.

Feature

November 6, 2008

Girl Talk’s Copyleft Curveballs
Sampling artist puts a smiley face on Plunderphonics

Until two years ago, biomedical engineer/mashup DJ Gregg “Girl Talk” Gillis spent more time crunching data in a cubicle than stripping on stage. His sophomore CD, Night Ripper, changed all that. 2008’s Feed the Animals reflects the RIAA-baiting producer’s newfound focus: the samples are longer and the “songs” more complete, but the pace is no less frenetic. Earplug’s Jorge Hernandez caught up with Girl Talk in Manhattan to talk irregular fashions, “Moist Vagina,” and the sonic collective unconscious.

Earplug:  You’re having quite a moment right now. What are you up to?

Greg Gillis:  I’m working on some music with a friend of mine, Hearts of Darkness. He does weird computer stuff, and we play together as Trey Told ‘Em.

EP:  You working on anything special together?

GG:  We’re doing a really long Nirvana cover; it’s really far out. We got these Nirvana multi-tracks, and we’re doing “Moist Vagina” with live drums and noisy, crazy stuff.

EP:  How do you get your hands on something like that?

GG:  Some kid who’s into my stuff knew I was into Nirvana. His dad had access to a studio, and so they sent me a few tracks like that.

EP:  Do you have free license, or are you just running with it?

GG:  I want to do an official EP of remixes of all of them, because no one else has their hands on it. I want to do something interesting. We’ve just been working on this one song this week. We haven’t really rehearsed much, but the little bit that we’ve done — you can tell it’s going to be good.

EP:  Are you still working your day job?

GG:  No, I quit last summer. I haven’t cut my hair since I quit. That year before I quit, I played like a hundred shows, so it was getting hard to ask for vacation time. I don’t have a job, but I happen to be able to live off this, so I’m feeling lucky.

EP:  The samples on Feed the Animals are longer. Are you getting in trouble? Isn’t there a time limit to samples?

GG:  That’s an urban myth. It used to be under a certain amount, but they recently ruled against that. Fair Use allows you to use however long you want, as long as the work is transformative, and it doesn’t impact the artist negatively. It’s more holistic criteria. There’s a big academic and legal movement behind it, so it’s not really that big of an issue any more.

EP:  A lot of the samples you use are very recognizable.

GG:  Most of the a cappella samples are available for a reason: the rap ones are on B-sides and 12-inches, and the Internet, and it’s because record labels want people to do crazy stuff with it. Stuff like my music is an effective way to promote the artists. It’s a different era. Hearing the music itself doesn’t hold value; you can go hear any song for free on Soulseek. If you pay money for it, it’s because you want to invest in it. So, I feel morally solid about what I’m doing.

EP:  You use Creative Commons, right?

GG:  They helped us out, gave us a bunch of specific elements. I’ve actually been getting a lot of support.

EP:  From whom, for example?

GG:  Representative Mike Doyle spoke in favor of me and DJ Drama and mixtapes and mashups. He compared it to Paul McCartney using a Chuck Berry riff.

EP:  How did you get started, gear-wise?

GG:  A lot of that stuff was just like modified children’s toys, broken stuff from the Salvation Army; whatever you can find, real junk gear. There were a couple of real samplers here and there.

EP:  It’s funny how all this music is rattling around in your brain, and you respond to the smallest samples.

GG:  For me, it’s a blatant form of music’s influence in general. You develop these affiliations with music, and what I like to do is recontextualize it. I guess that’s why the shows get so crazy. Regardless of what you’re into, it’s all being represented.

EP:  What do your parents think?

GG:  They’re cool with it, but the early shows with the noise band kinda took them a minute, because we’d be up there smashing things, and they were weirded out. But this Girl Talk stuff, they really like.

EP:  Your shows are notorious for getting kind of crazy — and naked. What happens to your clothes? Do they end up on eBay?

GG:  I don’t know. Even when I take a sweatshirt off, people take it all — even when I don’t throw it out there. There’s a store called Gabriel Brothers in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. They sell mis-manufactured clothing. I buy all my sweat outfits there still — they’re like a dollar or two each. When I used to be a kid, we used to go there. It was a lot weirder then; there’d be a Miami Hurricanes shirt with a Yankees logo on the back. It’s a bit more subtle these days, but that’s where I still get everything I wear onstage.

Blank Tapes

Behind every hit record, there’s a million misses. And I don’t mean single ladies. Misses, for lack of a better word, are the anti-hits of the music business. They are those records that music geeks and DJ’s treasure, those influential one-hit wonders, or sleepers that don’t move many units, generate inches of ink or hours of press. Every genre has its lost, forgotten, overlooked heroes. They’re either eccentrics, or “before their time” or prefer to work behind the scenes, content with the respect and adulation of their peers. What these records and their creators lack in commercial success, they make up for in influence.

Dance music has its fair share of influential behind the scenes and off the radar heroes. Larry Levan, Tom Moulton, Nicky Siano, Arthur Russell all spring to mind. Among them was producer/engineer Bob Blank. In the 70’s and 80’s, his New York studio, Blank Tapes, was home to a prolific class of left-field singers, producers, vocalist and performers. His credits include one of the first disco 12” releases (Jimmy Sabater, “To Be With You”), as well as Talking Heads, Chic, Instant Funk, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Lydia Lunch, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Ashford & Simpson, Tito Puente, Donna Summer, Sting, and Patti Smith. His wife was a former James Brown singer, and he also worked with Ronnie Spector, and Taana Gardner, of “Heartbeat” fame.

With so many avant pop stars in his pocket, it was inevitable that there would be lots of left-over tape, edits, out-takes and side projects. In 1980, Bob gathered some of his fabulous friends in the after-hours playpen that his studio had become and together they produced an album called “Aural Exciters”. Most of the songs were written by the Kid Creole & the Coconuts crew with help from James Chance of the Contortions on sax, Fonda Rae, and many others on vocals. The catchiest single is sardonically titled “Spooks in Space”; its cover features black ghosts swarming the galaxy. The track opens with a doo-wop vocal that quickly switches to a cartoon-like lilting raggae rhythm and non-sequitor vocals about an imminent funky invasion. It’s one of the most colorful entry points into the Post-Punk/No-Wave music scene that helped shape mainstream disco, pop and hip hop.

These days, Bob’s studio is apparently up in Connecticut, and as evidenced by the credits on his website, he is still quite busy, mostly licensing and producing music for various soundtracks, TV shows, and commercial jingles and making guest appearance on shows like Behind the Music and documentaries like Maestro, about the early underground disco scene in 70’s NYC. He most recently appeared in person at the premiere of the movie about Arthur Russell, “Wild Combination.” Sadly, I missed the it, but you best believe I will be trying to make contact and get an interview soon.

Free, Hot Tapes

After Chris De Luca split from Funkstorung a few years ago, he paired up with friend of Apparat, Phon.o. Together, they’ve mashed booty bass, acid house and breaks into a grimey, hands-up assault on dancefloors across Berlin and the rest of Europe. After several gigs and side projects, the album Supercontinental by CLP (their initials), will be out in time for Halloween parties everywhere. To whip up some hype, they’ve posted mix sets all over the interwebs. Get into the Euro-crunk groove with three free Hot Tapes here.