Bicep review – muscular, head-rushing tech house

Roundhouse, London
The Northern Irish dance duo showcase their skill for ping-ponging melody and beautifully tooled drum programming, paired with magnificent visuals

Bicep cut a relatively rare shape in today’s live music scene – no longer mere DJs, they’re one of the few dance artists (alongside Eric Prydz and a handful more) to have built up a strong live show from their own work. The duo stand fairly statically behind hardware and a laptop as their symbol emerges behind them – a trefoil of three clenched biceps – and it is an apt one, hinting at the macho homosexuality of disco, the Celtic roots of their native Northern Ireland, and the sheer elemental punch of a kick drum.

The crowd is predominantly young twentysomethings from the “sesh” generation, all in Champion tees, with Ketflix and Pills on their phones and a propensity to get on each other’s shoulders. They cheer in recognition as familiar licks eke their way into the flowing mix, turning to festival pandemonium as the Indian vocal sample of Rain kicks in, an anthem for yoga-loving Ibizans. The exceptional visuals by Black Box Echo build to fill the stage like psychedelic Lego and, for Opal, Matisse-like colour blocking.

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dom Servini – Netil Radio Show #4

Listen again here!

Officialkankick – Minimal Complex 

DJM trio – Cranes in the Sky

Lagartijeando – Malandro de Boa 

Sudan Archives – Nont For Sale

Hunrosa – Ransome (Clap! Clap! Remix)

Emma-Jean Thackray – Ley Lines

Vicky Edimo – Marina Drive 

Knxwledge – Relapse feat. Traffic

MC Paul Barman – ((((((Antennas)))))) feat. Masta Ace

Calvin Valentine – PCH 

All Spice – Slipped Away

April Fulladosa – For Us 

Divine Situation – Born Again

Nicole – New York Eyes

Freddie McGregor – Natural Collie

Resonators – Why I (Discomix)

Errol Dunkley – A Little Way Different

Cornell Campbell – New Ages

Cornell Campbell meets Soothsayers – Ja Ja Me No Born Yah (O.B.F. Remix)

Soothsayers – Natural Mystic

Billy Cole – Bump All Night (Lord Echo Edit) 

Paris Smith’s New Composers Ensemble – Lilith Came

Max Roach – Lonesome Lover 

Leon Vynehall – Envelopes (Chapter VI) (Edit)  

Alphabets Heaven – Deep Burnt (Dope version)

Hoffy – Apple Juice

Far Out Monster Disco Orchestra – Give It To Me

Majik – Back Into Your Heart

Blood Wine and Honey – Fear and Celebration

Dos Santos – Logos

Djavan – Nereci

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Jon Hopkins: ‘Psychedelic experiences inspired this album’

The musician on film scores, technological developments and the natural highs behind his new album, Singularity

Born in Kingston upon Thames in 1979, the musician and producer Jon Hopkins studied piano at the Royal College of Music before turning his hand to electronic music. He has released four studio albums, including the 2013 critical smash Immunity, and has collaborated with artists as diverse as Brian Eno, King Creosote and Coldplay. Hopkins’s mind-bending fifth album, Singularity, is out this Friday on Domino. He plays London’s Village Underground on 10 May.

You said on Instagram recently that you knew you’d make this record 15 years ago but only figured out how to make it in the past couple of years. What twigged?
I knew a few things in advance, including the title and the idea of the album starting and ending with a really simple tone. I also wanted there to be a symbiotic relationship between all the sounds, so that everything would seem to grow out of everything else. But I was still figuring things out back then – if I was a visual artist, you would say I was still learning how to draw – so I needed to get the basics right before trying to be conceptual and ambitious.

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by Killian Fox via Electronic music | The Guardian

Wah Wah 45 presents Official Field Day After Party

Another great Wah Wah night South of the river

Wah Wah 45s proudly present the fourth of a series of events at the wonderful Bussey Building in Peckham, South London, this one being a very special after party session for the beautifully curated Field Day London, happening in Brockwell Park on the very same weekend.

Topping the bill, and taking to the stage fresh from her Field Day performance will be Stones Throw signed vocalist, producer and violinist Sudan Archives. A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, and inspired by the North East African fiddlers from which she had taken her moniker, her music is an electronic take on that unique Sudanese sound, influenced by classical, soul and hip hop and topped off with her stunning vocals.

In support is Wah Wah 45s very own Hunrosa, AKA Sam Vicary – bass player for the Cinematic Orchestra as well as label mates Paper Tiger. Hunrosa’s music mixes a dreamy melancholy with fractured, often dance floor friendly, beats as his recent single, Ransome, will attest. The single, championed by the likes of Lefto, also features a rather tasty remix from Italian producer and Black Acre don, Clap! Clap! The Hunrosa live show is made up of live drums, keys and bass as well as some very special guest vocal performances.

Finally, we’re very excited to welcome award winning jazz trumpeter and Red Bull Academy alumnus Emma-Jean Thackray. Her 2016 Walrus EP caught the ear of many, including one Gilles Peterson, and recent live reimagining of Hello Skinny’s latest opus and remix work for Hector Plimmer have shown off her cutting edge production chops too. Get down early to hear Emma-Jean’s incredible solo performance.

Our DJs on the night are no slouches either. Headed up by Fila Brazillia legend Steve Cobby, a guiding light in modern electronic music who recently released a gorgeous solo album and a mind bending collaboration with renowned author Russ Litten on Cobby’s own Déclassé Records, as well as finding time to remix Soothsayers for Wah Wah 45s. Steve is partly responsible for shaping the modern electronic music scene, he’s remixed Radiohead and has all of the records you’ll ever want to hear. He’ll be playing a lot of them on June 1st.

And as if that wasn’t enough, we’ve got the main man behind Gilles Peterson’s Label of the Year in the house too! Pete On The Corner will be showcasing forthcoming music from his vibrant imprint as well as some bass worrying tropical treats and a lovely shirt no doubt.

And not wanting to stop there, we’ve added to this frankly ridiculous bill, our good friend Dusty from the brilliant Jazz & Milk Records based in Munich, Germany. Dusty’s 12” jam with Sam IRL was one of the highlights of 2017 and he’ll be dropping similar dance floor heat on the Bussey ballroom no doubt.

Add to that Wah Wah 45s head honchos Dom Servini & Scrimshire and you know that this is going to be a session not to be missed!

Early bird tickets are available now via Resident Advisor for just £6 until May 1st, so why not grab yours now!

Official Field Day After Party
Friday June 1st, 10pm til 5am
Bussey Building, Peckham

Ticket link and info
Facebook event and details

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Hunrosa – Ransome (feat. Alice Higgins) // Clap! Clap! remix

The new single from Cinematic Orchestra and Paper Tiger bassist Sam Vicary, AKA Hunrosa, is now out on 7-inches of wax, digital and available to stream on all your favourite platforms.

Links To Stream/Buy

“Ransome” is a hypnotic and soulful foot friendly nugget featuring the gorgeous vocals of Alice Higgins and bass worrying tropical take from Clap! Clap!. When people like Lefto are supporting, you know this is an essential addition to your collection from a very exciting new artist.

Director: Dion Star

Follow Hunrosa and stay up-to-date with the latest news:
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Elysia Crampton: Elysia Crampton review – Aymara polymath invents dancefloor mythology

(Break World Records)

The fourth release by Bolivian American producer Elysia Crampton contains just six songs and is 19 minutes long, but, as with all her work, it contains a universe of history and philosophical thought. In February, Crampton opened a performance with a lecture about an Andean god, and her self-titled album brings with it similar extra-textual depths. It’s dedicated to Ofelia, a woman credited with removing the mask from the female devil costumes worn by queer and trans people in Aymaran street festivities in the 1960s, and it is steeped in Andean and indigenous rhythms and ideas: taypi, the concept of space/time that Crampton describes as “radical asymmetry”, and pachakuti, the potential destruction of a power structure or hierarchy.

You can go as deep into the wormhole as you want with this stuff, and, if you can wrap your head around it, it may illuminate a deep listen. But no good record ever required footnotes – and nor, fortunately, do the immediate pleasures of Elysia Crampton. At that February show, Crampton heralded the musical portion of the evening by sampling the Universal Pictures theme tune, in a wink to her music’s maximalist, physical qualities, which recall the sounds of war. The sharp glints that slice through Pachuyma evoke sword-fighting, the gothic chunter beneath the jaws of some marauding beast, and rave horns pierce the melee like a fanfare across the dancefloor battleground. There are few hooks in Crampton’s work; instead, sounds and textures recur, giving the impression of some narrative tapestry: the gunshots of Nativity later return to pummel Pachuyma, while the chomping jaws of Pachuyma take on a crushing ferocity in Moscow (Mariposa Voladora).

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by Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian

Contemporary album of the month: Brian Eno – Music for Installations

(UMC)
Despite his mainstream pop collaborations, Eno has never stopped making interesting ambient music, as is evident on this six-disc set

For those of us who grew up being thrilled by Brian Eno’s sonic innovations, the great man seemed to have lost his lustre around a decade ago. When not providing big, bland, blustery, stadium-rock productions for Coldplay and U2, he was collaborating with such cutting-edge mavericks as Andrea Corr, Jools Holland, Natalie Imbruglia, Belinda Carlisle and Dido. His “song-based” albums, both solo and with the likes of David Byrne, were becoming tasteful, characterless and anaemic. The wonderfully perverse producer-conceptualist who had transformed Bowie, invented ambient music and shaped no wave seemed to have turned into a rather dull hack.

Related: Brian Eno: ‘We’ve been in decline for 40 years – Trump is a chance to rethink'

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by John Lewis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Wah Wah Radio – April 2018

Listen again here!

Hunrosa – Ransome (Clap! Clap! Remix)

Modified Man – Croydon Rooftop Cafe Culture

Machinedrum – Hype Up!

Soothsayers – Natural Mystic

Jessica Lauren – Teck et Bambou

Waaju – Waaju

Jessica Lauren – Simba Jike

Jorge Ben – Todo Dia e Dia de Indio (Tahira Afrobeat Rework)

Fulgeance – Low Club Anthem #5

Max Ransay – Ti Kanno (Soulpower Allstars Edit)

Sam Irl – Split River

Medline – La Planete Sauvage

Jonny Drop – All This Trouble

Andre Solomko – Le Deltaplane

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Tangerine Dream review – despite loss of leader, the Dream continues

Union Chapel, London
For their first UK show without founder member Edgar Froese, the synth pioneers enlivened their proggy ambience with techno, but still created the same cosmic grandeur

Is it thinkable for a group to carry on when its creator and sole continuous member has died? Could the Fall conceive of carrying on without Mark E Smith? Of course not, no more than the Jimi Hendrix Experience could have regrouped following Hendrix’s death. Could Kraftwerk continue were their only remaining founder member Ralf Hütter to die? That’s a difficult one, but not impossible and not to be betted against.

Tangerine Dream’s founder Edgar Froese died in 2015 and, despite the qualms of his son, Jerome, Tangerine Dream have put the proposition to the test. Such is the nature of the group – more of an organic, ever-shifting and evolving sonic structure than a vehicle for an autobiographical ego – that they, if anyone, might just be able to pull it off.

Related: Edgar Froese obituary

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by David Stubbs via Electronic music | The Guardian

Let's put Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl to bed

The global hit fetishising lesbians was released 10 years ago this week in a very different pop landscape. Now with mainstream stars from St Vincent and Princess Nokia to Halsey and Marika Hackman singing about their myriad sexual identities, queer female pop has finally come out

The LGBT community has always had a talent for embracing things that are so awful they could almost be good. But even we couldn’t save Katy Perry’s 2008 smash hit I Kissed a Girl, which was released 10 years ago this week. The song was undeniably catchy and camp, but the lyrics were plain offensive. The problem was all those justifications for why a woman might – God forbid! – kiss a girl: drunkenness, a male audience, that beguiling cherry lip balm. For queer audiences, Perry might as well have sung a more succinct phrase: “No Homo!”

Thankfully, there are many better examples of queer female representation in pop today. If in 2008 the joke still stood that all lesbians listened to was Tegan and Sara, today the joke is probably “why are there so many gay female pop stars?” We have US stars such as Halsey and Miley Cyrus improving bisexual and pansexual representation, queer artists Fever Ray, St Vincent and Shura making critically acclaimed music about female desire and pop stars including Janelle Monáe and Princess Nokia signalling their queerness while avoiding definition. Then, of course, there is acclaimed, pansexual French synth-pop act Christine and the Queens, who has legions of young, gay fans. But just what has changed?

Related: Fever Ray: on pleasure, patriarchy and political revolution

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by Amelia Abraham via Electronic music | The Guardian

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds review – anti-nostalgia set doesn't look back in anger

Brighton Centre
Unlike his brother, Gallagher Sr mostly refuses straightforward Oasis renditions, and instead embraces electronic drones, dance-rock and saxophones

As Noel Gallagher departs the stage at the end of his UK tour’s first date, he tells the audience to get home safely and that he’ll see them soon. “Probably at some shitty festival,” he adds. “We’ll be third on the bill. Fucking travesty.”

It’s clearly meant as a joke, but there’s a certain edge to it. The last six months have been a curious period in Gallagher’s career. He released Who Built the Moon?, by some considerable distance the most interesting album he’s made since the mid-90s, and the sort of record he’s been threatening to make ever since Oasis split up. A collaboration with dance producer, DJ and soundtrack composer David Holmes, it pushed Gallagher out of his comfort zone of mid-tempo anthems and Beatles references into more colourful and spacier territory: it touches on ambient electronica, New Order’s shimmering dance-rock hybrid, easy listening, and the sonically super-saturated glam of Roy Wood’s Wizzard. For his trouble, he’s been bested commercially by his brother’s debut solo album As You Were, on which pop songwriters-for-hire were drafted into the aforementioned comfort zone: mid-tempo anthems and Beatles references abound.

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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Avicii death: Oman police confirm no 'criminal suspicion'

Two autopsies return no suggestion of foul play in the death of the 28-year-old Swedish dance music star

Police in Oman have declared there was no “criminal suspicion” in the death of Swedish dance music star Avicii, who has died aged 28.

Avicii, whose real name is Tim Bergling, was found dead in Muscat on Friday 20 April, with few other details yet confirmed. Police have stated, however, that following two autopsies, no evidence of foul play has been found.

Related: Avicii: the poster boy for EDM who struggled with the spotlight

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Avicii obituary

Swedish DJ and producer who spearheaded a revolution in electric dance music

The Swedish DJ Tim Bergling, who recorded and performed as Avicii, was the quintessential shy superstar, a man who disliked the attention that global fame brought him but who also inhabited a world of huge wealth and extroversion.

“I love what I do, but I’ve never liked being recognised or being in the spotlight,” he said, after years of relentless scrutiny from the media and the thousands of electronic dance music (EDM) fans for whom he performed up to 250 shows a year. Despite his antipathy to public exposure, Avicii, who has died suddenly aged 28 in Oman, spearheaded an EDM revolution that earned him nightly fees estimated at $250,000 or higher; in 2015, Forbes estimated his annual earnings at $19m.

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by Joel McIver via Electronic music | The Guardian

Avicii: the poster boy for EDM who struggled with the spotlight

The death of the 28-year-old Swedish DJ and producer marks a tragic end to an illustrious career underpinned by pressure

Avicii was an avatar as much as he was a producer. Exploding on to the scene in 2011 with his unabashedly saccharine hit Levels, the Swedish musician born Tim Bergling represented, depending on where one stood, either the best or worst of dance music’s rise in the United States.

Related: Avicii: Chart-topping EDM star dies aged 28

Related: Avicii – a life in pictures

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by Katie Bain via Electronic music | The Guardian

Avicii – a life in pictures

The death of the 28-year-old Swedish DJ and producer cuts short a globally successful career, filled with arena tours and big star collaborations

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Swedish DJ Avicii dies at 28 – video obituary

Avicii, whose real name is Tim Bergling, has been found dead in Muscat, Oman at the age of 28. The DJ, from Sweden, retired from live performances in 2016 due to a string of health issues. Bergling's representative who announced the death has said 'no further statements will be given'.

• Avicii, Swedish DJ, dies aged 28

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by Gary Marshall via Electronic music | The Guardian

Swedish DJ Avicii dies aged 28

The producer and DJ, real name Tim Bergling, was found dead in Oman, his representative says

Swedish DJ Avicii has died in Muscat, Oman, at the age of 28, according to reports.

His representative said in a statement: “It is with profound sorrow that we announce the loss of Tim Bergling, also known as Avicii.

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by Jake Nevins and agencies via Electronic music | The Guardian

Wallets at the ready! Join our tour of the UK's greatest record shops

As Record Store Day returns, we go on ‘record store crawls’ around four UK cities with the country’s best new DJs, to find the bricks-and-mortar gems that keep pushing the culture forward

It’s Record Store Day on Saturday, a juggernaut that is still picking up pace in its 11th year, with many exclusive special-edition records released as a way to focus music fans’ attention on bricks and mortar. And now there’s a new way to take it all in: in the US, the Record Store Crawl initiative has been set up to explore the wealth of stores in each city. With RSD looming, we thought this could be a model for a survey of the health of record shops in British cities: so, four writers have gone round four cities with some of the UK’s most exciting new DJs and producers, picking out their ultimate record-shopping routes.

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by Daniel Dylan Wray, Kate Hutchinson, Joe Muggs, Graeme Virtue via Electronic music | The Guardian

Jenny Wilson: Exorcism review – a masterclass in catharsis

(Gold Medal Recordings)

The opening track on Jenny Wilson’s fifth album is called Rapin*. It’s a stark, shocking title for a stark, shocking song: the lyrics describe the night the Swedish musician was sexually assaulted. But Rapin* isn’t just monumentally disturbing, it’s also strangely upbeat. In it, Wilson says she had been clubbing before the attack, and she carries the earlier part of the evening into the song too, as whirring synths and crisp, insistent beats coalesce into an irresistible groove. The guilty confusion that comes from bopping along to such subject matter soon solidifies into wonder at Wilson’s ability to maintain this discomfort. We hear details of the assault’s psychological aftermath in unsparing detail – the sense of disassociation, the horror of intimate medical attention, the attempts to rationalise the attack. Lo’ Hi’ provides an unsavoury reminder that the burden of proof often falls on the rape victim, as Wilson recounts the evening again – this time repeatedly flagging up her vocal protests. Disrespect Is Universal, meanwhile, has her hopelessly attempt to identify her assailant, before attributing his violent misogyny to another culprit: society at large.

This isn’t the first time that Wilson, who made her name as a member of noughties electro-indie band First Floor Power, has channelled serious trauma into her music: in 2013, she recorded Demand the Impossible! while undergoing treatment for breast cancer. But while much of her experience then was couched in poetic language, Exorcism is blunt and unrelenting. Much like Mount Eerie’s 2017 album A Crow Looked At Me, which saw Phil Elverum write with devastating plainness about the death of his wife, the often very literal nature of Wilson’s language belies the efficiency and eloquence required to translate such a distressing experience into coherent and appealing song. Because, once you get past the initial shock, Exorcism is a hugely enjoyable record, not just for its riveting frankness, but its sonic palate too: the opening tracks pulse with cold anxiety, while later songs that tentatively suggest healing see Wilson assemble warmer layers of sound. A masterclass in catharsis, Exorcism finds a chink of light in the gloom.

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by Rachel Aroesti via Electronic music | The Guardian

Alexis Taylor: Beautiful Thing review – confessional electro marvels

(Domino)

The more you listen to Beautiful Thing, the more you realise what a marvel of sequencing it is: here are songs that truly talk to each other, musically and lyrically. You hear it musically in the way the walking bassline of Roll on Blank Tapes rolls into Suspicious of Me, the principal thematic link between two songs that are otherwise very different. You hear it lyrically in the transition from There’s Nothing to Hide into I Feel You. In the former, Taylor assures us gently: “There’s nothing to hide in a song / There’s nothing to know outside this song.” And then, in I Feel You, this most open-hearted and sincere of songwriters offers his truth: “I feel you / I wanted you to know / I feel you … When you’re lonesome / When you’re praying.” It’s not just that there’s nothing to hide; there is no desire to hide.

The production comes from Tim Goldsworthy, and Beautiful Thing sounds fantastic throughout. These are simple songs, but Goldsworthy does enough to keep them from being simplistic. In Roll on Blank Tapes, which may be a reflection on worthless nostalgia (“Home taping is killing music, don’t you know / Skateboarding is not a crime any more”), the song fills with percussive, electronic whooshes, echoes and bangs that seem to reflect the lyric: it sounds oddly like kids skateboarding around the ramps of a deserted multistorey car park. The most fun is Oh Baby, which begins with the glammy hammering piano and synth squiggles of an early Roxy Music single, but has the joyful honesty of a Teenage Fanclub song.

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by Michael Hann via Electronic music | The Guardian

What, no Whitney? The biggest Rock & Roll Hall of Fame snubs ever – ranked!

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame recognises the world’s greatest popular music stars – except for the ones it doesn’t, from Kate Bush to Kraftwerk

This week saw the latest batch of inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, but – like many other uncategorisable, expansive, eclectic and influential singer-songwriters – Björk was nowhere to be seen.

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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Coachella review – pop's new democracy creates uneven city in the desert

Empire Polo Club, Indio, California
The highs were high – of-the-moment rapper Cardi B, discomfiting art-rocker St Vincent, cosmic jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington – but others like SZA misfire, and the whole thing suffers from internet-era distraction

With a rumoured 40,000 extra attendees at the first weekend of Coachella 2018, the three-day festival is more congested than ever. It’s especially hard to move without stepping into the frame of an influencer’s selfie as they document outfits, record friendships and pray for a feature in a Twitter moment. This culture of validation and self-affirmation makes sense given that the festival’s culture is now predicated on reaction (reflected in promoter Goldenvoice recalibrating their booking in recent years) rather than minting trends. Hence 2018’s lineup consisting largely of mainstream urban hip-hop and R&B acts, including headliners the Weeknd, Beyoncé and Eminem (each reviewed separately).

There is a progressive positive to this: Coachella is now a playground for the global democratisation of pop. If you can cross over in the age of streaming, chances are Coachella will grant you the opportunity to realise it in a setting previously inconceivable to Billboard Hot 100 entries. In a digital epoch in which the thirst for “IRL” ownership is at its peak, the market for seeing your favourite song in 3D against crisp, larger-than-life, high-definition backdrops and desert-shaking soundsystems is strong.

Related: Eminem at Coachella review – career-spanning set is a perfect nostalgia hit

Related: Beyoncé at Coachella review – greatest star of her generation writes herself into history

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by Eve Barlow via Electronic music | The Guardian

Mr Fingers: Cerebral Hemispheres review – house survivor still going strong

(Alleviated Records)

House music’s debt to Larry Heard, AKA Mr Fingers, is incalculable. Ever since the genre was in its infancy, he has crafted records that have spurned the formulaic, from 1986’s game-changing Can You Feel It to 1992’s subtle album Introduction, on which he proved that house could be listened to at home. This, the Chicago-born producer’s first LP as Mr Fingers since 1994, combines the two dominant strands of his oeuvre – ambient soundscapes that reach for the stars, and refined, jazz-flecked songs that possess a mournful quality.

There’s a leisurely aspect to Heard’s music too, allowing you to savour every carefully fashioned note. The vocal tracks, Full Moon and Crying Over You, bear scant relation to contemporary house, Heard’s soothing voice and the gently probing beats distancing both songs from the demands of the dancefloor. On the album’s second half, he unveils his other side, discarding soul and jazz in favour of squelchy sounds. Typically, however, Heard forges his own path, imbuing machine-made music with humanity, and while Cerebral Hemispheres won’t win him new fans, it makes clear that, at 57, house’s great survivor still has much to give.

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by Paul Mardles via Electronic music | The Guardian

‘I played Berlin at 7am on Sudafed and coffee’ – the middle-aged DJs still keeping pace

Thirty years on from the second summer of love, a cohort of fiftysomething DJs are refusing to hang up their headphones, fuelled by nothing stronger than caffeine

In 1988, Luke Cowdrey was undergoing his acid-house epiphany in Manchester. “For me, it changed the world,” says the Sheffield-born DJ, better known as Luke Unabomber. “It wasn’t just music, drugs and hedonism. It was the people you met and the sense that life was, suddenly, so much better.” He smiles: “My brother always says the men in my family didn’t start hugging until acid house.”

In Manchester you are never far from such a testimony. The city is full of grizzly rave veterans banging on about the Haçienda. The difference with Cowdrey is that, aged 51, he is still raving, and not on the nostalgia circuit (“Celebrating the past is such a defeat”) but at clubbing’s cutting-edge – along with a generation of middle-aged DJs who have refused, or are unable, to hang up the headphones.

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by Tony Naylor via Electronic music | The Guardian

Rodion GA: the lost musical superstar of Ceaușescu's Romania

Playing an extraordinary blend of prog, pop and electronic experimentalism, Rodion GA was heard by millions in cold war-era Romania – and unknown everywhere else. He explains how he created a career out of nothing, and how it may be coming to an early end

It wasn’t easy being the biggest record collector in Cluj, says 65-year-old Rodion Rosça. The Romanian authorities would keep files on you, search your mail, make your business their business. Worse still was the suspicion that fell on anyone daring to grow their hair or wear some version of western fashion.

“Romania was a village country, you know what I mean?” he says. “There were a lot of peasants living in villages, who were working in the Securitate and Politia. They did not like the students and the people who were following the fashions like long hair. Also they were very angry against the people in the cities. They only liked folk music. And they were very, very angry against the people who were listening to other kinds of music. A lot of parents made the mistake of cutting the hair of their sons when they were sleeping – a big trauma for young people. This was the reason for lots of crime made by children against their parents. This is a fact. They made a very big mistake cutting the hair of some people. There were people who committed suicide.”

I never wrote lyrics against the regime. Why? Because my mother had already lost two children and I was the only one left for her

It was one of the big mistakes of my life. I stopped playing music when I was the best

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by Michael Hann via Electronic music | The Guardian

DOM SERVINI’S ALLO LOVE TEN :: APRIL 2018

1. Hunrosa – Ransome (Clap! Clap! Remix) (Wah Wah 45s Test 7)
2. Joaquin Joe Claussell – Pagliaci (Vamp Edit) (Raimo Symphonies 12)
3. Danvers – Interludes EP (WotNot Music DL)
4. Greymatter – Move Slow (Unique Uncut DL)
5. Various – Jazz Classics Volume 4 (Mukatsuku 12)
6. Muhavishla Ravi Hatchud – Bombay Palace (Part 1) (Outernational Sounds 7)
7. Sune – Butter Love EP (Better Listen 12)
8. Blvck Spvde – Hopeless and Romanticizing (DL)
9. Bishop Nehru – Elevators (Act I & II) (DL)
10. Leon Bridges – Bad Bad News (Columbia DL)

The post DOM SERVINI’S ALLO LOVE TEN :: APRIL 2018 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

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Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #14 on Soho Radio

Listen again here!

Jerome C – Don’t Say I’m Crazy feat. Einat

The Pendletons – Telling Lies (Buscrates Remix)

Sorcerers – In Pursuit of Shai Hulud

Nu Guinea – Je Vulesse

Todh Teri – Sampadan 8

Hunrosa – Ransome (Full Album Version)

The Funkees – Slipping Into Darkness

Cobby & Litten – Man Down

Jan Roth – Kleine Freiheit

This is the Kit – Sometimes the Sea

Honeyfeet – Hunt & Gather

Solange – Cranes in the Sky (iZem Remix)

Potatohead People – Morning Sun feat. Nanna B

Medikul – Objects

Bishop Nehru – Rooftops

Bones & Beeker – Heartbroken in Love ft. Brother Ali

Kadhja Bonet – Mother Maybe

Prophet – Insanity

Chrome Sparks – I Just Wanna ft. Kllo

Aeshim – Peckham Waltz

Fred Everything – Wherever You Go

Danvers – 1997 (Warren XcInce Remix)

Kevin Over – Coop

Love Company – Love Tempo (Red Greg Edit)

Florian Pellissier Quintet – Jazz Carnival

Dean Richard – Power of Love

Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids – An Angel Fell

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Dom Servini – Netil Radio Easter All-Dayer!

Listen again here!

On Saturday 31st March, Dom was given carte blanche by Netil Radio to program 12 hours of music with DJs, presenters and live musicians of his choice from across the globe. The result was a day of unforgettable radio with shows and performances from Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy; Ghost Notes’ Russell Porter; On The Corner with Pete OTC and Joshua Idehen celebrating Gil Scott Heron’s birthday; a live performance from Mark de Clive-Lowe; Throwing Snow in conversation; Brixton’s finest, Handson Family; WuLu & Hector Plimmer back-to-back; a UK soul special from DJ Gilla (First Word) with special live guest Yazmin Lacey; Jazz FM and Wah Wah 45s rising star Anne Frankenstein; Jake Holloway repping Love Vinyl; special guest Joe-Armon Jones and Dom himself of course…

Tracklisting for Dom’s first hour:

United Future Organisation – The Sixth Sense

Nicholas Payton – Egyptian Second Line (Edit)

Spunk – La Bimini

The Funkees – Break Through

Soothsayers – Natural Mystic (Exclusive)

Jean Grae & Quelle Chris – Gold, Purple, Orange

Cobby & Litten – Man Down

Hugh Masekela – Stimela (Coal Train)

Jessica Lauren – Kofi Nomad (Radio Edit)

Clap! Clap! – Ode to Pleiades (Live Bnad Version)

Jorge Dalto – I’ve Got You On My Mind

Angela Blofill – The Only Thing I Would Wish For

Marcos Valle – Estrellar

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Mø review – plenty of swagger, but can the Danish star be the main feature?

Brixton Academy, London
Best known as a guest singer on huge cowrite-hits, Danish star Mø’s own songs approach pop from the leftfield

At some point in the past decade, a young Danish creative stuck two of her initials together to create a moniker that, in Danish, doubles as the word “maiden” or “virgin”. In time – and it would take a couple of incarnations – Mø would become widely mispronounced.

As with Björk, English speakers – including ticket touts for tonight’s gig – see an “ø” and say “oh”. And so 29-year-old Karin Marie Aagaard Ørsted Andersen – bouncing around in athleisure, a tracksuit top wrapped around her waist – is now widely known as “Moe”, rather than “Murr”. Online, her byline is MOMOMOYOUTH, further muddying the waters. Moreover, there are two distinct halves to Andersen’s career – the hugely listened-to featured artist, and the lesser-known, faintly leftfield pop auteur. It is an imbalance which 2018 is supposed to redress, if all goes to plan.

Mø was not just the bought-in token female singing the hook of Lean On. She was one of its writers

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by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian

Daniel Avery: Song for Alpha review – majestic, cavernous techno

(Phantasy)

Between 1992 and 1994, Warp Records released the Artificial Intelligence series of albums. Including key early work by household names in electronica circles – Aphex Twin, Autechre, Richie Hawtin – it was ostensibly home-listening music, all unfolding minor-key melodies, gurgles and washes of sound. But it was also bathed in the afterglow of the rave explosion, much more about bodily pleasure than nerdy detail-spotting.

Lately, the Artificial Intelligence sound has been bubbling up again all over the club world. Belfast duo Bicep, Siberian superstar Nina Kraviz and Berghain’s Ostgut Ton label have all channelled it; now, so is Londoner Daniel Avery. Where his hugely popular 2013 album Drone Logic was about big riffs and forward momentum, its follow-up’s mood feels more like loosened gravity: the acid house 303 synths go round in circles, singing sensuous songs to themselves; diffuse chords hang like clouds of morning mist around the beats, intensely reminiscent of early Aphex and Autechre at their dreamiest.

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by Joe Muggs via Electronic music | The Guardian

50 great tracks for April from MØ, Trouble, Hot Snakes and more

From the first pop song of the summer to Alpine indie, San Diegan punk and Chinese neo-trance, here’s our latest roundup of the best new music. Subscribe to the playlist of all 50 tracks and read about our 10 favourites

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian

Hall and Oates: how we made I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)

‘It was a cry of defiance at all the stupid things we had to do – like when MTV made us race each other across America in Learjets full of fans’

Michael Jackson told us: 'I hope you don't mind but I stole its groove for Billie Jean'

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by Interviews by Dave Simpson via Electronic music | The Guardian