Posted by: Matt

I can’t quite remember how I came across Apparat’s music, but damn if it didn’t excite me. He managed to blend glitchy beats, bass, and distorted organic textures so well; it hit just about every button I had. He’s naturally evolved over the years as artists do, but once you are familiar with his sound you know it, particularly the droney washes he loves to drape delicately over everything.

As long as I’ve been aware of him, I’ve never heard of an Apparat DJ set. All his performances are of his own work, either solo or with accompanying musicians. I was fortunate enough to catch him at Conne Island in Leipzig a few years ago with Telefon Tel Aviv, and he spent half the night playing guitar with an organist/vocalist, and the rest rocking harder beats with his laptop and controller.

This live recording here is a little over six years old at this point, and though it doesn’t seem like much, that can equal several lifetimes when it comes to electronic music. It’s certainly a little busy and noisy, but it is pure Apparat. Though he’s refined his compositional practices, his signature elements are all here and can be heard to this day in his tracks (including his collaboration with Modeselektor, Moderat). I love that someone has such an unavoidable fingerprint on their work.

Anyway, it starts out watery and slow but be sure to stick with it! He really goes for the full range here, and it’s a totally worthwhile trip.

Apparat - Live @ Fad, Barcelona (2003)

Posted by: Cor

Wouldn’t you know it. As soon as I kick off our As Heard on TV feature several months ago, like clockwork, I stop hearing decent electronic tracks on TV. Maybe it’s because I skip 90% of the commercials. Maybe I haven’t been watching enough TV recently. What I have been doing, what I’m always doing, is playing video games (yes, I’m man-child, leave me alone.) So, for the sake of continuing our little feature here, I’m going to cheat a little bit and post this track from the latest BioWare space opera masterpiece, Mass Effect 2. After all, I still heard it on my TV, right?

If you’ve been playing the game, you’ll recognize this track from the nightclub Afterlife on Omega. The song is called Callista, by Canadian producer Saki Kaskas, and has a bit of that early “electronica” sound … like mid-90s Orbital. In the game it’s used to great effect, filtering out everything but the bass when you are outside the club, then cranking up the volume when you step inside. It lacks the same punch on it’s own, so just image you’re making your way through a moody, neon-pulsing alien nightclub. Or if you’re a hopeless lifelong gamer like myself, just do yourself a favor and play Mass Effect 2. It’s fantastic.

Saki Kaskas - Callista

Posted by: Matt

Hystereo. Some may remember them for out-Daft Punk’ing Daft Punk in 2005 by releasing Corporate Crimewave, an incredibly strong debut album crammed full pounding French electro-disco hooks and (much more significantly) a level of craftsmanship that was conspicuously absent from the long-awaited, disappointing Human After All(also out that year).

Unfortunately, Hystereo set the bar quite high for themselves and more or less disappeared around the time they should have been releasing new material. Short of a few uninteresting remixes, they haven’t had much of an output to speak of. Perhaps they used up all their ideas on their (fantastic) first album, or maybe they felt they couldn’t follow it and lost their nerve. The few remixes they did were pretty noisy and missing the hooks that made Corporate Crimewave so memorable, so perhaps they got caught up and misled by the fidget/banger wave of the last few years.

In any case, new rumblings from the Hystereo camp have been detected recently in the form of the Cityspeak EP on Bang Gang records. While the songs are not as strong as their initial output, as a fan of theirs who waited (and waited) for new material, and eventually gave up, I see this as a positive sign of things to come.

Hystereo - Cityspeak

More Hystereo on the web:
Hystereo on Myspace
Hystereo on Discogs

Posted by: Cor

This set has nothing to do with muppets, I just thought the name Electric Mayhem, shamelessly ripped-off from the band pictured above, was an appropriate title. Seriously, with the number of sets I’ve recorded in my time I should know that I’m headed for trouble when I try to include ALL my recent favorites regardless of how well the songs work together. In this case, I couldn’t decide between my latest banging electrohouse or funky breaks tracks, so naturally I included both. What resulted is the set below: a chaotic hodgepodge that ricochets back and forth between the two styles like a bowling ball on one of those kiddie bumper lanes… which isn’t to say it’s bad. Like bumper bowling, or the muppets for that matter, it’s a wild and unpredictable good time that the kids are sure to enjoy. Turn it up loud, and keep funkin’ that chicken.

DJ Cor - Electric Mayhem (right click to download)

(expand for tracklist)
Read the rest of this entry »