Hello!
I’ve felt rotten all week as every variety of pollen has decided to make an enemy out of me. I was wondering if I’d be able to get this one out, but I refuse to be beaten by a bunch of sun-enjoying plants. I’m not sure that sentence made sense - I think the antihistamines are kicking in. Anyway…
Elkka
DJ-KICKS: ELKKA
!K7
Ever since I heard her track ‘Hands’ on 6 Music a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. Did a little digging, a bit of Googling and ooh, what do I find? Elkka is the most recent curator of DJ-Kicks. I’ll certainly be having some of that. For the uninitiated, DJ-Kicks was set up by Horst Weidenmüller, he who founded Berlin-based !K7 Records, and is the longest running commercial mix series at 28 years (and still going). Here Elkka (born Emma Kirby in Cardiff) weaves an electrifying journey through Chicago house, techno, UK dance, and even some soft jazz vocals via Patty Waters. Her own contributions, the aforementioned ‘Hands’, ‘Attention, Lovers’, and the club-ready beat-driven ‘Body’ (a collaboration with UK electronic producer Jeigo) show off an artist with an exciting future ahead of her. Debut album when?
A Certain Ratio
1982
Mute
The bass intro alone on opener ‘SAMO’ shows that Mute favourites A Certain Ratio have still got it and then some. Released at the end of March, ‘1982’ is, they say, “more of a playful red herring than an invitation to nostalgia”, and I’d argue it’s one of their more exciting albums to date. I mean, the title track alone is dance-funk mastery, enough to have you grooving in your office chair. And ‘A Trip In Hulme’? A track so cool it could reverse climate change (those wah-wahing bass licks, Christ alive). There’s a discordant jazz instrumental with ‘Tombo In M3’, a crowd-pleasing anthemic funk number in ‘Holy Smoke’ and even some experimental electronica with ‘Tier 3’. Truly a record of many sides - sides that somehow mutate with every listen. This’ll be on repeat for the rest of the year.
Mandy, Indiana
I’VE SEEN A WAY
Fire Talk
It was by complete chance that this flashed up in my inbox, but when your tags are “experimental”, “electronic”, “industrial”, and “Manchester”, you’re going to get my attention. So this four-piece consisting of three Mancunians and one Parisian has, in my view, put out of the best records of the year. ‘I’ve Seen A Way’ is an oncoming storm cloud of electronic, experimental, post-punk, noise, industrial and whatever fits between. You’re sort of scared to see what lies in its eye but curiosity gets the better of you - and trust me when I say you won’t be disappointed. Influenced by film and video game scores, it’s no surprise that ‘I’ve Seen A Way’ is cinematic in its scope.
‘Love Theme (4K VHS)’ (tongue firmly in cheek with that title) builds with arpeggiating synths that pull from Vangelis and Badalamenti as well as ‘Drive’, until it crackles into the sinister thud of ‘Drag [Crashed]’, all howls and whispers before thrashing into a Crystal Castles-like frenzy. The off-kilter yet rhythmic groove ‘Pinking Shears’ is like the group tried to use every found sound and instrument at their disposal, while ‘2 Stripe’ could be the nightmarish audio recordings of a dream from a resident of ‘Twin Peaks’. I’m gonna stop there because I could keep going, but special mention should go to the atmospheric ‘(ノ>ω<)ノ :。・:*:・゚’★,。・:*:♪・゚’☆ (Crystal Aura Redux)’ that more than earns its eccentric title. Expect big things.
John Metcalfe
XYLEM
Real World
I’ve been lacking some neoclassical in my musical diet as of late, so this recent single from composer and multi-instrumentalist John Metcalfe is a welcome, and exciting, release. Metcalfe is a veteran at this sort of thing, having composed and arranged for the likes of Blur and Peter Gabriel, played viola as a member of The Durutti Column, as well as co-founding Factory Classical with Tony Wilson. Nothing major then. ‘Xylem’, the first track taken from his upcoming album ‘Tree’, is beautiful and expansive, with strings that shimmer, swell and blossom into a powerful crescendo, before dissolving into sharp staccato blasts. It reminds me a lot of Max Richter and, what would you know, Metcalfe had a hand in ‘On The Nature Of Daylight (Entropy)’. I’ll be counting down the days to the release of ‘Tree’, and will no doubt be scribbling my thoughts down here upon its release in September.
So that’s your lot. As always you can find my ramblings elsewhere in both print and online in Electronic Sound. I guess you can also follow me on Twitter right up until the very moment Elon Musk truly torpedoes the site into cyber-oblivion. But until next time, a couple of odds and ends that have taken my interest.
Apple announced the Vision Pro earlier in the week, their entry into the VR wars and launching early in 2024. Not that it’s a particularly good war, considering VR is still financially inaccessible to most people, which is the biggest barrier it needs to overcome before it goes truly mainstream. And when Apple’s own headset costs $3499, there’s no sign of that changing anytime soon. Though, in a weird way, I can imagine the Vision Pro being that thing that does catapult VR mainstream. First of all, the Vision Pro combines VR and XR, so you can still see the world around you when you’re using it - it doesn’t totally lock you into a virtual world like something like Meta’s Quest headset. Second, Apple have history when it comes to this sort of thing. I remember when the iPhone and the iPad were tech innovations reserved for the wealthy. Still, at $3500 the Vision Pro won’t be in a vast number of households for the foreseeable (though just to note, if any Apple PR happens to be reading this, I’m very pro-Apple and always have been would love to try the headset). I can’t imagine anyone wearing this in public though. Silicon Valley techbros need to hire people who have a sense of style, and I’m saying that about Apple, THEE company that creates sleek consumer friendly products. Then again, I never thought anyone would video call in public…
In the last Happening Again, I touched upon the decline of social media but I didn’t particularly expect Reddit to be an active participant. The social media company announced back in April that it is putting its API (application programming interface) behind a paywall at the start of July, which appeared to be a response to the popularity of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard so they couldn’t be trained for free. The knock-on effect, however, has been that third-party apps used to browse Reddit are being priced-out of the very service they provide. I couldn’t find an exact number for how many people use third-party apps, but I know it’s in the millions. In fact, Reddit app Apollo sadly announced it will be closing on 30th June as the new API changes would cost them $20 million (yes, million) a year to continue operating. This is after RIF, another third-party app, announced it would also be shutting its doors at the end of the month. In protest, around 2500 subreddits will be taking part in a blackout on 12th June and will go offline for 48 hours. If Reddit doesn’t announce a reversal of this policy, subreddits have promised “further action”. As someone who uses Reddit daily, I could see this having huge ramifications for the platform if they don’t back down (I already don’t use Reddit proper, and prefer old.reddit.com because I can’t stand the layout of the modern site). If Reddit do plough through with these changes, it will kill a whole host of apps, and the ones that survive will have to charge their users a monthly fee. And I can’t see many people paying to access Reddit (let’s not even go into Elon Musk’s galaxy-brained Twitter Blue subscription programme).
And finally, my favourite tweet regarding the pricing of Apple’s VR headset: