Singing Statues – Outtakes EP

Singing Statues hit me out of nowhere.  Sort of.  Truth be told I looked this up out of curiousity while absentmindedly browsing Teebs‘ profile and listening (again) to Ardour.  After an afternoon bicycle ride with this brief EP providing the soundtrack, I’m completely sold.

Imagine The Durutti Column (my favorite guitarist, Vini Reilly) hooking up with Flying Lotus, James Blake, Mount Kimbie, or even Bibio or Joy Orbison, and working that liquid guitar magic into some organically throbbing, techno-skirting production and forming something more akin to ‘songs’ than the beat genre usually cooks up.  Then realize that this is all done by the man formerly known as Jackhigh:  London based Ben Thomas, who with Teebs himself created the exquisite Tropics EP earlier this year.  Twisting crushing motorik beats with the tidal dynamic of emotional song structure, each track seems to toy with its own headspace, providing a high definition playground for the listener with discerning headphones turned loud.  Opening modestly abstract with a tangible guitar melody, every minute forward turns the energy up a notch and bleeds directly into another style.  Each track feels like a natural progression and evolution from the track before; despite being called Outtakes, this 18 minute set has an album’s worth of gravity and vision.  Fourth track All At Sea may just be a highlight with its shamanistic tribal/missle percussion section and ear-scraping synth line, but the EP is best heard as a whole.  And it leaves me excited for more.

[this EP is free and can be obtained for download on sendspace or streamed on last.fm]

Teebs – Ardour

Teebs is about to release the album of our sweetest dreams, and I mean that in the most literal sense.  The also-visual-artist and freshest face in Flying Lotus‘ Brainfeeder collective has finally created a full length release, finally exceeding even his most beatific psychedelic paintings in service of rendering his uniquely utopian vision.

Yes, utopia.  This is exactly what Teebs conjures on record; one listen leaves no doubt as to the veracity of a claim by Flying Lotus himself that this album sounds “the way Avatar looks.”  I’d be hard pressed to utter a more succinct bon mot.  This music reminds me of imaginary imagery more than any specific prior music; tropical visions of the future as seen in 60′s cinema, a psychedelic James Bond-ian secret island accessible only by submarine.  Or space ship.  The colors and tones may have forebears in  John Barry and Martin Denny – and the optimistic sheen the future once sported – but the construction and the visionary feel is all his own.

Listen to Arthur’s Birds – a cut right from the center of Ardour.

[pick this one up October 18th via brainfeeder on amazon or *more coming soon*]

Eleven Tigers – Clouds Are Mountains

“Eleven Tigers just blew my fucking mind,” I thought.

And this is probably the tenth time I’ve listened to Clouds Are Mountains.

“Who is the third who walks always beside you?”

That number is now closer to fifteen.  Realizing that this relative unknown not only explodes genres on one of my favorite albums of the year but also quotes The Wasteland with panache and twists it into one of the more earworm friendly tracks on a densely stacked deck of indelible dream bangers is a priceless sensation.

Eleven Tigers is the artistic name of Lithuanian transplant Jokubas Dargis, who makes his debt to a certain dubstep legend more than apparent:  “Influenced by Burial, I went to explore the atmosphere and the ambiance of London metropolis – my current home. I study music technology and do all sorts of activities I never thought to embrace.”  Pairing that quote with a listen is the quickest way to realize that he’s driven more by the expansive nature of Burial‘s idealism than simply his style.  The first and most obvious difference is the expansive color palette deployed across all corners of this hourlong experience.  From taffy-stretched drone tunnels bridging propulsive house and dub techno beats to the clipped channels of unknown conversation forming a preamble to fractured fairy tale dreampop vocals, every lush moment drips with a heart of wanderlust and a propulsive kick in its step.

Breaking with nearly all tradition of its nominal peers, this album has a dramatic heft, an operatic rise and fall structure demanding front to back listening – with the surgical precision of some mythical perfect trance mix to keep everything on a consistently gasp inducing flow.  Every time an exquisite groove is discovered and locked into, a new element arises to subtly shift context until a sudden left turn imperceptibly shuffles the entire journey onto yet another new level.  The segues – whether in-track or between them – offer nearly as much straight-dope pleasure as the hard hitting segments riding out one of the narcotic beats into that blissful state of pure flowing sound.  Almost.  This man truly understands the hypothalamic connection to the sort of infectious repetition present in any truly ecstatic dance music.  The fact that he manages to fold that in with a nearly spiritual sense of dynamic balance is beyond belief.

But really, believe it; it’s true.  Hear the evidence yourself for free streaming right now in high quality and you’ll understand what drove me to immediately place an order on his bandcamp page.  It’s just that worth it.

[buy this at eleven tigers' bandcamp page or grab it at boomkat]

Always Loved A Film

Underworld drop their latest studio album, Barking, on September 14th and are teasing it with the hilarious (and hilariously badass) video for second single Always Loved A Film.  Skateboarding, shoplifting, drinking, girls, joyrides and more… from a group of deliriously ecstatic senior citizens!

I’m guessing it’s a reflection of, or sly commentary on, the men behind Underworld‘s “grandfather” status in the electronic music realm.  They’ve come back with their most straightfoward party starting album (at least since the blissed out live Everything, Everything album and DVD) at a time when most of their peers are curating soft jazz shows on NPR or laying low in the south of France or some such idyllic place.  It may not be the most original slice of dance nirvana or within spitting distance of the band’s 1990′s apex (see Second Toughest In The Infants right here on Optimistic Underground for that) but it sure gets my blood pumping more than most of what 2010 has had to offer.

All I’ll say beyond that is to watch the entire video.  To say things escalate beyond mere (displaced) adolescent destruction is an understatement:  this ride gets wilder until the very last frame.  Enjoy

[pick up Barking soon at amazon or basically anywhere on the 14th.  as a longtime fan I can attest it's a worthy purchase]

Oneohtrix Point Never – Scenes With Curved Objects

Scenes With Curved Objects has become (possibly) my 2nd favorite release by Oneohtrix Point Never.

Well, this brief cassette release is at least tied with the two LPs preceeding the possibly-album-of-the-year Returnal.  Yes, like those psychotropic soundscapes, it is indescribably gorgeous.  Pulsing with an alien life unique in Oneohtrix Point Never‘s oeuvre, these two live-sourced tracks foreshadow the drifting-cloud majesty of Returnal while rumbling with the some of the most concrete rhythms he (Daniel Lopatin) has yet recorded.

It begins with what sound like marimbas via a familiar-enough repeated melody, simply growing in intensity – never changing – throughout the 9 minutes of Melancholy Descriptions of Simple 3D Environments.  The draw here is how Lopatin slowly cocoons this spine, draping layer upon layer of undulating synth washes, echoed laser effects, and eventually the swelling heart of warming drone takes everything right off the ground.  Side B opens with what can only be described as The Caretaker (aka Leyland Kirby) riffing on something more triumphant than haunting:  a hollowed out and dispatched-from-the-past orchestral section valiantly tries to break through the corrosion.  Then we abruptly cut to a short murky collage which feels like bumping through a science lab in the dark before drifting directly into the triumphant heart of this piece: The Trouble With Being Born.  An oscillating fuge of an (uncharacteristically) optimistic dystopian anthem, this largest cut of the side’s 9 minutes feels like the true contemplative center of the release, a space where all conscious thought lifts up and outward.  In other words, it’s 5 minutes that will totally “expand your mind,” man.  Then a proverbial sudden-record-scratch moment happens and we cut to an Ariel Pink damaged-AM-pop sound refracted in the same manner as the previous collage, fading toward silence.

It’s quite a ride.  Short but intense.  Listen.

Tracklisting:

A Melancholy Descriptions of Simple 3D Environments

B Adagio In G Minor Screw/Piano Craft Guild Edit/The Trouble With Being Born/Let It Go

[get the mp3 edition at boomkat or try and pick up the tape via discogs..but good luck with a fair price.]

[see also on Optimistic Underground: Antony and Fennesz on Returnal 7″ and Oneohtrix Point Never and Days of Thunder]