No Pain In Pop

In rude health

Recorded in a community hall in Brighton, you are maybe now able to understand the acute engineering concerns that have hampered The Sticks‘ ascent, only now able to flaunt their debut LP. As with their 2007 split EP, The Sticks is available through Upset The Rhythm, and finds their crude garage kicks in rude health; warped Joe Meek claustrophobics hugging a doting Diddley jukebox clatter.

MP3: The Sticks - Messing Around

MP3: The Sticks - I’m Wrong

Tags: the sticks, upset the rhythm

U

We’ve been waiting around long enough for a file or video from the new release, so here’s ‘Set U Free’ from over a decade ago. After Anotha Black Sunday’s future-funk fried Detroit numbers at the turn of the year, Kenny Dixon Jr is back behind the Mahogani production desk for II, former Slum Village head Andrés’s first album in six years. Or something resembling that; apparently this is the second part of the record, with the first half not yet released (hence the name). Either way, following on from last year’s ‘About Time’ 12″, not miles away from the sort of snapshot beat collage that Omar-S pieced together for SIDETRAKX 2 a couple months back with tracks sloping in and speeding off, ‘Change Your Mind’ lifts a GQ tune Theo Parrish sampled for his Ugly Edits and is one of ten tracks here that, amid the rogue skits and gospel choirs, is nothing but bliss. Alongside det.whippet Kyle Hall, another set of heavenly cuts from Motor City.

Cheque.

Also, whilst you’re with us, check out Legowelt finding his afrobeat feet: hummer.

Tags: andres, kenny dixon jr, kyle hall, Legowelt, mahogani, omar s, slum village, theo parrish

Grapple at Electric Swamp

Opening with a sequence that sounds like Martin Denny’s delicate numbers suddenly being swamped by Madlib’s blitzkrieg beats, a exotic idyll turned into mutant wasteland, Pelican Island seem in the habit of turning scraps into moveable feasts with this “Three Part Collage”. Never sure quite how seriously to take him but the Barbados native, having grown up cutting samples on cassettes on his sister’s karaoke machine, is now stationed out in E3. Plans are to release a beat tape in the next month or so, piecing together in the same hurdy-gurdy glories as The Samps, but until then it’s just another average day of “wake halfway. cereal. beats. take out. beats. beats. sleep. beats. wake halfway. dream.”



MP3: Pelican Island - Three Part Collage

Tags: pelican island

OCHIBA

This has been out there a few weeks now, but we’ve been slack. It doesn’t get any more astute than this coming together of heads, lead by S.E.F. and T. Williams, backed by Don Morris and Cooly G. Deep Teknologi will be putting out some releases “in the next few months”, but for now there’s Mix 1.0. Listen to them dismissing Funky dilettantes with MA1 before talking up Fingaprint, Fuzzy Logik and Morris’s forthcoming DT Records number ‘Inda Groove’; gems that sit gloriously alongside the likes of Dope and Dokes, muscular yet not quite as militant as the likes of Lil Silva, further showcasing how healthy House’s netherregions are at the moment. So, about as dramatic as it gets, S.E.F.’s Deep Teknologi Mix 1.0:

MP3: Deep Teknologi - Mix 1.0
(left click through to SoundCloud)

Probably worth mentioning the new Karizma compilation that’s coming out on R2 in a few weeks whilst we’re talking these tongues, while another of his R2 releases - ‘Necessary Madness’ b/w ‘Drumz Nightmare’ - is well worth getting teeth into, particularly for the B-.

Tags: cooly g, deep teknologi, don morris, dt records, mix, s.e.f., t. williams

Nxrth Sea Pearls

With Ariel and Geneva playing pop pretenders from underneath their duvets, Pearl Harbour want you down, down on the beach, where Nite Jewel’s alt-disco pebbles are being kicked around by the oily surf, Skylar K and Piper K’s drifting coastal hooks digging in deeper for their kaleidoscopic wash. You might have caught wind, but we’re proud to be putting the Nite Jewel record out over on these shores in the next couple of months; more over this way. In the meantime come get sunburnt, sea-stained.



MP3: Pearl Harbour - Sunburn



MP3: Pearl Harbour - Vapor Girls

Tags: pearl harbour

Throwing shapes at horizon’s edge

Having spent the last few years picking modestly at the scraps, Patten are now digging their teeth in deep on Liquid Liquid’s fleshy carcass. Following the careful calm of their debut, There Were Horizons (available here), they’ve now found their feet (the new moves kindly thrown out by those excellent gents at 20JFG) with the London-based troupe returning with the release of Sketching The Tesseract later this year via Kaleidoscope (previously responsible for releasing champion auteur Arch M’s Mountain Tan Commercials among other gems).

An EP precedes the full release, entitled GLAXJO XAACSSO, and these are some of the fruits.



MP3: Patten - Version (test mixxx)



MP3: Patten - Grey Gold (testt mixxx)

Tags: kaleidoscope, patten