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undo wrote:

BGwaves have you heard this?

Yeah, that was one of my faves from last year. I quieted my mind numerous times to this thing. Well worth it if anyone else here hasn’t checked it out, especially if you like drifting ambient music that incorporates of lot of modern ambient techniques. Glitch, dub textures, open spaces/field recordings, and minimalism just to name a few.

Edit: added the YouTube on this page since this post started a new one.

This Poirier is cool loopy, soundtracky, warm goodness. I dig it. Thanks as always for the recs guys.

Did I get this album rec from this board? I know that I somehow discovered another Jan Jelinek record through the Spotify algorithm, Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records. That is an awesome The Field-style heavy sample record. I looked up Jelinek and found he had this "Farben" project. The cover hooked me.

This came back up because a few of these tracks are on my Top 100 from this year. Replaying the album, I remember why. This is the absolute peak of German microhouse.



Conde Nast gave it a 9 point 5: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2993-textstar/

I heartily recommend this record to everyone. It's so smart and warm.

undo wrote:That is a great record.

I go back and forth between that and the album he recorded called Textstar under the name Farben. People don't seem to make music like this anymore.

There we go!

On my third listen of Textstar for the day.

I think microhouse will probably come back closer to the mainstream in a few years. DnB seems to be having it's mainstream moment right now.

I will also take more late 90s early 2000s microhouse recs!

I agree and would add IDM into that emerging trends category. My son recently fell in love with Aphex Twin. Especially the warm, hip hop inflected tracks like ‘Fingerbib’, ‘Alberto Balsam’, and ‘Windowlicker.’

As far as microhouse, I just listened to Thomas Brinkmann - Lucky Hands today and I think you’d enjoy that one. Especially the second half which gets a little more dubby and downtempo. Also:

Pole - 1 (or 2 or 3, they’re all good)
Isolee - Rest
Matthew Herbert - Bodily Functions and Around the House
Superpitcher - Today (mix)
Oval - Systemich, Diskont 94, and Ovalprocess are 3 of my favorite albums

I’ll think of more

More late 90s IDM/techno



I have gotten a lot out of this since late summer, it's aged beautifully with a tasteful sense of reserve that musicians are probably afraid of these days. I'm hesitant to list off everyone involved in this as that would definitely lead to some expectations that this doesn't quite fulfill but on its own terms this is such a fantastic album.

BGwaves wrote:I agree and would add IDM into that emerging trends category. My son recently fell in love with Aphex Twin. Especially the warm, hip hop inflected tracks like ‘Fingerbib’, ‘Alberto Balsam’, and ‘Windowlicker.’

Agree on this. Aphex gets put on a lot of Spotify playlists along with brand new music. "Xtal" is a song I see new people discovering a lot.

BGwaves wrote:Matthew Herbert - Bodily Functions and Around the House

"It's Only" is one of my absolute favorite tracks

Brilliant

On the micro house front, listened to Thomas Brinkmann - Soul Center today and that one holds up. More prime time dance floor action than some of the others you’ve enjoyed but still a classic. He released a singles retrospective not that long ago that is also worth checking out. Can’t remember what it’s called but it’s on Spotify. Ok, it’s called Retrospektiv and it contains Sur Ace, one of my favorite techno tracks. So good. His later stuff is much more experimental, especially the stuff on Editions Mego, equally interesting in its own way.

This MOTHERFUCKING BASSLINE

undo wrote:

I played a gig with another instructor over break, a cool Asian dude, who sang and played guitar on a version of 80s Bears rap shit.

Out at Basecamp Lisle... Good times. All packed in: a real super spreader.

^ fwiw this guy MIGHT be in Clown Core, you'll know what I mean when you hear it

the Sam Gendel / Sam Wilkes album from this year was probably my favorite thing from 2021 and they are also in this

or maybe they're not playing on the whole album but they do on this:

It’s really great! The whole crew is awesome and I love most everything they do. Thanks for introducing me to yet another iteration of their magic!

Listening to this album for the first time in probably 15 years. It's so smooth and so enjoyable. Maybe it felt like a letdown or a compromise after his first 3 releases, like he was "selling out" (not really but what else do you call it) by adding vocals to his music. This is of course bullshit but my thought process was definitely that simple back then. But also I definitely enjoyed this. I'm pretty sure I wrote a tepid and meaningless review of this for Illinois Entertainer way back when this came out. I probably just wrote a bland and basic four sentence description of dub techno with some kind of "if you like that, you'll like this, and now there's rapping on it"-level of a meaningless recommendation. 7 out of 10!

This kind of rapping has been totally lost to time. Yes I know that people love Nujabes and Samurai Champloo but how much have those listeners really dug into Fat Jon beyond that? Well I certainly haven't (I don't know anything about him at all tbh) and I'm sure that I probably bought into some idea that this kind of rapping was "corny" because deej said so way back then so it must be true!

This sounded great in the car last night and this morning. I've gone back to the first three Pole albums a little bit lately and I've had a little trouble getting into them but those were such a time and place kind of thing for me when I first heard them that it's tough to be present in the moment listening to them now without thinking of those circumstances. At the same time, I definitely have specific memories of listening to this back when it first came out and those don't weigh on my mind in quite the same way.

All I've heard from Pole after this was one EP and the album with the castle on the cover and I have no idea what he's been doing for most of the past decade. Still ridiculous how much people turned against this kind of music to show how radically poptimist and cool they were. "I don't want to listen to music made by some nerd hunched over a laptop, I want to dance!" Everyone online was like this for almost a decade, it was so dumb.

Yo, Undo.

Dude. Yes. I just listened to that album for the first time the other day. Quite taken w/ it.

Michael K. wrote:Dude. Yes. I just listened to that album for the first time the other day. Quite taken w/ it.

I was reading something on Reddit about it and made me listen to it. Haven't heard it for years and years.

Such an interesting period of ambient and tonal works in the mid-90s.

damo suzuki wrote:Yo, Undo.

I have never heard this but I am listening to it now for the first time and I'm really feeling it.

One of those groups that I keep meaning to check out but for some reason never had before now.

Damo’s year end lists were some of my favorite shit on SOMB and here I am listening to Fishmans. Some things never change!