Messages to the Majors – Break/Flow 1 – Record Reviews (1996)

Titled Messages to the Majors these are the record reviews from Break/Flow 1 from 1996, mostly written by Flint Michigan and a couple by Christoph Fringeli – and one by Michel Foucault!

Electro Zone: Epsilon Aqua Zone – Were Going Deep….

We’re always hearing about revivals: electro revival, house revival, Ibiza reunions and I think it’s worth making a few points about these revivalisms.

Electro is a sound that’s associated with the mid 80s and it’s often written-off as ‘backward looking’ and nostalgic (Mad Mike sometimes gets dissed for persevering with acid, which is to misrepresent the UR output anyway). This seems to suggest that there’s such a thing as a purely original track. This is bollocks, What seems to happen is that there are sound-zones to inhabit and not an ‘as-the-crow-flies’ journey to perfection. To put it another way… the past co-exists with the present… what has been before is always an inspiration… kind of collective-creative pool that people can draw upon. Pure originality ts a hang-up.

Even so, what’s happening with electro, like what’s happening with acid, is that the electro sound is being developed in reference to Its past, but with an heightened experimental sense of what is possible and addictive about the electro sound: bass lines, drum patterns, top. range sounds, synth sweeps, disembodied voices. There is no electro revival, Current outfits like Drexciya, Dopplereffekt, Acid Pimp, Electronome, Eotomorph, Transits of Tone, Aux 88 have listened and learned, it’s as if they are working on another line to the Hip-Hop/Rap line that’s been at a dead end for years, This is intensive electro with fellow travellers Mike Dred, Aphex and lately, Leo Annibaldi at Rephlex. What’s revivalist about this?

People have been doing it for years. It goes without saying that an electro strain has constantly been feeding into electronic dance music but this doesn’t mean we’ve got to pin-point an origin to the sound. Origins, revivals – these are both part of the nostalgic desire to live in the past (great for the corporate pigs and their back catalogues). A nostalgic, revivalist sound is one that isn’t revivified and built upon but imitated and re-sold to another generation: rock appears always to be in the 60s, funk in the 70s. Electro is out of the 80s, Techno is positive futurism.

Flint Michigan

Strange Breaks

It was only a matter of time until jungle got stuck in a lock groove – string intros, Lucozade adverts, a confusion of compilations. However, there are some records doing the rounds that are weighing in with strange hybrids. On Rephlex the Squarepusher album, Feed Me Weird Things melds hyperactive breaks to jazz-funk basslines, throwing in a bit of acid, dub and controlled randomness, Highlights here are the perverse Smediey’s Melody and North Circular. The latter features a duelette where a break fights against an Industrial 4/4 beat, A jazz theme is also featured on Network 23’s Psychic Alliance release that uses jazz samples and puts them back together in a different shape.

If sub-bass is the expected jungle element that is missing from the Squarepusher album then another Network 23 release Strange Breaks gives it to us pumped and rolling. The flipside here pits at least 3 drum samples against each other that give the consecutive rhythms a freshness of sound. Taking the pace down a bit there is Monk and Canatella’s Forthcoming Song on Bristol’s Cup of Tea records – a lazy, ride-cymbal driven trip-hop break is set against sleazy John Barry orchestration. Anus from the recent Steet EP on Mille Plateau adds bellowing bass notes to its lazy break whilst Deadly Buda’s Morph Beat Vol.1 on Praxis lets a hip-hop beat provide the inspirational backing for a trip into a more hardcore zone.

Flint Michigan

Up Link Data Transmission: Soundscapes (VVM) & Jega EP (Skam 6)

These two records are linked by more than their coming from the Manchester area – there is a shared eclectic approach that takes an impetus from neo-electro experiments but which outmanoeuvre such neat categories as they both open up a variety of potential directions. Soundscapes begins with the dark city sweep of Vakxhination passing through the wide angle bass of Clockworks to the fractured beat and detuning tones of the subtle Alien Cocoon, The Jega EP takes more of turn towards lo-fi melodics firing in with the rapid fire rhythm programmes of the excellent Norton Midgate, the clank funk of Stee/ Drum and Indian movie strings on In with the In. Two labels to watch out for. UK fractures. Use the force.

Flint Michigan

Fractal Hardcore

In the second half of 1994 new styles of hardcore suddenly emerged out of France with Weapons, Epiteth, Explore Toi and GTI all introducing a fast relentless sound of noisy speedcore. While the collective known as Gangstar Toons Industry constructed their own style using samples from rap and metal as well as a variety of sources at high velocity to craft their sonic equivalent of an uzi, another specifically French sound of pounding 4/4 bass drums often well over 200 BPM layered with screeching noises was developing. This minimalist brutalism is what, at the moment, prevails at the fringes of the French hardcore sound systems.

Now, a year and a half later this subgenre has consolidated itself as a social scene through the Teknivals – large festivals taking place during summer in the French countryside with up to two dozen sound systems and several thousand people attending. The Teknivals are probably the most Important international meetings of something that can still be called underground, Several new releases that have come out in the last couple of months, confirm, to a certain degree, the fear that this typically French style might develop into a new genre with its rules etc.

Even so, they still inject a fresh and mad energy into go spastic and disappear into the speed inferno in search of other dimensions, One example from Toulouse is the first release on a new label Fraktal, this is a no-compromise energiser in the best speedcore traditions incorporating the fastest beats, curious breaks and screeching noises on its 4 tracks, A similar line is followed by the first two releases on No-Tek, a label started by the ex-Explore-Toi members who previously did the Exp.02 record.

While Explore-Toi themselves have just released 5 new discs of monochrome raging speedcore in their typical style, No-Tek engages in a wider variety of this sound by opening it up in different directions, one being beatless nolse experiments as well as pounding (a little bit) slower hardcore that should get played a lot on the radical dancefloors this year. Obviously having reached the threshold of speed (the point where speedcore becomes ambient because the beats are so close together that they turn into one noise) new doors have to be pushed open. There may be some stagnation, and in France there certainly is a tension between the commercial aspects of most of the raves and the underground ethos of the most interesting productions, but we can be confident that there will be new developments leading to new aventure urbains, aventure cybernetiques.

Christoph Fringeli

Various: CrossFade Compilation (Cross Fade Enter Taiment)

Linking together Just some of the producers of a disparate European dance underground, Cross Fade hit the mark once again and prove that there’s more at stake than signing your life away to the corporations. Being Cross Fade’s third release this collection contains blistering mutant electro from Somatic Responses (UK), infectiously funky acid from Beverly Hills 808303 (Nth) and further experiments in artificial alienation from Unit Moebius. (Nth), The Germans weigh in with the distortion groove of Jaguar (Alec Empire), and the trippy minimalism of Tok Tok and Roland Foundation. This fine compilation of subterranean dance music is rounded off with two tracks from label organisers, De Babalon and Paul Snowden. The former foregoes the breaks for a reconfigured and roughed up Axis/Basic Channel vibe whilst Paul Snowden unleashes some hard acid/vocal loop distortion. Both induce involuntary movements.

These 8 tracks, although articulating different styles, are united in their creation of musical directions that operate at a distance from the fashion factories. The rough edges of these tracks display a mindful visceralism that add up to an outflanking of the transparent aims of the usual major league compilations. Sotteraneo. Autonomous Routes.

Flint Michigan

Foucault on Acid:

Being a review of Agro’s Disobedience and ACAB’s Fuck Hierarchy (Drop Bass Network)

We can easily see how LSD inverts the relationship of ill humour, stupidity, and thought: it no sooner eliminates the supremacy of categories than it tears away the ground of its indifference and disintegrates the gloomy dumbshow of stupidity: and it presents this univocal and acategorical mass not only as variegated, mobile, asymmetrical, decentred, spiraloid, and reverberating, but causes it to rise, at each instant, as a swarming of phantasm-events. As it slides upon this surface, at once regular and intensely vibratory, as it is freed from catatonic chrysillis, thought invariably contemplates this indefinite equivalence transformed into an acute event and sumptuous, apparelled repetition.

Michel Foucault

Fractures

There has always been a faction amongst the producers of cutting edge dance music to de-construct or even destroy the conventions of what is supposed to be dance music, This attitude to incorporate noise and breaks, even fractures, to add new aspects and points of view to the experience, is fundamentally different from the one that just adds a few new sounds here and there to save the genre from going stale.This violent whirlpool has once more launched its attack against the tyranny of the ubiquitous 4/4 beat – a crucial move after the return and renewed domination of House.

Little pockets of resistance are everywhere fearfully ignored by the dance establishment that is trying to hold on to its rules and doesn’t know (yet?) how to possibly recouperate these perpetrators of the most violent crimes against clubland conformity so far. The crime we’re talking about is the disruption of the steady 4/4 beat that House, Trance and Gabber adhere to, Prototypical records being Cylob’s Industrial Folk Songs on Rephlex and the Automatic Sound Unlimited double pack on Hot Trax. But recent months have shown an upsurge of tracks with broken up beats, maybe to some degree mirroring the development of neo-electro, but indulging in a much more profound polymorphous perversity of noise-exploration and beat disruption.

ADC is an example from Rome – distorted noisy industrial electro on their label X-Forces (First Assault 7”, The Massacre 12″). From the UK a mysterious 12” titled Void brought up its dark drones and klangy metallic percussion, as well as the fiercely distorted breaks on New Yawk Dog by the Slack Dog Ensemble (Lo/Flowershop); some tracks by Somatic Responses, Hard Sound Project and Cyberchrist are other examples of this school of dissension.

With Jungle becoming such an accepted genre the next step will have to be a similar subversion perverting fast breaks and deep basslines. Whoever thought that the development of this sort of noise would ever come to an end was terribly wrong, the forces that have been conjured up don’t allow for a standstill. Frequencies, structures, motions feeding off each other in everchanging permutations, giving impulses, picking up or negating influences and ideas; no doubt like a phoenix the 4/4 bass drum will rise again after the carnage and it won’t be the same. Let’s have some fun.

Christoph Fringeli

Somatic Responses: Post Organic (Praxis) & Axon (IST)

The electronic dance scene in the UK has become blighted by stale formulas and soporific tracks that can do nothing but enervate the listener. In a scene dominated by conservatism, music with a harder experimental edge, a music that is acategorical, gets sluiced out of the picture. The Somatics are part of a burgeoning UK scene that has close links with Europe and the USA. To date Post Organic Is only their second release on a UK JSabel after having released a dozen records on German (Agent Orange, Cross Fade…) and Amercian labels (Drop Bass, 666, IST).

Having passed through electro and acid the Somatic sound is informed by a hard, varying tempo overlaid with a composition of sound-work – the wide panorama of Axon works well with the tracks tight focussed bass kicks. On Post Organic the Somatics articulate what Jeff Mills has described as a future direction of techno: no particular one sound but a multi-layered sound which is abstract.

Flint Michigan

Christoph de Babalon: Destroy Berlin (DHR)

There are a lot of exciting European breakcore tracks around that are criminally unavailable through the usual channels. Media definitions of jungle and the tendency towards promoting so-called ‘intelligent’ music (i.e. teh woeful Guy Called Gerald, Jacob’s Optical Ladder) has detracted the hacksfrom this effervescent outbreak. Tracks on labels like Riot Beats, Digital Hardcore, Fischkopf and Cross Fade take their cuefrom a more ‘roughneck’ direction and would appeal to those into the faster Source Direct stuff, Hype’s Ganja label and Dillinja’s recent Muth*fucka. Like these, de Babalon has a penchant for rough and fast breaks which he triggers off over cinematic, dark strings and electronic warbling.

On Residuum, which works at both speeds, he uses orchestral glissandos as the break stutters, cuts up and subverts the groove. On Nameless 1 the break is used as a 4/4 but a more manic one is overlaid that adds an effect of pumping static. The last track Nameless 2 , builds more darkcore around samples of Noface (Praxis 6) – this frission between hyperactive rhythms and body rending industrial acid perhaps amounts to the strongest track. Tearing up the plans

Flint Michigan

The concentration of attention upon a certain kind of object is part of the production of subjectivity

Dopplereffekt: Infophysix (Dataphysix)

The second EP from an ever mutating Drexciya camp, this 7 tracker continues excursions into lo-fi electro that just as it is influenced by Kraftwerk it treats this obvious influence with a heavy dose of irony. Whilst other experiments in the electro zone (Electronome,Transits of Tone) intensify the listener by beefing up the sound with boosted production, distortion and noise, Dopplereffekt strip electro back into a fragile edgy wavering. Minimal melodies, lucid precision percussion, disembodied voices. The funk of this record comes with a satirical vertigo: the dehumanism of machine-soul is over registered to good effect by clinical composition and expressionless lyrics that play along the borderline of pomo. The sounds of minimal resources, stealth and detournement.

Terrence Dixon: Unknown Black Shapes (Utensil)

The process of selective hype is no guarantee of quality. Detroit’s Terrence Dixon comes up with the goods on this 9 track LP that goes about its business with a determined autonomy. Minimalism is the order of the day but of a much darker variety than we are used to — structures are offset by interesting sounds: slow bass glurgs feeding off fast flanged handclaps, backward cymbal hiss and an organ loop on Speediock. Elsewhere the human voice replaces the usual pre-recorded choral programmes and is put to sparing effect. In amongst such tracks that work on expectancy and anticipation Dixon takes us into the realms of conceptual-minimalism, by giving us B.P.M.- a single bass drum at an unerring 4/4 pace with virtually no alteration to its sound. Dark and funky – music for dense inner regions.

Flint Michigan

• Other texts by Flint Michigan on datacide-magazine.com
• Other texts by Christoph Fringeli on datacide-magazine.com
• Michel Foucault (Wikipedia)

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