Regular readers (if I can claim such a thing) will be aware of my ongoing obsession with Congotronics, the modern take on traditional Congolese music featuring Official Best Noise In The World, the electric thumb piano (as voted by me in a survey of me). The most recent release was Tradi-Mods Vs Rockers wich featured Western musicians like Animal Collective, Shackleton and Mark Ernestus remixing or being inspired by the more traditional Congotronics source material.

Last Tuesday the Barbican played host to a mega-band consisting of Congolese favourites Konono No.1 and Kasai Allstars as well as some of the contributors to the Tradi-Mods Vs Rockers album: Deerhoof, Juana Molina, Wildbirds & Peacedrums and Matt Mehlan. The night was billed as a live version of the album – an ambitious goal given the breadth of styles covered and the sheer number of musicians involved.

I was curious as to how they would approach the set – would it be individual bands taking turns to do their thing, or selected members of each band coming together for different songs? Instead, no less than 19 people took to the stage including percussionists, a marimba, vocalists, guitarists, basists and of course thumb pianos. Somehow they’d worked out how to merge their myriad styles and sounds into a remarkably coherent whole. Some tunes involved fewer musicians and a more identifiably Western or African sound, but these numbers didn’t feel like the line up had been tweaked or choreographed to ‘achieve’ the different sound. The Congolese musicians augmented the Western music and vice versa, and for the most part it was a harmonious collaboration – a band, if you will!

Personally I preferred the more overtly African pieces. Whether it’s cultural (in that they sound more exotic to my ears which were weaned on the music from my own part of the world) or simply down to taste (in that African rhythms and timbres excite me more than Western ones) I can’t say, but there it is – congas, marimbas and thumb pianos get me going more than a drum kit and a guitar. That said, the whole project is inspired by the Congotronics sound specifically, so it never strayed too far.

At risk of sounding hyperbolic, there were moments (specifically the 3 tunes where the entire band were going for it and playing Konono No.1 or Kasai Allstars classics) where, for my ears and my particular wiring, the music was perfect. I’ve talked about ‘perfect tunes‘ elsewhere in this blog and the same disclaimer as for those is relevant here: the music wasn’t, of course, empirically faultless (one can’t classify art that way), but to me it simply couldn’t have been improved upon. It was a genuinely thrilling, deliciously energetic barrage of up-beat, feel good, rhymically ingenious delight! To top it all, it looked like the musicians were having a ball.

I am going to write another couple of posts on subjects that have been brewing for a while and that definitely tie in to my experience at this gig. Namely: the effect that a venue or setting can have on music, and the physical movement (or otherwise) of audiences to rhythms. Or dancing, as it’s generally called. Suffice to say for now that the Congotronics vs Rockers gig ‘broke’ the Barbican Hall in that I’ve never seen so many people going for it in what is generally considered a classical, or ‘serious’, venue. Indeed, I got congratulated by a fellow dancer for ‘raving hard’ as I left, and had my hand shaken. A fitting end to the night as far as I was concerned!

Before heading home I indulged in the sumptuous Congotronics box set that I’ve been eyeing up for a while. 5 LP’s, a 7″ and a memory stick with a booklet in a lovely box. Mmmmmmm:

A bit sedate for the general vibe of the evening but here’s a video anyway:

Top image from 405

‘Epic’ barely does justice to this 6 hour concert exploring the wide ranging influence of Steve Reich. And attending just the last session meant I had the light version – some people I spoke to had been there for the entire, weekend-long programme! The evening featured 3 and a bit Reich performances, a piece by fellow New Yorker Fiona Wolfe plus full sets by Clogs, Owen Pallett and Max Richter. Things kicked off a bit later than scheduled at 6.15pm and didn’t finish until gone midnight. On a Sunday night. Phew!

A couple of Reich pieces started proceedings – first his fun Clapping Music – always enjoyable to see live, particularly when the man himself is one of the clappers – followed by You Are (Variations), performed by The Britten Sinfonia and Synergy Vocals. Not one of my favourite Reich pieces, but like with all his music it’s far richer when experienced live. To my (largely unqualified) ears this piece seems to be exploring the juxtaposition of tone and duration – something that, on a personal level, isn’t as interesting to me as his more rhythmicaly exploratative pieces. Nevertheless it was deceptively immersive and a pleasure to hear performed so well.

Next came Julia Wolfe‘s Cruel Sister. The composer herself introduced the story behind the composition – a dark tale of sibling rivalry over a mutual love interest. One sister murders the other by drowning, her body is then recovered and her rib cage and hair fashioned into a harp that is played at the surviving sister’s wedding. The music was genuinely disturbing and utterly captivating. The 2000-strong audience held a collective breath and shared many a spine-tingle as the story panned out, expertly and terrifyingly told through the voices of the orchestra. My highlight of the evening.

Owen Pallet and the Britten Sinfonia then performed Pallet’s Heartland, originally an alternative indie album of looped strings, drums and vocals. It was an ambitious performance and it took a while for the orchestra, drummer, keys, guitar and voice to find eachother, but when it worked it was soaring and satisfying.

Half way through Pallet’s set a stroppy, schoolmarmy type woman barked “we want Steve Reich!” to shocked looks all round. An outrageously selfish act that showed a lack of respect to everyone present. On the offchance that you stumble across this review, lady: shame on you.

Either way she soon got her wish as the original schedule was tweaked so that the planned finale, the London premiere of Reich’s Double Sextet was switched with Max Richter’s performance. Probably a good idea – the evening was massively overrunning and Double Sextet is what most people had come for after all. I was slightly put out as I really wanted to see Richter and by this stage I was unsure whether I’d make it to the end! Anyway, Double Sextet, peformed by Eighth Blackbird and Bang on a Can, sounded to me like fairly typical Reich: intricate, rhythmic, cyclical and hypnotic but perhaps more playful than some of his earlier work. It failed to blow me away like his career highlights (Drumming and Music for 18 Musicians in my opinion) but again it was a joy to experience live and the performers clearly enjoyed themselves immensely, which adds a lot to a performance.

Following this piece, people started reluctantly leaving – nobody was expecting such an epic concert and the Barbican had sold out of dinner-worthy food (I had to settle for nuts and a lolly, the hunt for which caused me to miss the ‘bonus’ performance of the first movement of Drumming!) Still, work the next day or not, I wasn’t going to be moved – there was music to be heard!

The penultimate performance was a curatorially misjudged set from folk-rock-indie experimentalists Clogs, playing with the New London Children’s Choir, which left a lot of blank faces. I was curious to see Clogs as their number features a member of The National, a band I’ve recently become a fan of, but I failed to see how such a folk-heavy performance tied in with the rest of the programme or showed clear influence from Reich.

Last but in many ways most exciting was Max Richter and his ensemble. The hardy few who stuck it out til the end (it was knocking midnight) settled in for what promised to be a special performance. Richter’s music is haunting, lilting and achingly beautiful – just the thing to end such an overwhelming evening! That they started with my absolute favourite On The Nature Of Daylight made it utterly worth staying so late. I surrendered to the swell and flow of the strings and piano for the next 40 minutes. I urge you to listen to Richter’s sublime album The Blue Notebooks – if there is beauty in sadness, this is what it sounds like.

From a programming point of view the evening was something of a mess. A warning that it would be so long would have been nice, the mid-session programme change frustrated as many people as it pleased and the inclusion of Clogs was somewhat baffling. But overall this was a stunning concert – 6 hours of music for the price of a standard show with all the composers present and a premiere of new music by a true innovator isn’t something one experiences very often.

‘There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.’ – John Cage.

The 2010 campaign to get John Cage‘s 4’33 to the coveted Christmas number 1 spot in the pop charts registered on the radar of most UK music fans. 4’33 is, of course, the composers infamous 1952 reflection on the nature of music, composition and sound – four and a half minutes of apparent silence, encouraging listeners to pay attention to the ambient sounds around them. Whilst the recording didn’t hit Number One the campaign prompted debate, amusement, outrage and delight – Cage’s intention, I don’t doubt.

I have long been intrigued by Cage and while I ‘get’ 4’33 as a statement, I consider it overstated – the natural end point of a path of creative philosophising past which not much more needs to be said. It somehow shouts it’s intent through the silence. However, I adore his earlier pieces for prepared piano and other similarly rhythmic experments in extended technique. It was with curiosity, then, that I attended this performance – part of the Cage 99 series at St.George’s Bristol which celebrated the 99th anniversary of Cage’s birth rather than the 100th, echoing composer’s own convention-defying spirit.

The night started with a performance of 4’33 by pianists and improvisors Tania Chen and Steve Beresford. I want to put inverted commas around performance, but I will refrain! Hearing the piece live (again, the desire for inverted commas) added nothing to my perception of it – I still get it; I still consider it an overstatement. The self-concious opening and closing of the piano lids (the pianists only interaction with their instruments) seemed contrived to me, but I am aware that the cultural context of the 1950′s is long gone.

Straight after came a selection of pieces from Music for Piano, Cage’s series of experiments in zen-like, automatic music creation. Each piece consists of a short phrase made with the piano as a noisemaker as opose to an instrument. The body of the piano was struck, the strings were plucked and rubbed, dissonant chords were juxtaposed with individual, sweet ringing notes. There were some interesting noises and the occasional serendipitious marriage of parts hinted at a melody or rhythm. All the pieces were short, studiedly sparse and existed in their own sonic universe.

While I hate the ‘anybody could do that’ argument, I think that if you put anyone with an interest in sound in front of a grand piano and said “see what noises you can make – don’t go crazy, but have a play”, they’d come up with much the same thing. The performance left me cold, it felt like there was almost nothing to say about it. It lacked emotional context or hooks. Again, I’m aware that the time when such experiments were new and even shocking is long gone, but even so, it felt like the sonic equivalent of reading an artists notebook – preliminary ideas, ponderings on the nature of their art. Is it necessary or rewarding to perform such pieces?

After the interval the musicians were joined by alternative comic Stewart Lee, one of my favourite stand-ups. He read short stories, selected at random from a pile, while the pianists improvised sounds with their pianos and a variety of childrens toys and noisemakers. This was Indeterminacy, a seeming development of the ideas explored in Music for Piano. Some of the stories were amusing, and Lee’s deadpan delivery suited their often inconsequential, diary-like structure. Again, some of the noises made were wonderful, my particular favourite being the hand-fan held to the piano strings resulting in undulating, textured drones. It was, however, somewhat boring – a word one probably shouldn’t use in a seroius review of classical music, but there we go. The lesson of the excersize was nothing new to me.

I fear this music (inverted commas) has dated irrepearably. The ideas Cage was exploring have undoubtably and tangibly influenced much music since, but to me these very early stepping stones have little or no impact anymore – the debt to Cage needs to be respected and remembered, but more interesting things have been done since.

There were aspects of the live experience that were fascinating to me, though. One was the obvious intention of the composer for any sound to be considered a part of the performance. In post-concert discussions people were clearly trying to work out how they fitted in. It also struck me that whilst one could go anywhere where there is relative silence (a church, the countryside) and decide to scrutinise the sound and the sound alone, the very fact that a performance of Cage’s music is deliberately and directly about the sonic environment subtly but essentially changes the way one listens. A church or a hilltop holds it’s own aesthetic and personal implications. A concert hall is about sound and performance. For this reason, the relevance of Cage’s musical aesthetic will live on.

SOUND BLOG – Australia, Feb 2011 by thereverseengineer

Top-loading Washing Machine, 10/2/11
SOUND BLOG – Australia, Feb 2011: Top loading washing machine 10/02/11 by thereverseengineer

In 2003 a review I’d written won a competition on the BBC Collective website. My prize was supposed to be an album by Broadway Project but there was a mix up and I received Broadcast‘s Haha Sound instead. Unfamiliar as I was with both bands I didn’t even realise and happily settled down to listen. A few weeks later I received an email from the Collective explaining that I’d been sent the wrong prize, and should I wish to switch CDs that it wouldn’t be a problem. By this time, however, I’d firmly fallen for Broadcast and couldn’t bear the idea of parting with Haha Sound. Since then I’ve followed their releases closely and caught up with what I missed and I’ve come to know and love a wonderful body of work. It was with considerable sadness, then, that I read about the death of front woman Trish Keenan from complications associated with pneumonia.

Broadcast are often described as an ‘art pop’ band, which I guess fits, but as so often with such pigeonholes it barely scratches the surface of their unique and gorgeous sound. I also remember reading a review in which Trish Keenan’s voice was described as ‘dead pan’. It wasn’t meant in a negative way and I can see where the reviewer was coming from, but again it’s misrepresentational. ‘Matter of fact’ would be a better description, I feel, and the fact of the matter was beauty. It was an unaffected, beautiful lullaby of a voice that contrasted and complimented the lilting, low-fi nature of the instrumentation, which ranged from spine-tingling twinkliness to static-soaked experiments and extended technique. The overall effect was ethereal, warm and soothing.

Broadcast had a genuinely artistic approach to writing music. That is, for all the 60′s psychadelia, 80′s synthwave and 00′s electronica that are evident influences in their music, they sought to originate. For example, Keenan constructed many of her lyrics, particularly for 2005′s Tender Buttons, by mixing up lines and randomly rearranging them, à la William S. Borroughs. The result was sometimes challenging but always poetic. (‘In autosuggested pathways you are caught‘ , ‘Michael, Michael Michael / This is not your saw tooth wave‘.) Meanwhile the band tailored their sound in unique ways – parts of Haha Sound were recorded in a church, for instance, lending the album its deep, penetrating resonance.

My personal favourite moments are Ominous Clouds from Haha Sound and Corporeal from Tender Buttons. The former is almost nursery rhyme-like in it’s gentle dreaminess but self-aware and poignant in it’s message of avoiding the big wide world for a while longer – it’s like she’s giving herself permission (‘I’ve got to find a place / be myself and learn to face / the ominous clouds / But not now, not now not now‘). The latter is a peculiar distillation of the automatic instinctiveness of sex and the inscrutable beauty that it can invoke – it’s like a biology text book rewritten as poetry (‘With and without mind / With or without Darwin / Classify me / The strings of my autonomy‘.)

I’ve been deeply moved, challenged and thrilled by Keenan’s voice over the years, and I’m gutted that I’ll never see Broadcast live (bafflingly they were always one of the bands I decided to ‘catch next time’).

Thanks for the music, Trish.

To me, Matthew Herbert is a musical hero and key inspiration, but as with many of my favourite artists I enjoy a mixed relationship with his work. His 90′s microhouse still gets me fidgeting on the dancefloor and his Big Band project was a beautifully realised synergy of politics, creative concept and music. However, his more recent output has failed to grab me. 2002′s Plat Du Jour, created entirely from recordings of food or food related sources, was high on concept but weaker on music. His more song based approach, such as 2006′s Scale, sounds somewhat flat to me.

Underlining all Herbert’s work is his fascinating (not to mention obsessive) personal manifesto for music making, which lays down rules about originality and the integration rather than discarding of ‘mistakes’. It calls for strict adherence to an overarching concept which dictates everything from sample sources and sound design right down to track names and tempos. This resonates with me – I love music as a wider artistic statement. If a tune is composed from the ground up with elements that comply to a particular message I appreciate it all the more, even if I do have to read about the concept first. In this way it’s like visual art – it often helps to read the blurb in a gallery to fully appreciate the work.

However, when listening to an album it has to be the music that counts once all’s said and done. If it’s not interesting to listen to then it’s failing as music, however strong the concept. This is where I believe Herbert’s recent recordings have faltered – one can chin-stroke at the ideas behind them but they lack sonic interest compared to his freer, funkier dance music. It’s telling that in my experience he’s always been better live, where one can see the processes involved in the music making – live looping, imaginative sampling (tea cups smashing, newspapers being ripped up), traditional instrumentation and vocals, all adding to a greater whole. One Day (the name marrying the concert with his current trilogy of albums) bridged the gap between concept, creative process and music more fully than any of his live performances I’ve seen to date.

The concert was an interpretation of the Guardian newspaper from Saturday 25th September 2010 – a bold thing to attempt, particuarly given that the whole thing was written in 6 weeks. The ever reliable London Sinfonietta, a jazz quartet (nestled up in the Royal Box), and singer Eska joined Herbert who was front stage at London’s Royal Festival Hall behind his array of machines and keyboards. One Day could have simply misfired, or been pretentious nonsense, but it proved to be witty, thought-provoking, original and hugely entertaining.

Proceedings began with the audience being given a copy of the paper in question, which acted as program and guide. With satisfying forward thinking Herbert had taken out an advert in the Review section that day which acted as a welcome and statement of intent on the night. Before each song a compare led us through the thinking behind the work, directing our attention to the articles that inspired the music and highlighting the links between them. This was very welcome – it would have been an impenetrable experience without. Complimenting the music (some of which was composed from recordings of the paper being produced at Guardian HQ) were projected videos with live sound effects by a foley artist and various on-stage antics such as live cookery and paper cutting.

From the unavoidable rustling of papers to parts that were actually directed by the conductor, audience participation was very much a part of things. We had to jangle our keys during a song about housing and rub credit cards together during a piece about a Sothebys auction. When food was the subject we were encouraged to make paper planes out the adverts we considered to represent the highest food miles. As a finale, the audience were divided into sections and our newspapers acted as instruments – beating, ripping and shaking in time with the music. The participation was great fun and broke down the ‘performer / audience’ barrier somewhat (although it was amusing to see Herbert getting slightly flustered when we continued outside the strict windows he’d composed for!) Most people wore bemused, amused looks – it was kind of insane, but it worked.

The connections Herbert drew between various parts of the paper and the means by which he represented them on the night deftly highlighted the tragedy, absurdity, mundanity and hilarity of popular media culture. One piece had the jazz band somberly covering Status Quo’s ‘In The Army Now’ whilst a video was shown of Francis Rossi and the boys jovially larking about at an army training camp. Meanwhile the audience were directed to articles about World War I gas attacks and there was even something to do with a gas mask on stage, the specifics of which escape me!

It would be too convoluted to detail all the comparisons and contrasts drawn between the Guardian stories, but others included an obituary Vs a zombie video game Vs a dead mothers favourite brownie recipe and a West Bank housing controversy Vs. Middle England domestic bliss. The latter involved volunteers building a wall out of red bricks on which they mounted a window in front of which they erected a lounge scene in which 2 girls watched telly and drank wine whilst the Guardian gardening columnist tended to window boxes ‘outside’. It sounds like chaos but it hung together surprisingly well. It was creaky but fascinating, encouraging one to think and laugh – much like Herberts music.

Speaking of the music, while it had its moments, it was somewhat forgettable for the most part. In fact if this had been a regular Herbert album, my critique of it falling slightly flat would apply. But being allowed into his creative world and the multi-sensory nature of the show took it beyond just music – it was far more a performance art piece than a straight concert. As such it was the perfect demonstration of Matthew Herberts creative intention which itself far exceeds sound, and a performance that refreshed his place on my ‘heroes’ list.

Read Matthew Herbert’s article in the Guardian about One Day, or watch the video.

Browse the posts of this blog and you might notice a few of trends, two of which are: Konono No.1 / Congotronics, and Techno. Imagine my delight, then, when I recently discovered a series of remixes of the former in the style of the latter. So inspired was I, in fact, that I’ve made one of my very own. Read and listen on, friends…

At risk of repeating myself, Konono No.1 are the hypnotic electric thumb piano maestros of the Congo and weavers of such musical delights the likes of which my ears have never before been blessed. Congotronics is a sort of blanket name for their style of music and a series of albums featuring them and their contemporaries. There are many similarities between their music and Western dance music, particularly techno and trance, so the recent remixes are a match made in heaven. To my utter bemusement I once managed to clear a dancefloor of eclectic world music and dance fans by playing Konono No.1, so perhaps tweaking the music for a more conventional Western dancefloor has been a long time coming.

Part 1 saw Burnt Friedman let loose on Konono No.1′s Rubaczech resulting in a wonderful, funky shuffle of a tune. The scattery nature of the originial material is maintained as the muffled background whistles, whoops, plinks and plonks replicate the live nature of Konono’s records. Their trademark fuzzy thumb pianos are used to nice effect, both rhythmically and melodically. A heavy kick adds a welcome dancefloor element.

On the flip, dubstep pioneer Shackleton turns Kasai Allstars Mukuba into a dark, brooding epic. However, as seems to be characteristic of many modern production styles, rarely is an idea left to flourish or evolve, a menagerie of sections are instead allowed jostle up against eachother. The technical proficiency is undeniable – Shackleton clearly knows exactly what he is doing – but being a fan of long, evolving grooves I found this too piecemeal to really get into.

Part 2 features Mark Ernestus of dub techno outfit Basic Channel turning Konono’s Masikulu into an irresistable techno floor-filler. The Dub version is a long roller, with snapshots of delayed, distorted thumb piano filth and vocal snippets over a beautiful, rolling, bass heavy 4-to-the-floor beat. The Beat version strips the tune down to the dancefloor fundementals, delivering just the groove.

Now, when I first heard all of these remixes, I was left a little bit cold. Ok, not cold, but I wasn’t hot and flustered like I’d expected to be. Where was the stomping, up-tempo, downright dirtiness of the originals? Where were the thumb pianos? How come nobody had made a version that was, essentially, a Konono No.1 tune over a techno beat? My arrogance/naivety/ambition kicked in and I decided that if the commissioned remixers hadn’t done that then I jolly well would. With source material of such vitality to work with, surely it wouldn’t be that hard?

A couple of days and one Reverse Engineer remix later, I realise that it’s not a case of how hard it is, it’s a case of whether there’s any point. Konono No.1 et al have covered the up-tempo trance-like scattery stomp over their 25 years of music making. Why reinvent the wheel when their wheel is so goddamned perfect? Also, to make techno (or dubstep in Shackleton’s case), a producer needs to stay within a certain tempo range. This isn’t a stubborn, self-imposed limitation so much as a naturally arising trait of being a producer interested in a particular style. A 160bpm gallop ain’t dub techno.

So my effort at remixing also fell short of a ‘Konono No.1 tune with a techno beat’, and in the process of producing it I came to appreciate Burnt Friedman, Shackleton and Mark Ernestus’ expertise all the more. Nevertheless, I’m very pleased with my version, and I present it here (well, at the top of this post) for your listening and downloading pleasure. Unfortunately the official remixes are 12″ vinyl only and not online, but I encourage you to hunt them down in whatever way you can!

Moritz von Oswald Trio: Live in New York

Listen to Nothing 4 from Moritz von Oswald Trio Live in New York

Oh, I had high hopes for this. There it was in the record shop rack in all it’s beautifully packaged glory – double vinyl only with free CD, and a line-up that reads like a who’s who of modern techno. Moritz von Oswald of course, with regular trio-completers Vladislav Delay and Max Loderbauer, plus special guests Carl Craig and Francois K. So arguably some of the most important and innovative scene-shapers in the history of dance music.

I listened idly, then I listened properly (headphones on, lights off, no distractions), then I listened properly again. On the third listen I just had to give in and accept I don’t really like it. Vertical Ascent, the Trio’s 2009 release on which many of the loops and beats for Live in New York are based, was an interesting and engaging piece of work. Live in New York, however, meanders and drags. An improvised performance is always going to have it’s highs and lows, with some parts working and others not, but given the experience and artistry of the musicians involved I think the lows outnumber the highs here.

Some phrases far outstay their welcome relative to their sonic interest, the bell-like loop on the first track, Nothing 1, being a good example – I audibly sighed with relief when this was faded out after 6 or so minutes. Other parts sound almost cluelessly improvised, with certain synthesizer phrases nothing more than a simple, atonal scale culminating in a sustained dirge. There is a surprising lack of bass which lends the performance an air of constant build up with no peak. Not that I think all techno should be banging, bass-heavy and dancefloor friendly by any means – the genre is easily mature enough to deliver a listening experience of sound design and atmosphere – but a bit of backbone wouldn’t have gone amiss.

That said, Live in New York does have it’s moments. The musicians clearly work well off eachother and there are moments when Vladislav Delay’s live, looped percussion and the atmospheric doodles from the keyboards and samplers settle into pleasing grooves, deep textures and genuine warmth. Unfortunately, these are few and far between and not maximised.

Mirko Loko – Seventy Nine Remixes

Listen to Ricardo Villalobos’ ‘Hilery’s Chant’ remix of Tahktok

Good old Cadenza (Luciano’s label) deliver another slice of forward thinking and involving minimal techno. I’m not familiar with the original, but this 12″ provides a Carl Craig and a Ricardo Villalobos remix. Can’t ask for much more than that!

Carl Craig’s ‘Soundscape’ Remix of Love Harmonic is a driving, percussive, tribal detroit workout. It doesn’t hit the highs of some of his other remix work but the soundscape elements that no doubt lend the remix it’s title add some nice dancefloor atmospherics.

It’s Villalobos’ ‘Hilery’s Chant’ remix of Tahktok that you need this record for, though. I’m a huge fan of Ricardo Villalobos and while I don’t like everything he puts out I respect him for doing his own thing and pushing the scene forward. Many of his productions are jaw-dropping dancefloor delights or intricate rhythmic epics, but rarely are they delicate and beautiful. This track, however, is both.

A sustained, sweet note carries us through most of the journey while a children’s chant ebbs and flows alongside his bubbly beats. Interest is expertly maintained over the 16 minute duration – Villalobos’ subtleties of production combined with his natural ear for a rhythmic hook are at the forefront, here. Sublime stuff, and one to file alongside early IDM, perhaps, rather than adding to the party box.

London has recently been given a load of hire bikes courtesy of major Boris Johnson, the taxpayer and Barclays Bank. One enterprising anarchist edited a row of them outside my office yesterday (Fashion Street, off Brick Lane), and I salute him/her! Matching the font and printing transparent stickers to amend the corporate sponsorship to read ‘Fuck Barclays’ is inspired!

Fuck Barclays - London's Boris Bikes