Hidiho, the Friday Night Special returns. I will be brief, so you can start listening as soon as possible. The first half hour is dedicated to some of my favorite techhouse and minimal tracks of the last few weeks. The second half is rolling train techno all the way, with tracks by Marco Effe, Mark Broom and Marco Brugattu, finishing off with Christian Smith’s take on an Underworld classic. Enjoy the ride:
A while back I promised you a cooled down, chilled edition of the FNS. Well, here it is. You could even say it is more appropriate for a Sunday afternoon than a Friday night, but don’t let that put you off. This mix is filled with some great slow tracks (100-110 BPM), spanning three decades of electronic music history. From the latest minimal, to pioneers of electronica, to early-90′s acid, it’s all in there. The finale consists of a couple of my favorite ambient tracks. Fly awyay:
Mirror’s Edge (2008) is an underrated video game. The unique dystopian atmosphere, taking place in a picture-perfect white glass metropolis, that is nevertheless continuously under surveillance and where privacy doesn’t exist, reminds of the brilliant novel We (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
The game takes you free-running and parkouring through this metropolis as a sole resistance fighter on the run for police, all the while accompanied by some really decent electronic ambient music, reminiscent of Aphex Twin and Underworld.
The track posted below is an example of this music. It’s not brilliant, but pretty evocative of this game’s futuristic atmosphere, which I think shows what some games at least conceptually are capable of.
I can’t stop playing this track since I discovered it on the 1992-2002 album a few weeks ago. It was a bonus track on that compilation. From the style I’m guessing it was produced during the studio sessions for Beaucoup Fish. A fat, sluggish beat, good build-up and great vocals from Karl Hyde:
It’s nothing like the Underworld of the good old days, but this track from the new Barking album is reasonably ok (-edit: upon repeated listening, it’s actually really good). Like the beat and the synths and the dark electronic glitches.
On November 2nd Warp Records will release a new album called Small Craft On A Milk Sea by the legendary Brian Eno. After a recent cooperation with Underworld’s Karl Hyde he has appearantly decided to make a new electronic album. On his new website you can see the track listing and some of the artwork. One track has been released, which can be streamed below:
This track is full of energy and I think it’s very exciting and promising. This new teaming up of Eno and Warp could work out very well!
Time for some cheering up, with all this depressing political news from the Netherlands. Here’s a nice techno/techhouse/minimal/dub set in a podcast from Utrecht techno luminary Nuno dos Santos, with tracks from Modeselektor, Kode 9, Martyn and Underworld, to remind you of the summer. Great intro.
This became available two hours ago, the single from the new Underworld album (will be released at the end of this summer), called Scribble. Download here (mp3) from the official Underworld website. A clear departure from the more ambient/minimal oriented Oblivion With Bells album. Makes me curious of the long version, which will be played for the first time on Pete Tong’s BBC radio show on May 15.
I don’t know how I could have missed this. In November, Underworld and Brian Eno have released a compilation cd: Underworld vs. The Misterons – Athens, with tracks from Laurent Garnier, Moodyman, Squarepusher and two original tracks by Underworld & Eno. It is a downtempo, jazzy album. Reviews here and here. Check out this song: Brian Eno & Karl Hyde – Beebop Hurry (It is a promotional .mp3, it’s not on youtube yet) and this song: Laurent Garnier – Gnanmankoudji. Or go here to listen to what Underworld is doing in the studio right now.
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EDIT: This track is amazing:
It’s from 1970 by the way.
