What Dave Segal recently wrote about the darkling sounds of King Midas Sound:

[Producer] Kevin Martin and vocalist Roger Robinson strikes me as a fantastical fantasy project hatched from two of Charles Mudede's biggest musical crushes—Burial and Tricky.

The duo's album on Hyperdub, Waiting for You... (due in November), sounds like an ideal merging of those artists' phenomenal talents. Difference is, Robinson can really sing, emitting creamy, soulful sotto-voce sentiments in wispy clouds over Martin's subtly noir-ish lovers dubstep; main exception is "Earth a Kill Ya," a doom-laden, Linton Kwesi Johnson/SpaceApe-style ecological-warning manifesto.

A decade ago, I wrote:

If one listens to "Feed Me" — an update of Bob Marley's "Concrete Jungle" — on Tricky's debut album Maxinquaye, their differences [between Marley and Tricky] become apparent. Though gloomy, Marley's "Concrete Jungle" was essentially inspirational: Out of the darkness of the city, he desperately hopes that "sweet life/must be somewhere to be found." But for Tricky, this concrete jungle is not something you faintly hope to escape, it is now your only religion: "You keep me singing while I'm drowning down into that two tone vision/I have been raised in this place and now concrete is my religion." "Feed Me" is fragmented, incomplete, uncertain. Tricky's is a world inhabited by burned out souls and "ghetto youth" who are not dangerous or potentially political, but vulnerable and not "free from love for one master."

Tricky is to Marley what SpaceApe is to Linton Kwesi Johnson. Tricky is in the aftermath of Marley, and SpaceApe is in the aftermath of LKJ. And where does this understanding locate Roger Robinson? He is in the aftermath of the Lonely Lover, Gregory Isaacs. Robinson is the dub of Isaacs. Proof? Listen to "Meltdown":

And then listen to Isaacs' classic, "Night Nurse":

Sub Pop subsidiary Hardly Art is giving music lovers an early Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hannukah gift with a label sampler that scoops up some of its best releases from this year. Download the compilation here.

The 15-track digital-only album contains tracks by Le Loup, Talbot Tagora, the Pica Beats, the Dutchess & the Duke, the Moondoggies, Arthur & Yu, and Pretty & Nice.

Seattle producer Ill Cosby releases a four-track EP today titled Lo Oyen. His two originals, the title track and "Kalakuta," get remixed by Birmingham, England's Emvee (Wireblock) and Austin, Texas' Dubbel Dutch (Palms Out Sounds), respectively. This is hectic, action-packed business for highly advanced dance-floors and sound systems equipped with large subwoofers. Cosby runs UK funky, house en Español, and humid afrobeat through his acute sensibilities (he's one of the most thoughtful commenters on this here blog and a discerning DJ, as well), cooking up some spicy DJ food with lots of rhythmic fiber, to boot.

Lo Oyen will be available for three weeks exclusively at Juno, then will have a wider release via iTunes, Amazon, and other digital outlets.

Cosby also just updated the website of his label, Car Crash Set, with more information on upcoming releases and new artists. You can hear more CCS music here. Finally, you can hear Ill's bass-heavy, avant-dance-music webcast, Cosby Show Nights, Tuesdays on glitch.fm.

Seattle hiphop producer/MC Datz Cold is making his five-track Paranekroi EP available for free through Halloween. Go here to download/listen to it.

Here's something I wrote about Datz Cold in 2004, which applies to the above release, as well:

It's tough to make dark hiphop without sounding at least slightly corny, but Seattle's Datz Cold (Jeremy Moss) instills a genuine chill with each of his tar-encrusted electro-funk tracks. Datz Cold's debut disc, 2003's A Green Hell, sounds like a lost gem from WordSound's Crooklyn bunker. "Surreal like Argento," Datz Cold raps on "Jaws of Life," and his own cuts exude the creepily gothic aura animating that Italian horror-film auteur's work. While Moss is retiring his Zero BPM label and Datz Cold moniker after this gig, he plans to continue creating sounds that give even thugs the heebie-jeebies.

Moss' current project By Proxy is also worth checking.

Seattle producer Splinters (Ben Torrence, currently living in Madison, Wisconsin, but planning to return here next August) is offering his new album, In the Footsteps of Insects, for free download here (though you can pay the man whatever you wish, if you so desire).

The third full-length by Splinters, the 16-track work finds Torrence honing his immaculately crafted IDM into compact pieces that are oddly funky and sweetly tuneful without being precious. The sound falls somewhere between Raster-Noton's scrupulously minimal abstractions and the Oval/Kreidler/To Rococo Rot axis of introverted melodiousness.

Torrence accurately describes In the Footstep of Insects as "a bug-themed affair full of crickety clicks, chirps, & buzzes, tech-hop-ish beetle hoe-downs, Summery melodic Dragonfly hums, and dubby techno crawlers." It's quirky without being gimmicky, full of fascinating details without seeming absurdly micromanaged. Once you get to know it, it's a real charmer.

Torrence—who plays in Bookmobile and the Lunch Buddy Program—is also offering his previous Splinters releases, Out of Elements, Metal Petals, The Watchmaker, and Arc EP, for free download. They're all worth exploring.

Well, duh.

The LA Times reports:

The Flaming Lips have already recorded a follow-up to “Embryonic.” The band will release a track-by-track interpretation of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” in the near future, which it recorded with Stardeath and the White Dwarfs, a band that features Coyne’s nephew Dennis.

Henry Rollins and Peaches make guest appearances on the album, Coyne told the crowd during a pre-concert question-and-answer session. A Flaming Lips spokesman says the album will likely be an iTunes-only release, at least initially.

The real question is: Will it be totally trippy when synced up with Christmas on Mars?

The Flaming Lips' new album, Embryonic is out now, and it is reportedly a fantastic return to freaked-out form for the band.

Converge are not the fastest metal band, or the most melodic, or the most technical. Instead, they are able to meticulously combine those elements to become one of the most perfectly balanced and unique. With every release they push their peerless sound in new and complex directions, continuously reaffirming themselves as one of the most important heavy bands on the planet. They’ve been putting out records for 15 years, and though they’ve spawned any number of bands that site them as influences, I’ve still never heard a single one that was actually able to duplicate their sound. Axe to Fall changes styles and moods several times throughout the record, moving from full-on barrage to stoned-out riffs, back to the brutal, then to clean, pretty melodies at the tail end. After this many years, it’s clear that Converge doesn’t feel their sound has to fit any specific category or genre, and that’s a refreshing attitude in a scene that feels stagnant all too often. More than anything, Axe to Fall feels like a record made by a band trying to keep itself invigorated with a genre it has already mastered — the fact that it’s also brilliant just comes with the territory.

Anti-Pop Consortium
Fluorescent Black
(Big Dada)

[We receive a lot of quality electronic-music releases at The Stranger—way more than we can cover in the paper itself. With that in mind, I hope to frequently post brief reviews on Line Out of albums and EPs that I think deserve your attention.]

For a minute in the early ’00s, New York quartet Anti-Pop Consortium sounded like hiphop’s future. All three MCs flowed distinctively and smartly about the personal and political, the groin and the brain, while also producing spectacularly odd electro-funk backdrops. But the center could not hold amid all that maverick talent, and APC split in 2002.

Fluorescent Black is their comeback album, and if they’ve smoothed some of Arrhythmia and Tragic Epilogue’s serrated edges, they’re still plenty strange and inventive (the Steve Vai-esque metal fanfare that kicks off disc opener “Lay Me Down” is one of the greatest red herrings in recent musical history). Beans, High Priest, and M. Sayyid drop dense, dexterous, highly metaphorical verses that take several listens to absorb while producer Earl Blaize continues to hone his avant-bling tone painting and funky rhythmic extravagance (e.g., “Timpani” builds an off-kilter beat from said drum). Fluorescent Black can get the party started while also impressing the soundboys and literary profs. It excitingly fills the APC-shaped void from which hiphop was suffering.

As of yesterday, Jessamine’s self-titled 1994 debut album (the esteemed Kranky Records’ third ever release) was languishing in Everyday Music’s discount bins for… 95 cents. Huh.

Jessamine is a finessed updating of Silver Apples-style electronic rock, suffused with sublimely chilled atmospheres, eerie drones, an epicurean, space-rockish tonal palette, and hushed, ice-maiden vocals courtesy of Dawn Smithson. Seriously, although it could use a remastering (the CD sounds way too quiet to 2009 ears), this is one of the best (post)-rock records ever to come out of Seattle. And it's selling for 95 cents. Huh.

[We receive a lot of quality electronic-music releases at The Stranger—way more than we can cover in the paper itself. With that in mind, I hope to frequently post brief reviews on Line Out of electronic-oriented albums and EPs that I think deserve your attention.]

Ethernet
144 Pulsations of Light
(Kranky)

California producer Ethernet (Tim Gray) makes his Kranky Records debut with 144 Pulsations of Light, a seven-course serving of lightly toasted techno and beatific, gauzy ambient. One can imagine several of these cuts wafting their way onto Kompakt's Pop Ambient compilation series (compliment). Gray keeps the 4/4 pulse muffled below modestly opulent synth textures and field recordings executed in Japan and northern California. "Vaporous" is almost too self-explanatory, an American take on Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, but it's still transportive, its beats like a runner's heart heard amplified from a quarter-mile away. "Seaside" lulls with exquisitely gentle beauty, like an E'd-out Eno. "Temple" murmurs like a convention of monks and fuzzily tolls like a bell heard five fathoms deep, its nearly 13 minutes a coming attraction trailer for an existence of serene meditation and tranquil flotation.

Like much of Kranky's output (see excellent 2009 releases by Tim Hecker, Greg Davis, Gregg Kowalsky, and the soon-coming White Rainbow), 144 Pulsations serves as an adult version of Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Babies series of albums. As someone who experiences much stress in his life, I find myself often playing Kranky CDs first thing in the AM and last thing at night, as a way to calibrate my nervous system to these crucial times of the day. Ethernet is yet another skilled purveyor of music that effectively centers the busy, beleaguered 21st-century urbanite.

"Based on my research and experience in using sound for induction of meditative states, I set out to apply trance-inducing sonic effects to drone-ambient music," Gray writes. "The intent of the album is to produce an introspective sonic environment conducive to self-healing work and voyaging into new states of awareness." Mission accomplished, Tim.

Melvins released a remix album Sept. 29 titled Chicken Switch (Ipecac). The lineup of producers taking stabs at the legendary dirge-metal group's canon is fantastic. It includes Eye of Boredoms, Matmos, Sunroof!, , Christoph Heeman, Lee Ranaldo, Merzbow, Kawabata Makoto, and Farmersmanual (was wondering where these mad Austrians had been).

Instead of revamping single tracks, each of the remixers had carte blanche to plunder an entire album by Melvins. Judging from the tracks I've heard so far, the results are intriguing and bracing, encompassing multi(ne)farious noise abstractions, bruising rock, zonked-out chanting, and all manner of drones (Panacea's weak Electric 6-style electro rock is the only dud so far). Check out Eye and Lee Ranaldo's reworkings below.