a-void : music by deemo
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Rapidly aging reviews: Jam City, Mike Gao, Pearson Sound
Posting is light around here while I plough through Polaris Music Prize listening obligations, but please accept these slightly outdated reviews for now, plus a mix I just finished last night that I will put up this week. I love you and want you to be happy. – Deemo Jam City Dream A Garden Night…
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New mix: Buss it!
This is a fun one. Lots of bouncy grime and du… okay, we don’t call it that anymore. But some lively non-4/4 beats and hot bars from the likes of Novelist and Redders (on the Sam Binga cut). Something to put a spring in your step. It’ll be a lot more fun than the server…
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Catching up: Björk, John Carpenter, DJ Clent
Björk Vulnicura One Little Indian I guess this is Bjork’s breakup record but I always heard, well, all of them as breakup records. All that vocalese and weird phrasing and unprompted high-note-hitting screams angst to these ears. It’s just that on Vulnicura the lyrics match up to the overall mood. You can’t mistake “History of…
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New mix: Paintbox
When it comes to labels making four on the floor tunes, I play favourites. Lot of stalwarts of my digital crates here – Kompakt, obviously, Hyperdub, Get Physical, M_nus – and a few relatively new entrants like Black Acre and Aus Music, neither of which I would dare sleep on. PS: this mix is gym-tested-and-approved.…
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The rest of 2014
One thing I would like to know is whether critics in the pre-digital era used to feel the same sense of angst over the pile of unlistened-to albums at the end of the year that I do now. It’s not just that there may be great records lurking in the unheard – that’s inevitable –…
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New mixes: Subscript/Superscript
If January is for resolutions, what does it mean that most of them never see out the month? I’d argue that January is just where the regrets of the past year go to die. With that in mind, I’ll be getting two regrets out of the way right now – I regret that I didn’t…
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a-void.ca’s best albums of 2014
WHERE IS T-SWIFT? Ok, I admit it, I didn’t listen to it. Nor did I get through albums by Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Jessie J, Keyshia Cole, Calvin Harris, et al and sundry. I also didn’t hear all of Ariel Pink, Foxygen, Swans, TV on the Radio, Leonard Cohen, Julian Casablancas and too many others…
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Cot Damn Fall ’14 Masterpiece No. 3: Clap! Clap!
Clap! Clap!Tayi BebbaBlack AcreReleased Sept. 8 2014 Maybe it was the mysterious nature of the Italy-based producer behind Tayi Bebba, but the phrase ‘cultural appropriation’ is now probably the first thing dance aficionados associate with Clap! Clap!. That’s a shame. Let’s assume for a moment that the person is a white man; is this then…
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New mix: Jaws
This one is especially rugged – lots of raw, sort of distorted sounds, though there’s a nice mellow bit in the middle with the Mala single (which is gorgeous) and the SBTRKT/Jessie Ware collab. My favourite tune in here is definitely the DJ Big O remix of the BFlecha tune. I could mix a whole…
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New mix: Not Foliage
With apologies/homage to John Oliver’s rant on native advertising, I titled this mix after the under-the-radar vibe of these tracks. Only one or two of them are big attention-grabbing room-fillers; the rest are slow-burners, grow-ers, subtly-getting-their-hooks-into-you-so-as-you-don’t-notice kind of tunes. Don’t sleep on the Tommy Four Seven track, and definitely don’t miss Henrik Schwarz’s funky all-noise…