After ditching the Games moniker in favor of the italo disco-esque Ford and Lopatin, the two men behind the Software label just uploaded a new track to their Soundcloud under their first name. Between Ford's recent Airbird split and Lopatin's upcoming album as Oneohtrix Point Never, fans shouldn't hold their breath on much new Games material beyond fun internet freebies. Nonetheless, F&L's chopped rendition of the Manhattans' "Crazy" is a great romp in '80s R&B, channeling the duo's danceparty-ready mix series, Heaven Can Wait, which you can download for free on their Tumblr. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones via No Modest Bear
Ford & Lopatin were kind enough to send us their jazz-prog "Roughly Fusion Mix II," and it seems they've raised the bar even higher since their last one, "Metal Fatigue." This mix starts off with Alain Renaud jammer "Opening Opus 19" --a song appearing on Ursa Records, a label run by Richard Pinhas of Heldon, who appears twice more here-- and then transitions into Claude Larson, an alter-ego of Klaus Netzle, who was most famously known for Bach for Computer, under pseudonym, Carlos Futura. There's a great Frank Zappa pick, "Night School", taken from the 1986 instrumental album Jazz From Hell, which was performed sans Mothers of Invention on the super-baller, mouth-watering Synclavier synth. Zappa collaborator and Synclavier user Jean-Luc Ponty also makes an appearance, on the heels of fellow countryman Patrick Gauthier, whose "Mixtur-Trautonium" appears on the deliciously titled Bébé Godzilla-- re-released on Magma's Seventh Records in 1994. Prog on. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones
Ford & Lopatin: "Roughly Fusion Mix II"
Now that you've heard the sounds that inspired F&L's Channel Pressure, get your own copy from the duo's own Mexican Summer imprint, Software
Just a little less than a year ago, New Jersey indie band Big Troubles filmed themselves traveling to multiple fast food joints in their native Ridgewood and stuffing their faces with hamburgers, hot dogs, and soft drinks until they vomited. Some people found it repulsive, others found it amusing, but most of us had a hard time discerning whether the band were taking a jab at American overconsumption or trying to make it look kinda cool. Thunderhorse's new video for Ford & Lopatin's "World of Regret" carries this conceit into the virtual realm, seating the Brooklyn production duo at a greenscreened dinner table and watching as they chomp on a seemingly limitless supply of animated sandwiches, spinning pizza pies, and raspberries the size of Nerf balls. When they are nearly buried alive by this cornocopia of digital delights, the video becomes a kind of tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale about gluttony in our beloved information economy. I guess? --Emilie Friedlander, Altered Zones via Gorilla vs. Bear
Channel Pressure LP drops June 7th via the duo's own Mexican Summer imprint, Software
--Previously:
FACT Magazine is streaming the debut full-length from the futuristic production team, Ford and Lopatin, formerly known as Games. But don't expect another That We Can Play; Channel Pressure puts the thick chopped n' screw jams on the back burner and focuses on their intricate, '80s pop side. Best consumed over repeated listens while staring at its cover, which looks like it came straight out of Goosebumps. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones via FACT Magazine
MP3: Ford & Lopatin: "Emergency Room"
Channel Pressure comes out June 7th, buy it from Mexican Summer imprint Software label to hold the piece of wax in your hands. Stay tuned for a totally sick sequel to their Metal Fatigue: All Electric Jazz All Night mix, which drops next week on AZ.
Channel Pressure, the first full-length effort from "futuristic production team" Ford & Lopatin (formerly known as Games), drops June 7th on the duo's new Mexican Summer production imprint, Software. According to Pitchfork, the album will be mixed by Prefuse 73, and based loosely on the concept of "a teenage anti-hero [Joey Rogers], violent robo-jocks, and a record industry run by a super computer." Peep the album art above, and the straightfaced '80s kitsch of album single, "Emergency Room," below. Dad just posted some tourdates. --Emilie Friedlander, Altered Zones
MP3: Ford & Lopatin: "Emergency Room"
01 Scumsoft
02 Channel Pressure
03 Emergency Room
04 Rock Center Paranoia
05 Too Much MIDI (Please Forgive Me)
06 New Planet
07 The Voices
08 Joey Rogers
09 Dead Jammer
10 Break Inside
11 Surrender
12 Green Fields
13 World of Regret
14 G's Dream
Director Franck Deron understands what the men of Games want: fast cars, red lipstick, and the most cutting-edge '80s technology. That's exactly what you get in this vintage car commercial-turned music video for the duo's remix of CFCF's "It Was Never Meant To Be," which appeared on the b-side of last year's That We Can Play EP next to Gatekeeper's reworking of "Strawberry Skies." In other Ford & Lopatin news (as they are now called), the production dream team is gearing up to release a full-length on their brand new Mexican Summer imprint, Software. Look below for the album trailer, which dropped earlier today. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones
Channel Pressure is out June 11th via Software. Read more on the new imprint in AZ editor Emilie Friedlander's interview with Dan Lopatin
MP3: Airbird: "Part of the Game"
MP3: Megafortress: "Omega L.I.F.E."
Dan Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never and Games is quite the young enterpriser. Between recording and touring, founding his own Upstairs CD-R imprint and doing A&R consulting for Hippos in Tanks, his track record over the past few years reads like a healthy reminder that success and creative integrity aren't mutually exclusive. Pitchfork reported Wednesday that Games, his ultra-smooth, "futuristic production team" with Tigercity's Joel Ford, has changed its name to Ford & Lopatin-- presumably, to preempt legal issues with a certain rapper on Interscope.
And now, these two Massachusetts natives and lifelong friends have founded their own imprint via Brooklyn's Mexican Summer, itself a subsidiary of Kemado. The label will be called Software and it's presently slated to release F&L's debut LP in early June, a Oneohtrix Point Never album in September, and miscellaneous goodies from Demdike Stare, Autre Ne Veut, Prefuse 73's Guillermo Herren, Megafortress, and Joel's solo project, Airbird. When we phoned Lopatin on Wednesday, he was sitting in the pair's brand new HQ: a state-of-the-art recording studio built by Kemado founder and producer Tom Clapp, which will double as an office and their very own control room.
AZ: So how did you and Joel link up with Mexican Summer?
Dan: Keith Abramson, the founder, wrote us an email inviting us to come over and see what was going on at the label. When we saw the studio, we got really excited. Having that space and the freedom to work without time restrictions or pay dates appeals to us, because it can take a lot longer than two weeks to do a record. Sometimes we want to jam for 12 hours straight. And I didn't want the pressure. Having a studio built into the label is kind of an old school model-- like Stax Records or something. It's just a rarity, like a vertically integrated label studio. It made us really stoked. No amount of money can replace having a home to make music.
AZ: And a built-in office…
Dan: …and a place to feel like home. It just makes you more productive and creative.
(img credit=Shawn Brackbill)
For the final installment of our year-end mix series, AZ is proud to present a collection of jazz, funk, and fusion classics by Dan Lopatin and Joel Ford of Games, comically dubbed "METAL FATIGUE MIX 2010: ALL ELECTRIC JAZZ ALL NIGHT". See comment thread below for the tracklisting.
Daniel Lopatin: "Metal Fatigue" Favorite Discoveries of 2010 by alteredzones
As 2010 draws to an close, Altered Zones brings you its collective year-end recap. Today, we list our favorite albums of the year. Check our list of tracks here, our list of videos there, and don't forget to stay tuned through the holiday break for daily year-end mixtapes from our favorite artists.
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Before Today [4AD]
MP3: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: "Fright Night (Nevermore)"
When attempting to blurb Ariel Pink's ambitious masterpiece Before Today for my own year-end list, it occurred to me that literally every dialogue about this record and its brilliant, transcendent pop songs had been exhausted elsewhere: Ariel emerges from his bedroom, abandons lo-fi, records in a real studio with real musicians for a real label, drops his breakout record, some irrelevant shit about chillwave, etc. So I enlisted the opinion of chillwave inventor Carles of popular weblog Hipster Runoff fame, a longtime Ariel Pink fan himself, who summed it up like this: “It seems as if perhaps the world has finally caught up with Ariel Rosenberg, and our ears are finally ready for his textures. Before Today is history, while the future is a mystery but today is a gift which belongs to Ariel Pink." --Chris Cantalini
Autre Ne Veut: Autre Ne Veut [Olde English Spelling Bee/Upstairs CDR]
MP3: Autre Ne Veut: "Two Days Of Rain"
Of the many R&B-nodding white guys making conceptual pop music this year, Autre Ne Veut's debut on Olde English Spelling Bee/Upstairs was one of few that had a completely unique spin. While HTDW had a darker, more pained take, ANV was minimal, clubby, filled with strange effects and unusual instrumentation. And, unlike HTDW, his live show was amazing, with him squirming on the floor and flailing his limbs like a wounded lamb. What that lamb proved was that Toni Braxton-loving white guys can have their cake and eat it too, and not in some W'burg 2006-era ironic way. This is the pop music everyone makes in their shower or in front of the mirror, only it's real. --Michael P. McGregor
Big Troubles: Worry [Olde English Spelling Bee]
Big Troubles' LP dreams finally came to fruition in the third quarter of 2010, when Olde English Spelling Bee released their debut full-length, Worry. The 14-track record bristles with buzzing grit and downright catchy vocal parts, penned by Big Troubles co-masterminds/songwriters Alex Craig and Ian Drennan. Their sound is often touted as a perfect marriage of searing shoe-gaze distortion and early '90s radio rock, but the sum of the descriptors proves greater than its parts. Big Troubles truly champion an exciting and relentlessly loud form of rock and roll. --Ian Nelson
Clive Tanaka y su orquesta: Jet Set Siempre 1° [Tall Corn]
MP3: Clive Tanaka y su orquesta: "All Night, All Right"
Clive Tanaka is a mysterious figure. Signs point to him being from Japan, Chicago, Brazil, and other far-flung locales, but no one's been able to pin him down yet. It's almost as if he's attemping to throw you off his path by giving false clues. But the international hook works: His Jet Set Siempre 1° tape melts down sounds from all over the globe into vintage synth bangers. How many people can make a robotic voice sound so damn passionate? In futuristic utopias, Clive Tanaka definitely owns the night. --Jheri Evans
Cloudland Canyon: Fin Eaves [Holy Mountain]
MP3: Cloudland Canyon: "Mothlight Pt.2"
Kip Ulhorn's euphoric plunge into synth-driven psych hides an underlying swell of sadness beneath its gauzy pop structures. With the addition of his wife Kelly to the fray, Ulhorn steers Cloudland Canyon away from its Krautrock roots and into a gloriously lush shoegaze present. The result is some of Cloudland Canyon’s catchiest songwriting yet, ensconced in shimmery pop foam and radiant noise, spiraling ever closer to bliss. --Andy French
Earl Sweatshirt: EARL [OFWFKTA]
OFWGKTA: soon to become a household acronym striking fear into the hearts of parents nationwide. These adolescent Los Angeles natives don't just produce their own warped beats; they spit rhymes that even Ted Bundy would find kinda fucked up. Their now missing member, Earl Sweatshirt, isn't any less twisted than the rest of his crew; he's just able to make some of the most vile verses sound eloquent. On "Assmilk", a track from OFWG founder Tyler's Bastard LP, Earl calls himself the "reincarnation of '98 Eminem", a pronouncement that rings true in both content and delivery. His eponymous LP was self-released earlier this year, and the kid leaves no rock unturned. With themes ranging to threesomes with Pam Anderson and Miley Cyrus to stabbing cops and cannibalism, he's definitely not tackling your everyday high school problems. Unfortunately, his parents failed to see anything creative about this and shipped him off to boot camp (or so we think). Hopefully, he'll take this as a learning experience and come back even more ferocious than before. #freeEARL --Nathan Smith
Games: That We Can Play [Hippos In Tanks]
It's interesting to watch our perception of the '80s evolve from a kitschy, "what was I thinking?" decade into an endearing, "those were the days" one. Once upon a time, the era was the butt of as many jokes as Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Chuck Norris combined. Despite flashbacks of gaudy clothing, nowadays the '80s would seem to have some lasting value after all. With their That We Can Play EP, the Brooklyn electronic duo of Joel Ford and OPN's Daniel Lopatin sums it up in a phantasmagoria of lithe synths, robotic melodies, and stiff drum-machine beats. Their songs bring back childhood memories of lying on the living room floor watching Airwolf and MacGyver, or wishing you had more Atari games to play. It's precisely this sort of nostalgia that makes for GAMES' best instrument. That We Can Play soundtracks our memories with sounds as familiar as they are fresh. --Will Abramson
Gatekeeper: Giza [Merok]
Gatekeeper’s Giza EP is an immaculate sound wave designed to paralyse unexplored areas of the human psyche with fear and delight. "Look in the mirror", say Gatekeeper three times. The only valid boarding pass for this voyage is your soul, so please have it open and ready. Upon launch, "Serpent" burrows its way down to the spinal column, where it takes control of your body with an injection of Front 242 serum straight to the nervous system. The rest is a feverish hallucination of wild contortions and glimpses from horror films that were never made. This EP is literally a killer. --J
How To Dress Well: Love Remains [Lefse/Tri Angle]
MP3: How To Dress Well: "Walking This Dumb (Live)"
How To Dress Well has had an amazing year, and much of that centers around Love Remains. The songs are inspired by R&B from the late '80s and '90s , but they have a distinct bedroom sound that elevates their emotional resonance. The entire album holds together seamlessly, but each track stands just as strong on its own. Love Remains grabs you by the heartstrings and allows you to experience How To Dress Well's most impassioned emotions, and that's no small feat. --Jheri Evans
James Blake: CMYK [R&S]
On this his third EP, released through legendary label R&S, London's unspeakably prolific James Blake came into the collective consciousness and established himself as one of the most forward-thinking, genre-defying, and exciting producer/songwriters of the year. Whilst all four songs on the release continue to hold their own, its status as landmark of the last 12 months is won by the title track's chopped, haunting R&B sample, and its seamless transition from a sparse and subtle, atmospheric arrangement to a heart exploding, sub-bass tour de force. --Sahil Varma
Julian Lynch: Mare [Olde English Spelling Bee]
MP3: Julian Lynch: "Just Enough"
Sound-shaper Julian Lynch composed the low-key, non-traditional psychedelia of Mare in his home states of New Jersey and Wisconsin. With its eclectic instrumental palette, ranging from Eastern to Western and Native American spiritual, the LP boasts more influences than the ear can absorb in one sitting. Like lots of '60s and '70s psych-folk songs, Lynch's have a carefree and endearing yogic leisure about them. --Ryan Ellis
Mark McGuire: Living With Yourself [Editions Mego]
MP3: Mark McGuire: "Brain Storm (For Erin)"
Guitarist Mark McGuire is perhaps best known as one-third of Cleveland Kosmiche revivalists Emeralds, but he has released no less than 30 solo albums in his 23 years on Earth. His Living With Yourself LP on Editions Mego is not only one his most accessible works to date (read: physically available), but also his most technically accomplished. Across eight loop-based sound collages, McGuire whisks through a psychic landscape as vast and minutely textured as America seen from 10,000 feet above. But Living With Yourself is less an exploration of space than an excavation of time, setting McGuire’s processed guitar reveries alongside sound-fragments from the musician’s own childhood. Hard not to feel a little bit like a voyeur when we hear a five-year-old McGuire introducing himself as “Mark”, but who are we to say that pop music hasn’t always been the highest form of autobiography? --Emilie Friedlander
oOoOO: oOoOO EP [Tri Angle]
"NoSummer4u", the track that put San Francisco-based bedroom recorder oOoOO on the map, is an enchanting, gothic-tinged synth-pop ballad, underpinned by foreboding atmospherics and a clinical, hip-hop-inflected beat. His debut self-titled EP presents a darker, more confused vision; oOoOO's skewed take on commercial electro-pop celebrates its decadent glamour while going out if its way to expose its rotten core. From the stuttering, fractured R&B wasteland of "Mumbai" to the barren faux-funk of "Hearts", oOoOO is a beautiful still of urban yearning and mindlessness captured through the stained glasses of a romantic outsider, a guttural fairy tale orchestrated by delayed vamps and diseased synth tones. --Noam Klar
Oneohtrix Point Never: Returnal [Editions Mego]
MP3: Oneohtrix Point Never: "Returnal"
Returnal sees psychedelic-drone linchpin Daniel Lopatin's amorphous, ambient landscapes mapped with more definition than ever before. Attached to OPN's ever-so-slightly rigid structures, the sad, far-out sprawl and bottomless celestial drip of "Drifts" render a consistently beautiful, frequently devastating effect. OPN draws sadness and redemption out of distinctly alien textures with the deftest of touches. --Jack Shankly
Rangers: Suburban Tours [Olde English Spelling Bee]
MP3: Rangers: "Deerfield Village"
Every time I put on the debut full-length from fellow former-DFW-suburb-dweller Rangers, I find myself moved by all the woozy, warped filmstrip vibes, inextricably tied to murky memories of a time and place in my youth. I think this is the kind of (possibly manufactured) nostalgia Nick Sylvester was talking about in his piece about Ariel Pink and hypnagogic pop, where he jokingly describes "half-sung melodies refracted through the quarter-remembered chopper blades of the opening sequence of Airwolf as I fell asleep in my basement." Okay, good point; but Suburban Tours emanates an affectingly real, often melancholic warmth that transcends any of these increasingly derogatory, of-the-moment genre tags.--Chris Cantalini
The Samps: The Samps [Mexican Summer]
On their self-titled debut EP, Haunted Graffiti member/new Nite Jewel full-timer Cole MGN and his side-project the Samps take deconstructed, sample-based pop to a whole new level. Their chopped-and-flipped retro-futuristic electro-funk is never anything less than exhilarating, elevated as much by the crew's obvious affinity for pioneers like the Bomb Squad and Dilla as their desire to create "glorious compressed FM gold." The whole thing's a blast; more than anything else, this shit gets us psyched to see where the Samps and like-minded dudes like Games are going to take this steez next. --Chris Cantalini
Sun Araw: On Patrol [Not Not Fun]
On his fourth LP, Sun Araw, aka Cameron Stallones, delves deeper into the heavy-psych he's been maneuvering in for a few years. On Patrol was not only a manifesto, but a coming out party for this deepest of zoners. His work with Magic Lantern and releases on Not Not Fun and Woodsist have been extremely influential on kids tempering in mystic psych explosions. On Patrol, a 2xLP featuring some of the most vibe-encompassing album art I've seen in a long while (also by Stallones), is the culmination of the exotic psych-dub sound he has been chipping away at for ages-- one that is uniquely Sun Araw, while harking where the diesel rumblings are headed. --Michael P. McGregor
Ty Segall: Melted [Goner]
Whether you pump Dead Moon full of steroids or blast The Stooges through a megaphone, you'll probably get something equally as robust as Ty Segall's third album Melted. It's a throwback album, treading retro ground as far back as The Sonics, and taking a flame to the oil stains that dripped on the floors of garage rock for so many years. Simultaneously, Ty manages to ignite the same fire in the current, gaseous cloud of seemingly omnipotent, hazy, nostalgic rock. Melted is a step forward from the snarky days of his debut Lemons, with Ty letting go of the defiant angst he once harbored. He still keeps that punk rock sword in hand, but rather than flail around wildly, he dishes out calculated thrusts and slices. --Will Abramson
Yellow Swans: Going Places [Type]
MP3: Yellow Swans: "Limited Space"
The Portland drone duo of Peter Swanson and Gabriel Saloman recorded the majority of Going Places after deciding to part ways in 2008. With a backstory like that, it’s hard not to feel touched by these six wooly excursions into the void. Relying more on tape loops and field recordings than their previous efforts, Going Places piles fuzz, hiss, bells, and aborted melodic lines into mile-long vistas of undulating, overtone-speckled squall. It's as dense as a brillo-pad, as tender as a beating heart, and as devastating as the sound of a distant werewolf howling past the point of exhaustion. --Emilie Friedlander
Zola Jesus: Stridulum [Sacred Bones]
Between Stridulum and Valusia and collaborations with LA Vampires and Former Ghosts, 2010 has been a busy year for Zola Jesus. She cast her biggest stride early in the year with Stridulum, a departure from '09's considerably lower-fidelity, "diamond in the rough" album, The Spoils. Stridulum paved the way for a clearer, more sonically refined and diverse Zola, exchanging 15 crunchy, overly saturated noise pop tracks for 6 fully developed, silky smooth synth pad and drum-machine driven songs. Zola's voice is undeniably among the most unique and arresting around. But it would fall flat if the atmosphere that fostered it weren't as lush and subtly nuanced as its counterpart. Swelling crescendos, doom, and gloom in all the right places. --Ric Leichtung
As 2010 draws to an close, Altered Zones brings you its collective year-end recap. Today, we list our favorite tracks of the year, with favorite albums due tomorrow. You can also check our list of the year's favorite music videos here, and don't forget to stay tuned through the holiday break for daily year-end mixtapes from our favorite artists.
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: "Round and Round" [4AD]
MP3: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: "Round and Round"
Balam Acab: "See Birds" [Tri Angle]
MP3: Balam Acab: "See Birds (Moon)"
In a year when many artists explored the meaning of image and identity in an age of faceless, over-abundant information, Balam Acab was initially lumped in with a wave of internet-dwelling producers who put more weight on artifice and presentation than substance. "See Birds" (and the ensuing EP) quickly dusted off any scene associations, and distinguished itself by actually owning a deep-rooted, intoxicating groove. From the triplet sway and watery reverb of the beat, to the the ghostly keyboard stabs, to the feedbacking, echoing sample that drives it, "See Birds" stood out by employing dub for it's sonic palette. Its use of vocal samples as an independent instrument rather than a reference, besides resulting in one of the years most bizarrely memorable "hooks," also strips it of any sense of irony, coming off rather like a heartfelt transmission from someone who, at the moment, would really rather be left in the shadows. --Noam Klar
Baby Jazz: "Michael Jordan" [self-released]
MP3: Baby Jazz: "Michael Jordan"
Baby Jazz's very first track, "Michael Jordan" is a 12-minute megamix collaboration between Golden Chow (Samuel Cooper of Sunglasses) and Teen Wolfe (Elgin Braden of Aux Arc). The track starts with a cacophony of angular, glitchy samples and reversed female harmonies. But after 80 seconds of rising and waning sonic patterns-- usually lost the moment they are grasped-- a beat finally organizes the chaos. From there on in, Baby Jazz skips from genre to genre and sample to sample like a mini pop culture role call of feel-good cues. We hear Chris Tucker screaming on the phone in Rush Hour, some rando screaming "NOBODY TURNS DOWN DRUGS", orgasms, and the intro to Dolly Parton's "Don't Drop Out". A hilarious and joyful musical rendition of my YouTube history. --Ric Leichtung
Blondes: "You Mean So Much to Me" [Merok]
MP3: Blondes: "You Mean So Much To Me"
Along with Teengirl Fantasy, Brooklyn electronic duo Blondes pretty much led the pack this year in re-envisioning the electronic music pioneers of the 20th century as music the rock kids could get down to. “You Mean So Much To Me,” the 9-minute opener of the duo's Touched EP, sounds like something Juan Atkins, E2-E4-era Manuel Göttsching, and Cluster might come up with if they convened for a late-night bump-and-grind on an autobahn ride to nowhere. Sam Haar and Zachary whisper synth ribbons and ethereal vocal samples into a delicate cymbal patter until they unleash the eternal techno 4/4. You can read it as an invitation to dance or permission to sink deeper into your beanbag; either way, it's proof that the millennial generation is making headway on a new, glitch-free strain of intelligent dance music. --Emilie Friedlander
Dead Gaze: "Take Me Home or I Die Alone" [Fire Talk]
MP3: Dead Gaze: "Take Me Home Or I Die Alone"
Cole Furlow, aka Dead Gaze, has been churning out one fantastic jam after another this year, but few tracks anywhere have struck me the way this one does. Through the first half, Furlow sounds like he's pleading with someone. More importantly, it sounds like he really means it. As the track progresses, the song gets brighter, leaving us to believe that someone must have finally taken him home. --Jheri Evans
Games: "Planet Party" [Hippos in Tanks]
It's been nine months since Games first arrived via "Planet Party." Needless to say, a lot has happened since, but the original genus for the duo's work still holds true. "Planet Party" is a diabolical excursion into midi-funk through the backdoors of our collective computer love, culling our internal memory for sampled bits and progenerated synth scapes. If there was ever a definitive sound of the past year, and counterpoint to "proto-chillwave," this was it. --Michael McGregor
Girl Unit: "Wut" [Night Slugs]
Counting local club producers such as Mosca, Kingdom, and label founders L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok among its ranks, the artist collective and upstart UK label Night Slugs had one of the most influential and consistent runs of releases this year, presenting an assimilated and innovative take on UK bass music. Girl Unit's "Wut" was easily its defining moment, in which the disparate elements of Southern rap, electro, grime and Baltimore club crystallized into one bold, forceful statement of intent. With its 7-minute sprawl and cyclical structure, the track oozes confident craft, coming in with a deceptively innocuous melody, before dropping a down-tempo bombshell of sub bass, air horns and pitch-shifted cries over a backing of buzzy, minor synth chords. --Noam Klar
Greatest Hits: "Danse Pop" [Olde English Spelling Bee]
MP3: Greatest Hits: "Danse Pop"
Greatest Hits lives up to their name. "Danse Pop" is a brief two minutes of sheer danceable ecstasy. The song wastes no time kicking into place and immediately has you sliding every which way across the hardwood floor. Just don't slip when it's all greased with the sweat of everyone else unable to contain this groove. --Jheri Evans
Hotel Mexico: "Its Twinkle" [Second Royal]
You can't not love the "Love Gun"-inspired riff that opens "Its Twinkle" by Japan's Hotel Mexico. But there's more to this song than that killer, 4-second, descending shredder of a hook. Layer upon layer of guitar, bass, samples, and tambourines build on that riff, as other melodic parts come in and out of focus like the phase of two droning tones. A soft falsetto emerges from the busy instrumental tapestry, changing the sonic climate with an added sense of fragility. The initial reason-- the "hot riff"-- that made you fall in love with "It's Twinkle" fades into the background. --Ric Leichtung
James Blake: "CMYK" [R&S]
A close relative of the cut-and-paste R&B hook Deadboy worked into his devastating "U Cheated," James Blake’s ubiquitous "CMYK" begins in a far more delicate fashion, before overwhelming with a 2-step wave at the drop. Starting with the notes on a synth falling like water in a fiendish Morse pattern of drops, you can’t help but be lulled into a moment of stillness before the fuzzy wall of sound hits. "CMYK" is so restless that its vocal snippets slip in and out of time, rushing around the track like echoes of its own past and future pitched forward and back before the energy of the whole collapses in on itself. --d
Nice Face: "I Want Your Damage" [Sacred Bones]
MP3: Nice Face: "I Want Your Damage"
Nice Face, the madcap bedroom project of Brooklyn’s Ian Magee, has been channeling some serious hyperactivity since he started self-releasing his first cassettes and singles back in 2008. “I Want Your Damage,” our favorite of the pint-sized psych-rock stompers that made it onto his Immer Etwas LP this year, combines the fuzzed assault of Wooden Shjips, Purrling Hiss, et al. with the off-color zaniness of the B-52s. We're psyched to hear someone actually rock out over a drum machine, and can thank Nice Face for the kind reminder that precision and lo-fi values are by no means mutually exclusive. --Emilie Friedlander
oOoOO: "NoSummr4U" [Disaro]
Though this year saw music's darker retreats illuminated by the likes of Salem, Nike7UP and Stalker, San Franciscan producer oOoOO conjured the most poignant image of C21st cultural pollution. His self-titled EP, released in autumn by Tri Angle Records, is a beguiling, obsessive collection of possessed pop poltergeists that may be veiled in an unsettling gothic sparseness, but still burn effervescent at the core with pure melodic feeling. Non-EP track "Nosummr4U" is the best gateway into the sensual shadow-world of oOoOo, though. Its disembodied lullaby hooks and super-sleazy soft-metal guitar shredding is simultaneously alienating and enrapturing. --Jack Shankly
Pure Ecstasy: "Voices" [Acephale]
In the past year I've gone from seeing Pure Ecstasy in the back parking lot of an Ethiopian restaurant on a dismal, cold night in Austin to the background music on an advertisement with a pale, stumbling Kate Moss-type. Both fit them perfectly. The understated-ness of this band must not be, well, understated. "Voices" is rife with blown-out blue notes and phantasmic guitar tones, backed by softened vocals which sometimes stretch out in love-lost angst. With its simple but steadfast lyrics, Pure Ecstasy's "Voices" reminds us that you dont have to be a TS Eliot to be affective. --Ryan Ellis
Salem: "King Night" [IAMSOUND]
When it hit the blogosphere last June, Salem’s “King Night” felt BIG. Huge, even. In fact, it sounded like these Chicago enfant terribles were trying to pull us out of the muddy highway ditch that their Water EP had dumped us into just a few months earlier. Setting aside the half-hearted white-boy rhymes and syrup-slow siren calls for a minute, Salem shocked us with a sample that seemed to be the electronic trio's antithesis: a heavenly, full-choir rendition of the Christmas carol “O Holy Night”, which speaks of a coming savior, and is bound to evoke the starry-eyed rapture of your elementary school Christmas pageant. Six months ahead of season, “King Night” set its source material to paper-thin beats and a bassline so blown-out it made you check to see if your speakers were broken. It was hyperbolic, a bit tacky, and almost tragically optimistic. --Emilie Friedlander
Teengirl Fantasy: "Cheaters" [True Panther]
MP3: Teengirl Fantasy: "Cheaters"
On "Cheaters", Ohio duo Teengirl Fantasy explore the more interesting peripheries of house and dance music, rather than these genres' more central, crowd-pleasing elements. As a result, the track feels like a careful distillation of all those subtle pulsations, innate rhythmic shifts, and density of sound that make the club such a good place to be. The vocal source material, culled from Love Committee's 70s R&B cut "Cheaters Never Win", appropriately swirls like some pained smoke-machine spirit through all of this anti-banger's small gaps. --Shea Bermingham
Teen Inc.: "Fountains" [self-released]
Teen Inc. found something special this Spring in the super-smooth sound of fusion and funk. "Fountains" comes off super epic and endlessly groovy, a supreme trip through wobbly synthesizer, slapbass, and plaintive falsetto. Perhaps part of the reason this song has bounced around so much in my head (and in my iTunes) is because of the unfortunately small sample size of Teen Inc.'s catalog: two songs, one solitary, self-released 7" record. However, give me an LP full of this sound on a long drive any day and I guarantee you'll see a satisfied dude. Fingers crossed for something similar to this fantasy in 2011. --Ian Nelson
Tjutjuna: "Mosquito Hawk" [Fire Talk]
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MP3: Tjutjuna: "Mosquito Hawk"
Tjutjuna's "Mosquito Hawk" opens with a whirling psychedelic synth vortex. It maintains this ethereal prog façade just long enough to fade up the hyper-motorik and bury the intro's transcendent affectations beneath a mountain of guitar fuzz. Then, something strange happens: crashing symbols and the raw power of a chugging riff struggle to find their form as subjugated arpeggios begin to infect their oppressor, and guitar solos rip skyward to a heaven full of patch-chord glitches. This shock and awe of this moment can't help but fade back into the shimmering effervescence of a seesawing keyboard until, finally, they're wed in a moment of 70s Germanic Rock bliss. --d
Ty Segall: "My Sunshine" [Goner]
I don’t think there’s a single other track that I’ve listened to more than “My Sunshine” this year. Ty takes his signature garage-pop and toughens it with a dose of classic 90’s grunge brilliance. The song tears itself apart, screams till it's hoarse, and then snaps back into place; always on the edge of self-destruction but never ceding to the crush of its own noise. It's songs like this that make me wish that the spirit of '91 was still alive on the radio waves. Were it only a few decades earlier, this one would have every kid in the country howling along in their bedrooms. --Andy French
Vacant Lots: "Confusion" [Ancient Hills Music]
MP3: The Vacant Lots: "Confusion"
The "psych" tag has been getting thrown around pretty arbitrarily recently (day-glo hypnogogia?), but in the classic sense, it could hardly apply more than it does to the Vacant Lots. "Confusion", one a handful of absolute burners from this Burlington duo, doesn't aim for any vast imaginary worlds (though it does nod to some monolithic/prog-temple vibes), instead preferring a dopesmoking hypnosis and half-disquieting/half-cozy drug-rug nostalgia borne of teenage garage jam thrills and more acquired tastes for drone and minimal guitar mesmerics. --Richard MacFarlane
WU LYF: "Heavy Pop" [self-released]
It's refreshing to hear such genuine, visceral soul on this out-of-nowhere hit from mysterious Mancunian outfit WU LYF. Such rawness and emotion tends to be absent from a lot of contemporary leftfield pop, but "Heavy Pop" stays true to its namesake, trudging through continual set-backs and triumphs, drum-rolls, guitar chimes, and gravel-throated howls. The climax comes in the form of a rambunctious, exhausted collapse; fitting of a track so emotionally invested, and as a result, so gloriously draining. --Shea Bermingham
Directed by WEIRDCORE. Games' That We Can Play EP is out now on Hippos in Tanks.
If you've been reading Altered Zones since back in the day, you might recall that we once had a feature titled Zoned In. This feature confused people, partly because we never really made its premise very clear, and partly because the whole process was too overcomplicated and confusing to explain anyway. So, once we hit the end of the first cycle (seriously, don't ask), we took a hiatus, regrouped, and simplified.
Yes, today we're officially "rebooting" Zoned In, as a brand new series in which we feature "our favorite records in the world right now." Sure, we post about records we like, even love, every day. But once you fair-haired readers started picking your own faves with that Facebook "like" jam (and btw, thanks for all of that liking!), we figured you might find it useful to know our most liked records, too. So this is that: the first entry of the new and improved Zoned In...
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Games is the "futuristic production team" of lifelong friends Joel Ford of Tigercity and Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never, and their debut EP, That We Can Play, earns the shit out of that "futuristic" tag. Even though this way-too-short record looks deep into the past for inspiration, to the kinds of hyper-obscure Europop 12-inches that were only released in places like Belgium on forgotten disco labels, the music Games spit back out sounds like it just returned from 2042 in a pimped-out Delorean. The thing about those old, rare 12-inches is that they barely existed in the first place. There's a ghostly quality to stumbling across turn-of-the-80s vinyl rips on YouTube at four in the morning, and it's that feeling, more than the music itself, that Games pay tribute to.
Armed to the teeth with a laundry list of period synths (as detailed in the incredible liner notes designed by the next-level multimedia artist Christian "Megazord" Oldham), Ford and Lopatin build their vintage pop feel, then coat it with a subtle glaze of post-modern effects. The result doesn't sound like those old dance tracks as much as it sounds like how we hear them now, decades later, through a soft-focused lens of romanticism. Even guest vocalist Lauren Halo (whose own music we recently profiled) sounds vaguely disembodied on the killer opening track "Strawberry Skies", like an ageless voice awakening from deep within a worn vinyl groove.
Games' That We Can Play also includes a few bonus re-imaginings of other works. One of them, "Shadows in Bloom" (which we co-premiered with our boy Gorilla vs Bear last month), puts up a fierce battle against "Strawberry Skies" for the title of Games' most replayable track yet, giving the Secret Service's 1981 Swedish pop hit "Flash in the Night" a 21st-century upgrade. They then do the exact opposite to CFCF's "It Was Never Meant To Be This Way", before Brooklyn-based Italo-horror-disco duo Gatekeeper brings things full-circle with their closing screw remix of "Strawberry Skies" sounding like a Dario Argento film score chopped up for the Streets of Rage 3 dancefloor stage.
That We Can Play LP is available in limited edition clear vinyl via Hippos In Tanks, also digitally from iTunes
2:00 Hippos In Tanks Communal DJ Set with Games, Gatekeeper, Laurel Halo, and Von Haze
12:00 How To Dress Well DJ Set
11:00 John Maus
10:15 Prince Rama
9:30 Greatest Hits
8:45 Woven Bones
8:00 Teen Inc.
Visuals by Sunset Television
MP3: How To Dress Well: "Decisions Featuring Yuksel Arslan"
MP3: Prince Rama: "Thunderdrums"
MP3: Greatest Hits: "Danse Pop"
Though "MIDI Drift" from Altered Zones darlings Games hit the internet a few months back, its creamy synth tones have been in constant rotation since, becoming a nearly inescapable staple during Brooklyn iPod DJ sets. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones
Pre-order That We Can Play 12" limited to 1,000 copies via Hippos in Tanks, digital available November 2nd. Also check out "Shadow In Bloom," which premiered last week
Games, a collaboration between lifelong best friends Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never and Joel Ford of Tigercity/Airbird, is a sample-based production dream-duo whose sonic pallette is composed of creamy sequenced synths and slowed snippets. Unique beyond the heaps of others that chop n' screw '80s cult jams and ironic italo, many samples used on the stellar upcoming EP, That We Can Play, are creations of audio architects Lopatin and Ford. Each sample having been tweaked, toiled, and sequenced to stand on its own long and silky-smooth legs, "Shadows In Bloom", drawing from Secret Service's "Flash In The Night", shows Games' deep understanding of '80s electronic music and seamlessly weaves it into a modern context that will inspire a more refined breed of soundsmiths to come.
Stream: Games: "Shadows In Bloom" by alteredzones
Pre-order That We Can Play 12" limited to 1,000 copies via Hippos in Tanks, digital available November 2nd. Also check out downloadable mixtapes on Games' tumblr and Gorilla Vs. Bear's co-premiere
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