Love Tempo #13
Hello! I’m Rory O’Callaghan, and welcome to Love Tempo, a monthly newsletter that collects my thoughts and findings from the world of independent and electronic music. If you enjoy what you find, please consider subscribing by using the button below.
Hot Off The Press
Five new releases you should wrap your ears around this month…
Like his compatriot DJ Plead, Australia’s Moktar scavenges sounds and instruments from his Arabic heritage, flips them, and packages them for the club. In early August, his debut single ‘Silk’ landed with a splash and received significant airplay on the underground radio circuit. ‘Lemon’, its bone-shaking follow up, arrived last week (also released via Mall Grab’s Steel City Dance Discs).
Unapologetically percussive, the track is anchored by a snapping electro groove. The dry snares act as framework to a series of hefty bass hits, the occasional squeal of woodwind and a frenzy of hand-drums that buzz and rattle like angry wasps caught in a jar. Around three minutes in, the faint outline of a melody emerges above the commotion. It’s pleasant, but short-lived, soon pummelled back into submission by Moktar's furious polyrhythms.
Luke Sanger has been active in electronic music for over fifteen years now. A seasoned live performer, his back-catalogue is full of of funky, roughneck techno released primarily under his Luke’s Anger alias. For his latest release, Languid Gongue, the Norwich-based artist changes tack, crafting a beguiling suite of experimental electronics for the newly-minted Balmat label.
For a record that shuns any notion of rhythm, Languid Gongue manages to avoid falling into expanses of shapeless texture. Sanger’s melodies are bright and clean, his compositions often unconventional but refreshingly uncluttered. Over the course of fourteen tracks, curious machines oscillate and gurgle freely, segueing from sweeping contours and glistening synth arpeggios to microtonal flutters as delicate as raindrops.
An early advocate of the rudimentary production software MaxMSP, Sanger now tends to fuel his output with more advanced modular gear. That said, the influence of the former instrument shines throughout Languid Gongue and the record floats by with a particular innocence. Rather charmingly, these compositions possess a childlike sense of discovery and wonder, as if unburdened by the weight of the world.
New York’s Kush Jones has proved himself a prolific producer over the past few years. Barely a month goes by without his Bandcamp page being topped up with another single or EP. He’s versatile too: equally comfortable churning out sweaty house and barrelling techno as he is producing high-octane jungle or rapid-fire footwork.
With both tracks speeding along north of 150 BPM, Rugrats/Basic Bass exists at the pacier end of his range. ‘Basic Bass’ is a heady slice of 90’s revivalism: whiplash breaks cascading over glassy pads that swell and dissipate over the course of three breathless minutes. By comparison, ‘Rugrats’ is stranger and more playful: balancing intricate rhythms with eski synths and a chiming xylophone melody that sounds like it’s been extracted from inside a wind-up toy.
Space Afrika are a production duo hailing from Manchester. Long-time hosts of an excellent, deep-digging NTS show, they turned heads with last year’s hybtwibt? a timely statement created over four days in the midst of worldwide racial turmoil. Honest Labour, their latest release, is similarly poetic, this time arriving as soulful take on the grey concrete and rain-soaked streets of their hometown.
Cycling through clouds of digital ambience, barely-there drums and sporadic use of guitar and strings, the duo craft a series of strange, intimate transmissions which gradually worm their way under your skin. It’s a collaborative affair, and various artists crop up over the instrumentals. These include two appearances from the singer Guest, the abstract musings of kinseyLloyd and Salford’s own MC Blackhaine. The latter hits hardest, helming the lead single ‘B£E’. His verses are coarse and vivid, laid over a bed of cinematic melancholia that could’ve been lifted straight from a Portishead album.
Listening to the album’s overcast soundscapes, snippets of field recording and chorus of haunted voices, comparisons with Burial’s Untrue are easily drawn. However, where that album tended to look backwards, Honest Labour feels like a more present meditation. Extending over nineteen tracks, it’s an urban sprawl of flickering street-lamps and shifting scenes: a city populated by honest, working people—their hopes and frustrations captured and woven throughout its runtime.
Newark, New Jersey’s Cherise Gary a.k.a UNiiQU3 is having a moment right now. Despite the recent absence of live shows, the “Jersey Club Queen” has seen her career leap forward, collaborating with artists internationally and scoring her first major magazine cover. She’s also signed to influential indie Local Action Records, who are due to release her next EP this coming autumn.
‘Microdosing’, the first single from that project, sees UNiiQU3 set aside her customary breaks and head in a more linear, housier direction. That’s not to say she’s ditched her trademark swagger. On the contrary, ‘Microdosing’ is fast, pumping and brimming with attitude. Channelling the most memorable dance divas of yesteryear, she bodies the track, laying down commanding verses and an infectious hook that’s chopped up and catapulted forward by the song’s pulsating groove.
On Rotation
A handful of older records I’ve been enjoying of late…
José Carlos Schwarz was a musician, poet and political activist from Guinea-Bissau. Born in 1949 to an affluent family, he received an excellent education, developing an interest in art and politics whilst studying abroad. Returning to his homeland in the early 1970’s, his music quickly became intertwined with his country’s struggle for independence from Portugal’s oppressive Salazarist regime.
‘Na Kolonia’ addresses this fight directly. Sung in guinean creole, over a steel stringed guitar and mournful horns, it’s devastatingly beautiful. A tender lament to his nation’s plight, the song is one of several revolutionary odes Schwarz penned alongside the poet Aliu Bari as the pair spent two years on Ilha das Galinhas, imprisoned by the colonial authorities.
Although today considered an important architect of independence in Guinea-Bissau, for decades, Schwarz and his recordings were largely unknown to Western audiences. Fortunately, Parisian label Hot Mule released a retrospective compilation of his work earlier this year, including ‘Na Kolonia’ amongst several other captivating tracks recorded before the musician’s untimely death, aged just twenty-seven.
Universal Mind is a rather obscure record from 1982. It’s the work of Finnish composer and sound designer Jone Takamäki, who aimed to create an improvisational jazz record, but curiously, one that was rooted in traditional Indian folk arrangements or ragas. A specialist player of Japanese shakuhachi and hocchiku flute, Takamäki’s woodwinds can be heard leading throughout the album’s fifty-one minute runtime. Flanked by fellow players Antti Hytti and Samppa Salmi, he succeeds in creating record that is strange and experimental in places, but at it’s best, light and free-flowing with delicate melodies billowing like ribbons in a gentle breeze.
‘124’ is a mid-album cut from Photek’s 1997 debut full-length Modus Operandi. The drum & bass producer, one of the genre’s most lauded and versatile figures, made his mark with a particular knack for singular, razor-sharp drum programming. On ‘124’ his percussion appears at a half-speed lilt: 124 beats per minute? Or 164? It’s hard to tell. Either way, the track’s deceptive tempo is in keeping with Photek’s ethereal aesthetic. Like much of Modus Operandi, the arrangement is sparse: the drums only accompanied by gliding, Detroit-leaning pads and a sumptuous, brooding bassline that begs you to spin the track on a heavyweight system.
That’s all for this edition of Love Tempo, thanks for reading!
As always, a Spotify playlist featuring a selection of the music featured in this issue can be found here. A handy list of purchase links can be also found in this month’s Buy Music Club rundown.
Please feel free to get in touch via lovetemponews@gmail.com.
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Catch you next month,
Rory