wagon repair

As Yancey hinted at earlier today, I kinda got schoolgirl-ish today at the office when I first saw the name Cobblestone Jazz on the new arrivals page. C-C-C-Could it be today is the day we get Wagon Repair?

It is.

Quite simply, Wagon Repair is one of the most exciting dance labels releasing music in that ever-nebulous minimal category today. Why so? Well, for starters, they’ve got Matthew Jonson, who is responsible for a string of monster singles from labels like Perlon, Kompakt Extra, and Richie Hawtin’s Minus.

In 2004, Jonson and a number of his Canadian friends (including his brother, who records as Hrdvsion) banded together to form Wagon Repair, which has since become his major outlet for releases.

While I haven’t enjoyed much of Jonson’s solo output of late (his best that we got in today, in my opinion, is 2004’s Marionette, although “Automatic” is probably the funkiest analog techno jam you’ll hear this year) the music that he has made in tandem with Danuel Tate and Tyger Dhula as Cobblestone Jazz is simply stunning stuff.

In that group, the three of them craft jazz-infused techno. Tracks have a solid 4/4 beat and the structures are very much indebted to house, but these evolving backgrounds serve as a canvas for the type of vamps on a theme that you might expect at a Medeski, Martin and Wood show. For a taste, try out “Dump Truck,” which takes twelve minutes to explore every single bob and feint that its opening organ lick has to offer. It’s a knob-twiddling extravaganza worthy of Lee Perry in some cases (one second you’ll hear a synth in your left ear, the next moment that same synth’ll be decaying in your right). It’s not gonna win the jazz fans over, surely, but if you’re looking for something to liven up your diet of dry and brittle sounding techno, open up to the warm sounds of Cobblestone and others (Loose Change’s “Kosovo,” Lazy Fat People’s “T.V. 20” come to mind). You won’t regret it.