na: villalobos
Oh. You thought I wouldn’t mention the 18-minute Villalobos mix that graced the site this week with its presence?
I seem to be the only that’s noticed Soundboy Punishments, in fact. It’s a 2 CD set that collects every 12″ that the Skull Disco label has put out thus far of Shackleton, Applebim and Gatekeeper’s avant-garde dubstep work. Fan of the Burial record released last year? Listen up. This is its even darker, twisted cousin.
I can’t say it much better than Mike Powell did in his recent piece for The Village Voice
The style’s narrowness is one of the reasons to celebrate its exceptional practitioners—most recently, Shackleton and Appleblim, whose Skull Disco label has put out some of the deepest, bleakest, and least dogmatic takes on dubstep yet. Consider Shackleton’s “Blood on My Hands,” seven minutes of mechanized gasps and clangs, with a bassline so low-frequency that half-decent speakers only register it by wobbling. And snare drums—snares that appear out of nowhere, clatter, and recede. Each element feels isolated; it’s a sound archipelago.
But where dubstep’s prefab dread can resemble common weed stupor, Shackleton sounds alert, harsh to the point of industrial, polluted by trickier, more seductive Middle Eastern rhythms. And then there’s the track’s deadpan voice-over, taking the perspective of a political radical watching the events of 9/11 on TV: “When I see the towers fall, it cannot be denied/That as a spectacle it is a realization of the mind.” It warps into a mantra: “When I see the towers fall . . . fall . . . fall . . . fall. . . . ”
Renowned house producer Ricardo Villalobos takes this track, smoothes it out, slows down certain parts, speeds up others and generally massages it to fit his version of 128 bpm dance music. It’s even more hypnotic than the original – if that’s possible.
I’d be more likely to notice if it were available in my country ;-(
on an unrelated note, when did (K-RAA-K) arrive on this site and why did i not hear about it? i mean, it’s an amazing name for a label first of all, and second of all, one of the artists on their roster is called Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat. come on, how do you NOT check that out? if you want to spend some wise downloads, check out either (or both!) of the records by Ignatz. demented primitive tripped out folk music, riyl anything by Wooden Wand.
“I seem to be the only that’s noticed Soundboy Punishments, in fact.”
I noticed it, certainly, but I bought the CD a few months back, before Rough Trade reissued it. It’s great stuff, and it’s cool that it’s on emusic, which helped kickstart my dubstep obsession with so many other good albums (Boxcutter, Vex’d, Various Production, etc etc).
Some of the big dubstep CD releases in the next month or two are on labels that are on emusic but a little slow in getting stuff online sometimes. Am I likely to wait for the new Burial, Boxcutter, or Pinch, or the others that are on their way? I dunno…
todd,
your thoughts on the villalobos fabric disc?
Semtex: Hope I answered your question about the burial question today in a post on the site. I’ll look into the Boxcutter and Pinch albums as well and see what the word is. I’ve already heard the Pinch album and it’s pretty darn good.
JD: The Villalobos Fabric mix is really good, but it starts really slow. After you admire his sound design for a while, though, he really kicks it up a notch around the midway point. It ends up having three very awesome highlights before it ends, which for mixes is a great hit rate imo. I reviewed it for an alt-weekly here (http://www.laweekly.com/music/music/dont-hang-the-dj/17532/) along with a couple of other DJ mix albums eMusic sadly won’t be getting.