The Prodigy – ‘Charly’
The Shaman – ‘Ebeneezer Goode’
SL2 – ‘On A Ragga Tip’
Altern8 – ‘Evaporate’
Sunscreem – ‘Love You More’
The Shaman – ‘L.S.I. (Love Sex Intelligence)’
Leftfield – ‘Open Up’
TransGlobal Underground – ‘Templehead’
808 State – ‘Pacific 202′
Moby – ‘Go’
The Future Sound of London – ‘Papua New Guinea’
Orbital – ‘Chime’

This afternoon I found my first grey hair. My pessimistic side is thinking ‘oh OH NO GREY HAIR aging process accelerating at speed!’ whilst my cheerier side thinks ‘at least it’s a kind of Meryl-Streep-In-Devil-Wears-Prada-silver.’ I have decided to mark this event in the time-honoured fashion of music bloggers everywhere and have made a playlist.

‘I Don’t Care What People Say’ – The Silver Apples
‘Out of The Grey’ – The Dream Syndicate
‘Fade To Grey’ – Nouvelle Vague
‘Silver’ – The Pixies
‘Silver Machine’ – Hawkwind
‘Grey Goose’ – Lead Belly
‘Grey Gardens’ FCS North

It’s a testing time, so just humour me here.

I have been listening to a lot of Hybrid and Way Out West lately, and I decided to indulge in one of my favorite eMusic activities: following the rabbit down the hole. Here are a few great discoveries I made along the way…

Hybrid

Starting from Hybrid’s artist page, I started browsing g4nym3d3′s Top eMusic Electronica Albums&EPs member list. There is a lot here I am not familiar with, but I don’t often have time to check every album in member lists and typically stick to recommendations that have some description so I know what I am getting into. Half way down the list I find an artist named 2 Bit Pie, who just happen to be comprised mostly of members of Fluke. Strong production and electro-grooves in a similar vein. While not quite as good as their ancestral incarnation, the album is certainly worth the downloads.

Being a fan of their remix work both in the mainstream market (Radiohead, Moby) and the indie scene (UNKLE, Carl Cox) I decide to search simply for Hybrid Remix. Having already grabbed the remixes off Never, Never, Land and PHUTURE 2000 (the only song I can really stand on that album) I grab Albatross (Hybrid Remix) by Chris Coco Feat. Peter Green. I wasn’t too sure this was even that Hybrid’s remix (not a foolproof way to search for these things) but Wikipedia confirms. Sounds like it could be an early mix, but it’s pleasant enough.

The next remix I grab yields more satisfying results. Towards the Sun (Hybrid Remix) lands me on the Future Funk Squad’s artist page and subsequently to their full length album Audio Damage. A remarkably solid slab of electrobreaks and technohop I have never heard of before. The artist name still reminds me of a throw away George Clinton title though.

Way Out West

Their artist page doesn’t have much that catches my eye, but I know the duo is comprised of Jody Wisternoff and Nick Warren, so I start there. We have some EPs by Jody W, but they are far too straightforward and brash for my tastes. Somehow I don’t think this OMI is the same Omi as they feature on their latest album (although for all I know it very well could be). However, Nick Warren’s mixes are much more my taste right now.

Nick Warren – Shanghai I already have and it’s fantastic, so I check out Nick Warren – Paris. It is just as consistent and well crafted as the other mix I have, and I notice we have several full lengths by artists featured in the mix. The samples on Pole Foder sound great (do I hear the aforementioned Oni singing on Faith In Me?), but I am disappointed by missing tracks. The disappointment quickly fades as I start listening to Tripswitch, I have found my white rabbit.

Circuit Breaker by Tripswitch is exactly what I was looking for in this journey. So much more subtle than the other fantastic albums I have discovered, it lies somewhere between Tim Hecker (well maybe not quite that subtle) and Juno Reactor. Ethereal voices and drones splash against breakbeats, springy synths and plucked guitars. It almost seems strands of folk or the countryside work their way in through the tunes at times. Despite one throw away track featuring the cliche movie sample (from K-PAX I believe), this is certainly going to become a fast favorite in my current rotation.

While not everyone loves electronic music like I do, I am sure we can all relate to this kind of experience finding something we treasure in a fantastically roundabout way. It almost makes the end result that much better.

Here’s to finding your white rabbit..

Train (morning): Small child singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’ Well, he’s never going to win American Idol.

eMusic Europe office (morning): eMusic’s European office is on the second floor of a central London building. The area of pavement directly below us is a favoured place for motorcycle couriers to congregate and eat pizza from the Italian café over the road. I have the window open and can hear them playing the Plain White T’s’ ‘Hey There Delilah.’ I downloaded this teen pin-up of a song a while back on the strength of Joe’s blog post and fell for it in a slightly slushy, crushy way; it arouses the same kind of feelings I had towards Christian Slater when I was 13. Then the couriers play it again. And again. And again. Quite relieved when they get involved in a ‘who can rev the loudest’ competition.

YMCA shop (lunchtime): Feeding my thrifting addiction and listening to Magic FM. They’re playing Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes.’ I have a slight problem with 1980s soft rock, that is, I like it more than is seemly. I thought I liked this, but memory has deceived me. Kim sings like she’s swallowed an ashtray, stretching for notes, horse and cracking. It’s painful and makes me cough in sympathy.

Outside wine bar (evening): Not missing music because I’m talking to my friend Vicky (she works in Westminster and always has great political gossip). Then a busker appears with an electric violin and a truly deadbeat amp. We have to move because the sound is so distorted.

Train home (night): Drunken woman singing… something. Well, she’s never going to win American Idol.

Home (night): Stay true to experiment and let boyfriend choose music. He picks Shit and Shine’s ‘Jealous of Shit and Shine.’ They’re like a less psychedelic, sillier Boredoms. One of them also plays with noise rockers Todd. Track titles include ‘Fisherman’s Jumper’ and ‘It’s a Pentagram.’

I had hoped to discover new things at random (After all, I first heard Kano played by a bloke on a bus), but it was actually an exercise in aural pain. Shit and Shine were a great discovery, but since the CD was in my house, being enthused over by my boyfriend, I’d have found them sooner or later anyway.

I bought some batteries this morning.

01 I generally view the Pickin’ On series as the music industry at its worst: piggybacking with kitschy covers meant to dupe unsuspecting folks into downloading something they don’t really want. I resent the whole concept, and always have. Well, today I eat a slight bit of crow as — surprise of all surprises — I’m finding a lot to like in Cornbread Red’s Pickin’ on Franz Ferdinand, especially “The Dark of the Matinee” (just a bit menacing, the harmonies in the chorus serious) and “Take Me Out,” which is 100% bonafide awesomeness. The pre-verse intro — always my favorite part of the original — is silky smooth and relaxed (shivers-inducing, even), and once the song kicks in, the banjos and upright bass replace the post-punk upstroke with a consistent churn of high notes that are completely winning. It’s part novelty, sure, but I also know that I’m going to be listening to this a lot.

02 Aziz from Human Giant‘s “Shittiest Mixtape Boombox Blast” YouTube clip:

03 I wrote about Medicine Head before on 17 Dots, focusing specifically on “(And the) Pictures in the Sky,” a lost glam classic. But New Bottles, Old Medicine, their 1970 debut, goes much deeper than just that song, I’m happy to report.

I’ve been listening lots to this album, and I have to big-time vouch for “When Night Falls,” the opening tune, which is as subdued and gorgeous an album opener as I have ever heard. The vocals are soft and regretful, and the arrangement is just guitar, drum and harmonica, all of them muffled as if wrapped in a thick gauze of anguish. Killer stuff. The other tune I dig is their cover of Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” which isn’t anything particularly special — it’s a hard song to screw up — but brings that same minimal, melancholy tone. Another worth grabbing: “His Guiding Hand,” which Said the Gramophone blogged about. So yeah, this is legit, folks.

04 Opening night of the Pitchfork Music Festival. Booked my flight earlier this week, and the prospect of seeing Sonic Youth play Daydream Nation, Slint do Spiderland (I will lose it during “Washer”) and GZA run through Liquid Swords is just ridiculous. Of course 17 Dots will be coming to you with all of the action, and kudos to Pitchfork for the lineup.

05 Sadly not eMusic related, but I can’t believe we’re only 12 days away from a new Shellac album. It’s called Excellent Italian Greyhound (out June 5), and we won’t be getting it as Albini doesn’t play the digital game with anyone (fidelity reasons: Douglas Wolk talked with Albini about it here). But seriously, a new Shellac record is a landmark event — one of my favorite bands in the world, ever. Here’s a live version of the opener, which is sick:

06 High on my to-do list for the holiday weekend is get my ass to a theatre to see Once, which everyone in the world seems to be raving about. Even though I’m iffy on musicals and hate all Irish music (pretty much true), the press and the trailers for this one have swayed me. Why is it of interest to eMusic folks? The main character is played by Glen Hansard, founder of the Frames. Has anyone seen it yet?

07 All of the Ponys songs that departed member Ian Adams wrote, chiefly “Shadow Box” (great Velvet Underground knock-off) from Celebration Castle, and “Fall Inn” (Motown girl-group shambles) and “I Love You ‘Cause (You Look Like Me)” (perhaps the most honest love song ever written) from Laced With Romance. Adams was the garage-punk soul of the Ponys, and I really believe that Turn the Lights Out suffers from his absence.

08 The eMusic Wildcats, the official eMu Intramural Basketball Team. This is, in fact, a real thing, and there are about seven or eight regulars on the squad, including myself. (No other 17 Dotters, however.) Anyway, plainly put, we are terrible. Last night we suffered a crushing (and resounding) defeat to the league’s only (formerly) winless team, dropping our record to 2-4, with one of those victories coming by forfeit. On a positive note, we get most of the rules now, and we’ve finally figured out that basketball substitutions aren’t like hockey line changes. Still, we haven’t been doing you — our subscribers and readers — proud. For that we apologize, and promise to lose harder next time.

The kings of indie rock, the best band ever from Stockton, California, and one of my favorite bands of all time: Pavement. They were an incredible band, with a range (life) that stretched between power-pop, slow indie jamz and even (in their later, forgettable years) jam band-age. Their first three albums are musts: Slanted & Enchanted, Crooked Rain Crooked Rain and Wowee Zowee. But some of their best songs were often relegated to B-sides, now collected on the reissued versions of those three albums, and so, for many years, the crème de la crème was somewhat scattered.

To help you navigate the many, many songs they have recorded and released, we present to you the twenty greatest Pavement songs ever. Here’s the complete list, all in one spot.

xoxoxo

20 “She Believes” | Westing (By Musket and Sextant)

Early recording, much of the song pretty much a throwaway, but it’s that Daydream Nation chorus, “but she believes,” Malkmus sings razor-thin, and the guitar pensive and hoping that makes the song so great. It totally falls apart (purposely) in the last 40 seconds — maybe the boys weren’t comfortable yet sounding purty? — but the rest of the song more than makes up for it.

19 “We Dance” | Wowee Zowee

Somewhere, sometime, someone from Pavement said something about how there was no set order to Wowee Zowee, that the random button on your CD player (‘member those?) was just as good a sequencing. There’s some truth to that, but it’s also true that “We Dance” is a spectacular opening song, a statement of purpose, a rock critic might say, for WZ itself: content to stay in place, no direction forward, relaxed and stoned. Oh and of course that opening lyric, so prescient from a white-dudes-with-guitars-indie-band in a particularly socially aware moment: “There is no/ Castration fear” as water starts pouring in the background. Funny stuff!

18 “In the Mouth of a Desert” | Slanted & Enchanted

The first in a long line of Pavement almost-ballads, those mid-tempo numbers where Malkmus sounds bored, the band sounds tinny and uninterested, the whole reason why they got stuck with that slacker tab and seemed determined to live up to it. They are also, pretty much across the board, the best Pavement songs. So maybe there’s something to that after all.

Here’s the band in 1992 at the Reading Festival playing “Desert:”

17 “Shady Lane” | Brighten the Corners

So I have a really, really hard time with Pavement post-Pacific Trim. Brighten the Corners totally bummed me out, and Terror Twilight I just couldn’t deal with at all. Pavement got so technical, sounding almost like Steely Dan with how orchestrated the songs suddenly were, as if they were playing connect-the-dots with some sheet music that fell out of Spiral Stairs’ knapsack. Still, I have to give it up for “Shady Lane,” which is a very sweet song, goofy in the right places and it’s really, really damn hard not to coo along with Malk, “Dutch! Dutch! Dutch!”

Here be the music video:

16 “Greenlander” | Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe and Redux

Originally included on the Born to Choose comp in ’93, “Greenlander” is in the vein of Slanted & Enchanted, very muffled with lots of dramatic mini-pauses, stuttering drums from Nastanovich (or is that Gary Young?) and that omnipresent bass-heartbeat. A spectacularly understated tune.

15 “Silence Kit” | Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Like “We Dance,” another album opener, this one beefier and broader, the first song they unleashed to the world after they “mattered.” What’s funny is that I don’t think it’s that much better than any of the songs I mentioned before, but it’s wrapped in more meaning being the first song on Pavement’s best-selling album and so evocative of a particular moment.

“Silence Kit” live in Cologne, 1994, with a fantastic alternate ending:

14 “Strings of Nashville” | Crooked Rain Crooked Rain: LA’s Desert Origins

Man did I love the “Gold Soundz” single. That might’ve been the moment when my interest turned into scary fandom, those three B-sides so good: “Kneeling Bus,” “Exit Theory” and this track. The resignation in “Nashville” is otherworldly: every aspect of the song is performed with the least amount of effort possible. Malkmus sounds like he’s singing from the bottom of a well, and the guitar is played so slowly and laconically it’s as if Kannberg is trying to transcribe the tablature as they record. Taken as a whole, it’s hypnotic, and a perfect, self-contained song.

13 “So Stark (You’re a Skyscraper)” | Trigger Cut

Though I dunno what it means, I’ve always found one lyric from this song awesomely snotty: “Stunnin’ the bureaucrats/ So fucking lost/ Stark as a skyscraper/ Letters embossed.” This is a rare Pavement song that heavily emphasizes the low-end, providing a pissy edge to the song’s placid, lackadaisical feel. Malkmus does his typical follow-the-bouncing-ball vocal melody, but his howl towards the end is totally unexpected and great. Recorded around Slanted & Enchanted, this really encapsulates the sound of early Pavement well.

12 “Give It a Day” | Pacific Trim EP

Veering close to Brighten the Corners-era, “Give It a Day” is so wordy it’s like Malkmus-as-self-parody, with its Cotton Mather namecheck, “small pox in the Sudan” and “gentrified your Alzheim clan” lyrics. But the melody is irresistible, loopy, catchy and really large. I remember this EP being a huge deal when it came out — only 5,000 copies manufactured on its initial run (it might have been my first-ever pre-order — thanks Blacksburg Record Exchange!) — and it really did signal a new direction for Pavement, with the ridiculous “Gangsters & Pranksters” and “Saganaw,” maybe the worst song in the band’s history (soooooo bad).

11 “AT&T” | Wowee Zowee

I originally had this song at the #3 spot — a sign of how close the next eleven songs are in terms of quality — but I had to keep dropping it as I returned to some old favorites. Still, this is an incredible song, especially its opening lyric, which I have always adored: “Maybe/ Someone’s gonna save me/ My heart is made of gravy.” (Is there a medical procedure for that, like doing a biscuit transplant?) If it weren’t for the last minute, which gets a bit silly in its epic-ness, this would’ve stayed top five, for sure. Although, listening to it on repeat right now, I can’t help but to feel like I’ve made a mistake for ranking it so low. Oh well.

Here’s a video someone on YouTube created of “AT&T” synced to a kung-fu movie:

10 “Stop Breathin’” | Crooked Rain Crooked Rain

Sitting here staring into space, I just realized that I have every lyric to this song memorized, and I can recount them sans music. Look who has talent! “Stop Breathin’” is such a beautiful song, so frank and sincere. The guitars shift in and out of each other, flirting like preteen fingers in a darkened movie theatre. “Dad they broke me.” “Stop breathin’ for me now.” I love it when they care.

Live in Germany, 1994:

09 “Range Life” | Crooked Rain Crooked Rain

Freshman year of college, stumbling through Colonial Williamsburg late one night with my two best friends, all of us intoxicated (on life!), the Colonial Cops patrolling through, driving up and down the cobblestone streets, the three of us ducking behind picket fences, mazed gardens and blacksmith shoppes. One friend, perhaps the most intoxicated of all, takes the opportunity during one particularly tense moment to begin singing/yelling, “the PIGS, the FUZZ, the COPS, the HEAT!” (a lyric from “Range Life”) at the top of her longs while we try to shush her. We get off scot-free.

Also, I don’t think Lupe Fiasco’s masterful “Kick Push” could have existed without this song. Just sayin’.

A video.

08 “Here” | Slanted & Enchanted

I’ve gotten to the point where I think I prefer the live version of this song (captured below in a YouTube clip, as well as in their Peel Session, heard here (waaa-waaaaaaaah) in track 24) to the album original. It’s a tough call. The original is introspective and resigned; the live versions are angry and defiant. And yet the lyrics work perfectly for both:

And I’m the only one who laughs
At your jokes when they are so bad
And your jokes are always bad
But they’re not as bad as this

Apropos of nothing, that verse has always reminded me of the opening lyric to Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street:” “You’ve got a lot of nerve/ To call yourself my friend/ When I was down/ You just stood there grinning,” which is the greatest opening lyric ever. FYI.

Anyway, the real key to “Here” is the guitar line. It plays a perfect harmony/counterpoint to the vocal, at times echoing Malkmus’ despair back to him, at others responding to it, as if it were the voice of the unnamed target of the song. Also, that little guitar hitch (dadadaddooooiDOY) sounds like Mario Brothers. Man, I am just full of Top Notch Insight today, aren’t I?

“Here” live in Belgium, 1992. Dudes, what’s with the shorts on stage? Are you the Chili Peppers???

07 “Box Elder” | Westing (By Musket and Sextant)

Because making shit up/half-remembering it is more fun than researching, here’s the history of “Box Elder:” Malkmus wrote the song, and it was released on a cassette called Slay Tracks, which I believe was Pavement’s first-ever release. It came out in ’89, I think. David Gedge, dude from Cinerama (who suck) and Wedding Present (who were sometimes awesome; buy Seamonsters, pls), heard the song somehow, and covered it on Bizarro, an album of theirs from the early ’90s. Pavement had yet to really put anything out aside Slay Tracks, and yet Wedding Present were moderately big in the UK, and so there was interest generated and then John Peel loved Gedge and loved the song and this transferred over to Peel loving Malkmus and then History Was Made.

Most of this might be false. I dunno. I do think I might like the Wedding Present cover better — they rightly recognized how great the crazy-simple guitar line is while Pavement buries it — but it’s the kinda track that’s awfully hard to screw up. I think a lot of folks consider this when Pavement really started. But who cares what a lotta people think — I gotta lotta good things comin’ my way, and I’m not afraid to say that they’re not some of them. Oh snap!

Also, here’s Malkmus playing this solo a couple years ago in NYC. Killer.

06 “Summer Babe” | Slanted & Enchanted

So I think this is pretty much unanimously considered the best thing Pavement ever did, and for once it’s a conventional wisdom that’s hard to argue with. But I will anyway. “Summer Babe” is spectacular, for sure. It’s totally effortless, feels like it might have been written on the spot, excited sideways glances between the band members, too fearful to wonder if this is it because they don’t want to jinx it, like a pitcher getting too excited in the 8th inning of a no-hitter. It also contains what I am reasonably certain is the first Swisher Sweet reference in song (“mixin’ cocktails with a plastic-tipped cigar”). It also contains a McCartney-worthy bass line. To repeat: it is spectacular. One of my favorite songs ever — by any band — and one you should download if you have never heard. But there are five Pavement songs I think are better. Come back tomorrow to find out which.

05 “Frontwards” | Watery, Domestic

“I’ve got style/ Miles and miles/ So much style that it’s wasted.” It is, above all others, the definitive Pavement lyric, even though most folks would have trouble pinpointing the song from which it comes. But even without that line, “Frontwards” would belong here. The song straddles the rough amateurism of Slanted and the pop maturity of Crooked Rain, a very attractive combo. (Watery, Domestic came out between the two albums.) (Also, it’s ridiculous that AMG gives this a bad review, as this is maybe the best thing Pavement ever released. Anyway.) There’s a great hint of finality to the song, from the opening chord on. It’s always felt a bit like a eulogy to me.

04 “Grounded” | Wowee Zowee

The closest Pavement ever got to grunge — that post-chorus riff-build — another real fun downer, lots of tension, a sense of purpose. The best I can do to advocate for this song is implore you to watch this performance, which is stupendous:

03 “Zurich Is Stained” | Slanted & Enchanted

We need to start by quoting the lyrics to this one in full. (Maybe think of “Zurich” as being a white cushion on his and his gal’s brand new, crazy expensive couch. Maybe that will help.)

I can’t sing it strong enough
That kind of strength I just don’t have
But if you watch the light change
Don’t hold them hanging

You think it’s easy, but you’re wrong
I’m not one half of the problem
Zurich is stained and it’s not my fault
Just hold me back or let me run

So what does it mean, a mistake or two
If it’s the kind of mistake no one can trace
To the fountain where we sold it
And held them hanging

You think it’s easy, but you’re wrong
I’m not one half of the problem
Zurich is stained and it’s not my fault
Just hold me back or let me run
You think it’s easy, but you’re wrong
I’m not one half of the problem
Zurich is stained and it’s not my fault
Just hold me back or let me run

The simplicity and directness of these words are great, as is the fact that Malk sings them so plainly, real flat, not a lot of feeling, just getting it down on paper. It lends the song a lot more credibility than some wrought performance might (fortunately for the song, and us, I’m not sure if Malk even has that in him). The song is really short — 101 seconds — and throughout there’s this great, really bad slide guitar squeaking and squirting in the background, which I’ve always heard as kind of an id to the vocal’s ego. Which probably sounds ridiculous, I realize, but what do you expect from a liberal arts education?

02 “Texas Never Whispers” | Watery, Domestic

More Watery, Domestic goodness. Reason why this song ranks so high:

a) The song title, which is just a spectacular bit of wording. It’s like some phrase that Peter Bogdanovich or even John Lennon would think of, and then do their best to repeat at every instance (I know I would).
b) That opening overblown guitar bit, the pedals and guitar shrieking out this almost ceremonial melody, like announcing the arrival of a foreign head of state.
c) After that drops out, Malk opens with, “Here we go/ She’s on a hidden tableau.” It just sounds cool, folks.
d) “She’s so lackadaisical/ Should have been a West Coast bride.” I feel that, ya know?
e) The song is huge. There’s a spaciousness to it, an expansiveness to the arrangement. It’s wide and tall (I feel like most Pavement songs are tall but not wide). The arrangement is very impressive and mature.
f) The coda at the end with the flirting guitar solo/drum fills and the fuzz bass.
g) “This tunnel is a Tex-as mile.”

01 “Pueblo” | Wowee Zowee

So this one ain’t even close. For me, there’s “Pueblo,” one of the last songs on Wowee Zowee, and then there’s everything else. From the first moment I heard it, I was dumbstruck. Pavement never played around with tension/release — too good for it! — but here they succumbed to the temptation, concocting these really subdued but foreboding verses that would just explode into a chorus so impossibly huge, almost never-ending in its breadth thanks to two sustained guitar notes that clash and then harmonize with Malkmus’ vocals. Kicking into the chorus is this out-of-nowhere piercing guitar dropping three notes fast — “duh-duh-duuuuuuuh” — and then it all comes rushing forward, like a stampede at 45rpm.

And yet there’s not a really strong structure to it. It basically works like this: intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, post-chorus instrumental noodling that lasts for well over a minute, sorta-verse only more like a middle-eight, chorus explosion, explosion, explosion, fragments, fin. It’s just a really long tease, except with two tremendous payoffs, the second of which still astonishes me ten years later.

When I was 17 and living in the boondocks of Virginia, I had a tape that I would listen to repeatedly when driving around. I can’t remember what all was on there. I remember Pavement, Stone Roses, Breeders, Nirvana, Archers of Loaf, Oasis, things like that — the Pavement song was, obviously, “Pueblo.”

One of my closest friends at the time lived on top of a mountain, and had a two-mile long gravel driveway down to a slightly larger road. Well, one night I was driving down that road and rocking out to “Pueblo” in my stepmother’s Taurus at a pretty good clip. Singing along, pounding the steering wheel, that sort of thing. But as I got to the end of the driveway, I noticed at the last second that the gate that was almost always open — a really long, white, solitary pole — was partially closed, and was pointing into the road. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late: I shut my eyes, and heard the sound of shattered glass and an awful tearing sound.

When I opened my eyes, I was confronted with a large white object pointing across my face. As I got my bearings, I realized that this long white pole had gone through the windshield, coming so close to my head that it had ripped the headrest behind me IN HALF. Somehow I still had my wits about me, so I very slowly backed the car up so the pole was out of the interior, and I stopped at a nearby trailer to use their phone. My family was obviously none too happy, and it was the closest I have ever come to death. And it’s all “Pueblo”‘s fault. Thanks Pavement!

The German DJ/electronic musician Superpitcher has a well-defined and even iconic sound based on a handful of key elements:

01 The slight, pulsing schaeffel beat that forms the skittering, perfectly too-slow foundation for microhouse, the name for a minimal style of house music. Superpitcher has a beautiful sense of how to use this rhythm, interweaving it with an arrangement’s other ingredients so that the beat not only pushes the track forward, but accentuates and punctuates elements of the melody as well.

02 Superpitcher’s melodies are very elementary. On his breakthrough (and perhaps best) track, “Heroin” (not available at eMu), the chord progression is incredibly sluggish, the bass shifting notes at the start of each measure, creating an appropriately druggy feel. His songs are very meditative, but outwardly so; he seems like the sort of man who feels comfortable brooding in public.

03 He really likes one keyboard preset (Or is it a type of keyboard itself? I haven’t been into gear since high school…): a clangy, hollow-sounding piano that sounds as if it’s cutting out with each burst of noise. The keys are roomy and staccato, nicely balancing out the restrained fluidity of his bass lines.

Superpitcher uses these elements in his own work, of course, but he also liberally employs them when remixing others (also seek out his non-eMu cover of Eno’s “Baby’s on Fire,” which is interrupted mid-song by the jangling guitar line from the Velvet Underground’s “Waiting for the Man”). While eMusic is sadly bereft of Superpitcher’s solo work, the catalogue does have seven fantastic remixes that he has done, all of which are highly recommended. Here’s a list, in order of preference:

01 Ghostcauldron | “See What I’ve Become (Superpitcher Smallville Mix)” | !K7 | link

This is basically a Superpitcher solo cut — I haven’t heard the original, but this whole throbbing track feels exactly like his best work: precious, epic, hypnotic, etc, etc. This is a must.

02 Dntel featuring Ben Gibbard | “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan (Superpitcher Komapkt Remix)” | Plug Research | link

I’ll hazard a guess that this is Superpitcher’s best-known track, thanks to this basically defining what the Postal Service would be two years later. The original Dntel track, which features vocals from Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, is an opaque bore (and this from someone who gets off on the purposely obtuse!), but Superpitcher deftly reaches right into the song’s guts and pulls out Gibbard’s cloying hook and rebuilds it around a sighing organ and that schaeffel beat (and sleighbells!). A good place to start.

03 Tocotronic | “Pure Vernunft Darf Niemals Siegen (Superpitcher/Wassermann Mix)” (nine-minute version) | L’age D’or | link

Tocotronic | “Hi Freaks (Superpitcher’s Beautiful Freaks Mix)” L’age D’or | link

The first track here was featured on the sixth volume of Kompakt‘s absolutely essential Total series, and after one listen to the mismatching rhythms of the guitar strumming and the song’s beat, it’s not hard to see why. The other song, “Hi Freaks,” is the housiest I’ve ever heard Superpitcher sound on record. There are few of the precious gradations that so clearly delineate his other work.

04 M83 | “Don’t Save Us From the Flames (Superpitcher Remix)” | Global Underground | link

“Don’t Save Us From the Flames” sounds pretty much exactly like a mix of “Heroin” and “Baby’s on Fire” (Superpitcher versions, both), except with an added little wrinkle of a mournful half-ooh/half-whisper/half-coyote call (make those thirds, I guess) that comes at the track’s midpoint. It’s also interesting to hear Superpitcher playing around with a very rock bass line — he leaves it largely untouched. This makes for a great mixtape closer.

05 Contriva | “Stuck (Superpitcher Remix)” | monika enterprise | link

So slow and woozy it’s almost chopped and screwed; recorded about five or six years ago, and the song isn’t quite Superpitched to the degree that the others are here, which is fascinating, especially in that he mucks about more with little hitches in rhythm and melody, like hiccupping the keyboard drone and the little flourishes in the cymbals. He’s still feeling his way through here, but it’s fantastic.

06 Hell | “Je Regrette Everything (Superpitcher Mix)” | Gigolo Records | link

Nothing terribly special here, but it is eight more minutes of Superpitcher.

Anyway, expect updates when we get more SP remixes on eMusic. In the meantime, be sure to grab Gui Boratto’s “It’s Majik” single here. His upcoming Kompakt record is great, but this track, which sounds like Superpitcher remixing the Steve Miller Band, is just unbelievably wonderful. Expect more on it later.