Lunatic Asylum: 2000-2016 choice cuts

Speaking of that Italian broken beat techno sound, Guillaume ‘Dr Macabre’ Leroux has just dusted off his old hard drive archives and revealed some very tasty cuts in this vein – mournful, radioactive sunrise dirges over piston juddering, industrial beats. I’ve cherry picked them, although there aren’t any Soundcloud/Youtube uploads (as yet). Check them on Juno? :

7. ‘Before Dawn’/ 10. ‘Crying For HELP’ / 13. ‘Sunday Caramel’ / 18. ‘Late at Night’ / 19. ‘Today is a Good Day to Die’ (my personal favourite)

Aquarian: Bad Feeling/Insulin

I’ve just done a whole bunch of new(ish) release reviews for the next issue of Datacide so I’ll try not to double up/copy, but this latest one by Aquarian deserves special mention.

His best and most slamming release to date and probably my favourite Bass release of the moment. Drenched in dark warehouse rave vibes, he’s definitely beefed up the low end and fine-tuned his chopped breaks & kicks aesthetic; strong tension and release composition too. In fact I would go so far as to say; no-one does it better! Proof that keeping it simple always leads back to something stronger.

‘Bad Feeling’ could almost be of D’Arcangelo/SNS/ADC/Anibaldi Italian broken beat techno vintage, just as ‘Insulin’ hints at a Mover vibe too!

This is a must for any fans of that era/sound.

Jesse Osborne-Lanthier: North Face Killah

Sticking out like an iceberg on the EP – this (first couple of minutes…) is powerful low end, tsunami, bass power noise with impressive menace and build.

A one off maybe? because the rest of the material succumbs to the leitmotifs of label boss Rabit (and the obvious temptations of sucking up to the boss, clearly) – jittery, scrunchy, spastic, stop-start, sonic doodling without intent. All very archly ‘abstract’ and ‘détourned’ flubbery sound design à la IRCAM/Stockhausen, but to what purpose who knows?

We often talk about music, or frame it, in terms of “going places…”, “going somewhere…” but this goes nowhere, and not in a good way either (like Satie’s ‘Vexations’ or La Monte Young drone marathons say?). It’s just f***ing irritating listening.