The Field - From Here We Go Sublime

En? Wat vinden we ervan?
Pitchfork geeft een negen en is laaiend enthousiast. Beweringen als "despite its nods to house and techno, Sublime is really an extension of the best ambient electronics of the last decade or so, especially Gas, a project of Wolfgang" gaan wel ver, maar 'Over the ice', 'Every Day', 'Silent', 'Mobilia' en 'The Deal' komen wel dicht in de buurt. Maar het klinkt wel HEEL erg als Kaito natuurlijk.

EDIT Zaterdagavond 31 Maart:

Vergeet het. Net zoals bij zoveel andere memorabele platen, valt het kwartje pas iets later. Het was nog eens heel lang geleden dat ik bijna gedwongen werd om naar een plaat te luisteren. Maar 'From Here We Go Sublime' zuigt je volledig naar zich toe. Verslavende plaat om 's nachts te dolen (maar waarschijnlijk ook om op een zomeravond op het gras te dansen.)

Small culture-shock in the house

OK, the last years I’m getting used to quite a lot of things, since I'm living together with so many people with so many different backgrounds, but today my Italian flatmate announced that from today on we would get the company of a Japanese girl for one week.

Juka is 26; she is a professional classical pianist and ehm, very Japanese. Some confirmed stereotypes of the first day:
- Gadgets: she has a very blitz mobile phone and a sort of mini-personal laptop translator which weighs 200 grams.

- Obedience: she asks us permission for absolutely everything; if she can take a glass to put her toothbrush in and put it in the kitchen (in Japan everybody brushes their teeth in the kitchen I learned today), if she can go to sleep etc..

- Man-woman relationship: Juka was literally staring at me when I was doing the dishes (‘I’ve never seen a man doing the dishes before’) and being stunned that Luca was cooking

- Language: she knew no English nor German when she came to Hamburg, but now her level is up to a hilarious crossing of basic English and Japanese expressions

- General weirdness: she stands up early in the morning to make some predictions about what kind of weather we will have during the day

- General niceness: she really looks like an Wong Kar-Wai actress, and boy, do I like Ang-Lee actresses
- In the weekend she’s going to give a solo-recital in Paris (Lizt and Messian (?) I think); I’m a bit afraid of playing Dominik Eulberg out loud the whole day, thinking her fragile body won’t be able to cope with it, but I’ll ask her opinion before I interview him anyway.

Mistress Barbara - Barcelona (Border Community 15)

Has Border Community ever released anything that was not completely brilliant? OK, BC 10 (Nathan Fake - Silent Night) and BC 11 (Lazy Fat People) were just good, but with this fifteenth release Border Community releases again an instant classic that fits in perfectly between the absolute hightlights of the label (Gazebo, Sky is Pink Rmx, Soopertrack).

You could say that Misstress Barbara has seen the light after her production break in 2005. Last year she released the ehm, slightly progressive, 'K-10' on John Digweed's Bedrock label, but now she delivers two unforgettable houseneotrance monsters that keep me raving on and on. Holden himself gives some 'tools' in the vein of his 'Idiots are winning' debut for the nerds, but it's all about 'Barcelona' and 'Jamais Moi Sans Toi'. What a release...

(PS: Holden is again on a roll with his fantastic 'The Sun Never Sets' remix for Kieran Hebden. Also a must have...)

Junior Boys and Lusine in the remix

Junior Boys surely know how to choose their remixers. Carl Craig delivers again an epic classic with his remix of 'Ľike A Child', while Kode9 gives 'Like a child' a dubstep treatment. Essential purchase! (Phonica)

Boomkat lears us that Kode9 and Jeremy from Junior Boys are apparently already close friends for years. Interessting combo if you ask me, apparantly Kode9 remixed also their 'High Come Down'. Anybody heard this one?

And while you're shopping it's also a good idea to lay your hands on the Podgelism Select Remixes of Lusine on Ghostly International. Robag Whrume's remix of 'The Stop' is one of the better minimal-releases of the last month, while John Tejada, Apparat and Lawrence deliver the goods in their own well-known trademark-style. The LP will contain more remixes of Mathew Dear, Lusine and Cabanne, but I haven't heard that one yet.

Kalabrese

Sorry Gus Gus, Eulberg,Boratto et les autres, but the record that I probably will spin the most the coming months is this one: Rumpelzirkus by Kalabrese. Sounds like Beck on Perlon and believe me, that just sounds GREAT.

Myspace

Yevgeny Zamyatin - We

Since I'm digging a bit more into the authoritarian states in Central Asia I wanted to read 'We' by Yevgeny Zamyatin, who wrote this dystopian novel after the Russian Revolution.

Wikipedia:
"We is a futuristic dystopian satire, generally considered to be the grandfather of the genre. It takes the totalitarian and conformative aspects of modern industrial society to an extreme conclusion, depicting a state that believes that free will is the cause of unhappiness, and that citizens' lives should be controlled with mathematical precision based on the system of industrial efficiency created by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Among many other literary innovations, Zamyatin's futuristic vision includes houses, and indeed everything else, made of glass or other transparent materials, so that everyone is constantly visible. Zamyatin was very critical of communism in Russia and his work was repeatedly banned.

George Orwell was familiar with We, having read it in French and reviewed it in 1946; it influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four. Aldous Huxley reportedly claimed that he did not read We before writing Brave New World, although Orwell himself believed that Huxley was lying".

Print out!

Uebel und Gefährlich

This is without competition one of the best clubs I've ever visited. Last month's programme included for instance(to name but a few)Ame, Henrik Schwarz, Junior Boys, Trentemoller, Tobi Neumann and Kate Wax. Prices are cheap, the dancefloor is large, the crowd is filled with 'experts' who dance hard.. Everything starts very late here (3.30 is peak hour here I think), but that's a general trend.

Besides that the location itself is amazing. The gigantic building used to be the headquarters of the SS in Hamburg during World War II and you're dancing on the fourth floor.

Next stop (am off to Czech Republic again tomorrow): GUS GUS on the 4th of May!

Sounds of the first season

1.The only nu rave you ever need: Gus Gus - Forever
Am raving every single day on this one. Energy! It's all about 'Need in me' and 'Forever'. And oh, it beats the last album ;).





2.The return of Kompakt: Gui Boratto - Chromophobia
A true 'album'. Not that many 'Arquipelagio' a-like highlights on this album (although 'The Blessing' is one of the best minimal-songs of the last two months), but just overall niceness. The last songs on the album prove why Styrofoam is right when he says that Kompakt-kids in Europe are the equivalent of indie-nerds in the States. Besides Gui Boratto, Kompakt distributed the very warm Superpitcher-pastiche of Pantha Du Prince (emotech to the fullest) and released the rather dissappointing debut of Hug. (Apart from the phenomenal 'Tiny Stars' that is...)

3.Following the path you created yourself: Pole - Steingarten (~scape) and Mikkel Metal - Brone and Waith
Pole is the album of the month in the Wire. Just like Mikkel Metal he doesn't really reinvent himself on his latest offering. You know what you can expect from both of them, and both albums are still lovely to drown in. (Now I'm thinking of it: Triple R's Selection 5 is also a typical example of this phenomenon.)

4.Because of/despite the birds? Dominik Eulberg - Heimische Gefilde
First I was amused and then annoyed by Eulberg's spokenword intermezzo's, but if you skip them you have again a solid Eulberg album. OK, the best tracks he released as singles last year ('Gasthof...', 'Harzer Roller') but 'Die Alpenstrandlaufer...' makes you forget about that immediately. Hasn't reached the level of the classic 'Flora and Founa' yet, but maybe that's only a matter of time. Eulberg songs need some time to sink in...


5.Adventures of Bpitch: Damero - Happy in Grey/Paul Kalkbrenner - Der SenatDamero tries to do an 'Orchestra of Bubbles' imitation and comes away with it. In the meantime Paul Kalkbrenner rips up the third Bpitch sampler completely with 'Der Senat',amazing hypnotic neotrance (yes, I plead guilty)! Other good tracks on the yearly Bpitch-collection are made by Fairmont, new kid on the block Larsson and Ellen Allien & Apparat. Ellen Allien is gonna do the next Fabric by the way; looking forward to that.

Honourable mention:-

- Air - Pocket Symphony (best Air since Moon Safari, just a bit better than the Virgin suicides, way better then 10000HZ)
- The Soulsavers - It's Not How Far You Fall, It's The Way You Land: one of my favourite downtempo acts teams up with Mark Lanegan.
- Alex Gopher - Alex Gopher: suprise of the month! French house pioneer returns with a downtempo late night bar disc.

No Thanks
- Klaxons, Bloc Party, LCD Soundsystem, Tracey Thorn, MSTRKFT, Joakim