Geoff White & Stewart Walker – Discord

I’ve never been super impressed by Stewart Walker‘s work. He’s been incredibly influential in a sub-sub-style of techno I have enjoyed for a long while now, but his own work is very monochromatic. As a consolation prize, however, his tracks have a unique and immediately recognizable sound .

This LP is one of those things I picked up from a used bin and promptly forgot. This collaboration with Geoff White is a pleasant, if deeply delayed, surprise. It would seem that while his palette remains somewhat limited, the dimensions of the form can be stretched out a bit. It’s still clicks n’ bass, mind, but top-fucking-notch.

Oddly enough, I readily admit the bass car is completely sensible for micro/minimal tech/house slash/slash, with it’s absurdly digital kicks and sub-sub-bass.  So any nerdy Germans who move to Queens and become guidos get a pass. You guys can bass car your little precise hearts out.

Hell, I nearly cheered last week when someone drove on by blasting “Number of the Beast”; someone obnoxiously blasting one of those Force Tracks mix cds might get my panties throw in the backseat.

Edit: found this interview on another blog. Like the format.

Hold Down Record, Press Play

One thing leads to the other on the Internet; I hear a song by a band, but I can’t find their info online. It was like being back in high school, before college showed that one could often rely on rec.music.* to help out. I’m a bit baffled – after all, I heard the song online, so they must exist somewhere, right?

I’ve long mentioned to people that private spaces from regional scenes are going to see a resurgence, because one way to stand out is to be genuinely invisible from the electronic eye. Rarefied tastes are a social signifier of some serious import in certain musical taste communities. Also, most everyone just wants to yell some variation on DICKS HITLER DICKS at you online anyway, so gated communities make a lot of sense. I think they work great, and the downsides – the loss of “new blood” over time – are actually a kind of selling point. It’s a position that would be unthinkable if you travelled back to the anarcho-techno-futurist days of 1995, but here in the age of most everyone being on broadband…

Anyhoo, long story short I’m sending a letter to some P.O. box in Oregon and we’ll see what’s what.