EP Review: Hey! - The Emperor Machine

Following on from his rather filthy Like A Machine EP earlier in the year Andy Meecham is cued to drop this new release Hey! on Monday and if anything it only builds on the scuzzy sound of that last release.

This new EP precedes a return to DJing in 2014 and a planned full-length album and new live show. Michelle Bee is shaping up to be a key partner in the forthcoming plans for The Emperor Machine, lending vocals to not only "Hey!" but a number of tracks on the new album. Much like on "Like A Machine" the vocals here provide a dramatic sense of sultry humanity to the jacking robotic rhythms. An extended vocal and extended dub provide two flavours of the original, a track built around a stripped back 80s house inspired hook that borrows a little from Adonis' "No Way Back" and gives it a strutting punk-funk rhythm embellished with scratchy snatches of guitar and some heavily arpeggiated synths.

View fullsize

Hey! - The Emperor Machine

Three remixes come from Ewan Pearson. The first, the "Skronk Disco Mix", features sleazy jazzy brass getting rough with a some seriously elastic bass and clattering drum rolls. In combination with Michelle Bee's vocals it results in a heavily layered and busy track but the sax, played by a guest musician from The Rapture, gives this a real backstreet New York vibe that's intensely depraved and slightly psychotic. A "Skronk Dub" does it all again but without those vocals, and with such excellent production it's better for a modicum of restraint. The final remix is Pearson's "Dubstramental" and it's slightly tighter still, reigning in the disco flourishes of the "Skronk" but amping the dark psychedelic acid feel in their place.

Finally the EP also includes a second original track, "Mandy Mutron", which comes complete with a low slung bassline and greasy guitars. It's another track that will go down a treat in the more twisted establishments and it has me excited for the forthcoming album.

 Hey! is released through Southern Fried Records on Monday, available to pre-order on MP3 and 12" from Amazon.co.uk, though the latter is currently posting a later release date [affiliate links].

Album Review: Eskimo Recordings Presents The Pink Collection

Eskimo just recently turned 10 and celebrated with an anniversary box set but this new album, The Pink Collection, is the start of something new. The first in a series based around a variety of colours, The Pink Collection is predominantly focused around feelings in music and retains the same hazy melodic electronic sound throughout, with the tracks being specifically created for this release.

The album has a real Scandinavian sound with a number of electronic artists associated with that movement featuring, but it also features artists from around the globe. Australian three piece Holy Models open the album with the lolling and inviting tracking 'Swimming', featuring drenched male vocals and sun-baked grooves. Satin Jackets take up the batten with 'Olivia', a track full of the sort of easy-going-yet-catchy melodies that Röyksopp are famous for. Coincidently Made In Sane actually come from the same town as Röyksopp and their track, 'Flying Circuits' also retains a hint of their sound but applies it to a progressive synth piece that feels like they stole it from Jean Michel Jarre's songbook back in the eighties.

Martin Brodin does Italo gone Ballearic to much success o the sparkling and upbeat 'Lazise 1979' and ATTAR!'s 'The Fool', featuring Cherry, is enjoyable eighties synth-pop influenced house with a slight Stevie Nicks vibe. Unfortunately from here The Pink Collection starts to fall down… There is an imagination to some of the earlier tracks that feels lacking later on, and ultimately it's 78-minutes of music that sounds very similar throughout. The album turns into a pleasant diversion, but nothing on some of Eskimo's finest moments.

It's difficult not to feel that in focusing on original material Eskimo have ultimately compromised their ability to curate, sacrificing the control to select exactly the right song for the right moment. It is an album that suffers in exchange for the ability to sell something exclusive via digital platforms. It's telling that the tracks they have already announced as singles - those by Holy Models, Majestique, Brynjolfur and ATTAR! - are all comparatively strong, it's just a shame the album doesn't quite live up to the promise.

The Pink Collection is out on 2 September through Eskimo Recordings, preview on the Eskimo website and pre-order on CD from Amazon.co.uk.

EP Review: Pass It On - The Joy Boys

Pass It On is the debut release from The Joy Boys, a collaboration between long-term friends Raf Daddy (one half of The 2 Bears, along with Joe Goddard of Hot Chip) and Toby Young (aka bootleg producer youngTEE).

It's a typically chunky house production with plenty of ravey touches focused on the dancefloor, even more so than The 2 Bears. Opening with 'The Wake', the EP kicks things off with some carnival sounding brass and samba inspired shuffling drums. The track builds with a some intensity, throwing in laser blasts and vicious bass stabs, and comes off like a midnight spent losing yourself in Brazil.

The title track is a little slower to build but becomes a bit psychotic, vocal snippets applied as percussion and cut up synths providing what there is of a melody. An evil bassline and the chanted vocals create a dark, twisted track.

'Shake The Tip' has more Latin rhythms, a bouncy bass and some screeching synths, and it points the way to the EP's rave obsessed conclusion but feels a bit flat in comparison. 'Kitchen Sink' closes, and the title is doubtlessly a self-parody of the fact that the duo seem to throw about twice as many ideas at each track as the need to, and here probably even more... We have rave horns, whistles and a love of the grimey south-London sound that suits these guys so well.

This is undoubtedly little more than music to lose your shit to, but within that confine it's pretty classy. Keep your eyes peeled for a launch party in Peckham on 14 September.

Pass It On is out now on Southern Fried Records, available on MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link]. Preview via Soundcloud below:

Album Review: For Now I Am Winter - Ólafur Arnalds

Long time readers of the site will know that I'm a massive fan of Iceland, it's culture, geography and particularly it's music. Ólafur Arnalds has created some good music in the past, new classical sounds that feel like they capture some of the cold majesty of his homeland.

Nothing, however, has come close to this. Arnalds' work has had a tendency to be impressive but a little difficult to penetrate. With For Now I Am Winter this is no longer the case. Having finished his album Arnalds felt like he had evolved his sound, but felt underwhelmed by the fact it wasn't a step-change. A friend gently mocked him, suggesting he should try innovating as hard in his music as he does on his Twitter account, the artist being known for how much he shares with his community via the social network and his own site.

The result is an album that innovates on two fronts. Arnalds brought in American composer Nico Muhly to assist with the orchestral arrangements. In his own words:

I wanted him to take what I had already written and make the textures more coloured. So, if I had a synth line which was just 2 notes, he would just put those 2 notes and spread them over 30 different instruments in different ways.

It results in a much greater variation in tone and pace than evidenced on any of his previous albums - the busy-being-born sounding 'Brim' positively fidgets with life and energy, the orchestral melodies thriving in amongst the crunchy electronic rhythms. In contrast, the album's title track is slow, considered and haunting.

View fullsize

For Now I Am Winter - Ólafur Arnalds

That title track also introduces the album's other major change - For Now I Am Winter features four tracks with vocals. Eschewing the temptation to work with established big names Arnalds instead went to Arnór Dan Arnerson, who he had collaborated with on a track for Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Japanese tsunami benefit project, featured here as 'Old Skin'. Arnalds is quick to note that the relationship was much more of a collaboration than that of a composer and a guest vocalist. Even when not on record, Amerson's vocals were present in Arnalds' mind, influencing the decisions made even on instrumental songs.

Those four vocal songs are all an undeniable success, providing an additional layer of emotional context that feels completely at one with the music. Restricted to a third of the album they end up contributing to the album's overall structure, providing a little climatic moments. 'Old Skin' is particularly strong, a soaring moment of beauty, Amerson's insatiable lyrics roused by the electronic pulse of the rhythms and the playful string arrangements.

Ólafur's risks on this third album pay off spectacularly. He has already had recent success in mainstream entertainment, through soundtracks for ITV's hugely successful TV drama Broadchurch and a track that appeared in the movie Looper. This album is the sound of an artist poised to breakthrough without any compromise in his vision.

For Now I Am Winter is out now on Mercury Classics, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links]. Stream in full from Spotify:

EP Review: Ministry of Love - Romanthony

I recently mentioned Romanthony in my review of Poolside Sounds Vol. II from the Future Disco series. At the time the inclusion of a track from Romanthony, years since his last high profile release and just weeks after his untimely death, seemed a spooky coincidence.

And whilst this release does nothing to reduce the coincidental nature of Anthony Moore's music cropping up again just as he left our world it does provide some more context. These remixes come out on Glasgow Underground as a result of label owner Kevin McKay's affection for Romanthony's work, and they started working on these remixes together with a view to releasing them along with an anthology of his best work (don't call it a greatest hits, there were none) and an album of the mixes later this year.

Romanthony and McKay were long-time collaborators following McKay's pursuit of an interview with the illusive start when he worked was writing for the long-since departed Muzik magazine... The interview didn't happen for a few more years, but they did strike up a friendship. McKay ended up setting up Glasgow Underground and released a string of singles and three albums, including the seminal R. Hide In Plain Site.

Romanthony ended up featuring on two tracks on Daft Punk's 2001 opus Discovery, and it's lead single, 'One More Time'. The latter was such a massive hit that Romanthony had no real financial need to record anything, and was having too good a time to worry about doing so. However, a legal case was launched against Daft Punk in 2006 from an unknown disco artist called Eddie Johns, who claimed 'One More Time' sampled his song 'More Spell On You' (you can see this here). The result being that payments to Romanthony, as one of the writers of the song, were put on hold.

Romanthony's celebrity lifestyle had to go on hold and he recorded new material, but whilst McKay tried to find a home for it no label was interested, despite the pedigree of Romanthony's back catalogue. McKay also tried to pair him up with some other producers but they innevitably ended up just trying to get him to do vocals on their own tracks, rather than let Romanthony record his own material. Understandably he wasn't prepared to compromise.

The final option was to revisit the back catalogue, which is how we ended up with 'Bring U Up' being remixed and featured on Poolside Sounds Vol. II.  Following his death there was much soul searching, but the remixes are now being released to provide a legacy from the artist's children.

 'Ministry of Love' is one of Romanthony's older tracks and therefore one I'm less familiar with. There's a real nineties vibe to this, particularly to the high pitched vocal chant that features, and the remixes all, to a greater or lesser extent, play up to that. 

Kevin McKay has got three mixes on this release - one straight-up, a 90s re-edit and one versus Mirrors. The straight up mix is more modern and both that and the 90s re-edit are highlights on this broad package, retaining the soul of the original but giving it a twist. The main McKay mix has a loose bassline with a touch of acid and a subtly funky drum set. 

EJECA's busy creating nostalgic 90s influenced rave at the best of time and so his mix is deliberately backwards looking, with an old school garage baseline and plenty of piano. Andrés' mix is swinging, full of a subtly crackling vinyl sound and a fair amount of soul. Andy Crom's mix also uses 90s garage bass patterns and pairs it with some tight drums.

As a remix package it's generous and has it's moments, but as a tribute to the artist this feels a little lacking. Romanthony produced a number of fantastic records and but I'm not convinced this was his best, so it seems a shame to lead with it. It is also a shame not to include the original so people can get an understanding of what made him such a great producer. We can only hope that these releases do something to raise some awareness for what a talent Anthony Moore was regardless.

Ministry of Love is out now on Glasgow Underground.