Music Blogs

Back when the IDM movement fostered stone cold chillout heads like Mixmaster Morris, FSOL, and The Orb, the music was created on simple machines. Akai MPCs, primitive Roland samplers, even tape and turntables entered into the crafty knob twiddler's equation for success. These days, when anyone can slap around a beat in Pro Tools, the entrance fee for creating chillout is pennies on the dollar. And it often sounds like it. Synth presets do not a Gary Cobain make. But the good people at Interchill Records create ambient chillout the old school way...they rediscover it!

Future Memories gathers a fine cast of midnight marauders intent on allaying your fears, removing all thoughts of worry and strife, and setting your mind and body adrift in a slow moving pool of ethereal beats and liquid, mind calming sounds. Interchill's Nathalie Edell looked deep within the label's vaults to unearth 10 previously unreleased tracks from producers known and unknown. What with the old dance trick of releasing different works by one artist under various guises it's hard to know who is who, it's safe to say that some names are more familiar than others. Eat Static, PhuturePrimitive, Reaktion and Spinning Whale sound mildly familiar, but more importantly, Future Memories works superbly as a single piece, a virtual scene setter. Though the artists span the globe (literally) they all sound oddly connected. From Israel's Ultimax (Max Kosenko) and England's nearly legendary Eat Static to Sweden's Carbon Based Lifeforms (Johanness Hedberg and Daniel Ringstrom) and Paris' Cell (Alex Scheffer) Future Memories expresses a single tone, a single voice, a single soothing beat manifesto.

Eat Static's "Sands Of Times" is the soundtrack to pre dawn insects flying over virgin grasslands... or virgin bodies ready for blood sucking. As a beat-less intro of quavering sounds and frequency extremes pervades your mind, a slowly undulating pulse asserts subtle rhythmic tension. Eventually, a dizzy funk beat crashes the party, but the mood remains frothy and playful--if subtly otherworldly.

Ultimax's "Noir" puts me in mind of some alternate The Good, The Bad & The Ugly soundtrack (we're talking cinematic!), all its lonely tones and spacey space echoes intimating isolation, loneliness and beautiful seclusion--with a beat. "Noir" goes through different phases, at one point retreating to background music status as what sounds like an Asian airline hostess reads gentle gibberish. "Noir" drops me back, massages my mind, and erases my ego.

Eat Static: " Sands Of Time"  (MP3, 8:42)

Liquid Stranger's Invisible Conquest: Using the old school trick of sampling cryptic spoken word nonsense to create a theme, Liquid Stranger kicks off Invisible Conquest with a peculiar person discussing "active frequencies" and "matter and energy [changes]." Liquid Stranger, aka Sweden's Martin Staff, travels typical dubtronica terrain, arranging programmed hand drums and percussion over Africa-worthy travelogue vistas.  "Vibration Ruling The Nation" leads to "Liquid Stranger On The un," "Diarum Express" and "Cook'n'Curry": equal parts sci-fi silliness, Bollywood blowouts and Barnum and Bailey beat hilarity.