First Floor #213 – An Incomplete Conversation
a.k.a. Thoughts on the current state of music reviews, plus a round-up of the latest electronic music news and a fresh batch of new track recommendations.
Later this month, I’m going on vacation. A real vacation, in the sense that I plan to break away from my usual routine of being constantly online and more or less staring at my laptop all day. I’d love to say that I’m not even going to bring my laptop with me, but who am I kidding? That’s not going to happen. If I can just cut my screen time down to a small, manageable window, I’ll take that as a win.
Don’t worry, First Floor will continue while I’m away. I’ll have more details on that next week, but in the meantime, I’m absolutely slammed, especially as I try to not only stay on top of my current workload, but also get a bunch of additional things sorted before I board the plane. Perhaps you’re thinking, “That’s nice Shawn, but I don’t really care,” and that’s fair enough, but this whole preamble is basically my way of explaining why I don’t have a witty little observation or anecdote to kick of today’s newsletter. I’m busy!
That being said, today’s First Floor digest is still packed with all the goodies you’ve come to expect. Earlier this week, I penned an essay about the current state of music reviews, one that basically asks the question, “Are we sure that doing away with negative reviews was such a good idea?” You’ll find that piece below, along with a hearty round-up of news items and new release announcements. I’ve also put together a bundle of new track recommendations, all of them plucked from records that dropped during the past week. And if that’s not enough, I’ve recruited pianist extraordinaire Kelly Moran to drop by with a guest recommendation of her own.
Anyways, I’ve got to get back to work, so let’s just go ahead and dive into this thing.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Every Tuesday, First Floor publishes a long-form piece that’s exclusively made available to paid newsletter subscribers only. The latest one, which is now (temporarily) open to everyone, is an essay looking at the current state of music reviews, and questions whether journalists have made a mistake by largely refusing to critically engage (at least publicly) with releases that aren’t to their liking.
REAL QUICK
A round-up of the last week’s most interesting electronic music news, plus links to interviews, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.
Hubert Adjei-Kontoh’s fire-breathing new essay for The Baffler was already mentioned in my own First Floor essay, but it’s worth highlighting again here, as it’s easily one of the most provocative critiques of contemporary dance music—and the media’s way of talking about it—that’s surfaced in quite some time. Touching on the culture’s hollow use of revolutionary language, widespread reliance on racial essentialism and grossly capitalistic nature, the piece is something that ought to inspire all sorts of conversations among dance music diehards—and, hopefully, a fair bit of soul searching too.
Fresh off his groundbreaking Grammy win, veteran grime MC Flowdan is on the cover of Crack magazine’s latest issue. The publication smartly enlisted Dan Hancox to pen the accompanying feature, which dives into the London artist’s early days with Roll Deep, his career-altering collaborations with The Bug and his recent brushes with the commercial mainstream.
Last Friday, Kim Ann Foxman and her partner, fellow DJ Cora, were assaulted in the street while “holding hands and taking a walk” in Berlin. The two first shared details of the unprovoked attack via an Instgram post, where Foxman also commented that the harrowing incident was “undoubtedly linked to [their] sexual identity” as “a visibly affectionate queer Asian female couple.”
No one seems to be quite sure of exactly what’s happening behind the scenes at Bandcamp these days, but the company editorial’s arm, Bandcamp Daily, has been rather solid this week, publishing a feature about the recent hardgroove revival by Henry Ivry, a Jóhann Jóhannsson retrospective by George Grella and a wide-ranging look at Portugal’s current electronic music scene by April Clare Welsh.
Nina—a platform where, full disclosure, I have a monthly column called Second Floor—continues to publish quality editorial offerings, including a series of Q&As with electronic and experimental acts who recently put out new releases. The latest two were both written by John Chiavernia, who interviewed fast-rising Dallas techno producer Decoder—who, incredibly, is only 19 years old—and Danish maverick Hekt.
Toumba is the subject of Resident Advisor’s latest Breaking Through feature, in which the Jordanian producer talks to Andrew Ryce about his first encounters with UK bass music, how he’s been shaped by traditionally Arabic sounds and how the current conflict in Gaza has impacted his community and career. The Hessle Audio affiliate also shares some clues about the music he’s working on now, which he surprisingly says is “very ambient with singing and live instruments involved.”
OBLIGATORY BOOK MENTION
My first book is out now. It’s called First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture, and you can order it from my publisher Velocity Press. However, if you’re outside of the UK, I’d actually recommend either inquiring at your favorite local bookshop or trying one of the online sales links I’ve compiled here.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.
Caribou released a new single this week, a track called “Honey” that might be his first out-and-out banger. There’s no word if the wobbly cut is a precursor to a new album, or if additional new material of any kind is on the way, but the single is available now via City Slang.
Speaking of new singles, Bristol mainstay Batu yesterday dropped “Sour 2 Taste,” a growling, deceptively speedy track that’s available now through his A Long Strange Dream imprint.
Kevin Richard Martin (a.k.a. veteran bass warrior The Bug) has teamed up with Kenyan ambient artist KMRU on a forthcoming new album. Entitled Disconnect, it’s billed as “a powerful study of dread, hope, and profound sonics,” and it’s set to be released by the Phantom Limb label on June 14. In the meantime, LP cut “Differ” has already been shared.
Following up on the throwback sounds of last year’s hardcore-oriented Digital Underground mixtape, Scuba has developed a new live show, DU:LIVE, that will be debuting in the UK in June. The Hotflush founder also plans to release a new EP, Hardcore Heaven III, on June 14, but in the meantime, he’s shared a new single, “Truth,” along with a live version of the song “i wna doit nth bckst.” Both can be heard here.
Four years have passed since Max D last released new material from his Dolo Percussion alias, but the Future Times boss has assembled a new EP, DOLO 6, that’s slated to arrive on April 12 (i.e. tomorrow). Ahead of that, he’s already made two tracks available here.
Ikonika is best known for her many outings on Hyperdub, but the London artist this week popped up on Night Slugs with Details, a release that includes both her original track and remixes from Bok Bok, Girl Unit and Aryu Jassika. The complete package is out now.
Speed Dealer Moms (a.k.a. the long-running collaborative project of John Frusciante and Venetian Snares) has a new release on the way. The two-song effort, Birth Control Pill, is due to surface on May 10 via Evar—the imprint Frusciante runs alongside Aura T-09—and while no full tracks have been shared yet, some previews can be heard in a couple of the label’s recent Instagram posts.
Decadence is the latest EP from MoMA Ready, and the six-track effort, which the prolific NYC artist says is focused on movement, is available in full on Bandcamp.
Kassian’s tunes have appeared many times here in the newsletter, and the UK house / techno / bass duo this week unveiled a forthcoming new EP, Supercontinent. The !K7 label will be issuing the record on May 24, but opening cut “Yena” has already been shared.
During the 2010s, Acid Camp was one of LA’s best underground parties, and its associated record label is still alive and kicking, as evidenced by the massive new Acid Camp: 10 Year Anniversary compilation. Surfacing as a surprise release last week, the 35-track collection includes tracks from Bill Converse, Bézier, Masha Mar, Cooper Saver, Abby Echiverri, Glo Phase, Eric Cloutier and many, many others, and the whole thing is available now.
KELLY MORAN HAS BETTER TASTE THAN I DO
First Floor is effectively a one-person operation, but every edition of the Thursday digest cedes a small portion of the spotlight to an artist, writer or other figure from the music world, inviting them to recommend a piece of music. Today’s recommendation comes from Kelly Moran, a NYC-based pianist, composer and producer whose latest LP, Moves in the Field, dropped last month on the Warp label. Moran’s experimental approach often pushes her chosen instrument beyond its supposed limits, but she’s no mere technician, and infuses her work with an emotional depth that’s palpable even to those who have no idea what exactly she’s doing. As her selection here demonstrates, that kind of depth is something she seeks out in others’ music as well.
Faten Kanaan “Naufragium” (Fire)
I first heard “Naufragium” when I saw Faten Kanaan open for Alessandro Cortini in NYC a few weeks ago at the appropriately named Church of the Heavenly Rest. To say this set of music was transcendent would be a vast understatement. Kanaan’s music was perfectly suited for a holy space, and her gentle and melodic compositions filled the hall with beauty and evoked contemplation. “Naufragium” was the closing number of her performance, and this track’s arrival in the set signified that we had left the softer, organic sounds (and visuals) that occupied the first part of the set, and we were now in the heavy, electronic wing. The visuals shifted from branches, leaves and images of nature to digital patterns and machine-like pathways. We were no longer in the natural world; we had transcended to an electronic, digital realm, but Kanaan’s human touch was still guiding us. Deep, undulating sawtooth waves gently emerged as though they were being bowed by a massive, electronic cello.
This sound engulfs me and I feel my whole body resonating with its gorgeous and deep bellows. I wish I could physically submerge myself in this song—the experience of listening to it brings me such a deep sense of comfort. I often want to feel completely enveloped in music like it’s a blanket wrapping around me, and playing this song on speakers gives me that same sense of comfort. It’s a true musical gem that will remain one of my all-time favorite compositions.
NEW THIS WEEK
The following is a selection of my favorite tunes from releases that came out during the past week or so. Click the track titles to hear each song individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list if you prefer to listen to them all in one place.
D.Dan “Rising” (summerpup)
Techno has caught a lot of flack during the past few years, particularly as its fastest—and, often times, dumbest—variants have come to dominate dancefloors around the globe, but D.Dan’s new sequence.01 EP offers hope that the genre hasn’t yet gone completely off the rails. Both deep and driving, opening track “Rising” is essentially built around a single riff, its rubbery contours borrowing from hardgroove as D.Dan plots a semi-subterranean course across the dancefloor. Is there a bit of a throwback element? Sure, but that’s true of pretty much all techno these days, and “Rising”—the rare cut that’s both introspective enough for the heads-down gang and celebratory enough for the hands-in-the-air crew—never feels like a retro exercise.
Lovely “Sumo” (Pineapple)
Taken from The Ride EP—a joint release with drum & bass specialist Settle Down—“Sumo” is a delightfully rowdy garage hybrid. Crafted by London-raised, Hong Kong-based producer Lovely, this swinging bruiser lives and dies by its brawny bassline, but the track has also been peppered with rogue vocal clips—some of which sound like samples of either Street Fighter II or old Kung Fu flicks—that infuse the already bouncy cut with even more energy.
Matrixxman “Falling Down” (The Grid)
Despite being one of techno’s most consistent producers during the past decade, Matrixxman has made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the genre. Yet few would have anticipated a switch-up like Identity Crisis, on which the Berlin-based artist has delved headlong into old-school UK garage and dubstep sounds. Clocking in at 19 tracks, the album certainly feels like something more substantial than a few afternoons of messing around, but even if the record winds up being a one-off experiment, Matrixxman has fully committed to the bit, wielding clacking percussion and bassy wobbles with the expertise of a Croydon native. Though the LP has numerous highlights, “Falling Down” might be the best of the bunch, its downtrodden R&B vocal and post-Burial shuffle bolstered with enough muscular wubs to put any soundsystem through its paces.
Tim Reaper “waveform 08” (waveforms)
Anytime a Bandcamp Friday rolls around, Tim Reaper tends to make the most of it, and the UK junglist was particularly active last week. Aside from a new remix EP that revisited his 2023 collaboration with DJ Sofa—which was just one of two new releases that his Future Retro London label dropped that day—Reaper also offered up a separate split EP with Coco Bryce and a two-track solo effort, waveforms 07-08. “waveform 08” obviously appears on the latter, and true to the label’s ethos of focusing on early ’90s-style jungle, the song takes a sparkling trek down memory lane, pairing its rapid-fire drums with floaty melodies that evoke both Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” and the pristine environs of a neatly manicured Japanese tea garden.
hoyah “131-31(-°-)” (BRUK)
Set + Setting is a saxophone record—sort of. It’s actually a saxophone sample record, one that the Berlin-based hoyah created after loading up his MPC with as many digital sax snippets as he could find. The end product—which also happens to be his debut album—is unorthodox, to say the least, showcasing an experimental strain of not-quite-jazz that not even the most virtuosic saxophonist could perform on their own. Yet the music does retain some level of humanity, most notably on LP highlight “131-31(-°-),” a pensive, slightly melancholy number that accentuates its moody horn wanderings with droning textures, darting stabs and a smattering of vibrant (albeit relatively low-key) percussion.
A Lily “Flimkien Ngħaddu Mill-Bieb” (Phantom Limb)
Malta is a tiny island in the Mediterranean, but its people—who have been emigrating in sizable numbers since the 19th century—can now be found all across the globe. UK artist A Lily (a.k.a. Phantom Limb founder James Vella) is one member of that extended diaspora, and his new album Saru l-Qamar taps directly into the history of his ancestral homeland. Constructed using archival cassette recordings that Maltese emigrants would send to friends and family back home—many of them in the form of ghana, a kind of traditional song that’s native to the island—the LP carries a distinct emotional weight, its (heavily manipulated) vocalizations dripping with feelings of loss and longing. (Adding to the magic of the record is the Maltese language itself, which is actually a Latinized offshoot of ancient Arabic.)
All of this makes for quite the backstory, but Vella’s work shines on its own merits, stretching and pitch-shifting those antique vocal fragments to a point where they sound almost alien, and then swaddling them in fuzzy bass tones and spacey, zoned-out melodies. The hypnotic “Flimkien Ngħaddu Mill-Bieb” is one of the record’s most alluring selections, and though it bears traces of Imogen Heap, Hudson Mohawke and any number of purple drank-powered mixtapes from the Dirty South, it’s fair to say that the song—and, frankly, the whole LP—resides in its own unique universe.
Loscil // Lawrence English “Indigo” (Room40)
Following up on last year’s excellent Colours of Air full-length, veteran experimental artists Loscil and Lawrence English have once again plunged into the ambient abyss on their new Chroma LP. As they did on the first album, the two have used organ sounds as a starting point—more specifically, the sounds of a century-old organ owned by the Old Museum in Brisbane, Australia—and while that lends the proceedings a celestial, almost devotional feel, the standout “Indigo” feels more like a gravity-defying trip through the clouds than an afternoon at church. Deliberate but never boring, it unfolds at a measured pace, as though its creators are making sure to take in the scenery below as their shimmering melodies take flight and drift towards some unseen horizon.
Coral Morphologic & Nick León “Precipice” (Balmat)
Born out of an audio-visual project that involved projecting footage of coral across the Miami skyline, the glistening ambient sounds on Projections of a Coral City are miles away from the rave-ready, Latin-inflected grooves that Nick León is best known for. Yet the South Florida native appears remarkably comfortable in the record’s relaxed waters, its pastel undulations—created in collaboration with Coral Morphologic, the duo of marine biologist Colin Foord and musician J.D. McKay—offering a listening experience that’s far more tranquil than an average day at South Beach. It’s funny to think that music inspired by the possibility of Miami someday being submerged under fast-rising seas could result in something so peaceful, but “Precipice”—one of the record’s contemplative highlights—has seemingly made peace with disaster, tastefully shining as its existential dread is carried away by the tides.
NUG “Sky” (West Mineral Ltd.)
Calling an LP Bong Boat—and upping the ante with an album cover that depicts a dude smoking a gargantuan water pipe while sitting in a little skiff—is almost too on the nose for the perpetually blazed confines of the West Mineral Extended Universe, but NUG (a.k.a. the duo Florian T M Zeisig and PVAS) thankfully have the chops to ensure that the whole thing is more than just an elaborate weed joke. Moving away from the drum & bass experiments that populated their 2020 debut, Napping Under God, the pair have brewed up a collection of syrupy ambient excursions, leaning heavy on slow-motion psychedelics, nature sounds and deliciously lazy bliss. “Sky” is perhaps the album’s most reflective cut, but there’s a sense of euphoria baked into its ambling fog, as though the NUG boys are determined to shrug off the demands of the outside world and enjoy life as they casually move at a speed of their choosing.
Adam Wiltzie “Tissue of Lies” (kranky)
Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal isn’t the first solo effort from Adam Wiltzie, but it is his first record following the death of Brian McBride, his longtime partner in storied ambient duo Stars of the Lid. It’s unclear whether that loss affected the creation of the album—it’s not mentioned in any of the accompanying promotional blurbs—but it does put the record under a brighter spotlight, and, Wiltzie, to his credit, has risen to the occasion. The standout “Tissue of Lies” exemplifies the album’s cinematic beauty, with Wiltzie’s patient, Americana-tinged guitar ringing out across a seemingly infinite expanse. Is it meant to be hopeful? Narcotic? Ruminative? All of the above? Wiltzie isn’t telling, but his stripped-down compositions are deeply rewarding all the same.
Piotr Kurek “The night we slept under an overhanging cliff” (Longform Editions)
Picking a favorite is never easy when Longform Editions drops one of its bimonthly bundles, but the Australian label’s latest batch of compositions—which also include efforts from Chuck Johnson, Daniel Bachman and Weston Olecki—is highlighted by Piotr Kurek’s “The night we slept under an overhanging cliff.” Reminiscent of his Peach Blossom album from last year, the nearly 24-minute track—which consists of seven distinct segments—primarily revolves around a virtual choir of pitch-shifted vocal sounds, which the Polish artist has supplemented with an understated assortment of melodies and textures both organic and synthesized. Moving through patches of playful jubilance and dramatic tension, Kurek has created something akin to a miniature theater score, one that doesn’t require actors to stir up the emotions of whoever happens to be listening.
That brings us to the end of today’s First Floor digest. Thank you so much for reading the newsletter, and, as always, I do hope that you enjoyed the tunes. (Don’t forget, you can find them all on this handy Buy Music Club list, and if you like them, please buy them.)
Until next time,
Shawn
Shawn Reynaldo is a freelance writer, editor, presenter and project manager. Find him on LinkedIn and Twitter, or you can just drop him an email to get in touch about projects, collaborations or potential work opportunities.