First Floor #117 – Selling Out Is Still a Thing
a.k.a. Thoughts on the Bandcamp sale, plus a round-up of electronic music news and a big batch of new track recommendations.
THE BANDCAMP BUMMER
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Bandcamp got bought last week.
This probably isn’t news to many First Floor readers, and in the wake of the company’s sale to Epic Games (best known as the makers of Fortnite), there’s been no shortage of people sharing their thoughts—most of them critical and / or pessimistic—about what it means for independent music’s most prominent digital sales platform.
Given the sizable amount of real estate that’s been devoted to Bandcamp here in the newsletter over the past few years, I too joined the fray earlier this week, pulling together some thoughts on why the public reaction has been so negative and highlighting the real risk the company is taking by (literally) cashing in its credibility and goodwill for… well, it’s not entirely clear what for. (CEO Ethan Diamond did make some vague promises of continued growth, expansion and improvements to the platform.)
Those thoughts, along with a little bit of speculation about where Bandcamp might potentially be headed, can be found here.
REAL QUICK
A round-up of of the last few weeks’ most interesting electronic music news, plus links to interviews, mixes, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.
First Floor readers should know that Substack has launched a new iOS app, which they describe as “beautiful, focused place to read your favorite writers.” More importantly though, it’s a good way to ensure that you actually see the newsletter. Has First Floor ever landed in your spam folder or been diverted to some other random mailbox? When the newsletter runs long, does it get cut off by your email program? With the new app, readers can now avoid those problems entirely.
Just hours after I posted my own piece about the Bandcamp sale, I spotted this thoughtful reflection from Andrew Thompson of Components, a publication and research group that’s previously published some excellent data-driven analyses of the platform. He takes a cautiously optimistic approach, asking the question, “but what if [the sale] is good?”
Butterz co-founder and music industry truth teller Elijah—who I interviewed here in the newsletter last year—has been named Resident Advisor’s first-ever guest editor. He’s curated a series of features that will be published throughout March and has kicked off his tenure with this letter that outlines his aims.
Less than a week after the New York Times published this (not exactly flattering) profile of Web3 community Friends with Benefits by Erin Woo and Kevin Roose, the paper followed up with an article by Eric Lipton and Ephrat Livni that examines how the utopian visions of many DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) are running into real-world difficulties—a topic I broached myself last month in the newsletter.
DAO enthusiasts often point to Water & Music as an outlet that’s doing crypto right, and the platform has this week launched what it’s calling Season 1.5 of its $STREAM Report, continuing its research-led look at NFTs, DAOs and other Web3 applications / issues in the music world.
David Turner has largely stayed out of the crypto / Web3 conversation in his excellent Penny Fractions newsletter, but the latest edition dives into the topic head first, kicking off a two-part series that looks (often skeptically) at some of the music industry’s most prominent NFT projects and platforms.
Writing for Mixmag, Kwame Safo (a.k.a. Funk Butcher) has put together an in-depth look at perpetuity clauses, outlining what they are and why they’re one of the most problematic business practices in the music industry.
female:pressure has published a 2022 edition of its FACTS survey, which began in 2013 and “quantifies the gender distribution of artists performing at electronic music festivals worldwide.” And while male artists continue to represent a sizable majority of bookings, it’s encouraging that the percentage of female bookings has roughly tripled during the past decade, reaching 26.9% in the organization’s most recent reporting period.
Countless articles on streaming have been published over the years, but this article in The New Inquiry by Jamie Brooks (a.k.a. Elite Gymnastics) offers a fresh perspective, going back in time to the final days of the music blog / filesharing era (i.e. when their music career first took off) and looking at how much the industry has been transformed since then.
Focusing on the work of artists such as Tarta Relena, Debit and Wojciech Rusin, Philip Sherburne has penned a new Pitchfork feature highlighting how these acts are bringing age-old folk traditions into modern electronic music.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases that were announced during the past two weeks.
In an effort to support Ukraine during the country’s current crisis, Skee Mask last week offered up A, an album-length collection of tracks made between 2015 and 2019, as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp. He’s since reported that the record brought in nearly 10,000 euros, which he’s donated to several different organization.
Helping Ukraine has been a recurring theme during the past two weeks, and several artists, labels and collectives have put together benefit compilations and special releases to raise money for the effort. Listing them all would be impossible—although the front page of Buy Music Club is full of fairly comprehensive attempts to do just that—but some of the most noteworthy offerings include:
Together for Ukraine, a 65-track compilation from Kyiv outpost Standard Deviation.
A 136-track, drum & bass-focused collection called Together with Ukraine.
U4E’s Support Ukraine, a compilation of 20 tunes from some of techno’s heavy hitters.
The latest volumes of the Lobster Plur and International Chromies compilation series, plus special compilations from the Permanent Vacation, Northern Electronics, Music from Memory, Toy Tonics and Gost Zvuk labels.
A special VIP version of Special Request & Tim Reaper’s “Spectral Frequency.”
The next Livity Sound release is already generating a lot of buzz, as it’s a collaborative effort between Azu Tiwaline and Al Wootton. Entitled Alandazu, the EP is due to arrive on March 25, although lead track “Blue Dub” has already been shared.
Speaking of collaborations, Aasthma (a.k.a. the joint endeavor of Swedish producers Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik) will soon release their debut album, Arrival, through the Monkeytown label. The LP drops on April 8, but two tracks from the record can already be heard here. (Full disclosure: I contributed to the press / promo text for the album.)
“Vocoder” is a new standalone single from Floating Points, who released the track yesterday via Ninja Tune.
Following something of an extended absence, Silent Servant has re-emerged with a new EP, Optimistic Decay, which is available now via the L.I.E.S. label.
UK duo Overmono have finished up a new EP called Cash Romantic for XL, and while it won’t be released until April 8, one of the record’s five tracks, “Gunk,” has already been shared.
!K7 has enlisted Cinthie for the next edition of its long-running DJ-Kicks compilation / mix series, and it’s scheduled to arrive on April 1. The full tracklist can be seen here, and the German artist has already offered up “Organ,” a new song she made exclusively for the release.
Berlin-based Australian Logic1000—whose “I Won’t Forget” was one of my favorite tunes of 2021—has issued a new single, “Cant Stop Thinking About,” through the Because imprint. Both the original and dub versions of the track are available here.
It was 2013 when Axel Boman dropped his debut solo album, but the fun-loving Swedish producer and Studio Barnhus co-founder has finally completed the follow-up, a double LP called LUZ / Quest for Fire. It won’t be released until April 15, and no tracks or previews have been shared just yet, but the artwork and full tracklist is here.
Given his prolific nature, it’s hard to believe that Physical Therapy hasn’t released a solo EP (at least not under that moniker) since 2018, but he’ll soon bring that streak to a close with Teardrops on My Garage, a five-track effort that will pop up on March 24 via his own Allergy Season imprint. Ahead of that, opening track “Circle Game” is already available.
NEW THIS WEEK
The following is a selection of my favorite tunes from releases that came out during the past two weeks. The ones in the ‘Big Three’ section are the songs I especially want to highlight (and therefore have longer write-ups), but the tracks in the ‘Best of the Rest’ section are also very much worth your time. In both sections, you can click the track titles to hear each song individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list to find them all in one place.
THE BIG THREE
Glass Pyramid “Better by the Minute” (PPU)
Is Glass Pyramid the funkiest band to ever come out of Oklahoma? Quite possibly. “Better by the Minute” was first released in 1988, and with its confidently strutting, Chic-style bassline and radio-ready hook, it’s essentially a perfect exemplar of the era’s R&B sound. In retrospect, it’s almost criminal that this obscure gem wasn’t a Top 40 smash. (According to this article from 1987, the group did manage to warm up for acts like O'Jays and the Temptations, but it seems that a full-blown breakthrough never happened.) Nevertheless, the single has now been reissued by the always reliable PPU label, who will at the very least ensure that it lands in the crates of funk, boogie and old-school R&B enthusiasts everywhere.
Walton “Dawn” (Lith Dolina)
Walton “Working Title” (Lith Dolina)
Walton has spent much of his decade-long career turning out ribcage-rattling bass bombs, but his new Maisie by the Sea album ventures into more ambient and experimental territory—and impressively succeeds in the effort. The UK producer hasn’t abandoned drums entirely, but on “Dawn,” they’re largely used for dramatic effect, serving as a sort of intermittently booming counterweight to the song’s gauzy drift and cosmic glow. “Working Title,” on the other hand, is one of the only tracks on the LP that might be considered “DJ friendly,” its jittery, IDM-adjacent rhythms underpinning a track that ultimately sounds like a dreamy strain of electro, even as its bassy growls and choir-like vocal snippets make clear that the song is far too interesting for a single genre descriptor.
Huerco S. “Plonk II” (Incienso)
Huerco S. “Plonk VI” (Incienso)
In news that will surprise almost no one, the long-awaited new Huerco S. album is real good. Plonk may have an irreverent title—the Kansas producer explained its origins (and discussed a whole lot more) in a recent interview here in the newsletter—but it’s a rich, rewarding listen that transcends ambient while folding in smeared bits of IDM, new age and even rap music. “Plonk II” is one of the LP’s more meditative selections, a reverb-soaked, stop-and-start composition whose broken rhythms only highlight the hazy glow of its melodies. More playful (albeit similarly jittery) is “Plonk VI,” an expansive, almost twee number that’s been populated with bright, childlike melodies and scattered vocal snippets, sounding something like a less eerie version of Boards of Canada.
BEST OF THE REST
Ignez “Anahata” (SK_eleven)
The menacing title track of Berlin producer Ignez’s latest EP, “Anahata” distills the world’s chaos into a sturdy techno thumper, its snarling wobble baying atop the song’s steady churn.
Alloy Sea “Remember we said” (Paralaxe Editions)
XOOMIN, the new tape from Alloy Sea (a.k.a. Mor Elian) obviously came out on my wife’s record label, but please don’t let my potential bias detract from the technicolor joy of “Remember we said,” an IDM-flavored song powered by gleefully off-kilter percussion and bright waves of jubilant digital melodies.
Charbonneau / Amato “All Rose” (Backwards)
Whimsy abounds on Synth Works Vol.2, the latest LP from the Montreal duo of Mathieu Charbonneau and Pietro Amato, and album opener “All Rose” is a bucolic delight that seemingly takes equal cues from ’70s synth soundtracks and bright spring mornings when the sun is shining and nature is in full bloom.
Perila “everyday hope” (Self-released)
It’s safe to assume that Perila’s new there are no words to describe it EP is at least partially inspired by the current crisis in Ukraine—the artist herself is Russian and the accompanying text on the Bandcamp release page includes the phrase “hope it all to stop”—and the quietly arresting “everyday hope,” despite its title, is tinged with melancholy, its layers of vocals and reverb gracefully wafting into the air, searching for something brighter across the horizon but seemingly unsure that they’ll find it.
No Moon “Train to Luzern” (Craigie Knowes)
UK producer No Moon has long displayed a talent for lush melodics, but on his new Spins, Parities & Multipolarities, he takes things a step further, ditching percussion almost entirely and concocting cosmic explorations like “Train to Luzern,” a song whose astral expanse recalls the work of Tangerine Dream.
Chinaski “Fix Me Up” (Running Back)
If French producer Chinaski had been active in the ’80s, the guy would have been a millionaire. His new No Pop No Fun LP is a pitch-perfect tribute to the era’s gleaming synths and cinematic grandeur, and “Fix Me Up” is the album’s gloriously slow-burning centerpiece, a song tailor made for steamy love scenes and slow-motion pans across the dark streets of a troubled city.
Bjarki “Electrip ppl” (Bjarki)
I Wanna Go Home is the first new solo EP from Bjarki since 2018—it’s also the first release on the genre-hopping Icelandic producer’s new eponymous label—and the lively “Electrip ppl” is a techno thrill ride, a runaway train of galloping rhythms, robotic voices and sci-fi flourishes.
Carmen Villain “Subtle Bodies” (Smalltown Supersound)
Built atop a softly clomping beat, “Subtle Bodies”—one of several standouts from Carmen Villain’s new Only Love from Now on album—feels a bit like a march through the woods, but instead of trees, its landscape is full of ethereal vocal choirs and breezy sheets of tape hiss. (Side note: for more info on Villain and her new LP, check out this recent interview with Andrew Parks for Bandcamp Daily.)
Chevel “Dawn” (Fixed Abode)
The first track on Chevel’s new Waiting for Love EP, “Dawn” packs a lot of drama into less than two minutes, the airy ambience of its opening moments quickly blossoming into a towering, IMAX-ready suite of disembodied vocal refrains and static-drenched bass swells.
Pjusk “Febertanker” (12k)
Densely constructed, intricately detailed and decidedly wintery, Salt og Vind is the latest album from Norwegian ambient outfit Pjusk—it’s also the project’s first release as a solo act after more than 15 years as a duo—and “Febertanker” perfectly encapsulates the record’s chilly aura, combining jittery percussive outbursts, echo-laden crunch, plinking melodies and rumbling bass tones in a thick, reverb-laden stew.
Eli Keszler “The Vaulting Sky” (LuckyMe)
The percussive elements of “The Vaulting Sky”—a brilliant new standalone single from NYC drummer and producer Eli Keszler—barely rise above a whisper, but the song’s gentle hi-hats are the glue that holds the composition together, their persistent pitter-pat beautifully offsetting the track’s woozy textures and dreamlike chimes.
J. Albert “Cliqued” (Self-released)
Easily one of NYC’s most underrated producers, J. Albert quietly continues to push the limits of his craft, and songs like “Cliqued”—an smoky slice of fractured, R&B-indebted club sounds from his new Good Music Mixtape Vol.1—are why he draws comparisons to similarly boundary-pushing acts like Actress.
Xyla “On & On” (Leaving)
Although the label has billed “On & On”—the latest single from genre-blurring San Francisco producer Xyla—as “Crunk ’n B,” the song also employs several splashes of playful ’80s color, hinting at new wave and freestyle while occupying an upbeat space that’s not terribly far off from what artists like Jessy Lanza are doing.
Minimal Violence “We Suffocate on the Violence of Light” (Tresor)
A standout from Canadian artist Minimal Violence’s new Phase Three EP, “We Suffocate on the Violence of Light” pulls from both the spooky soundtracks of artists like John Carpenter and Blade’s infamous blood rave scene, delivering a haunted, high-octane acid ripper for the nosebleed techno generation.
Radio Slave “Stay Out All Night (KUSP Remix)” (Rekids)
Need a big-room banger? Look no further. Although the Stay Out All Night (Remixes) EP also includes reworks from Carl Cox and Commix, it’s UK producer KUSP who’s most impressively flipped Radio Slave’s breakbeat-driven original, dialing up the rave energy while infusing the track with a wobbly, dubstep-influenced bass groove.
Rhyw “Slow Stings” (Fever AM)
Closer to dancehall than techno, “Slow Stings”—which is literally an alternate version of “Bee Stings” from Rhyw’s recent (and quite good) The Devil’s in the Dlzlzlz EP—is a swaggering slice of bass-heavy dance music that’s far less manic than the original, but the extra breathing room ultimately makes this bumping track even more potent.
Rødhåd “Wise Saying (feat. Sara Clarke)” (WSNWG)
“Wise Saying” might be the moodiest cut on Rødhåd’s new Alternation EP, and while the song’s insistent pulse will keep any dancefloor happy, the Berlin techno producer also weaves in some distinctly creepy undertones—a task made easier by the mournful vocals of Sara Clarke, which he’s stretched and processed into a sort of ethereal dirge.
Illuvia “Blue Rays” (A Strangely Isolated Place)
Illuvia’s 2021 LP Iridescence of Clouds was a stunning collection of ambient drum & bass, and now the Swedish artist has offered up a new expanded edition, Iridescence of Clouds (Sea of Vapor), which includes an extra disc of alternate versions and previously unreleased tracks. One of those tracks is “Blue Rays,” a gorgeous, billowing number that stretches across nine plush minutes, but still has plenty of Amen-fueled pep in its step.
Kevin Richard Martin “Destroyed” (Intercranial)
Sub Zero is the latest opus from The Bug’s ambient-ish Kevin Richard Martin alias, and the trudging “Destroyed” is full of the bracing winds of the tundra, the song’s scratchy static and howling currents pushing back against its bassy pulse. It’s a bit harrowing, yet Martin has a knack for making terror feel sublime.
That’s it for today’s newsletter. Thank you so much for reading First Floor, 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.)
Have a great week,
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.