First Floor #175 – Nowhere to Go
a.k.a. The withering of Techno Twitter, plus a round-up of the week's electronic music news and a fresh batch of new track recommendations.
It’s Sónar week here in Barcelona (a.k.a. the time of year when seemingly every DJ and their dog comes to town), so I’m expecting to be run a bit ragged during the next few days. Ahead of that, I’ve of course put together today’s newsletter, but first… it’s time for an obligatory update about my book.
First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture is in the mail! I haven’t yet seen it myself, but I’ve been told that the books are printed and that everyone who preordered a copy will soon see it arrive in their mailbox. The official release date is July 7, but if you want it now, just order direct from Velocity Press or come to one of the rapidly approaching book tour dates, which I’ve posted below. (Some non-UK vendors are also linked here, plus it’s on Amazon too.)
So yes, there’s lots of exciting book-related activity happening. I actually just gave my first interview about it yesterday, and more are lined up—which, as a person who’s usually doing the interviewing, admittedly feels a bit strange—but enough about that; let’s get into the newsletter.
As usual, I’ve rounded up all the electronic music release announcements, news stories and written articles I think are most crucial, and no edition of First Floor would be complete without some fresh track recommendations as well. There’s also a guest appearance by Spanish artist Ylia, and for those in need of a longer read, I’ve dropped the paywall on the First Floor essay I published earlier in the week.
The topic? The seeming death of Techno Twitter, and why I’m not as ecstatic about it as I thought I’d be. Find the piece below and see if you you feel the same way.
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, was inspired by my realization that Twitter has largely ceased to be the primary hub of discussion in the electronic music world. Considering how nasty the platform could sometimes be, that might seem like a cause for celebration—it’s certainly not an entirely bad development—but it’s also left the scene / industry even more fragmented than it was before, and without a viable replacement.
FIRST FLOOR: THE BOOK TOUR
This was announced last week, but it’s worth repeating: I’ll soon be bouncing around the UK and Europe on a book tour. Most of the events are free, and at each stop I’ll be joined by an artist who’s agreed to moderate the conversation and ask me some questions about my work. Mark your calendars, and—VERY IMPORTANT—if you want to come to the Berlin event, please make sure to RSVP as soon as possible.
The dates are as follows:
June 25 - London, Cafe OTO (moderated by patten)
June 27 - Bristol, Dareshack (moderated by Bruce)
June 28 - Glasgow, University Chapel (moderated by Andrew Thomson)
June 29 - Manchester, O! Peste Destroyed (moderated by John Howes)
July 2 - Berlin, Bar Neiro (moderated by Matrixxman)*
July 4 - Barcelona, Llibreria Finestres (moderated by John Talabot)
*The Berlin venue has very limited capacity; please RSVP to firstfloorberlin@gmail.com if you’d like to attend.
REAL QUICK
A round-up of the last week’s most interesting electronic music news, plus links to interviews, mixes, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.
John Talabot—who, again, will be moderating my upcoming book event in Barcelona—doesn’t grant many interviews, but he recently spoke to writer Eoin Murray for a new DJ Mag feature, which dives into the Catalan artist’s many different projects, his approach to running the Hivern Discs label and how the pandemic affected his artistic mindset.
How did Olof Dreijer (a.k.a. one half of The Knife) and Mount Sims wind up making a record primarily rooted in the steelpan? Chal Ravens gets an answer in a new feature for Bandcamp Daily, talking to the two artists about their collaborative Souvenir release, which was more than 10 years in the making.
Few tears are usually shed when small-town clubs that cater to mainstream crowds and primarily play chart pop close their doors, but in an intriguing new article for Dazed, James Greig—who smartly enlisted writer Emma Warren to provide extensive quotes on the matter—re-examines the value of these spaces and laments their precipitous decline throughout the UK in recent years.
In a recent piece for The Quietus, Jakub Knera profiled four young experimental composers from Poland, all of them female: Martyna Basta, Antonina Nowacka, Aleksandra Słyż and Teoniki Rożynek.
It was announced yesterday—via a tweet thread by editor in chief Simon Clair—that Trax Magazine, which was founded in 1997 and has long been one of France’s primary media outlets for electronic music, will be closing. (The publication’s parent agency, Bon Esprit, is also going out of business.)
Space Afrika is the subject of a new Dazed feature by Günseli Yalcinkaya, in which the Manchester duo explain why they don’t call their sound “ambient” and talk about how they want to “push Black music and Black experiences into spaces they are not supposed to be in or where they are not commonly understood.”
Resident Advisor enlisted writer Max Honigmann to put together an expanded news story looking at the issue of rising DJ fees and how they’ve impacted the wider dance music economy, particularly as the industry has struggled to get back on its feet in the post-pandemic era.
Bandcamp will be holding its fourth annual Juneteeth fundraiser next Monday, June 19, in which 100% of the company’s shares of sales on the platform will be donated to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.
Pangaea’s “Installation,” which first surfaced last month, is already threatening to become one of dance music’s songs of the summer, and this week the Hessle Audio co-founder revealed that the track will also appear on a forthcoming new album called Changing Channels. Although the LP isn’t slated to drop until October 6, two more singles—the title track and “Hole Away”—were shared this week, and they can be heard along with “Installation” here.
Mood Hut co-founder Jack J—who granted his first-ever interview to First Floor last year—unveiled a surprise new single last weekend. Entitled “Foolish Man,” it’s available now.
When Call Super released the collaborative “Illumina” single with Julia Holter last month, it was said that more new music was on the horizon, and this week the English artist has made good on that promise by releasing another collaborative single. “Sapling,” which features Eden Samara, is out now on can you feel the sun, the label Call Super runs with Parris.
Night Slugs is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, and has just marked the occasion with a huge new compilation, Night Slugs Classix Remixed, on which tracks from the label’s expansive catalog (including tunes from Bok Bok, L-Vis 1990, Girl Unit, Helix and others) have been newly reworked by such artists as Ikonika, DJ Polo & NKC, OSSX, Bored Lord and DJ Lag). It’s out now, and those looking for more information on Night Slugs’ history can also check out this little feature that Bok Bok put together for Ransom Note, talking about some of the key tracks that shaped the label’s trajectory over the years.
Last year Mount Kimbie took the unusual step of releasing MK 3.5, a double album that consisted of two solo albums: Dom Maker’s Die Cuts and Kai Campos’ City Planning. In the months since, Campos has dropped a number of remix EPs, and now the UK artist has assembled City Planning (Deluxe), an expanded edition of the LP that includes previously released remixes from Robert Hood, Beatrice Dillon, DJ Stingray and Forest Drive West, along with additional reworks from Ploy, Kush Jones, Lady Blacktronika and others. The whole package will arrive on July 21 via Warp, but in the meantime a new remix by Octo Octa has already been shared.
Samrai, a Manchester artist who many know as a co-founder of SEEN magazine and the now-defunct Swing Ting crew, has completed a new album called Work & Roti. It’s due to surface on June 30 through his own Sangha Industries imprint, but two singles from the LP (“Create Your Own Bless” and “Dirty Dirty”) are available now. Both can be heard here.
Ecstatic Recordings co-founder Alessio Natalizia will soon be releasing a new full-length from his Not Waving project. The Place I've Been Missing features guest appearances from Romance, Marie Davidson, More Eaze, Spivak and the late Mark Lanegan, and will arrive on June 23. No music from the LP has been shared yet, but more details about the record can be found here.
YLIA HAS BETTER TASTE THAN I DO
First Floor is effectively a one-person operation, but every edition of the newsletter 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. This week’s installment comes from Ylia, a Spanish artist who currently lives in Málaga. (Full disclosure: Aside from being a friend, Ylia and I have DJed together a few times and her first album, Dulce Rendición, came out on my wife Dania’s Paralaxe Editions label.) A classically trained pianist who cut her rave teeth DJing breakbeat parties in Andalucía, she’s someone whose musical talents are wide-ranging, to say the least, but her forthcoming Ame Agaru album for Balmat prioritizes quieter sounds, as does her recommendation below.
Harold Budd “Bismillahi 'Rrahman 'Rrahim” (Obscure)
This is the first song of the 1978 album The Pavilion of Dreams, which was produced by Brian Eno and is one of the most beautiful recordings I’ve ever heard. An essentially nocturnal record, it’s accompanied me on many occasions these last two years. You know when it’s cold outside, but then you get home and have a warm cup of soup that warms you up and calms you down? This track is something like that. You can get lost in Harold Budd’s keys, which form layers that are sometimes ambient and other times are more impressionistic and melodic, interweaving with the marimba and vibraphone as long saxophone notes glide over top. Coincidentally the song also connects with another record I’ve been listening to a lot lately by Susumu Yokota, which samples “Bismillahi 'Rrahman 'Rrahim” and maintains the same sort of energy, but uses it in a more hypnotic way.
NEW THIS WEEK
The following is a selection of my favorite tunes from releases that came out during the past week or so. ‘The Big Three’ 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. 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.
THE BIG THREE
Gacha Bakradze “ff31warning” (Lapsus)
Speaking as someone whose appreciation for Gacha Bakradze’s music dates back to 2012’s “Bowl” (and its enticingly bizarre video, which is perhaps best described as a lo-fi, Twins Peaks-esque synchronized dance routine), the Georgian producer’s best work has always been club-inspired, as opposed to club-ready. That doesn’t mean that his new Pancakes full-length doesn’t have its fair share of dancefloor moments, but when the kick drum is set aside, it often gives Bakradze room to offer something more emotionally immediate. (It’s telling that the LP’s title refers to, amongst other things, the fact that he likes to make pancakes with his young son.) “ff31warning” is a totally beatless number, but it’s also the album’s most majestic tune, a billowing slice of ambient trance that sits somewhere between the work of Jean-Michel Jarre and Barker. Bold but never brash, there’s something comforting about its pillowy melodic grandeur, even as the song casually drifts toward some unknown location beyond the horizon.
Bendik Giske “Start” (Smalltown Supersound)
Bendik Giske “Not Yet” (Smalltown Supersound)
The music of Bendik Giske has never been overly melodic, but on his new self-titled album, the Norwegian saxophonist—who intriguingly enlisted English artist Beatrice Dillon to produce the record—has done away with melody almost entirely, focusing instead on “pattern and rhythm” while stripping the music down to the studs. What’s left behind is Giske’s total mastery of his instrument, along with his willingness to push it into weird and often percussive territory that’s miles away from the typical saxophone riff. There’s an obvious physicality to the music—a sensibility enhanced by the incorporation of its creator’s own breath sounds—and with its borderline atonal horn blasts, the album shares some DNA with the early no wave era. That’s especially true on urgent album opener “Start,” on which Giske’s feverish tapping and howling brass evoke images of being chased through the night by some sort of bloodthirsty creature, while the similarly powerful “Not Yet” takes a more groove-oriented approach, its swaying gait laying the groundwork for the song’s interweaving—and increasingly dynamic—sax lines.
marine eyes “raindrop roof” (Self-released)
More than 20 years in the making, “raindrop roof” is a song that Los Angeles ambient artist marine eyes began writing when she was only 17 years old, “softly strumming [her] guitar while sitting on the roof of [her] childhood home.” Perhaps that’s why “raindrop roof” exudes such a palpable sense of wide-eyed wonder, its shimmering tones and gentle raindrops cooly floating alongside marine eyes’ celestial voice. “Avant pop” might be the most succinct descriptor, and though the track’s original genesis predates Grouper, the music of Liz Harris—her early stuff in particular—seems like an obvious reference point; the two women definitely share a certain sonic sensibility and penchant for raw emotion, but “raindrop roof” diverges in one major way: it’s full of hope.
BEST OF THE REST
No Sir “Animal Awareness” (Faux Poly)
Run by talented UK duo Kassian, the Faux Poly imprint extends its curatorial reach across the Atlantic with Voyeur, a new EP from No Sir. Much like the guys that head up the label, the Brooklyn-based upstart appears most comfortable swimming in the waters between big-room-ish techno and heady (albeit potent) UK bass music, and that formula that hits paydirt on “Animal Awareness,” a track whose brawny basslines and broken rhythms are offset by glowing bursts of melodic color.
DJ Balduin “Wherever You’re Going Take Me with You” (KANN)
With its weepy chords and peppy breakbeats, the rave nostalgia knob has been fully cranked on “Wherever You’re Going Take Me with You,” a standout from Leipzig artist DJ Balduin’s new Concrete Mimosa album. It’s not a party track per se, but its hazy textures and smeared, soft-focus synth melodies are sure to trigger memories of youthful abandon and glorious nights out.
Sakura Tsuruta “Double Standard” (Mule Musiq)
First released last year, C/O is the debut album from Tokyo producer Sakura Tsuruta, who’s now been given a bigger platform via a reissue by Mule Musiq. Dreamy and ethereal, but also filled with far too many percussive vocal chops and kinetic, IDM-indebted rhythms to be classified as ambient, the record brings to mind the work of artists like Salamanda and Sign Libra, and tripped-out LP highlight “Double Standard” isn’t far off from Holly Herndon’s occasional dancefloor flirtations.
Automatisme “Ultra-Scape (Extended Version)” (Mille Plateaux)
Despite its sleepy reputation, dub techno has an amazing capacity for weirdness, and is often at its best when the music’s reverb-soaked rhythms veer from the grid and get a little freaky. Topdown Dialectic is a master of this, and “Ultra-Scape,” an expansive new soundscape from Quebecois artist Automatisme, resides in a similar zone. Inspired by labels like Chain Reaction and Echospace, and composed using field recordings of a botanical garden, the pieces alternately glides, lurches and crunches its way through 14 minutes of murky magic, surely hypnotizing anyone who happens to be in earshot.
Levon Vincent “Greetings and Salutations” (Novel Sound)
After two decades of serving up top-shelf house and techno cuts—several of them certifiable anthems, at least in headier DJ circles—Levon Vincent swerved away from the dancefloor on last year’s Silent Cities album, which somewhat unexpectedly wound up being one of the most critically acclaimed efforts of his career. Now he’s swerved back toward the club on the new Work in Progress full-length, and LP highlight “Greetings and Saluations” quickly makes one thing clear: the man hasn’t lost a step. A stompy tune that relies on little more than a pumping beat and some not-quite-a-chime-sound synths, it’s a refreshingly no-frills number that’s primed to bring the house down.
Sara Miller “Sprinkles” (Permanent Vacation)
Permanent Vacation released its first label compilation all the way back in 2006, and the series’ latest installment, Permanent Vacation 8, is a sprawling collection of 24 tracks that features Iron Curtis, Rhode & Brown, Ruf Dug, Eli Escobar, tape_hiss and others too numerous to list. Yet it’s the opening track from Sara Miller—a Berlin-based Irish artist whose debut Lunar Theory EP dropped just last month—that steals the show; “Sprinkles” is a delightfully jaunty house tune, one whose pastel melodies and smile-inducing shimmy are aided by a funky little bassline.
Ignez & Rødhåd “Verdurous 01” (WSNWG)
The second half of a two-part collaboration, the new Verdurous EP finds Ignez and Rødhåd once again in top form. Lead track “Verdurous 01” is a muscular techno goliath, its industrial-strength churn very much in the lineage of the classic Berghain sound, yet its effectiveness isn’t rooted in brute force. There’s a sleekness to the song’s swooping synths and melodic flare-ups, as it’s clear that Ignez and Rødhåd would rather entice clubbers than bash them over the head.
Olor Acre “Phase 94-92” (Hedonic Reversal)
The debut offering from Barcelona duo Olor Acre (a.k.a. Stmkh and Refectori), Omica is a release that’s often rather punishing, its throttling percussive assault and gnarled textures seemingly emerging from the most hair-raising corners of industrial techno. Though it’s epic in scale—the work of Ben Frost comes to mind—it’s not really dance music, at least not in the sense that there’s much groove to it, but there’s nonetheless something thrilling about the music’s ferocity, which quickly makes itself known via the jagged static and thundering beats of opening track “Phase 94-92.”
And with that, we’ve arrived at the end of 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.)
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.