First Floor #181 – The Things We Will (and Won't) Pay For
a.k.a. The consequences of media paywalls, plus a round-up of the week's electronic music news and a fresh crop of new track recommendations.
As someone who technically creates content for a living (sigh), one of the strangest parts of the job is seeing just how worked up people get about things that they A) weren’t obligated to read and B) didn’t actually pay for. Oftentimes it doesn’t take much more than headline to set people off, and while that can be chalked up to online incivility and consumer entitlement, perhaps it’s also because when it comes to media, we’ve all reached a level of utter saturation. It says a lot that responding to long article (or even a long social media post) with a snarky “TL;DR” has become not only acceptable behavior, but something folks will do in hopes of being validated by their similarly exasperated online peers. Who cares how long an article took to put together, or even whether its contents are actually any good? For most readers, it’s just an annoyance, another piece of disposable content. (Questions of who, what, when, where, why or how it got made in the first place most likely fail to even register on their radar.)
It’s human nature to take things for granted, and after a decade-plus of access to virtually limitless free media, most consumers have little appetite to pay for it. That’s made life for publications and journalists exceedingly hard, and has left many of us in the profession with a choice: we can either give away or work for free, in hopes of reaching as many people as possible, or we can intentionally limit access via subscriptions and other paywalls, knowing that even our highest-quality output will probably be seen by only a relatively privileged few.
Exploring that choice—and what it means for the future of the media landscape—is at the heart of an essay I published earlier this week (more on that below), but of course today’s newsletter also includes all the usual electronic music goodies. News items, links to good articles, release announcements, new track recommendations… it’s all in there, along with a special guest appearance by Italian artist and PAN affiliate STILL.
There’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s go ahead and get started.
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, takes a look at the growing use of paywalls in media, and more specifically why I use them on First Floor. Beyond that, it also considers a future in which quality content is only available to those with the means (and the desire) to pay for it, while the majority of the populace is left with the ethically compromised and / or shoddily assembled information that publications are willing to offer for free.
OBLIGATORY BOOK MENTION
My first book is out now. It’s called First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture, and folks can either order it from my publisher Velocity Press, or if they’re in the UK or Europe, find it in a local bookshop. (And yes, it’s also available on Amazon.) The book is still making its way to North America—copies are literally on a boat crossing the Atlantic, and should arrive within the next couple of weeks—but in the meantime, folks there can preorder it from their favorite shop or via one of the links here.
SOME OTHER THINGS I DID
For anyone who cares about music writing, Todd Burns’ Music Journalism Insider newsletter has been essential reading for several years now. Earlier this week, he invited me to take part in the latest edition his Notes on Process series, in which he pastes a noteworthy article into a Google Doc, annotates it with a bunch of comments and questions, and essentially asks the author to provide some behind-the-scenes insights into their creative process. The piece we settled on is something I published earlier this year in First Floor (it also wound up in the book): the colorfully titled “Skrillex Is Green Day, and This Is Dance Music’s American Idiot Moment.”
Back in May, I moderated a discussion called “Impact(s) and Future of Independent Music Journalism” at the Nuits Sonores festival in Lyon. The panelists included Rachel Grace Almeida, Kwame Safo (a.k.a. Funk Butcher), Joel Penney and Tanya Voytko, and together we looked at the value of independent journalism in the current media sphere, along with the challenges faced when attempting to do it well. It was a good conversation, and a recording of it has now been made available by Nuits Sonores.
Sticking to audio, music journalist / historian Matt Anniss—who authored the bleep-focused Join the Future and was interviewed here in the newsletter several months ago—has a regular program on Bristol’s Noods Radio, and his latest episode includes a review of my First Floor Vol. 1 book, along with his thoughts on other recent titles of note by writers Emma Warren, Ed Gillett and Kirk Field. (In between all that, he also plays some excellent tunes.)
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.
I’m guessing Claude Young didn’t read my “Being a DJ Is Embarrassing” essay, but many of the issues I highlighted seem to have contributed to the veteran artist’s decision to abruptly retire from DJing. That decision was announced via a recent post on Instagram, and while said post isn’t publicly viewable—Young’s account is set to private—he said that he’d become “bored and annoyed with the whole thing.” He later provided a bit of additional context in comments to Mixmag, but Resident Advisor posted the complete text of his original statement in their own news story. (Not included in that story: the fact that Young began to harshly criticize RA as soon as their initial post about his retirement went live.)
Waking Life, an annual summer festival that takes place in Portugal, yesterday announced that its 2023 edition had lost €400.000, and asked supporters to either make donations or buy tickets for 2024 so that the team could continue operating and push forward into next year. That in and of itself isn’t necessarily groundbreaking news—festivals lose money all the time—but what is interesting is that in the interest of transparency, Waking Life has published a moderately detailed summary of their finances from the past seven years, demonstrating where money was spent, how costs have risen and the difficulties of running a large-scale event without corporate sponsors.
In a move that many in the music industry would argue was long overdue, Spotify this week announced that prices for its Premium (i.e. ad-free) tier would be increasing in more than 50 countries. The increase isn’t particularly large ($1 in the US, £1 in the UK, €1 in much of the EU), and so far there have been no indications that the increased revenue will be used to improve payment rates to artists and other rights holders.
Speaking of corporate shenanigans, I somehow missed this rather scathing feature that Liz Pelly wrote about Amazon Music, which was published by The Baffler earlier this month. Much of the piece focuses on Intersect, a Las Vegas music festival that Amazon Web Services put on in 2019, but Pelly also explores the company’s efforts to get into merch sales, its growing influence on the vinyl market and how Amazon Music ties into the company’s efforts to sell Alexa modules.
The Herb Sundays newsletter is usually a place for curated playlists and the thoughtful observations of Ghostly International founder Sam Valenti IV, but for this week’s edition, Valenti put on his interviewer hat and had a lovely in-depth conversation with synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani.
First Floor readers may remember that I was on Scuba’s Not a Diving Podcast last week—I’ve received many comments and compliments about it, so huge thanks to everyone who gave the episode a listen—and now the British artist has popped up in a new Bandcamp Daily feature, talking to journalist Daniel Cole about the 20-year history of Hotflush Recordings and highlighting a handful of key releases from the label’s expansive catalog.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.
Sofia Kourtesis has completed her first full-length. Scheduled for an October 27 release on Ninja Tune, Madres is dedicated to the Peruvian artist’s mother, who in recent years has been battling cancer. (The LP is also dedicated to Peter Vajkoczy, a neurosurgeon who operated on Kourtesis’ mother and apparently wound up becoming a sort of “sounding board” as the album was being completed.) Several tracks from the record, including new single “Si Te Portas Bonito,” are already available here.
Simo Cell, the French artist whose TEMƎT label has become the toast of bass music during the past few years, will soon be releasing his debut album. Entitled Cuspide Des Sirènes, it’s envisioned as a kind of majestic tale, exploring “themes of magic, enchantment, charm, and allure, but also personal fears.” Before it arrives on September 14, LP track “behind the waterfall” has already been shared.
Shackleton has been busy in 2023, and that’s set to continue with a new collaborative album, In the Cell of Dreams, that he’s created alongside Waclaw Zimpel and Indian classical vocalist Siddhartha Belmannu. The 7K! label will be releasing the record on September 8, but an edit of opening track “The Ocean Lies Between Us” is available now.
Fresh off his recent EP for AD 93, not to mention a guest appearance right here in the newsletter, Minor Science has lined up a new, ambient-leaning album, Absent Friends Vol. III, which stems from a series of live shows in which he used “hundreds of bespoke stems created in his studio” to assemble improvised, long-form performances. This release is essentially a collection of studio versions of music developed for those shows, and it will surface via the Balmat label on September 8. Ahead of that, the song “Dread the Evening” has been made available.
Aho Ssan, a Paris-based experimental artist who many will recognize from his collaborations with KMRU, has a new LP on the way. Rhizomes features appearances by Nicolás Jaar, Moor Mother, James Ginzburg, Valentina Magaletti and others, and ahead of its release by the Other People imprint on October 6, the song “Til the Sun Down,” a collaboration with clipping. and Resina, has already been shared.
Lee Gamble announced a forthcoming new LP this week. Billed as a “suite of illusory anthems” and something influenced by both Elizabeth Fraser and Lil Uzi Vert, Models will be issued by Hyperdub. The album is set for an October 20 release, but LP cut “She’s Not” is already available.
Jay Glass Dubs dropped some surprise new music yesterday. The self-released DJ HUMBLE EP, which is out now via Bandcamp, is said to be inspired by classic jungle and drum & bass, but its seven tracks are very much in the spirit of the Athens artist’s signature dub deconstructions.
Continuing a run of archival releases, Nyege Nyege Tapes has put together Inventor Vol 1, the first chapter of what the label promises will be a four-part retrospective of music from Angolan producer DJ Znobia, whose efforts during the ’90s and 2000s effectively birthed the kuduro genre. Before it arrives on September 22, the track “Piquena” has already been shared.
Following up the recent “Illumina” and “Sapling” singles, Call Super has created more dancefloor-oriented versions of those tracks for a new EP called The Doves of Discipline Mixes. Doves of Discipline is simply a new alias of the Berlin-based British artist, and the record was released last week via can you feel the sun, the imprint Call Super runs alongside Parris.
Speaking of remixes, Fever Ray enlisted DJ HARAM, Equiknoxx and God Colony to rework “Carbon Dioxide,” one of the singles from this year’s Radical Romantics album. All three versions can be found on the new Carbon Dioxide (Remixes) EP, which dropped last week via the Rabid imprint.
Mexico City outpost N.A.A.F.I has unleashed PIRATA 666, a sprawling, 46-track collection of bootlegs that features the work of Jensen Interceptor, Lao, Merca Bae, Anna Morgan and other artists too numerous to list. It’s available now as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp.
STILL 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. Today’s recommendation comes from STILL, a Milan-based artist who’s arguably best known for his speaker-rattling digital dancehall excursions and his contributions to the PAN label, but also heads up the sneakily excellent Hundebiss imprint and is one half of visual arts duo Invernomuto. His wide-ranging body of work includes conceptual dives into Mediterranean migration and Italy’s colonial past, along with directing boundary-pushing music videos for the likes of Marina Herlop, DUMA and Lala &ce and Low Jack. Tomorrow night he’s curated a special event at London’s Ormside Projects, where he’ll perform as part of a bill that also includes BRBKO, Cõvco, Agostino, E.B.N.X. and Klaus. (The latter, as it happens, is the creator of the bass-heavy tune he’s highlighted below.)
Klaus “Qua” (Tanum)
I don’t quite remember when I first heard Klaus’s music, but I vividly recall getting my hands on his 2017 vinyl Cry Tuff from Hard Wax. Since then, I’ve made it a tradition to open every single set with his track “Gus.” Whether I’m touring with Ecko Bazz or performing solo, I drop that tune to set the mood and draw people in.
There’s an inherent magic in Klaus’ music that I rarely come across elsewhere, and while picking between the two tracks on his latest release, Sabz, is challenging, the b-side “Qua” is truly exceptional. It begins with a hauntingly pitched-down vocal sample, which blends seamlessly with the song’s atmospheric pads as the track gradually evolves from a pulsating, stripped-down beat into a frantic and fragmented semi-jungle / semi-downtempo atmospheric piece. It perfectly captures the essence of these hot midsummer nights, intertwining the sound of crickets chirping with its various pauses and delays. There’s always something both dramatic and melancholic in Klaus’ music, something that transcends the obvious references of his style. Deeply moving and subtly shaking, it has a romantic and timeless quality, and a (digital?) mystic allure.
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.
Passarani “Skizzo” (Unrelatable / Loud Enough)
“Skizzo” is a new song with a complex backstory. Created by Italian producer Passarani, who’s best known as one half of Tiger & Woods but long ago made music as Analog Fingerprints (and a few other aliases), the song is available digitally on his Unrelatable imprint, but it was also part of a recent vinyl EP called The Analog Fingerprints Continuum. That record was issued by Loud Enough, the label offshoot of Roman record shop Ultrasuoni, who put it out as the first chapter a three-part EP series paying tribute to Pigna People, a short-lived collaborative trio featuring Passarani that released exactly one album in 2005. (Subsequent installments will come from the group’s other two members.)
Have you got all that? Don’t worry if not, because what’s important is that “Skizzo”—one of two new tracks on The Analog Fingerprints Continuum, which is filled out with two Analog Fingerprints cuts from the early 2000s—is a bubbly delight. Like many things Passarani does, it’s got a confident strut and a hint of ’80s glamour, its effervescent house rhythm underpinned by a rubbery, Jam & Lewis-style bassline.
Jaymie Silk “Circle It Up” (Self-released)
GHETTO CARNIVAL, the latest EP from prolific Parisian Jaymie Silk, is touted as an attempt to “put the groove back in techno music,” and there’s certainly nothing rigid about “Circle It Up,” a standout cut that playfully sashays its way across the dancefloor. In truth, it might be more house than techno, as its hard-charging rhythms recall the bouncy, sweat-on-the-walls energy of old-school Chicago heroes like Cajmere and Steve Poindexter.
ALEPH “IF U WANT” (VISION)
Clacking UK garage and brawny bassweight don’t make for the most obvious bedfellows, but “IF U WANT”—a highlight of Minnesota artist ALEPH’s quality new SEPULCHRE album—brilliantly infuses its swinging drum patterns with chest-rattling heft, seemingly borrowing from both Untrue-era Burial and the sturdy productions of someone like Pinch. The lighthearted frothiness of garage is generally one of the genre’s most enjoyable qualities, and “IF U WANT” does bear slight traces of that—the song has a subtle pop sensibility—but it’s also been fortified enough to sit comfortably alongside big-room bruisers.
Bawrut “Draa Valley” (Ransom Note)
Combining “Arabic voices and Latin American rhythms, stabs, trance and flamenco,” the new Raqs EP is part of Bawrut’s ongoing commitment to what he calls “weird club music,” and the gleefully shuffling standout “Draa Valley” is one of the most compelling tunes the Madrid producer has ever made. Wearing its North African / Middle Eastern influences on its sleeve, the track employs a looping (not to mention incredibly catchy) Arabic vocal sample, but it’s Bawrut’s off-kilter drum patterns that best capture the region’s rhythmic sensibility—and give the song its infectious bounce.
Yetsuby “물먹는하마” (Third Place)
One half of South Korean ambient-ish duo Salamanda, Yetsuby might someday be tempted to explore radical new ground with her solo work, but her new Water Flash EP largely exists in a similar musical zone. Perhaps the drums are a bit more prominent here, but plinking tones and pastel textures are still the music’s primary calling cards—that’s not a bad thing—and closing track “물먹는하마” is a shimmering new age gem, one whose digital crunch adds a welcome hint of grit to what’s otherwise an elegantly whimsical listen.
Fabiano do Nascimento “Yûgen” (Leaving)
LA-based Fabiano do Nascimento was mostly raised in Brazil, and that country’s musical fingerprints are all over his new album Das Nuvens. Crafting melodies with a variety of multi-string guitars, he pulls from genres like samba and choro, but does so without descending into cliché or pastiche. In truth, the most stereotypically Brazilian thing about his latest record is the music’s inherent sense of chill, but its jazzy asides and twinkling tones, in concert with Nascimento’s hypnotic guitar, also lend the proceedings a sort of vintage Balearic feel. With its relaxed bump, LP highlight “Yûgen” isn’t exactly a dance cut, but it’s not far off from some of the low-key groovers José Padilla used to slip into his Café del Mar compilations during the ’90s.
Primeiro “La Paciencia” (Danzee / Lassi International)
Music for Horses, the debut release from Primeiro, is a gorgeous record. The Argentinian artist describes it as “ambient manija” (rough translatation: “obsessive ambient”), which tracks with the music’s intense attention to detail. Though a song like “La Paciencia” initially seems loopy and laid-back—imagine a collaboration between The Sea and Cake and a Japanese ambient artist like Hiroshi Yoshimura—closer inspection quickly reveals a precisely edited lattice of ethereal tones and floaty arpeggios. This is no free-flowing drifter; the song is barely more than two minutes long, and only a real manija could have pulled it off.
Jonny Nash “All I Ever Needed” (Melody As Truth)
Jonny Nash “Golden Hour” (Melody As Truth)
In the film 24 Hour Party People, God famously tells Tony Wilson—both characters, by the way, were played by Steve Coogan—that Vini Reilly, the famed guitar player of The Durutti Column, makes “good music to chill out to.” The same could easily be said for Jonny Nash, who’s long swum in similar stylistic waters, both with his solo work and via Gaussian Curve, his long-running collaboration with Gigi Masin and Young Marco.
That project might actually be the closest parallel to the Amsterdam-based artist’s latest solo full-length Point of Entry; a guitar-centric album, it’s only electronic in the loosest sense of the word, but the music is deeply arresting all the same, its languid textures and melodic drift perfect for contentedly staring off into the distance. Nash even gets on the mic on LP standout “All I Ever Needed,” his dulcet tones gliding through the song’s warm fog of reverb, while the excellent “Golden Hour” brings some gentle keys and warbling sax into the mix as it patiently cruises towards some unknown horizon.
That brings us to 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.)
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.