First Floor #200 – That's a Lot of Newsletters

a.k.a. Kicking off 2024 with a round-up of the latest electronic music news and a fresh slate of new track recommendations.

Jan 11, 2024

First Floor is back! I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday season, or at least managed to take a little break from their inboxes, but now that we’re 11 days into 2024, I suppose it’s time to get back into the swing of things.

So… apparently this is the 200th First Floor digest. Is that a big deal? I suppose it counts for something, but seeing as how A) I haven’t been super strict with the numbering system over the years and B) I’ve never been a huge fan of arbitrary milestones, I ultimately decided that I wasn’t going to prepare anything special to commemorate the occasion. I will, however, say thank you. It’s honestly kind of wild that I’ve been doing this long enough to get to First Floor #200, and that wouldn’t have happened if people weren’t actually reading and supporting this thing.

(On that note, a whole lot of new people signed up for the newsletter during the past few weeks while First Floor was on hiatus. If you’re new around here, welcome!)

Anyways, what you’ll find below is just a normal edition of First Floor, but after three weeks off, there is a lot to catch up on. Of course there are news items, new release announcements and some interesting articles to read, but it’s also worth noting that a bunch of artists basically gave away free music during the holidays. (Yes, I’ve compiled the links so you can grab it.) I’ve also put together a new batch of track recommendations, and have recruited none other than Tiga to drop in and share a special guest recommendation of his own.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get started.

ANOTHER THING I DID

Second Floor is my monthly column for Nina, and the latest one, which was published earlier this week, focuses on minimal.

In truth, I’ve never really been a minimal guy (or a mnml guy), but after hearing and seeing the word pop up again and again in recent months, I decided to do a little digging. Is a minimal revival on the horizon? I can’t say for sure, but there is a whole new crop of artists and labels that are at the very least taking inspiration from the genre’s past, even if the music they’re making doesn’t technically sound all that minimal.

REAL QUICK

A round-up of the last few weeks’ most interesting electronic music news, plus links to interviews, mixes, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.

Electronic music journalism appears to be in a period of serious editorial turnover. First Floor readers may remember that I recently wrote about notable job openings at Resident Advisor and The Wire, and late last month, Crack magazine announced that it was looking to fill two relatively senior positions: Digital Editor and Head of Content. Both jobs are full-time, and all the available details can be found here. (For those curious, the salaries are listed as “dependent on experience.”)
Speaking of music journalism, Todd Burns announced last month that he would be ending his much-loved Music Journalism Insider newsletter. Its final edition did include a special Notes on Process feature, in which Burns and Philip Sherburne dissected the latter’s 2018 profile of DJ Koze for Pitchfork. The newsletter’s archives—which include interviews with hundreds of music writers—remain online, and regular contributor Laurent Fintoni, who previously maintained a Google doc compiling musical archives and other historical resources, has now put all of that valuable information into a proper website, Music Archives & Historical Resources.
After ceasing its broadcasts last May, online Barcelona radio station dublab BCN announced that it had found a new home and would be starting up again on January 17 of this year. More details are forthcoming, but I can happily confirm that my monthly First Floor show will be part of the programming calendar.
In other dublab news, the station’s founding LA outlet yesterday shared the news that it had been awarded a grant to program art and music at Los Angeles International Airport.
Sky News reported earlier this week that SoundCloud is up for sale, and the company’s primary investors are expecting the platform to fetch a sale price of $1 billion or more. Additional details surfaced in a Billboard story by Elias Leight, who reported that the company has been working towards a sale for more than a year, and that after negotiating several years of financial difficulties (and multiple rounds of layoffs), SoundCloud had finally become profitable in December.
Hudson Mohawke & Nikki Nair’s “Set the Roof” was one of the few dance cuts from 2023 that seemed to appear on nearly every single year-end list, and the two artists decided to celebrate by offering up a free download of the song’s stems, inviting producers everywhere to make their own remixes of the track.
New age pioneer Iasos passed away last weekend at the age of 77. As detailed in this Pitchfork obituary by Evan Minsker, he was born in Greece, raised in upstate New York and eventually settled in the Bay Area, where he began making what he called “paradise music” or “inter-dimensional music.”
Minimalist composer, filmmaker and photographer Phill Niblock has also died. Ninety years old at the time of his passing, he’d been a staple of New York’s experimental scene since the 1970s, and had remained active since then. Friend and fellow composer Lawrence English, who also heads up the Room40 label, paid tribute by penning an obituary for The Quietus.
Niecy Blues was responsible for one of 2023’s finest albums (Exit Simulation, which kranky released in November), and she talked about the record in a new interview with Michael McKinney for Passion of the Weiss. The conversation, which gets heavy at times, also touches on Christianity, gospel music, science fiction, escapism and more.
Cormac, a Northern Irish artist who also heads up the Polari label, has launched a new interview podcast called Queerly Beloved. Focusing on “queer music histories” and “exploring the unifying role that music plays in shaping and nurturing queer
people, and their creativity,” the first season will include interviews with Peaches, Kim Ann Foxman, Lakuti, Planningtorock and more, and the first two episodes, with feature Romy and Hercules & Love Affair, are available now.
Bay Area music and culture journalist Tamara Palmer announced yesterday that she’d launched an online community called Music Book Club, and part of that community includes a robust calendar of Zoom conversations with the writers behind a variety of, you guessed it, music-related books. In the interest of full disclosure, I am one of those writers (our talk is happening on March 3), but Palmer has also lined up Ann Powers, Lance Scott Walker, Dan Charnas and many, many others. (Fans of hip-hop should definitely take a look.)

OBLIGATORY BOOK MENTION

My first book is out now. It’s called First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture, and folks 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 few weeks.

Four Tet dropped a new track yesterday. Entitled “Loved” and available now via his Text label, it’s the opening song from the UK artist’s forthcoming new album, about which no further details have yet been shared—other than the fact that it’s “coming soon.”
Ben Frost today unveiled a new studio album, his first in six years. Scope Neglect will be released by Mute on March 1, and is said to be “forged from Frost’s admiration for metal with the mindful removal of its conventional attributes.” Two songs from the LP have already been made available here.
Skee Mask decided to clear out his hard drive again. C, which contains 11 tracks he made between 2016 and 2020, is the German artist’s third archival dump during in the past two years, and it’s available now as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp.
Speaking of name-your-price downloads, NYC artist MoMA Ready has made an annual habit of giving away a package of previously unreleased tunes. BODY 23—which will pop up again later in today’s newsletter—is the latest installment, and it’s available now.
Keeping things in NYC, AceMo and DJ Swisha teamed up on a new collaborative EP for the former’s Sonic Messengers label. The six-track effort is out now, and it’s called Expert Level.
To help spread the word about tomorrow’s Tresor meets Wania event in Berlin, DJ Sotofett posted a new EP called AM Tools Vol. 1. It too is currently available as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp, but only until January 12 (i.e. tomorrow), so move fast if you want to grab a copy.
Piezo became one of bass music’s most buzzed-about new acts in 2023, and the Italian producer decided to cap off the year with Soothe, a collection of what he describes as “loops, pads and sketches to soothe souls.” It’s also available as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp.
Galcher Lustwerk has been on a quietly prolific tear in recent months, and his latest offering is a new self-released EP called Played Out, which is available now.
Donato Dozzy has a new album on the way. Magda is billed as an “emotional homage to family and the Adriatic Sea,” and it’s due to arrive on January 19 via his Spazio Disponibile label. Ahead of that, he’s already shared LP closer “Lucrezia.”
Although his contributions to Kelela’s Raven album undoubtedly boosted his profile a bit, Florian T M Zeisig already had an impressive catalog of his own ambient / experimental excursions, and he’ll soon be adding to it with a new full-length. Planet Inc was inspired in part by his rewatch of ’90s German TV show Space Night, and though the Stroom label won’t be releasing the LP until March 9, two tracks from the record are available here.
Electro icon Anthony Rother has made a habit of wrapping up each year with a new full-length, and he actually closed out 2023 with a double LP, ROBO POP. Out now on his own Psi49net label, it was originally planned as a single album, but after rebuilding his AR-Textur-Maschine modular synth, the German artist created a second half, one that’s far more experimental in nature.
Ambient / experimental artist Kagami Smile offered up four separate releases in December. The first three (Where I’m Likely to Find It, Parallel Floating and Object of Fog) are all available as name-your-price downloads on Bandcamp, and the fourth, a tape called Moon in Your Hand, is out now via the Never Anything imprint.
Riding high off his breakout year, DJ Babatr dropped a compilation called Raptor House 2023, which features both tracks from the Venezuelan artist and contributions from like-minded producers Ronald Piñero, Armando DJ, Angel Linares, DJ Roy, DJ Loop and others. Released by TRR (The Raptor Records), the full collection is available as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp.

TIGA 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 Tiga, a mainstay of the Montreal music scene who’s spent the past few decades playfully connecting the dots between electro, techno and pop sounds. Aside from his own music, he’s also the founder of Turbo Recordings—which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary with a special compilation—and he’s also been teaming up with Hudson Mohawke; the duo dropped their debut collaborative album, L’Ecstasy, in December via their Love Minus Communications imprint. Here Tiga reaches far into his own past to highlight a song that unexpectedly blew his young mind many, many years ago.

Les Rita Mitsouko “Marcia Baila” (Virgin)

It’s odd to get up at 6 a.m. to write about a French pop song you first heard when you were 10, 39 years ago. It’s not even a song that I fell in love with at the time, an age when I was more into the synth-pop of Depeche Mode or the perfection of Duran Duran. I wanted to be and look like Nick Rhodes. I grew up in an English family in French-speaking Montreal. I was FORCED to learn French by the fucking government—so of course I hated it. I never thought anything French was cool. And then… on my TV... Les Rita Mitsouko. What the fuck??? I certainly didn’t want to BE THEM (that would take about another 20 years), but I couldn’t take my eyes off them. The video was for “Marcia Baïla,” and it was wild, alive and bizarre, and somewhere in my young brain it lodged and taught me what freedom and success looked like.

Les Ritas were a French pop band, but “Marcia Baïla” was produced by Conny Plank, producer extraordinaire and vanguard of Krautrock. This was a modern German production, and though it was filled with creative mayhem and overflowing with personality, it was still on the groove rails. Even today, it seems wild. Fred Chichin’s skinny moustache. Catherine Ringer’s dominant charisma. The words (“CANCER,” “ASSASSINS,” “DANSE UN PEU CHINOIS”). The images (Jean Paul Gaultier). The RISKS. What the fuck happened to the world? Am I crazy? I guess it’s all still out there, but I miss this. These are real people making unreal music. Art without a hint of compromise, fun and cool and weird. And even when it’s a song about death and essentially a eulogy, it completely avoids cliche and sentimentality, never getting indulgent or morbid or self-conscious. It’s a PARTY eulogy, one filled with explosive color and power and LIFE. That takes confidence. That takes bravery. That takes skill.

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.

Andrés “Listen to the Sound” (Mahogani)

As a general rule, building a house track around a sample of “Dreams”—yes, the Fleetwood Mac classic that soundtracked this heavily memed video a few years back—is not a good idea. Andrés, however, is not the average producer. Taken from the Detroit mainstay’s new ANDRÉS V album, “Listen to the Sound” molds a snippet of Stevie Nicks’ velvety voice into a confidently cool groove, punching things up with some squelchy synths, a yacht rock-ready guitar riff, some scattered horns and a drum pattern that could have been played by the local marching band.

MoMA Ready “Levitator” (Self-released)

Although he’s certainly capable of making a satisfyingly gut-rattling rave-up, NYC artist and Haus of Altr boss MoMA Ready is often at his best when his strips his music down to the bare essentials. “Levitator,” which opens his new BODY 23 release, is a sleek bit of late-night techno, its insistent pulse offset by the song’s dreamily drifting pads and sultry vocal whispers. This is one for the last hour of the party, when the vibe is easing up but the dedicated folks still on the dancefloor are determined to keep moving until the lights come on.

Pluralist “Water Cycle” (curvingtrack)

Hailing from Bristol, it’s no wonder than Pluralist has proven adept at crafting hybridized strains of bass music, but “Water Cycle”—the closing number on his new Touch EP—puts a fresh spin on things by blending its percussive clatter and brawny low end with a healthy dose of swirly prog escapism. As such, it’s not a banger in the traditional sense, but the song’s fluttering melodies, which are very much in the spirit of ’90s heroes like Sasha and Digweed, should sound positively epic at your local forest rave.

Siu Mata “Pannotia” (Nervous Horizon)

Still one of bass music’s most reliable outposts, Nervous Horizon has done no harm to its reputation with Amasia, the latest EP from Siu Mata. Though he originally built his name with a series of high-octane edits—many of which were created alongside frequent collaborator Amor Satyr—the French artist (slightly) eases off the throttle on his new record, the additional breathing room making every thump and thwack feel even more potent. “Pannotia” closes things out on a particularly bouncy note, its trundling rhythm joined by a playful array of melodic whistles.

Fred P “LG Fantasy (Early Edit)” (Private Society)

Just before the end of the year, deep house veteran Fred P unveiled a new EP series called DJs ARE THE ORIGINAL EXPATs, which appears to be exclusively available via Bandcamp. Seven installments have dropped so far—apparently there will be 12 total—and the second one included “LG Fantasy (Early Edit),” a warm and floaty cut that satisfyingly drapes its diva vocal snippets in plenty of reverb. Bumping enough for the dancefloor but also relaxed enough to put on while you’re chilling or making dinner, it’s a great example of the soulful elegance that Fred P has made his calling card.

Sweater on Polo “Hot December” (L.I.E.S.)

NYC might be the city Sweater on Polo calls home, but his music is steeped in the sleazy grit of 1980s Chicago. Go Wild Harlem Trax is the young producer’s L.I.E.S. debut, and its no-bullshit, bang-the-box rhythms bring to mind the work of early house legends like DJ Pierre and Farley “Jackmaster” Funk. Fans of jackin’ grooves will find plenty to enjoy on the record, but the standout “Hot December” takes a more subdued approach, pairing its vintage drum machine percolations with a chunky bassline and sustained synth notes that linger like a cloud of cigarette smoke in a tiny, dimly lit bar.

Shed “AWE” (The Final Experiment)

Has Shed ever released a bad record? Some might be more memorable than others, but genuinely bad? I don’t think so. The 030-Files, a double pack that quietly slipped out just before Christmas, contains some of the dubby techno abstractions one might expect from the German producer, but it also contains some surprisingly urgent material. That includes “AWE,” a crunchy stormer with a screeching melody that legitimately sounds like somebody pulled a fire alarm. On paper, perhaps that sounds annoying, but with Shed at the helm, it’s invigorating.

J. Albert “tdU_du_tdu_tdu” (Self-released)

I’m running out of ways to praise J. Albert, but the shapeshifting NYC artist dropped another batch of hypnotically odd productions last week. Entitled onomatopoeia, its individual song titles do appear to be legitimate attempts to verbalize what the music sounds like, and it reaches a high point on “tdU_du_tdu_tdu,” a spacey, not-quite-techno tune on which a sludgy, dubstep-ready bassline takes center stage. Simultaneously both rude and refined, it’s an excellent piece of work.

Ben Kaczor “Katamaran (Sebastian Mulleart Remix I)” (Dial)

Ben Kaczor “Katamaran (Sebastian Mulleart Remix II)” (Dial)

It’s a bit of a cop out to highlight two separate remixes from the same artist, but given that Sebastian Mulleart actually reworked “Katamaran” three times on Ben Kazcor’s new Petrovo Uho Remixes (III) EP, I don’t feel like I’ve completely abandoned my editorial duties. Both of these versions dial down the motor of the original “Katamaran,” but “Remix I” takes the track close to lullaby territory, its skeletal dub techno rhythm swathed in comforting layers of static and tape hiss. “Remix II,” on the other hand, is a more colorful affair, pairing spritely chords with a steadily bubbling underbelly—and stretching out across more than 12 minutes of proggy bliss.

Patrick Holland “Chop” (Verdicchio Music Publishing)

Having spent 2023 dropping singles, EPs and other short-form bursts of creativity, Patrick Holland has apparently decided to stretch his legs in 2024, as he’s kicked off the year with a surprise new mixtape. With 16 tracks that include ambient daydreams, low-key house groovers and numerous points in between, Infra—which has been in the works since 2017 and features collaborations with fellow Canadians CFCF and Unknown Mobile—is essentially a showcase of both the Montreal artist’s multifaceted talents and his seemingly innate sense of chill. “Chop” is an obvious highlight; not quite beatless and not quite trance, it’s full of understated rave nostalgia (and maybe a bit of big-room sad) and doesn’t need a kick drum to get listeners’ hearts pumping a little bit faster than usual.

Le Mystérieux Orchestre Électronique de Paris “Apologie des Apogées au Sommet de la Montagne” (Versatile)

Not much is known about Le Mystérieux Orchestre Électronique de Paris—which makes sense, given that the name translates to The Mysterious Electronic Orchestra of Paris—but the project will be releasing an album on Versatile next month. In the meantime, the label is offering up “Apologie des Apogées au Sommet de la Montagne” as a name-your-price download, and it’s a verdant suite of wondrous (albeit relatively serene) sounds. Nearly 11 minutes long, the song’s twinkling melodies and weightless textures pull from ambient and new age alike, its languid tones eventually settling into a kind of bucolic drift.

Michal Turtle “Borrowed Times” (Music from Memory)

Dazion “Friendship” (Music from Memory)

Marking the Music from Memory imprint’s first decade of existence, the arrival of the new 10 compilation ought to feel wholly celebratory, but the untimely passing of label co-founder Jamie Tiller last October sadly looms over the release. That said, the record stands as a testament to his curatorial prowess, featuring contributions—most of them in the ambient / new age zone—from Yu Su, Jonny Nash, Gigi Masin, RAMZi, Terekke, Suso Saiz and many, many others. One of the clear standouts is Michal Turtle’s “Borrowed Times,” which weaves together an enchanting array of bells and chimes as the song’s underlying percussion steadily (but gently) marches toward the horizon. Dazion’s “Friendship”—which is actually one of several digital-only bonus cuts—is another highlight, and it occupies a moodier, more pensive space, sitting somewhere between the Windham Hill catalog and (not joking) the epic opening moments of Van Halen’s “Right Now.”

Eva Sajanova & Dominik Suchy “Karamel” (Weltschmerzen)

Decision Paralysis, the debut collaboration between Slovakian artists Eva Sajanova and Dominik Suchy, is a compositionally uncomplicated affair. (The promo blurb that accompanies the record literally says, “The whole album revolves just around vocals, synths and layers.”) Yet this duo wrings a lot of power from their minimalist approach, and on dazzling LP opener “Karamel,” Sajanova’s vocal incantations—which bring to mind the alluring talk-singing of someone like perila—float amidst droney chords and a cinematic flurry of jagged synth loops. Though the music itself is relatively controlled, there’s an underlying intensity at work, as though full-blown chaos might erupt at any second.

Manongo Mujica - “El sonido del sueño” (Buh)

Inspired by the writings of Borges and the pre-Hispanic ceremonies that once took place on the desert coast of Peru, Ritual sonoro para ruinas circulares is a powerful album, one whose spiritual undertones (and, frankly, overtones) add a tangible weight to its sonic explorations. “El sonido del sueño” is one of the LP’s most overtly ominous cuts, as psychedelic and avant-jazz veteran Manongo Mujica—with the help of an ensemble that includes his three sons—uses both cello and bassy drones to create a palpable sense of menace as the song’s reverb-drenched percussion seemingly works to blast open a door to another state of consciousness.

That’s it for today’s edition of First Floor. 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.)

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.