First Floor #256 – More Reading, Less Reacting
Trying to have a conversation in a space dominated by knee-jerk reactions, plus a round-up of the latest electronic music news and a fresh crop of new track recommendations.
Nobody reads anymore. Yes, that’s admittedly a common “old guy” complaint, and it’s also an unsettling admission for me specifically to make, seeing as how the bulk of my income stems from people reading this newsletter. But those things don’t necessarily make the original observation any less true, and in a world where pretty much everyone is being constantly bombarded with more content than they could possibly consume, we’re all guilty of taking shortcuts from time to time.
Sam Hockley-Smith, a former editor at New York Magazine and The FADER, doesn’t write too often anymore, but the occasional dispatches from his Gross Life newsletter are always stuffed with entertaining stories and insightful observations. The latest edition reflects on just how absurd the state of reading—or, more accurately, not reading—has become, citing an online blowup that stemmed from a line about nachos in Pitchfork tweet about the publication’s review of the latest Lady Gaga album. (I wish that was a joke.) Although the actual review was in fact extremely positive, that didn’t matter, because Gaga fans—who clearly hadn’t read the article—were “outraged,” and immediately started feeding the algorithm with their own angry takes.
If this had been a one-off misunderstanding, perhaps it would have made for an amusing anecdote, but in a time when people routinely read headlines and assume (often inaccurately) what articles say, this kind of wrong-headed outrage has become commonplace. I see it all the time in response to First Floor, and I assume most writers and editors have experienced something similar at one point or another.
Watching this happen can be maddening, and as Hockley-Smith wrote:
If you don’t care enough to read the review, why care enough to get mad about it? If a line about nachos doesn’t make any sense in isolation, it doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just means you lack the proper context, and if you don’t care enough to learn the context, then what are you even doing in the first place?
Some of what’s happening could be classified as a kind of confirmation bias—some people do have an axe to grind, and will seek out anything, no matter how trivial, that can be used in service of that effort. But when so much of this phenomenon stems from what appear to be knee-jerk reactions, there are other factors at work. Simple laziness is likely part of the equation—after all, it’s never been easier to blast out an opinion, no matter how misguided it may be—but the dynamics of social media arguably play an even larger role. Activity and engagement are the lifeblood of these platforms, which offer their users no reward for being thoughtful and reflective. In an environment where being loud—and even loudly wrong—is so strongly incentivized, it’s no wonder that so much of the public has become conditioned to react without thinking. That’s what really juices the algorithm, and when the consequences for being wrong online are largely nonexistent, should we be surprised that so many people don’t bother to do the reading before they fire off a take? Probably not.
To his optimistic credit, Hockley-Smith seems to think, or at least hope, that this situation can be improved. I’m not so certain. Humans are who they are, and underinformed loudmouths have likely been spouting off since the dawn of spoken language. The difference now is that they all have access to platforms that actively encourage their behavior, and even allow them to try and monetize it. Hell, some people might argue that’s what I’m doing with First Floor.
Uh oh.
While I grapple with that potential existential crisis, how about we get into today’s First Floor digest? As always, there’s a thorough rundown of electronic music news items, new release announcements and suggested reading links from the past week. You’ll find a bunch of new track recommendations as well, and after the onslaught of new releases triggered by last week’s Bandcamp Friday, I can assure you that sorting through the muck and fishing out the gems was no easy task. There’s also a special guest recommendation, which comes courtesy of dub techno veteran Brendon Moeller, so make sure to give that a listen.
Let’s get started.
FIRST FLOOR x DUBLAB BCN
Readers may already know that aside from the newsletter, First Floor also exists as a monthly radio show on dublab BCN. The Barcelona-based online station, which is a non-profit entity run entirely by volunteers, recently unveiled both a new URL (dublab.cat) and a new t-shirt, which is now available for sale to the public. All proceeds will go towards the station’s operating costs.
REAL QUICK
A round-up of the most interesting electronic music news from the past week, plus links to interviews, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.
Major newspapers have largely avoided critiquing Spotify over the years, but in the wake of Liz Pelly’s recent Mood Machines book—which she discussed here at First Floor back in January—something seems to have shifted at The Guardian. During the last week alone, the paper published an opinion column by John Harris, in which he complains that “its algorithms have pushed artists to make joyless, toothless music,” along with a separate article in which journalist Eamonn Forde pokes holes in the sunny (and selectively curated) narratives espoused by the streaming giant’s latest Loud & Clear report.
The No Tags podcast recently published its own Liz Pelly interview, and in the follow-up episode, which surfaced this week, hosts Chal Ravens and Tom Lea built upon on one of the most troubling takeaways from Pelly’s book, examining how major labels have been steadily buying up significant swaths of the independent music ecosystem.
Thanks to a post by Mat Dryhurst—which contains several of his own insights about why music culture, even in the supposed “underground,” is feeling rather stale these days—I came across this engaging video essay from a guy named mkay, who methodically lays out how the tech industry is strangling music (the artform, not the industry) and significantly reducing its impact on the culture at large.
As someone who’s attended the C2C festival in Turin multiple times—and is old enough to remember when it was called Club to Club—I was saddened to see the announcement that founder and director Sergio Ricciardone had passed away this week at the age of 53. In our brief interactions over the years, it was clear to me that Sergio was an exceedingly kind person with a genuine love for music, and more details about his life and accomplishments can be found in news stories about his death that ran in Pitchfork and Resident Advisor.
Writing for his FRANKA newsletter, Frankie Pizá put together a deep dive into the world of Elijah and his Yellow Squares project. Full disclosure, it does mention Elijah’s recent appearance at a First Floor event here in Barcelona, but what’s most interesting is how it examines the UK artist’s unique ability to cut through the noise of social media and communicate relatively complex ideas in a way that’s quick, clear and thoughtful. (Just FYI, Pizá writes in Spanish, but that’s what Google Translate is for.)
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 recommend that you either inquire at your favorite local bookshop or try one of the online sales links that have been compiled here.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.
Shackleton has developed quite a taste for collaboration—a trend First Floor detailed at length last year—and he’ll soon be debuting a new joint endeavor, Light-Space Modulator, in which he works in tandem with singer-songwriter Marlene Ribeiro. The duo’s debut LP is called The Rising Wave, and the AD 93 label will be releasing it on April 25. Ahead of that, the song “These Things” has already been shared.
Speaking of collaborations, Mark Pritchard has linked up with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke on a joint album for Warp. The two first worked together on the song “Beautiful People,” which appeared on Pritchard’s 2016 album Under the Sun, but the forthcoming Tall Tales is a complete full-length that’s slated to land on May 9. In the meantime, LP track “This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice” has been made available, along with its accompanying music video.
The ever-prolific Legowelt strapped on his Smackos alias last week, and released a new collaborative album with Dim Garden. Entitled The Art of DX7 and billed as a collection of “synthesizer folksongs full with nostalgia and yearning,” it’s out now via the Dutch artist’s Nightwind imprint, and is available as a name-your-price download.
Experimental composer Kara-Lis Coverdale has officially joined the Smalltown Supersound label, and will be releasing a new album, From Where You Came, on May 9. The Canadian artist says that the record is influenced by 19th-century programmatic music and mid-’70s jazz, and has already shared one track, “Daze.”
Smalltown Supersound has also become a steady home for UK producer Actress, who last week dropped a new release called Grey Interiors. Originally made as “an installation piece for the Berliner Festspiele together with Actual Objects,” the nearly 21-minute composition is available now.
perila is another Smalltown Supersound affiliate, but the Berlin-based ambient and experimental artist has prepped her next album for another outlet, VAAGNER offshoot A Sunken Mall. Scheduled for an April 3 release, it’s called The Air Outside Feels Crazy Right Now, and more than half of its eight songs can already be heard here.
Surgeon has a new album on the way, one that maintains the “minimal equipment list and studio-version-of-live-show-sets approach” of 2023’s Crash Recoil LP. The UK techno veteran’s latest full-length is entitled Shell~Wave, and though the Tresor label won’t be releasing it until May 2, the song “Soul Fire” has already been made available.
Few would dispute that Krust is one of the greatest drum & bass artists of all time, and last week he popped up on Future Retro London, the endlessly prolific label headed up by Tim Reaper. As he explained in a First Floor interview last year, Reaper is something of a jungle and drum & bass historian, so it’s no surprise that the VFR001 12-inch is based upon “One Stop Mr Driver,” a previously unreleased Krust tune from the ’90s. Out now, the record includes both the original track and a new remix of it from Reaper himself.
Following up on his 2023 debut album Agartha, Japanese techno artist Wata Igarashi has put together a new remix EP, Agartha Remixe. Due to surface on March 28 via Kompakt, the record includes reworks from Michael Mayer and Philipp Stoffel, along with two remixes from Igarashi himself. The latter of those, Igarashi’s “Shimmering Mix” of the track “Floating Against Time,” has already been made available.
Wrecked Lightship, the collaborative project of UK producers Wedge and Appleblim, will soon release a new LP. Promising a return to the duo’s “dubbed out, breaks-scattered, bass billowing, shrewdly sculpted world,” Drained Strands will be issued by the Peak Oil label on May 9, and two tracks from the record have already been shared here.
Barcelona-based ambient / experimental artist Dania (who, in the interest of full disclosure, also happens to be my wife), has teamed up with experimental Italian duo Rosso Polare on a new release. Out now via Dania’s Paralaxe Editions imprint, the long-brewing collaboration is called Keep Smoking Swamp, and it takes inspiration from the “anti-colonialist work of Martiniquais poet Aimé Césaire.”
BRENDON MOELLER 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 Brendon Moeller, a New York-based South African artist who cheekily bills himself as a “reclusive practitioner of hazy dubs and rural electronica.” With more than two decades of releases under his belt—not only under his own name, but also as Beat Pharmacy, Echologist and a litany of other projects, both solo and collaborative—Moeller’s career highlights are too numerous to list. He has, however, been on something of a hot streak in recent months, dropping an album of 170+ bpm dub techno experiments called Further on Samurai Music and exploring similar territory on Blue Moon for ESP Institute. Just last week, he offered up yet another release, the dubstep-flavored Peacemaker, and amid all of that activity, he’s carved out a few moments to share a track that fans of deep, slow-burning bass are sure to enjoy.
Refracted “Reverie” (Titrate)
“Reverie” is a sonic wormhole that pulls you under with hypnotic, phased percussion and ambient dub atmospherics, swirling in a haze of hiss and cavernous space. It’s the kind of track that feels less like listening and more like surrendering—propelling you through deep space and immersive soundscapes with raw analogue grit. Equal parts meditative and otherworldly, “Reverie” blurs the lines between reality and the cosmos, delivering a moody odyssey that leaves you weightless, suspended somewhere between here and the next dimension.
LISTEN UP
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.
edapollo & Alice Ivy “forgetaboutyou” (all my thoughts)
“forgetaboutyou” has all the nutritional value of a pack of Skittles—and it’s just as colorful. A chipmunk-voiced collaboration from Australian artists edapollo and Alice Ivy, this sugary concoction goes by in a flash—it’s barely more than two minutes long—and with its effervescent bounce and whimsical twirls, the song seems destined to soundtrack countless TikToks and Instagram reels. Are there already many, many songs in this vein? Absolutely, but there’s something irresistible about “forgetaboutyou,” a track that will put a smile on anyone’s face—even when they’re picking its sticky remnants out of their teeth.
Kangding Ray “Boojum” (ara)
With its assorted trance-isms, Kangding Ray’s new Superfluid EP at first glance might appear to be some sort of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” proposition. Yet even a halfhearted listen to the record quickly reveals that the techno veteran’s approach was a lot closer to “if you’re going to join ’em, beat ’em.” Proof positive that one can engage with the dreaded t-word without descending into mundanity and braindead drivel, Kangding Ray skillfully harnesses the genre’s floaty euphoria in pursuit of something substantial. On the crunchy standout “Boojum,” that pursuit also heads into some satisfyingly bassy territory, the track’s zooming wobbles conjuring visions of cars flying by at a high-stakes Formula 1 race.
St. Amp “Outline (Float Mix)” (TiHKAL)
Having dropped a number of highly inventive, bass-centric releases of his own during the past few years, Wordcolour has now brought that same aesthetic sensibility to his newly launched TiKHAL label, which officially kicked off last week with a self-titled EP from fellow UK producer St. Amp. Is dubstep still dubstep when it’s bounding along at 160+ bpm? Opening track “Outline (Float Mix)” answers that question with a resounding “YES!,” and adorns its surprisingly elastic thump with a lively assortment of tinkling chimes and freaky vocal fragments. There’s definitely a bit of Shackleton in the record’s DNA—it’s even more apparent on Wordcolour’s remix of “Cave”—but if cribbing a few notes from the Skull Disco catalog is a crime, then half of UK dance music would need to be locked up.
Emily Jeanne “Wet Skin” (quỳnh)
Call of the Sea isn’t Emily Jeanne’s first record, but the EP—which does happen to be the inaugural release on her new quỳnh imprint—does feel like something of a rebirth. Swapping out techno stomp for fidgety polyrhythms, the Belgian artist’s drum programming does much of the heavy lifting, but the music itself sounds palpably wet, coalescing into what could be described as aquatic bass. Like much of the record, EP highlight “Wet Skin” is literally populated with the sound of dripping water, and its plinking droplets work in conjunction with the song’s skulking textures and swampy smacks to create something that’s potent, stiflingly humid and more than a little bit ominous.
Elecno Posse “Tarzan” (Klasse Wrecks)
That’s not a typo. This mysterious trio have somewhat confusingly chosen to call themselves the Elecno Posse, but as you might expect, their retro-flavored sounds definitely borrow from the electro canon. (That said, they’ve also thrown plenty of old-school acid, techno and house into the mix.) EP opener “Tarzan” quickly lives up to its title, confidently swinging onto the dancefloor with its robotic rhythms and bold string flourishes, but rather than clubbing listeners over the head, the Elecno Posse play it cool, allowing the song’s corpulent bassline and space-age machine funk to work their magic.
Lyo XS “Teyolia” (Infinite Machine)
The title track of the new EP from Mexican artist Lyo XS, “Teyolia” is a hard-charging slice of techno-bass that utilizes the best of both genres. Built atop pounding kicks and whipcrack rhythms, the song practically gallops across the dancefloor, and Lyo XS bolsters that unrelenting drive with an airborne array of jagged-edged wobbles. Can a tune be simultaneously playful and menacing? It seems so, because “Teyolia” vigorously ticks both of those boxes.
upsammy “Relict” (Dekmantel)
Though she often gets tagged as an experimental or leftfield artist—and, to be fair, last year’s excellent Strange Meridians LP was essentially an ambient record—it’s important to remember that upsammy has literally spent years in the DJ booth, having been at resident at vaunted Amsterdam clubs like De School and Garage Noord. While it’s true that much of her previous output is perhaps better described as “inspired by the club” than “for the club,” making dancefloors move has long been a part of her skillset, and the new Open Catalyst EP is easily her most functional effort to date. Functional, however, doesn’t mean formulaic, as propulsive highlight “Relic” almost feels like a souped-up slice of IDM, its crystalline chimes gleaming atop a bubbly and—most importantly for DJs—relatively linear beat. As compelling as upsammy’s meditative wanderings can be, a record like this is bound to leave listeners demanding that she reach into her “bangers” folder a little more often.
Gabe & Jude “Binding Mochi” (Self-released)
Given the wide range of sounds he’s explored over the years as Martyn, it’s not totally clear why the DC-based Dutchman and 3024 founder occasionally dons the Gabe & Jude moniker. Maybe he’s just having some fun, but regardless of whether or not there’s a clear delineation between his two projects, both can be counted upon to deliver quality material. “Binding Mochi” kicks off the new Gabe & Jude 007 release, and it’s a fizzy gem, one that seems to revel in its sludgy bass tones, even as chirpy vocal clips, twinkling melodies and jazzy drum outbursts fly overhead. There’s undoubtedly a lot going on—Martyn somehow manages to also squeeze in patches of static and some rather solemn piano—yet the song feels vibrant, not cluttered. We may not know exactly what its creator had in mind, but whatever it was, it clearly worked.
AshTreJinkins “EVERYTIME” (Self-released)
One of those artists who pops up every few months, quietly drops a grip of new tunes and then slips back into the shadows, AshTreJinkins has been doing his thing for more than a decade now, largely unburdened by notions of genre, elaborate marketing campaigns and all the other things producers are “supposed” to do. THE DOOR is the LA native’s latest dispatch, and it finds a particularly sweet spot with “EVERYTIME,” a fuzzy slice of late-night house music. With its lo-fi crackle and heavy glaze of reverb, it’s akin to someone playing an old Larry Heard track through an old rotary phone, but even with all the haze, the song’s underlying soulfulness still shines through.
m. geddes gengras “floe” (Self-released)
Speaking of artists who confidently do their own thing, synth explorer and former Angeleno m. geddes gengras retreated to Upstate New York several years back, and seems content to keep his head down as he takes his tripped-out creations further and further into the abyss. The gorgeous QUIK-MELT is his latest offering, and the standout “floe” calmly drifts into borderline Balearic territory, its free-floating tones and textures glistening like sunlight on the surface of a Mediterranean pool. Intricately assembled and yet deeply chill, “floe”—and, honestly, all of QUIK-MELT—is some of the loveliest music gengras has ever created.
Shinetiac “highway” (West Mineral Ltd.)
With a line-up that includes Shiner, Pontiac Streator and Ben Bondy, Shinetiac is something of an all-star affair, at least in the context of the West Mineral Ltd. Extended Universe. Infiltrating Roku City, which grew out of a live set the trio first created for a show in Brooklyn, is the group’s sophomore outing, and it apparently pulls from an odd potpourri of influences that includes everything from TikTok and YouTube to the WWE and Tiësto. In lesser hands, that might make for a tedious or terribly disjointed listen, but Shinetiac manage to distill the chaos of modern content consumption into something blurred and beautiful. Shoegaze, trip-hop and ambient are all in the mix, but the trio has a definite (albeit subtle) cinematic streak, which elevates the trundling shimmer of “highway”—one of the album’s early highlights—into an elegant, and slightly Madchester-sounding dreamscape.
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 Instagram—and make sure to follow First Floor on Instagram as well—or you can just drop Shawn an email to get in touch about projects, collaborations or potential work opportunities.