First Floor #259 – That Explains It
An interview with Andy Crysell about the history of brands in dance music, plus a round-up of the latest electronic music news and a fresh bundle of new track recommendations.
It’s not often that I feel “seen” after reading something. The phrase has become so ubiquitous in recent years that I actually cringe a little bit every time I see someone crowing online about how “seen” they feel by a particular piece of content.
But dammit, I sure as hell felt seen by this article that The New York Times published last weekend.
Entitled “The Gen X Career Meltdown,” it looks at 40- and 50-somethings in creative fields. In previous areas, that age cohort would have essentially been running the show, making decisions about what projects get greenlit and not just putting their definitive stamp on the culture, but getting paid a decent wage to do it. History, however, has had other ideas. Thanks to a series of social and technological upheavals, many Gen Xers are now finding that the skills and knowledge they spent decades cultivating have become largely irrelevant, and as such, they’re struggling to even maintain to a foothold in music, television, film, design and other creative endeavors.
Now, is anyone outside of that age group likely to care all that much about this? Probably not. Intergenerational empathy is perpetually in short supply, but for me personally, the article most definitely struck a chord. And I’m actually one of the youngest members of Generation X! (For those curious, I was born in October 1979.) I can only imagine how disgruntled the people 10 years older than me must feel.
When I think back on all of the people I’ve worked with in radio, journalism, nightlife and other facets of the music industry during the past 25 years—which is an alarming figure in and of itself—I realize that shockingly few of them are still working in music, or even doing anything creative on a professional level. And many of the ones who have managed to stick around are actually doing jobs that might be best described as creative-adjacent, in the sense that they’re programming content for tech platforms or working in culture marketing, where their primary responsibility is not boosting culture, but brand awareness.
Having logged several years working for the Red Bull Music Academy, I too have had a significant brush with the world of culture marketing. Yet my experience in that realm ultimately pales to that of Andy Crysell, a former music journalist and marketing professional who authored the new book Selling the Night. A detailed history of the complex relationship between brands and dance music, it’s perfect for an era in which corporations have infiltrated seemingly every aspect of the culture and the word “underground” increasingly feels more like an aesthetic than an economic reality.
I published an interview with Crysell earlier this week, and it’s now (temporarily) available for everyone to read. A link to our conversation is below, but there’s plenty more in today’s First Floor digest, which rounds up many of the latest happenings from the electronic music world. There are news items, new release announcements and suggested reading links, and for those who simply want to hear some excellent new music, I’ve gone through all of the releases that dropped during the past week, and have put together a batch of highly recommended tunes. And speaking of recommendations, First Floor has also enlisted Lucy Gooch to pop in with a special guest recommendation.
Let’s get into it.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Every Tuesday, First Floor publishes a long-form piece that’s initially made available to paid subscribers only. But if you’re not part of the paid tier, now’s your chance to see what you missed! The latest piece is now (temporarily) open to everyone, and it’s an interview with Andy Crysell about his new book Selling the Night. The conversation digs into the history of brands in dance music, exploring not just how that relationship has evolved during the past few decades, but where things have gone right—and, occasionally, very wrong—along the way.
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.
First Floor’s interview with Barker is one of the most popular things the newsletter has published this year, and with his new album, Stochastic Drift, coming out this week, fans have had additional chances to hear from the thoughtful Berlin-based artist. Resident Advisor tapped him for the site’s latest podcast, and rather than delivering a standard DJ mix, Barker chose to string together an hour-long session using excerpts of his own live performances from the past four years. And for those seeking a more substantive conversation with the man, writer Michael McKinney has interviewed Barker for Tone Glow.
Sully was the subject of a salivating column I wrote for Nina last year, and now the UK jungle maven has participated in the latest installment of the site’s Web of Influences series. It’s not clear who exactly he spoke to—the piece is unbylined—but it finds Sully reflecting back on some early jungle and dubstep memories, listing some dream collaborators and talking about his love of David Lynch.
Chal Ravens writing about pretty much anything is going to be worth a read, which is likely why Resident Advisor asked her to pen a new Rewind feature about Art of Noise’s iconic ’80s classic, “Moments in Love.” The article digs into the history of the group and the genesis of the track, but it also expounds on the song’s enduring legacy, as it’s been played, sampled and referenced by countless artists during the past 40 years.
Kraftwerk’s Wolfgang Flür, it seems, has been duped by someone pretending to be former Daft Punk member Thomas Bangalter. The news was confirmed by a representative of Daft Punk this week, and the whole saga has been laid out in great detail by superfan Luke Perez (a.k.a. The Daft Punk Historian), but it appears that someone pretending to be Bangalter contacted Flür online a few years back, and then perpetrated a hoax in which musical contributions from this imposter ultimately wound up on the former Kraftwerk member’s new album, Times.
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.
Stereolab are up to something. The beloved space-age / indie / lounge / socialist outfit already has a massive tour scheduled to begin next month, but this week, a new 7” began to show up—unsolicited—in the mailboxes of fans subscribed to the group’s newsletter. (As it happens, I also received one, which was a pleasant surprise!) Stamped with the Warp Records logo and accompanied by a word search, the records contain a new song, “Aerial Troubles,” along with an instrumental of the track. Stereolab teased the mailout via Instagram, and more details have since popped up on Reddit, but as of now, there’s been no official indication that the 7” will receive a wider release, or that additional material is on the way.
As an admitted Fugazi fanatic, I can see why the Balmat label is especially excited about its next release, a collaborative effort from Stephen Vitiello, Hahn Rowe and Brendan Canty. (For the uninitiated, Canty was the drummer for Fugazi and beloved post-hardcore outfit Rites of Spring, and is currently part of the group Messthetics.) Back in 2023, the experimental trio debuted with First on Longform Editions, and they’ve now linked up with Balmat to release a follow-up, Second, on June 6. Opening track “Last Minute Guitar” is available now, and Balmat co-founder Philip Sherburne has just published an interview with Stephen Vitiello about the project in his Futurism Restated newsletter.
Ilian Tape co-founder Marco Zenker dropped a surprise new EP last week. It’s called Challenge, and it’s available now.
Hollie Kenniff and her husband Keith Kenniff (a.k.a. Goldmund a.k.a. Helios) have worked together plenty of times before, and even have a “technicolor pop” duo called Mint Julep. Last week, however, the pair unveiled a new, ambient-oriented joint endeavor, Harbors, which is set to debut on August 1 with a new album called When We Are Free. The Nettwerk label will be releasing the record, but in the meantime, first single “A Portrait of Time” has already been made available.
Death in Vegas has a new album on the way. Slated for a June 6 release via the UK artist’s own Drone imprint, Death Mask is confidently described as being “closer in DNA to the grainy growl of sunn O))), or the searing intensity of Underground Resistance at their fiercest.” Two tracks from the LP have already been shared here.
For her next full-length, Polygonia has joined forces with the Dekmantel label. A German polymath whose sound refuses to conform to traditional genre boundaries, she apparently infused the album with “her own voice, saxophone, flute, violin and percussion to inject organic, human vibrancy” into the music. Entitled Dream Horizons, it’s due to surface on June 13, but LP track “Twisted Colours” is out now.
Having broken through with 2021’s Aquamarine EP for Nervous Horizon and 2023’s Clouds EP for 3024, Ehua will soon be returning to the latter label with her debut album. Panta Rei finds the Italian-Ivorian artist exploring her voice for the first time, and though it won’t be issued in full until May 2, two songs from the record are already available here.
SUED and Acid Test are both impressive labels in their own right, but after years of collaborating, their respective founders, Stefan Wust (a.k.a. SW.) and Oliver Bristow, have decided to launch a new joint imprint, SWOB. Kicking off the new endeavor will be an SW. trilogy called tekkNOthing. Something of an ode to what was once known as the “underground,” the series will officially kick off on May 2 with TekkNOthing I & II, but two tracks from the release have already been shared here.
LUCY GOOCH 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 Lucy Gooch, a UK artist whose ambient electronic excursions have always retained a distinctly human touch. Her ethereal voice has a lot to do with that, and has gradually taken on a more prominent role—and drawn plenty of Kate Bush comparisons—across her previous releases on Past Inside the Present, Looking Glass and her current label home, Fire Records. Vocal improvisations were actually the foundation of Gooch’s forthcoming album, Desert Window, which Fire will be issuing on June 6, but ahead of its arrival, she found a few moments to share a captivating avant-jazz tune that first dropped back in 1985.
Azimuth “Adios Iony” (ECM)
A fog. Then John Taylor’s rhythmic piano cycles come in—relentlessly whirring along tracks. We hear Kenny Wheeler’s trumpet and Norma Winstone’s elegant wordless soprano coalesce around Taylor’s grounding pattern. You get the feeling that these arrangements are suspended in air. The way it all assembles and scatters; such a lightness of touch.
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.
Wata Igarashi “Agartha (Wata Igarashi’s Sorcery Acid Mix)” (Kompakt)
Planetary Assault Systems “Desert Races (Luke Slater Reassembly 2025)” (Mote-Evolver)
Remix collections are generally a vehicle in which artists make a point to showcase the talents of other producers, but in the case of Wata Igarashi’s Agartha Remixe and Planetary Assault Systems’ REASSEMBLED, the most potent reworks came from the original artists themselves. On the former, Igarashi actually provides a full 50% of the remixes, and opens the record by transforming the trippy, psychedelic wanderings of “Agartha”—the title track of his 2023 debut album—into a swaggering slice of acid-licked techno. In contrast, Luke Slater only assigned himself one-third of the remixes on REASSEMBLED, but he bolsters “Desert Races”—a track from 2017’s Deep Heat Vol. 4 EP—with a similarly confident strut, nudging up the tempo, adding in some spooky static and thickening up the song’s sci-fi stomp.
Daystar “Hope” (Fixed Rhythms)
From its home base in Oklahoma City, the Fixed Rhythms label continues to run rings around the techno competition, shining a light on one relatively unheralded talent after another. (The fact that most of these talents hail from North America, the birthplace of techno, is an added bonus.) The Guidance EP from NYC-based producer Daystar is the imprint’s latest offering, and the joyously bopping “Hope” is the record’s clear highlight. Built atop a slappy pulse that’s part Detroit techno and part Chicago filter house, the song quickly ushers in a bevy of synthesized string flourishes. That alone would have been sufficient—no one is going to complain about a tracky gem that nods to the Midwestern masters—but Daystar swings for the fences, ramping up the string-centric drama while simultaneously peppering the tune with tinkling chimes, a car horn and some real “stop what you’re doing and get your ass on the dancefloor” energy.
Unspecified Enemies “Mathematics Parc” (Numbers)
Unspecified Enemies “Yield Compressor” (Numbers)
During the past four decades, notions of futurism and retro-futurism have run rampant through the techno canon, and the Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback album brilliantly (and quite literally) indulges in both. Though the Unspecified Enemies project is currently headed up by Louis Digital, the LP has its roots in bits of electro-tinged machine funk he crafted during the early 2000s alongside fellow UK producer CiM. Those collaborations were largely lost to time—although a few fragments were salvaged from a broken Iomega Jazz SCSI Drive—but Digital has harnessed their original spirit, blending a distinctly Detroit sound palette with a cinematic, LA-inspired sensibility.
The cybernetic (albeit still soulful) shuffle of “Mathematics Parc” opens the proceedings with a clear nod to Underground Resistance, its fluttering bleeps and bloops sounding like a 24th-century supercomputer—as it would have been depicted in a ’70s sci-fi flick. Another standout is “Yield Compressor,” and though its soaring synths provide a familiar sense of on-screen fantasy and wonder, the track’s hypnotic allure primarily resides in its low-slung, not-quite-industrial chug. Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback is full of songs like that, and while plenty of albums in this vein have been made over the years, not many of them are this undeniably good.
Korzi “Cracked Plates” (Left, Right & Centre)
ZeroFG “Elemental” (Pineapple)
After reading last week’s First Floor interview with Ploy, it’s fair to wonder if other bass-centric innovators might also be redirecting their skills toward house music and other genres. Time will tell, but if these tracks from Korzi and ZeroFG are any indication, audiences with a hunger for gut-rumbling rattlers have nothing to worry about. The screwface-inducing “Cracked Plates” is the title track of Korzi’s latest EP, and it’s a sludgy wobbler, one the Manchester-based producer has intriguingly outfitted with both skippy dubstep rhythms and a smattering of epic, trance-style synths. “Elemental,” the titular cut of ZeroFG’s new EP, is more energetic offering—and something of an homage to both soundsystem culture and the short-lived breakstep sound of the early 2000s. In other words, it’s the sort of low-end-heavy hybrid that the UK has made its calling card during the past two-plus decades, and its combination of bouncy chimes and brawny bass should prove to be all but irresistible.
Prayer “May Never” (YUKU)
First Floor has been waving the flag for Prayer—the UK producer, not the religious practice—for years now, and yet his music continues to be bizarrely overlooked, even with a string of records on labels like Hooversound, Black Acre and YUKU under his belt. The London artist has returned to the latter imprint for his latest full-length, Dream of Heaven, and it explores the idea of “hope within darkness,” filtering widescreen emotions and the ghosts of the hardcore continuum through robust—and often big-room-ready—rhythms. Even so, the record has more than just bangers to offer. Prayer occasionally veers into ambient-ish and trip-hop territory, and with its swelling strings and melancholy vocal refrain, LP highlight “May Never” is rife with introspection and rave sentimentality. That sentimentality, however, is backed by thundering breakbeats and growling basslines, ensuring that the track will likely have even the weepiest of clubbers howling with excitement.
Toma Kami “BB Halo” (mb studio)
Tapping into the same sort of candy-colored glee that defined last year’s missed heaven album, Toma Kami has cooked up a fresh batch of bouncy bubblers. BB Halo sits somewhere on the bass music spectrum, but the French producer’s elastic, anime-ready rhythms are refreshingly dread-free, and reside in an effervescent soundworld that’s not all that dissimilar to that of Two Shell. (Even better, that duo’s obsession with in-jokes and goofy hijinks is nowhere to be seen.) The EP’s title track, like many of Toma Kami’s best tunes, is a bite-sized production, but between its darting pastels and jaunty drum patterns, there’s a whole lot of joy packed into its 144 seconds.
Moomin “Joni” (Oath)
Though he’s often classified as a house artist, Moomin has filled his new Into the Distance LP with a variety of grooves. Yet regardless of whether he’s dabbling in disco, hip-hop, jazz, ambient or, yes, house music, what binds the album together is its deeply chilled energy. More than a decade into his career, the Berlin-based producer is in no hurry whatsoever, and on the standout “Joni,” he indulges his Balearic side, setting twinkling tones adrift atop a leisurely drum pattern. It’s music for gazing at the stars, preferably with a drink in hand and an infinity pool nearby.
HTRK “Puddles on My Pillow” (Ghostly International)
Speaking of pools, “Swimming Pool” is the A-side of a surprise new 7” that HTRK offered up last week. The song’s woozy guitar chords—and singer Jonnine’s even woozier voice—definitely have their charms, but the record’s flip side, “Puddles on My Pillow,” proves to be even more compelling. With its patient jangle and tear-streaked vocals, the stripped-down tune drinks from the same pool as the Australian duo’s brilliant 2021 album, Rhinestones, and makes the prospect of crying yourself to sleep sound absolutely sublime.
NYX “Mother” (NYX Collective)
Enya seems content to spend the rest of her days hanging out in her sprawling Irish castle, but those looking for an alternate source of choral bliss would be well advised to spend some time with NYX. The London collective makes arrestingly beautiful music, and “Mother,” which opens the group’s self-titled debut LP, also has a serious medieval streak, its weightless, multi-part harmonies tapping into a lineage that includes Gregorian chants and pagan mystics alike. Add in the song’s weighty drones and a few precisely plucked strings, and “Mother”—much like the rest of the tracks on the album—is more than just a dazzling composition. It’s a soul-stirring, borderline religious experience, and a gorgeous one at that.
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.