Richard Skelton - The Complete Landings Recordings & Book ( Aeolian, 2011)

In 2004, Richard Skelton's wife passed away. Apparently, his coping mechanism was almost decided for him. He spent the next five years exploring and remapping Anglezarke, an area on the West Pennine moors of Northern England. The book of his findings intertwines with a personal narrative, and this is accompanied by a score. The music is cello and guitar-based ambient experimental. Through the highs and lows, one can grasp his tumultuous emotional journey in a very clear way. Skelton makes incredibly powerful and moving music that, given his inspiration, is incomparable.

Download excerpts / order book and music HERE.


 
Listen to one of the three albums here:

Zelienople - The World is a House on Fire (Type, 2012)

Everyone's favorite Chicago drone poppers / pill poppers are back with another glorious outing. I've had this on repeat for two months. Its really the kind of record you can listen three times consecutively before you realize its happened.

This album is less doom and gloom than the last. Here they stick with a freeform shoegaze vibe, mixed with a  ghostly americana aesthetic. Think Slowdive's "Pygmalion" meets Labradford's "Mi Media Naranja". In fact, this is a perfect hybrid of those two records, which incidentally are two of my favorite records.

Listen / Buy the LP HERE

808s and Dark Grapes II - Main Attrakionz (Type, 2012)

The Oakland Duo of rapper/producer Squadda B and rapper MondreM.A.N. make spacey downtempo hip hop that a few years ago was affectionately dubbed "cloud rap", a sub-genre which hybridizes the most current rap beats with shoegaze and 90's Houston purple drank feel. Alongside this is a lazy and laidback vocal flow reminiscent of cool Philly vibes and classic good time summer tracks. You may be familiar with some of their contemporaries: Lil' B, Clova, Odd Future and Havoc. These performers have been on numerous mixtapes together.

Type has finally issued the best document of their work on vinyl. It shows them at the height of their game and also showcases the talented beat junkies Clams Casino, Friendzone, Marlee B and Keyboard Kid.

Get it Here

Pete Swanson - Man With Potential (Type, 2011)

I can't help but think the mop-headed militant character on the album cover is a tongue in cheek jab at French noise enthusiast Vomir, who always performs his noise sets hidden underneath a kaffiyeh. Ironically, this scarf has become more recognizable as the fashion of a 22 year old hipster girl than the original image of Yasser Arafat and the PLO.

There are three types of listeners that will drop the needle on this one: The Drone / Noise fans of Swanson's now defunct project Yellow Swans, fans of elegant and classically-minded instrumentals typical of the Type label, and then there are those dance music fans who are as surprised as I am by beats surfacing as a newly integral part of the avant-garde Ambient / Noise / Drone world.

None of these three are remotely prepared for what happens on this album. Swanson decided to fuck with everyone here.

With a hynosis-like approach, he sends you back in time to that really bad tripping experience at the warehouse party in Detroit circa '95. You remember, the one where one of the dj's was walking around shaking hands with people, and later all your friends were talking about how he had dosed his hand with more liquid acid than you could possibly imagine.

By the time you were peaking you saw no reason not to accept the offer for some ketamine. Shortly thereafter, the lights were sizzling your brain like you were staring into the sun, and you were pulling on the side of your head trying to remove that drill bit that was furiously burrowing into your cranium.

All that to say this: Here we have blistering noise-laced techno. This is Jeff Mills, Muslimgauze and Vatican Shadow buried under 6 feet of Prurient and Wolf Eyes.

Remember to take your Dramamine and keep that gallon of oj on hand just in case you want it all to go away.

Stream it Here

Get it Here

Porter Ricks - Biokinetics (Basic Channel, 1996)

Type Records just celebrated their 100th release with the reissue of this 1996 classic from Basic Channel. It was the first of the Chain Reaction imprints, in which the label birthed a subgenre of deeper, buried techno sounds.

Contrary to what you might think, Porter Ricks is not the warden from the tv show Flipper. Its actually multimedia artist and dark ambient pioneer Thomas Koner along with mastering engineer Andy Mellwig (Mille Plateaux, Klang Electronik). Together they produced an atmospheric style of techno, often with an underwater aesthetic that’s exemplified by song names like “Port Of Call” or “Nautical Dub (Tidal Mix).” Biokinetics simultaneously plunges us thousands of fathoms under the sea and light years into space. Womb-like pulses are dark and buried but always dance-floor friendly. A notable characteristic of much of the music is that even when certain more experimental tracks deconstruct the four on the floor aesthetic, they still have a film score affectation.

Get it Here