Clemens Eduard Haipl - 330rawson

Band / Artist: Clemens Eduard Haipl
Year: 2005
Genre: Synthpop, New Age, Lo-fi, New Wave, EBM

My Review:
My first look at the cover yielded a "....What?". Its a strange album. Strange, but not bad.
If you liked Space Dimension Controller then you'll likely enjoy this. 

Some of it is heavily steeped in the synthpop genre, and some has newagey moments and some lo-fi video-gamey elements. Everything sounds just a hair to the left of what I’d expect to hear on various New Wave and EBM nights at a goth club crossed over with the music from Katamari Damacy, the most entertianing nonsense game out there. Some of it is in English, while the rest is mostly in german I think. The vocals have a lot of synth processing in some spots.
 
As far as the man himself, He lives in Vienna. He was one half of the band Cell1110, and is apparently a very prolific guy in Austria. Hell if I can find much more info, I don't speak German. I'm pretty sure I did find him on Google+ though.


https://plus.google.com/113120146981058885839/posts

And back to the album. It isn't 100% there, but its a pretty good freshman album. I only hope that he keeps making music and really works on his mixing and secondary production skills.

Clemens Eduard Haipl - 330rawson

Special post - Kukishi.tumblr - EP

Band / Artist: Kukishi.tumblr
Year: 2013
Genre: Punk-Rap, Alternative Hip-Hop, Dirty South, Rap, Bastard Pop, RnB, Lo-fi

My Review:
I got a rather cryptic email from a guy that was just a link to a Tumblr page. After a peek at what was there I asked the sender if it was music he was submitting, to which he replied "depends on if you like it".

Well I had a series of conversations with him after that and gave the tracks a listen in my Mardi Gras driving time, so here's what I can share with you. I edited them down to here, and made sure to omit enough to keep some of the mystery.

Just a heads up, there's some fairly blue parts in here toward the middle, but I didn't feel right editing it out.

________________________________________________

Jumbly Music: howdy. whats going on?

???: just listenin to Depreciation Guild. (ケ ≖⊿≖)ケ ..Are we interviewing now?

Jumbly: lol. yeah sure... SO where do you live? Whats the story on the music?

???: is it important where i live?

Jumbly: not directly, but it's nice to have some information about the music and the musicians.

???: It isn't totally me. and meh

Jumbly: so I'd assume that this is a shell persona in a sense

???: mmm depends on the song, but really the whole project is that. I don't put my name on the album, or ever say it in a song. I don't have any word names for the album or songs. The album name is just however you read the images of the covers.

Jumbly: do you have a persona that you'd prefer to go by? anything to make the work searchable? Why separate yourself so directly from your work?

Kukishi.tumblr: just the website name Kukishi.tumblr is what i'm sticking on stuff. Kinda starting from scratch...

Jumbly: alright. It seems like a cool idea to have the Tumblr part as an actual piece of the name. What would you say is influencing you as far as this work?

Kukishi: Umm I don't really know genres...rap and non-rap. It's very sample heavy full of everything i like, and some stuff i don't like.

Off the top of my head there's major samples of; newtral hilk motel, notorious big, ogre you asshole, bloc party, fight club, a clockwork orange, anamanaguchi, Kaiji, Animal collective, grizzly bear, Conan OBrien, BILLY STEWART, the zombies...

I'm sure theres more i'm forgetting

Jumbly: are you trying to meld the references into anything in specific? Would you say you're emulating any other artists with your work?

Kukishi: thats a weird question, the melding one

Jumbly: this is a weird interview.

Kukishi: I've done weirder :T

i guess a lot of the album with the samples i tried to use things oddly. ummm making hyped up bangers out of indie sounds, and doing things like non-4/4 time signatures and tempo changes, things that don't really happen in raphops.

Jumbly: are you planning to tour/ collaborate with others?

Kukishi: No plans to tour.

I've collab'd with people in the past and will in the future but that stuff isnt ummm...well those are one off type deals. Theres no collabs on my EP beyond the Notorious BIG verse, which doesn't really count. I don't like features on albums, they're shallow.

Jumbly: well, I haven't got much of your history or anything, so I'm just wondering, do you prefer to release your works like a hiphop mixtape, or you intend to release a full album in the future?

Kukishi: i'm going with "EP", especially since it's about the right length by the official terms of what an EP is...as decided by someone a hundred years ago for a medium we don't even remember.

Jumbly: Well doing everything from a blog would be a more forward facing way to approach it. So far you've got the EP on a blog, do you have a plan of how you'll expand that in time?

Kukishi: There's a single now too. Gonna be some more. Finishing up B-sides and trying to get a music video made

oh there is something else...for one of the music videos i had the idea of having a qt just stare into the camera for the length of the song....magibon style with less longface. and i've been having trouble getting someone to agree. if you got any qts in your readership that would be helpful.

Jumbly: I'll leave a message for volunteers. If anyone wanted to contact you about doing some kind of collaboration?

Kukishi: there's a thing on the tumblr you can send me a message with, http://kukishi.tumblr.com/ask

Jumbly: alright. Have you been following the blog, or did you have any suggestions there?

Kukishi: No idea! More porn maybe?!

Jumbly: do you have any extra artwork or photos you'd like to share in your post?

Kukishi: umm nothing in particular, want something?

Jumbly: Sure. if you don't care, I'll go with what I have.  

Kukishi:

i like calling the side-A tracks niggercore

Jumbly: well, your beats are good, and the genres chopped up and taken hold of was fun. I chuckled at the clockwork orange samples

Kukishi: I really showed self restraint on that track. It was originally 20 minutes of "DEVIL TROMBONE"

Jumbly: I have no idea what that is. but 20 minutes of it would probably be pushing it, unless you just want to fuck with people.

Kukishi: "fuzzy warbles"

Jumbly: Ohhh yeah, the quote.

Kukishi:  "DEVIL TROMBONE". That's my favorite quote from a clockwork orange. Double entendre-ing his music setup. Bitches be on their pitiful portable picnic players

Jumbly: I do love the sex scene, its hilarious, and a wonderful use of the music. That scene and the attack scene with the rest of the gang on the water are the best two in my opinion.

Kukishi: Can't take the eye scene huh?

Jumbly: No, I can take it fine, I just think that as far as cinematography goes, those two scenes are the better. specifically the attack scene, but the fuck scene is just good film that I might be biased for on the basis of hilarity.

Kukishi: I like it all so i got nothing to say. every scene in that movie is memorable and iconic in its own way.
*peers into buttcheeks* ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A HO-MO-SEXUAL

Jumbly: yeah, that movie is really well put together, I like to wonder what it'd have been like were it made now.

Kukishi: don't worry it'll get a horrible remake eventually. "WE'RE REALLY NOT EMULATING KUBRIK ITS.....MORE BASED ON THE BOOK"

Jumbly: I'd hate to see the remake happen, I just wonder how good it's be if it were made now.

I'll probably mention my distaste about the *niggercore* thing, and the general usage. I like to be pretty honest about the music, but I try to stay objective. My tastes aren't other peoples, and I'm not working for pitchfork.

Kukishi: you should relax on "nigger" its not going away ever, and it's post-racist now. also i'm pretty certain there's a phonetic reason its so popular

Jumbly: fair enough I suppose. I avoid it for all the hatefulness I've experienced around it

Kukishi: welp, you mah nigga now. Its not like i go around saying nigger, i'm an adult after all. Nigger is a good hype word for hype songs....better than swag anyways. 

i'm pretty sure there's something phonetically addicitive about the G sound though. nigger, faggot, swag. guh. GGGGG. real g shit. GGGGRRRRL. gangsta used to be a big word. fell to the wayside because the meaning got in the way :T

Jumbly: well as I know it, "Gangsta" was really more of a musical genre name than anything else. G-funk was the chill brother to it, but Gangsta was the east coast responding to the belligerence of the west coast style. I suppose Dre is the founder of G-funk, which says something about why it'd be more chill.

Kukishi: i never really got that side, pac/snoop/dre/NWA/etc. They were all lacking lyrically. 2srs

Jumbly: well pac, nwa and the like were more the originals of the west coast scene, it morphed over to G-funk in time.

Kukishi: snoop had his moments. growing up it was badboy all the way until it fell apart.

Jumbly: Cypress hill had a decent amount of funk to their stuff as well, but they are more of an outlier to me... Alright well lets finish up the interview bit.

Kukishi: k

Jumbly: do you want to say something about anything posted before on the blog or suggest any other bands that people should look into?

Kukishi: you ask people to review things for your blog?

Jumbly: No I don't ask them to necessarily review things, I usually ask if they like any of the other artists I've posted or if they have any other artists they'd suggest to the readers, but I'm trying that out, everyone has an opinion, and other musicians voicing an opinion about others in the field, seems like something worth trying.

Kukishi: I could gush about Ogre You Asshole all day but it probably wouldn't be a fun read. I know some guys but none of them have finished albums/mixtapes so I cant even push them. 

I couldn't review anything because i don't have the proper vocab for it. I listen to all kinds of stuff across different genres....so much so that i have a hard time getting genres unless there's something specific to it. Like...this is rap, it has rapping....this is screamo, it has screaming...this is bleepbloops, it has bleepboops, but then I listen to to rapping screamo with bleepbloops and I don't know what I'm supposed to call it, or why I may or may not like it.

Jumbly: Well that's understandable. If you wanted to say anything its cool, but I don't mind if you don't.

Kukishi: I'd say something about how the west needs to have 20 new animated series each season like japan with 2 songs book ending each show #animation #newmusic

Here have some EXCLUSIVE. gonna be a b-side track, wubwubs made out of chiptunes

Kukishi.tumblr - Chipwubho (demo)

Jumbly: Thats sounding pretty badass. Last thing, what is the most valuable thing that the internet has taught you?

Kukishi: the most valuable thing the internet taught me is that stealing isn't stealing if the thing isn't a thing, so steal all the things that aren't things.

Jumbly: alright. Well thats pretty much it. Thanks for the chat and all, I'd like to hit you up later and see if you want to do some kind of art collaboration

Kukishi: k, thanks

__________________________________________________________________ 

Now on to a review. If you read all the interview then you already partly know what I'm gonna say, and if you didn't, you're likely to be pretty "TL.DR." about a long review, so I'll make it brief.

The layout is something like a mixtape, with the album being 2 mp3s, each containing a handful of songs. Its like an mp3 version of a cassette. If you like death grips, you'll probably like this. If you enjoy bastard pop, there is plenty to appreciate in it.

Its one part mash-ups and bastard pop, one part dirty south rap, and a little garage r&b. The lo-fi part is a strength, and cutting up all the samples he's using makes it pretty fun, and it definitely does have the bones to make it some good weird rap/r&b. The lyrics have some really solid moments for this style of rap, but some of the aggressive dropping of hype words hold me back from staying in the groove in parts. 

I would say that if he keeps up making music, then a year or two worth of growth is going to leave him making some fairly grade-A alt-rap-punk-bastard-pop, which is something I look forward to seeing. Especially with that extra he tossed me. Enjoy.

Kukishi.tumblr - EP

Also, if anyone wants to be a part of his music video he's making, shoot him a message.

Special post - DJ Sarcastic - Holophonic Samizdat

Band / Artist: DJ Sarcastic
Year: 2013
Genre: Dub, Lo-fi, Breakbeat, Trance

My Review:

Weirdo Techno at its finest. The album uses a mix of oldschool amen breaks, trance, and jazz elements to make the skeletons of the tracks, then fleshes them out with tons of eclectic lo-fi samplings. After that, the whole thing is simmered in some heavy dub, and served fresh.

It comes together like a trippy cross of Bonobo, Thievery Corporation,  and 90's Meat Beat Manifesto. The chillest tracks are my favorites, especially "Red Programs in American Exile", which I must've listened to on repeat for an hour.

In case you were curious about the name (I was.), here is a description from the page.

Holophonics is a binaural recording system created by Hugo Zuccarelli that is based on the claim that the human auditory system acts as an interferometer. It relies on phase variance just like stereophonic sound. The sound characteristics of holophonics are most clearly heard through headphones though they can be effectively demonstrated with 2-channel stereo speakers, provided that they are phase-coherent. The word "holophonics" is related to the concept of an "acoustic hologram".

Samizdat (Russian) [səmizˈdat]
(in the former Soviet Union)
(Communication Arts / Journalism & Publishing)
a. a system of clandestine printing and distribution of banned or dissident literature
b. (as modifier) a samizdat publication
[from Russian, literally: self-published] 

Now, onto an interview.


Jumbly: It's nice to meet you. How are you doing in this fresh year?

DJ Sarcastic: I'm doing okay. In Montreal it's really cold in February still so we're just trying to get to the spring, then I'll be doing better. Much snow and ice on the ground still. Glad to be alive in 2013 as 2012 was a pretty stressful year.

Jumbly: Ugh. I know snow is pretty to most people, but to me it instantly sets off some alarm in my head that screams "This is frozen hell. Stay away". Suffice it to say, I can empathize with your discomfort.

So, whats your back story? Who is in the group?

DJ S: I am the group, I'm DJ Sarcastic, it's just me, I make all the music.

My back story is that I've been DJing in and around Montreal, Quebec, Canada for about fifteen years and making music on my own for about ten years. I used to play in a band when I was in high school ('93) called King Hemlock too. I spent many years heavily into the local techno scene, organizing events with the Level 4 Productions crew in Montreal and DJing a lot, working at a local record store and putting out a record or two. Somewhere around 2002 I started writing music reviews for a local magazine -you have some idea of what that's like, heheh, I wrote a column called Lalla Land (cause I'm Steve Lalla)... and my musical interests really expanded, first by necessity but then by choice.

I'm a real fan of vinyl and records, and my collection now includes lots of psychedelic rock, current and older, jazz, blues, country, reggae, dub in addition to all my electronic records that're mostly techno, jungle, trip hop, dubstep and so on. The music I make now incorporates elements of electronic music, sampling, and live music, and it's really influenced by what I've been exposed to in the past. I don't write for the newspaper anymore, they folded in 2010 like 95% of print media. ;) ...

I work in an office and by night I turn into DJ Sarcastic and kick out anti-capitalist tunes in my basement.

Jumbly: Who makes your album art?

DJ S: I designed the album art myself. I've done a lot of the artwork for DJ Sarcastic, and had some help with other Level 4-related artwork from Mindlabs and a local artist called Rhys Taylor. Rhys and I did a weekly night together for a few years and he put together some great flyers for that, they're still all online here http://level4productions.com/mix.htm his stuff is pretty cool. But ya nowadays it's really easy for artists to attach visual elements to their music through youtube videos and so on. I like to do graphics and draw and everyone takes pictures nowadays; like many musicians I usually have an idea of what I want the cover to look like. So we do it ourselves.

Jumbly: Do you tour much? Ever doing a tour through the US?

DJ S: As a DJ I've played a few times in the states mostly in Vermont and have travelled to Europe. To tour a "live PA" or live set frankly I'd have to sort out some technical aspects first. My real love is playing records for people though.

Jumbly: What way do you think is best to enjoy your music? Would you consider it good date music, driving music, chillout music, etc?

DJ S: I'm not sure but I think that as a general algorithm, the more altered your state of mind is, the more you will enjoy this album. Also it should be played loud. In the past I've been more focused on making dance-floor oriented music for DJs to play in clubs and raves. The digital releases on bandcamp however are really more suited to "listening". Exposure to hypnotic visual patterns, repetitive blinking lights, spiralling patterns or optical illusions would probably make listeners more suggestible.

Jumbly: Do you like giving away your music for free? Do you hope to continue or would you rather move to a pay system?

DJ S: All my years in writing music review for a magazine, organizing events and trying to run a record label have really led me to be where I am now.

Most of what goes on in the music "industry" or the music "business" is complete B.S., a gigantic fraud and a big waste of time and stress, so I just choose to focus on the music side of things and eliminate the aspects that bother me. Today with the internet it's easy to do that, but there's always been underground, outsider and alternative music published whether in the CD, cassette or vinyl medium. I really don't have the time to deal with the concerns of the mainstream music industry, I don't feel like competing nor can I afford to compete with those out there that are really trying to sell their music, so ya, I do like giving away my music for free, and ya, I do hope to continue being able to do it.

Honestly it's a very real fear that someday soon the world wide web will become a giant store like HMV, which could actually make it difficult for independent artists to give their music away digitally anymore, we'll see what happens.

Jumbly: Do you have any sounds/ bands/ or pieces of art that you admire or wish you could emulate with your music?

DJ S: My inspirations come from a wide variety of sources but they're often artists that I feel went beyond the call of their genre or style to express themselves in a way that felt true and honest to the listener, and I'm often attracted to lyrics of political or social consequence.

My biggest influences manifest themselves in my record collecting and listening habits; over the last year or so I've been heavily admiring Phil Ochs, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, Nilsson, Gil Scott Heron, the Last Poets, or the Lost Children of Babylon, to name a few artists that range from folk and rock to hip hop. I also really admire the sounds of guys like Ripley Johnson (of Moon Duo and Wooden Shjips), Shackleton, Demdike Stare, and René Pawlowitz (Shed), Tom Russell (Truss) and Deadbeat -to name some artists who do not use lyrics or vocals as much.

In my music I don't try to emulate any of these artists so much as I try to make something new out of the old. I use a lot of samples from records that I enjoy and then I turn them into something different, so I might sample a drum roll from the beginning of the Nilsson track "Poli High" and put it together with a dub bassline that I write, so in the end it won't sound anything like the original context. I also use many spoken word samples from movies, videos and, 'cause I'm a bit of a bookworm, audio books sometimes too. My music is totally informed by the cut-and-paste hip hop sampling aesthetic, and in that sense it borrows from 1990s producers like Coldcut, DJ Food, Frankie Bones or even RZA, but my goal is to end up with music that isn't easily qualified as 'hip hop' or 'trip hop' or 'techno'. 

Jumbly: If anyone wanted to do a collaboration with you, would you be interested?

DJ S: Sure I've done some collaborations; I especially like remixing tunes, here's a recent one I did of the Quebec City techno artist Bleupulp:

Jumbly: How should they get in touch with you?

DJ S: They could e-mail me at djsarcastic at gmail.

Jumbly: Thanks a bunch for sharing your music with me.
I have one last question. William Burroughs, or Jack Kerouac?

DJ S: That's a tough one but I'm gonna have to go with Burroughs. Steely Dan, who are one of my favourite bands of all time, named themselves after the metal dildo in Burroughs' Naked Lunch, And i'm reading The Ticket That Exploded right now. I've been reading it for a few months, while I was making many of the tracks on the Holophonic Samizdat album -along with some other books, it hasn't exactly been easy to read. Really though, the answer is Gaddis. Or maybe Pynchon.



And there you have it.
Kick on a blacklight, lay back in your hammock, and enjoy the grooves dude.

DJ Sarcastic - Holophonic Samizdat

Garren Epley - ...Ellipses EP

Band / Artist: Garren Epley
Year: 2012
Genre: Alternative Hip-Hop, Experimental, IDM, Lo-fi, Rap

My Review:

I'd call this Hip Hop, but its got the kind of feel that IDM had back in the days of “Braindance”. This feels like a stripped down version of Family Glue from Global Goon, with this humble Hip Hop style laid out and then added to with layers of sampling and warping. It has some really catchy moments, but i thought that the usage of the little digital track naming voice in each track was kind of throwing off my groove.

This album is hosted by Oligopolist Records, a sponsor with a really cool business model. They avoid Itunes and most other indie labels, and host themselves, giving most of their money to the artists. Check them out here.

http://oligopolistrecords.com/

  

Here's a copy of the album as found on Internet Archive

Garren Epley - "...Ellipses EP"
 
This one had a problem in the initial download, in that it was listed out of order, so I fixed it up and I'm sharing a repack of the tracks with the right labeling and all. You can get that here.

Garren Epley - ... (Repack)

Observer Drift - Corridors

Band / Artist: Observer Drift
Year: 2012
Genre: Alternative, Dream Pop, Indie, Lo-fi, Shoegaze

My Review:

This is some really good hipsterish chillout by a guy named Collin Ward. He's unsigned, and works at a pizza place apparently. I really dig what he's working on, and hope that he gets some attention for what he's got going on. Check out his Facebook page here.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Observer-Drift/127123260702730

It would be a really good album to throw on for the romantic dinner with a person who loves new music.

Observer Drift - Corridors