On repeat

Tweet I am now on the sixth (or maybe seventh?) crappy MP3 player I've bought in four years; the last one fell from my shirt pocket into a toilet as I stooped to flush it. Here are some of the songs that are on repeat on my newest generic plastic rectangle of cheap circuitry.

welcome to my world

MP3: Julia Holter-Marienbad

This song is the opening track and thematic stage-setter for Julia Holter's coolly gorgeous new album Ekstasis. It is a song in three movements - reminding me tangentially of other little compressed symphonies like 'Good Vibrations' and 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Each successive movement in its sequence is a bit more ornate than the one previous, culminating in the breathtaking final part of the song which coasts along on a combination of celestial drum rattles and a vocal counter-melody that sounds, and I say this sincerely, not of earth. Float on.

MP3: Traxman-Callin all Freaks

I've noticed that more and more people are becoming aware of 'footwork', which is a variation on Chicago Juke or ghetto house, a sample-based music genre which has the function of providing super fast musical patterns for break dancing competitions. I only discovered Juke music last year through stuff like Machinedrum and particularly through Ramadanman's absolute wopper 'Work Them'. Traxman is one of the original ghetto house producers, hard at it since the 1990s, and Planet Mu have just put out a full length album of his productions called Da Mind of Traxman. In keeping with the music's function, many of the tracks are tightly wound little systems of rising energy that seem to spin, then stop. In saying that, the music does stretch out a bit in places, incorporating less purist elements from techno, R&B, and the like.

BTW lads, you should see me footwork to Da Mind of Traxman. That's me; I love like I've never been hurt, and I dance at 155bpm like nobody's watching.

MP3: Actress-Shadow from Tartarus

The ambient techno producer Actress put out his latest album R.I.P on the 20th of April, a date significant to, erm, many of the sort of people to which such extremely zoned out music appeals. The above observation is backed up by the Resident Advisor forum which is full of comments along the lines of "Out on 4/20 - sweeeeeeet dude".

I'm still not entirely sure if I can connect with the album which plays out as if each track is a discrete room the listener visits, evoking a particular strand of the crawling gloom that permeates the entire project. I'll give it one thing, though; it fairly conjures an atmosphere.

Hah hah, I'm not exactly selling this am I? It'll probably end up my favourite album of the year.