Pylon Sounds

The moustache clad and hard working producer/dj Eric Sharp originally hails from San Francisco but has now relocated to Los Angeles where he’s already become a staple of the dance music scene, towards the end of his time in San Francisco he wrote his latest release “Pioneer EP”. The EP was just released on his own label Rock It Science Labs and it’s four amazing tracks of dark, twisted house music in the best sense. The tracks are well suited for late night/early morning dancefloors as well as for the peak time in the club. This impression is further cemented by the EP already breaking into the Juno Top 30 chart.

This post is dedicated to our friend Matt.

We have long known that good science fiction isn’t really about the future but about the present. Contemporary situations, concerns and trajectories of development are stretched to fit an altered framework, and from this strange viewpoint, we reach new insights. This means that good science fiction isn’t prediction, but a reflection about today’s zeitgeist and the qualities of the new world encoded in it. Also architecture fiction, a usability test of potential realities that may help us make decisions today – is that the kind of world we want to live in – or that – and what do we do about it?

We have the temptation to interpret electronic music like the musical equivalent of that conventional notion of science-fiction as future gazing – a purveyor of soundtracks for the days to come: the frantic street-hustling of new wave cyberpunks, martial communions atop techno obelisks, or the wide-eyed exploration of alien galaxies.

But of course, it is not that, or it is that, but it not really about that. Electronic music is just a mode of expression that humans adopt when electronic technologies become available to them, because it is in the nature of humans to express themselves through whichever media exist – as if their spirit, infected by the will to communicate, was an irrepressible fluid forever looking for vessels to contain and transmit it, all of which are of course, smidgens for immortality – every song a singularity.  And what glorious diversity this yields, but also what recurrence of themes and moods, a source of great joy in its revelation of spiritual commonalities across the spaces and times that mankind inhabits.

Look at Mammani Sani et son Orgue, an avant-garde musician from Niger whose minimal electronic composition channel a millennial tradition of Saharan song-writing into tone poems wonderful like Kraftwerk’s infrastructural hymns. This is motorik music for spaces without straight lines, lands where all roads are built by the wind

He first picked up his organ in 1974, when Kraftwerk released Autobahn, and he recorded his only album, ‘La Musique Electronique du Niger’, in 1978, the same year as the Man Machine. We hear his compositions filled the Saharan airwaves, evolved into radio broadcasting drones and soundtracks for TV intermissions.

The romantic in 2JFG imagines for a moment that one night, as they sped down the Westphalian motorway, our favourite man-droids were reached by radio waves supernaturally amplified, over the Sahara and the Mediterranean, by the sheer gorgeousness of their content and their need to be heard by kindred spirits. But the truth is simpler, and more beautiful. Mammani Sani et Son Orgue and Kraftwerk converge in the human (and reflect the human’s wonder, exhilaration  – and sadness – as he gets on the road, leaving home behind), because they start in the same place, in the human.

And that connection across spaces suggests continuity over time, a sharing that gives us hope and consolation in the face of strife, suffering and transience.

Mammane Sani et son Orgue – Bodo

La Musique Electronique de Niger is out in Sahel Sounds. Buy it here.

Cam’ron samples Cynthia Fee’s track “Thank You For Being a Friend” from 1980′s sitcom – The Golden Girls – on his latest track “Golden Friends”.

"Stool with canadian maple wooden frame and skateboard." Available for 149,00 € at www.skate-home.com

via dertypvonnebenan.de

Star Trek Into Darkness Press Conference - Berlin
Star Trek Into Darkness Press Conference - London

Neil Gaiman's keynote at The Digital Minds Conference 2013
“But digital meant the end of several dinosaurs. Encyclopedias – I actually remember encyclopedia salesmen knocking on my door. Well, just one, but he was an encyclopedia salesman. And I still have encyclopedias at home. Ancient Encyclopedia Britannica’s, a set of World Books that was bought for me by my dad in the ‘60’s. They were heavy. They were huge. They took up room. They were rarely consulted. They were out of date when you got them. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as predicted by Douglas, was an encyclopedia that could be updated on the fly. And encyclopedias ended.

- Reading Recommendations by George R.R. Martin
- Jeff Noon: a life in writing


Dietmar Dath: "Pulsarnacht"
"Packende Kampfszenen, kilometerlange Raumschiffe und geheimnisvolle Legenden: Der intellektuelle Tausendsassa Dietmar Dath hat einen großartigen Weltraumroman geschrieben, der nicht nur eingefleischte Science-Fiction-Fans begeistern dürfte." Weiter

- NOVA MP3 ONLINE-SPECIALS

Hot on the heels of the release of their much anticipated debut album “Hanging Gardens” (drops May 14th), highly acclaimed L.A dreamlike disco/house duo Classixx drops a mixtape for Solé Bicyles and their Fixtape series. Listen to this beautiful mix while cruising the streets.

Nail – Cassiopeia

I’m very much enjoying this right now so thought I’d share, it’s been a while I know. From when trance was still good, this track comes from 1993’s Strictly 4 Groovers, an LP from rave favourites the legendary DiY soundsystem crew.

It’s a slow builder, starting off with some trancey arpeggiated synths, the lush bassline comes in after a minute or so, the spacey atmosphere grows with hints of cymbal until the beat finally arrives three minutes in. even then it’s another minute until the handclaps (my favourite) hit and we’re into full-on gorgeous ambient trance.

Try it, you just might like it.

And if you’re unfamiliar with DiY then there are worse places you could start than the seminal DiY Jack set from 1992’s Castlemoreton festival – check the link below to download the whole set.

• DiY Jack @ Castlemoreton, 1992 ::
• Release info at Warp ::
• Buy at Bleep.com ::

File Download (9:46 min / 16 MB)

“IV Play” drops May 28th!