Guest Mix

Our main man Moth has come up with another sweet mix, this time charting some chilled summer house and disco, with a lot of WN favourites in the mix. Listen here:

 

Just for WN readers, here's the tracklist:

Moodymann – The Thief That Stole My Sad Days

Unknown Artist – A Jazz Thing

Metro Area – Piña

Mark Barrott – Saviours Or Savages

Domenique Dumont – L’Esprit de l’Escalier

Ben Sun – Seven Sisters

Ben Morris – Polarna Flyger Till Kuba

Paxton Fettel – Dots on the Skyline

Alice Smith – Love Endeavour (Maurice Fulton Remix)

Pablo Mateo – Roxy

J Albert – Love Delivered

Panama Brown – Theme From Panama Racing Club

Merwyn Sanders – Mimi Likes 2 Dance

Davina – Don’t You Want It

Move D – Eastman

Kornél Kovács – Malon

The Bass Foundation – Recognition (Club Rave)

Dream 2 Science – My Love Turns To Liquid

Samo DJ – Flyer Edit

Jean Adebambo – Say That You Love Me (DJ Nick The Record Re-Edit)

Aphex Twin – Alberto Balsalm

Mark Barrott - Bush Society

Label: International Feel

Mark Barrott’s musical career has been a rather interesting and unusual run. Starting out in the 90s producing ambient-indebted DnB and Jungle as Future Loop Foundation, he has utterly reinvented himself over the last few years helming the International Feel label from his home in Ibiza. I-Feel has been on particularly good form of late, putting out a killer reissue and even wrangling Call Super into a rare remix gig. Meanwhile his own music took a sharp left-turn into Balearic and new age (two styles whose cool factor is on the cusp of uncurdling), putting out dreamy sunset electronica under a series of aliases and now seemingly settling on his birth name. His output has been rich and fine, but only this most recent release has made us at White Noise really sit up and take notice.

Barrott’s recent releases, particularly last year’s Sketches From An Island LP, have been pretty but sometimes failed to hold our attention. On Bush Society he has come up with a more winning sound that is utterly consuming. These two tracks swap dusky beaches for a rainforest bristling with life, a veritable sonic ecosystem with all manner of fascinating wildlife on display.

The core sound is a combination of sky-gazing new age synthwork and a set of distinct (though somewhat vague and generic) African rhythms and instrumentation, corralled into a mesmerising and coherent whole. Bush Society is the meat, beginning with a lullaby improvised on a thumb piano and genuine Amazon field-samples. Barrott does an excellent job of populating his rainforest with both real (sampled) and sonic wildlife – the melody like a cry of monkeys in the trees, the predatory growl of the lurking bassline, the varied percussion of the feet of a thousand beasts, even the ominous shake of the rattlesnake’s tail. It’s busy but never crowded, a particular talent in Barrott’s production, and utterly immersive as its ten minute runtimes unfolds.

If the title track is the epic, B-side Saviours Or Savages is like a diamond glimpsed on the forest floor, where the textured percussion and 80s synths return, here joined by a beautiful crystalline melody which totally steals the show, unspooling opulently with a real emotional tug. The nagging issues we had with Barrott’s latest output haven’t really been changed – it’s still all a touch gritless and can slip a little too easily into the background – but Bush Society offers so much more when you delve into its lush sonic world, a sound not just mellow but also somehow alive.

7/10

May Roundup 2015

As ever, there's been more great music than we could possibly write about last month. The May roundup collects some of the best tunes that our radar has caught over the last few weeks. We start sketching some house and disco sketches figures, Nebraska's ace filter-disco, a lovely reissue of Vincent Floyd and some ace material on Text, Future Times and the intriguing new Uniile imprint. Darkness falls midway through the playlist, with Galcher Lustwerk's long-awaited Parlay, a lovely edit from Caribou as Daphni and two stellar cuts from J. Albert, who's got our trophy for the most exciting new artist this year. We end with some spaced-out trips courtesy of Nicolas Jaar, JMMF and Lifted, with Minor Science's dangerous bass flex accompanying the curtain fall.

Tracklist:

Paxton Fettel - Afloat on a Sea of Nothing feat. Takuya Matsumoto

Nebraska - Emotional Rescue

Unknown Artist - A Jazz Thing

Mosey - Tuff Times

Joe - Thinkin About

Vincent Floyd - Get Up

Creta Kano - Skyway Motel

Panama Brown - Theme From Panama Racing Club

Cherushii - Wild Abandon

Galcher Lustwerk - Parlay

Daphni - Usha

J. Albert - Kiss The Ground

J. Albert - Vertigo Contracto

Luca Lozano & Mr. Ho - Dripbox

JMMF - Paraesthesia

Nicolas Jaar - The three sides of Audrey and why she's all alone now

Lifted - Bell Slide

Farbror Resande Mac - Stockholmsnatt

Mark Barrott - Saviours Or Savages

Minor Science - Closing Acts