‘There’s a certain, and certainly clichéd rigmarole which greets the every peep made by Steven Ellison and subsequently articulated via his Flying Lotus SoundCloud account, with every unapologetically scrappy cut and iffy glitch hyped up and machined about to ludicrous, and indeed ludicrously excessive ubiquity. Though S.D.S. – a woozy galaxy bounce once employed as backing for reputedly precocious Pittsburgh wordsmith Mac Miller, the initialism signifying Somebody Do Something – is the sort of gently jazzy instrumental to have become Ellison’s stock-in-trade around the time of the irreproachable Cosmogramma. And only once unstuck from Miller’s wack gumball rhymes does this particular number genuinely become something ever so slightly exceptional…’
Posts tagged Sonar 2012.
‘OK, so I should imagine it’s fairly safe to say that Scouse electronica three-piece Sun Drums wouldn’t beam with gushing delight were they to be snared by the trap tag, and indeed it’d be fairly nonsensical to deem them thus. Nonetheless as introductions go, Order Of Nothing is a full-frontal bash; a figurative handshake to transform knuckles into dust. Though it’s an introduction best chopped finely, lined up and gorged upon, for contained within these heady eleven are in fact elements of the lambasted genre aforesaid – that unerring aggression; the sonorous kicks; those crisp hi-hats – yet these are masterfully intermingled with other once seemingly incompatible inflexions. Hyphy interludes, muffled techno interjections, and cagey breaks all combine as the track which itself runs as though the stream of consciousness of Coyu’s record case blurs in and out of refinement and focus. Consistency is of course as ever crucial, and in terms of quality they’ve the dial set to something undeviatingly skyscraping. Order this one in.’
‘Perhaps it’s for the positive that we weren’t quite so hasty in assessing what was, having experienced this second disc, a duly overdue début. Talabot took his time in piecing it together, just as we’ve taken our good sweet lo que sabes in coming around to review the oeuvre. Certainly witnessing the perpetually peaked hombre sweat it out on home turf proffered a better understanding of what it was that he was about and just as time may often be cited as life’s omnipotent, all-forgiving healer, it may also be its hesitant evangelist in this instance. In Depak Ine and in deeper reverence praise alike, ƒIN now appears all but immortally excellent.’
‘Even over a month on every tastemaking bud thirsts for the throb that first greets you upon entrance to the ineluctable onslaught of Sónar de Noche. As such anything arrhythmic fails miserably in setting the pulse to agitated race. The likes of Walls and Yeasayer excelled at getting the old heart rate rapid last weekend, as did LDR (just as she coincidentally did back in Barça) although that may be for rather contrastive motives. Mercifully then the ever reliable sibling pairing of Ben and Tom Page, aka Rocketnumbernine, are well versed – or rather programmed in these sorts of things and consequently their rework of USRNM’s Tru Say gives a dreary, if wearyingly balmy midsummer afternoon a much needed hoof up the proverbial backside. Subtle, minimal rhythms reminiscent of Hawtin here creep and twitch unnervingly beneath the subtlest of synth swells and rash top-end interjections. Factor in the baleful thrum what propels this one and you’ve something mightily burly with which to clobber Stoke Newington into a jittering state of submission.’
Rocketnumbernine play The Waiting Room of N16 this Thursday imminent.
