From Shane Cantwell Sent Fri, Jan 15th 1999, 03:00
From Shane Cantwell Sent Fri, Jan 15th 1999, 03:00
I love my local record shop (shout out to Albums on the Hill in Boulder, CO). I walked in between classes today to check the latest order (they're predominantly DJ/dance record shop upstairs, which my tastes have somewhat evolved into over the past couple years), and was almost immediately accosted by the manager and one of the employees - the former telling me that the new Autechre was in, and the latter handing me an odd-looking little 7" with "Slut Smalls: Out of this World, A Division of Slut Trax Industries" printed on it. Well, the former was the 12" Autechre "Peel Session, TX, 13/10/95" with the tracks Milk DX, Inhake 2, and Drane. I'm not going to do a thorough review, here - let me just say that I'm much more pleased with it than I was with Ae5 on first listen, and my fave albums of theirs are Incunabula and Amber. Layered crisp percussive sample loops and a couple bass keyboard loops on the former two, and Drane sounds kinda Oval-ish, IMO - not ACTUAL CD skipping noise, I don't think, but pretty similar, and very foremost, with ambient chords fading in and out of the background, a wide break with a "free effects solo" (flange/delay ambience) which blends into the opening for the remainer of the track (one side of a 33rpm 12", not sure just how long). The other little thing was what caught me totally off guard... It's Slut Trax (a label I actually haven't heard of) SMALL002, A: 808 State "Quincy's Lunch" AA: Jega "Move Ur Body" (!!). Of course, now I realize that this did get a quick mention on this list... Anyway, it's most like "German" on _Spectrum_ - a bit more "distant" ambience, though, pure 808-sounding percussion and lots of resonance filter/cutoff on the keyboards (~4 minutes). The 808 State track, on the contrary, is quite bright, with real drumkit drum sounds, skittery D&B with horn-like sounds. "Life is composed of exquisite moments and the rest is shadows of them." -T.E. Hulme np: 808 State (it's growing on me)