Pocket Pet: WeSendIt EP
Goosehound

The Suffragettes: Gunsi EP
Goosehound

VA: Unfound EP
Goosehound

Listeners with a ravenous jones for the minimal genius of Microcosm and foundsound will delight to know that adding NY-based Goosehound makes for a perfect troika. In fact, so simpatico are the labels' aesthetics that Goosehound's compilation EP pays tribute to Unfoundsound, foundsound's net label counterpart, and even culls material from Unfoundsound's archives.

Strangely enough, Goosehound's inaugural release circuitously came by way of Japan. Even so, The Suffragettes' Gunsi EP aligns itself perfectly with Microcosm's and foundsound's stateside aesthetic. Throughout the disc's four cuts, pumping beats lightly pitter-patter while a legion of unusual samples and noises—clicks, clangs, honks, tears, grunts, smears—maintains a constantly morphing broil. Dub-inflected tracks like “Josyo” and “Syakoto” feature so many layers they verge on aquatic and follow such intricate pathways they resemble mazes. The EP's apex arrives with “Hanzo,” a funky slice of off-kilter business egged on by dubby house stabs and a grooving bass figure.

The Suffragettes gets the opening spot on the Unfound disc too, with the quartet's “Homework 1” equal to anything on its own release. Grunts and moans collide with a warped keyboard theme and beats rattle alongside strafing smears, as a thudding bass desperately imposes some semblance of order. Someone Else sprays funky accents all over Ezekiel Honig's “Under The Covers” without derailing the slinky bass-drum dyad that blithely slithers down below, while Barem's “Three Tiny Trees” ups the dance ante with a storming raver dogged by primal percussive burble and spectral echo. Prodded by voice edits, the inexplicable presence of a raw guitar figure, and swinging rhythm patterns, Butane's “Drew's Purse Is So MNML” returns the disc to the grooving minimal style with which it began.

Merging the talents of Japan-based Segeke (One Thousand Birds) and the Agriculture's David Last (The Push Pull), Pocket Pet doesn't radically deviate from the dancefloor foundation of the other EPs but it does reconfigure the sound palette. Bizarre voice edits imbue “Shaky Hands” with a disorienting, animalistic vibe, though the focus shifts in the second half to a more dominant rhythmic punch. Slathered with voice slices and writhing noises, “With You” gravitates towards house territory without losing the foundsound ambiance, while The Suffragettes once again re-appear to give “WeSendIt” a micro-minimal rinse.

July 2006