Article
Lucy

Albums
Alphabets Heaven
AREA C
Aidan Baker
Black Devil Disco Club
Cluster
Dakota Suite & Errante
Davis & Machinefabriek
Deaf Center
Fancy Mike
FM3
Forest Swords
Frivolous
Hakobune
Kyo Ichinose
Juv
Deniz Kurtel
Sven Laux
Lucy
Stephan Mathieu
Joel Mull
Near The Parenthesis
Netherworld
nunu
Fabio Orsi
Penalune
Pleq
port-royal
Rainbow Arabia
Todd Reynolds
Roedelius
Rosenqvist and Scott
Steffi
Sublamp
SubtractiveLAD
Tapage

Compilations
Back and 4th
Future Disco Volume 4
SMM: Context
Tasogare: Live in Tokyo

EPs
Aardvarck & Kubus
Corrugated Tunnel
Debilos
Djamel
Tolga Fidan
Flowers and Sea Creatures
Anne Garner
Mike Jedlicka / Cloudburst
Mo 2 Meaux-2
Proximity One: Remixes
Darren Rice
Sepalcure
Sharma + Krause
Josh T
Talvihorros
Francesco Tristano
Widesky
Dez Williams

Aardvarck & Kubus: Gloom
Eat Concrete

Aardvarck (Mike Kivits) and Kubus (Bart van de Werken) split sides on this latest twelve from the always reliable, Netherlands-based Eat Concrete imprint. The only complaint in this case is that, while the release tops out at eighteen minutes, Aardvarck's slice of that pie—eight minutes only—disappears too fast. The level of imagination and invention in Kivits ' tracks is phenomenal, with each a fireball of forward-thinking dubstep artistry that evades easy linguistic capture: a sputtering swirl of smears and low-end bass bump, “Wall E Synth” thumps and clatters for three glorious minutes before giving way to “Spees,” a bottom-feeding slow-stepper inflamed by its own analog synth shudders and flares. Two short cuts follow, “Prince Would” first, a half-minute of elastic beat warble just long enough to leave one dizzy, and “Tekk Toek,” whose warm pads soften the staccato pulse that otherwise hammers through the track.

On this outing, Kubus's cuts impress less than Aardvarck's simply because Kubus's bass-heavy throwdowns go for the jugular, so to speak, but do so with less creative élan than Aardvarck's. Even so, there's no ignoring the forcefulness of the deep-throated guzzler “In Principe” or hellacious “Schweinenblut,” which grinds and convulses like some zombie corpse charged back to life. The standout Kubus track is “Zonder Baan,” a synth-strafed warbler that chops heads with a heady marriage of sci-fi atmosphere and bass-throbbing rumble. It's the closest in spirit to the flip side's material and stands out all the more for being so.

March 2011