Articles
2015 Top 10s & 20s
Roomful Of Teeth

Albums
0
David Arend
Artificial Intelligence
Nimrod Borenstein
Randal Collier-Ford
Deadbeat
Julien Demoulin
Denki Udon
R. Nathaniel Dett
Dwiki Dharmawan
Yair Etziony
Marina Fages
Francesco Di Fiore
Flowers for Bodysnatchers
From the Mouth of the Sun
Goldmund
Markus Guentner
Momenta Quartet
Music Komite
North Atlantic Explorers
Ontal
Prequel Tapes
Saffronkeira
Slivovitz
Alessandro Stella
Subheim
Swarm Intelligence
Robert Scott Thompson
Triac
Trigg & Gusset
Aino Tytti
Andy Vaz
We Mythical Kings
Sebastian Zangar

Compilations / Mixes / Remixes / Reissues
Dub Phizix
Stacey Pullen
Replicants
A Simple Procedure
Tour De Traum X

EPs / Cassettes / DVDs / Mini-Albums / Singles
Ant'lrd
Big Phone
Great Panoptique Winter
Hydro
Mtwn
Mute Forest
Selaroda
Thee Koukouvaya
Joshua Van Tassel

Big Phone: Black Earth App Worship Remixes
Peloton Musique

Seattle-based Peloton Musique brings us remixes of material from Black Earth App Worship, the spawn of Big Phone aka Kenric McDowell, once a Brooklyn resident toiling in the advertising industry and today an electronic music producer who creates wonky techno when not working as a machine-intelligence designer and prototype developer at Google. The EP features contributions by individuals well-known in these parts, with Caro (Randy Jones) tackling “Honey” and Marshall Watson (Shane Watson) crafting two takes on “Glow For Me.” Seattle resident Jones has been keeping a low profile of late, with little heard from him under his Caro guise in recent days and the last release on his Orac label having appeared in 2008, so his appearance on the remix set is welcome indeed. Watson, on the other hand, is a veteran of Highpoint Lowlife and Volkoren, among others, and lives and works in San Francisco as a sound designer and composer for Sirius Sound as well as a freelance composer.

Jones digs into an electro vibe immediately in his effervescent “Palindrome Mix,” its trippy throb bolstered by dizzying ascending flourishes and buoyed by an irrepressible bounce. Jones takes his time, however, and lets the track stretch its legs for a scenic eight minutes, and like McDowell's Big Phone originals, the makeover functions equally well as dancefloor and headphones material. Drawing inspiration from producers such as Daniel Avery and Roman Fluegel, Watson replicates the Caro cut in the way his contributions satisfy as club-ready house productions while at the same time standing out as distinctive personal creations marked by imaginative earworms. Watson's an experienced hand with an expert command of pacing and build, and both are strongly evident in the way he surreptitiously threads a melodic motif into the pulsating psychedelia of his “Spacelight Mix” at strategic moments. As effective is his “Spacelight Dub” treatment, a slinky club dynamo whose pounding bottom end registers strongly on the groove scale and whose Moog analogue delays and tom-tom fills add mightily to the material's tripped-out quality.

December 2015