textura

Albums
17 Pygmies
Ælab
Aeroc
Adrian Aniol
Aleph
Artificial Memory Trace
B. Schizophonic / Onodera
Blue Fields
The Boats
Canyons of Static
Celer
drog_A_tek
Fennesz + Sakamoto
Marcus Fischer
Les Fragments de la Nuit
Daniel Thomas Freeman
From the Mouth of the Sun
Goth-Trad
Karol Gwózdz
Mark Harris
Inverz
Kingbastard
Tatsuro Kojima
Robert Lippok
Maps and Diagrams
Merzouga
Message To Bears
mpld
The New Law
Nuojuva
Octave One
Petrels
Puresque
Refractor
Lasse-Marc Riek
Jim Rivers
Dennis Rollins
Scuba
Shigeto
Susurrus
Jason Urick
VVV
Williamette
Windy & Carl
Zomes

Compilations / Mixes
DJ-Kicks: The Exclusives
Future Disco Volume 5
King Deluxe Year One
Phonography Meeting
Pop Ambient 2012

EPs
Blixaboy
Matthew Dear
Fovea Hex
Jacksonville
Kurzwellen 0
Phasen
Pascal Savy

VA: King Deluxe Presents Year One
King Deluxe

British Columbia-based King Deluxe has been carving out its own little niche in the electronic music firmament over the past year with a steady string of head-turning releases by figures like Fancy Mike, Alphabets Heaven, and Option Command. Anyone not yet hep to the label's forward-thinking fusion of glitch, IDM, and hip-hop should proceed directly to King Deluxe Presents Year One, as good a primer as could be imagined. To celebrate its first-year anniversary, the label has cherry-picked some previously issued standout tracks and augmented them with new interpretations by King Deluxe-associated artists. The result: one comes away from the release with an enhanced appreciation for the breadth and boldness of the label's vision.

King Deluxe Presents Year One is an almost ridiculously strong collection that follows one standout with another. From the head-spin of Muta's tribal-electro-funk makeover of Option Command's “Polybell Strategy,” for example, we move immediately onto the fidgety trance-house of Longwalkshortdock's unstoppable “You Berg (2999 Version).” Hints of jungle, drum'n'bass, and dubstep give the low-end breaks of ID's “Aether” a marvelous thrust, while Aleph's “Sulfozinum” presents a whirling dervish of proggy hip-hop. Seductive marriages of potent vocal melodies and glitch-hop breaks such as Alphabets Heaven's future-soul workout “Woman (Ghost Mutt Merix)” are as fresh as anything coming out of the Hotflush or Hyperdub stable.

Some provocative results come from the sequencing design, which finds the original followed by the interpretation. As a result, we're first presented with Fancy Mike's “Cartoon Pornography,” which smothers a crisp buckshot groove with synth atmospherics and vinyl crackle, and then get an acoustic jazz rendering by the Kingston Jazz Trio. The gloomy (dystopic, if you prefer) dubstep of El Haijn's “Out of the Unknown” sputters and writhes even more forebodingly in the Cubism Black Remix of same that follows. Vaetxh leavens the Aphex swizzle of “Mass” with a gently sparkling melody that Richard D. James would be proud to call his own, while Calvin Cardioid's “92% Analog” remix plays like the original's gleeful synth-pop sibling.

Echoes of other music sometimes surfaces in the tunes, though not to detrimental effect. “Galaxy Train 2999” by Milch of Source feat. EeL, for example, vaguely sounds like some mutant reimagining of the Bloodhound Gang's “The Bad Touch,” while DNA traces of Madonna's “Into The Groove” seem to bubble to the surface of the outfit's (now credited as Mitch Murder feat. EeL) heavily disco-fied “Galaxy Train 1989.” Listening to the great music on this collection, the phrase “an embarrassment of riches” comes to mind. Suffice it to say that the label's range has never been better captured than on this twenty-five-track release.

February 2012