Daniel Avery – Quick Eternity
(Four Tet Remix)
Kieran Hebden can send the internet into meltdown with a banging new white-label. He can also have festival crowds on the verge of tears with his touching live set. He’s back with another remix, this time reworking Daniel Avery’s “Quick Eternity,” an ambient techno track that closed Song For Alpha earlier this year. Made available on a 12-inch sold at June’s Field Day festival in London, it gets a wider release this week, rightfully bringing its unique radiance to a bigger audience.
The remix is classic Four Tet, a twinkling, almost ambient slice of shimmering house, vaguely tropical and intensely emotional. The faint garage rhythm at the start is a red herring, as there’s barely a kick drum for the next five minutes. Instead, the focus is on the sunny chimes, whistles and keys that swirl in harmony. And then, silence. But the beat returns, the track building into a technoid stomp with a growling synth, paired with a crunchy clap. It’s a bold switch up, resulting in one of the more memorable remixes of recent months.
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Helena Hauff – Qualm
The word “dank” gets thrown around a lot in the club world, usually to play up the music’s psychotropic qualities. But Helena Hauff’s shadowy take on techno is dank in a different way: It’s cold and clammy, evocative not so much of marijuana as moldy basements. That’s definitely the case with “Qualm” and “No Qualms,” a pair of cuts from the Hamburg, Germany producer’s upcoming album, Qualm.
The pair of tracks, sequenced back-to-back on the album, make for a potent one-two punch. On “Qualm,” a rare foray into beatless fare, she lays off the drum machine and sinks deeply into a hazy synthesizer meditation that leaves the bitter scent of burnt wiring lingering in the air. The title has a double meaning: In English, it means a feeling of unease or nausea, while in German, it’s a word for “smoke” or “fumes,” and her wispy waveforms live up to both connotations. With “No Qualms,” though, she unmutes the drums and unleashes one of her characteristically punishing drum grooves—a snapping, swaggering electro cadence run through gritty overdrive, handclaps and woodblocks so heavy they leave welts. The synth melody remains the same, but the transformation is unmistakable: from sickly drift to full-on dungeon techno.
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Ted Jasper – Go On
The short but powerful discography of UK house prospect Ted Jasper has already shown the producer to be one willing to paint outside of the lines.
The glitchy tendencies of debut short player ‘Little Bit More‘ set a solid bar for the newcomer, who kick-starts 2018 with another full-bodied delivery of unboxable club work. Between the ambient echoes of “Buried” through rhythmically licked house cut “The Drum,” the EP’s three tracks are guided only by a red line of quality from start to finish.
Based on the warm instrumental values of “Mali Mali,” Ted Jasper can still cater to the approachable house market with his widespread talent, but chooses to carve his own path with a truly diligent second EP of eclectic electronic brilliance.
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Peggy Gou – Shero (Needs – Not For Profit)
Just as people in this world have far more in common than they have differences, so too are men and women as capable and ambitious as the other, and yet, in 2018, we still have to fight for equal rights in the United States and in most countries around the world. The United Nations wants to help in that fight, and UN Women’s HeForShe initiative fights to bring accelerating education programs to female populations around the world.
Peggy Gou is one woman working her way to the top of a male dominated industry. The South Korean producer and DJ turned heads with her recent Once EP, which saw her singing over her beats for the first time. Today, she’s back on her instrumental groove with a cool, classic house groove that’s a little bit retro and a lot of dopeness, inspired by the HeForShe movement and women’s struggle for equality around the world. It’s been chosen as part of UN Women and the Needs charity’s forthcoming HeForShe charitable compilation album.
“‘Shero’ is one of the most hypnotic beats I’ve made so far,” Gou says in an emailed statement. “It has melodic arpeggios moving all around, on a repetitive drum groove. The track means a lot to me having been chosen for the #HeForShe gender equality campaign for UN Woman which I’m extremely proud and grateful to be a part of.”
Needs004 x UN present HeForShe is a two-track release, featuring “Throwdown” from Juju & Jordash, via not-for-profit label Needs, which dedicates proceeds from releases and events to various organizations and causes to help the fight against mental health issues, homelessness and equality. It’s out everywhere Monday, June 11, all profits from which go to the UN’s HeForShe campaign.
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Mura Masa – Move Me
Mura Masa’s 2017 self-titled debut approached electronic pop with a uniquely curatorial point of view. The London-based producer recruited Charli XCX, Nao, Damon Albarn, and others for a set of experimental dance tracks that drew inspiration from the various sounds that thrum through his hometown, simultaneously revealing his distinct point of view while affording the assembled group of talent plenty of room to shine. On “Move Me,” Mura Masa’s first release since his debut, he once again draws from London’s wide-ranging music scene, this time by tapping rising local rapper Octavian for a potent rap-dance hybrid.
Driven by a knocking drum machine beat, a heavy bassline, and Octavian’s dependably mellow flow, “Move Me” is a smooth, dancefloor-prepped song with some clear Top 40 ambitions. But the track sticks the landing, largely thanks to Octavian’s nonchalant chorus (“Now you’re tryin’ to move me/’Member back then you never knew me?”) and Mura Masa’s reliably groovy backdrop. “Move Me” maintains and expands on the producer’s elegantly styled mix of electronic, dance, and rap music, adding a promisingly balmy flair that’s perfectly primed for summer.
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