Little White Earbuds June Charts

Picture from the enduring Space_ghetto, in its new, more NSFW home

I couldn’t do Hits and Misses this time around because June was a damn good month for techno and house — something I could get used to. Order is more or less random. Some of the unlinked tracks will still have live links in the backlogs for a short time more, so get downloading.

01. Paul Kalkbrenner, “Altes Kamuffel” [BPitch Control]
Kalkbrenner finds the best way to bring back trance is to frame it in spidery Ashra guitar licks and twinkling keyboard patter, then just bulldoze ahead with a few carefully charted tonal shifts. Like its producer, this track is not to be slept on.
02. Blaze, “Lovelee Dae 2007” (Subsky Reconstruction) [Vivid Trax]
Not that this hasn’t been remixed to bits, but you can tell a good revision when it’s better than Pepe Bradock’s efforts. Turkish producer Subsky’s revision is atmospheric in an appropriately uplifting manner and timely in the light of deep house’s resurgence.
03. Mark August, “Old Joy” [Connaisseur Recordings]
Half of a great single, “Old Joy” shows off some retro flair, drawing together strains of, daresay, LFO with a 21st century vibe. (Ronan does a better job describing it.) Mark August is writing himself in the right direction and leaps off the success of “Warm.”
04. Heckmann & Kauffelt, “Sommersause” [Karton Schallplatten]
Heckmann and his collaborators are having a hell of a 2007 production-wise and “Sommersause” with Kauffelt is no exception. Here their laborious progressions provide small peeks at rough diamond motifs that chug underneath many others.
05. Henrik Schwarz, “Walk Music” [Moodmusic]
06. Cobblestone Jazz, “W” [Cocoon Recordings]
07. Ricardo Villalobos, “No. 1 Encuentro Latinoamericano de la Soledad” [white]
08. Tiger Stripes, “Hooked” [Liebe*detail]
09. Matthew Dear, Asa Breed [Ghostly International]
10. Siobhan Donaghy, “Don’t Give It Up” (Carl Craig Dub) [Parlophone Records]
11. Super Flu, “Tripple Mapple” [Traum Schallplatten]
12. Brendon Moeller, “Jazz Space EP” [Third Ear Records]
13. Roland Appel, “Dark Soldier” [Sonar Kollektiv]
14. Simon Baker, “The Fly” [Connaisseur Supérieur]
15. Chaim, “It Never Ends” [Love Minus Zero]
16. Daydream, “Petrichor” [none]
17. Dusty Kid, “Tsunamy” [Systematic]
18. Elon, “Tamingo” (Rekleiner mix) [Infant Records]
19. Afrilounge, “Cruisen” [8Bit]
20. ON-OFF, “Space Tokes” [ON-OFF]

Charred

I don’t know if I really get the idea of charts, but here’s a list of tunes/albums I liked most in January (in order of memory):

01. Pink Grease, “Carlights” (Cajuan remix) [Horny energy incarnate]
02. MVS1 – Troy Pierce vs Heartthrob / Gaiser & Heartthrob [Review forthcoming on RA]
03. Nathan Fake, “Outhouse” (Valentino Kanzyani remix) [From beginning rippling stutter to eventual epic melody: intense]
04. KC Accidental, “Is And Of The” [Float in the jetstream; thanks, sweetie!]
05. The Chromatics, In Shining Violence [Credit to Birth School Work Death for turning me onto this; still thinking]
06. Panther, “How Well Can You Swim?” [One of the few times a dude singing like Christina Aguilera is a good thing]
07. Burial, Burial [Totally missed the ’06 bus on this one, still catching up]
08. Silicone Soul, “The Unforgiven Dub” [Deep deep deep/steep steep steep!]
09. Black Devil Disco Club, 28 Later [Another missed connection of ’06; as essential as its predecessor]
10. The Klaxons,”Golden Skans” [A marzipan laser pointer through the ears. Erol Alkan remix review also forthcoming]
11. Martin Buttrich, “Well Done” [Tech-house with acid frosting? I’ll take two and a Serafin remix, thanks]
12. Thomas Heckmann & Andreas Kauffelt, “Stylophonic” [Cheers to Ronan for pointing and handing this out. A.F.U.!]
13. Daft Punk, “Musique” (Lounge version) [Good to revisit the basics from time to time]
14. Deerhoof, Friend Opportunity [You would think they would run out of excellent ideas by now, but um, nope]
15. Âme, “Rej” (A Hundred Birds remix) [So this is what modern classical music should sound like?]