I mentioned a little over a year ago that I’d been enthusastically getting amongst all things Apparat. If you didn’t see that post, go check it out and get a hold of those albums – a year later they still rank high as some of my favourite albums for repeated listening.

I’d been keenly awaiting an upcoming collaboration LP between Apparat and Modeselektor, another key Berlin electronica group that you may have come across when they gathered some attention by getting Thom Yorke in on vocals for “The White Flash” from their last album Happy Birthday. Ironically, the album evaded my notice for a good couple of months after release – and here I am blogging about it even later still. However, I haven’t seen a lot of talk about the album here in Australia so I figured I’d throw my commendation for it in.

The album promoters for the Moderat project seem to have made a lot of mileage out talking about the supposed tensions that exist in the Apparat/Modeselektor working relationship. In many ways, it’s not hard to see why such a tension would exist – Modeselektor seem to enjoy a goofy, hip-hop derived, swaggering beat-heavy synthetic sound while Apparat has increasingly been moving towards an ambient yet organic approach to his music. To put it more simply: Modeselektor’s music is good for clubs, Apparat is good for headphones and living rooms.

So where’s the album land, sonically speaking? In many ways, the trademarks of both entities exist evenly across the record, though the whole ends up being a little more on the dramatic, serious side. That’s not to say it’s slow – it’s generally quite uptempo – but it’s fairly minor key and takes its identity more from texture than rhythmic propulsion. The trio seem heavily influenced by the dubstep movement – notably first single “Rusty Nails” and closer “Out of Sight” live in Burial’s shadow just a little, while bringing it under a more refined, Berlin-esque structure. Elsewhere, some excellent Berlin ambient techno gets a couple of tunes (“3 Minutes Of” and “Nasty Silence”) and even a very pop-sounding rave anthem (“Sick With It”) is amongst the lineup.

Initially I was a little disappointed by the release – it seemed to lose my interest a few tracks in and repeat itself – but over many replays I’ve gradually come to find it a solid, thoroughly enjoyable work. Much lies in the detail, waiting to be unravelled over repeat plays.

As a result, the disc is certainly no party starter in atmosphere but it’s an impeccable disc for evenings (and, in my case, coding) – a detail-rich labour of love (and possibly even frustration, judging from the cover) that may not see a followup due to Modeselektor and Apparat’s own busy careers (presently on hold while they finish touring as Moderat). Worth a listen.

Rusty Nails (video)

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I apologise for the insane lack of posting (if anyone had noticed)… life has been immensely busy between moving house (I am now, terrifyingly, a resident of Ryde), multiple music projects (notably Soma Music, which has been immensely exciting and rewarding) and even Real Work. Things are settling down, so hopefully more blogging will follow – there’s a big backlog of albums that I’ve been meaning to cover.

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With some sadness Aussie music bloggers bid farewell last mongth to Sean from A Reminder. He’s left for his native land of Canada and I certainly hope that his mother country realises what a boon has just arrived for their music scene as his coverage of music in Australia will be hugely missed here. Hope the move is fruitful Sean – and I’m looking forward to hearing what you unearth out of Canada’s music scene!

I’ve been unforgivably AWOL for the last month and a bit, for which I must apologise. Until now I’d been working late nights on a rather insane project and had generally been getting distracted by life’s little quirks. This blog post finds me one day after finishing the aforementioned project (and also not having full use of my computer thanks to a faulty iPhone updater)

Excuses aside, I was pretty darn excited when I heard that Sasha was bringing us a follow-up to his excellent 2004 mix CD, Involver. If you didn’t hear the release (you should buy it), the album was basically a DJ set with a quirk: each track was a unique remix by the DJ himself, all of which were carefully arranged to make a really impressive flow of tracks. The selections were great, and the remixes were hot.

After a lacklustre release in the form of Fundacion NYC (which was, IMHO, a pretty ordinary mix CD), Sasha looks like he’s back to take things to another level. And does the tracklist look killer or what?

1. Intro – Badger
2. You Are The Worst Thing In The World – Telefon Tel Aviv
3. Flesh – Rone
4. Eclipse – Sasha vs Ray LaMontagne
5. Lowlife – Sasha vs Adam Parker
6. Midnight – Charlie May
7. Arcadia – Apparat
8. That You Might – Home Video
9. Destroy Everything You Touch – Ladytron
10. Couleurs – M83
11. The Eraser – Thom Yorke
12. 3 Little Piggys – Sasha
13. Sometimes I Realise – Engineers

I needn’t make too much of a fuss about the quality of the artists represented here. Needless to say, I am excited.

The disc is slated to be released on September 5, and will be heard quite clearly within 5km radius of my block for a good few weeks, I’m sure.

After my insane non-stop listening spree of early Krautrock (I still hate that term) that began a couple of months back, I guess it was to be expected that I’d eventually end up getting amongst the current German electronica scene. Currently I’m working my way through a few of the artists on the BPitch Control record label, which has some great talent including the label’s founder and owner Ellen Allien, whose latest record I wanted to cover here.

However, as I began to write this it began to be apparent that it would be remiss for me to not talk about the albums that got me into discovering Allien’s latest, so I’m going to give a quick run-down of how I got into her stuff, starting with Apparat:

(so you’re too lazy to actually read the whole thing? here’s the summary: I love the following three albums. you might not have heard them. you should hear them. you’ll probably love them too, but maybe you’ll find the last one a bit hard to get into at first. go buy them)

Apparat – Walls (2007)

I discovered Walls randomly via a mention from a friend after he saw it on a year-end list (“this sounds interesting, might be good”). It’s basically an (excellent) electronically constructed pop record largely based around laptronica with some nuances of live instrumentation, the odd vocal-led song and some really, really great sounds. Despite the fact that Apparat is relatively obscure at this point (in Australia anyway), the tunes are well developed and I’m pretty sure this album will continue growing an audience for some time to come.

Chances are you’ll enjoy this album if you’re reading this, and you’ll probably find it the easiest of the three to get amongst.

All of the remixes I’ve heard from this album are also impeccable – if you happen to see any of the 12 inches around, pick them up. Many of them can also be found on Apparat’s Things To Be Frickled remix compilation released just recently.

• Stream the whole album on Apparat’s website

Apparat & Ellen Allien – Orchestra of Bubble (2006)

After playing Walls a lot out I began to notice mention of collaboration Apparat did with Ellen Allien, which I decided to give a try. If Walls was an immediately enjoyable listen, this record really pulled me in.

This album certainly has much stronger ties to dancefloor culture, but it does a wonderful job of exploring all manner of sonics and ambience while laying down some absolutely infectious grooves. Vocals are limited to a couple of tracks, but all the same it’s got a strikingly accessible aesthetic while still being a very technically accomplished work. The album sticks to concise track lengths for the most part, but despite this a few of the album’s cuts strike me as being strong contenders for consideration in a DJ set.

Speaking of DJ sets, the 2xLP package has different edits of some of the tunes which I’m assuming were provided to make the album more friendly for DJing. It’s a different perspective on the album, and worth getting, despite omitting a couple of tunes heard on the CD/download version.

• Stream samples on the official album website

Ellen Allien – SooL (2008)

After digesting and thoroughly enjoying these two albums, I was pretty keen when Ellen Allien announced her new album Sool.

Talk about totally turning my expectations on their head: here I was pumping myself up for a grandiose record full of textures and melodies coupled with sublime beats, and I’m greeted by a hushed introduction of muted synth bleeps and what sounds like an ambient noise in an airport terminal for robots. The next track continued to confuse me with slowly evolving, sparse rhythms and a distant synth ambience, with Allien’s single-word vocal whispered over the top.

So, “minimal” music eh? It seems to be getting a lot of action lately and it seems that Allien has jumped in headfirst. I’ve enjoyed a lot of music of this variety… but Allien certainly takes the genre to sparser, more difficult worlds than I’ve experienced before.

Not exactly grabbed by the sounds I heard, I initially wrote this album off as a demonstration in minimal at its most self-indulgent, but persisted all the same (for some reason)

Well, it turns out this record isn’t just self-indulgent beats and noodlings: it has a soul and after many further listens I’m beginning to realise I like it very much, thankyou. Beneath its seemingly cold and detached exterior is a quietly restrained, beautiful and very engrossing record. Frequently you can hear the silence between Allien’s microscopic beats, with the web-like arrangements building and shifting throughout the duration of a track. Allien’s snippeted vocals give it a unique character and a bit of human-ness (despite how robotic they’ve been mutated to sound). Each sound is meticulously crafted and I can imagine the degree to which all of the details are exposed would have made the album all the more nerve-wracking to put together.

It’s not an easy first ride, but keep trying with this one: it ends up being a great journey.

• Stream the album on the BPitch site