Articles
2008 Ten Favourite Labels
Ten Questions Celer
Ten Questions Deadbeat

Albums
Anzio Green
Ariel Abshire
Osman Arabi
Arastoo & AEMAE
Asymmetrical Head
Benoît Pioulard
Bohren & der Club of Gore
Matt Borghi
Celer
Cubenx
Anders Dahl
Davis & Roux
Deadbeat
Feu Follet
Formication
Generic
Stefan Goldmann
Gultskra Artikler / Lanterns
Hauschka
Hexes & Ohs
Koen Holtkamp
I Am Robot And Proud
Illusion of Safety
Integral
Koen Park
Akira Kosemura
Koushik
Library Tapes
Lineland
Mamiffer
Melodium
Moon
Oppressed By The Line
Pillars and Tongues
Rumpistol
Kamran Sadeghi
Sans Serif
Signal Deluxe
Skogen
Saul Stokes
Matthew Sweet
Tapage
Thursday / Envy
Windy & Carl

Compilations / Mixes
An Taobh Tuathail II
Chaos Restored 2
DFPRMX
Kuniyuki
Message Subatomic World
Pero es olor en el cuarto...

EPs
Canyons!
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Cubenx
Dokuro
Fraction
Lee Holman
Ikonika
King Midas Sound
Michael Lambright
Library Tapes
Lilienweiss
MRK1
:papercutz
Spencer Parker
Poratz
Spartak + John Chantler
Andy Vaz

VA: DFPRMX
Concrete Plastic / Bass Up Treble Down

DFPRMX is a compilation of remixes of the nine tracks constituting Yard's debut CD Deciduous Flood Plains (Chris H. Jones' disc came out on Concrete Plastic in mid-2007). Jones himself contributes a “Warehouse mix” of “Pacquet” while Arctic Hospital, Let's Go Outside, Karri O, Eric McIntyre, Fisk Industries, Rootsix, Anders Ilar, and—perhaps most surprisingly—soundscaping outfit Celer tackle the other originals. It's a consistently strong release that one might generally characterize as artful and sleek dance music made by machines and tailor-made for the club—“cyborg techno,” in other words. An orgasmic marriage of bass-heavy beat propulsion and android whirr and click, Let's Go Outside's “Under the Bonnet” perfectly instantiates the release's overall style. Standouts include Karri O's “Whitefrog,” whose pulsating dub-inflected techno groove teems with burbling keyboards and chiming filigrees, and Eric McIntyre's “Bees,” a willowy stream of staccato pulsations and hammering stutter-funk. Mixing it up is Fisk Industries (generally associated with Highpoint Lowlife) with “Canopy,” a hot-wired bottom-feeder whose skeletal, tabla-inflected tribal wobble lends the tune a stalker feel, plus there are feverish space-disco jams by Arctic Hospital, Rootsix, Anders Ilar, Yard, and others. Throughout the hour-long set, tight beat patterns give the tracks horizontal heft while multi-tiered arrangements of synthetic melodies and crystalline textures add huge vertical depth. Most of the tracks are in the six-to-seven-minute range which is ideal: long enough to get the point across but not so long that boredom sets in. The obvious outsider in this lot is Celer whose beatless, slow-motion reveries are about as far removed from dance music as one could possibly imagine. As one might expect, the “Copper Globe” mix of “New Beginnings” created by Danielle Baquet-Long and Will Long provides a prototypically sonorous exeunt to this otherwise uptempo collection.

November 2008