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

Poratz: 28.50
Electroton

Patrizio Orsini only established his Poratz project in 2008 so the persona is as fresh as the material comprising this twenty-nine EP. Carefully stitching together minute samples and beats into six glitch-funk electronic cuts, he shapes the material into heavily atmospheric, head-nodding set-pieces that hypnotically skip and crackle. His loop-heavy tracks exemplify a bit of that Prefuse-styled cut-and-paste aesthetic so beloved of instrumental hip-hop producers though, to his credit, Orsini tastefully refrains from overloading the tracks to excess. Having said that, the opener “Sal Linda” teems with so much detail, the effect is almost dizzying: in just over four minutes, snappy stutter-funk electronics and waves of whirr and click collide with gunshot punctuations, rattle-snake exhalations, clanking rhythms, and other sounds. A woman's interstitial “um” and other vocal fragments act as rhythmic punctuation against a bass-crawling pulse in “01” while the clubby “At Wu Pu” charts a course down a deep river of densely-textured funk swing. It's not all uptempo: “11” is an exercise in brooding, crackle- and static-drenched ambient whose sonar flickers have more in common with Raster-Noton than Stones Throw, and “Goodnight Cleveland” ends the set with a metronomic lesson in krautrock-styled hypnosis. 28.50's certainly a more than promising coming-out for Poratz; it'll be interesting to see if Orsini can extend that quality level to a full-length production.

November 2008