The big beaters are back: new Wagon Christ and Prefuse 73 albums ahoy

Wagon Christ is to wheel out new material in the autumn.

Ninja Tune are planning a 20th anniversary compilation called XX, and have been giving away free music on this site as a free bone for all the barking music bloggers.

When they gave away an old Wagon Christ mix (the label never released it because of uncleared samples), Ninja Tune revealed September's anniversary compilation will contain a new Wagon Christ track - and they promised a new long-player too.

Wagon Christ is the 17-year-old alter-ego for acid artist Luke Vibert. Christ helped define electronic music in the 1990s before getting caught up, to some extent, in the big beat revival and the cut-and-paste chic of Ninja Tune.

As far as I can remember, the Christ the wheeled wonder hasn't released a jot since his Sorry I Make You Lush LP in 2004.

Meanwhile, beat-splicer Prefuse 73 is working on a female-voiced album and has given a shout-out to TyBo on this blog post about the new project. His collaborators will include experimental rocker Zola Jesus, Angel from the Bjork-collaborating Dirty Projectors and Trish from Warp Record's dreamy Brummie band Broadcast.

The sharper-goggled readers among you will note none of this is terribly new news, but I have an awful lot of catching up to do - and anyway, I haven't finished drinking the bromide from my Manchester blogmeet write-up the other day.

Original photo: Stuart Holt

Flying Lotus' Cosmogramma embraces the cobblers

Do you remember all that cobblers in the '90s about the Aphex Twin's lucid dreaming?

If Flying Lotus hasn't spent the last two years in one massive lucid dream, I'll eat my trilby. His third album Cosmogramma sounds like every hazy memory and lazy Sunday spilled from his brain into shimmering, liquid gold.

Los Angeles, his influential 2008 album, was all about the head nods and the knob tweaking. It deep froze hip hop into crystalline instrumentals. The new album is not that. In fact, it blows his J Dilla manifesto out of the water as he looks further afield to jazz, to soul, to the weight of a musical history few artists manage to encompass in one record.

Cosmogramma seems ungrounded to the casual listener, spinning as it does from p-funk house (Do The Astral Plane) to shuffling workshop techno (Recoiled). It often jumps genres within one tune, but unlike that track-hopping scratchamentalist Prefuse 73 he plumbs emotional depths whilst snatching from different record boxes with breathtaking drive.

Confused

It's a difficult LP to hook into at first. The space jazz of Pickled confused me, and left me wondering if I was playing my mp3 at 45rpm instead of 33, while other tracks are pure lounge: Satelllliiiiiiiteee underwhelms, while Zodiac Shit is a laid-back summer afternoon.

But one you get used to the newness - free jazz and plenty and plenty of harps - the wooziness begins to lighten your head. Ravi Coltrane's tenor saxophone lends a smokiness to German Haircut and...And The World Laughs With You smothers Thom Yorke's vocals until they're musical chloroform. It's a dizzying ride.

Arkestry is the most leftfield, with mad drumming leading into moody choralwork, a dramatic edge that is only amplified by the descending melody and clockwork rhythm of MmmHmm. I can even forgive him the opening ping-pongs of a track called Table Tennis (what else?) despite dredging up the memory Enrique Iglesias' awful 'Ping Pong song'.

Spell

The deeper we fall into the spell of Cosmogramma, the more Flying Lotus' place in musical history becomes transparent.

Until now, FlyLo's great aunt, the jazz pianist Alice Coltrane came from another musical world: a different time with different ears. Until now.

The genre-busting Cosmogramma, encompassing nuyorican soul as much as hip hop, ties his history in with hers. It's that echo of the past that makes this a real producers' album, but in a very different way from 2008's Los Angeles.

Cosmogramma is a soulful kaleidoscope of genres, lending it a headiness not seen in his previous work - but its roots are deeep. FlyLo has drawn a line in the sand once again: it's time for his contemporaries to get dreaming.

Gonja Sufi's a smokin' nomad in sound and soul: plus Friends Of Friends and Babe Rainbow

Gonja Sufi

Time for some single reviews. The haunting voice of Gonja Sufi will leave an indelible mark on 2010, especially with his second 7" single Kowboys And Indians. He's so unique, a nomad in sound and soul, that he hardly needs the production genius of eclectic LA beatcruncher The Gaslamp Killer. But it works like nothing you've heard before.

The track opens with a buzzing that will have you packing your speakers off to the repair shop. What follows is a stunning blend of eastern mysticism, slacker guitar, psychedelic rhythm and a vocal that swings loosely between Bollywood theme music and Method Man aged 95.

Gonja Sufi, that sinister, genre-smoking spirit of an electronic Hendrix, has produced the essential new sound of this year. The rats are already fleeing town in preparation of his all-conquering debut album A Sufi And A Killer (featured in the March section of my 2010 electronica preview).

Daedelus

Where do I start with the first volume of a split-single series from the Friends Of Friends label? They've given Ninja Tune's Daedelus and debuting double-act Jogger three tracks each on the Friends Of Friends Vol 1 EP, but then they've gone and drowned it all with no less than seven remixes. Flippin' heck!

Daedelus slaps down some disco house (C'est Super works nicely), then gets the guitars out and strums to a Smashing Pumpkins sample. Jogger concentrates on pumping house (Litre O' Colais is especially manly, grrr) and then goes and spoils it all with vague electric guitar noodling, demonic growling and speed techno silliness.

On the remix side, Prefuse 73 protégée Eliot Lipp puts Kraftwerk through an 80s disco mincer, while for his remix of Nice Tights, Nosaj Thing does a wonderful job creating a leftfield soundtrack full of guitar whimsy and minor-key boogie. A mixed affair - it could have been prettier without all the remix bling, as they'd no doubt say on Stockport's Next Top Model.

Babe Rainbow

I promised I would waffle about Babe Rainbow when the time came for his long-awaited Warp debut, the Shaved EP. It's time, so let's get the clippers out and inspect the scalp of Canada's premier dubstepper.

Sorry. I mentioned the d-word. The thing is, Cameron 'Babe Rainbow' Reed is kinda dubstep, but only in a slow-motion, life-slowly-melting-before-your-eyes way. His noise is so deep and deliberate, he makes Massive Attack look like Scooter (the hardcore German funsters, not the weedy muppet).

And so we have seven tracks of metallic, ringing percussion with vocals swamped with claustrophobic drizzle and an all-too-familiar whoomp bass. With the exception of sixth EP track Celebrate, I'm yet to fall in love with Babe Rainbow. Then again, I haven't used his music to get so stoned out of my face, my brain is melting on a toxic beach somewhere north of Jupiter.

Kelpe and Klimek: from the faded to the filmic

Cambio Wechsel is the third album from Kelpe (pictured), who, as you can see from that link, needs to update his website.

There's plenty of head-noddingness to the ambience, especially with the thin Woodstockian groove of After Gold and the Prefuse-infused buzz bass of Eye Candy Bath.

The seaside cheefulness of The Blankout Agreement is a little underwhelming, but spiralling from psychedelia and radiophonic samples to post-rock hip hop in the course of one album is pleasing - in fact, it's frequently scrumptious.

The whole effect is like listening to a postcard from a long forgotten era, and you can just make out the words Music Has The Right To Children on the postcode. I just wonder if it's sometimes a little too slight and faded.

Klimek also throws an album at us this week, in the expansive shape of Movies Is Magic.

It's filmic. Crikes, I've called Klimek 'filmic' before, but that's the whole point of this album. The idea of producing an album of cinematic audio vistas is not new - just ask David Holmes - but this is epic stuff. It's pretty much what I imagine it's like to hear the whole universe at once.

Tracks like Pathetic And Dangerous and the fabulously-titled Exposed To Life In It's Brutal Meaninglessness sway and wash against the surround-sound speakers.

Others, such as opener Abyss Of Anxiety (Unfolding The Magic), are darker, danker, and much less multiplex, giving this album much more crunch than ambient music often offers.

M*therf*dding Risil is not the m*therf*dding shizzle, m*therf*dders

Risil's album Non Meters (pictured) is the only album in the world* that can only be described with a four syllable word: polyrhythmic.

It's a collaboration between (pay attention now) Prefuse 73's Guillermo Herren, Hella's Zach Hill, Battles' Tyondai Braxton (no, not the hit singer of Unbreak My Heart), Tortoise's John McEntire... oh and blah blah blah, about a thousand other people.

With such talent on display, and with a band name sounding like it was dream up by Snoop Dogg, you'd expect more than just expansive, lurching psychedelia that doesn't quite gel.

There Has To Be is the soundtrack to half my nightmares, and the frenetic drumming on Zantra is most pleasing. But, Risil is not the shizzle.

Speaking of Snoop Dogg, you know Dogg After Dark? The programme where Calvin Broadus Jr gets it aaawwwn with bee-yatches, young hippety-bling superstars and besuited gangsters? That's my house every night.

Without the women.

Or the gangsters.

Or the hop hop.

Or the television coverage and numerous producers giving it the sheen of credibility, when in fact it's just a West Coast version of The Word.

*there may be one or two others.

Top of the bleeps: what's hot and banging bad-style right now

Topping the downloads list on electronic music's answer to the Arndale Centre, Bleep dot com, is Clark's Totems Flare album. I've got it cranked to the gills as I type; it's a brilliant analogue wig out designed as much for the tootsies as for the cranial glue.

The second most downloaded album is a debut LP from Bibio. Ambivalence Avenue has been covered here before: click the Bibio link at the bottom of this article. Bleep says it's like a lost 70s folk record.

Here is the rest of the top ten on Bleep:

3. Clark - Growls Garden (track). Marvin The Paranoid Android malfunctions at an 80's disco.

4. Tim Exile - Listening Tree. Another debut album and probably Warp Records' only gabba opus.

5. The Black Dog - Further Vexation. I'm pimping their previous album Radio Scarecrow a lot right now, but this record is darker, frownier and more techno.

6. Battles - Mirrored. An old one but a classic, described by Pitchfork with this trio of scintillating sentences: "Marc Bolan is dead. But Battles can rebuild him. They have the technology."

7. Diamond Watch Wrists - Ice Capped At Both Ends. This is Prefuse 73 stretching out his legs and playing footsie with a percussionist. 

8. Floating Points - J & W Beat. Best described as bubbly 2-step. Yes. Bubbly.

9. Bizzy B - Retrospective. A look back at the best of the master of the Amen break. No Bizzy B, no Venetian Snares.

10. Moritz Von Oswald Trio (pictured, photo from Stink Finger) - Vertical Ascent. I don't know too much about this, although I think it's got something to do with AGF.

Damn, this Clark album I'm listening to is good. It's like old Aphex Twin a million years into the future. Meanwhile, the top ten on Bleep has already changed while I've been typing this. Please scrub out this post. You'll find a permanent marker pen under your chair.

Harmonic 73: Prefuse goes all oversensitive on us

Okay, you've got Prefuse 73's scatter-gun beat collection Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian. What next?

Well, quite a lot as it happens. Mr 73 is also a part of Diamond Watch Wrists, a collaboration with members of overblown rock lizards Mars Volta and Hella (their album Ice Capped At Both Ends is out now). He's also teamed up with a Catalan singer Eva Puyuelo Muns for his latino-tickled Savath y Savalas moniker.

And so to this week, when Prefuse 73 releases an EP The Forest Of Oversensitivity. Prefuse is quite happy for you to have music for free, and he has given permission for track Preparations Kid's Choir to be given away here. Yes. He's given permission. Take note, Blogger Big Brother.

The five tracks on The Forest Of Oversensitivity are ethereal remixes of Ampexian album cuts. It's either melancholic harmonics with choir voices sliding down the speakers like melted Dali clocks, or old-P73 click-hop that we've come to know and love. Buy it from Boomkat (digital or vinyl only) here.

Everything She Touched Tur-- oh she's gone already

Beats overlord Guillermo Scott Herren is back with a fifth album under his Prefuse 73 moniker.

Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian is the sound of a man dipping his toes into various colourful pools of smokin' beats without ever getting totally immersed.

The hip hop sensibility that underpinned his debut Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives has been spat into the wind here. Instead, we have crunchy, Clark or Vibert-style electronica, sprinkled with shiny aaahs and swooshes to give it a rather false-sounding heart.

My beef is that there are about a hundred million billion trillion tracks on here, and most of them last barely more than two nano-seconds. As soon as your head is nodding to one particular diversion, the CD starts shouting "next track! next track!" at you.

That's not to say the majority of the beats aren't oodles and oodles better than stacks of other junk out there. He recorded this to analogue Ampex tape, hence the album's title, and you can feel the warmth if you stand close enough.

So Herren remains the Mega King Of All The Beats. It's just a shame he won't hang up his coat and stick around for more than one quick cuppa.

Dorian Concept's When Planets Explode is a sumo wrestler with smiley faces tattoed on his ample buttocks

Dorian Concept's album When Planets Explode is a sumo wrestler with smiley faces tattoed on his ample buttocks. He's here for serious business, but he's not afraid to be playful either.

Let me explain.

Oliver Johnson is an Austrian producer with a microKORG under one arm and John Coltrane records under the other. As Dorian Concept, he slapped us across the chops with a couple of neat singles recently, including the head-noddery The Fucking Formula as chronicled on these pages here.

Concept's absorption with detail steals your breath. This is only his debut album, but he sounds like a master. Not hanging around on any one loop for too long, he dives straight into the morphing experimentalism that made Autechre's name.

Johnson must spend decades in the studio. Every week. Literally.

The formula doesn't always work. Mesh Beam Splitter has more noodling than an eating contest in a Wagamama, and after a while it's tiresome and your beard smells of peanut sauce.  Meanwhile, Her Marshmallow Secret sounds like Prefuse 73 waiting for a bus.

However, when the playfulness kicks in, it's a different record.  Clap Beep Boom nicks its cue from The Fucking Formula, where the beats are so crisp, they should have a Walkers logo. Color Sexist's bassline has more fuzz than Fozzie the bear watching Hot Fuzz whilst listening to Fuzzbox on a de-tuned radio.

The playfulness makes up for the seriousness. Whether you like it jazzy like 4hero or super-sawing like Dabrye - or you just have some bass bins that need testing - When Planets Explode is worth wrestling with.

Farting, belching, bleeping buckets of steaming sub-bass

Murcof (pictured) just seems to get deeper and deeper, into some unknown depths that would even prompt Satan to exclaim: "Hey, what's going on down there?"

The Versailles Sessions, Murcof's new collection of experimental noodlings on the legendary Leaf label, are no less deep. Although the album was meant to work for an arty-farty event on the other side of the channel (in a land called France), the sprawling, spooky compositions work in their own right.

The only downside is the record's loaded with harpsichords and flutes, and is therefore giving me flashbacks to my third year music lessons at Parrs Wood High School.

My favourite album this week is the seething bucket of steaming sub-bass that is Lord for £39, the latest offering from Edinburgh's Neil Landstrumm.

The rolling tech-bass tickles the feet of ragga and plays footsie with bleepy console noises to produce what ought to be a sombre bad-boy wonky techno effort. Except, the album has titles like Ross Kemp As Pixel and Easter Krunk Power, so it's hard not to smile.

Finally, keep your eyes open for a 12" from Dorian Concept called The Fucking Formula. It snaffles Landstrumm's fuzzy bass and wonkiness, but it has a Prefuse 73 accessibility about it. If you like your belches and squelches as low end as possible, whilst keeping your top end nodding in a hip hop stylee, track down this single - and duck when album When Planets Explode hits next month.