Telefon Tel Aviv's Charlie Cooper dies

Charlie Cooper, one half of Telefon Tel Aviv, has died.

This is absolutely awful news for the world of electronic music. I had rightly hyped their new album Immolate Yourself as potentially one of the best LPs of the year in my 2009 preview.  The sense of anticipation has only heightened the shock of Cooper's death for anonymous music fans like me.

Here is the statement in full, from his band mate Joshua Eustis, which celebrates Cooper's love of hip hop, wine and, wonderfully, shoes:

Hello, Everyone.

It breaks my heart to inform you all that Charlie Cooper, my better half in Telefon Tel Aviv, passed away on January 22nd.

We have been friends since high school, and began making records together a decade ago. We have been so fortunate to tour the world together, while at the same time having a massive amount of laughs at one another's expense.

Aside from Charlie's singular genius and musical gifts, I can tell you that he was a total sweetheart of a guy, and a loving friend and confidant to people everywhere. His musicianship was surpassed only by his greater gift to the world - his warmth, his generosity, his unquenchable humor, and his undying loyalty to those whom he loved. In the spirit of honorable mention, however, I should mention that he had a shoe collection that was marvelous, knowledge of hip-hop that was profound, and knowledge of wine that was subtle.

He is survived by a sister, a neice, a nephew, his mother, his stepfather, me, and more adoring friends than the Universe has dark matter. As such, his family and I ask for your discretion and consideration of our privacy during these extremely turbulent waters.

Yours in Music,

Joshua Eustis

The Designers Republic vs B12 Records: are the 1990s dead?

I was sad to see The Designers Republic close its doors last week.

Through work for many bands (Autechre, Aphex Twin, Pop Will Eat Itself, Pulp) and classic video games, they pretty much defined 1990s graphic design for me.

According to a piece in the Creative Review, founder Ian Anderson explained:

“We’d lost a couple of clients, didn’t win a couple of pitches, got a tax bill which should have been sorted out and wasn’t and a major client who didn’t pay the money they owed us – in themselves any of those things would have been fine but when they come all at once there’s not much you can do.”

So sad.  They made a Google image search look sexy.  Their record covers looked like the music, like a kind of creeping Talented Mr Ripley metamorphis.  Wipeout 2097 wouldn't have been the game it was without their abject coolness, and they utterly defined PopWill Eat Itself's image.

They're not wiped out for good (did you see what I did there?) as I'm sure something will rise from the paint fumes.  Speaking of paint fumes, the picture of Designers-style graffiti at the top of this post was taken by John Wardell.  No-one needs Banksy when you have this graf in the basement.

On a more positive vibe, B12 are keeping the 1990s well and truly alive by rereleasing their complete back catalogue in a seven volume Archives series.

Rewind to the early '90s for a moment.  Modern electronica came out of the dregs of rave culture, when a cluster of assorted dredded dancers and smiley pill-poppers wanted music for the head as much as for the body.

B12's Archives series tracks the invention of IDM and intelligent techno, and spans many important moments in post-rave electronica.  It includes tracks used in the Electro Soma and the Artificial Intelligence compilations, the former of which you can hear at the bottom of this post.

Absolute techno nirvana, in seven double-CD chunks.  Volume three is out this week, which largely contains tracks from '91 and '92 and contains four unreleased tracks.  The 1990s may be dead visually, but the beautiful noise lives on.

[THE EMBEDDED MEDIA THAT WAS HERE IS NO LONGER ACTIVE]

13 bird related facts about Merzbow's Masami Akita

In honour of Merzbow's 13 Japanese Birds project, in which the seminal Japanese noise experimentalist will release 13 records in 13 months inspired by Olivier Messiaen's birdsong music, here is a list of 13 bird-related facts you should definitely know about Merzbow mainman Masami Akita.

Bird fact one.  Masami Akita shares his surname with a prefecture of Japan in which three swans died from bird flu.

Bird fact two.  Akita founded Merzbow in 1979, just three years after the Atlas Of Breeding Birds In Britain And Ireland was published.

Bird fact three.  Some birds, such as the whip-poor-will, are good at camouflage. 'Camouflage' is the name of yet another album by Merzbow, out this month.  A special edition of this album is in the shape of a seabed and is limited to just 149 copies.

Bird fact four.  Akita is from Tokyo, which is in a place called Japan.  The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was founded in Didsbury, which is very much not seen as the 'Tokyo of Manchester'.

Bird fact five.  You can listen to Merzbow's Woodpecker No 2 on Last FM.  It pretty much sounds like a lot of his other stuff.

Bird fact six. Akita attended Tamagawa University, which has a Honeybee Science Research Center.  Honey bees are not birds.

Bird fact seven.  While in Akita's home country of Japan, TV-presenter and planet-killer Jeremy Clarkson tricked the country's speed cameras by shielding his face with a mask of ornithologist Bill Oddie.

Bird fact eight.  Merzbow is named after the work of Kurt Schwitters, who once made adverts for pen makers Pelikan.  (I wanted so much to type 'penguin makers' just then.)

Bird fact nine.  The bird with the most feathers is the Tundra Swan.  Max Tundra is an electronic musician, as is Merzbow.

Bird fact ten.  Masami Akita switched to using laptops some time in the 'noughties'. Chris Killen's debut novel The Bird Room was probably written on a laptop. Probably.

Bird fact eleven.  Akita is into bondage.  There is a bird called the red knot.  There may be a connection there, I'm not sure.

Bird fact twelve.  A cassette compilation called Massaconfvsa, featuring Merzbow's track Everywhere It's Machine (Grid Module 3), was released in 1988 on O Crow Records.  It seems to be the only thing O Crow has ever released.

Bird fact thirteen.  If you're baffled by Japanese noise music, read Paul Hegarty's Noise Music: A History, which has a whole chapter on Merzbow.  Birds do not read books, as a general rule of thumb.

Fingers, fists and big squelchy buttons: new singles from Amon Tobin, Syntheme and HudMo

If I stuck two fingers in your face, you'd quite rightly twaz me round the chops with your broomstick.

But if I stuck Two Fingers in your face-- note the capitalization-- you'd quite rightly hold me and squeeze me and call me George.*

That's because Two Fingers is a collaborimification between smoke-hazed Ninja Tune sample king Amon Tobin (pictured) and electronic artist Doubleclick.

The first digital single of that partnership hit like a freight train this week.  What You Know has been hailed as Blade Runner played out in Tottenham.  If the streets of London are strewn with paper unicorns after this post publishes, you know why.  The single fuses hip hop and drum 'n' bass, as a twitchy nod to the early DJ Food era of Ninja Tune Records.  Mercury nominee MC Sway grimes things up good and proper with an angry rant on racial stereotypes, and it's entertaining to see Tobin make room for the vocals by stepping back from the wall-of-sound big fistedness he's known for.

The Two Fingers chaps will drop an album, which I believe will be titled eponymously, closer to Easter. 

Also out this week is Syntheme's daringly titled 12" Syntheme Vol 2.  The key word here is "squelch".  She gets a Roland TB-303 Bass Line synthesiser and pummels it until it's squelchy.  She recreates a banging acid rave in a basement by pressing a big red button labelled 'squelch'.  She squelches like no other: a fine 12" from Planet Mu Recordings.

Hudson Mohawke's new EP Polyfolk Dance is out today(ish).  He's been banging out tracks for ten years, and since he's only 22, that makes me sick.  In fact, I'm already fed up with him, so I'm not going to tell you about him justifying all the hype, about how your ears will find him outrageously addictive, and about how he's working on The Best Album Of 2009 Maybe (which will be fawned over extensively on this site - stay tuned).

*one of my favourite Looney Tunes quotes, from 1961's Abominable Snow Rabbit.

Why Lukid's Foma is the first essential electronica album of 2009

Edit: This album is mentioned in my top ten electronica albums of 2009. 

January's most overlooked piece of plastic also happens to be more essential than oxygen, water and Alan Partridge repeats on the inexplicably-acronymed telly station G.O.L.D.

Lukid (pictured above) released his Foma album in the last few weeks to barely a whisper of applause.  It is an SBD.  Silent But Delightful.

It's a big slugful of hip hop sensibility, salted down to a mere shrivel of its former self, with slight rhythms and paper-thin synths belying a depth akin to the likes of Autechre.

Foma, the follow-up to his debut album Onandon a couple of years ago, sounds like a house of cards falling down.  Slowly.  It's a football match played by ghosts.  It's Flying Lotus smoking a massive doobie.  It sounds a little... woozy.

When the beats are more substantial, such as on tracks Veto and Sky Fly (but even then, they gasp and trip), it could become the engine of a new scene of baggy-beats driven by Dabrye and powered into the future by Hudson Mohawke.

But when it is sensual and dreamlike, glitchy and inviting, it sits firmly in the vein of classic IDM electronica.

For both those reasons, Lukid's Foma LP is the first essential electronica album of 2009.  Listen to it then buy it at Boomkat.

Hot off the press: Warp Records are giving away free, without obligation, sans engagement, uden forpligtelse, the track Illegal Dustbin from Squarepusher's new Numbers Lucent EP.  It's the fiercest and best track on the EP.  All you have to do is give them your email address.

Please spell Freeland versus Daft Punk. "OBAMA." You are correct

Just for one day, hide your cynical Private Eye brain in your sock drawer and celebrate a sparkling slice of political history.  In tribute to the USA's most listenable president since, er, well, George W Bush, here is coastal breaker Adam Freeland's reworking of Daft Punk's Aerodynamic, set to an energetic cut-and-paste video by a bucketful of sickeningly talented visual artists.

Oh and while I'm here, in the comments under my Stefan Betke's Pole piece, you'll spot a top tip from Go Flying Turtle's Steve.  Go to Last FM and download tracks from the Wasted Magic In The Sand compilation for free.  (See the 'free' button in the grey box, top right.) Recommended for fans of Proem, Lackluster and Boards Of Canada.

Lovely bleepy goodness from Mind On Fire

Manchester music collective Mind On Fire are stoking their flames of success by launching a brand spanking new web label.

The label (http://www.mindonfire.co.uk/) will burn a trail for the hottest Manchester artists (you do realise the fire synonyms are just going to get worse, don't you?) regardless of style, genre or dress sense.

And they're sparking it all off with three launch events later this week, the details of which are at the end of this post.

Mind On Fire have scorched a trail throughout Manchester, burning up dancefloors in places like Po Na Na, Music Box and Mint Lounge.  I actually started a fire once in Po Na Na, which seems prescient considering this blog post, but that's a different story.

They subscribe to the John Peel school of DJing, which says if something smoulders with goodness, the genre doesn't matter.  Hence the web label.  Set your ears alight with the excellent tracks on their MySpace page (and tremble in awe at their brazen use of the word "brap!").  There's some lovely bleepy goodness in them thar hills.

Here are the gigs:

- Thursday 22nd January at the Deaf Institute, Manchester city centre, from 8pm.  Making Faces, Go Lebanon, Neko Neko playing live, and The Natural Curriculum.  Plus visual gubbins, lovely art and free stuff.

- Friday 23rd January at the Ram 'n' Shackle, Fallowfield, 9pm - 2am.  Mind On Fire DJs, natch, plus Indigo and the cream of the crop from Indigo's label mates on Mindset Recordings.

- Saturday 24th January. It's off to Chorlton's The Nook, from 6pm, with the bluesy Denis Jones, and support from LA77 and Kane Testrack.

Alles Gute hat sein Ende, especially when chucked across the room

Stefan Betke's started his career as the influential techno experimentalist Pole when he dropped a piece of music equipment (pictured, suitably rearranged) and the resulting crackles it produced became alluring to him.

As Pole releases his new 12" Alles Gute/Alles Klar, two dubby tracks of scratchy Underworld in slow motion, I decided to have a go at becoming an influential techno experimentalist. I decided to create music through destruction.

I began my smashing in my television with the fridge (and not a cat as I nearly did on Mercury prize night). I wanted to throw the fridge at the TV, but it proved too bulky to carry - and suprisingly hot - so instead I hurled the telly at the fridge. Screen first.

The telly no longer made any noise, but now my fridge is emitting a threatening hum. I like it.

Shooting my sandwich maker with an air rifle proved to be a more tricky affair. I don't own an air rifle. Nor a sandwich maker. So I went into Argos, and flicked an elastic band at a picture of a sandwich maker.

This failed to produce any interesting noise.

I then re-tuned my DAB digital radio to Radio 2. This produced a frightening noise, which is too horrific-- no-- too chilling to describe here.

So I shall stick with Pole. The A-side Alles Gute is the better track. It's a gloopy groove where the spaces are filled with buzzes and sub-bass. Alles Klar, the one featured on his Round Black Ghosts dubstep compilation, is slower and moodier, cutting its own rhythm in a choking post-rock apocalypse.