From Carl Craig’s classical excursions to Lena Willikens’s Dusseldorf
eclecticism and Juju and Jordash’s ballsy improv: it’s the electronic playlist
Carl Craig
plays at the Movement festival in Detroit
Carl
Craig and Francesco Tristano
Premiering exclusively on the Guardian is a live improvisation between
disgustingly handsome pianist Francesco Tristano and Detroit techno master Carl
Craig. Recorded for a Boiler Room session in Germany sponsored by Ballantine’s
whisky (whose imagery you might well notice throughout) it comes as part of
their Stay True Journeys series. Techno is naturally po-faced, so can seem
awfully haughty when it actually tries to be serious and edge its way into the
conservatoire. But whether its Villalobos and Loderbauer mining the ECM
archives, or Craig and Moritz Von Oswald turning Ravel into dub techno, the
worlds of classical music and techno can potentially dovetail beautifully. So it
(mostly) proves here as Craig sends acid arpeggios on skewed axes, before
Tristano returns with full-blooded house chords. Piano sounds are usually
approximated in dance music, often beautifully and strangely, but it’s
satisfying to hear the grand piano put to use in the unbecoming business of a
fist-pumping anthem. You see can more from the same Boiler Room series
here.
Lena Willikens
Another Guardian premiere here, from the debut EP of Cologne producer Lena
Willikens, out next week on Matias Aguayo’s Comeme label. Willikens made a name
for herself as an artist with immaculate taste: She’s hosted the likes of
Hieroglyphic Being and Theo Parrish at her Dusseldorf club residency, and her
brilliant podcast, Sentimental Flashback, showcases her crate-digging – one week
will be her favourite bass guitar lines, the next, cold war-era German pop, the
next a tour through global polyrhythms. All of this cosmopolitanism is poured
into her tracks, which have the chilled jugular beat of minimal wave, the
scrunched electronics of IDM, the wit of electroclash and the phantasmagoric
camp of gothic pop. On lead track Howlin Lupus, Willikens breathes and howls
like a wolf, tapping into the dark sexuality at the heart of werewolf myths,
while the bassline scurries with maniacal intent. Club promoters – you have your
first no-brainer booking of the year.
Galcher Lustwerk
While acknowledging his punkish credentials, part of me really wants
underground producer Galcher Lustwerk to bring out an artist album and blow away
the dance mainstream – one-offs like Chillin in the Booth have been as
spectacular as his 2013 Blowing Up the Workshop mix, where he lays his steady
enigmatic flow over peerless deep-house production. For now, we can happily make
do with a new batch of re-edits, featuring lazy G-funk, ambient and the
addictive riddim of Lumidee’s Never Leave You flecked with workout sweat. Best
of all is this rework of rap crew OGC’s track Hurricane Strang, which has a
gorgeous tension between the pert pulsations of Lustwerk’s beat, and the vocal
line dragging its heels just behind it.
Juju and Jordash
Gal Aner and Jordan Czamanski are Israelis who moved to Amsterdam and
immersed themselves in the playful, puckish house style of the city – and also
added their own flavour, building their tracks from lengthy improvisations until
a groove is smoothly carved. They ballsily use this technique when playing live
in their trio with Move D, Magic Mountain High, but they’re skilled arrangers
too, using the studio without sucking away the serendipity of improv. Their new
album, Clean-Cut, is their best yet. Ambitious in its clean mulch of krautrock
and jacking house, and channelling high-gloss 80s weirdos like David Sylvian and
Laurie Anderson, the pair manage to nail it, and the title track is as good a
place as any to start. The strutting bedrock could have been made by Moderat or
Todd Terje, but then the kitsch panpipe melody begins, and is joined by sounds
seemingly from a cheap instructional cassette for ayurvedic medicine. Pristine,
yes, but definitely perverted.
Sueño Latino
Finally, clearing away the January blues is the turquoise flourish of Sueño
Latino, reissued this week on vinyl following its original release in 1989.
Perma-gurning crusties will insist that the second Summer of Love was ecstatic
social emancipation on a par with the fall of apartheid, but when you hear
tracks like this you can imagine the pharmacologically-assisted bliss must have
been pretty significant. Built around Manuel Göttsching’s astral classic E2-E4
the Italian group fed a solid bass drum underneath, dotted tropical birdcalls
and house pianos throughout, and added some almost comically sensual vocals from
Carolina Damas. The canonical version is the Paradise Mix, but other remixes
included here are equally strong. On Derrick May’s revisit from 1992 he revs up
the bpm, adds extra melodic lines, and sluices mild acid over it all. Equally
beautiful, though in a much more elegant way, is the Agua Version, which mutes
the bass kick to keep everything flitting around in the mid-range and Gottsching
himself turns up on the pounding Winter Version. Buy it, turn the central
heating up, and spin around your living room wearing a flower garland for
late-80s Ibiza on the cheap.
