With each passing week, listening to the deluge of mixtapes, radio shows, and live sets from electronic producers and hip-hop artists alike becomes an even more insurmountable task. Quality offerings can fly under the radar, either added to our ever-growing “to listen” list or — more often than not – disregarded all together.

This week’s round-up has something for everyone: entertaining rap tapes from promising newcomers (Travi$ Scott), resurgent veterans (Gangsta Boo), and those somewhere in-between (Chuck Inglish, Dorrough Music, Ballout). As for DJ mixes, Kingdom, Vjuan Allure, and Cosmo Baker run the gamut of club music, house music, and party music. Meanwhile, two acts that couldn’t be any more different — Hype Williams’ Inga Copeland and Atlanta duo FKi — continue to do whatever they damn well please.

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Notoriously convivial Cologne-based techno label, Kompakt Records, turns twenty this year.

Rather than simply releasing a massive best-of boxset, producing a variety of celebratory merch items, and holding a series of birthday rave-ups (actually, they are doing all of these as well), they’ve asked composer, Gregor Schwellenbach, to create an album of classically-inclined arrangements of some of the standout tracks from the label’s back catalogue.

Having trained at Hannover’s prestigious Hochschule für Musik und Theater and studied with composers such as Heiner Goebbels, Michael Nyman, and electronic music pioneer Rüdiger Rüfer, Schwellenbach is steeped in a tradition stretching back centuries. His own compositions have been performed at esteemed international festivals of new music and for a wide variety of national theatres and broadcasters – he’s even written an opera about sugar.

For Gregor Schwellenbach spielt 20 Jahre Kompakt, the Cologne-based composer chose twenty tracks from throughout the history of the label in discussion with DJs, producers, and label heads. For the most part though, Schwellenbach says, “the label let me do whatever I wanted.” It’s a policy that has drawn some of the best talent in electronic music to the German indie: “Treating the artist like a friend.”

For a more detailed view of the process from floor-filler to chamber suite, we went through each track one-by-one – complete with sizeable clips of each for you to sample – discussing the composer’s decisions, techniques, and inspirations.

Jürgen Paape – ‘Triumph’ (1998)

[listen to the original here] 

“I am obsessed with tracing back traditions,” Schwellenbach admits, “That must be one reason why I studied classical music.” So naturally when developing the concept for this album, “I looked for catalogue number KOM1 and found that the label started with a consummately timeless rhythm.

“With a beat as strong as Paape’s, Schwellenbach knew he had to “keep that rhythm as exact as possible.” Instead of sticking to a standard orchestral percussion group, however, he sought to utilise, “all the sounds from the inside body of a Steinway grand piano. I didn’t make elaborate preparations,” he elaborates, “only some strings were dampened by velvet and paper. The rest is simply plucked, scratched, and knocked strings, construction bar, and soundboard.”

Justus Köhncke – ‘Was Ist Musik’ (2002)

[listen to the original here] 

Right from the start, Schwellenbach knew he had to include at least one Justus Köhncke track. “When I moved back to Cologne in 2001,” he explains, “I took seeing him walk down the street in my new neighbourhood as a proof of having chosen the right place to live.” This proved easier said than done. Köhncke, explains Schwellenbach, is “the kind of producer whose tracks often catch you by the sound itself rather than by a melodic hook or a specific bassline.

Finally, he was drawn to ‘Was ist Musik’, for its “Kraftwerk-like melody,” its “universal text,” and perhaps most important of all, the fact that, “it’s got violins in it.” So naturally, the composer adopted a string quartet arrangement, “the perfect instrumentation for this song that lays claim to being a universal statement on music in general.”

Closer Musik – ‘Maria’ (2002)

[listen to the original here] 

It was Wolfgang Voigt who drew Schwellenbach’s attention to ‘Maria’, but the composer, “immediately liked it.” At first, the rhythms and the harmonies of the original suggested “some Steve Reich kind of sound-meshes.” Only at the eleventh hour, just before mastering the record, did Schwellenbach change his mind and decide, “that a very slow piano version might be even more interesting.”

One of the key differences between dance music and ‘concert’ music, Schwellenbach says, is that a contemporary classical composer “wouldn’t dare to try and control the listener’s emotion. His goal is to create music that no one ever heard before,” he explains. “The listener’s emotion seems to be hardly more than a desirable side effect. In contrast a producer of electronic dance music will try to make people dance first of all.”

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Fancy heading to Manchester on June 8-9?

Manchester’s Parklife Weekender is quickly looking like one of those festivals that makes you wish you lived up North. They’ve got a devastating set of artists lined up, from rappers Action Bronson and Joey BadA$$ to producers TNGHT, Julio Bashmore and Martyn all the way through to alt-pop sensation Jessie Ware and ‘Harlem Shake’ man Baauer. FACT were actually asked to co-host a stage, and we’ve roped in Danny Brown, Disclosure, Four Tet, John Talabot, Daphni, AlunaGeorge, Lapalux, Krystal Klear and Cyril Hahn.

Sadly, weekend passes have now sold out, but don’t dispair, FACT have managed to procure a pair of VIP weekend tickets which we’ll be handing out to one lucky reader. If you fancy your chances, just shoot us an email at competitions@thevinylfactory.com, with ‘Parklife VIP’ in the subject field and your name and telephone number in the message body. It’s that simple – we’ll see you there.

For more information on the festival and to purchase tickets head here.

Free Agents is a new feature series where we shine the spotlight on an up-and-coming act who’s yet to have a proper release – at least, not one that we’re aware of, and yes, we know that the phrase “proper release” is a bit of a cloudy one these days – but that we think is onto something special regardless. 

Artist: Sublo
Origin: San Francisco
Style: Grime

Soundscapes is such a naff word, but when it comes to Sublo it seems an appropriate one. Jerel Bromley makes vivid grime music, but it’s not for MCs and we’re not even sure it’s for the club: although his tunes sound good in the mix, they’re more likely to startle dancefloors than than make them dance. On ‘Snow Blind’, drums tumble back over themselves like they’re climbing a hill, frosty arpeggios obscuring their vision, while ‘Miasma’ blends Black Sun-esque detuned synths with rhythms that are mangled to the point of barely being in time. Our pick, though, has to be ‘Realm Freeze’ – when those strings come in, it’s game over. You can stream all three tracks below.

Rap game Spanish inquisition?

Influential New York radio station Hot97 today grilled polarizing rapper RiFF RAFF and asked him the questions many have been wanting to throw his way since he burst onto the scene. Station veteran Ebro, clearly not a fan of the Houston-born rapper’s chosen path, told RiFF RAFF that to him the rapper’s persona was a big problem, saying ”It looks to me like a stereotype of a certain type of black person”.

RiFF RAFF defended himself at length, and without giving too much away about his background (he’s been notably mysterious for some time now) he seemed to eventually get the trio of interviewers at least partially on-side, noting that he represented a desire to “have fun and not have nothing negative around me at all times”.

To be fair the grilling is a little insistant and definitely pushes into mean spirited territory at times, with Ebro basically throwing the same accusation at RiFF RAFF for the interview’s twenty-odd minute duration, but it makes for interesting viewing, and offers discussion on a question many of us have no doubt pondered.

We’ll leave you with this choice quote from RiFF RAFF: “I don’t like being around humans.” – make of that what you will.

On June 15, Soundcrash are bringing a seismic bill of dub-heavy noisemakers to London’s KOKO.

Kevin Martin’s remarkable will perform as The Bug, with Flowdan and Daddy Freddy joining him for the occasion. Bad Company graduate dBridge will up the bpm, and DMZ hero Mala will be on site as well. UK dub legend Mad Professor will round out the bill.

With the show fast approaching, FACT are giving away an assortment of tickets and goodies. The winner will bag group tickets (x5) to the KOKO show, plus two copies of The Bug’s 2008 LP London Zoo and a copy of the ‘Hardcore Lover’ 7″. To be in with a chance of winning, send an email through to competitions@thevinylfactory.com, including your name, telephone number and the words ‘The Bug’ in the title field.

Tickets and further information are available here. A teaser video for the night is available to watch below.

Digital love.

Daft Punk‘s world-beating single ‘Get Lucky’ has already broken Spotify’s first-day streaming record, at this point nudging towards a mammoth thirty million plays, and it  looks like the French duo’s full-length Random Access Memories is on its way to go even further.

The album has already reset the Spotify record for first day streaming, and now it looks like it’s set to grab the record for most first week streams, nudging out current top-spot holder Babel by folkie types Mumford & Sons.

Random Access Memories has had an incredible run this last few weeks, and while the music itself is still like Marmite to some fans, it at least seems to be pushing people to actually take a proper listen and see what the fuss is about. FACT’s Tom Lea reviewed the album here. [via The Next Web]

If you like your hip-hop laid back to the point of being horizontal, Digable Planets will likely already have pride of place on your hard drive.

Consisting of Ishamel ‘Butterfly’ Butler, Craig ‘Doodlebug’ Irving and Mary Ann ‘Ladybug’ Vieira, plus touring DJ Silkworm (who would later come into his own as King Britt), Digable Planets were a major force in the early 1990s alt.rap scene. 1993 debut Reachin’ (A New Refutation Of Time And Space), notable for smash ‘Rebirth Of Slick’, laid poker-faced rhymes over backing tracks schooled in cool jazz and Grant Green. 1994′s Blowout Comb saw them expand their palette, bringing in the likes of Guru and Jeru The Damaja into the fold and beefing up their sound considerably.

The group split soon after, although they reunited in various permutations throughout the 2000s. After a period in the wilderness, Butler’s career has also had a second lease of life: trading as Palaceer Lazaro, he’s the mastermind behind critically feted wyrd-rap unit Shabazz Palaces.

Light In The Attic – home to recent reissues of PiL’s First Issue and the Searching For Sugar Man OST – will handle an expanded Blowout Comb reissue. Following on from this year’s repress of D’Angelo’s Voodoo, sub-label Modern Classics will put out the record next week. Blowout Comb will arrive with liner notes from Larry Mizell Jr., and will come with an embossed cover and 18″ x 24″ poster.

Blowout Comb will arrive on May 28 on Modern Classics. [via Pitchfork]

Tracklist:
1. The May 4th Movement Starring Doodlebug
2. Black Ego
3. Dog It
4. Jettin’
5. Borough Check
6. Highing Fly
7. Dial 7 (Axioms Of Creamy Spies)
8. The Art Of Easing
9. K.B.’s Alley (Mood Dudes Groove)
10. Graffiti
11. Blowing Down
12. 9th Wonder (Blackitolism)

13. For Corners

Available on: From the Rib LP

Eleven years since Eve-Olution Eve returns with Lip Lock, her mere fourth album since 1999 and what the Philly-born Ruff Ryder has called her most honest work to date. After Interscope repeatedly delayed, then shelved her last full-length Here I Am, Lip Lock presents itself not as the remnants of what Here I Am once was but a well-executed reminder of what Eve always has been – a rapper who strides through the ever-shifting pop landscape with enviable ease. Regular collaborator Saleem Remi even mined a Benga production back in 2009 for hot-mess banger ‘Me N My’ which didn’t see an official release, yet attested to her willingness to experiment in a way that pre-dates the current crop of urban artists marching towards the EDM Eye of Sauron, knuckles dragging all the way.

Lip Lock is exactly the kind of pop album that rappers set on crossover success should be making. Granted, ‘Make It Out This Town’ is little more than prime-time radio filler which does an injustice to Eve’s testimony of overcoming struggle, and the Swizz Beatz and Missy Elliot-produced efforts ‘Mama In The Kitchen’ and ‘Wanna Be’ are disappointingly lacklustre, but the majority of the album is compensation enough. The glottal bass line of opener ‘Eve’ jump-starts her story of reaffirmation alongside a powerful kick drum and “E-V-E” mantra, ‘All Night’ is sheer infectious pop with bursts of brass and warm undercurrents of guitar strums and sub-bass, and ‘Keep Me From You’ balances out shoulder-popping hand claps with former Dirty Money singer Dawn Richard’s euphoric hooks as the flip-side to Eve’s rapid-fire verses. It all serves as a bubbling warm up to the excellent ‘Grind Or Die’; a Diplo daydream where Eve walks her lyrical red bottoms through a murder scene of naysayers: “I’m sitting pretty, haute couture culture / But don’t doubt me, I’m a pure bred hustler.”

Coming just over half way through Lip Lock, this line encapsulates the whole message and timing of the album, and as the breathy ‘Zero Below’ unfurls it feels as if Eve has penned a ying to Rihanna’s Rated R‘s yang; the macabre, sensual tour-de-force that showed just how versatile modern r’n'b has become. Lip Lock is a joyous hybrid of pon-di-floor riddims, auto-tuned r’n'b and summery pop jams centred by Eve’s likeable boss bitch persona – a facet of her that shouldn’t be underestimated. She may not be the First Lady with a bleached crew cut, Timberland boots and steely gaze anymore, but Eve has retained that original attitude whilst reshaping her sound from diamond in the ruff to 24 carat show-stopper without the various crises of confidence that often fuels rap comeback albums of this ilk.

Eve doesn’t dwell on the past with underhand bitterness or glassy-eyed nostalgia. Considering it’s been eleven years, there’s a pointedly absent element of story-telling about her hiatus which leaves the listener wanting more, yet Eve was never held up as a great lyricist and can’t really be bashed for not being one now. That’s not where her appeal lies. For all her success in commercial rap Eve is first and foremost a singer. It’s the fluidity of her appeal that she’s most keenly aware of, and this gets a triumphant finale on the remix of first single ‘She Bad Bad’ featuring Pusha T and Juicy J. As the three fellow comeback success stories stand side by side like this over what is certainly the album’s most intense beat, even I feel smug listening to it. Eve is back, and she barely broke a sweat.