Strategy

Albums
Bird Show
CacheFlowe
Caroline
Considerate Builders
Dday One
DJ Olive
Dub Tractor
Jimmy Edgar
Exillon
Four Tet
Guitar
Halma
Landesvatter
Don Limpio
Mariel Ito
Matinée Orchestra
Maximo Park
Mikkel Metal
Ms. John Soda
Music A.M.
Naing Naing
Nightmares On Wax
No Move. No Sound
Pillow
Ghislain Poirier
Prefuse 73
randomNumber
Rec_Overflow
Mike Shannon
.tape.
Wechsel Garland
Zucchini Drive

Compilations/Mixes
Check the Water
Futurism Ain't Shit
Idol Tryouts Two
I Love Techno
Kiki
Machine Drum
Steve Porter
Satoshie Tomiie
SRL
Quality Elect. Music

3"/7"/10"/12"/EPs
aitänna77
Jonas Bering
The Blow
Cepia
Clipd Beaks
DaFluke
Direwires
Drop the Lime
Florent
Honig/Packard
Infinite Scale
Midwest Product
Mufo
Office-(R)6
The Orb/Rice Twins
saidsound/Krilll.minima Scorn-Fury
Solenoid
Miles Tilmann
K F Whitman
Why?

randomNumber: Golden Acre Sleeps
Highpoint Lowlife

Matt Robson christens his randomNumber sound 'Northern Wrongbeat,' an apt handle for his compelling fusion of brooding melancholia and hyperactive beat constructions. The Leeds-based artist exploits contrast more than the average electronic musician, with bright, often euphoric melodies colliding with intricate rhythm structures throughout. That the 47-minute disc teems with complex beat patterns shouldn't surprise (check out the jittery, spasmodic pulses that combust throughout “Sleep,” as well as the slippery groove of fractured drum'n'bass that underpins carnival melodies in “Troubled Moves”), given Robson's drumming tenure in Hood and years spent playing in Leeds' alternative music scene. Though beat machinery erupts throughout the otherwise placid “In Distant” and crystalline “Non Port,” Robson also realizes that simplicity is often the best strategy of all, as the absence of density in the closer “We'll Let the Idea Sleep, But We Won't Let It Die” makes clear. Elsewhere, a hazy opium aura permeates “Galleries” while a serpentine lurch burrows through crackling starbursts in “Effective Edge.” Perhaps the album's strongest moment arrives when the sonorous tinkle of jubilant piano melodies illuminates melancholic fields of crackling beat clatter in “Autumn Shine.” In a manner that recalls Eddie Symons' recent Bovaflux outing Where There Was Nothing, Robson's Golden Acre Sleeps likewise impresses as a distinguished Highpoint Lowlife debut.

March 2006