Articles
Colleen
Take and Glen Porter

Albums
Aquarelle
Victor Bermon
Bogenschutzer
Boy in Static
Celer
Colleen
Copy
Damiak
Dan Deacon
Matthew Dear
Decomposure
Elegi
Brian Ellis
The Fields of Hay
Formication
The Fun Years
Guthrie & Budd
Tobias Hellkvist
J Dilla
Library Tapes
Maps
Maserati
Mokira
Ontayso
Morgan Packard
Glen Porter
Proem
Radical Fashion
Rain-cloud
Retina.IT
Run_Return
Ulrich Schnauss
Signalform + Tachikoma
Someone Else
Take
Jedediah White
Wiley
Wolf Eyes
Yard
Zelienople

Compilations / Mixes
Ellen Allien
Famous When Dead 5
A Private Shade of Green
Speicher 3
Telefon Tel Aviv

3"/ 7"/ 10"/ 12"/ EPs
Apples & Milk
Canson / Styro2000
Chrom
Claro Intelecto
Dartriix
Death is Nothing to Fear 2
Deepchord : Echospace
Ditch
Easy Changes
Monsieur Black
Brian James
Koljah
Liviu Groza
mha
Andy Stott
Vektormusik

DVD
Packard / Ott

VA: Famous When Dead 5
Playhouse

In this particularly strong fifth outing in Playhouse's Famous When Dead series, the German label celebrates thirteen years of operation with eleven sterling cuts, most of them originally issued in 12-inch form and now collected onto CD for the first time. Stuttgart trio Rework sets the bar ridiculously high at the outset by backing a punchy swirl of amour-obsessed female voices with a beautiful bass-driven stomp in “Love Love Love Yeah”; other exceptional moments include Max Mohr's “Lucky Go Wild,” where a gleaming synthesizer battalion sings sweetly over an electrohouse shuffle, My My's “Southern Comfort,” which ends the album with a blissful marriage of harp strums and gentle propulsion, and Boardroom member Pete Lazonby's driving slice of throbbing technofunk (“I Miss U”) where normal and chipmunk variations of the title utterance generate extra interest. Also strong, Roman Flügel (under the Soylent Green alias) infuses the steamy electrohouse grind of “La Forza Del Destino” with a subtle hint of Latin swing, and then gives Rework's “Jogging Beat” an alluring synth-pop treatment. Isolée brings his customary unique touch to “The Jacko Theme,” a grooving cocktail of galaxial synth streams and percolating funk, while Frankfurt duo Einzelkind pursues a slightly different direction by infusing its electrofunky “Spam Bot” with foundsound and Minus flavour and Infant Records' head Simon Baker stokes nine minutes of snarling minimal electro in the relentlessly churning “Plastik.” Only Losoul's ‘Hot Edit' makeover of Unknownmix's 1989 cut “The Siren” disappoints but that's due to the grating vocalizing of the original, not Losoul's valiant updating. Generously stuffed comps of this type usually scatter a handful of strong cuts amidst otherwise solid but less spectacular offerings, but Famous When Dead 5 proves the exception to the rule with almost entirely high-quality material from start to finish.

July 2007