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2LP
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HJR 086LP
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Visceral, elemental, electronic funk, conjured from scraps of sound, breath, mutterings, dub-wise remembrances, scuffling, sweat and blood, thin air -- "crawled out of the slime", as the opener puts it, self-engendering like the baddie in Terminator -- all harnessed to cruelly grooving earthquake bass and b-boy drum science. Rhythmically it has ants in its pants and it needs to dance, with an improvisatory, streetwise nervous energy and uninhibited, purposeful rapture, crossed with on-song Pepe Bradock and stripped-to-the-bone, mongrel hip-hop. It's unruly and edgy, a bit off its rocker, emotionally ranging -- typically anxious, often nostalgic -- and riveting dance music. Mastering by Dubplates & Mastering; first-class Pallas pressing; gatefold artwork by Will Bankhead.
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12"
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HJP 095EP
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Three dazzling re-routings of Detroit machine funk -- Moodymann in particular -- into deep mid-Atlantic cominglings with raw, old-school hip-hop and house. "Str8 Crooked" is clattering, chugging jack, holding something like Paisley soul under the water; "Build Back Better Sweatshops" is more driving, riven with breakdowns and horror-show vocal samples. With an up-tempo downbeat which nonetheless sounds like a tolling bell, the epic, immersive, sixteen-minutes-plus "Episcopi Vagantes" pulls off the deadly combination of a kind of stifled, timeworn, melodic wistfulness and percussively restless, passing-through urgency. This is killer dance music, run through with swinging bass and ruff b-boy drum-machine rhythms: encrusted and detailed, mangled and nervy, but intensely hard-grooving; wired with punk insouciance, edginess, and free spirit.
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2LP
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DDS 041LP
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Dropped Out Sunshine is NYC mutant Madteo's incredible new album of trigger-happy club graffiti on Demdike Stare's DDS, weighing in a keenly anticipated follow-up to 2012's cult-classic Noi No LP for Sähkö. Splitting at the seams with deviant funk and irrepressible attitude, Madteo's first LP in sevem years forms a fractal, mixtape-like mosaic of asymmetric techno informed by skewed traces of rap, house, R&B, and dancehall. Its 12 tracks are delivered in an enviably nonchalant, freehand style that's become the Italian-American artist's ear-snagging signature since 2012's Noi No and Mad Dip Revue albums, and also a dozen 12"s and mixtapes over the interim; all of which exerted heavy inspiration for everyone from Andy Stott and Joy O to Demdike Stare over the past decade, making this new LP a perfectly unusual fit for the anything-goes DDS aesthetic shared by label alumni including Mica Levi, Equiknoxx, Iueke, and Shinichi Atobe. Without beating around the bush, Dropped Out Sunshine is a straight-up masterpiece of cut-up sampledelia bound to make the club dance differently. Crammed with sawn-off edits that never lose the thread, its wild and effortlessly inventive turns of phrase are anathema to linear club music convention, generating fizzing alchemy from mutually exclusive bedfellows such as dancehall and techno, or R&B and noise that could really only be executed by a producer of Madteo's caliber. Yet for all its singular nature, the album is also patently symptomatic of the times, sub-consciously parsing a gripping intimacy, personality and urgent yet elusive psychedelia from ubiquitous media overload. Kicking off with another *****-sampling zinger "1 4 U" (following his infamous use of "Marvin's Room" on Noi No), and ending up mired in the melancholy gauze of "The Lies That Bind", at each step the album effortlessly resists a struggle to square the nature of artistic expression. Fragments of gospel blues noise intersect gauntlets of filtered house fuckery, while restless Autechrian electro rubs up against uncoiled trap and needle-worrying levels of textured bass turbulence, leading to an outrageous turn of stuttering ragga-tekno in "Resident Alien (Broke-'n-Steppers Reluctant Club Mix)" and a final side of collapsed, post-club styles that will leave listeners wondering wtf just happened, and ready to do it all again. RIYL: Andy Stott, Joy O, Mica Levi, Demdike Stare, Moodymann. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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12"
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DOSER 018EP
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2016 repress. Madteo's return to Morphine. He really expands his electronic palette for this one, and goes into some heady, experimental realms.
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12"
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NEK 007EP
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Repressed. On the Strumpetrocracy EP, Madteo constructs a distinctive sound-world that throws a very strange light on dance music. "Laissez-Faire Couture" instantly transports you to bizarre realms with midtempo funky beats haloed in swirling, celestial synth drones and angelic female swoons contrasting with strident Roland 303 twangs and unsettling, growling bass frequencies. "We Doubt (You Can Make It)" threads a male vocalist over a broken tech-house rhythm. DJ Sotofett's "Radio Mix" of "We Doubt" adds an urgent blaxploitation-flick bass line and Dresvn offers a chilled dub version.
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2x12"
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DOSER 006EP
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2016 repress. With disco, jazz, dub and noise references and just because of Detroit, Madteo brings the philosophy of Morphine onto the top of the mountain. First, you'll have to listen through a sound wall on "Room 1," then, you'll have to cross the "Avenida Liberdade" until the drums release you. Meanwhile, "Maconha Low Disco" twists against clattering spoons, and heart-thumping bass in such a way that even Sun Ra would be happy. Finally, "Alan Greenspin" pushes the apocalyptic madness into manic club-worlds. Featuring vocals on one track by Sensational.
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