This week on Neue Haus we’re setting our sights on two artists with very different approaches towards making electronic music, but these artists’ work has a similar outcome: it’s exciting, and it’s a little bit unfamiliar. The first of these is Ukrainian techno artist Stanislav Tolkachev, and the other is Jamaican duo Equiknoxx.
Stanislav Tolkachev has been making techno for over 20 years now – the Ukrainian producer and DJ caught the bug by listening to pirate radio as a kid. Since then, Tolkachev has made a name for himself as one techno’s harshest and most unrelentingly experimental musicians. I’ll be drawing from this past December’s There Is Almost No God EP, released on Dutch label Mord – it’s 30 straight minutes of abrasive rhythms, often obscured by sludge and smoke. Tolkachev is a hard worker – he already has a new album, It Will Be Too Late Then, and an EP, Champions Breakfast, coming this spring. However, all his work is exquisite; There Is Almost No God is not one to miss.
Another brilliant album we’ll be looking at this week is Colón Man, the brand new Equiknoxx LP. Equiknoxx spent years making dancehall hits in their home of Jamaica, but with the release of debut album Bird Sound Power, they found themselves exposed to a whole new audience, thanks to the album’s release on popular experimental label Demdike Stare. Now, with Colón Man, the duo looks to consolidate themselves on the world stage, and they’ve done so wonderfully. Just to be clear, this is not typical dancehall music – it shares the sonic imagination of popular dancehall, but pairs it with a kind of skeletal cleanliness that allows the riddims to pop like nothing else I’ve heard before.
There’s plenty more planned for this week’s show beyond these two! We’re going to be listening to some deep cuts off of the new Björk album Utopia, along with some music from Pittsburgh veteran Shawn Rudiman and a new single from SOPHIE. We’ll also be playing cuts off of some new EPs – a song by Porter Robinson’s Virtual Self side project, a song from a new FaltyDL EP on Aus, a track from a new release by glitch producer Max Cooper, and a single from XL signees Overmono. All that and more, on this week’s episode of Neue Haus! Tune in at 3pm.
By Owen Zoll