This Is Just ... Cool!

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You Don't Have to Read This

A Pre(r)amble On Sports and Music
At first glance, house music and the Summer Olympic Games seem to have little in common. But there are some parallels that aren't too much of stretch.

1. Context
The Typing Monkey has never attended the Olympics (well, except for that awkward jaunt to Moscow in summer 1980 -- so embarrassing) but we can imagine how thrilling it must be to witness firsthand some of the world's greatest athletes in action.

Likewise, house can be genuinely exciting when the listener is there, in person, on a dancefloor, with all the appropriate sensory cues the genre was created for.

2. Expertise
A frequent complaint about house, and electronic dance music in general, involves some iteration of the "I could do that" criticism. Any dork can buy a laptop (or a sequencer, drum machine and synthesizer) and make a 4/4 beat with some bass squiggles. But those who are good at it, and have put in the time and effort to get good, are going to leave lesser musicians at the starting line.

Similarly, most of us can run, but we're not about to get up and make a showing at the 100-yard dash time trials. We sit back and marvel at the people who've found they were built to do amazing physical feats.

3. Accessibility
Even non-sports fans can find something of interest at the Olympics. And there's that whole "uniting diverse cultures" aspect to the competition that remind us that a global superpower can lose to a third world nation when we're equalized by our basic human abilities.

In the same way, electronic dance music is a sort of international unifier. Though it has the advantage of being enabled by technology, it's difficult to site another style of music that's been so quickly picked up by so many cultures.

What does all of this lead into? Nothing more than the following review of a two-disc house compilation. (Click the link, or scroll down a smidge.)

... In Order to Understand This:

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Great Summer Games Stuff: A Tribute to Human Rights
(Great Stuff)
Listening to Great Summer Games Stuff is like watching the Olympics on television. If you're a house-music glutton, this compilation mainlines the ceaseless kick drum for the duration of two globe-spanning discs. A more casual listener, like the average Olympics viewer, passively pays attention but perks up when something remarkable happens.

Disc one's first gold medal comes from Turkey's Butch. The track screws with expectations by slowing the beat down and dropping it out entirely, usually by pitch-bending the samples of locale-appropriate woodwinds as if they're melting.

A silver medal goes to Germany's Swen Weber for pushing a brisk hi-hat scuffle to the forefront and countering a buzzing bassline with some sort of marching-band anthem the fades in and out like a passing parade.

Disc two offers more to grab our interest, with an almost-ambient opener from Japan's Tokyo Black Star. [Who is actually French native Alex Prat -- ed.]

Greek techno DJ/procuder Mihalis Safras gets top honors for his contribution that combines a minimal, watery rhythm with a weird guitar break that shouldn't fit, but does -- even when it takes over and drapes cinematic shadow over the proceedings.

Romania's OK Corral do right too, with a playful 8-bit number. They get bonus points for claiming to be from Bucharest, circa the year 2259.

England, New Zealand and Australia all bring the big, dumb fun, with a blaring rave/big beat throwback from Atomic Hooligan, a glorious mess by Greg Churchill, and a track by Tommy Trash that ignores genre divisions the way a good pop construction should.

The connection to both the Olympics and human rights feels tenuous, but if any of The Typing Monkey's theory (see above) holds water, maybe a DJ really can save a life. It's no less believable than the fact that every few years we ignore continuing global strife in order to play a bunch of games.

Reference materials: Click on the artist links in the review, and see if you find something to suit your fancy. Or snoop around the Great Summer Games Stuff tack list for yourself.

Did Delia Take the TARDIS to a Rave?

It's old news by now, but that's never stopped The Typing Monkey before. It seems that Delia Derbyshire, one of the pillars of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, and the woman who turned Ron Grainer's Dr. Who score into one of the coolest TV show themes ever, made a recording in the mid to late 1960s that is essentially a blueprint for techno. Read all about it here.

Given that other electronic music pioneers have gotten or are getting the documentary treatment, it seems that films of Derbyshire and Radiophonic Workshop pioneer Daphne Oram are long overdue. Really, given Oram's fascinating life, a biopic seems like low-hanging fruit.

In the meantime, here is a too-short video of Derbyshire showing how to build an electronic beat using reel-to-reel loops:

European Space Program

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Elaste Vol. 2: Space Disco

Tom Wieland, of digital-dub outfit 7 Samurai and techno-soul band Panoptikum, put together this worthy follow up to DJ Mooner's excellent inaugural Elaste collection.

Roaming the expanse of cosmic/space disco, Wieland concentrates on early '80s Euro soul -- a sound rooted in the brisk funk of prime '70s American disco but reaching toward futuristic grooves with the help of analog synthesizers where the horns and strings would normally be.

The mix opens strong with five solid disco workouts. But Elaste 2 gets really interesting at track six, "Sundance." The song, by Curt Cress, a German session drummer with a primarily jazz and prog-rock résumé, feels like a drum battle in which only one of the combatants is human.

Another workaday musician, English library composer Alan Hawkshaw, makes a good showing with "The Speed of Sound" -- a muscular bit of '70s cop-show funk that surges forward on the dual power of a Fender Rhodes and Clavinet.

Please note, The Typing Monkey staff put this mix to the test by setting the office CD player on random. After repeat plays, it never failed to play tracks 12 and 13 together, as they are meant to be.

Those tracks are The Vulcans' "Star Trek"-- a nifty, Moog-heavy reggae instrumental -- and Tony Allen's "NEPA Dance Dub." The latter finds the Fela Kuti drummer issuing a tense, syncopated Afro-funk heavy on the kind of simple repetition that Talking Heads employed.

Wieland manages to sneak in a couple Panoptikum cuts without breaking the mood, but that's not a big surprise given the style of music. Elaste 2 has no real party crashers, though the most dazzling moments shine much brighter than the rest. Either way, there's plenty to chew on here.

Reference materials: If you enjoy the sounds on Elaste 2, do spend some time investigating the Strut label, the efforts of the D*I*R*T*Y collective and, as if we don't hype it enough, the Smalltown Supersound label.

Better By Half

MUNK
Cloudbuster
(Gomma)
Given some of the song titles, it's not hard to imagine Munk's tunes as the soundtrack to an obscure fantasty film with a cult following. "Monopteros", "Psycho Magic" and "The Knights of Heliopolis" all inspire images of occult worlds where the barrier between technology and witchcraft is permeable.

That's especially true of the final cut ("Knights …") which begins with the same rigid kick drum that powers most of Cloudbuster. But the damp electronics and Mellotron-like flutes signal altered states of consciousness. A brief celebratory break with hi-hat and disco bass eventually decays into one final minute of rattling drone.

If this were an actual LP, side two beats side one, no contest. The two opening tracks -- "Live Fast! Die Old!" and "Down in L.A." indulge in the kind of coarse, nightlife-posturing that inspires scoffs from those who think electronic dance music is nonsense.

Guest vocalist Asia Argento doesn't do anything interesting during her three appearances. Matty Safer of The Rapture makes a better showing by playing bass on two songs -- his work in "The Rat Race" nails down a rhythmic strut reminiscent of Soft Cell's version of "Tainted Love."

Despite the 1:1 ratio of compelling to ho-hum, there's enough to Cloudbuster, Munk's second full length, to prompt The Typing Monkey to check out his 2006 debut LP Aperitivo.

Reference materials: Though there isn't an obvious musical correlation, for some reason the second half of Cloudbuster brings to mind the work of both David Shire and Alain Goraguer.

Bonus fun facts: Clearly Mathias Modica, the man behind Munk, cherry picks his references from the best of mythology both modern and ancient. Check out the Wikipedia entry for Heliopolis and then look at this picture of a monopteros in a park in München.