UPCOMING RELEASES: 2006

UPCOMING RELEASE: WE™:

Qpe "Gentrifried"

Downtown chillout master kacy wiggins comes with his sophomore full length, what he calls "hip hop nouveau."

DJ OLIVE "Heaps As: Live In Tasmania"

Down Under Dance Party where shazas and bogans woop and holler while bouncing off the walls.

Once 11 "Smile Hunter"

Bubbly West African and tropical Costa Rican Dub joy.

DJ Wally "Mrs Millers House "

Gunslinger DJ Wally aka Pish Posh returns to present a cornucopia of hilarious scary sounds, obscure movie samples, and sick sick beats -- influenced by the haunted house at the end of the lane where Wally grew up.

DJ Olive "Polk Street"

Sweet and tender understated down town funk and misty left wing and on the west side ballads.

We™ "Remix We™"

We™ startle their public with an unexpected fourth EP of “remixes” of prior We™ hits. One of America’s most loved electronic acts blasts out of the corner with a scalding world class post September 11th re-masterpiece...

Natural Sphere "NoAge"

Silicon alley dot.com bubbley bad boy, dj natural sphere, drops his much anticipated first full length of NoAge rhythms.

BBQ BEETS 3

The 3rd BBQ BEETS compilation CD with accompanied video artists In CD/DVD format.   natural sphere and dj olive select and dish out these roof music treats from the brooklyn underground. down home tempo grooves with visuals.

QPE - "BOOLEAN LOGIC"
BY RICK ANDERSON, ALLMUSIC.COM

Free mp3's (192K)

Sometimes chillout music can get so chilled that your eyes glaze over and you just fall asleep. And sometimes club music gets so self-consciously clever, so ironically self-referential, and so off-puttingly trendy that you stop wanting to dance to it. Kacy Wiggins, who records as QPE (for "quiet personal electronics"), seems to have had enough of both scenes. But instead of reacting with a kiss-off message album or an angry "death-of-the-scene" screed written in an alternative paper, he's responded by making one of the warmest, most approachable, and most enjoyable chillout albums of recent years. Try not to be fooled by the information-theory titles he's given to both the album and many of its tracks; while this may be music made on a computer, QPE's sound is consistently warm and generous. His beats tend toward the reggae end of the rhythmic spectrum, and his production style is heavily influenced by vintage dub -- note the minimalist vocal samples on "Fulcrum" and the way they tail off into the reverb-drenched sunset every time they pop up, as well as the synthesized sounds of water drops and crickets on "OR." "Out" generates a darker vibe, but it still comes across as personal and inviting rather than hip and forbidding. Every track follows that same general pattern. Brilliant.
...listen to the record here.

Legendary electronic band We™ regroups for a remix of their classics.

ONCE11'S - "SMILE HUNTER"
BY SMOTHER.NET - EDITOR'S PICK

Free mp3's (192K)

A while back I used to be a big dub fan and I really wanted to record some dub of my own. But I fell out of that circuit for whatever reason. So I'd like to thank Once11 for helping me re-achieve that love for electronic dub. Thick bassy beats are laid next to layers of electronic fuzz sparsely built out with Brooklyn's take on Jamaica. After a two year stint in the Costa Rican rain forest building modern bamboo structures he founded the Bamboo Institute, which seeks to develop innovative ways to utilize bamboo's vast potential to solve a variety of Earth?s problems. In the mood for some laid back electronic dub and breaks? "Smile Hunter" is the answer to your prayers.
...listen to the record here.

QPE - "GENTRIFRIED"
BY RICK ANDERSON, ALLMUSIC.COM

Free mp3's (192K)

Kacy Wiggins, who records his solo excursions in quirky dubwise ambience as Quiet Personal Electronics (or qpe), is a rare breed of musician. Where most electronica artists hide behind funky bombast or cool, digital distance, Wiggins seduces with gentleness, warmth and goodheartedness. Not quite downtempo, not quite dub, definitely not drum'n'bass and definitely not lounge, his music is effortlessly enjoyable but difficult to parse. His label calls the music "hip hop nouveau," but while that term captures the funky matrix in which everything on this album floats, it doesn't do justice, for example, to either the textural pointillism of "Mirrored" or the loping swing of "Lapland". This music is the aural equivalent of the really smart, kind of geeky kid you knew in high school, the one who seemed to know everything but whom no one resented because he was kind and self-deprecating and funny. Makes you wonder if that's what Kacy Wiggins is like. If not, he sure knows how to fake it.
...listen to the record here.

RECENT RELEASE:
DAVID LAST - "THE PUSH PULL"
BY JESS HARVELL, PITCHFORK MEDIA

Free mp3's (192K)

"...Last's sense of rhythm is as developed as any rap, dancehall, broken beat, or dubstep scientist you'd care to throw up. Whereas most post-downtempo electronic music shifts the burden of interest to the melodic/harmonic, Last's swinging beats and liquid metal bass throw all the weight on the rhythm section. This is a funky, funky record. On "Secret Society", a mutant dancehall pattern bumps to static offbeats and a hiccuping vocal that's an integral part of the groove. When Last drops a rattling, chiming melody, it's more rhythmic than simple coloration. "Badlands" filets some microsamples over percolating handclaps, bubbling steel drums, and a one-note bass plummet that'd rattle your teeth at the appropriate volume.

There's also a playfulness that takes it out of the city into more unmapped terrain. "Besitos" plucks and weaves like The West-era Matmos. "Posca Kid" pivots on a mournful little accordion melody over a doleful skank, surrounded by blips, blorps, burps, and other IDM onomatopoeia. There's also a faint taste of classic Black Dog running throughout, the evanescent Orientalism of tracks like "Chiba" and Balil's "Nort Route". (This is no bad thing.) Like the "Coolie Dance" and "Egyptian riddims, Last has found a music that sounds urban and folksy, ancient and modern all at once. Play it late at night, and watch how eerily (and beautifully) it synchs up with both the wind in the trees and the guys playing Tupac upstairs at 3 a.m."
...listen to the record here.