experimental noise jungle/techno/2-step/breaks/etc

Over the last couple years, Demdike Stare have released a series of nicely packaged faux white label singles (which I’m compiling here). Each track draws in varying proportions from some subset of noise, jungle, drone, dub, techno, 2-step, and house. Things mostly fall somewhere between the dronier drift of their “Symbiosis” album and the more consistently floor friendly Millie and Andrea collaboration. There’s a bit of 4/4, but most of the beats are breaks, and probably 30-50% is beatless or nearly so. Mostly sinister, often noisy/abrasive, longish tracks. Some are slow burners, some get straight to the point. All are excellent.

RIYL: Shackleton/Appleblim/Skull Disco, Special Request, Millie and Andrea, recent Andy Stott, filthy noisy textures, drones becoming beats, beats becoming drones

FCC clean

disc 1
1. 001A. some kind of futuristic laser saw cuts through something (possibly your brain). drums slowly come up, drunken and dubby. clearly a slow skeletal jungle monster, but it’s in no rush to get moving (though it definitely gets moving). gets a good ripple going through it around halfway. 8:04
2. 001B. menacing slowly spinning fan blades, slow queasy synth line. noise slowly fades up. percussion starts to fade up around 1:45, bad trip “tribal” hand drums, punchy nimble kicks, not too abrasive shaker. intermittent digital hisses/pops/snaps grow in mass and volume. dubs out, pares back, builds up starting at the halfway point. fade out to pleasant noise shimmer. 7:59
3. 002A. ragged electric pulse slowly gets shimmery, takes on choral overtones, gets richer and smoother. building drone till about halfway, when drums slowly come in, sharp echoed approximations of a snare, and just the attack on a kick. fuzz drone starts to undulate a bit later on. simmers down to rich bass tone and drums in home stretch. 6:17
4. 002B. creepy indecipherable chatter, clicking drum fragments spin up, huge stalking kicks. something else starts whirring up around 1:00, night time crickets and stuff gone sinister. lurching percussion stumbles in around 1:30, takes a breather just before 4:00. manic descending vocal samples, drums crash back at 4:20. 8:28
5. 003A. blocky clean 303-esque synth line. mellow, not depressing, moderately optimistic. static-y dubby techno in the basic channel vein, slowly builds. pulsing 4/4 kick (one out of place every couple bars), layers of descending and rising synth lines enter and exit, occasional filter sweeps, echo on everything. drums leave/synths grow 1:30 from end. 7:09
6. 003B. rising windswept buzz grows, slowly droning. hints of percussion around 3:30, but by 3:50 it’s full on galloping kicks that are 4/4 before you know it, with piercing snares to round it out. lasers around 5:00, seriously pares back around 5:30, returns just before 6:00. sheet metal echoes in last half. runs past its operating limits, melts down. 10:24
7. 004A. foreboding noisy rumbling, low digital wind enters around 1:00. steady deliberate kick enters just after 1:30. low loping steel drum around 2:20, disturbing rising alarm percussion around 2:50, slowly swallows everything by midway, till the kick really starts competing again. there’s at least some degree of insanity to all these songs, but this feels particularly unhinged. slowly skulks away. 8:20
8. 004B. super distorted digital wind and smeared low female vox give way to hyperactive stuttering breakbeat, snares and kicks run amok with occasional hiccup to bass pulse. hiccup gets more frequent, other tones slowly pop up. filter swept textures swarm in around 3:00. fever breaks for a bit around midway and female vocal tones re-enter for a while. kicks stumble back in around 4:50, other percussion sputters back around 5:00. watch out for slow fade out. 7:46

disc 2
1. 005A. riveting machine drummers, stuttery vocal sample, shaker. bass pulse, then bass pulses. metallic echoes. hints of buzzy synth pad around 4:00. patient, precise, odd, spare, but keeps a groove. like if ramadanman/pearson sound had been left to play with DS’s gear after they’d loaded up all their sounds. 6:42
2. 005B. thick fuzzed out bass guitar, with occasional fuzzed out guitar interjection. nervous drums get a groove going before you realize it. pulsing distorted synth line traded for drums around halfway, then drums come back. drums leave, noisy guitar ending. efficient electronic simulation of psych rock epic. 5:48
3. 006A. house textures run through a blender, fragments get caught in a belt sander. pulsing almost 4/4 kicks keep it nominally floor friendly, distorted “snares” and buzzsawing synths keep it weird. noisy passage in the middle winds up in tape echo and drums come back. 6:09
4. 006B. pulsing nasty filtered synth test pattern, like fennesz gone all wrong. kicks come in and it seems more stuttery, but by 2:00 the synths are shimmering (not gentle but not as harsh), and it feels like it’s smoothing out. acid-y 303ish tones stumble in around halfway. ends sparse and glitchy. 6:10
5. 007A. rising female choral vox smear. lush pinpricked static sheet. rising ghostly wind. loping kicks, more atmosphere and percussion around 1:20, still very chill. additional percussion enters around 3:00, quickly develops into skeletal halting jungle. end dissolves into noise. 6:27
6. 007B. low machine rumble, metal sliding against metal, chains rattling, other metal clanking. breathy quiet female vocal sample rolls enter around 1:00 and bring along snares with some momentum. cavernous 2-step beat kicks in around 1:30, vocal sample saying “i’m back?” (but not “i’m back!”). textures glitch and more percussion comes in around 2:30. briefly stuck in quicksand in the middle, but bounces out. stutters a while around 4:30, but bounces out. 6:39

recommended: 1.2, 1.7, 1.3, 1.6, 2.3, 1.4, 1.5, 2.6, 2.1, any