Posts tagged ‘electronic’
Today’s Desert Island Disc: De-Phazz, Daily Lama
Posted on | September 14, 2008 | No Comments
De-Phazz is a revolving cast of singers and performers around German jazz/electronica producer Pit Baumgartner. For more than 10 years, De-Phazz has released an interesting and unique blend of jazz, German cabaret music, electronica, hip hop, reggae/dancehall and r’n'b. Baumgartner changes his lineup between albums, and there are very few singers who stay for more than a record or two. The music is sung mostly in English, but there are songs in German and French, too. Everything has a delightfully old-school, continental European touch: a 40s-style cabaret tune here, a 50s Brazilian-inflected German Schlager there. But there’s also some seriously funky, and not-German-at-all soul here: a track like ‘True North’ shows off Baumgartner’s production chops – chops that could grace any contemporary ‘big’ r’n'b artist’s album. The path he chooses, though, is quirkier than that. And it’s a very likable quirkiness, one I find myself returning to time and again. The sound is cultured and aware of the world’s musics in a way that British or American electronica isn’t. And that makes this first-grade pop music that doesn’t become dated.
Listening to: Burial, Untrue
Posted on | January 24, 2008 | No Comments
(Direct URL: http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/B000WTBMBK/)
For anyone still standing at the end of the long, strange journey through the tunnel of electronic music, particularly all the different forms of house over the years, this is lovely, emotional, introverted and perhaps a little nerdy. It’s also very, very good in a genre-transcending sort of way. The producer (whose real identity is apparently a secret, woo hoo) makes dubby headphone soundscapes based on the fast-yet-somehow-serene broken beats of two-step and grime. It’s really great to put on repeat while working. Not sure what that says about it, but I find it strangely motivating :)
Detailed Pitchfork piece here.
Recent Posts on Changebowl, Carsten’s other blog- Playing around with Ontario electoral geography August 11, 2010
- HelTweetica for iPad July 20, 2010
- Facebook privacy & digital NIMBY July 19, 2010
- What we can learn from gear porn May 31, 2010
- Are creativity and intellectual property rights inversely proportional? May 27, 2010
- Comparing the tech giants May 2, 2010
- Corporate applications and content on smartphones March 21, 2010
About
Carsten Knoch
Attentive music listener, reader, vegetarian, affordable audio hobbyist, software and services professional, vision enabler, instigator, product manager, marketer, thinker, writer, blogger, tinkerer, Internet dweller since 1992
Teabowl is my blog about music, vegetarian food, books, art and life.
Teabowl's sister blog Changebowl discusses technology, community, design and business.
