Madame – Lies And Sunsets [MV018]
Pol Duno Ruhi (aka Madame) has released no less than 21 tracks in 8 EPs and albums for the Barcelona and Berlin netlabel Musica Vermella . The latest; Lies And Sunsets , is a 6-track EP, which, accordingly to the label, blends dubstep, wonky beats, IDM, and classical music with pure electronic sounds. OK, that sounds like the sort of ingredients I’d like to see in a recipe, but it’s the quantity and blend of the ingredients and the skill of the chef that make this a truly great feast.
It’s the way in which classical music is incorporated, that makes this EP special. It’s not just a series of classical samples, arbitrarily stitched together with a predictable dubstep drop at the prerequisite interval. This is a properly conceived fusion of the various genres of music, and it’s magnitificent.
If you listen to the opening of Alkhimia, or Verd you will assume this was a classical album, but then the various broken beats start, followed by low-frequency dubsteppy growls and finally an organ and you know you’re into different territory.
Deep Moon is less classical and more electronic in it’s delivery, but the classical instrumentation returns (albeit in a hip-hop style) with Love Cuisine. Side Chain Sunset is more of an IDM beat, but the dubsteppy bass wobbles are in attendance throughout. Finally, No More Lies rounds off the album. Beginning with an almost childlike lullaby the piece expands with vocoder vocals and then takes a darker, classical twist before opening out into a nice electronic groove and then repeats the process again.
It’s hard to instrument the classical and electronic music fields together into something coherent and something that will appeal to lovers of both styles. Lies and Sunsets is a very good attempt to do just that. It’s well worth a download, along with Madame’s back catalogue from this excellent netlabel.
[wpaudio url=”http://www.archive.org/download/PeteCogle/Madame-Alkhimiaexcerpt.mp3″ text=”Madame – Alkhimia (excerpt)“]
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Various Artists – Recopilatoire II [MV015]
Recopilatoire II has taken a year and a half to get together, and features a whole load of existing Música Vermella artists, such as: Xtrngr, DjCode, KaostapesKain, Icebreaker, Yarkouy, 4cantons, Pisu, Madame, Wermonster, Spectateur and Ocoeur, as well as two new artists : Alphabetsheaven and Fatkut.
As anyone who’s listened to my podcasts know, I’m a sucker for those fragile sounds you get from Xylophones and synths that mimic them; so I was hooked by track one: Xtrng’s “Bell Mountain”. DJCode then gives us the disco-oriented “Up1”, before Madame gives us some glitchy/RnB/abstract hip-hopwith “Distressed”. Pisu, provides a surprisingly mellow track “Teletechno” before we’re back in the dubstep groove with Yarkouy (a.k.a. TSO) and “Human nature is so deceiving”.
KaostapesKain and Alphabet’s Heaven provide some mellow broken beats and then Fatkut takes the musical high-ground with an electro-acoustic piece “Anna”. Wermonster gives us “Underground Continental” a classy hip-hop track served with some broken rap. There’s a classic 8-bit games influence in “Scherer8″ by 4Cannons and some more hip-hoppy goodness from Spectateur. The final two tracks of broken beats are from Icebreaker and Ocoeur. 12 tracks in all of high-quality netlabel goodness.
Also checkout the excellent artwork by Turkesa.
[wpaudio url=”http://netlabelism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Xtrngr-Bell-mountain.mp3″ text=”Xtrngr – Bell mountain”]
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