philip sherburne

Super mired

You didn't hear it from me.

A Walkabout with Carl Craig

The Wire has posted the complete, unedited transcript of my "Invisible Jukebox" with Carl Craig, in which we listen to Throbbing Gristle, Ron Hardy, tape edits, the Music Box, Brian Eno & David Byrne, Junior Boys, the Grammys, Harry Bertoia, Terry Riley, His Name Is Alive, Recloose, Phil Ranelin and Vibe, the Electrifying Mojo, Cabaret Voltaire, Robert Hood, A Number of Names, Petre Inspirescu, Herbie Hancock, Narod Niki, dubstep and more. I came out of the interview more impressed than ever with Craig -- not just for his music and knowledge but even more for his spirit and generosity. You can read the full interview here.

Allez Allez Allez Allez

I'm thrilled to once again to offer a new mix through the always awesome Allez-Allez, home to guest mixes from the likes of Luke Abbott, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Lo Recordings' Jon Tye, Thisisnotanexit, Jacques Renault, Lindstrøm, Nathan Fake, Guido Schneider, Ewan Pearson, and... well you get the point. (Not to mention a slew of great mixes from residents Sam and Weekend Steve.)

Here's a description and setlist for the hourlong mix; please click on over to Allez-Allez to download the goods.

"a few weeks ago, there was snow falling in portland, oregon—not enough to stick, but enough to make you wonder if the winter, or even just the ubiquitous northwest grey, would ever break. Then, last saturday, kapow: tulips opened, a snowy mount hood gleamed against a robin's-egg sky, and temperatures soared to 75 degrees—the perfect conditions for an impromptu backyard barbecue. (visiting home, meanwhile, has provided the perfect conditions for pulling out old favorites that had fallen by the wayside, like H3ÖH's astonishing "mind loss" — how could I have forgotten about that track?). the results, more or less "deep" or "house" (or even, sure, "deep house") in nature, are mildly schizophrenic, mixing the bleak and streamlined with the lush and overgrown. call it seasonal dissonance."

newworldromantic - spirit (delsin, 2002)
H3ÖH - mind loss (ash international, 1993)
newworldaquariuum - trespassers (delsin, 2000)
brendon moeller - jazz (third ear, 2007)
sasse - soul sounds (dirt crew solid diamond remix) (moodmusic, 2005)
session victim - no friends (no power) (real soon, 2008)
justin martin - the sad piano (charles webster remix) (buzzin fly, 2004)
furry phreaks - tearful (miso, 2004)
pepe bradock - 4 (atavisme, 2003)
i:cube - tunnel vision (versatile, 2003)
jamie lloyd - what we have (…is a zwicker remix) (future classic, 2007)

Bonus Beats

I edited and cleaned up my portion of the recent Beta Lounge session described below; for a limited time it's available for download as a 192kbps MP3. Two full hours of music!

No tracklist as of yet, but the set includes cuts from Quietpoint, DJ Koze, dOP, Kalabrese, Andy Stott, Thomas Melchior, dOP, Jackmate, Rhadoo, Moodymann, Polder, Clé, Sebastien San, Roland Appel, Kassem Mosse, Closer Musik (more or less in that order, with a few extra tracks I'm spacing on)... Varying degrees of deep, in other words. Enjoy!

A chaotic March brings April charts

Long overdue, I'm back at the blog--and back, for that matter, in Portland, Oregon while I deal with some immigration issues. Word to the wise: never watch Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel late at night, alone, while feeling melancholic about the concept of national borders. While I'm dusting off the jetlag, here are a few recent projects:

* Gudrun Gut feature in The Wire (April 2008)

* Interview with William Basinski to launch later this week at eMusic

* Brazil's rraurl.com spoke to me about Pitchfork, techno, and bringing Villalobos to the rock kids (the article's in Portuguese -- and no, I don't speak it; thanks to Jade Augusto Gola for the translation efforts)

Finally, here's an April Top 10... Click on the links for label pages, MySpaces and the like; you'll generally find an audio sample at one or more of those.

Kassem Mosse, Untitled (A) (Workshop)
Strange, shuddering, melancholic electro with a deep house underpinning (or vice versa). Featured on Ellen Allien's new Boogeybytes Vol. 04 and, come to think of it, my recent Betalounge mix. An instant classic.

Jackmate, "Buccaneer" (Phil E)
Another shudderer, with a steamroller of an 808 set to cruise control and one of the lushest arrangements of the year.

dOP, "Foly feat. Sibiri Samaké" (Milnor Modern)
My new favorite Frenchmen flesh out organic minimal house with vocals by their collaborator Foly, recorded in Senegal—this ain't no sample-pack bullshit.

Daniel Bortz, "Südwind" (Pastamusik)
Ravy but understated; old-school but definitely new. I can't quite figure out what it is about this cut that grabs me so, but since when was techno reasonable?

Daniel Meteo, "Beautiful (Junction SM Remix)" (Kalk Pets)
More 808 action, featuring a melody as delicate as the rhythm is tough.

Sebbo, "Watamu Beach" (Desolat)
African vocals, dubby chords and redlining drum machines, in just the right proportions.

Style of Eye, "The Big Kazoo" (Dirtybird)
I've never been a huge Dirtybird fan, but this tune is so blithely stupid and fun, who am I to argue? Kills curmudgeons dead.

Clé, "Nomads (Mathias Tanzmann Remix)" (Poker Flat)
Everything I said above could probably go for this one as well. What can I say? I'm a sucker for big, garish syncopations like this one.

D'Julz, "Just So U Know" (Ovum)
Yes, another carnival banger, about as serious as a pie in the face, but with a dark, brain-warping feel. What's the only thing scarier than being stuck in an elevator? Being stuck in an elevator at a clown convention—on acid.

Peter Van Hoesen, "L.O.C. (Philip Sherburne's Lungbutter Remix)" (Lan Muzic)
Out soon on white label—until then, you'll have to take my word for it. You can hear the original over at Peter's MySpace, linked above.

Beta Days

Every Thursday evening in the late '90s and early '00s, a nondescript warehouse space in San Francisco's Potrero Hill rolled up its loading-dock door to reveal, well, a big, empty warehouse space—but one tricked out with oddly shaped couches, video projections, lighting, turntables, and lots of black boxes glittering with LEDs, the majority of which you had no idea what the hell they did. What they did, of course, was to broadcast the proceedings inside across the internet, bringing intimate, impromptu sessions from some of the world's best DJs to computer speakers and headphones across the globe.

I still remember my first encounters with the Beta Lounge; as an unhappy graduate student at Brown University who yearned to know what an actual dance-music scene sounded like, its weekly feed was a lifeline. (Now that I think about it, the Beta Lounge was also the subject of one of my very first, self-assigned stories: I wrote a short profile of the site as a writing sample submitted to *Surface magazine, back when my only clips were from the Providence College Hill Journal and, inexplicably, an interview with filmmaker Helen Stickler for Bust magazine. How very '90s all that sounds!)

It was only when I finally moved to SF, though, that I finally got it: the Beta Lounge wasn't just about disembodied media streaming through straining pipes. It was a community of people. The shows were always free, and the protocol was BYOB—most folks brought six-packs and shared around. There were always bags of chips lying around, and during the summer, a barbecue often sat smoking on the sidewalk outside. This was before SF caught the Giuliani bug, and cops would roll by, slowing down to ogle the beef but never stopping to cause a fuss.

One of the best things about the Lounge was its mix of people. Every week, it seemed, you'd recognize a small core of regulars, but as for the other half of the crowd, you'd never seen them before, and you might never again. One week a group of Filipina hip-hoppers had the place full of Pinay B-girls; another week there'd be a massive contingent of weeded junglists in hoodies. The programming was eclectic, and excellent; the residents spun wide-ranging sets that always left you trainspotting, and wanting more. Every so often, the Lounge would throw an all-night party; I'm pretty sure the first time I ever saw the sun come up in San Francisco was after one such throwdown.

To the casual observer, the juxtaposition between the Beta Lounge's furnishings—a sort of shabby yuppie chic—and its surroundings, poised between high-income (white) Potrero Hill and the lower-income (and largely African-American) Hunters Point, and nestled next to a mobile, semi-shantytown full of campers, trailers, and homeless folks living out of shopping carts, might have suggested the pernicious influence of gentrification. But for those who took part—and I never saw anyone turned away—the Lounge was actually all about community. It reflected a particular strain of '90s utopianism, one where technology, (post)-rave culture and the entrepreneurial spirit came together to create something special.

The good times couldn't last. The Beta Lounge, financed by a parent company that first made CD-ROMs, then DVDs, never found a way to make money, and all that cabling wasn't free. Then the cops clamped down. So what if it was an industrial neighborhood: noise ordinances were noise ordinances, and open containers were deemed unaccountably threatening. Fines were levied; the kibosh was put.

But the Beta Lounge lives on, and not just in its extensive archives. (I have a few sets in there; I'm eternally grateful to the crew for giving me some of my very first chances to play in front of a crowd, and probably long before I was ready for it. Fortunately, my earlier sets were recorded under a DJ alias I've long since given up using, and one I'm not about to share with you now. Interested sleuths may find me out and laugh away at their leisure.) The Beta Lounge's sister outfit, with the same name and the same logo, continues to operate in Hamburg, in a space remarkably similar, but for the addition of a full (cash) bar. I was fortunate enough to play there a few weeks ago, before a night at that city's (infamous, and amazing) Golden Pudel club. You can listen to the set here--it's currently linked from the front page, but once it's moved, you'll have to dig into the archive to display it. (If anyone knows how to link directly to the stream, please tell me!)

Hausmann.C (Fresh Fish, Word and Sound) kicks off the first hour and a half, and I take over around 1:34 or so. The whole session is nice and chilled, quite a bit slower and housier than I normally play. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed playing it.

Special thanks to Hausmann.C, Ian, Brian, Zane, Öle, Monty, Ron, Niels, and everyone else from the good old days, spread to the winds as we may be.

Monopolizing

Today's my day to monopolize Pitchfork's front page, what with The Month in Techno and my review of Hercules and Love Affair's fantastic debut album. In lieue of fresh bloggage, I leave you with a little bonus Herc in the form of his remix for Goldfrapp's A&E -- probably my favorite thing he's done yet. You can hear it over here at Hype Machine, archived from Silence Is a Rhythm Too. (Wouldn't it be nice if they made a player you could paste directly into a blog? Yes, it would.)

If you're going to be in Barcelona this weekend, don't miss our Lan Muzic special at Lolita featuring Exercise One, Jacopo Carreras and myself.