December 2007 news

December 31, 2007

CALIFORNIA ÜBER ALLES


• tube'|106 - Norman Fairbanks - American Case Study

«Well... and here's our last tube of 2007. Please welcome again Mr. Fairbanks from Los Angeles, California, with this new collection of tracks, which he appropriately titled 'American Case Study'.
Norman has been steadily putting out high quality releases for a couple of years at least, officially releasing most of them through his own website. In this present case, we made a selection out of a couple of his latest works, rounding up roughly an hour of Fairbanks' tunes. 'American Case Study' helps us to explore an unusual side of Norman's creations, namely the ambient/spoken word approach. 'Element One' through 'Element Five' gathers some speeches from whatever - including the late Allen Ginsberg - and serves them with some of Norman's trademark spacious beats and drones. The rest of the album rests on the usual high quality of minimal techno and IDM, on healthy doses for good measure. To put it simply, Norman Fairbanks' music is an amalgam of contemporary American culture, synthesized in small packets of aural pleasure. Enjoy! Happy New 2008!» - Pedro Leitão

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December 26, 2007

FREESTYLE


• tube'|105 - Eye - Plays

«Peter Memmer is originally from Germany and is a former classical dancer who used to live in Portugal until very recently - the cover photo was taken by Peter at a typical portuguese Carnival festivity at Loulé - before moving again to another european country, Spain, if I'm not mistaken. Musically, one could easily think of Peter's work like something between Manitoba/Caribou and Kieran Hebden's Four Tet: Contemporary electronic pop with traces of pop-rock from last century. On the other hand, Eye also touches fringes of good old experimental territory, and even some electroacoustics too, churning out some nice drones and minimal textures somewhere along the middle part of 'Plays'. But the keyword here is 'Pop' without a shadow of a doubt. Excellent release!»
- Pedro Leitão

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December 26, 2007

December 19, 2007

BEYOND AWAKENING


• tube'|104 - Cory Allen - Satori in Atlantis

«As you struggle to stop your thoughts, you can still hear the conversation of some neurons. Sometimes they sound like little pieces of metal sliding over a self-constructed organism, or granular rings that create ephemeral vibrations. In any case, they lead you into a psychic silence where you are able to listen to a higher consciousness. The enlightenment and awakening of your being brings you the true nature of creation. As you listen, you can create a new world formed of legendary islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, pleasantly sink into deep waters, or embrace your own neurological research. Once you find yourself floating, “Satori in Atlantis” allows this experience to last longer and create new beginnings to deeply understand the world you imagined. With this insightful sonic production, you are able to associate and assemble the wisdom of eastern philosophies and quantum mechanics. Allen’s creations succeed in becoming a source of energy.
Satori can be found in every moment of life, it is wrapped in all daily activities, its goal to unwrap them to see and hear satori. Be ready to submerge into a very profound view of the unified field. Be ready to journey into deeper levels of intelligence in nature and establish a dialog with your “self.”»
- Sebastian Alvarez

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December 11, 2007

ED IN WONDERLAND


• tube'|103 - Motown Junkie - Plagiarism Perversions

«Motown Junkie a.k.a. Ed The Sampler is Edgar Matos and lives very close to the spanish border in a portuguese town called Elvas, deep in the Alentejo's deserted countryside. Ed - for short - loves heavy metal rock, noise, goth, industrial and several other kinds, but he also enjoys sampling based electronic music and is quite fond of dark ambient too. As Nhoin - another one of his aliases - he has released stuff on our friend label Enough Records, but this time, as he puts on the Motown Junkie outfit, we will be graced with a different pallete of sounds.
'Plagiarism Perversions', despite its rather obnoxious or even tasteful artwork, is not about junkies or sex perverts, but rather about the art of stealing and appropriating of well known pop music phrases and references, and the consequent recontextualization of those elements, in an instrumental Hip Hop setting. Ed captured dozens of bass lines, guitars, drum beats, keyboard notes, etc., from pretty much everything he had lying around, mainstream or not, and built 15 tracks with strong hip hop beats and strings and basslines from various other styles turning the originals almost unregonizable (but still recognizable if you have a sensible ear). I won't say any names to not spoil your surprise.» - Pedro Leitão

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December 10, 2007

December 03, 2007

SONIC GASES OF INTEGRATION


• tube'|102 - krypton - Silent Drama

«Whether a fictional planet in the DC Comics universe or a chemical element, known as a noble gas that occurs in trace amounts in the atmosphere, Krypton has the ability to expand into your subconscious. Along these sounds, you would be able to walk through a cold hummed darkness to develop systems of echolocation that will take you into distant memories. In this realm, memory becomes a bright greenish-yellow light that glows and reverbs. Once submerged into the nature of “silent drama”, you might hear the images of a forsaken territory, of a territory that is like faint shadows, of a connection with the land that is not familiar any longer. Once thought to be completely inert, Krypton is known to form a few compounds.  These compounds are substances formed when two or more elements are chemically joined. In this case these substances are sonic. By suddenly arriving with some metal keys being plucked up and down, “human rights” is one of the tracks that will probably bring you back into the human constructs of a cyclical and percussive time. On the whole, these seven pleasant and fluorescent tracks are aural treats that can make you understand that all is one, that there are no fundamental divisions, and a unified set of laws underlie nature.» - Sebastian Alvarez

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December 03, 2007