Pitchfork Forkcast: Words Into Sound: The Month in Techno: Various Artists [Streams]

Words Into Sound: The Month in Techno: Various Artists [Streams]

This is another in a regular series of Forkcast posts highlighting music discussed in some of Pitchfork's columns. Our hope is that we can introduce you to tracks and genres you may not be familiar with, as well as highlight some of the fantastic writing happening below the fold every week. Here are some of the tracks discussed in Philip Sherburne's current installment of The Month in Techno, along with quotes from the column. You can read the full piece here.

"[Basteroid is Areal co-founder Sebastian Reidl.] Daisy-chaining analog machines and devoid of finicky editing, Upsets Ducks' ten tracks bang out unfussy, electro-inspired rhythms beneath cascading melodies and counterpoints as sawtoothed as the Weyerhauser shop floor."

"Dapayk, aka Mo's Ferry founder Niklas Worgt, and Eva Padberg, a German model who has recorded with Worgt since 2003, are fond of a sort of loose and low-slung funk whereby clicky hi-hats knit a gauzy scrim out of analog gargle and stubby bass lines...The album's title refers neither to horses nor to skin tone, but rather to vinyl itself, as the refrain of the title track makes clear: 'This could be the last vinyl album/ MP3s killed the black beauty.'"

"Deadset, otherwise known as Tom Mangan and Cass, set their sights squarely on the kind of fidgety, stripped-down house music that's reinvigorating the UK's flagging house scene. DJs and home listeners alike will find every track a snapshot of the dance floor at its most woozy, where sirens, reverbed chants, ingenious polyrhythms, nimble synth riffs and wobbly bass lines dance on the edge between restraint and rowdiness."

"For the most part, Michal Ho's Screw the Coffeemaker is a desiccated landscape of gently treated beats, corkscrewy synth squeals and shadowy bass lines more felt than heard, but there's always something to grab the attention, even subconsciously-- a weirdly gleaming little riff in 'Take Away', a Depeche Mode-inspired keyboard in 'Saftwork', a spark-spitting livewire of an oscillator in 'Ghost Floppy'."

"Samim knows his way around a groove-- just listen to the way the hi-hats and handclaps create the effect of a great steel trap snapping open and shut at the beginning of each bar in the opening of 'Setupone'. (Like 'Heater', that track also shows Samim's proclivity to marry stripped-down house beats to more sweeping musical statements, as it unfurls into a filtered loop of salsa piano.)

"Soaked with swirling pads and dripping with melody, the first disc of Will Saul's Simple Sounds blendsl together shreds of disco and deep house into a 50-minute blissout that only serves to validate the old saw, 'the more, the merrier.'"