Ricardo Villalobos - Dependent And Happy (2012)

Ear-bending, trippy minimal techno from the master.  When first released, Dependent And Happy took the form of two and a half hours of music across twelve sides of vinyl; shortly afterwards, 11 of the 14 tracks were mixed down into this fully-segued 78 minute CD.  Airy, atmospheric and never boring even when it seems there's very little going on, this is expertly-produced electronic music that suits any level of concentration.  Traffic sounds, odd voices, minute variations in the drum tracks and more keep offering a fresh experience no matter how many times you return to it.

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Ricardo Villalobos at SGTG:

Fizheuer Zieheuer

Vasco

Re: ECM

Safe In Harbour

Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer - Re: ECM (2011)

My favourite thing about the sheer volume of ECM's back catalogue is that you can spend years listening to hundreds of albums, and still have hundreds to discover.  When given free rein of the label's output in 2009 to sample and remodel, Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer's first hurdle must've been to decide where to start with their choices.  The thirteen albums that they settled on could easily have been a completely different set.  As per my opening line, I'm only personally familiar with two of them, the only two here of 70s vintage: John Abercrombie's Timeless and Bennie Maupin's Jewel In The Lotus.

Far from being some sort of 'remix album', Villalobos & Loderbauer worked with a live mixing board setup and a modular synth to improvise around the spatial structures of the original recordings.  Taking full advantage of ECM's famously audiophile frequency range and sense of space, they sampled not just instrumental/vocal elements but "also used pauses, gaps and the microphonic impressions of the rooms as source material", to compose the 17 new tracks that make up Re: ECM.

The resulting two-hour listening experience is a deep, subterranean dive into pure sound that continues to pay fresh rewards with every listen.  I've been living with this album on and off for about five years, and dug it out this month to enjoy during a major Villalobos kick that I've been going through.  There's enough here that's recognsiable to please fans of Ricardo & Max, in the minimal, jazz-inflected drum tracks when they appear - a far more reductive, ultraminimalist version of this approach would lead to Safe In Harbor.

There's also more than enough that's classically ECM, even when heavily manipulated, such as a faraway snatch of piano, bass (although nine minutes of Miroslav Vitous' bass buzzing midway through disc 1 may be the album's weakest point) or, in its most sublime moments, a haunting vocal from one of Arvo Pärt or Alexander Knaifel's ECM New Series releases.  Listen and enjoy, many many times, and let this singular project, a fully respectful homage to the ECM sound, wash over you.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link
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Ricardo Villalobos - Vasco (2008)

Been in a massive minimal-electronics mood this past week, so here's some music from the maestro of minimal techno/microhouse.  Vasco, meaning 'Basque', was originally released as a pair of 12" vinyl EPs a few months apart, before this CD version ditched the remixes from the vinyl but added one new track, and massively extended another.  It works beautifully as a double-album length immersion into just how much can be done with so few elements.

Taking up the first 31 minutes is the epic Minimoonstar (Full Session), which as noted above only ran for 13 on vinyl.  Given such room to breathe, the listener can fully appreciate just how intricate a Villalobos production can be, and how audacious an envelope-pusher he's been at times.  Whereas Fizheuer Zieheuer/Fizbeast (link below) were based on much more spartan, beat-driven repetition, Minimoonstar's percussion programming is a delight in its constant variation.

The next two tracks match their vinyl counterparts, sans remixes.  Electonic (sic) Water is full of subtle clicks and pulses, with the occasional ear-blasting spike, and the wonderful Amazordum is the most relatively conventional track here.  Rounding out the CD is the previously unreleased Skinfummel, which samples dialogue from the French erotic thriller Nathalie... (2003, dir. Anne Fontaine) to great effect.  The claustrophobic, disorienting production makes for an unsettling, memorable closing track.

link
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previously posted at SGTG:
Fizheuer Zieheuer
Safe In Harbor

Vilod - Safe In Harbour (2015)

The meat in the middle of this week's ECM sandwich comes from two electronic musicians who have in fact featured on that label together, in the remix double-album Re:ECM.  That one was under their own names, Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer, and I'm still making my mind up about it - it'll probably appear here at some point.

For their first full-length album of original material, Villalobos and Loderbauer compressed their names into Vilod, and compressed jazz, dub techno and free funk (yup, I've checked around to make sure I got my subgenres right!) into a subatomic particle chamber to let them freely intermingle for an hour.  With the beats made up of at least as much live drums as machine programming, and some moody electric piano on tracks like Beefdes and the outstanding title track, this is a record that genuinely swings with its jazz DNA.

Both artists wear their love of classic jazz on their sleeves in the grin-inducing opener Modern Hit Midget.  The track samples the between-song announcements from a Modern Jazz Quartet performance for NDR Hannover in October 1957 (released in 2013), and a few bars of Milt Jackson's vibes, both speed-shifted into absurdity.  That one and the title track are my definite favourites, with the epic Zero running them close, but every time I listen to the other tracks as well there's a fresh microscopic detail to pick out and revel in.  Deep listening electronica par excellence.

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previously posted at SGTG: Fizheuer Zieheuer

Ricardo Villalobos - Fizheuer Zieheuer (2006)

A discovery from one of those magical nights on YouTube, where each recommendation leads you somewhere new.  Think I was listening to some Steve Reich or Philip Glass odds & ends when I stumbled upon Fizheuer Zieheuer, and spent the next half hour plus just sitting in amazement of how such spare ingredients could make up a track this unique and addictive.

Villalobos, firstly, is a Chilean-born German DJ and electronic musician, working mainly in the minimal techno genre.  I haven't really taken to the main body of his work as yet, to be honest - might be in the zone for it at some point - but his work with kindred spirit Max Loderbauer has appealed to me, which includes an ECM remix project (will probably post that once I've got into it more deeply), and a solid studio-album collaboration from last year under the name Vilod.

Fizheuer Zieheuer, then, was released in 2006 as possibly the longest CD single in history - two tracks totalling 72 minutes.  The title track takes two samples from a Yugoslavian brass band track from 1980, and skilfully loops the main ostinato over and over into infinity.  The beats ensure that this never gets boring - like Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4, the background is constantly shifting in its texture, the loops sometimes taking a back seat before coming back into focus.  Track 2, Fizbeast, goes even more ultra-minimal by leaving out the brass altogether, putting the spotlight squarely on Villalobos' beat-shaping skills. I've listened to Fizbeast at work a few times, at low volume, if I need to concentrate on a repetitive task.  Music for spreadsheets.

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