Build – Orienting Points (Audiobulb) – “Perfectly executed electronic music. Motion, glitch with a smooth stability core anchored to multiple interior orienting points”. An album that comes out on January 1st, 2024, next year then. This is crisp, pure, it is almost perfect, is it AI? Haven’t looked yet, it feels perfectly possible that it is, but then there is warmth,, it does feel real. Who or what is Build? “Build isn’t a techno producer”, Build is apparently Damon Zucconi, some of it is almost church-like, one of those very modern very white ultra clean churches, the type that worships the god of minimalist technology. This is a very stylish very forward looking album, does it sound a little like one of those slick adverts for futuristic electric car type lifesyles?
“Zucconi delivers a unique blend of breakbeat-driven techno and darkwave. His latest album Orienting Points builds from the foundations of his previous work to create something that feels familiar yet completely new”. This really is an album designed for movement. It is both refreshing and tranquil, it feels effortless, it feels very very 2024, “Damon Zucconi creates exceptionally well planned urban landscapes created for the convenience of suburban commuters”. And a word for that perfect artwork, artwork matters…
Meanwhile, more from earlier this year before we’re finally sone with 2023…
Romy – Mid Air (Young) – Another album that really needs to be quickly acknowledged before we finally draw the curtains on 2023’s music, Romy’s Mid Air came out back in September, it really is such an uplifting celebration of life, of love, of so so much. Mid Air really is an album that makes you swell with warmth, underpinned by a gloriously uplifting 90’s dance vibe, it just feels good, sometimes it really is as simple and uncluttered as that. I knew very little about Romy, knew about her band XX, vaguely knew who she was when we walked in to that big blue tent at All Points East back towards the end of Summer this year – that tent, so many good musical things have had happened in there in the last few years – Ms Banks, Warmduscher taking on Black Midi, Sleaford Mods, Knucks – Romy had the big (big) blue tent is a joyous state of united euphoria in the middle of the afternoon back there in late Summer. It is a throwing your hands towards the sky thing and it is something when there’s three, four, maybe five thousand happy people doing it there with you in the tent (okay, so I was on the outside looking in but the vibes was so good in there with Romy and her crowd), and Mid Air, is just an addictive extension of that feeling in that tent back there in the Summer, it is just about Enjoying Your life, it is about enjoying people, about loves, obsessions, celebrations. Enjoy your life, enjoy you life, my mother said to me, it is just gloriously euphoric dance-flavoured synth pop, just glorious weightless pop art. I just love this album, can’t stop playing it, I probably am in a minority around here, and, as she says herself, I don’t really care any more, I just love it, throw my hands into the sky, who am I to deny… (sw)
Madmadmad – Behavioural Sink Delirium (Bad Vibrations)– We’re still doing that tidying things up at the end of year thing, Behavioural Sink Delirium came out back in July of 2023, the latest rather mad studio album from the ather mad outfit known as Madmadmad. “Powered by their wild live parties and rooted in the sounds of mutant disco, post-punk and experimental electronics, the London-based trio’s third LP”. Following 2019’s Proper Music and 2020’s More More More, Behavioural Sink Delirium was recorded and produced by Eddie Stevens (Zero7, Moloko, Róisín Murphy) in his Fulham studio. “We locked ourselves away for ten days and recorded 30 hours of music, all played live in one room, and only edited to create arrangements”. The result of those sessions are these “nine unhinged techno-dystopian freak-outs that mark the trio out as a truly singular group”.
“Behavioural Sink Delirium takes its name and inspiration from the 1968-70 ‘Universe 25’ experiment by American ethologist John B. Calhoun, looking at the behavioural effects of population growth in a ‘rodent utopia’. During the studies, a perfect space was built for a colony of 3,000 mice to thrive in, with constant food and water supplies, cosy apartments and no outside threats or predators. Starting with 4 females and 4 males, the population grew rapidly before capping at a number of 2,200. At this point, a living nightmare ensued, filled with antisocial and violent mice as the utopic conditions began to collapse.
The mice formed violent cliques and social hierarchies, cannibalism started becoming common practice and the population started plummeting to eventual extinction. Calhoun coined this tipping-point the “behavioural sink” effect, and it’s this state of societal breakdown that the trio tap into on the record. “You can easily see the link with our species in terms of overpopulation, but also with the Internet medium or ‘metaverse’ and its overproduction of data, causing tremendous societal, mental and environmental shifts. What was supposed to cater for most of our needs has also turned on us. Delirium kinda states the air of it all, and the folly of the music.”
You have all the information, you have the Bandcamp thing just down there, Krautjerk was the thing that got out ears curious back in the Summer, indeed the track features in our New Year’s Eve best of 2023 radio show on Resonance FM, go enjoy the Madmadmad bounce, go feaste on their Minty fresh fizz..
THE ORGAN 
One response to “ORGAN THING: Albums – Build’s Orienting Points takes us crisply towards 2024, and before we’re done with ’23, Romy’s euphoric Mid Air, Madmadmad and the Krautjerk of Behavioural Sink Delirium…”
[…] 30: MADMADMAD – Krautjerk – This one had to be played, the London band really don’t need that much in terms of our words but there is more here… […]