The Kahvi Collective, a netlabel known for giving away gigs and gigs of beautiful, downtempo IDM, just announced their especially generous Christmas exclusive Selected Works from London-based duo Yimino. In this free download we get 7 tracks spanning a variety of their previously released Albums and EPs available to purchase on the band's own label Ominim, including their latest album Breaker just out in September of this year. It would have been extra nice if they had included an unreleased track or two for those who already have Yimino's back catalog of work, but this little sampler is a great way to let potential new fans know what they're all about without any monetary risk.
Being heavily inspired by known favorites such as Boards of Canada and Autechre, Yimino's work can create a divide among fans of this particular electronic music sub-genre. Some stubborn devouts could be put off by the striking similarities, but though the essentials of their music are haunting tape-compressed pads, nostalgic samples, and textured beat patterns arranged in a style pioneered by those that came before them, the lads venture a bit further out to the fringes with tracks like the funkier, vocal-heavy "No Gamet" and the more straightforward Dido-ish "Bintliptick". My favorite track from the lot is "Apone Fenex" which starts out by pinning glitched out vocals over a creepy organ playing wayyyy in the distance, and evolves into a really cool beat-driven piece that might have felt at home on Tri Repetae. From the dreamy vocal cutups in "Firen" to the eerie ambiance of "Moflek", it's all gorgeous electronics and good vibes, so if you simply love the niche and crave more, you'll be happy to hear Yimino carrying the torch to light up both new and familiar territory.
"With a past that includes support from the legendary John Peel, performances at the South Bank and electronica festival Bloc 2010 this London based duo continue to innovate and diversify both in their musical output and label development."
Yimino - "Piper" (from Breaker, 2010)
Selected works consists of the following tracks from the named albums:
1. Firen (reading edit) - Bulbuss 2. Apone Fenex - Qeh 2004 3. No Gamet - Autonoe Vora 4. Squeeze me - Autonoe Vora 5. Piper - Breaker 6. Bintliptick - Breaker 7. Moflek - Doe EP
NOV 3, 2010
"Chameleon", a track illegitimately released on iTunes using the Boards of Canada name, has been removed from the online music catalog after approximately 5 days of sales. Amazon has yet to catch up but will most likely follow suit.
Nick Baxter, a.k.a. "Skeptical", the artist known to be the real composer of the single, has offered up an "explanation" in a recent post on the Black Dog Towers message board, casually stating that the ordeal stemmed from a metadata mixup by an inexperienced iTunes employee. skept says,
"apparently, the new admin lass at itunes made a mistake when inputting the ol' meta data. the release should have been -
artist: Chameleon
song: Boards of Canada
needless to say, Warp weren't very happy about it, so it's been pulled from sale... you just cant get the staff nowadays eh?"
This of course doesn't explain how the mixup could have occured on Amazon.com as well. We also don't know how skept could have acquired information about an iTunes employee such as length of employment.
A few days prior on the WATMM forum, skept posted a video featuring the villain from the SAW series of horror films, who's character is known for orchestrating gruesome prank scenarios. If Skeptical is attempting to plea "not guilty" to intentionally mis-labelling and releasing the track to try and fool people into buying it, this post certainly doesn't help his case. YouTube user MrWhitelabel (who has hosted a video containing the Chameleon track mis-labeled as Boards of Canada for the past year), recently "favorited" both the SAW video as well as their own "Chameleon" video, but whether MrWhitelabel is an account run by Nick Baxter is still unconfirmed.
It is not known which digital audio distributor was used to submit the track for sale online, however there are typically terms that must be agreed to by an artist or label before they can proceed with the service. TuneCore, a popular online music distribution service, forces new sign-ups to agree to this Terms & Conditions / Copyright Agreement before they can submit songs for sale, which clearly states:
"YOU AGREE THAT YOU WILL NOT USE THE SITE OR SERVICES TO TRANSMIT, ROUTE, PROVIDE CONNECTIONS TO OR STORE ANY MATERIAL THAT INFRINGES COPYRIGHTED WORKS OR OTHERWISE VIOLATES OR PROMOTES THE VIOLATION OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF ANY THIRD PARTY."
You must also confirm,
"...all of the Recordings, including, without limitation, any sampled third party material embodied therein, artwork, metadata, videos and any other materials furnished by you to Company or relating to the Recordings are owned or controlled by you and the use thereof as described or contemplated herein and/or on the Site shall not infringe on the copyrights, trademark rights or other rights of any person or entity; and that Company shall have the right to exploit same in any manner hereunder free from adverse claim and without any obligation to make any payment of any nature to any person or entity, other than the amounts payable to you hereunder. You shall defend and indemnify Company and any of its affiliates (including any directors, members, officers, employees and other representatives) and hold them harmless against any third party claims or expenses and losses resulting from breach, or a claim which if true would constitute a breach of the foregoing warranties, these Terms of Service, and/or the Copyright Policy, including reasonable attorneys' fees and litigation expenses.
Will Warp or Boards of Canada take legal action? Scottish brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin of Boards of Canada, known for being men of few words on the internet, have yet to publicly comment on the incident ... or anything else... though their official Twitter account posted its second tweet on Nov 1st reassuring followers,
"The "Chameleon" track that appeared this week on iTunes is not by BOC, it's a hoax."
Some fans speculate the whole ordeal could have been an attempt to get them to "come out of hiding" after a long stretch of radio silence following their last EP release "Trans Canada Highway" in May of 2006. Impatience among die-hard fans grows more and more intense as the release date of their forthcoming album continues to push back further beyond anticipation and remains unknown.
OCT 30, 2010
The track "Chameleon" released on iTunes was previously released as a single on the now defunct label Artificial Bliss by Nick Baxter a.k.a. Skeptical. In this thread started by user skept (Skeptical himself) on the Black Dog Towers message board, it was pointed out that the track is in the Boards of Canada style, to which skept replies,
"with the boc thing... yes there is a bit of shenanigans going on there, but i'll not go into it!"
It has not yet been confirmed who actually submitted the bogus track to iTunes for release.
YouTube user MrWhitelabel who posted the Chameleon track on the video hosting site in October of last year as if it were a BoC work, also posted another track by Skeptical from a separate release calling it Boards of Canada - Red Sky Night. Amidst the confusion within that video's comments, nickb523 (Nick Baxter a.k.a. Skeptical) chimes in with, "try looking for Skeptical: Red Sky Night". When another commenter asks, "why is this dude saying it's BOC?", MrWhitelabel replies, "nowadays it's harder than ever for good indie artists to reach the right people. ;)"
Releasing fake tracks to capitalize on the success of other artists is not unheard of within the electronic music making community, but the hoaxes don't often quite go this far. It is still unclear how this track slipped through the iTunes screening process, how many downloads have been sold, or what the recourse will be.
OCT 30, 2010
Though no official statement has been received directly from Warp Records or Boards of Canada, a recent post on the twoism.org message board by user mdg (widely accepted as reliable source Mark David Garrett, photographer and member of Hexagon Sun who acts as an informal on-line representative of the band source), confirms many fans' speculation that this track is indeed a fake and that Warp is investigating the issue.
"Thanks guys, we know about this, Warp are investigating it already. There's a chance the prank has backfired, because I'm guessing this would earn BOC a lot of royalties at this rate."
mdg has reiterated in previous statements made within the twoism.org community that Boards of Canada do in fact have a new album coming out soon, and that it has only been held up due to "one or two issues outwith the band's control" source.
Also noted is that the artwork for the single on iTunes was borrowed from Susumu Yokota - Kaleidoscope which is an electronic music album released on October 11, 2010. No correlations to this album or artist have been made at this time.
The idea that it is possible to illegitimately release and sell music under anyone else's artist name on a shop as big as iTunes is frankly unsettling.
OCT 29, 2010
Boards of Canada - "Chameleon" :: This video was uploaded to YouTube In October of 2009 by MrWhitelabel, and as you can see by reading a majority of the user comments, it was widely dismissed as just another BoC copycat track. However, the very same track appears to have been released October 28th, 2010 on iTunes by Boards of Canada's music label Music70. Adding to the intrigue, the Boards of Canada's official YouTube channel left a comment on the above video's page approximately 2 hours ago with the following message:
"diet coke green screen failure"
It's a lovely track and pretty standard BoC fare save for the slightly uncharacteristic wonky beat that seems to be in trend right now. The sample of children's voices sounds like it was derived from the same recording used in "Aquarius" from their 1998 album Music Has The Right To Children. Overall it's almost "too BoC" for BoC, but can someone fake a release on iTunes?
Just can't get enough Com Truise? Well, you're in luck; New Jersey artist Seth Haley has also released music under other aliases including Sarin Sunday, Airliner, and Systm.
Free Downloads + For Purchase
Since the release of his free Cyanide Sisters EP, the name Com Truise has been seeping into indie music blogs and radio stations faster than The Blob. With nods from the likes of Stereogum, URB, and ISO50 (run by one of his favorite artists, Tycho), and a recent DJ gig opening for Neon Indian, his melted city summer beats and nostalgic synth sounds are making waves far beyond fellow Boards of Canada fans.
While we wait for the forthcoming Com Truise full-length LP (which I'm going to take a wild guess that it will be coming out on Moodgadget or Ghostly based on their back catalogs and this Tweet, but that is pure speculation!), and assuming you've already swooped up the 2 free tracks Pyragony/Tripya from his Future Sequence interview and have been following him on Soundcloud, we can explore the other musical releases and web presences of this talented and diligent artist. For whatever reason, his other aliases aren't widely advertised, but are found pretty easily with a small bit of poking around the internet. And yes, they're just as good.
Sarin Sunday Sarin Sunday takes it down a notch, thriving in the realm of nostalgic library music and is one of the closest things to Boards of Canada that I think I've ever heard. Download Sarin Sunday - The Lonely Hike for free from the Archaic Horizon netlabel to hear what I mean. Tracks like "Light Fragments", "Gateway to the Sun" and title number "Lonely Hike" are melodic masterpieces full of warm laboratory sounds, lush, emotional ambiance, and perfect rhythm. There is something about this album that makes me think of watching 3-2-1 Contact or science videos in school, then going outside to play in tall grass near a power plant as the sun sinks in the nuclear sky and slowly disappears. A 4-track EP called "The Path Before Us" is also available on Sarin Sunday's Last.FM but you can download the .zipped .mp3s + front & back artwork directly HERE. Airliner (aka Airliner67) As far as style and mood go, Airliner sits somewhere between Com Truise and Sarin Sunday. Here he combines those warped '80s science VHS sounds and lush synths with atmospheric samples and deep chilled beats with hip hop influence. You can currently buy the Airliner - None LP via Bandcamp for $6 USD. Another release called "Self Destruct Pt. 1" is also advertised on the Airliner MySpace page, but the Bandcamp account it links to is no longer active. UPDATE: Oct. 15th, 2010 Com Truise made "Self Destruct Pt. 1" available for download on his site | .zip direct download.
Systm Are Com Truise, Sarin Sunday and Airliner putting you to sleep? Systm will kick up your pulse with an injection of buzzy, compressed dance floor electro arcade bangers that fit in perfectly with the MSTRKRFT / Boys Noize / Justice club. Grab the Systm - Invader EP via Bandcamp for $5 USD. Final track "808 Whore" is a hit waiting to happen. A mysterious Flash file on one of his websites hints at an EP called "Splatter Punks" but a download is nowhere to be found.
Komputer Cast (mixes) If there's one thing we know about Seth Haley aka Com Truise, it's that he has a passion for the '80s and vintage synthesizers. In a series of DJ mixes he calls Komputer Cast, Seth throws a few of his own tracks in with some of his '80s heros such as The System, Andy Clark, and Joy Division. Free Downloads + track listings and artwork: KC1, KC2, KC3. (These mixes reside on his Brokenradar.org domain, which seems to have been another great name for a project that eventually got put on the back-burner.)
Nostalgic Music Foundation
If you are an active member of the Twoism forum, you may remember the upstart of Sarin Sunday's promising blog/label called Nostalgic Music Foundation celebrating the BoC style of ambient music and new artists within the genre. The aesthetics were spot on and the releases were quality, but the project seems to have fizzled. The MySpace page still has songs uploaded to its music player as well as a perpetual call for artists, but the website and digital shop are no longer in operation. Not that he has any spare time right now but I really wish the NMF was flourishing, as I'm sure I'd be a regular customer.
Welcome To Your Life™
Being an art director and digital artist with a sharp eye for current trends in design, I can imagine Seth constantly coming up with new ideas for website layouts and graphics. Welcome To Your Life™ appears to be yet another project for creative outlet. The area with the most content is the "Notes" section which is a blog of thoughts and musical inspirations that hasn't been updated since June 4th, 2010 - right before his Com Truise release.
As you can see, Seth Haley is a busy man with a huge passion for what he does. It comes through in his music which I believe is a major factor that keeps us all in anticipation of his next project.
Plone 2nd Album
[Unreleased :: ????] Free Download
9/10
The perfect soundtrack for this hot summer afternoon is Plone's unreleased 2nd album which is currently echoing throughout the house as I go about my daily chores and get ready to head out to a party later this evening. I don't know much about this album other than it was finished sometime in 2001 just before the group split, and my guess is that it was let loose on the interwebs so as to be heard and appreciated.
This collection of 16 perfectly laid-back electronic tracks are full of their cute and simple xylophonic melodies, analog portamento, plinky rhythms, twinkling synths and smooth organ vibrato, but a new style direction can be heard. Many of the songs do sound like they were written around the same time or shortly after their first album "For Beginner Piano", but some of them contain the addition of live-sounding acoustic drums and an almost krautrock feel, such as the track "140" which extends into something of a lengthy, Neu-ish jam. A mid-century cocktail bbq feel still dominates with dreamy vibraphone, some vintage strings, uplifting chord progressions, and psychadelic sounds which would be a joy to play on vinyl. You can definitely hear some new ideas being explored here but you never veer too far away from their signature sound. I find this album to be a graceful exit for Plone and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Footnote: Plone is gone [for now?] but not forgotten. Their song "On A Bus" was covered by Plaid and released in 2009 on Warp20 (Recreated) to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Warp record label. Also in 2009 their track "Plaything" from Warp's We Are Reasonable People [WAP100] Compilation appeared in a Reeses Peanutbutter Cups commercial (see video below.)
Gotta' love the modulation that begins around the 0:47 mark. Though this piece was programmed with the VICE emulator, it's beautifully done with interesting visuals. I only wish it would go on longer.
Polygon Ring Songs From The Season Labs
[Kahvi Collective :: 2010] Free Download
8/10
This album almost didn't happen, but I'm relieved that it did. It's a beautiful collection of tracks by Bulgarian artist Polygon Ring that, in his own words, "ranges from tender and hazy interludes, through wavering instrumental hip-hop pieces, to lengthy messed up glitch affairs."
Fans of Boards of Canada and Autechre should certainly lend this album an ear as their influences on Polygon Ring's sounds and techniques are pretty out in the open. Be that as it may, he mixes and molds the warped tape loops and textural beats into arrangements of his own, incorporating hints of traditional music from his ancestral heritage, hip-hop leaniencies, and recordings of live performance with radio receiver hardware.
His personal style really shines in the track Clouds And Other Contraptions, which happens to be a favorite of mine. A constant drone tone provides meditative bliss while glitchy rhythms dance around you and a distant voice, sounding like it was recorded in a cathedral, sings an unintelligible but heartfelt hymn. I hope Polygon Ring decides to explore this sound in future releases as it is both gorgeous and unique. I also quite enjoy his shorter interludes which feature warm, Bach-like organ solos, and the instrumental hip-hop joint "A Most Unusual Camera" that includes a lazy flute loop, shimmery synths and a sampled Rod Serling monologue from the Twilight Zone. While listening through this album from start to finish, it's easy to tell that these songs were composed by someone who has an undying appreciation and love for this style of music; he handles it with care. Overall this album just feels good and I recommend checking it out.
So how did this album come about? Mr. Polygon Ring took some time out to talk about that and answer some other questions about the release.
Bc: I read in the album description on Kahvi.org that you were urged by fans to create this album based on a single track that was heard in a podcast? How long did you work on Songs From The Season Labs before releasing it into the universe?
PR: This is not how this happened. It was actually Nik, the head of Kahvi, who found out that I was performing at last year's Artmospheric festival and was curious what I was up to musically, since I had not released anything on Kahvi for the last several years. I sent him the tracks that I played there and he was eager to release them right away. I was convinced by his positive attitude that releasing them to a wider audience would actually be a good thing. Most of these tracks were from older albums and EPs of mine that I had only sent out among various friends and never intended for world-wide release, but I was converted. Still, I wanted some time to work on what exactly to include in the album, polish a bit more some of the tracks that end up on it, and have the whole release properly mastered. This took about an year to happen, and being featured on the podcast was like a little nudge for me to lead things to completion. The album itself contains pieces dating back to 2004, and each following year till 2010 is represented by at least two tracks.
Bc: Ah, I see. So which track did you complete first, and which track was the most enjoyable to compose?
PR: Must have been either "Twisty Little Passages" or "Istedi". Both these little interludes were written about 6 years ago. Nik was keen on having the first one, and I'm pretty partial to the latter for more reasons than just the sheer sound of it. So, leading to the second part of the question, hard as it is to single a track out, I'd say this is a draw between "Istedi" and "Induce" which featured an enjoyable live performance on two radio receivers. Recording "Clouds and Other Contraptions" was a pleasant experience too. It was recorded live and has subtle references to traditional Bulgarian music with its constant drone, specific rhythmic structure, and the dvoyanka parts (that's a wooden double flute).
Bc: What artists inspire you most to make music?
PR: I enjoy tons of different music, but I guess the Autechre and Boards of Canada influences are the most obvious. Perhaps Machinefabriek has part in my choice of sonic palette as well.
Bc: Who is your favorite up and coming artist right now?
PR: There's a Bulgarian artist called Nurthice who recently released his debut album "Otono" on VU-US. Highly recommended. I'd like to mention Smartech too, a friend of mine who has been making music for as long as I can remember, but he has also released it primarily among friends until recently, so I guess "up and coming" still applies. You'll be rewarded if you make a trip to http://smartech.bandcamp.com
Bc: What was your favorite T.V. show while growing up?
PR: I was never much of a TV kid, but I have rather fond memories of "Nu, Pogodi!", a Russian cartoon that was very popular in Bulgaria during my single-digit years.
Polygon Ring doesn't have an official website or MySpace page (how rare!) but you can keep up with his musical endeavors on Soundcloud for now. If you're a fellow music maker, you may want to explore his large collection of free electronic drum samples via the stylish http://blips.hit.bg website. Also, if you use Renoise at all, you might find his Renoise Track Generator page interesting.
Yimino
", but some of them contain the addition of live-sounding acoustic drums and an almost krautrock feel, such as the track "140" which extends into something of a lengthy, Neu-ish jam. A mid-century cocktail bbq feel still dominates with dreamy vibraphone, some vintage strings, uplifting chord progressions, and psychadelic sounds which would be a joy to play on vinyl. You can definitely hear some new ideas being explored here but you never veer too far away from their signature sound. I find this album to be a graceful exit for Plone and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 
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