Frank Kvitta

My baptism to the Church of Hard Techno Wisdom was performed by Technasia back in the days of “Hydra” (see my first post on this blog), but the archbishop of the discipline is definitely DJ Rush. And like the Pope, DJ Rush is always right. Which is why you have to listen to Frank Kvitta.

Kvitta gave one of his tapes to DJ Rush in a night club, and Rush liked it enough to invite him to release an EP on his label Kne' Deep. This should be enough to throw any hard techno amateur to his local music dispatch with the right spelling of ‘kvitta’ written on the back of his hand with a thick black pen.

As expected, his stuff (not everything though) is amazingly good hard techno. The first video was apparently made by one of Frank Kvitta's friends, Mario Ranieri.



The second video features Pet Duo, another rising star in hard techno.



Another video by Marco Ranieri, taken in a Hungarian club in Budapest. What is simply über-cool about this video is that it opens with the best track from the Donnie Darko soundtrack by Michael Andrews, one of my favourite ambient works.



Update: so Kvitta is my best pick for this summer. Hardtechno vol. 3 is wonderful: it wakes me up. It's how spending most of my time looking for contemporary classic musicians has sent me straight back to 130 BPM hard techno, the closest to hardcore I have ever been since an old apocryphal mix by Jeff Mills. The tracklist is going to provide me with new material for months.

Eminem

As a supplement to the previous Mos Def posting, here's one of the acceptably good clips by Eminem, who wrote some great pages in the book of American white trash hip hop despite the cohorts of WASP zombies who followed his lead.



Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is also very much fun to watch, use your online video-fetching skills.

Mos Def

To my own surprise, I am enjoying Mos Def a lot. It all started with this track “Respiration” from the Backstar duo he is part of. Here's my discovery thread, from Steve Reich to Mos Def. “Respiration” appears on Howie B's Another Late Night. Howie B participated to the Reich:Remixed album with DJ Spooky, Ken Ishii, Andrea Parker and more geniuses.

But back to Blackstar:



After that, I decided Mos Def deserved another serious try. So I rushed to his Most Definite best-of album, and there it is: “Ms Fat Booty”. Funny as hell, tends to remind me of Cypress Hill's “Freak Bitch.”



Maybe Mos Def's appearance in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes played a role in my recent interest for the American rapper.

A look back at Laurent Garnier

Laurent Garnier released an appropriately titled Retrospective album in 2006. This is far more interesting than a best of, insofar as the selection rests, in theory, on the artist's personal favourites instead of the top sales argument.

The album has my favourite Laurent Garnier track, and definitely one that I would include on my imaginary introduction to techno: “Raw Cut”, originally from the album Shot in the Dark. I remember loving this track so much that I could play it backwards (using SoundEdit 16 on my Performa 5400) and still enjoy it. I still play it two or three times in a row when I listen to it.

The live recording on “Man With The Red Face” reminds me the St Germain concert we attended with Am. a few years ago. French techno/house has a lot to offer.

Max Richter

I just (re)discovered Max Richter. Discovered it on this video (the music comes from his 2006 album). Rediscovered it because I am a huge fan of the Future Sound of London (FSOL), and Max Richter is actually everywhere in their music, producing, playing. He's the piano on FSOL's “Max” from Dead Cities. He also plays the mellotron for Vashti Bunyan; I cannot wait to listen to some of it.

Sometimes I spend months without finding any music that really catches my attention. I am almost sure that I am back on track! The last musician to have this impact on me was Nik Turner (see this post), and this seems to have been ages ago.

Front Line Assembly's “Millenium”

Millenium (1994) by Front Line Assembly (FLA) is one of my favourite industrial rock albums.
Too bad there is no music video for its first track, “Vigilante”, which starts with these unforgettable lines:

We are not the same. I'm an American, you're a sick asshole.
Feels good to exercise your rights, doesn't it? (sound of shootings)

I wondered where the samples come from. They are from Falling Down (1993), by Joel Schumacher and starring Michael Douglas.

“Surface Patterns” is one of the best tracks of the album. The vocal “Victim of a Criminal” is probably its weakest.

Herzeleid and Band Updates

Herzeleid is a really good resource on all things Rammstein-esque. Its feed sends me the essential news about the band: tours, singles, albums, and important updates on side projects in which Rammstein members take part.

I wish there was a kind of portal somewhere to play the role of Herzeleid for virtually any band, providing a feed with tours and releases. I thought Last.fm was going to provide something close to that, but it did not. Discogs is far from anything that interactive (it is an excellent catalog nonetheless).