Areal Records - search n destroy

mmmmmmn, granularity.

If it doesn't have all these Ada tracks everyone keeps talking about I will cry.

As I said on my blog the other day, I pulled out Bis Neun again recently and was shocked to remember how great it sounded, esp. the Metope tracks!

my picks of the recent material: basteroid's "sympathy for disruption" (both sides), metope's "discordant", ada's "arriba amoeba", the a1 and b1 on basteroid's "against luftwiderstand"

why has the dmx krew / drexciya electronerd axis ignored this stuff?? they seem to associate it with labels like playhouse, i think it's coming from somewhere else entirely. far to the left of kompakt or klang, in terms of sheer techiness.

Date of Release: 19th of April 2004

. . . this on slsk yet?

You people...

I can't find the strength to get excited about threads on here about labels that release 12" singles, and then only get active when the label releases a compilation CD.

I have Rabimmelblahblah but I haven't listened to it yet.

(ok this doesn't really hold up more than a little way into the track. now it's more SET YO BODY FREE SET YO BODY FREE &c&c&c)

(ok now it's back to how it was originally!)

YEAH!!!!

(just got "2r2r2r2bb")

i still dont really like their artwork though

And I'm a huge fan of Commodore 64 music (it was my first music love as a ten year old)

So, I guess this is why I like them.

And I'll certainly be enjoying myself tonight!

Has she milked the cows too heavily so that she had been catapulted into another dimension?"

= brilliant / out-kompakting kompakt descriptoramas...

"You wake up on the sidewalk, having absorbed some gravel into the sides of your cheeks...."

or "you wake up on the sidewalk from a failed attempt to milk it..."

not x-post:
http://www.areal-records.com/

they have samples of all the records they've released...it's definitely worth checking out.

It's always seemed that way whenever I've downloaded tidbits before... am I missing a huge amount not getting a compilation/mix at the same time as I order 'Blondie'?

Which I am going to have to import via the Kompakt store (way overdue, but can't find it online anywhere else in the UK).

I don't think any of the rest of the Areal stuff sounds like Ada. Bis Neunzehn is worth a punt.

Maybe there's one I haven't tried... but ordering from Kompakt isn't really that much hassle. I can get a few other things while I'm there which I've not been able to find either. They may throw in stickers!

If you're looking for more Ada-esque musik (who said Abba-esque?), might I suggest you Triple R's Friends mix disc a spin (or six)? For I, for one (an apparent minority), think Blondie's weak tracks outnumber its strong tracks at a rate of 3:1.

As far as representative of Areal's sound, I would mos-definitely pick up 2Rabimmel... first (and if you like and/or love it work backward through Bis Neunzehn and Bis Neun). After many (car, iPod, home stereo) listens, 2Rabimmel... sounds more and more like a wholly coherent, single artist album than any compilation I've heard in a long time. It's amazing how like-minded the work of the Areal collective appears. And I mean that in a good way. A very, very good way.

With Ada's two noteworthy tracks adding balance to the thick crunch of her labelmates' work product, of course.

GREAT TRACKS: Eve, Cool My Fire (I'm Burning), The Red Shoes, Each & Every One, Maps

Very Good Tracks: Lifedriver, Les Danseuses, Cool My Fire

Pretty Good Track: Our Love Never Dies

Crap: Who Pays The Bill

That seems pretty good to me!

I also think both Bis Neun and Bis Neunzehn are pretty essential; I'd probably give the edge to the latter on account of the "Believer" and especially "Against Luftwiderstand".

such a lovely record

Yeah I like it too - I was trying to underrate everything so as to be generous to Zimmer's assessment (and STILL five tracks came out as "great". My usual feeling is that "Eve" especially is one of the best things ever).

Yet upon further (i.e. three more weeks of) review (and please keep in mind that outside of Blondie I blindly pledged my faith to all that is Arealism back when I first heard [how's this for irony?] Ada's "Blindhouse" on Triple R's Friends back in late '02/early '03), I'm sticking with my opinion that, overall, the album – as an album – is underwhelming.

I’ll readily concede that part of the basis for my conclusion is the fact that I have been listening to the primary (and the vast majority of compelling) elements of both "Each And Everyone (Blindhouse)" (under the guise Ada’s original version of "Blindhouse") and "Lifedriver" (under the guise of Metope’s "Lifedriver" featuring Ada) since late and early ‘02 respectively.

In short, I’d have liked to hear Ada do/release an album chock-full of previously unreleased material, particularly when given the opportunity that is a full-length. Consequently as a consequence of the incredible depth and creativity I initially heard in both of the abovementioned classic tracks, my expectations of her long-player were greater than the recycled (i.e. remixed) material she delivered. As I think I implied upthread, Ada’s contributions to the 2Rabimmel… compilation are not only necessary (i.e. give balance) to it, but also demonstrate her talent (i.e. ability) in a way that Blondie, as a whole, doesn’t.

That leaves, for me: "Eve," "Cool My Fire (I’m Burning)," and "Our Love Never Dies" as the three GREAT TRACKS; "The Red Shoes" as the lone Very Good Track; "Maps" and "Les Danseuses" as the two Pretty Good Tracks (even if the former is recycled/remixed a la albeit differently than "Blindhouse" + "Lifedriver," and I skip past the latter regularly); 3.5 recycled/remixed tracks two of which that don’t surpass the originals (the second, slowed-down, not-burning version of "Cool My Fire"? An OK outro, but…); and I can’t really add anything to the discussion of "Who Pays The Bill" that hasn’t been written already.

My scorecard then (even if I am loathe to break an album down like this) has Blondie with 3 Great, 1 Very Good, 1.5 Pretty Good (read: OK), 3.5 Recycled/Rehashed/Meh tracks and 1 Crap(per).

Perhaps I overstated my weak:strong track ratio upthread, but not by much.

not that there's anything wrong w/ this relativism (which is i guess a fancy way of saying "all our terms are subjective, duh") except i have noticed that paradoxically it seems to lead to more "groupthink" rather than less (perhaps by encouraging lazy thinking?).

Dunno! I think the problem is not that my cod-dialectics runs up against a limit, but that it does allow for lazy thinking as you say - but then I'd say that simple oppositions of hardness/tweeness are already inviting a certain laziness. If Areal are simply a more twee version of [x], and if that tweeness is not in and of itself valuable somehow, what purpose does Areal serve?

The K-Punk-style argument here - "Areal serves the purpose of llegitimating the false consciousness of a mass of bourgeois listeners whose fantastical enjoyment is structured by tweeness" - is not, for me, sufficient; it imports a certain vision of ethical engagement with music as a deus ex machina in order to resolve the deadlock of positing in the first instance what music is supposed to do.

All I can do is attempt to explain in as accurate a manner as possible why, say, "Against Luftwiderstand" hits me so hard, when I know that it is in fact not the hardest thing ever (allowing for definitions of "hardness" - let's pretend that in this context we're talking about a certain type of sonic muscularity and harshness). This counter-intuitive perception of hardness is not only in me as much as it is in the music; we should also insist that it is in the music as much as it is in me. i.e. what it is it in the music that my subjective perspective is interlocking with?

Chalking it up to dialectics is also insufficient if I can't explain how that's actually working for me, and I guess I would say that on the level of the sound-as-I-hear-it, "Against Luftwiderstand" tends to posit a certain fragility (those big whirring trebly synths) which it then proceeds to stomp on our consume with its rollicking bassy groove...but then the fragility returns as a sort of spectral presence in the form of the astonishingly nervous acidic bass riff Basteroid intermittently deploys (it's probably hard to specify which bassline i'm actually talking about - unless you already know the one I mean we'd probably have to sit down and listen to it together so I could signpost it) - a bassline which seems to somehow symbolize a certain doubt or concern about the tune's own destructive programme (along the lines of "what am I doing?/what have I done???").

As you say, the same dialectical operation might be done in reverse for the Tresor axis you mention - I think both can be correct because, as I've argued elsewhere, the impact of music is not, I suspect, tied to some ideal implementation of certain "correct" elements (e.g. Hardness NOT Tweeness), but rather to the articulation of something that is minimally different; in the absence of absolute sonic extremism this difference will always, I think, be somewhat dialectical (and even in the case of sonic extemism, the impact of a piece of noise unlike anything we have heard for before is shaped by the fact that we are hearing it as music).

To return to the issue of the subjective perspective (and the difficulty it causes for establishing and agreeing upon terms), it might be helpful to clarify what we mean by this - for me, it is simply the "intertextual" understanding that you never arrive at a piece of music with a clean slate; you always bring with you the sum total of your listening experience (in the sense of listening to, reacting to and thinking about music).

In this sense "Against Luftwiderstand" is not merely a dialectical process in and of itself, but a point in the dialectical process of my own listening. So another way of putting your relativist definitional quandary ("this house is minimal" / "compared to what?") is "this house is minimal/minimal for whom?".

I don't think this deadlock is easily resolvable, except insofar as we can answer this question: for whom? For me. The burden of music criticism then becomes to sketch out the vantage point from which we can say "this house is minimal", the particular point which grounds our universality. I think the problems start piling on when we assume that this vantage point is itself universal, or we simply incorporate an accepted vantage point as our own (on the assumption that it is universal). This is the cause of the lazy groupthink you refer to, I suspect:

"This house is minimal"

"Compared to what?"

"Other house music"

"Okay then, minimal for whom?"

"Philip Sherburne, and thefore myself"

(with apologies to Philip!)

BTW Vahid, I love that Tarrida mix! Sadly it's another CD I have lost and now never see around! (Tragically, I recently lost a whole swag of other CDs, including Platinum Breakz 1 and 2!!!)

Anyone listen to that new Roan EP? I really like it so far: dense, funky in its way, more "experimental" than the usual Areal fare, I'd say

Listening to Bis Neun again today - time will not tarnish its amazingness. That said it's easy to forget just how monstrous Areal sounded in 2003/2004, and it seems a bit sad that the music's basic impulse is absent at the moment - is there any (good) clunky dance music at the mo? Apart from UK funky house at times obv? Am I forgetting something?

I wonder what Misc's Crunch Time album will sound like to my 2008 ears if I put it on now.

I will always love now and forever Metope's "Selvsyn", what a WTF groove.

Although still not as WTF as that weird dialectics screed I posted in this thread.

Glancing back over it I think I did a decent job capturing what is so loveable about this music in this piece (if I do say so myself). I remember being slightly disappointed by "Sonnenbrilliant" because it seemed like Basteroid had started to confuse toughness with toughness with hardness, and ended up leapfrogging Sender Records to end up closer to Black Strobe (circa 2004) territory. Which is not a bad thing but it felt like a move away from the, erm, tough fleshiness that I associate with Areal. In Areal's robo-battles there should always be goblets of bloody, quivering flesh lying strewn through the field. That's why tracks like "Against Luftwiderstand" and "Libertango" feel oddly melancholy: these killing machines still feel pain as their parts are slowly, painfully dismembered.

Yes grandma, I can buttertrance

I still fucking love this label. Did anyone ever get around to checking out the AR series? AR3 is pretty good and could actually work in the context of a more contemporary set (ie stripped back not Basteroid-excessive).

Got this the other day - http://www.discogs.com/release/1537492 - the Koze track is great.

Loving Onze's Goodbye Lino at the moment. Probably too 'Kompakty' for current tastemakers though.

The B-side is more upbeat, the A-side is lovely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20hEpc9G2Zo

New LP from Areal's Ada on DJ Koze's Pampa. Nice work, features a reedit of the great tracks of the Cologne Tape thing (intro) and only two that will danceable.

i have great memories of seeing Ada DJ in New York several years ago at some place off Canal Street.

It's not much of follow up to 'bis neunzehn' but Areal have released 'lazerwhales' a digital only comp of recent release. It starts well with Onze.

I had never heard Basteroid's "29 Forever" from 2006 before now but it's brilliant, maybe sleeker / more tech-house than his classic sound but it's just about up there with "Against Luftwiderstand" for me in bringing the "weep for me, I created Skynet" machine-melancholy vibes.

areal is such a unique label, it's hard to slot that crunchy blippy terminator apocalypse sound into any preexisting niches. i've never heard areal records in a club

clangin and bangin

Yeah I talk a lot upthread about the uniqueness of their sonic attack, which maybe Metope's work captured most clearly/consistently.