Mr. Moods – The Strings of Life

Hip Hop, Instrumental // By: NoahcloseAuthor: Noah Email: noah@netlabelism.com
More Authors Posts (8) // 10/08/2012 // No Comments

Where to begin?  Christian Denis (aka Mr. Moods) is yet another netlabel heavy-hitter with a great backlog of beats to his name.  For those not awfully familiar with his work, browsing Bandcamp would be a good place to start.  His latest releases are singles, “Existence” and “Some Other Time,” the latter featuring a vocalist who goes by the moniker MarLikNun.  For this review, I’d like to focus on his latest full-length album, titled The Strings of Life.

Mr. Moods’ music is, well, moody… pensive, meditative.  His influences aren’t hard to pin down: one can definitely hear nods to DJ Shadow or Krush, and his compositions are very consistent.  In fact, maybe they’re a bit too consistent… track 11, “Trapped,” leaves me feeling just that. By the time I’ve gone mid way through the album, the arrangements become overly-predictable, leaving me feeling as though I’m listening to a chopped-up DJ mix instead of an 18-song LP.  However, when I’ve reached “Istanbul,” I’m back in the groove again and carried through to the end quite nicely.  What might make this album more interesting would be a decision to either make it shorter, cutting out some of the more redundant bits, or present it as a continuous composition, like a “live” mix focusing on the more unique sounds or arrangements overall.  Nevertheless, The Strings of Life, as well as a great deal of Mr. Moods’ music, is very well put together and recommended listening.

For those who prefer more traditional netlabel audio, check out his releases on Dusted Wax Kingdom, here as Prototype 68 and here as Mr. Moods (among other releases).

Link to Release Page:  The Strings of Life, by Mr. Moods

Syndrôm – Nomades En No Man’s Land [BP060]

Ambient & Experimental, Broken Beat, Downbeat & Downtempo, Drum & Bass, Instrumental // By: simiolioliocloseAuthor: simioliolio Email: simon@netlabelism.com
More Authors Posts (40) // 27/07/2012 // No Comments

The existence of net labels is a wonderful example of globalisation being put to good use. Tens of thousands of people running their own labels for zero profit would have seemed like a ridiculous prospect for the hundreds of label owners before the turn of the millennium. Now that the netaudio scene is in full flow, it is exciting to imagine how advances in web design will change the way we browse netlabel websites in the coming years.

I recently stumbled across Bypass net label, which has thrown a vicious curve-ball when considering the ways in which netlabel content is presented to the viewer. The site does not present you with a big list of mp3s, social music widgets, and a sensible menu bar. Instead, it is an emulation of a Unix-like application which runs in your browser. To display a list of releases, you type ‘list’ at the command line. To get more information about a release, you enter its catalogue number. From here, you can use the ‘play’ and ‘get’ commands with appropriate arguments to stream or download tracks from the chosen release.

This is, of course, completely bonkers. The primary goal for web developers is to present information in the most readable, functional, and stylish way possible. A large percentage of casual internet users would not have a clue what was going on after reaching the homepage. Although its lack of readability and usability is quite severe, I personally think it is a fantastic idea. The brittle interaction required by the user is forcing them to engage with the site in a more intense way. They must read instructions carefully. They must play a major part in their own experience. They must make a decision to play just one track, or bundle tracks into a playlist, but using a very basic interface. I think this heavily user-dependant quality gives the music on the label a bit of extra value. What do you think, is this netlabelism gone too far? Or is this an inspiring example of diversifying the netlabel experience?

The favourite release I played (whilst thoroughly enjoying the audio player!) was Syndrôm’s. Melodic, glitchy, beat-driven, sample-laiden electronica, which is always a winner in my book. It is 20 tracks long and took the artist around a year to complete. There is a lot of Luke Vibert shining through here; quirky use of sampling, dusty beats, uplifting melodics, and witty genre-hopping. If you are not surprised by the mashed jungle explosion in ‘La Vallée Noire’, then you either have no soul, or you need to turn it up. Likewise, the hiphop MCing at the end of the track is delightfully unexpected.

Like a lot of longer albums, the overall consistency of quality is low. The energy is constant, and each track seems to bounce off each subsequent track, but some tracks are significantly stronger than others (for example, ‘Oppression’ just doesn’t quite exhibit the same delicacy and care as found with other tracks). The production is good, but some sounds can be a little bland and raw (like the main hook on “Dala Dala”). However these ‘stick-out’ sounds are so few in number, and bound by such short passages of ever-changing content, this does not become too much of an issue. This music is certainly not ‘current’ by any means, and many of the techniques heard are borrowed from the last 20 years of sample-based triphop (on labels like Ninja Tune). However, although it has all been done before, there is a certain individuality to this music which left me strangely satisfied.

So, all in all, a great release, on an innovative netlabel. It is sad for me to inform you that this label has bitten the dust, and will not be releasing any more material. But with the website only taking up a minuscule amount of server space, and all the content streaming from archive.org, this delightful website is bound to linger in cyberspace for a fair ‘ol while.

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Deeplink to: Release page (archive.org, there are no permalinks at Bypass!)

Deeplink to: Label Website

Relative Q – Small Craft Exercise Caution [one030]

Ambient & Experimental, Audio, Broken Beat, IDM, Indie & Indietronica, Instrumental // By: SimonVBcloseAuthor: SimonVB Email: simon.vanbockstal@gmail.com
More Authors Posts (23) // 10/07/2012 // 1 Comment

A little over five years ago (on June 8th, 2007 to be precise), Paul Zyla published an album under his alias Relative Q. This release, titled ‘Small Craft Exercise Caution’, is one of my favourite netlabel releases of all time so I thought it only fair to share it with all of you. The album was the 30th release on One Records, a great label also representing the likes of Emil Klotzsch or Makunouchi Bento. This label specializes in what they describe as “edgey electronic music, occasionally straying off into the corners of post and experimental pop”.  What I associate with a lot of their releases, however, is pure, raw melancholy. And none captures these emotions so brilliantly as Relative Q does.

Paul Zyla lists his influences as Herbie Hancock, pop music in general and Brian Eno. But above all he is inspired by, as he himself puts it, “an overwhelming sense of melancholy”. We’ve heard these terms thrown around before, but in this case, I must say it’s absolutely true. Most of the tracks are centered around the duet between electric piano sounds and drum machines. The drums are often bent and warped and magnified by baroque amounts of reverb. The result? Electronic music that is about as heart-wrenching as the synth lead in Autechre’s Clipper, though sounding a lot more organic than the latter.

The tempo and intensity of the songs on this release aren’t exactly fixed, as they are largely dependent on the emotion conveyed through the songs. Where some of them actually seem rather upbeat (the cheap disco beat from ‘Fairer Shores’ comes to mind), even those songs carry in them so much feeling it just oozes out of your speakers. Don’t be fooled by the face superficiality of the arpeggiators or some of the drum elements, this release delivers where it counts. And when Relative Q turns on the hurt, there’s really nowhere to run. ‘The ghosts came quickly’ is better avoided if you’re having a bit of an off-day, lest you spend the rest of it in bed, eating cereal. ‘No Sympathy’ is just that: an unrelenting barrage of snare hits in an almost 2-step-like drumbeat combined with an assault of spacey synths and a bass line that is not quite growling but moody nonetheless. I enjoyed the long parts of static in the opening and closing song my first few times listening, but they’re about the only part of the album that feel a bit too over the top. No, I take that back. They’re just right. All in all, this is one of the best soundtracks moody people could ever wish for. I have no idea what Pittsburg, Pennsylvania is like, but it must be one dark place during winter. [SVB]

Relative Q – Sun Rises over the Undeserved

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Deep link to the Release Page