April 27, 2011
Eliot Lipp: The Days EP (August 2006) Sequential Circuits keyboard might be missing a few buttons, but one listen to Eliot Lipp’s debut full-length and it becomes clear that those particular triggers must not be important. Recorded in a shifty Chicago apartment on just that old 70’s synth and an equally questionable sampler, Lipp creates tracks that sound far beyond his limited means. Born in Tacoma Washington, Lipp went through the time-honored discovery of hip-hop throughout the 90’s. Tribe, RZA and Hieroglyphics all made the cut. Upon moving to the Bay Area in 1998, he dove headfirst into San Fran’s neoteric hip-hop scene. Lipp’s fluid instrumentals are a fresh to the ears, yet they already sound like classic cuts with dust settled deep into the grooves. MCs would love to get all over these tracks, but the songs just don’t require them. Enjoy the layered moments of spacey synth and gritty drums. They are all you need.
____________________________________________
Eliot Lipp: Tacoma Mockingbird (February 21, 2006) Coming across like Stevie Wonder as re-worked by Dabrye or Yesterday’s New Quintet, it is quite clear the producer has a special gift for rewiring fractured funk and hiphop in his own characteristic fashion. It’s funny, Tacoma Mockingbird is the perfect companion album to go along with Freescha’s Head Warlock Double Stare, both albums look back to a time when synths buzzed and the noise from recording was embraced and both are frankly great fun to listen to. There doesn’t seem to be any pretence in Lipp’s sound, rather he just wants us to listen up and rock out, a refreshing sentiment from either hip hop or electronic music. It would seem there’s a world of neon-lit beauty out there, and with Lipp’s help we’re going to find it.
____________________________________________
Eliot Lipp: Steele Street Scraps (October 2006) On Lipp’s third LP, Steele Street Scraps, he collaborated with renowned electronic musicians John Hughes and Earmint. The Washington native coats an array of dancey drum samples for his Steele Street Scraps EP, which, with seven newbies and a few remixes, is a little longer than average. A couple of scratches sneak in and out of whining Moog lines for ‘The Intro,’ and the brief ‘Gangsta Shit’ loops wouldn’t have been out of place on Gang Starr’s Daily Operation. The party dies down somewhat when vinyl cracks lend a cozy sense of nostalgia on a gorgeously layered sampled bed of guitar harmonics and bass called ‘Harmonix;’ it’s weighty evidence that this beat maker, as much as he seems to dig on his older keyboards, is consistently surprising his audience with a colorful approach.
____________________________________________
Puncture
 Plus Device: Puncture (November 2006) It’s easy to get caught up in the guessing game surrounding Plus Device’s identity. Their web site is coyly evasive and Hefty itself only concedes that the group is “a secret side project of two well-known electronic producers” and one with apparent Detroit connections. While Plus Device’s sound is far from generic, its heavy embrace of classic Detroit techno — basic drum machines, Moog synthesizers, Rhodes piano, the Roland TB-303 — tends to camouflage the individuating touches that reveal immediately a particular artist’s signature. No matter whose hands are twirling the knobs, Puncture’s fresh fusion of classic and contemporary electronic sounds will strongly appeal to fans of classic (Mantronix, Drexciya, Model 500, Kraftwerk) and more current acts.
____________________________________________
Body Heat – EP
Plus Device: Body Heat EP (February 2006) The actual identity of Plus Device is closely guarded by Hefty!. Described as “secret duo project,” Plus Device “creates electro-funk/electro-pop music that is destined for instant cult classic status.” Many rumors have it that at least half of Plus Device is Jimmy Edgar.
April 26, 2011
1320 Records is proud to release a brand new EP from the futurist dub maestro: Bass Science. On Out Of Step Bass Science infuses his unique blend of dubstep with wonky drum programming and shimmering synth lines that blend a sonic concoction fit for a rockstar night on the Miami strip. Fine-tuned through hours of focus in the studio and reinforced by enthralled audiences across the world, Out Of Step marks the beginning of what will be a huge year for Bass Science. Check out the tour dates below to catch Bass Science on the road and keep your ears tuned for more releases to come.
Tour Dates:
05/05/2011: Johnson City, TN – Spring Street Music Hall
05/06/2011: Asheville, NC – The Garage at Biltmore
05/07/2011: San Francisco, CA – Public Works
05/11/2011: Denver, CO – Vinyl
05/27/2011: Richmond, VA – Canal Club
06/17/2011: Milwaukee, WI – The Miramar Theatre
06/18/2011: Bellefontaine, OH – The Blastoff Festival
07/09/2011: Randal, WA – Innertia Festival
Click HERE to grab the new EP
April 25, 2011
“Brolabs is all about collaborating with friends I like to work with and whose music I respect. Each track on Brolabs is a unique collaboration between each artist and myself, not a faceless email trade of songs and samples, the way alot remixes are done these days. Close friends, great artists, quality time and good music…..that’s Brolabs.” – Eliot Lipp
Click HERE to get the new album
Check out what people are saying about “Future, Sex, Computers”:
“Intricate and full of deep colors, The Polish Ambassador (aka David Sugalski) is determined to craft a soundscape more picturesque than any of his contemporaries. Transcending mood and genre, he exhibits his artist prowess to the fullest with his new full-length release Future, Sex,
Computers.” – The Untz.com – Full article HERE
“The album is an energetic, body-grooving, head-nodding, toe-tapping, throw your arms up in the air ode to our extraterrestrial counter-parts.” – Lost in Sound – Full article HERE
“I found his unique mix of hip hop and electronic music to be extremely interesting and refreshing, especially in an industry overcrowded with copy cat artists.” – Vacay Wave – Full article HERE
OMFC – Full article HERE
Headstash – Full article HERE
Glitch Drop – Full article HERE
Bass Addict – Full articel HERE
Afromonk – Full article HERE
None Backwards – Full article HERE
Crayon Beats – Full article HERE
Sample This – Full article HERE
Peanut Butter Jams – Full article HERE
507 Projex – Full article HERE
April 20, 2011
Brood: Brood XIII (April 2008) An electronica supergroup comprising Hefty Records’ owner John Hughes alongside Retina.IT’s Lino Monaco and Nicola Buono, Brood goes some way towards maintaining the idea that IDM can still sound progressive and relevant in 2008: lead track ‘Brood XIII’ twitches and pops its way through an intricate piece of beat programming, establishing a skeletal framework of crisp, detailed sound to immerse yourself in. More percussive delights await on ‘Attack Lemanu’, an Aphex-style uptempo production filled with alien modulations and droning synth weirdness. Lovely.
___________________________________________
Immediate Action #11
John Hughes: Immediate Action #11 (October 2001) The first of a series of limited edition compact discs from Hefty Records, this album was originally hand pressed by Hughes himself.
___________________________________________
Confidence In Duber
Slicker: Confidence In Duber (September 1998) Slicker is a fairly straightforward project for someone like John Hughes, whose work with groups like Bill Ding and Turtletoes moved between the strange and the incredibly strange — Confidence in Duber has Hughes (along with fellow Chicago musicians like Ryan Rapsys) laying out peacefully buzzy and occasionally frantic electronic programming, with all of the beepy grooves and drum’n'bass aesthetics one might expect. There’s a definite sense of composition to the record’s tracks, which is certainly a good thing — Hughes puts a great deal of movement into his programming, and the addition of organic instruments (such as Rapsys‘ guitar on ‘Prader’) allows for a few funky grooves to emerge as well. ___________________________________________
 Slicker: The Latest (June 2001) The third Slicker release dovetails Hughes‘ obsession with textural techno and breakbeats. Utilizing various loop and sampling strategies — like pairing vocal samples (courtesy of Asia Argento; yes, her dad’s the horror film director), looped around three drum machines and threaded through a keyboard playing one endless chord slipping in an out of an airy mix on ‘Hard Track’ — Hughes walks a line between machine-like precision and warm musicality. In utilizing musicians such as guitarist Takeshi Mitsuhashi and pianist Christopher Case on ‘Open Huru,’ Hughes leaves a bit more to chance than on his previous outings. Allowing individual expression in a mix project is risky, but the results are more than worth it. That’s the vibe of the entire album, each cut feels as if it’s a prelude to something else, something grander coming down the pipe. But there’s no frustration since upon deeper listening the grandeur is contained within these densely packed loops and rhythm tracks that insinuate themselves slowly and subtly over the listener in a manner that suggests aural seduction. Well done. ___________________________________________
 Slicker: We All Have A Plan (May 2004) For Hughes, the common chord on We All Have a Plan, Slicker’s fourth album and a pan-global, soul-jazz masterpiece made out of bits and pieces, is elemental and spiritual. “Honest” and “organic” are words Hughes uses repeatedly to describe his blueprint. And in the wake of similar cut-and-paste excursions by kindred spirit colleagues, Plan smuggles modern electronics away from indie-techno dilettantes back to the timeless land of song. The collaborative voices and jazz tones you hear throughout the record belong to soul, jazz, funk and world music’s forgotten heroes. Legendary Motor City funk-jazz cats Phil Ranelin and Wendell Harrison illuminate the laid-back funk collage of ‘God Bless This Mess, This Test We Pass’. Vocalist Khadijah Anwar, once a 14 year-old soul wunderkind for mid-’70s funkateers Sugar Hill, shines on the Zapp-like electro-funk of ‘Knock Me Down Girl,’ while Detroit MC’s Phat Kat and Elzhi (of Slum Village fame) add a future urban element to the proceedings. Singer Lindsay Anderson (L’Altra, Telefon Tel Aviv) gives ‘A Strong Donkey’ a sultry jazzed-out bliss, while guest vocalist/trumpeter James Cromwell grumbles alongside her. Also appearing on the title song, and throughout Plan, is Dan Boadi, a Ghanaian vocalist residing in Chicago, who Hughes estimates affected the album as much as anyone.
___________________________________________
All My Friends Have To Go (Instrumentals)
___________________________________________
All My Friends Have To Go
 Some Water and Sun: All My Friends Have To Go (June 2005) Fresh off the heels of his We All Have a Plan release in 2004, Slicker (aka John Hughes) joined in collaboration with Spanova’s Shin Tasaki for a series of sessions in Hughes’ Chicago studios. All My Friends Have to Go is Some Water and Sun’s first full-length to use plants and gardening as metaphors; Stevie Wonder beat them to the punch decades ago with “Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants”. However, the comparisons to plants form on other levels too, as Slicker and Tasaki have crafted a 12-song salad of electronic compositions fueled with R&B, soul-jazz, a shade of quiet storm, and a bit of modern-day micro-house thrown in for good measure. The record moves smoothly and evenly from song to song, including ‘Watering,’ which is an ode to a housewife’s thoughts of seducing a man watering his plants and could easily be used in the series Desperate Housewives as a subtle music bed. The return of Hefty’s house chanteuse, L’Altra frontwoman Lindsay Anderson, is a welcome surprise, and her distinct and sultry voice adds to a musical jambalaya that is already enticing.
April 18, 2011
1320 Records is happy to announce that April 20th, ELIOT LIPP will be releasing a free remix album entitled “Brolabs“. The album features remixes of tracks from the likes of Pretty Lights, Paper Diamond, Big Gigantic, Mux Mool and more. Up until the full release, ELIOT LIPP will be giving away pairs of tracks off the album. Once you sign up, he will also email you a link to download the entire album for free when it’s officially released on April 20th.
This week ELIOT LIPP is offering up the remixes of “Yeah” by Big Gigantic and “The Outside” by Mux Mool. Enjoy!
Click HERE to sign up
April 15, 2011
STS9 and 1320 Records are honored to make available select recordings from the Hefty Records catalogue on www.1320records.com. As long time fans of Hefty, and founder John Hughes, we are proud to present you all with some of our all-time favorite and most influential artists, including Some Water and Sun, Telefon Tel Aviv, Savath + Savalas, and MUCH more.
Long before 1320 developed into a label, we looked to Hefty as a model on how to make IT work ~ IT being a sustainable and conscious Indie label for the artists, and for the fans. This is a partnership that we are thrilled about and excited to share with you all. Please take a moment to check out these albums, which have so impacted us throughout the years. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
Every Wednesday for the next 4 weeks (April 20,27 & May 4, 11), 1320 Is releasing our favorite Hefty albums from years past. Stay tuned and get ready!
A new John Hughes remix for L’altra is featured on a compilation for victims of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The remix and full compilation is available on iTunes. All profits raised will be used to benefit the relief effort. More information can be found at: www.andrecords.jp/benefit/english.html
Click HERE for the album
April 13, 2011
After their successful debut album, Gresham’s Disco (1320 Records, September 2010) and sharing the stage with nationally known artists such as STS9, Bonobo, Emancipator and Big Gigantic, Up Until Now is set to release their 2nd EP, Billet Doux (1320 Records). Written, produced, recorded, and mixed by Jay Murphy and Chris Byron, Billet Doux, which means a short love note, delivers heavy electronic dance beats infused with live drum and bass. Featuring collaborations with guest musicians David Murphy (STS9) and Solomon Wright (Dubconscious, The Axis). Billet Doux’s 5 track EP is the quintessential party soundtrack that commands attention.
The new EP, Billet Doux, will be released TODAY April 13, 2011. EP available through 1320 Records or iTunes. Check out upcoming tour dates at www.upuntilnowmusic.com.
April 12, 2011
On April 26th, 1320 Records drops a brand new EP, Out Of Step, from the futurist dub maestro: BASS SCIENCE. On Out Of Step, BASS SCIENCE infuses his unique blend of dubstep with wonky drum programming and shimmering synth lines that blend a sonic concoction fit for a rockstar night on the Miami strip. Fine-tuned through hours of focus in the studio and reinforced by enthralled audiences across the world, Out Of Step marks the beginning of what will be a huge year for BASS SCIENCE. Stay tuned for info on upcoming tour dates and keep your ears tuned for more releases.
Older Posts »
|
|
