100. Helix – Rapid Mixtape Click here to download
Helix is that dude with All Caps & Night Slugs 12″s out this apocalyptic 2012 which places him in unique position to quietly influence the best djs this year; just before the oceans evaporate forever… and so what’s he offering? Well he’s upping the tempo on all this pussy compressed laptop techno and trying to bring back something raw uncut with clattering, black-pepper drum programming that feels authentic. He builds music for 1AM and 4AM with equal weight – even his deeper, understated moments swing on long tape saturated pads. And with this tape for us, which could of easily just been a tribute to OJ Da Juiceman, he sorta surprised us with this perfect night drive soundtrack of rapid & classic techno that warrants bouncing to cassette just for the extra dose of fuzz as the planet moves slowly closer to the sun. Our 100th tape. Helix in the mix. Happy new year.
Again, it's a bit different from the other two but (hopefully) this one sounds good in that time of doing nothing between Christmas and New Year
Kraftwerk - Tone Float
Kraftwerk - Megaherz
Gbáyá - Naa Ndongoe (Empire Centrafricain - Musique Gbáyá / Chants À Penser Vol. 1)
Gbáyá - Piere (Empire Centrafricain - Musique Gbáyá / Chants À Penser Vol. 1)
Gbáyá - Dadte (Empire Centrafricain - Musique Gbáyá / Chants À Penser Vol. 1)
Kraftwerk - Ruckzuck
Kraftwerk - The Hall Of Mirrors
David Axelrod - The Human Abstract
Many, many, many thanks to Snooks at Bm Soho for asking me to do a mix for his podcast series. By some chance and good fortune, it has come out this weekend as the offical xmas guest podcast.
We would like to wish all who have supported Niteshade Inc a great christmas and a happy new year! And what better way than to celebrate the coming of a new year than with a great guest podcast!
After enjoying this guys mixes we found through mixcloud (he runs a pretty good blog too) we thought we would hit him up and see if he wanted to do one for us.. He brought the goods.. In his own words:
It's an 'influences' mix with a lot of nods to some producers, labels, djs and record shops who inspire me and have become good friends through music in the last couple of years, namely Blackclassical, Seja Herói, Second Layer Records, Toby, Andrea and Ben at Svetlana Industries, Semtek and Bandshell.
Track List:
Delia Derbyshire - Track 01
Delia Derbyshire with Barry Bermange - Dreams (Edit B)
Marvin Gaye vs. Svarte Greiner - I've Got My Halves (Seja Herói's Ambient Edit)
Delia Derbyshire - Delia's Theme
Delia Derbyshire - Planetarium
Delia Derbyshire - Music Of Spheres
Daphne Oram - Rockets In Ursa Major (Excerpt 3)
Daphne Oram - Fanfare Of Graphs
Daphne Oram - Studio Experiment No.5
Ursula Bogner - Soloresonanzen
Ursula Bogner - Für Ulrich
Ursula Bogner - Atmosphere 1
Ursula Bogner - Modes
Ursula Bogner - Speichen
Ursula Bogner - 2 Ton
Ursula Bogner - Metazoon
Irmin Schmidt and Bruno Spoerri - Rapido de Noir
Grouper - A Lie
Grouper - Moon Is Sharp
Vladimir Cosma - Psychochisme
Emuul - Expectations
Coil - Is Suicide a Solution?
Mika Vainio - In Silence A Scream Takes A Heart
Ricardo Donoso - The Deck Of An Ancient Ship
Agitation Free - Rücksturz
Can - Return To BB City
Tangerine Dream - Rain In NY City
Tangerine Dream - 8.07 And 5.23
Tangerine Dream - Creation
Tangerine Dream - Sunset Drive
Tangerine Dream - Airshaft
Tangerine Dream - Running Through The Hills
Tangerine Dream - Alley Walk
Tangerine Dream - Alien Voices
Tangerine Dream - Cyro Lab
Tangerine Dream - Healing
Dead Can Dance - Song of Sophia
Aphex Twin - Kesson Daslef
Soft Machine - French & German Lessons (Marbert Basement Extension)
Rodger Stella / Kites - Interior Moon Side A
Harmonia - Vamos Companeros
Jean-Michel Jarre - La Cage
Kraan - Die Maschine
Oval - Citibase
Cluster - Avanti
Holger Czukay - Persian Love
Harmonia - Hausmusik
Autechre - Weissensee Against Im Glück
Farben - Swinn Off
Can - Future Days (Carl Craig's Bladerunner Mix)
Hidden Hawaii Solaris Series - hh.q.ii.qq.bb.qqq.h.r.iii.rr.g.rrr.ddd.s.ii.ss.aaa.
Hype Williams - Warlord
Actress - Maze
BNJMN - One Sea (Lukid Remix)
Stanley Crouch - Ain't No Ambulances For No Nigguhs Tonight Part I
My hero of 2011 is Helix. Producer of track of the year, Stacks, which I have played almost constantly since the summer. The track, although still as yet unreleased, was picked up by many big named djs and was included in Ben UFO's recent Rinse cd. He is also part of the best new label of the year, Glasgow's All Caps, with a 100% hit success rate from their first releases.
I caught up with Helix earlier this week to chat about the record, the label, Ben UFO and where he is going next.
Hi there
Hi. hows things?
Pretty good. Building a lot of loops for my liveset
Really? What’s the plans with that?
Luckyme want me to do a mix for them so I'm just giving a lot of stuff its debut in the liveset for them. And then one day when somebody books me
Nice one.
Your earlier productions were more a Basic Channel / dub techno sound. Stacks is very different to them. Was that a conscious idea to try other styles or just how your style is developing or are you planning on doing more minimal / dubby techno again?Stacks was the product of another side of my production that I felt matured enough to the point of being able to make trax.
So would you say your techno tracks are still not where you feel comfortable with them yet? They sound ready now to me.
None of my trax are ever at a point where I'm entirely comfortable with them, especially not my loop-based projects.
My goal is to find the perfect loop.
How did Stacks come about then? Is it something you'd been working on for a while or just one of them moments were all the ideas came together quickly and just worked?
Luck
Lol! How did you manage to get an unreleased track onto Ben UFO's Rinse cd?
Luck
I knew that was coming
Let's keep it mysterious then, ahah.
But seriously, Ben just happened to like it enough to include it on the mix.
It already got a bunch of publicity before Rinse 16.
And are all the hows, whys and whatnots about licensing pretty dull? So you actually see much money from compilations?
Hah!
Money.
I've heard about money
Can you tell me more
How did you get the track to Ben? Was it through connections or has he been a friend for some time now?
Bake knows Ben more than I do. Since Bake was releasing it, he just got it into Ben's hands somehow.
About a year ago I spoke to you about the scene around Georgia and you said that no one really cares about techno around there. Has there been any change this year or are you still having to travel to clubs?
No change. Still the only one making / playing trax I like. Although I'm slowly getting my friends into it through forcing them to hear my music all the time.
What scenes are big over there? I know its lowest common denominator stuff but hasn’t rave music broken through at all with mainstream r'n'b using so many (of the albeit crap ones) dance producers these days?
Well, we've got a bunch of "raves" thrown locally
But nothing worth bothering with?
Just house parties blasting the latest in either overly aggressive dubstep or beatport house. So nothing I ever deal with.
It seems really weird and a bit odd that everyone at that Hessle night at fabric earlier in the year has heard your track over a really good system about 5 times (or however many rewinds it ended up getting) whereas you can't.
Yeah, I've only heard it once on a club system, and I was the one playing it.
What was that night then? Are you getting bookings from a bit further afield now?
Nope, I was opening for Silkie in Atlanta. I figure bookings will come when my records finally come out.
Speaking of which - has there been a reason for the delayed release dates or was it just that ALLCAPS 001 was held back so its pushed your back too?
After the delays, we were looking at a December release, which we didn't really want to do. So it's most likely coming out in January.
You know, over here, they used to say you get weird chart hits in January as the post Christmas releases dry up...
Don't really have any preference as to when it comes out, I'm just happy for whenever it comes out.
Well you've kept me waiting about 6 months to get my hands on it so another 2 weeks isn’t going to hurt anyone.
Ahahaha. Could've sworn I gave you a copy. We fam-lay.
I’ve got the mp3 but i meant on wax.
Oh okay
Its my most played mp3 of the year. Though about 10 of them were rewinds on the day i got it.
Lololololol. Glad you like it
It’s the first tune in a while that I have really hammered but it never gets boring to me.
Thanks
So plans for 2012? Finally getting the record out, then live stuff did you say?
Yeah I just want to get my liveset fully fleshed out and then I'm just going to keep making trax
Still working with ALLCAPS or are you in discussions with any other labels yet?
Well, I've got an EP coming on Other Heights, that Night Slugs thing, and I'm just casually chatting with a couple other label owners, throwing trax at them and just seeing where things go.
Any word of remix work yet or are you still just doing bootleg remixes at the moment?
I have a Jakob Altmann remix out digitally on Instabil
Oneohtrix Point Never's Daniel Lopatin made the best album in the world since his last album. And then went and bettered it again a few weeks ago.
The two albums he was on this year, firstly with David Borden, James Ferraro, Sam Godin and Laurel Halo on Frkwys then in his own Oneohtrix Point Never guise, were masterpieces of modern experimental ambient.
His remix work this year included a nod to one of the underloved originators of the sound, Harald Grosskopf, whose original 1980 lost synth classic was reworked by todays contemporaries. It is however another of his rewordings which was my personal favourite remix of the year; that of Anthony and The Johnson's Swanlights.
Jamie XX may have been a bit ubiquitous this year. There must only be a few people on the planet he didn't offer his steel pans to. Gil Scott Heron, Radiohead twice, Falty DL, Adele, Rhianna and his own solo debut on Numbers. When working with the former legends, he produced some of the best work of his career and with the initially questionable moves of working with the latter mainstream artists, produced some of the best work of their careers. Add to that his increased dj schedule this year and rumours of working on new material with The XX and he has been a busy boy but it doesn't look like the start of 2012 is going to slow him down any.
