Packed tightly with interlaced rhythms, set against crisp cool intoned lyrics, the first cut of Brian Eno’s forthcoming “Drums Between the Bells” from Warp can give us all reason to look forward to the summer.

Mr. Eno has been on something of a roll lately. We’ve certainly gone through periods when he wasn’s necessarily in command of electronic headlines in music, even as he contributed in other ways – the 90s brought pioneering work in generative music software and the infamous sound set for Windows, for instance. Now, he’s had back-to-back major releases in recent years.

2008: Spore (the videogame, the soundtrack for which may have overshadowed the actual game title), Everything That Happens Will Happen Today with David Byrne

2009: New live work, score for Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones

2010: Small Craft on a Milk Sea with Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams

And now we know what’s coming for summer 2011: Warp Records, July 5, a full-length with Rick Holland entitled “Drums Between the Bells”

The stunning cover image, as much alien patchwork quilt as glitch, is Eno’s own creation. You can preorder vinyl with high-resolution digital for just $21, but $39 gets you the hardback two-CD set with instrumental versions of the tracks (perfect for a late-night painting session when you don’t want to be distracted with poetry), plus a forty-four page book. Typically, such books are superfluous to the musical experience, but here, with Eno himself as accomplished in visual media as musical, they’re almost a no-brainer.

Bleep has your pre-order options.

Give the first track released a listen:

Brian Eno – glitch (taken from Drums Between The Bells) by Warp Records

More details:
http://brian-eno.net
http://warp.net/brian-eno

The Guardian’s take

The poetry

So, who’s this Rick Holland, anyway?

It’s perhaps best answered with his words, which to me sound unaccompanied as though they already have Eno music behind them – the forward-moving staccato cadence, the interwoven reflections of a modern electronic age, the unassuming zen echoes, the amiable ambience of the thing. Here’s his Orange Notebook Philosophy, from his blog:

flutter eyelids against the pillow
flashes behind the eyes

the sounds are computer processors

the mind reflects on itself

on what it can simulate

and it becomes that thing

the imagining becomes event

and event leads to event

so the imagining becomes

in retrospect

equally an event. The computer processor

flutters and electric outbursts

merge data with data

and en route

creates florettes of accidental light

enough to capture the path of animated thought

and divert to a place at once utterly surprising and real within us.

He is mindful of the world around him, but he’s no elitist: he pits the Marquis de Sade against Sasha Fierce.

Read his posterous blog – evidently a new outlet for poetry. Follow him on Twitter (of course).

Rick is musician as well as poet, just as Eno is artist as well as musician, and has various collaborations around London, it seems. Like many of Eno’s collaborations, this one is long-standing, dating to 2002.

http://www.rjholland.com/

And as with Eno’s other recent releases, Eno has a talent for finding other resonant minds to present.

Sonically rich, thickly layered with texture, crackles, and low end, the upcoming full-length by Prefuse 73 nonetheless promises a focus on songwriting and vocals. That could make it a highlight of the year – whereas dense production can often render singers almost decorative, early samples of the new work suggest the singers step up.

Prefuse 73, aka Guillermo Scott Herren, certainly has the resume. Here, he’s joined by a string of female vocalists (presumably represented by the mandala of naked ladies on the cover and the title), “The Only She Chapters.” The likes of Zola Jesus, Nico Turner, Adron, Faidherbe, Niki Randa, and Broadcast’s late Trish Keenan are onboard.

Warp Records has a release for late next month, but it’s worth mentioning now is you can grab a stunning, moodily soulful track by My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden. It sounds imaginative and different, packed with indie cred, yes, but also something adventurous. And there’s still the kind of bass and electronic production you’d expect of a friend of The Gaslamp Killer.

Prefuse 73 ‘The Only She Chapters’ Album Sampler by Warp Records

I imagine some out there won’t like this, but I don’t care; I think Worden’s voice is fantastic.

More details at Warp Records:
Prefuse 73: New album ‘The Only She Chapters’ out in April – listen to sampler

http://www.prefuse73.com/

Rob Brown and Sean Booth, aka Autechre, remain one of the most forward-thinking acts in electronic music; going back to their work from a decade or two ago feels less like history and more like futuristic artifact, a musical seed from space unearthed in a cornfield somewhere and about to rip your throat (or ears) out. Warp Records’ Bleep service doing the hard work for you and collecting all their EPs? That’s very good news.

EPs 1991-2002 promises to be what a box set should be: all substance, no nonsense, and with 47 tracks, many of them rare and out of print, for US$30-50, this is an astoundingly-good deal.

In a sign of the times, you can even forgo the box if you don’t want it. (Yes, yes, tangible objects and whatnot – but many electronic music lovers live in cramped urban quarters.) US$29.99 buys you high-quality 320kbps MP3s, and an extra $3 gets you the proper, uncompressed files. Or you can get the box set with the five CDs and some lovely packaging. Regardless of which option you choose, the fine folks at Warp don’t hold on out you; you still get three of Autechre’s ground-breaking music videos in high-quality form. It’s about time we get to see them somewhere other than grainy YouTube clips, or, erm, the countless music videos by other artists that have tried to clone them cheaply.

Nor do you have to wait. Pre-order the physical box or buy only the downloads, and video and audio downloads are ready for you, right now.

Highlights:

Cavity Job (1991 – First Autechre release from before they signed to Warp and not available on CD before)
Basscad EP (1994)
Anti EP (1995)
Garbage (1995)
Anvil Vapre (1995)
Peel Session (Transmitted 1995, released 1999)
Envane (1997)
Cichlisuite (1997)
EP7 (1999)
Peel Session 2 (Transmitted 1999, released 2001)
Gantz_Graf (2002)

All versions come with 3 High Quality Videos:
Second Bad Vilbel (Chris Cunningham)
Gantz_Graf (Alexander Rutterford)
Basscadet (Jess Scott Hunter)

Release page: EPS, 1991-2001

Actually, full track listing:
1. Cavity Job
2. Accelera 1 & 2
3. Basscadet (Bcdtmx)
4. Basscadet (Basscadoublemx)
5. Basscadet (Tazmx)
6. Basscadet (Basscadubmx)
7. Lost
8. Djarum
9. Flutter
10.Garbagemx
11. PIOBmx
12. Bronchusevenmx
13. VLetrmx
14. Second Bad Vilbel
15. Second Scepe
16. Second Scout
17. Second Peng
18. Milk DX
19. Inhake 2
20. Drane
21. Goz Quarter
22. Latent Quarter
23. Laughing Quarter
24. Draun Quarter
25. Yeesland
26. Pencha
27. Characi
28. Krib
29. Tilapia
30. Rpeg
31. Ccec
32. Squeller
33. Left Blank
34. Outpt
35. Dropp
36. Liccflii
37. Maphive6.1
38. Zeiss Contarex
39. Netlon Sentinel
40. Pir
41. Gelk
42. Blifil
43. Gaekwad
44. 19 Headaches
45. Gantz_Graf
46. Dial.
47. Cap IV

For reference only (you really need those high-quality files), here are the videos in question; first, the legendary, oft-copied Gantz_Graf video by Alexander Rutterford:

Next, Chris Cunningham’s contribution:

Actually, watching these with all the TV artefacts is … kind of awesome. So here’s another:

Lastly, Jess Scott Hunter’s interpretation of Basscadet:

After a fuss over a leak and then an official confirmation from Warp, Brian Eno has unveiled his next album, “Small Craft On a Milk Sea.”

The launch page reveals far more about the packaging than the actual music (though I must say, the packaging is very pretty). But the album does focus on collaboration, working with returning artists Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams. Hopkins and Eno have worked together regularly, and that trio produced some wonderful sounds, recording with Peter Chilvers, for the soundtrack for “The Lovely Bones.” Abrahams’ original mention on his Web diary also described some of what’s to come:

It contains the fruits of several years of jams between the three of us. I’ve not heard anything quite like it — it sounds ‘live’ and ‘alien’ at the same time. Some things have been permitted to survive, which only Brian would have had the courage to let go, and it’s so much the better for it.

(Via tinymixtapes, which also lends the live video of the trio below.

The release also comes wrapped in some evocative artworks by Eno himself, including the dune-like, oceanic long exposure image seen on the cover.

All in all, that seems there’s reason to look forward to the November 2 (November 15 UK) release date, as we get to hear the product of these three musical imaginations. Preorders, from digital to various collectors’ editions, start Wednesday of this week.

Details:
http://brian-eno.net/#headlines

And these three artists live:

Autechre are back, following up a set of live dates and March full length release with yet another full-length on Warp and more dates, this time beginning at the end of August in Perth, Australia and heading off to Slovakia, Poland, Japan, and Greece.

Best to let you hear the new full-length track, available for streaming via SoundCloud. (Not embeddable; only on their site, though note that there’s actually a little SoundCloud security hole when you expose a private link in that way – a topic for another day.)

http://autechre.ws/move-of-ten/

I think I may be more eager to hear this one than the March release. Stay tuned.

Does anyone else notice the graphic similarity between Warp’s cover for “Move of Ten” and Flying Lotus’ Fieldlines? You could almost see the one image fitting inside the other. Indeed, let’s try that:

Mystical secret coded message from the folks at Warp?

For more free music, Bleep.com is starting a SONAR free MP3 promo series.

Working with music production today is a bit like science fiction. It’s fitting that visions of technology’s promise, menace, and humanity would inspire electronic music.

Create Digital Music, XLR8R, and Pitchfork got to join together with TV network SyFy to curate a free, 13-track compilation of “Music for Our Future.” Inspired by the world of SyFy’s new TV series Caprica, which is set just before the recently-concluded Battlestar Galactica, this is science fiction as the familiar. It’s the near future, not simply fantasy.

Download the full compilation for free, exclusively at:

http://www.xlr8r.com/musicforourfuture

The lineup, curated by the three publications, includes the likes of Lusine, Willits & Sakamoto, The Field, and Richard Devine, to name a few regular favorites on this site, with exclusive or previously-unreleased tracks by White Rainbows, Nice Nice, and myself.

In addition to the music, several of those artists share with CDM their techniques and process.

The full tracks:

Lusine, “Gravity” – this cut comes from A Certain Distance, a CDM favorite album in 2009. Lusine aka Jeff McIlwain is on Ghostly Internationaland, whether it’s  “abstract” electronica or downright electronic songwriting, always manages to put a unique sonic stamp on his work.

Atlas Sound, “Walkabout (with Noah Lennox)” is by Bradford James Cox of Deerhunter fame, from his album Logos.

Hudson Mohawke, “Fuse” – the Glasgow-based artist just debuted on Warp with Butter, including this track.

White Rainbow, “Raw Shanks a Million” comes from Kranky artist Adam Fornker of Oregon. It was my introduction to his work, but see more on this track below. I love its spare, pulsing beats; it sounds like what I’d listen to while jogging to Caprica City’s cybernetics research institute.

King Midas, Sound “Outta Space (Slow Version)” comes from a project started by London’s Kevin Martin, the man behind The Bug. It’s a future-dub track for people who believe space is the place.

Low Limit, “Turf Day” is by San Francisco producer Bryan Rutledge, whom I knew as half of Lazer Sword, and who seems to be right at the center of the good stuff happening in electronic music in California.

Willits & Sakamoto, “Toward Water” comes from 2008’s “Ocean Fire,” the collaboration between experimental guitarist and composer Christopher WIllits and master composer-musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. If you don’t know that full album already, it’s well worth owning.

The Field, “I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet (Gold Panda Remix) revisits the track off The Field’s latest, “Yesterday and Today” – another top pick for 2009, and nicely reimagined here. You can check out Gold Panda, too; his mixes have become big Internet hits, and I love the quality of his work.

Tyondai Braxton, “Uffe’s Woodshop” is off his solo album Central Market and premiered on Pitchfork. The Battles singer is a Warp artist, composer, looper, and yes, indeed the son of Anthony Braxton. It’s an explosion of acoustic sounds amidst the other works here.

Untold, “Luna” is by London’s up-and-coming Jack Dunning, familiar on dance floors both for his original productions and remixes.

Nice Nice, “See Waves” will be a 7” from Warp Records in February, but you get to hear it here first. I love that it brings an entirely different rhythmic feel to this group.

Richard Devine, “Matvec Interior (Feat. Otto Von Schirach)” really is science fiction, an intricate set of colliding sonic forms from the composer and mad-scientist sound designer. It’s a favorite from his 2005 Cautella, but Richard revisits his sonic process for CDM here today.

Peter Kirn, “Anaxagoras” is my own track, premiering here, named for the Greek philosopher who attempted to explain astrological events through science, and fled after being called a heretic. The music, with some sounds of viola da gamba and others synthesized (or resynthesized), fall on that boundary between re-processed past and imminent future.

Now, some notes from behind the scenes:

White Rainbow

CDM: Tell us about the inspiration for this track. What was the process like?

I don’t get inspired to make something in the sense of looking at a butterfly and then writing a song. For me, it’s more like the act of making inspires where things go. The sounds as they come out inspire me to react and create on top of them.

This track was made by recording about an hour of live improv and then editing and cutting down and doing a few overdubs. My set up is:

INPUTS:
mic, computer running ableton using drum racks to trigger samples with a padkontrol, various iphone/ipod touch drum apps (beat maker, idrum etc), synth, electric guitar

MIXED/OUTPUT:

delay, multi –fx, dd-20 giga delay as looper, kaoss pad kp3 as multi-fx and looper

…and this all getting recorded into ableton on another computer in the studio.

I let that sit for a few months, then came back to it, cut things down and added vocal (with the Ableton Looper…one of the only times I’ve used that) and weird synth pad overdubs.

I’ve been making looper based music for a really long time now (going back to the original boomerang pre turn of the century). It’s really tough to keep it interesting… so I’m always looking and searching for new ways to keep myself interested and inspired to make new music in new ways.

I also play in an improvised electronic group called Rob Walmart, wherein we get very wrong and stupid and on tons of crappy gear. Tons of Casio keyboards, MicroKORGs, iPod Touches, Nintendo DS, microphones, etc.A new 3xLP of Rob Walmart will come out on Marriage Records early this year.

People probably still brand me as a new age or psychedelic ambient guy, and that’s cool but to me there is a direct line between synth future funk from the 70s and 80s and say, tangerine dream or Klaus Schultze. Just technology inspiring different people to make wild, "out there" space sounds. I would like to continue along that line.

Richard Devine

CDM: What can you tell us about this track?

I originally produced it in 2005, in collaboration with my good friend Otto Von Schirach. I was a going for something very alien, futuristic, scifi, scientific and unusual for this piece. The sonic timbres and textures are a combination of hybrid computer synthesis and field recordings. Think Aliens vs. Predator happening inside the world of HR Gigers head=)  The track initially started out in Logic Audio, I began cutting up sections and pieces of various field recorded bits. I went to many locations to get some of the sound sources. Many of them quite unusual and disturbing.

CDM: Your work always has these extraordinary layers of sound. What was the production process like on this track?

I started out on this farm near my house here in Georgia. It was during fall, and we went to this Halloween festival pumpkin patch place with my girlfriend. It was a huge field that had a petting zoo, and various other farm animals. I was intrigued by this fairly large turkey they had in a small metal wired cage. I record several takes of him frantically moving around as I got closer with my microphone. I also recorded the sounds of pigs, breathing heavy into the microphones.

I had a pair of DPA 4060′s Miniature Body Microphones clipped and tucked into my shirt sleeves to capture the animals up in close proximity. I also recorded sounds of water, sand, rocks, trees, leaves and debris in my backyard. I used a lot of these sounds and then imported them into the computer for heavy processing and manipulation. One of the main processing engines was the Kyma system by Symbolic Sound. I took a few sounds and converted them into spectral analysis files in which I morphed and re-synthesized some of the acoustic sounds into synthetic grains, or partials. Creating these very alien artificial sounding sounds to the mix. I also did a bit of FM synthesis for some of the percussion. Lots of intense programming in hundreds of layers of processed bits. You will notice that each bar in the composition never repeats, the same sounds or sequences. This was completely intentional. I wanted the entire sonic experience to be kinda like a roller-coaster ride of audio frequency dynamics. I also tried to experiment with interesting new breaks, and redefine what could be considered song structure adhering to no rules or constraints.

CDM: Given the complexity, structurally, of this music, do you tend to iterate through a track over many layers?

I spend weeks, months sometimes designing the sounds, and trying to get all the pieces to work together. Almost like a complex microsound jigsaw puzzle, but the pieces are very fractalized and tiny. Each sound I painfully program by hand. I take each sound as if it was a sculpture piece. I look at the sound in 3D structure. I often compare the sounds to architectural shapes, structures, and manipulate them one section at a time. I read the waveforms and sculpt them into what I want. I then add the pieces together to work into a composition as a whole. This is the most difficult part in my work in making everything seem fluid and natural. It is often difficult to make the transitions work within a short amount of time especially when you have so many sounds and textures you want to squeeze into a 5 or 6 minute track.

Lusine

CDM: What was your process like, creatively – particularly in regards to the vocals?

It was a very long process. It started off as something totally different. Some sort of downtempo disco type track with much more lyrical vocals. But, after several months I realized it wasn’t working for me, so I approached the whole thing from scratch, resampled everything and made a more minimal downtempo track out of it.

The vocals started off a lot more obviously upfront, but I decided to use them more as a musical layer, so I resampled the completed vocal track and started shuffling the bits around. It felt better to me, like the musical layers in the song weren’t competing with the vocals as much.

Ed.: I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts on the compilation, especially since it represents three very different musical perspectives (which to me wound up making the experience richer). The TV show Caprica, for its part, premieres January 22 with another great Bear McCreary soundtrack (I’ve been listening already, as a fan of his scores).

The novelty of the iPhone or [your favorite device here] may fade. But part of what matters in mobile design is thinking about how to create interfaces and uses that can scale to the size of your palm. That can mean embracing radical simplicity, and reducing an interactive, digital musical object down to its essential noise-making functions. In acoustic instrument design, that means economizing sound production in a form. In the digital world, it means finding the interactive role you’d want to bring with you onstage, in the length roughly equivalent your fingertips to your wrist.

I’m a few weeks overdue actually writing about it, but one design I really admire is Star6, developed by Jason Forrest and Agile Partners. There are no awkward, gimmicky emulations of hardware interfaces here; it’s clear this was an interface that was illustrated in two-dimensions. It has funky nerdster chic color combos, with neon pink atop wood grain. It demonstrates that, in the space of a grid, you can fit triangles. It makes use of computer wifi capability to easily load samples without mucking around with over-designed clients – or record right on the iPhone. And it’s – surprisingly – one of the few apps to make heavy use of the accelerometer, which means rather than looking like you’re trying to text message someone, you can move it around. There’s a “grain” mode so that you can randomize sounds and not have everything synced all the time. I also enjoy the “reset” button. These are all design decisions that could make sense in more commercial software – and our own home-brewed Max/Pd patches and such, too.

Apparently Agile Partners were also influenced by the brightly-colored, handheld fun of the Buddha Machine, too; see their interview with the creator.

Star6
A lovely lineup of free samples, including the Buddha Machine

It’s not a perfect app (no mobile app really can be – that’s the fun of it), and it doesn’t do everything, but I find Star6′s personality rather irresistible. The real test of all of this is whether you can use it in real music-making. And, while my inbox is full of cheezy bands trying to ride the iPhone wave, I love the offbeat Star6 music launch party from Berlin, as documented in the video below. It ranges from Jason’s own work to Warp Records artist Jackson and ex-Chicks on Speed Kiki Moorse. And there’s a crazy iPhone + banjo + accordion cover of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” There are even some genuinely experimental sounds – not the sort of thing you’d expect at a launch event, sadly. (I wish we could have more of that.)

An Evening With Star6 – Berlin (Compilation) from Star6 on Vimeo.

More on the artists, and some of Star6 creator Jason Forrest’s own unique work:

Jason’s own artistic aesthetic, as seen in this video for “War Photographer,” does have this quirky efficiency to it, the sense of cut-out animation (in both visuals and music, I’d argue), and saturated, rich, retro colors.

The eclectic Berlin launch.

Jackson (Warp, FR)
Kiki Moorse (ex-Chicks On Speed,DE)
Song Band (US)
Jason Forrest (CRD, US)
Guido Mobius (Karaoke Kalk, DE)
Ben Butler & Mousepad (SCT/DE)
DJ’s: Finkobot & Marius Reisser

Jacki Terrasse / Joseph (@ Maria)
An Der Schilling Brücke
10243 Berlin

For more on the artists:
myspace.com/moorse
myspace.com/jacksonand
myspace.com/benbutlerandmousepad
myspace.com/guidomoebius
myspace.com/jason_forrest
myspace.com/songbandmyspace
myspace.com/finckobot
myspace.com/mariusreisser

Video shot by Martin Sulzer
Photos by Marco Macrobi

Complete sets:
Ben Butler and Mousepad
Guido Mobius
Kiki Moorse
Jason Forrest

Warp: Engage

The new Warp Mode in Live may actually be friendlier to new users; it’s existing users, accustomed to the previous way of working, who seem thrown for a loop. (Erm… excuse the pun.) I’m at a bit of a disadvantage myself in that I tend not to do a lot of warping/remixing. But Medway Studios has a set of tutorials specifically geared for people wanting some tips on how to assimilate the new working method:

Part 2:

Our friend Dennis DeSantis of Ableton offers his own take in a video shot at NYC-based music tech learning center dubSpot. This is a pretty good conceptual overview of what the whole thing is about.

Basically, what I’m hearing is that people used to previous versions of Warp Markers, while they find it confusing at first, do like the new system once they understand how it works.

Controllerism

Mark Mosher has been doing fantastic tutorials on his site Modulate This. For one thing, he’s got tips for getting Wacom tablets to work in Live 8 and finally getting text entry support, which means Kore works properly in Live at long last (among others).

Best of all, he has a tutorial that demonstrates how he’s putting together all his controllers – the Notation ReMOTE SL with Automap and the Akai APC40 – and making them function more effectively using some subtle controller changes in Live 8.

What’s interesting to me is that this isn’t so much about unique, proprietary stuff added to the APC integration, but basic feature improvements in Live itself, which could help you be more effective with other controllers, as well. That’s the kind of functionality I like to see, because it helps everyone.

All of this is great, but we are getting a little heavy on the Ableton-only video tutorials. It’s time to pick up the screencasting tools and demonstrate other tools, too. I’ve got some time blocked out this summer for the task. Requests?

Burial and Four Tet are working together on a record.

But there’s …

No artwork.

No promos.

An entirely … black cover?

And it’s vinyl only?

I’d believe the whole thing were an April Fool’s joke, if the folks at Bleep didn’t put out an email:

We was so excited about this one, we couldn’t wait till next week to tell you… A split release shrouded in darkness (hence the artwork; no sales notes, no audio, no promos). We have been told the artwork will be in a black cover with a black sleeve on good old fashioned black vinyl.

One disc, two sides crafted by two of the most insurrectionary, innovative producers of the last twenty years, Burial and Four Tet… Believe us, this will fly off the shelves. Now available on pre-order and ready to ship for the release date of May 4th. Do not get left out. "Essential Purchase" has never sounded so right.

Look, they even included a thumbnail image of the album art. (I’m not making this up, this is literally what was included in the email.)

Maybe it’s an image of Cleveland at Night.

These guys do know the “Smell the Glove” “Black Album” in Spinal Tap was a joke, right?

The really amazing thing is, black-on-black vinyl-only limited release with only two cuts can’t even distract from the news that Burial and Four Tet are doing an album together.

The release hits May 4 for US$8.99 as a limited-run 12” vinyl.

Is this the test pressing?

It’s Friday afternoon, so you have my official permission as Editor-in-Chief to quote random lines from that scene in comments. GO!

Official release page / preorder from Bleep

(Wait, ships 04.05? I’ve missed it already? Oh, yeah … the rest of you in the world aren’t American. Never mind.)

Update: will it go fast? Will it ever. It’s already sold out, in something like an hour.