Producer Series #3: Hip Indie & Hip Hop

V/A: Dark Soul of the Night [.zip]

Toilet Guppies' team of DJs, writers and graphic designers is too busy with other things currently to put much effort into the blog, so here's another filler post to give you all something nice to put in your ears while you wait for us to come up with some bona fide rarities.

This is a comp compiling various tracks by miscellaneous artists guided by the expert hand of a superstar producer who first caught the greater public's ear as a hip hop conceptualist, but who's currently renowned for his '60s retro stylings, helping flesh out soulful and bluesy indie with his trademark instruments and arrangements. (No, it's not Mark Ronson.) His work spans said hip hop and indie to folk, punk disco, spaghetti Western and psychedelia, all of it dressed in his distinctive retro-futurist style.

I compiled this with my brother in my mind, who has an ear tremendously sensitive to sounds, levels, mixing, arrangements and rhythmic precision. He should be a producer, really (besides producing his own stuff). If you, too, have a keen ear revelling in sensuous aural delights, Toilet Guppies urges you to download the above sampler ASAP.

Producer Series #2: Norwegian Noise vs. Scandinavian Design

V/A: Scandinavian Design meets Norwegian Noise [.zip]

Here's a producer who, in a way, would be Norway's equivalent to Nigel Godrich (producer of Beck, Air and «sixth member of Radiohead»). His style is typified by glitches and bursts, but also by spacey electronic sounds whose sources you can't quite identify, but that seem to have come from the future—or sometimes your childhood: There's a lot of comedy, with kitschy, '70s home organ sounds and rhythms, not to mention sudden blips, scratches, etc. reminiscent of cartoons. One of his trademarks is slapstick noise music, played with the the same kind of absurdist mischief of Nurse With Wound or Add N To (X). It's arty, but never pretentious, and a lot of the time there seems to be no discrepancy between «moving» and «funny». And why should there be?

Norwegian music possesses two general trends: that few artists have anything interesting to say (or sufficient talent to say them), and that the Protestant work ethic and Germanic meticulousness result in an obsession with detail that makes most of the music sound sleek, either in a perfected (but soulless) mimicry of some internationally hip style or just in terms of the production values. Consequently, the most noteworthy Norwegian music tends to be music that, a) doesn't try to say anything and, b) doesn't copy a style but pays careful attention to sound. In other words, experimental instrumental music. And it's perhaps these qualities that make Norwegian noise music among the most accomplished in the noise field.

This producer is an accomplished noise artist who often uses his near scientific audio chops to help produce inane, Norwegian pop artists (Sondre Lerche, the National Bank, Sissy Wish, Morten Abel, Magnet), a couple of alternative bands whose ambitions dwarf their talent (Datarock, Kaizers Orchestra, Emmerhoff & the Melancholy Babies, Ralph Myerz & the Jack Herren Band), the odd well-schooled and well-oiled jazz pop act (Helén Eriksen), a couple of metal bands (Trinacria, Deride) and experimental (Spunk) and noise (Jazzkammer) outfits. Thankfully, apart from the artists mentioned above, some of whom are middling or even terrible, he has also produced artists who negotiate the precarious balance between prog and jazz, art wank and noise, to yield albums like so many giddily enthusiastic ADD children. You'll find it all here on this compilation.

The more commercial records this guy has produced are too straightforward and safe to do justice to his ideas, and the noise stuff, although a breath of fresh ear in the blandness that is Norwegian culture, is too chaotic to really showcase his studio skills. So here's a collection of songs that find themselves somewhere in the middle. Some melodic stuff not entirely impervious to noise, and some noise stuff not impervious to melody. Many of the pieces on this compilation are what happens when easy listening meets something it would be easier not to listen to, but that's the way Toilet Guppies likes it. This guy somehow manages to combine the sterility of Scandinavian production values with the violence of noise in a best-of-both-worlds kind of way. The best albums he has produced are journeys of discovery, every second and every listen bringing a new revelation. God is in the detail, people. Enjoy.



(For more exotic music from the far-away land that is not the capital of Sweden, check out these Toilet Guppies compilations:

Ambient noise [.zip]
&
An introduction to Norwegian non-instrumental music [.zip])

Producer Series #1

This collection is not about songs, or even music, but about sound:

V/A: Fridge Buzz from the Basement [.zip]

There are certain producers, studios and record companies best known for being producers (Phil Spector, Lee «Scratch» Perry), studios (Sun Studios, Studio One) or record companies (Motown, Factory Records), with a distinct sound overriding the individual talent. But most producers flit around from album to album, band to band, record corporation to record corporation. With some albums selling well and others rarely if ever to be heard, and few of the bands likely to appear on the same record, most people miss the connection. The producer's contribution goes largely unrecognised, which is why Toilet Guppies is launching a series of comps collecting the scattered work of such sound whisperers.



If you listen to the various projects a producer has overseen in one set, you'll appreciate how a good producer makes his mark on the work, guiding the listener through the music by way of the mix, challenging, pushing or manipulating the emotional state of the performers, adding (or subtracting) arrangements… A producer worth his mettle becomes an artist in his own right, bringing to the mix his own textures, philosophy, judgment, demands and perhaps instruments. Thus George Martin was known as the «fifth member» of the Beatles, &c. &c.



The subject of the above comp is the «sixth member» of an English environmentalist art rock-techno prog group that has pioneered Internet music distribution. He has also worked with the finest folk/hip-hop mixer upper to come out of the Church of Scientology; an offensively bland but eminently competent French duo applauded for their interior design muzak (such as their robotic, paradoxically sexless hit about a sexy boy); the actress daughter of a legendary Judeo-Gallic fun boy; a knight of the realm who once used to be in the best known rock/pop group of all time; a slacker alt. rock band inexplicably adored by the sonic youth underground mafia as if they were deities; some blips on the hipster radar that vanished like UFOs; and Travis.



Regardless of the merits of the artists he has produced, what this musician and sound engineer brings to the mixing table is sublime: The crisp and warm synthesizers, the glockenspiel punctuation and those languid strings he coats the music in all make you feel like someone's gently spreading honey laced with opium across your eardrums.



And the mixing! There's always something happening. Details abound, tickling your cognition, yet nothing ever competes for space or attention. Everything in its right place. Not afraid of noise, he's also deft at somehow making something loud and uptempo come from a place of great sensitivity, almost delicate. And unlike the unimaginative polish applied to hits, there's not a boring sound in this guy's sonic universe. There's a kind of futurism to his craft: If Kraftwerk succeeded in conjuring the music of an unconscious, mechanical machine, this bloke predicts what an artificial intelligence might one day compose.



Enjoy.