On his first full-length album, Brock Van Wey (better known as Bvdub) abandons dub techno conventions and returns to his West Coast chill-out room roots. It’s a step in the right direction, making for some of his most emotional music to date.

The opening track, “Too Little Too Late” is gentle and ambient with voices drifting in and out of the mix. “I Knew Happiness Once” features fuller vocal samples that sound Eastern in origin. “Forever a Stranger” is beautiful and relaxing, with slow washes of textured sound. Repetitive choral pulses guide “A Gentle Hand to Hold.” I’m reminded of Philip Glass’ soundtrack for Koyaanisqatsi (in a good way). “A Chance to Start Over” seems to ask a question. Its ascending three-note pattern is joined by plucked strings and echoey vocals. The title piece is awash in long drifting chords.

All six pieces are airy and beat-less with little bass. They are perfect for summer’s late twilight. I’m sure lazy afternoon or late-night post-party listening sessions would work equally well.

Van Wey and Stephen Hitchell both played live at a LWE loft party in Chicago over the winter. They must have kept in touch, because not only did Hitchell publish this album, he also contributed a full disc of remixes. These versions will undoubtedly please dub techno fans. The “Intrusion Shape” of the title track gradually reveals itself with full, deep bass and lingering chord caresses. It turns the uplifting original on its head, adding elements that are dark yet sensuous. At over twenty-four minutes, it’s no lightweight. The Intrusion version of “A Chance to Start Over (Intrusion Shape III)” bears little resemblance to the original, but is pretty in its own right, with contemplative analogue synthesizers and wonderful surface noise that gives way to downtempo percussion. “A Gentle Hand to Hold” gently sways to congas like a pop song de-constructed. There is an entire world built into its subtle changes. “I Knew Happiness Once (Intrusion Shape V)” reminds me of The Orb, but for being serious (and more sparse). On “Too Little Too Late (Intrusion Shape VI)” metal shivers and beats tick while piano notes glisten.

This double CD is an amazing two-and-a-half hours of quality electronic music. Listening to it straight through, I’m reminded of the good old days when synthesizers offered glimpses of an alien world, when bedroom producers created whole atmospheres in space and time. Sometimes you need to look back to move forward. It’s a revival.

As the summer music season ramps up, I’ve already come across some nice singles. First up, the Excursions EP by Patrice Scott on Sistrum Recordings features a slow-building deep house groove, with clipped bass, unrelenting snares, and old-school techno blips. That’s just the title track. “Callistro” is great for home listening, with reverberating chords and laid-back keys. The “Excrusions (Reprise)” is deep and beatless, with shades of “Pacific State.” Chimes sprong away off-kilter. More, please.

I haven’t seen much mention of the latest Theo Parrish 12-inch (on Sound Signature, of course). Omar-S is credited with “sound selection arrangement” on “Space Station.” The resulting production is more techno than most Parrish productions, starting with beat-less space bells (beautiful enough to bring tears to your eyes), then transforming into something gritty and tracky. Around the seven minute mark, a chunkier beat and some weird effects make for a real mind warp. “Going Through Changes” sounds a bit like the overplayed “Synthetic Flemm” but with quirky, simple vocals by Danny Banks. Come to think of it, it has a lot in common with the latest Dam-Funk single.

While I’ve been collecting all of the Aesthetic Audio releases thusfar, they tend to be better-suited to club use than to home-listening. Moments In Rhythm Vol. 1 by label head Keith Worthy is strong, though. True to its word, “Deep Sea (The Original Deepstrumental Mix)” is deep, with a repeating keyboard riff, spacey bleeps, and big kickdrums. The “Beats For Dayz Mix” adds to the live mix feel with additional bass and percussion. “Lost In Sound” is more my style, with chords to die for at the beginning and end, and industrial percussion through the middle.

Chicago

Someone kindly slipped a new Tevo Howard white label into my latest Discogs order. “Everyday House Music” (BGR-006) on Beautiful Granville Records features an unnecessary edit of said track from “Without Me.” (The “Extended Original Mix” is truly great.) Among the new material, “Energia” is decent, with a morphing synth pulse and a single-chord drone. Around three minutes in a new synth riff takes over. It’s elegant if a bit too simple. “60660” has an unusual acid pattern that’s joined by chimes. On the flip, “Frequent Digitals” and “House Mood Swings” have charming old-school basslines, but neither is given enough time to really develop.

Since my interview with Jamal Moss, there have been three new singles on his label, Mathematics Recordings. The Impersonnel Naviguant E.P by Les Aeroplanes is simply amazing. “Ils Disent Que L’ Orient Est Rouge” is my favorite cut, with funky, jazzy synths and strange vocal samples (“soul power,” “romance and beauty… aviation”?). It’s as though an unknown left-field New Wave disco track was pulled right from the eighties. Seriously, where did he find this? “36 F” is more abstract, but too short. “Impersonnel Naviguant” seems like a cross between French disco and Kraftwerk, while “Trajectoires” is French through and through, with a great spacey ending. This is one unique-sounding single.

On the acid tip, Steve Poindexter presents Andreas Gehm and his My So Called Robot Life E.P. All of the tracks are spooky and moody, which works for sexy samples but not so much for the Martin Luther King, Jr. ones. A Prescription Of Love E.P. by Marcello Napoletano is lo-fi but lush deep house with odd samples. It’s on the verge of being great. Also on the way is a new Jack-FM 7-inch by Jamal as The Sun God. Knowing his previous releases in the series, it’s likely to be good gritty fun.

Moritz von Oswald needs an introduction because he guided the sound of techno from its shadows, through mysterious, anonymous releases as Maurizio, Basic Channel, and Rhythm & Sound. For fifteen years he shunned interviews, photographs, and the trappings of fame. The records spoke for themselves. At the same time, he and Mark Ernestus gathered a tight-knit community through their Berlin record store, Hard Wax, and their studio, Dubplates & Mastering.

The past couple of years have seen von Oswald opening a window into his world, with interviews, tours, and new collaborations. His recent productions stray from the techno and dub reggae styles he firmly established into a new aesthetic not as easily described. Vertical Ascent seems influenced by African rhythms, with Vladislav Delay playing a steady clatter of home-made percussion. There may be a hint of Karlheinz Stockhausen as well, thanks to the spacey yet somehow formal synthesizer performance of Sun Electric’s Max Loderbauer. Under it all are bass depths a good octave lower than what you normally hear. This mini-album, clocking in at under forty-five minutes, deserves to be heard on a large system.

“Pattern 1” orbits around a slow (60 BPM) pulse which gets picked up by kick drum and synchopated claps. It’s tricky even after a couple of listens to keep the synth parts straight, as they hand off and echo. There are sweeps and whistles. It’s all a bit alien. “Pattern 2” begins with cymbals. A steady bass pulse reverberates downward, then tightens, producing a subtle tension. Treble electronics are more overt at creating unease. They wink in the distance, like lights glimpsed across a frozen lake. Door knocks join in, seeming almost cliché. At over twelve minutes, it’s an oppressive experience.

“Pattern 3” brings back the funk, with panning steel drums and absolutely lovely slow chords. The ever-present bass buoys it all. Von Oswald’s reggae explorations are most in evidence on “Pattern 4.” The bassline could belong to a Rhythm & Sound production, and drowned in waves of atonal organ and cascading reverberation. It is actually hard to think once this track is blasting full-force.

The best thing about this album is its pace. Despite being dense, cerebral music, the arrangements are slow and relaxed. It’s as if these three classically trained musicians have been playing together a long time. I’ve never heard a combination of sounds quite like this. Once again von Oswald is inventing something new and riveting.

This 12" is the first release on a new label run by pipecock from Infinitestatemachine. It’s acid through and through, reminiscent of Tin Man, if a bit simpler at times. A1 sets the tone, with a bubbly acid bassline, a basic melody, and dry snares. A2 adds chord pulses to 303 squelches. I wish it were longer with more percussion. B1 is even better, with a synth undercurrent and old-school claps and cowbells. B2 is hard but short. It’s got a nice pattern that could be developed a bit more with a remix. This is a fun release, but more importantly, I hope it is just the beginning for both Disco Nihilist and Love What You Feel.

Gas played a beautiful, free, two-hour set at the Chicago Cultural Center last night. The space was a small, packed theater on the second floor. (Some attendees had to move to an overflow room.) It was pouring rain outside. Wolfgang Voigt emerged after the lights were lowered.

The Gas sound is unique with layers of mysteriously stretched orchestral samples. At times the music was muffled, bass-heavy, and beatless. Sometimes strings or horns would strike out or a huge, fast kick drum would descend.

Video artist Petra Hollenbach’s visuals were intricately detailed and hypnotic. Monochromatic lifeforms rotated and undulated. Leaves and branches enveloped to soporific effect.

The sound and video were perfectly intertwined. At one point a kaleidoscope of fragmented shapes moved into formation. Grid overlays formed pixels of glimpsed movement. At times I felt like I was moving through a three-dimensional sculpture.

At the end, stroboscopic colors were so intense some audience members covered their eyes as the dark, alien music surged. It was a dramatic finale to an indescribably powerful experience.

Free MP3: Hieroglyphic Being: Sacrifices of The Heart Part 1
2x12" A VIsitor From SOmeone Else’s Memories (Mathematics 033) Oct 5, 2009

Jamal Moss is as prolific as he is original, recording as Hieroglyphic Being, IAMTHATIAM, and The Sun God. He collaborated with Steve Poindexter as I.B.M. and with Noleian Reusse as Africans with Mainframes. Adonis is his mentor. Like Theo Parrish, Jamal is reinventing house by bringing it back to its lo-fi DIY roots, but he is better known overseas than in his own city. Jamal’s music is gritty, otherworldly, and beautiful.

Jamal has appeared on labels as diverse as Sony Europe, Crème Organization, International Deejay Gigolo Records, Interdimensional Transmissions, Klang Elektronik, Axis/6277, and Ghostly International/Spectral Sound. He runs his own label, Mathematics Recordings, which began when Jamal sold test pressings out of his backpack in 1996. The label really got rolling in 2001 after a bad break-up—Jamal wanted to prove to his ex-girlfriend that he was serious about music and to “pay homage to his adoptive parents for giving him a better life.”

Jamal’s latest release is the double 12-inch So Much Noise 2 Be Heard, which he culled from eighty tracks, many of which were tested on live audiences in Japan. I met Jamal at a bar halfway between our apartments in Evanston, just north of Chicago.

Jacob: Did you grow up in Chicago?
Jamal: Yep. Far South Side.

When did you first get into music?
My first encounter with music is my parents always playing a lot of jazz records around the crib. And then when my mom was busy doing house chores, she would leave National Public Radio on, or some station would always play classical. So, me being black and growing up in the hood, nah it wasn’t no P-Funk in my life. Wasn’t no Midnight Star or Con Funk Shun or The Dells. I can’t front and say I came up with that type of soul. ’Cause I was adopted, so my adoptive parents were from a different generation from that. They were much older, so they came up during the thirties, forties, and fifties…. I got exposed to a whole different way of thinking. I learned about The Ink Spots and Cab Calloway and all that stuff.

Do you think that background helped you as a musician?
It helped me in my left-brain thinking. Because you can have certain music that can be emotional, you have certain music that affects intellectual…. That’s what made me just different from anybody in my neighborhood. It was a lot of “Family Classics,” a lot of Ray Bradbury. I was the only kid at six years old with a thesaurus and an Encyclopedia Britannica. Comic books. It kept me in the house most of the time. Until I got a certain age, and then it was like, yeah, you need to go outside ’cause you ain’t looking so cute no more…. ’Cause I was cocooned in a little bubble for those first couple of years, I didn’t like what I seen on the streets. I would hang out in the backyard or sit on the front porch and read.

When I was growing up there was a lot of snow storms, so a lot of times school would just get canceled, even though the damn school was just a block up the street. And then they’ll tell you, there’s no school, there’s no reason you still can’t learn. So they’ll say listen to this radio station. That’s how I learned about The Hobbit, you know a precursor to Lord of the Rings. A guy would sit on the radio and read knowledge. And my parents would make me sit there and listen to the radio. So that’s what gave me the keen concept of appreciating more aboriginal, deeply textured creations or thought concepts. Unlike today where people hear some music and they might go back five years, I learned no matter what I hear there’s always gotta be a precursor to it. In literature, music, art, whatever, somebody’s influenced by someone else.

So what are your more direct musical influences?
Sun Ra. I got a chance to see him when I was little, when he played in Chicago. That was cool. I didn’t know it was really cool at the time, I thought it was just really weird and strange watching this dude do what he do. That was one of the first things that caught my attention. And after Sun Ra, I started learning about Parliament Funkadelic, how they was influenced by him.

My adoptive parents had a biological son. He was in his teens at the time, so he was part of the street thing. Because we were ages apart, he didn’t hang out with me…. He would listen to Kid Creole and The Coconuts. When I started getting older, I come to find out I didn’t see a difference between Count Basie and what Kid Creole and The Coconuts would do.

So when did you start going to clubs?
Let’s put it this way. Unofficially, sneaking out of the house, twelve. Officially, sixteen. I graduated high school…. I left home at sixteen, I was able to go out a lot and catch a lot of stuff going on. Even at twelve years old, when I would tell my parents I was hanging out at somebody’s house for a overnighter, we would go to a school party. When I was growing up, “house parties,” whatever they wanted to call it back then, were everywhere.

What kind of stuff were they playing at those parties?
At the time I didn’t know if it was Italo or disco or New Wave. I didn’t know the terminologies for that…. Back then everybody would mark-out the record so you couldn’t even see what the hell they had, because everybody was DJing they didn’t want nobody having the same record they had. If I was fortunate enough, somebody would tell me what it is. And my money was going towards comic books. If I could scrape up the money, I would reach and go find a record and buy it and start a little record collection on my own. Wasn’t trying to be a DJ; it was just something that was really really good or obscure abstract, I would try to go out and get it. One of the first records I bought was a Liaisons Dangereuses album, and then Anne Clark. That’s because of the upbringing, in the house I’m hearing something different, it had me gravitate towards the Italo disco or house scene.

And industrial too?
Industrial too, but that didn’t come ’til a little bit later. Technically speaking Liaisons Dangereuses is somewhat industrial, but at the time they were playing it, it was just considered house music. They had the electronic aesthetic, so there was really no separation.

At the time I still wasn’t really listening to the radio that much, only the stations that were set on the dial in the house, ’cause my parents were like, don’t change the dial. You gotta leave it there. And eventually when I got my own radio from a flea market, I cut it on, and I got influenced by WBMX. But not because of the Hot Mix 5, but in general WBMX would just play Euro stuff anyway, or Italo disco, or obscure disco. So it wasn’t like it took Farley or all those other cats to bring it to light, because a regular radio DJ would play it anyway. But it was KKC, a college radio station, that went more off on a deeper, deeper end where they would play obscure New Age or industrial or really obscure disco. Just wylin’ out stuff. Pink House, T. Chablis, and all those cats. And then they would talk about the deeper parties. They wouldn’t talk about just Mendel or the common spots, like Coconuts or whatever. They would talk about some really deeper, in stuff, and that’s the first time I heard about The Muzic Box.

The three times I got down to The Muzic Box, I only got in twice. One time I was able to be there the whole night, and then one time I got kicked out. Because they realized, like wait a minute, you look a little bit too young to be up in here. And the one time I didn’t get kicked out was because me and my friends were standing out front and Ron walked up, and I was just like, I wanna get in, and he was like yeah, they with me. And we got in. Just that one night of fully being up in there and hearing what was going on affected me a lot. It was working the intellectual side and the emotional side. It had both synapses going back and forth, all over the place…. I was overwhelmed; I was shocked.

But you know, Ron, he played a lot of places, it wasn’t just at the Box…. Ron would get hired out to play hotel parties, school sock hops. That’s what they were, sock hops. Just would happen to have a house or disco DJ. Even my high school would hire DJs. The first time I ever ran into Boo Williams, he played my high school homecoming sophomore year.

You were involved with a club night called Liquid Love Parties. When did that start?
It was the end of ’89, and it went into ’90, towards the summer. It ended because it was some problems with the owner of the spot and the city, about some permits or whatever. He just had to close down.

Where was that?
It was actually in the West Loop, for a while, and then he moved, and thought he could get over the city and move into the old spot at 2210, and he was trying to get set up, but then the city just still stopped him.

Was that a teen party?
I left home at 16, that was in ’89. I’d had to figure out a way to hustle, and the one way to hustle was throw some gatherings. At that point in time, a lot of places around the city were hiring people just to try to get people in there for teen parties because they all copied out from Medusa’s. Because they were doing so well. So if you could get some people in there between five and say ten o’clock and kick ’em out, why not. Before you geared up for the adults to come in later on. And we had our hustle for Sunday evenings. So a lot of skateboarders, graffiti writers, BMX bikers, that was the clique. Come under one roof and just kick it.

What did you do? Were you the promoter?
It was me and a group of people that promoted it. But then I just got access to some equipment that was given to me by a family friend that was actually a sound designer/engineer for a lot of performance art dance companies. He worked over at the Edge of the Lookingglass. I went in there one day, and I come to find out that’s where some DJs started going there to play late at night. All I know was during the day it was a theater place. I asked the dude, what is this stuff, and he was like, oh, some drum machines and whatever. And I was like, what about the stuff sitting over there. He was like, some of this stuff is broke. Some of this stuff works and some the stuff you gotta bang on. I was like, well how much you want for it? He was like, take it! That was how I was able to get some of my own personal equipment. It was an E-mu Drumulator and an Orbitron effects unit with the big knobs and foot switches. It was blue.

The “cool” DJ of the clique, before he would get there, they would need something going. And I was just like hey, well I got this, just let me mess around with some sound stuff, tweak it out some. And that was part of my experimentation.

Technically speaking, from ’89 to ’92, I was kinda homeless. I really wasn’t paying my own rent and my own bills. I’d crash at friends’ houses or me and some other friends would squat somewhere else or a chick’s parents would go to Europe for a couple of weeks and we would crash in there. I didn’t really get solid until ’92. That’s when I was like, hey, I’m tired of this floating around and being unstable, and I just said let me go ahead and start school. [Jamal received a degree in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University. He minored in ethnographic film studies.]

When did you start Mathematics?
Actually Mathematics started up in ’96. Graduated in ’96 from school, started graduate school, but then I left in ’97…. The type of music that I was making and what I was doing wasn’t “professional” enough, which is the same thing I hear to this day, and no label would put me on. Any person I would try to hook up with that was hot then would not let me into their professional studios…. I’d record to a VCR or record to a regular cassette tape…. Basically I would just run around and sell my cassette tapes at different parties.

Eventually when I got access to burn some CDs, I was able to do CDs and started selling those, but still bad sound quality. I would still try to go to these labels, give ’em my stuff, and they’d be like, oh it’s interesting, but it needs to sound like this. And there was no way in the world I could figure out how to sell my soul to make it sound that type of standard. I kept doing what I was doing.

So I got some magazines, looked in the magazines, and believe it or not back then in those magazines they were giving out P & D [pressing and distribution] deals. A lot of these magazines in Europe… and I just got some cats in the UK and they were just like, yeah, we’ll do it. Of course I name-dropped Steve Poindexter and Adonis. That helped out a lot too. So I sent them a couple of projects, they pressed it up, actually sent me three or four boxes of test pressings…. I went around practically giving them away….

In the process I got two releases put out, but the place folded…. That’s when that whole UK garage two-step scene was starting to pick up… so they said they didn’t want to deal with the whole house aesthetic…. So I went back to hustling my tapes and CDs after that.

Your music still has that gritty sound.
I don’t know nothing else. I didn’t go to the engineering school…. The majority of the clubs that I went to, it didn’t sound pristine. I think back then it was much more raw and much more original feeling in the systems, and I guess that’s what’s always in my ear, that dirty aesthetic. That’s what always moved me when I would hear a person playing and they would do crazy distortion with the basslines or the drums or the high-hats. That’s why a lot of my records have some very high highs. And I always have mastering guys to this day, it’s like, why are you killing me with these highs? But I’m like, well that’s what it sounded like to me when I was kicking it back then [both inside and outside of clubs] and that’s what made everybody scream. Now you go into clubs and you listen to it, it’s all flat across the board.

I try not to really worry about what other people think anymore, because it’s just me creating and doing my own thing. If other people can appreciate it for what it is, then I accomplished what I set out to do…. If they feel like it would inspire them, either by hate or love, to say oh this is whack, I can do better, then do so. If they love and appreciate it and it cause them to still wanna do better but out of the love, I really appreciate that too. It’s the call and response.

What can you tell me about the Members Only edits?
Everybody was running around talking about me me me…. Nobody would be doing nothing if it weren’t for the people who was coming to pay to keep this thing going. It was the dancers that came that made the DJ…. It’s the crowd that makes it hot…. That was what Members Only is about. Trying to give it from a point of view of the consumer, the dancer, the partaker…. [It’s] my perspective of what tunes that people react to, that set them off. Or a certain way that song was organized that would set them off….

If you walked down in the city right now you’d probably run into some older black person that’s probably in their forties and you asked them about a club in Chicago from back in the day, they’d probably say, yeah I kicked it. There’s a good chance.

Thousands of people.
Thousands upon thousands of people. You don’t hear their story because they’re not in this structured culture now. Even though they were one of the aboriginals of it, they’re not part of it now because life has other things ongoing for them. They were enjoying that moment in time.

This Members Only thing is basically letting people know that the other ninety percent is not forgotten. So no matter who does these little DVDs, these magazines, these documentaries, these ten percent would be nothing without the ninety.

What do you think about the current music scene?
That a lot of people need to start giving back and not taking, and not letting it be about them. That’s why the scene is messed up, because everybody’s crumb snatching on crumbs that’s not even there.

That’s the perspective I just want to put in this interview, whoever reads this, they need to know that if they want to come into this, don’t get on it because it’s a quick fix, don’t do it because it’s ego…. Fuck all that. You gotta do it because you really care about it and you’re trying to give back, you’re trying to add to the collective consciousness of what we call artistry.

I definitely want it to be known that Mathematics is more like a co-op to give back, to help other people who I feel really care about creation. And I dare any label out there to sign any new artist and let them still own one-hundred percent rights to the music and masters.

What are your current projects? What’s next?
At this point I gotta really start focusing on me and my career because I turn thirty-six; it ain’t sexy being single, trying to barely pay the rent month to month.

[Via email:] I have another 2x12" vinyl release A VIsitor From SOmeone Else’s Memories (Mathematics 033) coming out in Oct. 2009 and a limited edition repress CD of So Much Noise 2 Be Heard (Mathematics CD - 007). [I’m] working on an indie ethnographic/art visual documentary at the end of the year.

Do you have a day job?
No, this is it. ’Cause believe me if I had a day job with benefits and health insurance and a 401K plan, I don’t think I’d be wholeheartedly into this thing, you know what I’m saying? If I gotta be up by seven, out of the house by eight-fifteen to be at work at nine and then I don’t get home until about six, the last thing I want to look at is a drum machine. I said if I decide to do this, I gotta be all into it or not. And that’s the sacrifice that I make to do this.

+ + +

This compilation of Loess rarities and unreleased material, old and new, is a pleasant surprise. Bass-heavy beats on “Lull” meld with shifting, atonal electronic horns. “Schoen” is more low-key, with layers of drones and rattling percussion. “Troper” picks up the pace again with a hip-hop beat. Two lines of breathy notes form a duet of sorts.

“Bud” feels new, contrasting dubby reverb with a flat tapped beat. “Selkuth” is long, but indistinct. I feel like it’s always on the verge of melody. “Spetaelska” is obviously influenced by Boards of Canada, sounding like a warped music box. Nyckel is more original, with instrumentation that feels Middle Eastern. “Cyanor” is even better, with encompassing treble organ and pulses of distortion.

This album strikes me as a celebration of the past ten years of electronica. For the most part, these sounds no longer seem futuristic, but they make for a good Sunday morning listen. Who would have thought IDM would become my comfort music?

As a side note, it’s great to see Loess’ Nonresponse label resurrected after a five-year absence. The new Proem album Till There’s No Breath is straight-up IDM as well.

At first listen a week ago, this album seemed a bit cheesy, but it perfectly accompanies warm, sunny weather like today. While some of Wisp’s sounds are reminiscent of Analord or The Tuss, the over-the-top orchestration has more in common with artists like Frog Pocket and Secret Frequency Crew.

The first track, “Teddy Oggie,” is short and somewhat muffled, but “Picatrix” is better, with deep pipe organ bass and a syrup-sweet melody that veers dangerously close to pop near the end. “Keeper of the Hills” gets funky in the middle before turning almost ridiculously elaborate. “Flat Rock” starts with familiar chord changes, briefly adds a deep bassline, then breaks down to quasi-melancholy strings and alien computer noises.

“Seaway Trail” introduces the inevitable Aphex snare rushes. They work, though. “Hexenringe” is probably the best track here, with subtle, melancholy melody and then some Squarepusher-like breaks. “Katabatic” definitely shows Analord influences. “World Rim Walker” is a proper dark acid track topped off with horns, but unfortunately it’s followed by a weird Renaissance festival tune.

If the Frog Pocket and Secret Frequency Crew releases are any indication, this album will probably stay in my iPod for a while, but intricate, happy tracks tend to have a short life-span. Wisp obviously has great production skills, and a firm knowledge of British IDM. I’d love to hear him apply his skills to more experimental sounds and deeper themes. As much as I’m rooting for a resurgence of non-guitar home-listening electronics, it’s time for a giant leap.

Don’t worry, I still keep my ears open for IDM, but good new albums are few and far between. This debut from Sebastian Ehmke on Chicago label Tympanik Audio is a notable exception. From the cleansing tones and stress-fractured static of the opening track, “Komplex_A,” I could tell I was in for a treat.

“15mg” is an obvious highlight, with slow broken beats and melancholy minor keys. Hints of melody compete with speaker-chewing crunches. “23R0 & TH3 5T4R5” and “Hitchhiker” are both simple and cinematic, reminding me of old Bola. “I Need a Medic” is more fully realized, with unexpected bassline key changes and a hip-hop beat.

I’m not saying this is a perfect album. Some of the sounds are a bit too generic. “Null,” for example, is a fun romp, but I know I’ve heard a similar track somewhere before. “Androgenetic Bullshit” has lots of notes but little melody, while the piano loop on “Aer-” is too Philip Glass-like for my taste.

It’s worth waiting, though, for the closing tracks: “Komplex_B” is hauntingly beautiful; “No Need For Voices” is immersive, lush ambience. There are three bonus remixes as well. My favorite is Quench’s take on “15mg.” Massive bass creates its own melody.

While Ehmke’s work doesn’t (yet) represent a new direction, it’s nice to hear a new voice. I’m also heartened there are still labels taking risks on less easily marketed sounds.

In the late nineteen-eighties, Merwyn Sanders and his childhood friend Eric Lewis recorded a series of beautiful house tracks here in Chicago. Their first two EPs were issued under the names Virgo Four and M. E. on Trax Records in the U.S., then were licensed to Radical Records in the U.K. The duo followed up with another M. E. EP on Trax and a fourth release as Ace & The Sandman on Trax subsidiary Saber Records.

More recently, Virgo Four tracks have been featured on compilations from Warp and Soul Jazz Records. In 2006, N.E.W.S. in Belgium re-issued the Virgo Four EP “Do You Know Who You Are?” as part of their Trax Classics series. I interviewed Merl by phone last week, and discovered he’s a down-to-earth guy who is still active in the local arts scene.

Jacob: Did you grow up in Chicago?
Merl: Yeah, I was born and raised here, and my partner Eric was born and raised here too. Grew up on the South Side, primarily. And we were in our own four-man band. We actually called ourselves Quadraphonics. I played drums, and Eric was on guitar. A known steppers DJ in Chicago called DJ Calvin, he was the bass player, and another friend named Edgwick, who passed away, was on guitar. So we started out really early, in grammar school, as far as music and doing our own little songs and stuff.

What year was that?
We were in sixth grade. We must have been around twelve. When we started out, I didn’t even have a drum set yet. I used to play on my mom’s Tupperware. But somehow I used to make that Tupperware sound so good! I learned later, too, that it was actually a lot easier to lug around once I really did get a set.

Then after that, once we got in high school, it was just me and Eric who stuck together. That’s when we were able to get a drum machine, we got a Moog keyboard, and you know, all that stuff was starting to happen as far as music…. That was ’80 or so, ’81. We just started doing a bunch of music at home. At that time we got a 4-track. So, that’s what we would do, go to school, and we would hang out and do music all day, and on the weekend all day, and go shoot some ball, then work some more music…. We were into a lot of classic stuff, Kraftwerk and Gary Numan and a lot of jazz stuff. That’s what I grew up around, listening. My dad was a huge jazz fan, so that was just engrained in my head without me even knowing it. So I guess that’s what you get a little sense of with that album we did, that first one with Larry [Sherman at Trax Records].

We actually came to Larry probably ’84, ’85 or so, and he just wasn’t interested. ’Cause I think Jesse Saunders had just hit with the first house music record, so that really got us going, got everybody else going. We actually went to State Street Records after that. Then they weren’t interested either. Actually what happened is I started getting ready to go to The Art Institute—that’s where I went to college. I remember we left State Street Records, went over and hung out at The Art Institute. We went to one of their sound rooms there and that’s how we came up with four of the tracks on that first album. Because we came back to Larry about 1988, which is almost four years later, gave him the songs that we’d brought the first time, and then we had four more. So a total of eight or ten or something like that. At this time he was, okay, let’s go, let’s do it. I think it finally came out in ’89.

Were those the M. E. tracks on the “Ride” EP?
It was Ride and Virgo Four. All those were actually done at the same time. That’s how I met Rick Barnes, who runs Rax Trax. Rick Barnes and Derek Brand who were part of Nicholas Tremulis Band here in Chicago. Most of our stuff we played live except for the drum machine. Everything else we got so used to just playing, I guess just from the repetition, we didn’t use a sequencer at all. We showed up at the studio, had our keyboards, hit “Record.” It’s kind of like a live session with the keyboards.

Actually Lidell Townsell was there to help us produce it a little bit. So that’s how I got to know him, but we ended up just doing it our own way, so he didn’t stay on the project after that first set. ’Cause it would have been totally different than what you hear right now. He brought his own drum machine and everything else. We were thinking of not using the drum machine we had, but then once we got to the studio and started hearing stuff we got a little nervous and said, no, let’s just stick to what we do and how we’ve done it at home and just played it. They’re simple songs, let’s just do it and knock it out. We recorded ten all in one live session. It was one song, you know, “Next,” maybe a couple of passes with some other little things or a second take or two, then, “Next!”

There was a big thing with calling us Virgo Four, because we really approached them saying we were “M. E.,” Merle and Eric. [Larry Sherman] wanted to take half of [the tracks] and put them on “Virgo Four,” and that’s how the constant bickering between Larry and I started. ’Cause I argued up and down, that’s not our name, that’s Vince Lawrence and Adonis and Marshall, those guys…. And I think that’s what he was trying to do, he was trying to have some name association ’cause he thought the tracks would need some help or something…. Eric was more like, whatever man, just put it out, and eventually he just did it anyway. Overseas, I think it ended up being on its own CD where all eight tracks were together, but here in the U.S. he split it up with four of them Virgo Four, four tracks under M. E.

So did you know it was going to be licensed in the U.K.?
See Eric and I were so kinda, sometimes I actually kinda regret it, ’cause we were so detached from everything. We weren’t hooking up with other people doing stuff, with talking with the DJs to play our stuff or do anything. We were really just about the music. As soon as that was done, we were going back and still working on new stuff. We were looking at that as just a foot in the door to do something even bigger.

We had tons of tapes. I think by the time we went to Larry we had so many tapes and so much music we just picked those to do with him…. We were constantly hanging out with Larry. We always heard a lot of people talk about how Larry was this or that, but we seemed to have a different relationship, kind of, ’cause we’d be at his house playing Nintendo or something. Telling him, here, listen to this new stuff. We just constantly had new stuff, listen to it. “Oh I can’t do that, that’s R&B….”

We were still playing. Eric switched to bass then and I switched to guitar, started singing more. We really weren’t doing anything around the Trax stuff. And then no one was contacting us to do it, and then Larry didn’t promote anything, really. The guys who are doing it now or did get performances back then, they were just good at promoting themselves. They put their name all over the record, not a name in the background. We weren’t doing all of that. Nobody even knew who we were. That’s why it’s great and somewhat surprising when someone like you will say, “Oh yeah, I love that album,” and name it, and it’s just like, really? Where was everybody? We just didn’t know what was going on. No clue.

We did do other things with Larry, but then that was also under other names. Ace & The Sandman, he put out, I think, two EPs under that.

Was there one besides “Let Your Body Talk”?
I know there’s another track in our catalog called “It’s Hot.” I don’t know if that’s on the flip-side; see I don’t even remember anymore. [It’s credited to M.E. on the 1993 compilation “Lost Trax.”] That was the only time we kind of hooked up with a DJ or got cool with one, and that was primarily because he was so cool in that way, and that was Ron Hardy. Right before he passed, we brought Larry more music and Ron happened to hear this 4-track version, and so he wanted to meet and talk and say, hey, well do this to this track. ’Cause he was kinda helping Larry pick out new stuff. It didn’t even have a name or anything, and he just said, “Yeah this track is hot! Just try to do this to it…” So that’s why we ended up calling it “It’s Hot,” ’cause that was his way of describing it, and then we ended up doing another version of it. I actually liked the 4-track better.

What clubs did you go to?
Mendel Catholic High School was a big hot spot back then. But then you had The Music Box, the Power Plant, that was early on, and then Sauer’s and then COD’s. We were hitting the clubs, we just didn’t have any hook-ups with any of them. We were just going like everybody else. Occasionally we would hear somebody play one of our tracks and be a little surprised. Other clubs that came later were Shelter, The Warehouse, or Playground, whatever it was called. Then we would go to Canada a lot, actually. In Toronto, that’s where we would take the records sometimes, hit some clubs and give it to the DJs. But here we didn’t do anything. Nothing was promoted or anything.

We had one record called “Winter Days & Summer Nights” that we did with a singer called Yvonne Gage that was more on the R&B flavor and he [Larry] finally decided to do one. And WGCI got really interested, but they just didn’t want to play his crackly vinyl. They were like, give us a nice, clean version of it. Put it on CD. And he goes, “Whoa, I shouldn’t have to put it on CD, it’s a good song, it’s a good song!” So they just never played it….

What did you study at the Art Institute? Did you have formal musical training?
I was primarily focused on painting, drawing. And then I was in their fashion department for a year. Then I got out of the department and just kept with the basic studio studies, which was painting, drawing, illustration, and even some photography.

My dad was a musician. It’s just in my family. So all of that came from in-house. I would play drums at church. I was a back-up drummer at church when I was growing up. The music was just always there, way before college.

What is your day job?
For the show Million Dollar Quartet, I was the lead artist on doing the set. I started doing that work right out of The Art Institute. I started working for a production company in their art department, just been doing it ever since. This particular company, we do a lot of opera sets, these huge opera sets which require a lot of sculpture-type work and painting and things like that. So that’s the day job for me right now.

[Merl was also nominated for two awards for his lead role in eta Creative Arts Foundation’s production of “Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil” in 2005.]

Had a little mural company with a partner for a while, so a lot of the spots around Chicago, we did a few public murals, did a lot of work with Chicago Park District. Some of them had to be removed because the city re-did certain areas, but Diversey Harbor was one big major area that we painted. Daley Bicentennial Plaza downtown, there was a big Earth Day project down there. So for a while I was doing a lot of painting and murals and production work like that, and doing a lot of photography at the same time. That’s what has swung me around to doing film now, ’cause it actually encompasses all those things into one thing: the sound, the music, the photography, the production work I’ve done.

Merl with George Clinton after a session for Die Warzau (left) and recording “Elevator House Music” with Van Christie (right)

Do you still collaborate with Eric?

We still over the years, every now and then, will get together and come up with stuff. Last time I saw Eric was probably two weeks ago. He pulled up some tracks that we were messing around and doing probably a year or two ago, and he’s like, “Man, you just came over here and did a cut! I mean this track is hot, man.” And I don’t even remember us doing it….

We have a weird connection that way where sometimes we come up with ideas separately and then get together and say, check this out, I got a great hook and then okay, he adds a good drum track or a good bassline or a good melody over the top of that and then we just build and kinda build, and off of each other back and forth. And then sometimes it just happens with us just playing together….

I remember when we first started, we were still young, we thought, well let’s number our tapes and get really organized and know what songs are on what tapes. I think after tape 200 we stopped even writing it down. I don’t know how many tapes there are now. If you figure 60-minute tapes, there’s gotta be at least one decent song on an hour tape, plus how many tapes, there’s gotta be some good songs in there. So that’s what we’ve been doing lately, tryin’ to go back through all that stuff and try to make it somewhere release-able, like getting it on iTunes or something. Somewhere, a site for it, even to just download it and check it out.