Find them at basement nights and warehouse one-offs reaching from New York to Montreal and overseas Berlin, a collective of connoisseuring clubbers. The recent flood of clichéd counterfeits has left much of today's dance music better left unheard, but it's the rumours stuck in our head that tug at our ego and give us the need to shine light. A compulsive urge to spread from one ear to the next, to draw a line between bottle service cogs and the cutting edge of electronic music, music built to live in. There's no room for Vegas roller coasters or casual chit chat, just Night Rumours worth spreading.
After a brief hiatus over the holidays, this edition of Night Rumours tends mostly toward the more delicate, atmospheric side of techno, with a few exceptions. Few of these tracks will "kill the dancefloor," but since when was raving a necessarily violent endeavour? There's a certain relief to harsh, aggressive, volatile beats, to be sure, but in turn, sometimes moments of slippery, ethereal sound lend a different kind of intensity. For those seeking a harsher experience, scroll down to Drax's release on Perc's label and JoeFarr's remix of RVFFIAN; among the rest, highlights on pay-what-you-want releases from Berlin's Xosar and Dublin's Eomac as well as Marquis Hawke's techno release as Juxta Position on DVS1's Mistress sublabel.
Night Rumours:
Xosar - "Glyph of Lesser Elementals"
Holographic Matrix, self-released, December 28, 2015 [Donate via Bandcamp]
Juxta Position - "Speaking in Tongues"
Mistress 07 Vol. 2, Mistress Recordings [MISTRESS07], December 15, 2015 [Buy via Bandcamp]
Q3A - "Untitled B2"
Space Chamber, Delsin Records [DSR114], January 11, 2016 [Buy via Delsin]
Drax - "Low Machine"
The 3rd Decade, Perc Trax [PTL005], December 13, 2015 [Buy via Bandcamp]
RVFFIAN - "Midtones" (JoeFarr Remix)
Sprezzatura, RDL47 Records [RDL016], October 26, 2015 [Buy via Beatport]
Eomac - "Who Saw You"
25122015, self-released, December 25, 2015 [Donate via Bandcamp]
Unknown Location - "S.E."
S/N.2, Circular Limited [CIR035], December 29, 2015 [Buy via Bandcamp]
Søren Nordström - "Transmission II"
Syndicate, Drumlore, January 12, 2015 [Buy via Bandcamp]
A Light in the Dark:
Fort Romeau's Cin Cin label launched last fall with the goal of bringing friends together in collaboration, and the first release from back in November places label co-founder Fort Romeau alongside Berlin's Nick Höppner. The A1, Fort Romeau's "Untitled" track, captured my fancy, a balearic house groove supplemented with an acid-tinged bassline.
Fort Romeau - "Untitled"
Fort Romeau/Nick Höppner, Cin Cin [CINCIN001], November 25, 2015 [Buy via Juno]
Featured Mix:
To be completely honest, over the holidays, separated from my work laptop, I fell a bit behind on digging for new mixes to take in and instead fell back on old staples stored on my phone. I was a bit nervous about picking a mix for this column, but then this one fell in my lap a few days ago and saved the day. Joyce Lim (who DJs as Zem Su Yung), Sami Yenigun and Dawit Eklundashington, founders of Washington D.C. label 1432 R, put together this selection for the 135th Truancy podcast, and it's a delightful representation of their tastes across multiple genres. It's a bit of a lighter vibe than the usual suspects for this column, but absolutely worth a listen.
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