Kettenkarussell Easy Listening LP 04, Edward Into A Better Future Giegling LP 05

	£		100
	$		132

Bought in March 2015 directly from Giegling, for curation purposes, never opened or played, kept in dust cover and original packaging by sender, this is a wonderful opportunity to acquire Mint copies of two sought after titles, both 2 x 12” albums. Immaculately presented in individually printed covers. I will also send in original Giegling printed envelope.

2 Albums, 4 Records, 8 Sides

Giegling LP 04 Kettenkarussell - Easy Listening

Tracklist:

A1 Intro

A2 Drama

A3 Chords Of Banana

B1 Konstant Sleep

B2 Spirale

C1 Haller

C2 Drift

C3 Krusty Dreams

D1 The End

D2 Of Course

Giegling LP 05 Edward - Into A Better Future

Tracklist:

A1 Let's Go feat. Mari Inoue

B1 Yes

B2 My Life In A Window

B3 Into A Better Future

C1 Skating Beats

C2 Hecstatic

C3 Commercial Break

D1 At Ease

D2 Fooling The Magician

D3 Miracel Steps

Returning late to the table, the drolly titled Easy Listening brings their house style to fruition in mesmeric moves and boundary crossings—a ride that, while not of the white-knuckle variety of their namesake (see artwork), undulates with lowercase thrills from lyrical pianism, ambience, downtempo and deep tech-tinges.

Remember micro-house? It didn’t stay around long, as the geek-meets-party thrall palled. A pleasant surprise, then, to find a take on the template tapped into to good effect by Kettenkarussell. The German duo first brought the minimal house down with I Believe You & Me Make Love Forever (2009) and Things Will Never Flange (2010), on Weimar collective label, Giegling, along with a couple of mixes, one for Little White Earbuds (LWE Podcast 58), the other a ssg special for mnml ssgs, one of whose curators waxed: ‘They not only pull off the requisite formulas and push all the right buttons, they add a whole dark thicket full of animated organic sounds, wind up dolls (perhaps demonically possessed, be careful!) and forest clearings filled with soft, shining, melodic lights… fairies?’ (PC, mnml ssgs, 2010). Since then all has been mostly quiet on the production front for Herr Koreander and Leafar Legov, together or solo, though the Giegling label they were involved in founding has grown with the likes of Prince of Denmark (aka Traumprinz), Vril, Edward and Christopher Rau. Returning late to the table, the drolly titled Easy Listening brings their house style to fruition in mesmeric moves and boundary crossings—a ride that, while not of the white-knuckle variety of their namesake (see artwork), undulates with lowercase thrills from lyrical pianism, ambience, downtempo and deep tech-tinges.

Where mainstream techno/house can seem as much about DJ-ego self-construction as it is about The Music™, KK cultivate a somewhat murky persona, an anonymity seen as ‘…one part of our personality […] In our opinion techno should be faceless and not about names or persona, or some nice pants.’ (Little White Earbuds, 2010). Mood-mirroring the shades of the cover’s water-blotched image of a derelict rollercoaster, Easy Listening opens as if broadcast from past times, with a harp-pluck dream sequence, the woozy waver of an orchestral concert pitch, and a Bruce Lee sample about ‘honestly expressing yourself’—a Giegling motto perhaps. Then “Drama” creeps in with a sneaky guitar motif and syncopated mnml/downtempo beats—a groove that’s rare but uncultivated. First genuine dance gestures surface on “Konstant Sleep,” a more upbeat take on “You’n’Me” extending hypnotically. A shift to downer tempo comes in the breakbeat chill of “Haller”—somewhere between Mo’ Wax and Giegling sample-monger, Dwig. Intertextual touches abound—from playful on the thinly veiled BoC pastiche “Chords of Banana” (see what they did there?) to po-faced on the Reichian concatenations of “Spirale.” “Krusty Dreams” is music to stomp on the leaf-Kompakted floor of Königsforst to, while chords of AFX-ian synth banana-bit-crush sweet(‘n’sour)en the rimshot-propelled “The End.” Sample-wash and field-fizz striate the beat patter, the air of a presenting past, retrieved from tape depredations, drawn from memory drift. KK say: ‘…most of what we bring out is pretty much imperfect and has something super realistic to it…’ (xlr8r). In signature Giegling style sampled snippets of jazz—horns, drum breaks—endow proceedings with a naturalism and humanity far from Microhouse v.1.0.

All in all, Easy Listening is a quietly engaging debut from the tone-setters of the Giegling collective, in the vanguard of regional artists cultivating a distinct house style. Kettenkarussell’s is a voice of its own deriving from genre-transgressive instrumentation and a ludic trope-pushing spirit, flickbook-ing through the mind’s musical archives. Alan Lockett Oct 2014.

Berlin producer Gilles Aiken, AKA Edward, has come along way from the hypnotic tech house of his early releases on WHITE. His odd path has led to an immersion in the music of krautrock artist Conny Plank (of Neu! and Cluster), whose music he remixed last year. On Into A Better Future, Aiken has done an admirable job of integrating Plank's techniques into a functional dance music context. The distance he's come since his debut LP, Teupitz, is startling evidence of an artist who can do whatever he wants.

Speaking to Musicbaum about the differences between Into A Better Future and his last LP, Aiken said: "The new one needs much more attention from its listener. Various parts get really weird. If you close your eyes and listen you might follow but if it's just music in the background it could get difficult. At least that's what I think." Indeed, Aiken bends and refracts the deep house template into an uncanny, psychedelic form. His union with Giegling makes perfect sense. In our recent Label of the month feature, label co-founder Konstantin spoke of being inspired by a small party at the New York record store Dope Jams: "It was dance music, but the bass drum was never the focus. I really liked that." Aiken, too, hits this sweet spot, focusing on mid-range percussion, atmosphere and motorik propulsion.

"Yes" dabbles in the '70s German sound, tempering a breezy techno snap with a guitar wash indebted to the "Frippertronics" technique King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp used in his collaborations with Brian Eno. Aiken told Little White Earbuds he likes to play Eno's "Thursday Afternoon" over techno tracks to put dance floors in an elegiac mood. He's dropped in a few beatless gems here, namely the wind-chiming "My Life In The Window" and the aptly-titled drone "Commercial Break." "Hecstatic" takes the logical next step, laying a blistering techno breakbeat under some beautiful, new age-style ambience.

Aiken alternates between head-music and a soaring melodicism that shines through the murk. The title track traverses both zones, starting with a hypnotic tom loop and Can-style spookiness and ending with heavenly pads. "Skating Beats" is unquestionably the album's banger. It arrives with a skipping house beat, the first rhythm that seems like a viable peak-time choice. A group of trippy arpeggios are eventually turned upside-down by a jarring and ecstatic funk-rock sample. There's also a sad grace to Edward's work, in keeping with the Giegling ethos. On "At Ease," he flits a doleful melody over a dubby house rhythm.

Kraut-informed house with an ambient lean has codified into itself into a genre these days (see Terekke's smudgy dance music, or much of the Further Records catalog), but not much of it works as well for dancing as what Edward's given us here. He's infused his modern house sound with a history of cosmic music and arrived at something unique. Despite the album's title, he seems more obsessed with the past. Either way, the future's looking rosy for Edward. RA Oct 2014.