Bluetech
Love Songs to the Source
Interchill records
You gotta love a label like Interchill that purposely sets up visitors to have a perfectly bizarre web experience. The front page is gray with a teeny, tiny box of crawling text from a Marvin the Paranoid Robot chomskybot. The actual web site is a pop-up, so you have to turn off your blocker to see it, and then it plays music and makes you chase buttons around to get anywhere. If I didn’t like their stable of electronic artists so much, I’d just send their link to MostAnnoyingWebsites.com.
Love Songs to the Source is a great collection of afro-beat and calypso influenced remixes. There are a dozen up and coming musicians contributing to the rounded and well arranged collection, beginning with Bluetech (OK, Evan Bartholomew and Evan Marc) and “Seed to Soil” moaning vocals behind the ganja slow beat sounding a bit like sex and a bit like a sale at Macy’s. Katrina Blackstone jumps in for “Change.” The island sound is still there but more electricity has entered the synthesizer. Another fun guest is Dr. Israel who contributes to “Dred Inna Babylon” and “Counting Out Stones” which are filled with shy bird calls and a lost didgeridoo darting among the beats. A more ragged rhythm underlies “Poly Chrome Petroglyph” provided by KiloWatts, and DJ Mari Boine adds the new age vocals to another hypnotic and minimal mix. Alternately hypnotic and alluring, Bluetech has found a good balance between electroweird and mass pop attraction. These guys are out touring right now; you might be able to catch them before they have to go back to the dream world and do some more composing.
Interchill: http://www.interchill.com • Bluetech: http:/www.bluetechonline.com • http://www.myspace.com/iambluetech
