Monday, August 8, 2011

hudson mohawke: satin panthers ep (warp)

hey look! my first review for Tiny Mix Tapes:

 
Satin Panthers is Hudson Mohawke’s third major outing for Warp, and in many respects, it’s also his most accomplished. It’s a tight little EP — five staggering, stuttering, often imperious dancefloor gems — and far more consistent than Butter, his debut full-length from 2009. Opener “Octan” is a masterpiece of a pricktease: all anticipation, no climax. And then, once “Thunder Bay” has kicked in with its surly rude-girl vocals, massive baile-inflected horn riff, and ravetastic synth break in the middle, our appetite for the rest of the record remains duly whetted. From the loping THC-addled bassline of “Cbat,” through the glossy-as-fuck "All Your Love," to the frenetic martial snares of closer “Thank You,” Satin Panthers is a quality piece of work from Glasgow’s much vaunted wunderkind.
 
But here’s the rub: It’s also less exuberant, less manic, less gleefully ADHD than some of HudMo’s previous efforts...
 

Saturday, August 6, 2011

shameless plug: discipline journal

a great new arts journal called Discipline and edited by a friend of mine is being launched at the Alderman on Friday night. says its website:
Discipline is a Melbourne-based contemporary art journal. It has a focus on longer, research-based essays, interviews and artist pages.

While based and published in Melbourne, the writers and artists who have contributed to Discipline are both local and international. In presenting longer-form essays, the journal aims to ground a new body of sustained intellectual writing about contemporary art that does not merely fall back on the crutch of ʻpluralityʼ as a means for theorising art after postmodernism and globalisation.

Discipline aims to publish highly focused essays that take on, critically and intelligently, the full strength of contemporary artworks, working through their specific concepts, histories, politics and materialities.