RCRD LBL

The Ivy Wire #3; or dreams of a decent life

The word ‘minimal’ – what does it mean to you? The word has leant itself as a label to worlds as diverse as visual art, interior design, mathematics and cookery. Anything can be ‘minimal’, in a literal sense. It just means there isn’t very much there. Sonically, the word has been tossed around with feral abandon for decades, treasured as much as it’s the victim of abuse – Chinese water torture, Steve Reich. Harmonia, Hannett and Burial, clock chimes and microwave ovens. Some noises deserve the tag more than others, but that’s to be expected when you’re dealing in amounts. Also implied towards ears is an efficiency. The lean grace of something built to handle business dutifully, without roaring like a Maserati engine or wigging and wringing out, guitar in wrist, grotesquely overblown. Rock star buffoon. Minimal in music means restraint, means elegance, means decency. This is beginning to sound like Italian advertising. Here’s the chocolate.

Download: Foals – ‘Olympic Airwaves’ (Chris Woodward dub mix)

Download: Foals – ‘Olympic Airwaves’ (Chris Woodward vox mix)

Oxford quintet Foals’ brand of pop is already more restrained, elegant and decent than spring time in a nunnery. Still, friend and resident Buzzin’ Fly DJ Chris Woodward has spotted some crumbs on ‘Olympic Airwaves’ chin and dabs at them with a moistened tissue. Two mixes here – one ‘dub’, the other ‘vox’. Both gleam like you wouldn’t know.

You would? Foals release ‘Red Sox Pugie’ on the 9th of May.

Pluxus are another band whose craft’s more akin to deck-tied onanism, by which I mean solo and by proxy the lonely, sullen sound of Kompakt’s startling minimal techno template. ‘Kinoton’ is taken from new album Solid State (released on the 19th of May) and stutters awkwardly into life before picking up speed in the slipstream of The Field. Balmy, breathy vocals help ease these comparisons and tenderly tie knots between the avant witchery of Autechre and Cut Copy’s gumball take on minimal tech, delicately plotting a course between the two, tape sounding like it might rip and break whenever too much is happening at once, thoughts of summer nights and open windows to yr skull while u sleep.

Download: Pluxus – ‘Kinoton’

Let’s be whistlestop – Booka Shade are the most long-in-our-teeth, two sleuths quietly setting about rotting gums, one left, one right. ‘Mandarine Girl’ hustles along on synths rusted light red, slotted into gaps in the composition that means a simple kick’n’bass is all that’s needed for the gee-up. This old cut – taken from 2006’s Movements - reaches us after the release of new album The Sun & The Neon Light, Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier’s third, on Monday (26 May).

Download: Booka Shade – ‘Mandarine Girl’ (reworked)

- Kev Kharas

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