The Musings of a Very Important Lawyer.

I don’t know a single goddamned biographical detail about Sami Koivikko. I know he’s on Ghostly International’s minimal techno imprint Spectral Sound, and I know that I was fortunate enough to receive a promo copy of his soon-to-be-released single, Sapphire. In fact, the EP wasn’t even self-contained - it was burned onto the end of an Audion single I was sent to review. I don’t know if the gambit was to catch me when I listened through, or what, but it worked - “Sapphire” is a slick piece of beautiful melodic techno.

The a-side builds from a single-note bassline, tagging on hats, blips and chords as it goes at its own leisurely pace. The claps and occasional stutters place it near the intersection of techno and electro, at least until about the three-minute mark. After a brief rest, a chord progression begins - wholly unexpected yet totally in-tune with everything else that’s happening - and this chord progression anchors the track the rest of the way through. It’s one of those perfect moments of golden ratio release where you just have to lean back and go “holy shit.”

“Sapphire” is followed by a remix by Daso & Pawas, and the way they jump right into the progression of the track, it feels like nothing changed except the weight. The kicks are louder and the synth touches are dubbier. It’s one of those mixes that ups the bounce quotient* of the original, doesn’t do anything life-changing but doesn’t fuck anything up. By being placed second on the EP instead of tacked onto the end, it works to prolong the joy of the original track while switching it up and injecting a nice, house-y vibe.

The last track, “Tonalite,” toes the electro line even closer than “Sapphire.” The template is the same - a single-note bassline gives way to a dream-like melody. It’d be hyperbolic to talk this one up as hard as the a-side, as the tracks are both fantastic. Strongly recommended.

Sapphire will be released as a 12″ or as a 320k, DRM-free MP3 download from Spectral Sound on June 24, 2008.

* “Bounce quotient” is totally a real thing, I learned it in physics in college

Several big, expanded, remastered cash-grab album re-issues have come out in the last few months, all of which are screaming for my attention. In the interest of something to talk about, I’m going to go endlessly on and on about why they are so great. There’s nothing obscure about this list, but I’d like to discuss anyways, so here goes.

The most widely-heard of all these re-issues is Beck’s Odelay, which got the “deluxe edition” treatment. These deluxe editions are super, super nice - I have the Who ones for My Generation (absolutely incredible - “Leaving Here” has a Keith Moon drum pattern that sounds like proto-jungle, thirty-five years ahead of its time) and Tommy (better for the liner notes than the extras - what idiot wants to hear a demo of “Pinball Wizard” that doesn’t even have a drum track?) . There’s tons more I have my eye on, but none of them are quite as special as Odelay. Odelay doesn’t get put on even 1/4 as often as Midnite Vultures, which deserves a Pulitzer, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an unstoppable juggernaut of greatness. It’s got a whole second disc of bonuses, all B-sides and comp tracks and demos. It contains “Richard’s Hairpiece,” the Aphex Twin remix of “Devil’s Haircut,” which is notable because I purchased it on vinyl back when I was an Aphex completist. The album and the b-sides just reek of high school for me, and I’m aching to pick up a copy once I can find it for less than fucking thirty dollars.

Next up is another high school favorite, a CD that endlessly repeated in my car as I’d drive through the snow on my way to/from school - Air’s Moon Safari (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition). Moon Safari came out at a time where my friends and I had an all-consuming obsession for all things synthesizer. I remember my friend Joe lending me his Polymoog around the time, and being frustrated that a piece of junk like that was unable to even pretend to replicate the beauty found on this CD. Moon Safari was the last truly solid album Air wrote; that’s really unfortunate, because it was also their first. Their use of vocoder - supposedly to keep the vocalists mostly gender-neutral - is ubiquitous without ever being annoying (this is quite the tightrope when it comes to the vocoder!). “Kelly Watch the Stars” will hit me with nostalgia for winter-time driving until the day I die. This album is really fucking stupendous. Again, there’s a second disc with B-sides, comp tracks, and so forth. Plus, this one comes with a DVD - it’s the tour video Air put out when this album got released the first time, except it’s off of that nasty VHS and onto a format that isn’t irretrievably broken.

Third - and I just read about this today, via Pitchfork - is Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville. Liz Phair was one of my absolute favorite musicians in the whole world when I was in high school. A smart, aggressive woman with an amazing knack for confessional lyrics that weren’t about fucking fairies or whatever (you can pretty much go and fuck yourself, Tori Amos [although Little Earthquakes will always be amazing]) and who wrote incredibly vicious, rocking tunes. I was just like oh my God. I’m sure I talked about marrying her at least five million times. Exile in Guyville is why. It’s totally perfect, it’s from Chicago, it has “Mesmerizing” and “Fuck and Run” on it. Fun fact: my sister walked in on me singing “Fuck and Run” on my guitar once in high school. You want to feel the pain of true, raw embarrassment? Have a little girl walk in on you when you’re singing a first-person song about a girl, you know, fucking and running “even when I was twelve.” I am secure in my masculinity, bro. I swear to god I am.

This is also a good time to mention Replicas Redux, a double-disc reissue of Gary Numan / Tubeway Army’s first true classic with a whole second disc of demo versions and stuff. If you heard any of the other Numan reissues, you know that there is tons of gold to be mined in the demos / Peel sessions / live tracks / etc. Plus, this is the one reissue on this list that is actually affordable - like fourteen bucks at Reckless - so it’s pretty easy to go and buy it and then listen to it all of the time.