Various - Night Owls 02

Various - Night Owls 02 (Deluxe Records, DLX013CD, 2002) (320)

01  Soft Pink Truth, The - Adeusz
02  Electric Birds - Nightriders: Greenhouse FX Mix
03  Warmdesk - Guero: Bedside
04  Daniel Gardner - Polokolipt: Friendly Fe-Lion Mix
05  Jetone - Somatonin
06  Electric Birds - Impel
07  Sagan - Who Speaks For Earth?
08  Emisor - Sala De La Lectura
09  Bizz Circuits - Drought
10  Emisor - Mnaomal
11  Bizz Circuits - Dubbing In Gaza
12  Pan•American - Fake Philly Strings

Allmusic review:

Volume two in Deluxe's compilation series Night Owls is different from the first installment. Avoiding ambient electro and dreamy soundscapes, it focuses on rhythm. Danceable but not dance, the music follows light clicks & cuts guidelines with sidesteps into IDM and, yes, a couple of atmospheric tunes. The roster includes label favorites Electric Birds and Bizz Circuits, the latter adding two new tracks to his album The Very Best of Bizz Circuits, released at the same time. Emisor also delivers two cuts: "Sala de la Lectura" has a Latin drum machine thing going, while "Mnaomai" boasts a romantic Fender Rhodes. The other featured artists are all Canadian or American: Warmdesk pulls off a nice number where clicks look like glitters; Soft Pink Truth (aka Matmos' Drew Daniel) opens the set with "Adeusz," a dancefloor-friendly cut, although not as straightforward as the duo's porno soundtracks (see Vague Terrain Recordings' A Viable Alternative to Actual Sexual Contact). Concluding the track list is an honor awarded to Pan American. His "Fake Philly Strings" takes listeners back to the mood of Night Owls 01. Volume two delivers the goods and makes a fine continuous listen, but there is not much here to write home about. 

Various - Night Owls 01

Various - Night Owls 01 (Deluxe Records, DLX011CD, 2001) (320)

01  Esa Ruoho - Molies 1 (24/11/00)
02  Aspic - Mr. Ouik
03  Parts:Places - Untitled No. 8
04  Solid Objects - It Was In Middle Of Lake
05  Eblake - Nachtmusik
06  Solid Objects - It Was In Middle Of Mountain
07  Llips - Out Of Reach (Electric Birds Remix)
08  Dietrich Schoenemann - Interwinds
09  Etherdrag - Subway Trolls
10  Esa Ruoho - Molies 2 (24/11/00)
11  Electric Birds - Autofibre
12  Starfish Pool - Sleepless
13  Chessie - The Firefly

Info:

Deluxe Records presents Night Owls 01 - the first volume in a compilation series of nocturnal mood music; not to fall asleep to, but a nocturne that awakens as it evolves. From lush, vivid dreams to dark hallucinatory nightmares, the Night Owls appear, taking shape in various forms of dark, textural electronic listening music. The first volume features 13 exclusive tracks from: Esa Ruoho (aka Lackluster), Llips, Electric Birds, Starfish Pool, Chessie, Eblake, Dietrich Schoenemann, Aspic, Parts:Places, Solid Objects and Etherdrag.      

The Deluxe label's Night Owls 01 compiles the work of some of abstract techno's relatively unknown quantities in a fashion that entirely befits its name. While it's a bit louder than the output of Taylor Deupree's like-minded 12K label, the contributions to Night Owls 01 are also deafeningly understated. As each track seems to straddle the space between consciousness and unconsciousness, you can imagine the types of sounds present here; heavily treated blips and samples, softly spliced together under the digital scalpel of Pro Tools and the like. Not to say that all are completely made of ones and zeroes. Some choice compositions from Chessie and Llips actually include quite a few acoustic elements. What can be said about all of the songs, though, is that they're sparse and slow, clicks & cuts-type collages that allow themselves plenty of time to develop. In rare cases, some give themselves a little too much time, though. Still, rarely does one track rise about another as all comfortably flow together without a beginning or ending, truly making for moody night music. Generally, this is a gorgeous record that delivers the goods of a promising label. If nothing else, it serves as the perfect sampler of few of abstract electronic music's formidable new talents. 

Electric Birds - Gradations

Electric Birds - Gradations (Mille Plateaux, MP 112, 2002) (320)

1 Cyclist
2 Nightriders
3 Painted Rooms
4 Slow Motion
5 Astral Traveling
6 Radia
7 Vox Canon
8 Gradations
9 Rian

A couple good Amazon reviews:

In the fast n' furious world of electronic music, the period between the impact of influence and its implementation is remarkably short. No sooner had the legions of Autechre clones seen their white cd covers gleaming from the racks of the local record store, then the error-electronics popularized by Oval were codified as the Glitch. While scores of 2000's class of headbobbing laptoppers have already faded into rightful obscurity, Mike Martinez has managed to grab that elusive golden ring: a release on Mille-Plateaux. Not that Martinez's Electric Birds project needed the stamp of approval of the Force-Inc empire: his music abounds with warmth, subtle detail, and layer upon layer of melody and texture. The sonic ecosystem of "Gradations" compares positively with the work of my personal 2000 artist of the year, Vladislav Delay. Before his Luomo project catipulted him to relative dance-pop stardom, Delay released four of 2000's best discs. What set his work apart from the encroaching clicks n' cuts hordes was the same thing that elevates Electric Birds: change, detail, and a prismatic sense of time. "Gradations" is the first work I've heard since Delay's that takes electronica out of the land of the loop. True, repetition IS part of Matinez's game. It's difficult to work succesfully in the post-techno aesthetic without it. However, his music contains innumerable unique events that squirn through the musical landscape. Scrapes, clicks, pops, chimes, mysterious percussive sounds, subtle ripples in the melodic fabric, shifting beat matrices, expansions and contractions, and so on all add to the richness of the music on this disc. Funk and deep house influences make these sounds as inviting and seductive as they are innovative. A few of these tracks would work as well at a candlelit dinner as they would at an opening of a gallery show of multimedia artwork. Others would send your send your date packing. That's the real strength of Electric Birds, where a unified style, with constant flux as its key component, meets a variety of moods and energy levels. For experimental electronica that's easy on the ears, but rewarding for the mind, look no further.  

There's something pleasing about the endless iterations of click and cut-based music, particularly when it's as warm and inviting as _Gradations_, from Electric Birds. "Cyclist" starts the album out on a neutral IDM note, but once the layers start building, as on the purring "Nightriders," things seem to come to life. "Painted Rooms" sounds like the illegitimate love child of Akufen and Tim Hecker -- not a bad thing at all! -- while "Astral Traveling" blends digital funk with some nice acoustic guitar riffs. The throbbing "Radia" is full of warm, suspended notes with some added bits for flavor. "Vox Canon" sets some tinkling tones to an off-kilter rhythm that never seems to sync up quite perfectly, not even as the track's speed begins to decay. The title track serves up some of that Basic Channel dub goodness, and the final track, "Rian," chugs out on a quasi-industrial dirge that settles into its groove 2/3rds of the way through. Clicks and cuts to make your day!       

Electric Birds - Panorama

Electric Birds - Panorama (Deluxe Records, DLX010CD, 2001) (320)

1  Avocet (Panorama Mix)
2  Cascadia
3  A Green Frost
4  Terra Forms
5  Repercussions
6  Lake City
7  Azul
8  Black Oceans

Good Amazon review:

Mike Martinez's second effort as Electric Birds flirts with minimal techno as a counterpoint to his lushly overlapping soundscapes, and the result is hypnotic. The opening "Avocet" spontaneously restructures itself mid-track, where another artist would let it loop; "A Green Frost" evokes a dark, frozen forest without resorting to sound-effect cliche; and "Terra Forms" simply slips by in the night, virtually unnoticed but with its presence felt. Martinez has effectively swallowed his influences and mastered his tools, and the result- a focused, deliberate work of almost visual intensity- is a rare pleasure in a climate of half-baked demos. - Rob Geary - XLR8R Magazine - November 2001      

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Electric Birds - Electric Birds

Electric Birds - Electric Birds (Deluxe Records, DLX005CD, 2000) (320)

Produced by Matmos.

01 Windy Hill
02 Parallelogram
03 Finger & Stroke
04 Slampic
05 Tensonic
06 Hyper Elevation
07 Acoustic Orange
08 Bubble Cycle
09 Icepic
10 Invisibility
11 Lost Leaders

Couple good Amazon reviews:

In the sonic nest occupied by Electric Birds (aka Deluxe label principal Mike Martinez), loops, samples, and meticulously programmed beats nourish the kind of heady, minimalist electronica that hatches ever so rarely. The 12 tracks here never devolve into mere background music, as Martinez resists the urge to just push "play" on the old Powerbook... The result is a wide range of sounds that jumpstart the grey matter and prick up the ears.
Much like his labelmates Matmos (who are credited with "additional production" on the album), Martinez has the uncanny ability to weave seemingly unrelated fragments into logical, flowing pieces. "Slampic" affixes sampled piano lines over thumping Casio beats which threaten to burst into pure house but never do, while the stacked, melodic beats in "Hyper Elevation" eventually drop out altogether in favor of some highly skilled, bare-bones techno workouts.  Elsewhere, Martinez has his way with otherworldly tonal effects. "Parallelogram" mirrors the phasing genius of Steve Reich's "Music For 18 Musicians," as mallet instruments strike a "melody" over wobbly, skipping tones. "Finger & Stroke" is much edgier, its deep bottom end coalescing into crashing, My Bloody Valentine-ish waves of sound and unabashed distorted hums.  The album's final two cuts, "Invisibility" and "Lost Leaders," turn another corner entirely, recalling the sad guitar picking and funereal drones of acts such as Windsor For The Derby and Early Day Miners. "Electric Birds" is one of the most creative, electronic-based albums to drop in some time, its panorama of sound the perfect chill for overheated clubbers. - Jonathan Cohen - Billboard Online, spring 2000.

All three of Electric Birds' releases are very different from one another as far as genre or style is concerned. I would say his self-titled here comes in a close second to Gradations only because I like the more steady beats on the latter.  This CD, though, should not be over looked (despite the fact that it's out of print)! It has some very beautiful ambient experiments that sometimes hints of Nobukazu Takemura.  One song (Invisibility) even has lyrics, which are masterfully mixed in as to not destroy the mood of the CD.  If you like any of Electric Birds' first three releases, I firmly believe you should buy them all! Then you can stock up on Takemura, Sutekh, Matmos, etc...maybe even some Casino Versus Japan.      

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