Downloads & Releases - Reviews
Alex Tronic - Electricals EP Review
Alex Tronic is the nom de plume of Paul Croan, a musician who works out of Edinburgh, Scotland. His latest release is the Electricals EP - a recording which contains some of the finest electronic music I have heard in some time. A four-track, 17-minute EP may not seem to be something worthy of a lengthy discussion - but this one is.
Much like the AFX release Analogue Bubblebath, way back in 1994, this is an EP that is so creative as to nearly qualify as a full album’s worth of material. To be honest, one attraction for me is the relative obscurity of the release (at least here in the U.S.) Putting that somewhat personal bias aside though, the Electricals EP is simply wonderful music.
The four tracks the EP contains are “Panoramic” (“Walking Dream Mix“), “Send Me Five Dollars” which is presented in both the (“Hillside Mix“), and (“Five Dollar Remix”) versions, and “Sunshine Lover” (“Lounge Mix“).
As a States-side dweller, I have always had trouble with remixes, simply because I got suckered into buying 12” singles back in the eighties, when the “remixes” added up to basically nothing at all. Bite me, Def Jam.
This is why I brought up the Richard James release - it was the first time I heard music that was truly re-done, and qualified as genuinely different at all. This is the effect the Electricals EP had upon me. The 17-minutes of Alex Tronic’s Electrical EP is filled with music which is difficult to describe. It is not ambient, and it is certainly not “dance.” It falls somewhere (in a wonderful) place between the two genres.
Although this comparison may not meet with Mr. Croan’s approval (in fact it may piss him off royally), the Electricals EP reminds me (in spirit) of the early Air recordings collected on Premiers Symptomes. There is a beauty to this type of music which does not readily fall into any of the general “electronic music” categories - which makes it all the more enticing for me.
The Electricals EP is not really “dance” music per se, nor is it ambient. But it exists in a zone which I find indescribably wonderful. If any of the references I have previously offered make any sense to you, then by all means - check out Alex Tronic.
This is “electronic” music which makes the term itself seem almost irrelevant. Anyone who has ever understood the beauty of Air’s “Modular Mix” will know exactly what I am talking about. For those curious about some of the most “friendly” (yet ignored) current electronic music available - the Electricals EP is a very welcoming place to begin.
As a small Scottish label, you may not find this release easily. A click to visit the Alex Tronic Records site would be a good place to start.
By Greg Barbrick
ALEX TRONIC - SHIFTING SANDS
The second studio album from Edinburgh producer Paul Croan is perfect for Ibiza so it's no wonder he's now out there DJing. The album kicks off with the dreamy house of Psychedelic Fun Day which manages to go from a squelchy tribal beat to a funky get down.
Kirsty Brown adds vocals to three tunes. The lazy feel of the album continues with Lubdub, Torchlight and Lost, perfect chill-out moments that will have you drifting off lying on your sunlounger. But it's not all dreamy ambiance. Palpitations (Sunshine Lover) takes the earlier song and adds stinging drum 'n' bass. Back In The Room has a huge house beat which would make everyone in Ibiza's Privilege, the world's biggest club, hit the dance floor. Panic attack's squiggly synth line will wriggle into your brain. As always, Paul's production is spot on. Ibiza won't know what's hit it. Shifting Sands is out on May 27
Rick Fulton – Soundcheck Daily RecordMARVIN WILSON - PLANETARY CIRCUIT
Wilson has spoken influence-wise here of Robert Moog and a natural progression of sound “from acoustic to electric to electronic”. If that was his definite aim then he has succeeded admirably.
This is a record that slowly seeps into you; gentle, soothing keyboard passages letting you feel it almost even before you hear it. This comes on like the perfect summer record, all balmy airs and gentle grooves.
But then, the bass sound that flooded Our Time Will Come, Wilson’s previous album, reasserts itself, slowly taking control to stunning effect. Make no mistake; your heart will be pounding with excitement by the time this disc’s finished spinning.
This is an album with drive, to put on in your post-club comedown, late at night, with a glass of whatever your poison happens to be and thoughts of what may lie ahead on your mind. Another classic from the ATR stable.
Jonathan Muirhead – www.isthismusic.comBecki Bardot - Summer of Love EP
At Last Scotland has our answer to Sister Bliss,What that means is a female Producer/DJ producer who can produce club-crushing tunes that tear the place up. Becki Bardot aka Rebecca Croan-has released her debut trance EP on Edinburgh`s supreme electronica label Alex Tronic Records.
She has just left for 5 months in Ibiza and could come back as one of this years biggest breakout stars.The former ballerina who had to retire due to a foot injury , has created a Huge anthem in Summer of Love . With vocals from Fiona Lynch, it is an upbeat pounding tune.
On the EP there`s a chilled out Snakestyle Ibiza Sunrise mix and a frantic Alex Tronic D&b mix . The other tracks are the big-bassed Fluke-sounding Essence and the house pose of Disco Barbie .The Summer starts here. Summer of Love is out May 6th. Rick Fulton – The Daily Record 6.5.2011Becki Bardot - Summer of Love EP
The first great record of summer 2011 is here already. It’s called ‘Summer Of Love, which should give you an idea of where it’s coming from and the disc is Bardot by name and Bardot by nature – it’s deep, teasing and sinuously sexy without ever being gratuitous or in your face. It’s the kind of disc you’ll be playing to death before you even realise it.
The Bardot factor makes it come across like an experiment between Portishead and The Orb – aching, romantic and longing on one hand and spikily electronic on the other. Lead vocalist Fiona Lynch has all of Beth Gibbons’ throaty vocal affectations and her backing band have the kind of sonic ambition that makes you have faith in dance music all over again.
Jonathan Muirhead – Is this Music Magazine 15.4.2011Pandacetamol - Headless EP - ATREP126
How do you deal with a New Year hangover? With some Pandacetamol.
If you buy the Headless EP now you`ll have it when the summer arrives and and you need a lie down after a heavy night. First tune Rope a Dope has a one synth line that sounds like a pussycat purring through a 303. The Beat will bounce around your brain like a game of ping pong in Tron. Flashpan takes you right back ti 1987 and the pure unbridled joy of your first rave . Pandacetamol ? It feels like Fatboy Slim going on a trip as Aphex Twin.
Rick Fulton –The Daily Record 7.1.2011For more information on Pandacetamol see here: www.myspace.com/pandacetamol
MetalTech Alkomatik EP
FINALLY a band that put fun into Scotland's music scene. Looking like a cross between Kiss, Slipknot and Sique Sique Sputnik, MetalTech mix dance rhythms with crunching guitars and Jesus Jones- style distorted vocals. It's fantastic.
MetalTech are an Edinburgh band who already know they are great. Erik Tricity, who sings, plays guitars and does programming, has two Ziggy Stardust-like ashes on his face while The Insidious Dr. Mayhem: Guitars looks like a Japanese Kabuki clown. Meanwhile bass player Lord Thrapston Flagellator wears a gas mask. Not your average Oasis rip-off band then.
Opening dance/rock mash-up track Sell Your Soul whacks you with drum 'n' bass beats and gurning Metallica guitars. Kontrol kicks off with a house synth and deep space bass as Erik Tricity veers from the languid vocals of The Jesus and Mary Chain to Slipknot's throaty growl.
Wasted sounds like a modern version of ZZ Top as the dance rhythms bounce and the guitar snarls. You have to make these guys stars.
Alkomatik out from June 1st 2010
ALEX TRONIC Back in the Room EP
It may be called Panic Attack but Alex Tronic's first tune on his new EP is anything but stressful. In fact it's a bit of a flashforward to sunny, lazy days which will be on us in three months. From the first upbeat drum hit you know Panic Attack is going to be joyous. And with an added mesmerising Stone Roses-style bass, UFO- synth, squelchy Matrix synths and even a Spanish-sounding guitar it has TUNE written all over it. An early contender fora techno hit on Ibiza. Edinburgh-based producer Alex Tronic, aka Paul Croan, shows just how it's done. After the epic Panic Attack comes the distinctly technofunky Psychedelic Sunday driving you to dance with its rootsy drumming and Chic guitar. The title track has a booming bass, driving drums and squiggly synths and it's four to the floor with the cheeky Slappa Doobie, is an uplifting slice of Acid House. Back In The Room is out this week. www.alextronicrecords.co.uk
Rick Fulton –The Daily Record (c) 2010 Daily Record; Glasgow (UK). Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
The Psychedelic Manifesto - Lysergic Sushi
ANOTHER stunning release from Edinburgh electro label Alex Tronic Records. London-based Chris Garland and Rene Steuns kick off with Forever, an instant club classic.
It begins with singer Ilona singing a very choral sounding “free” before a trance bass kicks intakes you off to a blissed out state. A top tune that would work in clubs around the world from Ibiza to Scotland the duo must think highly of it as there are two mixes of it at the end of the album. An ambient mix and a wonderful churning Acid House 808 remix.
Second track on the album does what it says on the tin. Higher has a perky beat which will keep the knees up, epic guitars and Chris’ otherworldly vocals. Shake Your Mind is faster and dirtier mixing Eastern vocals with knife sharp synth hits. Giorgio is more trance while Time veers to Erasure bouncy Europop. Perfectlight adds some Kraftwerk work while Timeslip is an ambient episode of Space 1999. A trip in more ways than one.The album is out now.
Rick Fulton –The Daily Record (c) 2010 Daily Record; Glasgow (UK). Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
For more information on The Psychedelic Manifesto see here:www.myspace.com/thepsychedelicmanifestoKeser - Robo_Ghos
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If Martin Hannett had lived to see 2009, I’m sure he’d have loved to produce an album like Robo_Ghost. As it happens, Keser have done a pretty good job without him. The dub-eyed urban soundscapes that Hannett unleashed with Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures are translated in the modern vernacular; on 3 Point Play (Set Piece), robotic beats are pumped out of drum machines rather than kits, whilst blasts of white noise replace boxy punk power chords. Amongst this post-rock ambience, however, there’s a track with enough pop appeal hat it seems oddly bereft of a lead vocal: the deceivingly daft-titled Acts of Dog.
Starting out like an early U2 ballad, the song is soon blitzed by a bombing raid of dangerously dirgy guitars before succumbing to a blissful fadeout. It's a collection so image-laden that it dares you to write a dystopian movie screenplay, just so it can provide the soundtrack.
Joe Barton The Skinny
Marvin Wilson Our Time Will Come ATRCD116
The third album released by Marvin and again released on Edinburgh`s electronica label Alex Tronic Records.
Our Time Will come is an instrumental mix of blissed out pounding rage. Whilst the opener Majestic Sleep would be perfect for the sun lounger on a morning after. The second song The Brink slams the senses like guitar-less Prodigy. Drum and bass and plastic tear synth sounds drive the song into trance heaven. You can almost see the Kraftwerk train wheels on the stripped down Good to See You Last track.
Connecting Stars slaps your face like a laser fish. Top Stuff.
Rick Fulton –The Daily Record
IS THIS MUSIC CD REVIEWS FEBRUARY 2009 – 03 – ALEX TRONIC – “TO INFINITY” ALBUM
There’s a real air of celebration present here, as this disc marks the 10th album released on Alex Tronic Records. The set’s sheer tightness alone is breathtaking. Tracks are there for just long enough for you to get into them before ending. This means you immediately want to hear them again... read more of this review
©JONATHAN ROBERT MUIRHEAD 2009 Is This Music
Alex Tronic - To Infinity (ATR CD 072)
When the boss of a label decides to put out his own record - there's going to be a sucking in of breath. Has he just set the label up as a vanity project, is this really what it's all about, if he's not very good will he hole the good ship? Fortunately for Alex Tronic (realname Paul Croan) of the great Edinburgh-based Alex Tronic Records - he's got the goods and then some... read more of this review.
Rick Fulton The Daily Record
The latest offering from Alex Tronic records is a real treat, for a number of reasons. The opening notes of the first track Life's A Dream (In my Scratcher) suggest that the record may be going down a darker route, but within seconds the tone changes to one that promises a brighter journey... read more of this review.
Chris Duncan The Skinny **** fourstars
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Title: Alex Tronic – To Infinity
Label: Alex Tronic Records
To Infinity can loosely be described as a psychedelic techno-pop album, the work of Paul Croan – who owns the Alex Tronic label.
Eclecticism is Croan’s biggest strength, converging splayed guitar chords with ascending Roland 303 notations. Female vocals add a haunting quality to many tracks, swaying to the echo of luscious Ambient-Techno by employing some soothing orchestral strings and spiralling effects.
To Infinity is a more than passable effort from Croan, with three or four very very good tracks. Although its combination of liquidised guitar and earthy beats does tend to drown out some of the subtler elements of the album, when the production is spotless the results are consuming.
Score
Danny Turner Future Music [FM 7/10]
Top Downloads
Chiller
Death Of Light
Life’s A Dream
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NEU GESTALT: Altered Carbon (CD on Alex Tronic Records)
This CD from 2008 offers 67 minutes of gentle ilbient electronic tuneage.
Neu Gestalt is Les Scott.
This music blends elements of ambient and contemporary EM with a touch of ilbient glitchiness to produce remarkably dreamy tuneage.
The electronics are gentle and slippery. Background tones manifest as barely audible textures, tenuous approximations of the noise found between spaces.
Keyboard-driven chords possess a languid presence, emerging in the sparse mix to express themselves with grace and generate soothing melodic enhancements.
Percussives are present, but not all of them are the conventional kind. Some rhythms stem from the applications of glitchy sounds looped to establish a tempo akin to flickering diode sparks. These beats are almost seductive in their softness. The more normal examples of percussion are similarly understated, relegated to a vantage deep within the flow where they flavor the music instead of driving it.
The ilbient aspects exist in a carefully restrained equality with the other electronics. Their normal harshness is muted, making them immersed effects swarming under the surface.
These compositions are designed to induce passive contemplation. The melodies are pleasant and fluid, crafted to lull and open the inner mind to itself. The auxiliary effects serve to stimulate cognition during this meditative pacification.
Michael Chocholak :Sonic Curiosity Website and Magazine .
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Roy's Iron DNA - Men In Wax Jackets (ATR CD 037 )
SOUNDCHECK NOVEMBER 2 - Roys Iron DNA
SOUNDCHECK have been big supporters of this band since they were Ordinary Son.
With a new name (it's an anagram puzzle fans) Ian Thompson -singer/guitars/beats has upped the ante for the Edinburgh-based band.
The album will be helped by its release on fizzing-electro label Alex Tronic Records home of Keser and AsA.
With Ian's in-tune Ian Brown blissed-out voice and chilled out beats this is an album for down tempo moments or the ironing. Album opener Steppin' On has been flown in from Ibiza with its great lyric: 'what do you think we are?/some kind of wannabe/some kind of celebrity" How many clubbers have thought that of each other?
Quite simply this is a fantastic album. It mixes beats, breaks, trip hop, eighties synth and chill-out as well as any of the chart stars you can name.
For those who like to dance, even in your living room, this is essential.
Their album Men In Wax Jackets is out on Monday.
The band play Po Na Na, Edinburgh tomorrow (Sat).
www.roysirondna.co.uk
Roy’s Iron DNA
A band at obvious right angles to the trebly guitar wielding, drainpipe wearing, side-shed sporting indie spods but that’s what makes their brooding racket so appealing. Like The Beta Band on serious downers, they conjure up the same spooky dread as Massive Attack’s Mezzanine with a bit less paranoia with a sound that blends all manner of wobbly, quaking electronic trinkets with understated live instrumentation. At the heart of this stramash however, are songs. Good songs.
The Hive, Edinburgh, Fri 30 Nov; King Tut’s, Glasgow, Sun 2 Dec. The album Men in Wax Jackets is out now on Alex Tronic Records.
Malcolm Jack and Mark Robertson present five more aspirant acts to look out for
The List Nov 07
Roy`s Iron DNA -men in wax jackets review ,Is this Music Magazine
Men In Wax Jackets (Alex Tronic) There’s a very Stone Roses-esque swagger to this album. This works beautifully, as there’s a real groove on display here. There’s a lovely, moody undercurrent to the songs here, making this an album of real force and power. Fierce, vibrating basslines shake the floor from under your feet while songs like ‘Silent Majority’ have hooks that linger in the brain long after the disc has finished spinning. This alone should make the album appeal to those of us who crave something a little deeper and darker in our sounds. Unlike many recent debutantes, who have crammed all of their best ideas onto one disc, in the hope that they’ll work, the strengths here are pace and measurement. These guys sound like they mean business. This is an album of real heart, venom and power, which deserves to be heard by as wide an audience as possible. Jonathan Muirhead
ROYS IRON DNA
Men In Wax Jackets (Album)
Released 12th November
Odd name, but very pleasing sounds. Roy’s Iron
DNA play super-chilled, ambient electronica
and glitchy trip-hop set to vocals spookily akin
to The Stone Roses. Psychedelic guitars and cool
beats add to the experience. While it’s most likely
to be described as a post-club album, it actually
reminds me more of snowscapes and the mountains,
more woolly hats and Roni Size than Ibiza
sunsets. Perhaps I’m just pining for my winter
holiday.
Narc Magazine Nov 07
