More from No Type — following from the bulk seen just recently. Another ep, there are also some vinyl ones on the way, participating in the No Type real/on-line series.

We Remain Faded is basically an instrumental — long soft tones, rapid rim hits dancing over the sound space, a strong bass and crunchy claps giving a rhythm with squiggles and scrapes over. Some bigger washes and breath like snatches together with interference stutters complete the main underbody, and then a slow melody slides through creating a lovely relaxed mood over the shifting ground — some breaks for a breather but nicely balanced.

The next track, Games, is the one that was on the sampler and is a 10 minute delight. Tones, occasional cat squall (that signals direction changes) and a strong drum rhythm have thrown highly chopped and looped rap over them some words are seperable, but it is mainly a chopping jump. There is a deep synth melody, and the male rap is replaced by a woman. Some echoed twangy synth lines and some boppy ones and an extended instrumental period ensues, the voices return before instrumental final section ended by some woodblockey tuned percussion. An exciting track.

Those two track totaled 18 minutes, making half the album. Thus the next four take the other half. In Larcenous big grooves support the ‘lyric’ line which begins sensibly then becomes chopped and turns into a melody line. The main melodies, though, are a pair of slow synths, one high the other lower, that create a stately semiclassical mood. There are contrasts in Air Bubble Material as ratchetting and a dense crackling rhythm are joined by slow tones which sound like string samples, insects leap about and a higher lyrical line runs through.

To Dine in Distance begins with some concrete — walking round, a camera motor — then shifts to some loungey jazz with trumpet and a romance/soap sampled conversation. After a minute or so they both go ‘choppy’, swirling and churning over a steady rhythm, then the trumpet goes solo, before an acoustic guitar and straight-trumpet take the final moments. The album ends with Life Struggles Constant where buzzy blurts shift from side to side then long organ tones join with clickety blip-hop, high flitters and chopped rap-voices, before it all gets loopy to the end.

This album works on rhythms and contrasts — voices in sense and fragments, hip-hop and classical sensibilities — to create a very entertaining mix.

Before hearing this disc, I had heard of the name Headphone Science before. It was mentioned to me several times on discussion forums and mailinglists, and I had seen it before on the No Type Website. For some reason though, I had not heard any of his music before. Of this fact I am not proud. Truth be said, I’m a bit ashamed. Cause this is the music I love! The chilled idm-ish type of music. Lots of details, lots of laidback rhythms, and beautiful melodies. Unfortunately, this disc is not a full album. With its nearly 40 minutes of playing time spread out over 6 tracks, it’s a damn good EP though.

From the laidback melodies of its title track We Remain Faded to the cut up rap of Games I just can’t find anything that I don’t like. Of course, this is not the perfect music. There is no such thing. Music wouldn’t be fun anymore if there was something perfect. But this comes near that. This is one of these albums that I just can’t ignore, can’t shake off. It happened to me before, for instance with Boards of Canada and their In a Beautiful Place Out In The Country. Some things just linger.

My favorite track though is To Dine in Distance. Guitar, horns, starting laidback, with nice downtempo laidback rhythms kicking a bit later. Beautiful vocal samples used as well. It just gets to me the most. Beautiful.

All in all a great disc that I think more people should get. If you like hiphop-influenced laidback idm-ish stuff, this is definately a disc to get!

Dustin Craig is from Oakland, California and has worked as Elasticlego and Headphone Science, melting his interests in hip hop, dub, IDM and musique concrète together. This debut CD release is considered an EP but at 38 some minutes, I think it’s more then that. Many of the influences (which I just cited from the blurb) are not really that apperent, except hip hop. The opening title piece is an exception: this more in the directions of IDM, with jumpy beats and a piano theme. The other five tracks are clearly more hip hop inspired. The rhythm section, the dominating factor of each song, and cut up raps (I assume lifted from TV or radio?), make all the other influences very small in that respect. To Dine in Distance, again with a conversation taken from TV, and loungy trumpet, is a nice piece, but overall I wasn’t really blown away by it. Maybe it has to do with lacking interest in hip hop or anything like that. One can hear that Dustin Craig can make a nice piece of music, sampled together, but a bit more IDM and a bit less hip hop would be, at least for me, nice.

It’s definitely great when someone manages to create a successful, even groundbreaking mix of abstract instrumental hip-hop beats and contemporary electronic music. That’s how this mini-album from Dustin Craig aka Headphone Science feels, or to be more precise, it sounds like a perfect and flexible mix of idm, hip-hop and ambience.

An excellent combination of firm hip-hop beats are present at the front, ambient sounds are subtly tucked in the background, tiny experimental sounds float in the midst, and occasionally you get mixed vocal clips or jazz tones in between. That’s why this music sounds very fresh, clever and inventive.

No Type (Brief) Background:: No Type started to release CD’s in 2002 and in a very short time this label has become a favorite amongst open-minded people searching for new forms of contemporary music, be it experimental, noise, idm, improvised, and even post-rock. All of these styles are part of the 2xCD compilation, The Freest Of Radicals; the first (official) CD release for No Type.

No Type will launch 3 new releases at Mutek 2003, the lovingly crafted projects of Claudia Bonarelli, Books on Tape and Headphone Science! Moreover, Thursday May 29, 2003 a Canadian all-star crew takes the stage: morceaux_de_machines, Coin Gutter, Samiland and the Diane Labrosse A_dontigny duo.