Sundaze 1609

Hello,

Much to its credit, electronic dance music has always played fast and loose with its own history. A hugely sprawling form hyped on progress, it seems to announce a new aesthetic revolution every few weeks. Movements divide into micromovements, which then splinter into even smaller subsets, which in turn fan out into different camps, and so on. Each gets its own name, its own historical precursors, its own migration lines, its own self-aware philosophy. And even if, like the high sciences, these variations get parsed out in a language largely impenetrable to those not obsessed with obscure nuance, at the very least they stand in for electronica’s heartening faith in meaningful change. Underlying that spirit, though, is a conflict over the importance of the music’s dance roots. Fans of the unfortunately named IDM (Intelligent Dance Music; ugh) consider danceability a sort of blight on their new language, while dance-floor populists dismiss the former as obnoxiously cerebral and pretentious.

Glitch is a genre of electronic music that emerged in the late 1990s. It has been described as a genre that adheres to an "aesthetic of failure," where the deliberate use of glitch-based audio media, and other sonic artifacts, is a central concern. Sources of glitch sound material are usually malfunctioning or abused audio recording devices or digital electronics, such as CD skipping, electric hum, digital or analog distortion, bit rate reduction, hardware noise, software bugs, crashes, vinyl record hiss or scratches and system errors. In a Computer Music Journal article published in 2000, composer and writer Kim Cascone classifies glitch as a subgenre of electronica, and used the term post-digital to describe the glitch aesthetic.

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Mille Plateaux (the name was taken from Mille Plateaux, a philosophy book by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, published in 1980).is an influential electronica record label founded 1993 by Achim Szepanski in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2000, to take advantage of the popularity of glitch music in the electronic music scene, Mille Plateaux released their Clicks & Cuts Series, which showed both Mille Plateaux and non-Mille Plateaux glitch music luminaries exploring the genre.

In early 2004, Mille Plateaux parent company Force Inc. Music Works went bankrupt due to the collapse of Germany's main independent music distributor, EFA-Medien. Mille Plateaux and other Force Inc. Music Works owned labels were folded at that time. The label was revived briefly in late 2004 under the name MillePlateauxMedia, with 4 releases. In 2005, two releases were made by RAI STREUBEL MUSIC S.L. on the label Supralinear with the note "by Mille Plateaux".

In 2006, Mille Plateaux (along with the other former Force Inc. Music Works labels Force Inc. and Force Tracks) was taken over by the Berlin-based company Disco Inc. Ltd., who only released two CD albums. In March 2008, Mille Plateaux was acquired by TOTAL RECALL, an online store and distributor for used and new music. With new owner Marcus Gabler, known as singer of the band Okay as the A&R manager, they aim to close the gap existing since 2003 and continue the original work. Mille Plateaux relaunched its activities on 7 May 2010, with three new albums.

Sublabels
Ritornell Started 1999. Even more abstract and experimental than the parent.
Cluster Started 2010. Releases experimental ambient music.
Force Intel (sister label) Started 2010. Releases less experimental electronic music, typically IDM.


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There's no evading Mille Plateaux's ambitions with Clicks & Cuts, Vol. 2, a mammoth triple-disc compilation pretentiously attempting to both summarize and further the German techno label's self-termed click movement. The label's first volume appeared a year earlier and took some time to resonate before garnering tremendous critical praise by the year's end. Thankfully, after a year's worth of follow-up records, press releases, and year-end awards, the curiously awaited Clicks & Cuts, Vol. 2 doesn't disappoint, proving that there is more to the click movement than hype and overwrought theorizing. First of all, contrary to what this album's academic liner notes may have you believe, don't get too hung up on exactly what the click aesthetic implies: Just know that the music found on this compilation was composed on computers rather than analog gear, the artists tend to employ some sort of subtle glitch-like sounds, and that the sonic vocabulary for composing this music is remarkably vast. Given these common attributes, it's no surprise that the 36 artists featured here present an oceanic breadth of styles. Some (SND, Farben, Auch) drift toward stark yet melodic minimal techno, some (Vladislav Delay, Kid 606, Rude Solo) aim for the dancefloor; others (Andreas Tilliander, Mikael Stavostrand) revel in murky dub, others (All, Full Swing, Thomas Brinkmann) unleash dizzying whirlwinds of sound. And, unfortunately, several (the near-entirety of the third disc) present unpleasant experiments where the jarring, abrasive, and/or boring characteristics outweigh anything of interest. So, as you would probably expect with a compilation this vast, no matter how diverse your tastes, you're not going to like everything here -- there is just way too much variety. Still, you have to acknowledge Mille Plateaux for being comprehensive, even if it dilutes the album as a whole; they've perfectly summarized a vibrant techno movement.

Clicks n Cuts 2-1 (flac 314mb)

01 snd - Circa 1666 6:19
02 Farben - The Videoage (re-edit) 5:40
03 Andreas Tilliander - Vibetan 4:35
04 Frank Bretschneider - Walking On Ice 6:34
05 alva.noto - Neue Stadt (Skizze 8) 4:14
06 Deltidseskapism - Tanken Aterskapad 6:34
07 Tomas Jirku - Pohdka 5:59
08 Swayzak - Kisonga 6:49
09 Geez 'N' Gosh - 012001 4:57
10 Random Inc. - Losing Touch 4:57
11 Dan Abrams - Academic 6:10
12 März - "Ranking + Rating 5:05

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Clicks n Cuts 2-2  (flac  318mb)

01 Vladislav Delay - Holiday 6:17
02 Kid606 - While You Were Sleeping 6:50
03 Reinhard Voigt - Personal 4:59
04 Mikael Stavöstrand - Repl 4:49
05 AUCH - The Animal Factory 5:21
06 Rude Solo - Tight 4:12
07 Antonelli Electr. - Unintense 5:41
08 All - All Music 4:44
09 Full Swing - Drive 4:29
10 Thomas Brinkmann - 0100 6:34
11 Donnacha Costello - ri2.2 5:05
12 Sutekh - 19xx 4:36

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Clicks n Cuts 2-3 (flac 281mb)

01 Twerk - Inorganic Clarity 4:22
02 Hakan Lidbo - Megalodon 5:59
03 Kit Clayton - Material Problem 5:01
04 M² - Tone Exploitation 5:56
05 Fennesz - Menthol 3:50
06 Matmos - Keine Zähne 4:02
07 Taylor Deupree - Clir 6:30
08 Richard Charier - Filer 6:57
09 cyclo. - c5.1 4:16
10 Pansonic - Arvio (long edit) 6:49
11 Station Rose - Smoother Than Strange 4:32
12 DAT Politics - Hardwai 2:52

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