Still Alive

Good News! The Apocalypse has been swiftly averted so we can all carry on existing as usual. Turns out the Mayans were about as good at predicting the end times as they were at predicting the arrival of the Spanish. But it does open up a nice window for me to talk about tunes, see me and a friend got talking about what'd go on our end of the world playlists so I thought I's share with you all my list of finely crafted end world tunes.

Squarepusher to start, with Tundra 4 from the wildcard Venus No. 17 EP having the perfect balance of glitchy breakbeats and foreboding backing like in the original Tundra. It starts fairly placid but just layers on the intensity over and over again through it's 12 minute run time, but this is only the beginning.



Staying in familiar territory, fellow beat melter Venetian Snares brings his contribution to the table. It works mostly in the same ways, with those haunting ethereal strings juxtaposed with the madcap drum programming. It, like most of Rossz Csillag Alatt Született shouldn't work. But it does, and in spectacular form.

I just had to include this live recording of Aphex from 1990, it's got that rawness about it like on Analog Worms Attack that's real nice, and of course the 303 work is also pretty nice. Take note that this is from AFX's acid house days, so don't expect any beat butchery in the vein of the 'Pusher and the Snares above.



Bringing it back to more coherent tunes, an old gem I had buried away in the depths of my Dubstep folder from Press, I got it like forever ago on some kind of compilation EP with a Stenchman tune and a few others, and they all have that Stenchman-esque grimy streak to them. I wasn't expecting it to hold up very well, but it properly nails the sound it's going for, my only complaint is it's a bit long at 7 minutes but I can let that slide.



And finally, my favourite slice from the Planisphere series Justice did for a Dior fashion show. The crunchy guitar solo throughout absolutely makes this from the get go, but the break around 1:10 lets you know that something big is on the way. And it doesn't disappoint, the guitar returns, this time with the trademark Justice touch that pushes it to that next level.



And with that I'm done. Until the next apocalypse at least, rest assured that if and when that time arrives I will have more tracks prepared to make your end of the world the best sounding one this side of Alpha Centauri!

Y2K?,
-Claude Van Foxbat