Been a while since I did one of these - the whole point was to be a series after all. It's been a good few months since I got around to picking up the Touched Two compilation, a massive 250+ track compilation and I'm pretty sure there's more than half of it that I haven't heard. But every now and then a track or two will pop up and it's most of the time a great addition. The sheer amount of variety it's added can't be overstated! So I figured I'd go through and pick out some recent highlights that I remember from it - Honestly I think shuffle is the best way to listen to it, the tracklist itself is arranged alphabetically by artist anyway so it just ups the variety even more. There's plenty of big names on there as I've said before, so I figured this time I'd focus more on random finds I'd made instead.
Starting off with a suitably cyberpunky bit from Anodyne in Off World Blues - a lot of the crew on Touched Two operate in the more experimental side of the electronic music sphere, there's boatloads of IDM and Ambient spread across the 200 entries. Anodyne's works fall into the former category mostly, but as I always say 'IDM' to too broad a term to really get an idea of how something sounds. Off World Blues is fairly middle of the road, it's not going to blow your away with crazy complex snare rushes for one, though there is still a glicthy side to the beat work. Backed with some suitably Blade Runner brassy synths given the title, it's one of many standouts from the whole thing I've come across recently.
Shifting gears down next with Music That Brings Good News from Midimode, a number that I think I can best describe as Jaunty. As if to further illustrate my point above, we're still very firmly in IDM territory here but with a wildly different sound: much more off-kilter than the steady thump of Off World Blues and with a kind of whimsical sound to it that is present on a couple of Aphex Twin tracks from the Richard D. James Album era like Fingerbib. Add in a dash of vintage sampling as on the intro a la Mr. Scruff's Ambiosound and the package is complete, perhaps not Plone levels of cheery playfulness, but it's still more than enough to raise smile on a dreary day - befitting of the title really!
And finally, something a little more on the ambient side to round things out, I've not actually touched on (ha!) that side of this compilation yet, not for lack of material to go at though - all the ambient bits I've heard on here have been beautiful. The latest one to catch my ear is this one from Port-Royal, I'd seen their name around on my travels through n5MD's catalogue but never took the time to look at their work in detail. And truth be told it's not strictly ambient, the first part is for sure, but it is in reality an extended intro to what eventually segues into something a little more like a hybrid between Post-rock and general techy IDM. I don't mean to sound dismissive when I say that, it's a great experience overall, the opening ambience lusciously swells and twins with the glitchy electronic elements beautifully - and when the drums come slamming into the mix around the halfway point (at roundabout 4 mins exactly) it is just divine. Great stuff and another one to add to the ever-growing 'to check out' list.
And that'll be all for this time, apologies for the slightly bigger gap between posts than usual, it's been a bit of a busy week. I think the tiny bite-sized posts may take a backseat for a while now, I am very much enjoying the return back to multiple players per post and feel like I have a little bit more time to dedicate to the long-form ones now anyway. There may be one or two more just before I file them away, but you can pretty much expect a full return of this format going forward. Anyway - I hope you've enjoyed our brief dip back into this compilation today, I can highly recommend picking up the full thing if you'd like an absolute buffet of new music, it's very reasonably priced for the sheer amount of content you get, and it's all for charity too! I'll be back soon enough with more but until then, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
-CVF
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