Bleep Update 17th October

Bleep Wins at Digital Music Awards 2006!
Two weeks ago we won the ‘Best Music Store’ category at the BT Digital Music Awards, beating iTunes and Napster in the process. It was a public voted award and we would like to extend a massive thanks to everyone who voted for us - we couldn’t have got there without you! Enough gushing, onto some albums that you need to have in your collection this week. All of these releases come in standard MP3 encoded at the maximum quality of 320kbps. Clicking on a release will take you to Bleep where you can listen to the whole thing in full.

‘Hello Everything’ is Tom Jenkinson’s 10th Squarepusher album, and the most direct and accessible yet – without compromising on either musical experimentation or thrills. “An album brimming with tunes. Dazzling chord progressions override fiendishly intricate beats as Jenkinson combines the elation of rave with the complexity of jazz. ‘Theme from Sprite’ positively twinkles with melody and the pacey ‘Hello Meow’ combines chiming xylophones and virtuoso bass playing… this is Squarepusher on full beam and Hello Everything is a thing of unbridled joy.” John Burgess, The Guardian.
Also available in FLAC Here

A snapshot of the state of the dubstep nation in mid 2006, selected and compiled for Planet Mu by the scene’s most high profile supporter Radio1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, the only person left at the station flying the flag for underground British electronic music in the absence of John Peel. Includes genre-defining tracks by The Bug, Kode 9, Benga, Digital Mystikz, Plastician and more, and is the perfect introduction to this music for anyone who has not dipped their toes.
Also available in FLAC Here

After a host of satisfying 12”s on Num records and Cadenza, LVD & Quenum unleash this album via Glasgow’s venerable institution Soma Records. The result is a solid long player of pumping 4/4 techno & electro that warrants both listening to as a complete piece of work, and chopped up into some suitably dancefloor-destroying tracks.

New single from Matthew Dear under his Audion guise, weighing in at nearly 13 minutes. "..Being this long, two minutes elapses before things really get kicking, but by then the drums are truly pounding, there's shakers and smaller squeaking noises, but they're all subservient to the deafening rocket-ship-take-offs that appear haphazardly throughout the track. Further action comes from a two-note conga riff, the most purely decorative element here, but it's the excitement wrought by the sirens that push this along. " Resident Advisor

With overt nods to krautrock, musique concrete and post rock and sidestepping the shortfalls of much homogeneous contemporary electronica, Clark’s music has a playfulness and freedom that belies the intricate planning that has gone into it - repeated listens reveal the different layers that have been built up and the microscopic shaping of the sounds within. This is a big full-on beast of an electronic album that proves his evolution from Warp roster newcomer to a standout 1st league artist. Varied, layered and richly textured music that we're still going back to every day, months after first hearing it.
Also available in FLAC Here

Subtle are Doseone, Jel, Jordan Dalrymple, Marty Dowers, Alexander Kort and Dax Pierson. "With For Hero: For Fool, Subtle have outdone almost all material released by anticon with regards to vision, bravado and musical breadth. .. it is an unshakeable belief in their combined artistry that propels the record into godly stratospheres. Where some would find themselves buried under this conviction, Subtle take it, insert it, and run off it until their output resembles something like a Picasso painting: obtuse, disjointed and just so damn beautiful... Pretension is ripped away from them and shrivelled into something only useable by those unwilling to be sucked into their singular universe, where love, life, music and death all coincide nicely in a hip-hop record. Where Subtle use many words to convey many things, I will use one: perfection." Drowned in Sound.

Hawk and a Hacksaw is the solo project of Jeremy Barnes of cult american outfit Neutral Milk Hotel, partnered with violinist Heather Trost (also of NMH). Last year, Barnes set off to eastern europe to track down renowned gypsy band Fanfare Ciocarlia, with whom he recorded this album. The result is a beguiling slice of ancient Europe, meshing gypsy instrumentation (accordion, violin), a brash brass band, carnival caravan percussion, and Barnes’ chant like vocals. “an invigorating journey, a caravan of cavorting musicians, careening through the countryside, stopping only to play festivals and funerals.” Stylus Magazine.

Following on from his own ‘Blue Notebooks’ and acclaimed production work for Vashti Bunyan, Max Richter unveils ‘Songs From Before’ on FatCat’s 130701 imprint, an outlet for music of a more orchestrated, instrumental variety. Beautifully recorded and cinematic in scope, ‘Songs from Before’ features readings by Robert Wyatt over Richter’s stunning string compositions that recall the best of Philip Glass or Arvo Part.

‘Colleen Et Les Boites A Musique’ is Cecile Schott’s best work so far - a beautiful and heartwarming album intricately pieced together using the sounds from a whole orchestra of chiming music boxes, and imbued with the same kind of purifying naivety found in similar work by the likes of Pierre Bastien and Aphex Twin.

King Creosote is Kenny Anderson, joint founder of the Fence collective, and with over 30 albums to his name since 1997. This collection of unreleased bits and pieces formed part of the "KC Rules ok" reissue on Warner earlier this year.