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bip-hop generation 1 & 2

In less than a year's time, the highly ambitious French-based Bip-Hop collective has launched a webzine and fairly hip label with 4 releases readily available and more on the way. Unafraid to flood the market, the first two releases, "Bip-Hop Generation" volumes 1 and 2 gather various tracks from some of their favorite electronic acts from all over the world. Luckily these folks have good taste and great connections. Marumari from the USA, Massimo from Italy, Phonem from the UK, Goem from Holland and Ultra Milkmaids from France and Schneider TM from Germany only contributes tunes for Volume 1. Here, the spectrum ranges from beat-organized cuts from Marumari to shrill sonic substructures and medical sounds from Massimo and Goem.
Volume 2 features 20 tracks of contributions from Bernhard Flaishmann, Arovane, Warmdesk, Köhn, Wang Inc., and Laurent Pernice. On this disc, the music explores more incidental melodies, letting the electric clicks sort of fall to the background. Standout tracks include the emotive pieces from Köhn and the twittery pulsing dissonant ambience of Wang Inc., allegedly due for a full-length release one of these years! Both volumes serve a multitude of purposes. First off, many people reading this could have heard of Scheider, Ultra Milkmaids, Arovane or Wang — people who have become listeners of these fine groups might find a collection featuring others interesting to pick up to experience some more music from a collective who obviously has similar tastes in music. Next up, each disc comes with a short bio, selected discography and website of each artist providing helpful reference points. Finally, it benefits the Bip-Hop fellas as they're already starting to roll out full-length albums from new and upcoming electronic acts. Unlike releases like Clicks and Cuts, these compilations aren't out to prove any point or lump a bunch of groups into one definable genre, they're simply sharing in some of the cooler future electronica names. My only issue is simply getting sick of seeing the word "bleep" in association with music.

 

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