Being a "fan" of electronic music superstar Ricardo Villalobos for a long period I think I do owe him a post on my blog. This blog post I have found on the music portal FACT magazine and is not written by me. As the title says it is all about essential Villalobos stuff. The 10 best records made by Villalobos followed by a kind of nerdy music description is what this post is all about. Nice reading.

Enjoy

Søren

He has as many detractors as fans, and arguably his best work is already behind him, but the fact is that for most of this decade Ricardo Villalobos has been one of the world's most boundlessly creative and compelling musicians.

During the mid-00s especially, every Villalobos release seemed to represent a giant leap forward for house music as an art-form; however, as the cult of Ricardo has grown (and grown and grown), the waters have become muddied. Even though the Chilean producer is more popular now than ever, one can't help but feel that we've forgotten why. We need to sidestep all the bullshit - the snarkiness, the sycophancy - and re-engage with Villalobos the visionary, the iconoclast, the innovator.

Below, Kiran Sande offers his guide to what he feels are the ten essential solo records by Villalobos, the records we'll still be listening to in 10, 20, 30 years time - taking in 12"s, albums and one very famous mix CD . It's the first of a new series on the FACT site, a kind of little sister to our 20 Best strand, dedicated not to whole genres but rather to individual artists, labels, producers. We hope you enjoy it...

01: RICARDO VILLALOBOS

ACHSO

(CADENZA 2X12", 2006)

This double-pack for Luciano's Cadenza imprint is a landmark in Villalobos’s career, a mini-LP of morphological jam-music that only the bravest DJs (Ricardo himself among them) have ever dared to play out. There’s nothing minimal about its busy, fanatically prolix tracks – they chirrup and growl and drip and slide and slither like ecosystems unto themselves. Things begin relatively conventionally with the sultry jack-track 'Suso' and sprawling analogue funk odyssey ‘Enso', but soon we're immersed in the tropical avant-jazz ellipsis of ‘Duso’ and the serene, gamelan-infused 'Sieso' (think Autechre-meets-Alice Coltrane). Is Villalobos the Ornette Coleman of minimal? This record is certainly the closest he, and we, have ever come to a kind of "free house".

Unbound from the 8/16-bar metric of traditional house/techno, Villalobos explores all manner of cyclical, gloriously involuted time signatures on Achso; he lets the percussion sing rather than simply dictate the pace of the record. These tracks don’t feel like narratives so much as spatial entities; every listen grants fresh angles and perspectives, yields new resonances and revelations. This is music that sounds alive, organic, autonomous even. Philip Sherburne has described Achso as a kind of “all-encompassing psychedelia”, and he's absolutely spot-on.

Listen: 'Ichso'

See also: Ricardo Villalobos - What's Wrong My Friends? (Perlon 2x12", 2006)

02: SHACKLETON

'BLOOD ON MY HANDS' (RICARDO VILLALOBOS' APOCALYPSO NOW REMIX)

(SKULL DISCO 12", 2007)

Villalobos was one of the first techno DJs to cotton onto the potential of dubstep – and not just in that wishy-washy sub-Maurizio dub-techno way. He saw the music's true hypnotic potential; the psychedelic possibilities afforded by those sub-lo frequencies and jabbing, sparsely arranged beats. As far back as 2005 he was dropping ‘Midnight Request Line’ into his sets, but he fell hardest for Skull Disco - doubtless feeling a natural affinity with Shackleton, sharing as they do a penchant for Moroccan-style percussion and sickly, enveloping atmospheres.

After some face-to-face haranguing at (of all places) Bestival 2006, Ricardo got hold of parts for Shack’s post-911 lament ‘Blood on My Hands’ and proceeded to craft his already legendary ‘Apocalyso Now’ remix  – a loping, juddering thing; a rickety ghost-train driven at rollercoaster pace. It's housey as fuck, but rendered with such distressed textures and creepy, fractious edits that it feels at times like an entirely new genre - and, like 'Fizheuer Zieheuer', it makes its case over two whole sides of vinyl. "Forms break down / they cannot last forever" the portentous lyric advises, but in Villalobos's hands you feel that maybe they can.

Listen: 'Blood On My Hands' (Ricardo Villalobos Apocalypso Now Remix) Pt. 1

See also: Beck - 'Cell Phone's Dead' (Ricardo Villalobos Entlebuch Remix) (White label 12", 2007)

03: VILLALOBOS

ALCACHOFA

(PLAYHOUSE CD/LP, 2003)

Make no mistake: Alcachofa is one of the 21st century's most important albums. It finds Villalobos establishing a whole new grammar for house music. The trippy, tracky tracks validate beautifully Eno’s idea that “repetition is a form of change”, and mood-wise they reject house’s default setting of studied euphoria in favour of something altogether more ambiguous and disquieting. Though it's an undeniably minimalist work, Alcachofa has an expansive, macroscopic quality missing from the more fussy, fractal work which would follow on Perlon.

The 3x12” vinyl edition of Alcachofa is obviously a must-have, but it’s currently out of print (second-hand copies change hands for nearly £100); and while it includes the bonus track ‘Fusion The Enemies’ it’s also missing four key tracks from the CD – ‘Y.G.H.’, Waiworinao’, ‘Fools Garden (Black Conga)’ and ‘What You Say Is More Than I Can Say’. The latter, with its insistent, androgynous vocal refrain and anxiously lapping snares is pure suspense and sensuousness, while 'Fools Garden (Black Conga)' is insidiously funky abstraction as only Ricardo could conjure it (tellingly, it found it's way onto one of Compost's Future Sounds of Jazz compilations). ‘Waiworinao’, which would eventually hit vinyl via the Alcachofa Tools 12”, is remarkable: a prime example of Villalobos's ability to fuse organic instrumentation (in this case a treated guitar, on a South American folk-rock tip) with burbling electronics. A veritable stomper, it reminds you that Villalobos does do euphoria after all, albeit by the most unusual means.

Listen: 'What You Can Say Is More Than I Say'

See also: Villalobos - Alcachofa Tools (Playhouse 12", 2003); Alcachofa Remixes (Playhouse 2x12", 2004)

04: DJ MINX

'A WALK IN THE PARK' (VILLALOBOS 'TIL THURSDAY' REMIX)

(M-NUS, 2004)

DJ Minx is the alter ego of Detroit’s Jennifer Witcher, sporadically interesting producer and boss of the Women On Wax label. In 2004, with minimal gathering steam as a (sub-)cultural force, her track ‘A Walk In The Park’ was picked up by Richie Hawtin for release on M-nus, and the increasingly prolific Villalobos was drafted in to remix it. The result is among the best things that M-nus, Villalobos and certainly Minx have ever put their name to. As if so often the case with Villalobos's work, you feel as if the track might last forever, and you hope to God it will. It's really little more than an accretion of spring-loaded congas and spiky, staccato bass, over which louche, druggy, almost scat-style vocals are looped and layered - but five years on and it still sounds like the future.

Listen: 'A Walk In The Park' (Villalobos 'Til Thursday' Remix)

See also: Innersphere - Phunk (Ricardo Villlalobos Remix) (Intacto 12", 2007)

05: THOMAS DOLBY
'ONE OF OUR SUBMARINES' (RICARDO VILLALOBOS REMIX)
(SALZ, 2002)
Given his tendency to fragment and deconstruct the human voice in his own productions, Villalobos's remixes are often suprisingly respectful of their source material's sung parts – check his remix of Depeche Mode’s ‘Sinner In Me’, for example. Here he sets to work on Thomas Dolby’s bizarre, evocative 1982 tale of cold war paranoia, taking the Bowie-esque vocal and really letting it breathe amid the clipped snares, arctic whooshes and impossibly chunky analogue bass riff. It’s electro-pop, Villalobos-style, and one of my favourite pieces of music ever. Seriously.
See also: Depeche Mode - 'Sinner In Me' (R. Villalobos Conclave Mix) (White label 12", 2007)

06: RICARDO VILLALOBOS

THE AU HAREM D’ARCHIMEDE

(PERLON CD/LP, 2004)

For some, this album is nothing so much as the sound of Villalobos disappearing up his own arse; for others, myself included, it's simply one of the most impressive avant-garde long-players of the century so far - it finds the restless Chilean leaving behind the traditional stricture and structure of 4/4 house once and for all in favour of an intuitive, Latin-tinged drum-poetry that's intellectually involving but never at the expense of funk.

Alcachofa is the more influential album, to be sure; but The Au Harem is the most radical. A masterpiece of Latin-Germanic noir, there’s a certain humidity that seems to hang about this record, as if the music itself is vegetation giving off moisture (music as organic matter is a recurring trope in the Villalobos oeuvre - see the artwork for Achso and Alcachofa). Some tracks, like the near-tribal 'Temenarc 2' and the aptly-named ‘Serpentin’, are aimed squarely at the dancefloor and have a real malevolence about them (latent, of course, but scarcely suppressed); there's a jazzy bustle to 'Theorem D'Archimede' that brings to mind Multau Astatke, 70s Miles and hell, even Can.

The Au Harem D'Archimede takes its title from Mehdi Charef's book and film about the dislocated lives of second-generation Arab youths living in France - and accordingly it's a powerfully, if obstrusely, soulful record. Villalobos and his family were forced to flee Pinochet's military coup of Chile when he was three years old, so he can perhaps relate more readily than most to the nomadic angst felt by Charef's characters. There's certainly a faint existential bent to 'True To Myself', a micro-house torch song with flamenco flourishes voiced in broken Nina Simone-style by a then little-known Cassy Britton. I'm all about 'Miami', also co-produced and vocalled by Britton and driven by growling techno synths and warring percussion elements that never really resolve themselves. Incidentally, The Au Harem D'Archimede translates as "Tea In The Harem of Archimedes". How prog is that?

Listen: 'Serpentin'

See also: Ricardo Villalobos - 'Chromosul' (Perlon 12", 2005)

07: RICARDO VILLALOBOS

'QUE BELLE EPOQUE 2006'

(FRISBEE TRACKS 12", 2006)

This list is undeniably skewed toward Villalobos's 2004-2007 output, and even though ‘Que Belle Epoque’ was first recorded in 2006, it’s the 2006 re-edit that I’ve gone for here. As is invariably the case with recent R.V. releases, it’s all in the sample: out of a swamp of bass and snap-claps emerges a limpid French vocal sample, wreathed in woodwind and swirling synths - this is Villalobos at his most gushingly cinematic. 2006 saw the release of Salvador, a CD collecting Villalobos’s various productions for Frisbee Tracks, of which ‘Que Belle Epoque’ was one. While it’s certainly no Alcachofa, it’s an interesting portrait of the artist as a young(ish) man, with all kinds of intimations and premonitions of the greatness to come.

Listen: 'Que Belle Epoque 2006'

See also: Ricardo Villalobos - Salvador (Frisbee Tracks CD, 2006)

08: RICARDO VILLALOBOS

FOR DISCO ONLY 2 (485U)

(FOR DISCO ONLY 12")

Fabulous. The sheer elasticity of the percussion, the punchy up-down bassline (inspired by Higher Intelligence Agency’s IDM classic ‘Ketamine Entity’), a cut-up male voice offering varations on the phrase, er, ‘chaka chaka’, while a spectral soprano wails wordlessly in the distance; from its opening moments '485U' is engrossing and impossible to predict. Beyond the kickdrum, itself fairly erratic, Villalobos offers no map, no easy route through his grand design – once you get lost in there, you have to figure your own way around. The sudden burst of melody that lights the labyrinth is the main theme from Philip Glass’s circular, clarinet-and-synth-led masterpiece ‘Floe’. It recedes almost as quickly as it appears, like a mirage, an aural hallucination.

See also: Ricardo Villalobos - 'Enfants' (Sei Es Drum 12", 2008)

09: VILLALOBOS

'FIZHEUER ZIEHEUER'

(PLAYHOUSE 12", 2006)

Though he’s made some pretty austere music in his time, Villalobos isn’t one to shy away from the grand, crowd-pleasing gesture – witness the sheer exuberance of ‘Fizheuer Zieheuer’, based around a ramshackle horn sample (lifted from ‘Pobjednicki Cocek’ by Blehorkestar Bakic). While the painstaking construction of some of Villalobos’s records is obvious, 'Fizheuer' is simplicity itself. Villalobos has talked on several occasions about his principle aim as a DJ as being to bring about genuine “What the fuck?” moments on after-hours dancefloors, and ‘Fizheuer Zieheuer’ – which like many of his recent productions is nothing if not a strung-out, sophisticated DJ tool – is full of them.

Listen: 'Fizheuer Zieheuer' (pt. 1)

See also: Señor Coconut And His Orchestra - 'Elektrolatino' (Ricardo Villalobos' 'Lecktro Cariño Mix) (Multicolor Recordings 12", 2002)

10: RICARDO VILLALOBOS

FABRIC 36

(FABRIC, 2007)

Faced with the task of contributing a mix CD to Fabric's long-running series, what does 21st century house music's most original mind do? He produces a mix comprised entirely of his own tracks, all of them new, is what. All of this would be so much hubris if the tracks weren't so special, were they not blended so artfully and effectively. Notable especially for 'Premier Encuentro Latin-Americano' (a sumptuous re-edit of a Chilean folk standard) and the supple techno jam 'Farenzer House', both of which found their way onto the Sei Es Drum 12" double-pack released subsequently.

Listen: 'Farenzer House'

See also: Ricardo Villalobos - Love Family Trax (Goodlife, 2002)

Source: http://www.factmagazine.co.uk

Written by: Kiran Sande