Eleven Tigers
Somewhere along the line, various strains of electronic music separated into unspoken (or overspoken) factions, such that some tunes sound distant, ethereal and ghostly, drowned in reverb and static, and others sound compressed, crunchy and in-your-face to the point of bludgeoning. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and plenty of acts avoid these extremes.
Somehow the Lithuanian producer Eleven Tigers has managed not just to avoid such extremes but to synthesize them. His tracks are bathed in reverb and static, with ghostly echoes as you would expect from the darkest dubs, but they manage to be immediate and earthy at the same time, with real presence (and not just in the sub-bass register). They also flow like wine, although in practice they go down more like a rich mead. It doesn’t hurt that Eleven Tigers’ debut album, Clouds Are Mountains, is structured like a DJ mix, or, if you prefer, like an album, where the end of one track and the beginning of the next are impossible to distinguish. It is one big aural Jacuzzi, and one of the best albums of 2010.
Read: http://eleventigers.net/
Buy: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/eleven-tigers/id328949299
RIYL: Burial, Magda, Mad Professor
eleven tigers rocks. and his latest initiative is absolutely beautiful: http://eleventigers.net/111/. it seems we could enjoy another album of his if he raises the money needed. roll on eleven tigers signed and numbered 12″ vinyl lp!!can’t wait!