Browse by Artist: STRATEGY

Artist:	STRATEGY
Title:	Boxy Music
Label:	100% SILK
Format:	12"
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	SILK 021EP

"Prince of Portland Paul Dickow turns his no-nonsense Nudge-sludge awesomeness into revved-up, avant tech-house arousal as Strategy. The moniker has found Dickow checking out hooks in his Community Library and niche-in'-out nooks on Kranky. With SILK he separates: 'Skanking Stabs' stomps with reverb canned-can drums, bouncing in a dancehall vault. 'Feel The Earth' is not your daddy's acid jazz, with its bouncing house arresting piano bar tipped jar. 'Starry Day' soft serves up a swirl of '80s vamp funk, contempo computer chocolate chips, and haywire Cyberdyne scheming sequences. The dueling 'Bolly Valve' tracks mix Arabic woodwind skill scales with whisper sizzle clatter data. Limited edition, with hot pink pop art Neu-bout-town jackets designed by the artist. Strategic move for winning your love."

Artist:	STRATEGY
Title:	Future Rock/Can't Roll Back
Label:	COMMUNITY LIBRARY
Format:	12"
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	CL 015EP

"Following hot on the heels of his breakthrough Future Rock CD album for Kranky, Community Library is proud to bring you a proper vinyl single containing two of its key tunes. Future Rock is simply Strategy's breakthrough album -- a pastiche of hundreds of musicological reference points tied together in massive swells of bass, spring reverb, vocoded haze, and echoes; the album seems to play on every field, being a functional ambient experimental pop record on low volume, and bass heavy dance-dub when cranked up to full volume. Following on the latter idea, we took two of the CD's most propulsive cuts and sent them over to Berlin's D&M to be rendered as a proper clubmusicplatter. The album's title track 'Future Rock' takes the A-side, welding techno, Afrobeat, and outer space jazz elements to a rocking core of breaks, live drumming, and a superlow bassline. Backed by a curtain of sound that is virtually a tribute to Vladislav Delay's or Basic Channel's most classic, blue moments, this song is the missing link between live drum syncopation and dub-techno spectra. 'Can't Roll Back,' is a little more openly referential, throwing a huge number of styles into a 4/4 stomper. Following a spectral vocal intro, percussion, loads of keyboards, and guitar build into a massive track that is part electric-era Miles Davis and part early A Certain Ratio. Reconfigured for dance DJs, this version features a proper bass drum and an extended, dubbed-out outro, including Strategy's first ever searing psych-rock guitar solo. For fans, this represents an exploded view of two of the album's highlights; for DJs who have been in tune with anything that's crossing the line between live and programmed (DFA, Gomma, Nonplace, Kitsune) this single is a totally new angle-casting away stiff standards of punk-funk-disco backbeats in favor of brave new recombinations with dub techno, live syncopation, and arcing riffage."

Artist:	STRATEGY
Title:	Pacific Agenda
Label:	DRECK (UK)
Format:	12"
Price:	$10.00
Catalog #:	DRK 014EP

"Strategy is on a roll and Dreck is very pleased to release a follow-up EP to his fantastic Future Rock album, which came out earlier this year on Kranky to much critical acclaim. Strategy continues to blend different genres and influences, creating very organic and unique sounding tracks that meander between dub, house and techno culminating in analog warmth and love. 'Pacific Agenda' on the A-side kicks off with Profan-like offbeat stabs only then to surprise with lovely Rhodes keys and hand-played percussion. The flip side's 'Julydub' is a dubby house track drenched in spring reverb and carried by an incredibly deep bassline. Strategy is Portland based Paul Dickow, who's been making a name for himself as a producer, DJ and curator of Community Library, a record label he runs with David Chandler (aka Solenoid) which releases music varying from house to noise. Paul has recorded for various labels including ORAC and Kranky, he has also remixed tracks for DFA and Tigerbeat6 to name just a few."

Artist:	STRATEGY
Title:	Drumsolo's Delight
Label:	KRANKY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	KRANK 066CD

"The second album Paul Dickow has made under the name Strategy. Dickow was a fan of synth-pop who simultaneously learned to play keyboards, the drums and program. He went on to drum in the art punk outfit Emergency, play keyboards in Fontanelle and multiple instruments in Nudge. Strategy wires together Dickow's programming and performing experience via a hodgepodge of table top electronics, computers and real-time musicianship. Combining a granular ambient aesthetic with an abstract, percolating rhythmic sensibility, Strategy unites small parts into complete melodies motivated by complex pulsations."

Artist:	STRATEGY
Title:	Future Rock
Label:	KRANKY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	KRANK 108CD

"Three years have passed since Drumsolo's Delight, and Strategy finally comes forward with a new full-length. His third album to date, Future Rock focuses Strategy's diverse interests into a single point, while still drawing directly from the dense, shimmering sonic language established on Delight. Based on a refined studio process that incorporates multi-tracked live instrumentation, archaic synthesizer equipment, archived recordings of improvisations and band practices, digital sound design, and sound of non-musical origin, the album is a polyglot solution of genres. Musical quotations, discrete sonic jokes, and skewed musicological impressions are blended into a dream-like, impressionistic musical composite which confounds and compounds music's past, present, and future. A gauzy, vibrating curtain of sound, much like the one that made Drumsolo's so distinctive, ties together all the songs as do the signature Wurlitzer electric piano and old-school spring reverb. Incorporating compositions that have taken years to develop, a handful of close collaborators (including his cohorts from the band Nudge), and using source material that dates as far back as 2000, Future Rock is easily Strategy's most complex, narrative, ambitious and overtly 'pop' record to date; as well, it's practically a thesis statement for his vision of a genre-free musical world. To date, you've heard Strategy dabble in everything from headphone-oriented ambient music to house and dub; this is the work that brings it all together."

Artist:	STRATEGY
Title:	Super Vamp
Label:	ORAC (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$10.00
Catalog #:	ORAC 010EP

"'Super Vamp' is hi-tension funk, strung tightly between its classic influences and exploratory production techniques. A classic disco vamp drawn out relentlessly in a techno mode. The result is funky as hell, and one of those great bridge tracks which can take a set from one genre to another. It's also got a great vitality which comes from strategy applying his homemade cut-up software live in the mix. Nudge's version uses the vamp as the skeleton of a pop song, a beautiful and unexpected move. The hazy, nostalgic-future mix paints a picture of a basement full of gear, lovingly tended, and two quiet but very intent vocalists. If Windy & Carl tried their hands at making house music, the result might be something like this. Solenoid makes an epic electro-disco version of the track, with abundant musicality and a great dancefloor flow."

Artist:	STRATEGY
Title:	Fields of May
Label:	ORAC (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$10.00
Catalog #:	ORAC 022EP

Strategy takes off into deep Detroit-influenced house territory on "Fields of May," and the result is a foggy, hypnotic, heavy track. The DSP trickery is still in evidence, but takes a backseat here to a more organic sound. A serious late-night burner which fans of Moodymann or The Mole ought to dig. Secondo's remix ups the energy level a bit, taking it into techno-house territory. The last track is a spiky and gorgeous experiment in ambient techno/dub. Headphones? Check. Spliff? Check.

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