Cover By Dan Love
Artifacts, the debut solo record from San Antonio producer Aether, was last year’s most underrated beat record. Come list time (it finished at a too-low #46), I claimed that few artists were as accurately defined by their name. In Greek myth, Aether is the personification of space and heaven, and Diego Chavez’s music successfully embodies that notion with its celestial strings and samples and bedrock of breakbeats that come loose from their moorings and drift off into the void. Collecting the splintered shards of the Mo Wax’ aesthetic, Aether ensures that DJ Krush, UNKLE, and Shadow’s lamps stay lit.
Trip-hop only died because music journalists got tired of trumpeting a stupid name and Talib Kweli started rapping over Morcheeba instrumentals. But really, the idea of grimy hip-hop drums set to drugged down-tempo melodies only went dormant until it could mutate and recombine. Aether and the rest of the criminally unsung Exponential Records camp (Ernest Gonzalez, Diego Bernal, Mexicans With Guns) represent some of the best of the revanchists. Along with stylistic kinsmen, Take and Nosaj Thing, they synthesize trip-hop, boom-bap, and IDM into something warmly familiar but very fresh. His mix for PotW collects older rarities, previously unheard new material, and a remix of an artist named Zoon Van Snook. In my opinion, the mix is as good as being named Zoon Van Snook. Maybe even better.
Tracklist below the jump.
Download:
MP3: Passion of the Weiss Mix Series – Volume 2: Aether (Left-Click)
Tracklist
1. A.M. Architect – Road to the Sun II
2. Aether- Love Theme
3. Lazy Bones – Lovers
4. A.M. Architect – Distant (Demo)
5. S.E.L.F. – Trapped
6. Aether -Dejame Dormir
7. Rae Davis vs Aether – Drama Free (Feat Tina Hanae Miller)
8. Ernest Gonzales – Dancing in the Snow (Aether Remix)
9. Aether – Leaving Me
10. Aether – Tomorrows Thief
11. Zoon Van Snook – The Gloaming (Aether Remix)
