"A Picnic with the Hunters" - Out NOW! (Reviews)
post a comment | posted Jan 8
My debut full length, "A Picnic with the Hunters", is now available through Soma Quality Recordings and your favorite record store.
Download it on Beatport: https://www.beatport.com/en-US/html/content/release/detail/90887/a_picnic_with_the_hunters
Get the real version from Boomkat: http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=71677
Check here to get your CD, MP3 or FLAC directly from Soma (coming soon): http://www.somarecords.com/shop/music/soma_cd066/
Preview the album here: http://www.virb.com/letsgooutside/music/albums/49887
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Earplug
http://www.earplug.cc/161134
A decade ago, Stephen Schieberl was making suicide-letter music in Portland, Oregon's sub-underground, playing everything from negative-space ambient to techno that verged on the downright abusive. In 2006, as Let's Go Outside, he began creating some of the darkest, most creeped-out minimal techno around. The undisputable gem from his debut long-player, A Picnic with the Hunters, "I'll Lick Your Spine" was released several months ago as a 12-inch. The track slinks along on spare snare hits and sultry, maroon-hued synth burbles, framing Christina Broussard's vampish whispers of the song's title. "You Make Me Struggle," meanwhile, replies with static crackle, pixilated synth groans, and a vocal that sounds like it's being fed through a radio-squawk filter. While dance-floor effective, the record feels just as suited for a black-painted back room -- one where, as "I Keep on Trying" and "I'm Sitting Alone" suggest, Schieberl patiently waits.
musicOMH
http://www.musicomh.com/albums/lets-go-outside_0108.htm
Soma's reputation for picking up worldwide techno talent is about to get another shot in the arm through the Portland-based, Italian-born Stephen Schieberl. The great outdoors would seem to be his theme, but this music is far from pastoral.
If you go on a picnic with Schieberl there could well be vodka hidden in the strawberries and cream, and the jam sandwiches might well have rogue anchovies in them. For Schieberl has the ability to switch between blissfully ambient sound pictures and vocal samples that verge on the downright alarming.
Not a bad thing, you understand, for that makes him less than predictable, and that's a considerable advantage in a field where it's easy to keep to the same level of programmed music, competent but a little featureless. Schieberl doesn't do featureless, and his soundscapes are complemented by spoken word or sung snippets.
I'll Lick Your Spine might not be a title for the squeamish but actually turns out to be a rather sleazy vocal number that will strike a chord with any Fatal Attractionists out there. Schieberl's offbeat chords complement the half-whispered vocal perfectly, with a breakbeat that gives the track a curious, liquid energy and a deeply atmospheric backing.
Towards the end of the record he shows himself to be an electronic orchestrator of great subtlety. Crashing is a blissful piece, its fast foreground synth loops projected over background washes of colour that give the impression of movement against the stars. Still Up becomes one of those 4am pieces where the bed beckons, but the listener doesn't have the energy to move there. My Friend also excels here, though Cotton Jenny's vocal may be a bit too downbeat for some tastes.
On the other side of the fence sits Girls Don't Like Me. It's little wonder, with a vocal sample that makes Frank Bruno sound like a lofty soprano and rumbling, threatening beats that refuse to go away. You Make Me Struggle is hardly easy listening either, but packs quite a punch with its disembodied voice and white noise around the edges.
My First Time and Like My Creep also muscle in with beats aplenty, the former with big, booming percussion and the latter with a bass boom that muscles in after a while and takes over.
For a debut album A Picnic With The Hunters has most impressive scope, ambition and structure. To blend delicate nocturnal with more disconcerting music that tends toward the industrial makes for an interesting blend, and presents Schieberl as a flexible electronic music artist well worth keeping an eye on.
Borne Magazine
http://www.bornemagazine.com/
Milanese borne, but now Portland based Stephen Schieberl has been crafting electronic music since his teens. Now under the guise of "Let's Go Outside" he's produced a fine and original album which has been snapped up by our favorite Glasgow based dance music label, Soma Records. A Picnic with the Hunters, will have something for almost everyone. It doesn't stick to one particular style. In contrast, it leaps from ambient, experimental electronica such as the opening track "Peripheral" and "Crashing" to the mind bending and dare I say it "boshing" tracks, "My First Time" and "I'm Sitting Alone". These tunes would easily fit into a peak-time set by techno giants such as Sven Vath or Adam Beyer. However, the real stand out track is the slutty and dark electro number, "I'll Lick Your Spine". Its dirty vocals, hypnotic beat and creepy synths have made it a favorite amongst DJs such as Andy Weatherall, Laurent Garnier and Ivan Smagghe of Black Strobe fame. If you're curious for a wee listen, some of Schieberl's finely produced work can be downloaded for free on the Soma website or you can check out Let's Go Outside on tour around the UK about now.
DMC Update
http://www.dmcupdate.com/soundjudgement/review.asp?id=6499Promo'd before Christmas, played to death and then found hopping around the garden naked with a pitchfork last week. So Stephen Schieberl's remarkable Soma debut album is out there and definitely worth investigation, although if you want spikey electro shouting and desperate clichés look away now. This is dangerous stuff, ranging from sepulchral calm to raging, nad-crunching techno blowout. On tracks like 'I'll Lick Your Spine', last year's sexiest single with its spine-wanking vox from Christina Broussard, the man from Portland, Oregon, beats all the other cod-electro mewlings at their own game. Tracks like the darkly malevolent 'Peripheral' say 'I've just let the most enormous fart', giggle and do damage. Tracks like the bollock-blastingly extreme and spooked 'You Make Me Struggle' and nasty generator drone of 'I'm Sitting Alone' show why Schieberl can sit on the same park bench as fellow mavericks like 2 Lone Swordsmen and Repeat Repeat and hold his own [missus]. He should be arrested but, as the New York Dolls said, is it a crime to fall in love with a Frankenstein? (5/5)
Berlinista
http://www.berlinista.com/en/article/lets-go-outside-picnic-with-the-hunters/4180
Let's Go Outside will release his debut album on Soma titled "Picnic With The Hunters" on January 28, 2008.
Stephen Schieberl has produced electronic music for over a decade, taking the mantra "Let's Go Outside" as his moniker. Residing in Portland, Oregon where he first released on small local experimental label, Buried In Time, he soon moved onto Bradford-based Midnight Recordings before being picked up by Soma shortly afterwards.
His discography includes everything from nearly silent ambient to the most destructive of techno, and all that lies between. Let's Go Outside's performances borrow from this immense palette to create a form of music that defies genre. His weird and filthy techno hits you like a rusty chainsaw in the face... in a good way.
'I'll Lick Your Spine', his first 12" on Soma's offshoot label Pnuma, gained huge support from Andrew Weatherall, Laurent Garnier and Ivan Smagghe with Smagghe going on to reconstruct the track alongside minimal man of the moment Massi DL in a remix single due to be released on Soma shortly. Schieberl then compiled 100 of his favourite creations and demanded Soma's A&R whittle these down to a masterpiece album.
Kicking off the album is the wonky techno sound of Peripheral. Like a lot of Let's Go Outside's work this is menacingly fun, blissfully malicious. The track bounds along in leaps while the mind-warping pitch-bending melodies quirkily mess with your perceptions. Schieberl's own vocals lend an abstract human edge to the electronic hysteria.
Let's Go Outside pays homage to a mass of genres throughout the album. 'I'll Keep on Trying' for example is an exceptional celebration of acid techno. Meanwhile tracks like 'I'll Lick Your Spine' toy with genre taking inspiration from IDM, ambient and electro to create such a slutty little number. With the fiendishly sexy vocals of Christina Broussard this track is like a lusty vampire luring you in only to leave you bloodied and torn.
'My First Time' is audio violence. Delving into the darkest stretches of Schieberl's mind finds cutesy vocals being brutally assaulted by a barrage of beats and squelchy bass. Schieberl is keen to note that no-one was hurt in the making of this track. He's lying. Kindly enough he resolves the raid with 'Like My Creep', a track which begins in delicate, creepy ambience merging into wobbly IDM.
The pace ups a notch again for 'Girls Don't Like Me', a thundering sado-masochistic storm of repressed machismo, leading graciously onto 'You Make Me Struggle' with it's percussion tearing at you like a rabid dog, the bassline circling you into claustrophobic paranoia and the vocal crawling over your flesh. 'Crashing' then brings the tempo right back down again resolving the torment that has gone before. An elegant display of ambient breaks this displays the other side of Let's Go Outside's work.
This is followed by possibly the most devastating track on the album. 'I'm Sitting Alone' is a full-blown techno destroyer. Verging on white noise at points this is playtime for the musically deranged. 'Still Up' creeps up with some glitchy techno before 'My Friend' drops to finish off the album. Featuring Cotton Jenny on sublime airy vocals this is the perfect remedy to bring the album back down to earth, heavenly yet subtly intense.
The Daily Record
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/club-nights-scotland/2008/01/11/clubbing-news-86908-20281217/
SOMA'S latest star has the unusual moniker of Let's Go Outside.
His real name is Stephen Schiebri, and his debut album for the respected Scottish imprint, A Picnic with the Hunters, is an articulate mix of glitchy, acid influenced, but satisfyingly warped techno.
There's a more experimental feel to the album, which sound like Aphex Twin trying to make pop music.
Boomkat
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=71677
Portland-based producer Stephen Schieberl makes his full-length debut for Soma having released two singles, 'Speak My Language' and the rather filthy 'I'll Lick Your Spine' (included here) featuring a particularly illustrative vocal from Christina Broussard, who presents a detailed itinerary of her seduction technique. As is true for much of A Picnic With The Hunters, the track makes for an artful balance between edgy techno production and skewed pop sensibilities. 'Peripheral' could be compared to Safety Scissors around the time of his Parts Water album given its odd, sing-song-y vocal and weird clicks 'n' cuts funk, whilst other tracks go straight for the jugular, with 'My First Time' and 'I'm Sitting Lone' gunning for harsh, abstract territory. By the time the Detroit-influenced pads of 'Still Up' kick in, it becomes apparent that it's this willingness to hop between styles and disciplines that makes the album such a refreshing, whimsical electronic record. A fine addition to the Soma roster.
Machines Are Funky
http://machinesarefunky.blogspot.com/2007/12/last-of-2007.html
Why am I reminded of dark Victorian streets and abstract shapes and phantoms while listening to this album? There's something here for everyone (and I know how cliched that is) not just over active imaginations like mine. Anyway Stephen Schieberl, aka Let's Go Outside is certainly fertile in the thought dept. Depth charge beats of varying intensity permeate this collection, along with crafty overdubs and sounds with a muted, shifting pitch. 'I Keep On Trying' is a good example of this wonkiness with its bass offset by what sound like processed pan pipes. There's more full-on bits like 'You Make Me Struggle' and 'I'm Sitting Alone' plus the corrupt musings of 'I'll Lick Your Spine' awaiting a rerelease with remixes by Ivan Smagghe and Massi DL. What I like most about this album, though is its use of vocals with no compromise on the instrumentation.
Boucherie Electronique
http://boucherie-electronique.blogspot.com/2008/01/lets-go-outside-picnic-with-hunters.html
Ce qui m'a donné envie de poser mon esprit encore lessivé par le nouvel an sur l'album de Let's Go Outside, c'est le commentaire qu' Ivan Smagghe a fait sur celui-ci :
"Let's Go Outside is probably one of the most original electronic acts at the moment because he does not fit anywhere. Brilliant ideas, brilliant production. Liked so much the previous single that I asked Soma to do a mix of it, coming soon. Massive props from a man that does not give many."
En gros, celui que nous surnommerons L.G.O., a été déclaré par monsieur Smagghe (de Kellogs, haha), comme un des producteurs de musique électronique les plus originaux du moments, au point de se trouver inétiquettable.
Brillantes idées, brillantes productions, à tel point que Sir Ivan s'est même proposé pour faire un remix du single.
Je me suis dit que ça ne pouvait que sentir bon car l'originalité se fait rare aujourd'hui, et que Soma, malgré sa discrétion, reste un label intéressant.
Ainsi j'exposais mon cerveau malade à de nouvelles sonorités, en le cerclant de la puissance de feu de mon casque, qui n'a évidemment aucun scrupule à tâter l'infra basse.
Vérifions l'éloge.
Au premier abord, l'engin apparaît minimal, ou deuxième, electro, et enfin au troisième, electro à tendance housey techno experiment.
Enfin OUI, c'est dur à classer.
Globalement on pourrait rattacher le style LGO au genre Electronique avec un grand E pas comme Ed Banger mais plus EDMX, Elektron ou E.R.P. (Convextion).
Ce qui fait hésiter c'est ce côté un peu deep, que l'on pourra assimiler comme la signature personnelle de l'artiste, son originalité.
Ce son à quelque chose de délicieusement groovy, on ne peut s'empêcher d'acquiescer les choix synthétiques de LGO d'un petit mouvement de tête, déhanché et hop, nous voilà tranquillement lancés dans un trémoussement bien druggy.
Tout ça est un peu breaké, légèrement nappé d'acid (« Girls don't like me », « Peripheral »), écroué techno indus par moments (« My First Time »), aseptisé minimal à d'autres (« Like My Creep »), ou encore techno Micronauts-ique avec le track rouleau compresseur « I'm Sitting Alone ».
On trouve donc de tout mais pas de n'importe quoi, avec une cohérence qui est le style original, inimité et déjà inimitable de Let's Go Outside.
Si vous désirez un petit aperçu de ce que produit le garçon, Soma a gracieusement mis à disposition trois tracks en téléchargement gratuit sur OneWeekToLive.com.
Morceaux qui de surcroît sont exclusifs car non-présents sur l'album.
Pour écouter le reste vous devrez attendre le 28 Janvier, date à laquelle son album « A Picnic With The Hunters » sera disponible.
Wer will mal wieder eine herausragende elektronische Platte hören? Bitte melden! Das englische Qualitätslabel Soma Recordings veröffentlicht Stephen Schieberls Projekt ,,Let's Go Outside" auf Albumlänge. ,,A Picnic With Hunters" pflügt das Feld von hinten kräftig durch.
Der aus den USA agierende Schieberl entwickelt seit einer Dekade elektronische Musik von House bis zu heftigem Techno, er kann von zurückgenommen bis zerstörerisch. Und alles, was dazwischen liegt. Diese Palette wird auf ,,A Picnic With Hunters" so gekonnt abgedeckt, dass man schon jetzt klar weiß, einen Klassiker vor sich zu haben.
In medias res. Man darf kein stereotypes Club-Album aneinandergereihter House-Perlen erwarten. Wäre zu einfach und will ja auch keiner. Trotz aller Tanzbarkeit ist mehr Hirn als Hüfte gefragt. So sehr man sich auch wehren mag, zieht die Vielfalt und Erhabenheit des Schieberl-Hybrids in den Bann anspruchsvoller Tonhypnose. Er rangiert zwischen Ambient Radierungen und angestoßenem Acid Electro Techno, warmem House, verwischten Vocals und gegenläufigen Harmonien. 4 to the floor Beat-Armierung fügt sich an elektroid gebrochene Beats.
Es entsteht seltsam entschleunigte Hysterie durch die klaustrophobische Paranoia schmutziger Techno-Tracks und der davon losgelösten Ummantelung des Restlichen, dessen makellose Schönheit und/oder kreative Intensität wie unsichtbare Fäden gierig und zitternd über die Haut kriechen. Immer wenn es geordnet scheint, wird die Soundlandschaft aufgebrochen und das Tempo wechselt von gebremstem Effet zu erneutem Spurt. Gepflegter Machismo geht mit melancholischer Empathie, Feinsinn ergänzt scharfes Auge und ruhige Hand des perfekten Arrangements.
Die mäandernde Struktur dieses von der Skizze zum Entwurf geformten Werkes bringt die Spannung und zeitlose Relevanz, derer ein Klassiker bedarf. Und eins wird sehr schnell klar: Dieser hier vorliegende Entwurf ist meisterhaft.