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Touted as ‘more than just a gig bag,’ Fusion lives up to its name by offering high-quality DJ bag accessories including various other mobile cases for iPad, laptops, and a wide assortment of instruments. (January 2012) After having DJ’d for over 10-years and running an online magazine, I’ve never really taken further steps to properly [...]
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Igloo Magazine’s Contributing Editors pooled together their top releases of 2011 and with 105 titles on display, there’s no real shortage of music to go back and dive into. Also included is an audio sampler of various tracks to entice your ears. ALAN LOCKETT :: 01 Black Swan :: The Quiet Divide (Experimedia) 02 Chihei [...]
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Greece-based From A Tree responds to igloomag.com’s Five questions profile. Learn more about the imprint, their starting points and where they intend to take electronic music. [Shop] Igloo Magazine :: When did From A Tree start up and what was your inspiration? From A Tree :: From A Tree began in 2008 and it’s a project from Anastasios Papalias, [...]
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Compass Kum’pas was first released in 1980, getting a few re-issues in the latter years of the decade. Seattle’s Medical Records has come to blow the dust off this forgotten album, prime the needle and lead you into the world of Dalek I. It’s no news that Liverpool is a music town. But within Merseyside’s [...]
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Compass Kum’pas was first released in 1980, getting a few re-issues in the latter years of the decade. Seattle’s Medical Records has come to blow the dust off this forgotten album, prime the needle and lead you into the world of Dalek I. It’s no news that Liverpool is a music town. But within Merseyside’s [...]
This collaboration between Portugal’s Beautiful Schizophrenic, aka Jorge Mantas, and Japan’s Yui Onodera, who previously made beautiful music with Celer, opens with unobtrusive ambient grace. Onodera picks out a hesitant melody on piano over a gently billowing synthesizers, wafting like powder trailing off a passing moth. This collaboration between Portugal’s Beautiful Schizophrenic, aka Jorge Mantas, [...]
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Twenty-five minutes in and the feedback blossom and blooming strings dissipate, leaving the calmer swell of the delicate pads and sea-salt spray, but very soon the bite of a chill wind begins to whistle alongside the distant, repeated clang of vast machinery to even greater hypnotic and panoramic effect. Way back in late 2008, echospace [...]
With electro disco having dried up over the last few years, Voltaire are, in a way, breaking with the norm. For those looking for an analogue fix with a decent floor slant, look no further. It’s full time work, well part time, staying up to date with the comings and goings of electronic music. But [...]
Static noise is interwoven through clicks’n cuts, manipulated guitars, tribal tentacles, crumbling techno, post-industrial washes and an extreme focus on the obscure craft of darkened tonal activity. Minimalism floating amidst industrial wastelands, broken (African) beats stutter across the landscape. A thin sheet of dust falls upon analog machinery that struggles to find itself in a [...]
The Exaltics serve up two warming Electro tracks, toeing the line between detached and inviting. Gosub tears down any welcoming aspects, instead establishing an uneasy twosome of Electro dappled with disaffection. [Release page] There are a handful of Electro labels and artists that are consistently releasing pure quality; Solar One Music and The Exaltics (Robert Witschakowski) are two [...]
More good—forward looking bass heavy music from Bristol and London, a collaboration which seems to be all the rage at the moment. Artifact delivers this mutant house/techno/garage hybrid with unfettered authority. Skittery hats and swinging percussion usher in a killer steppy groove with “machine gun” snares (a somewhat clichéd term, but appropriate) and tight sub, which [...]
Greece-based From A Tree responds to igloomag.com’s Five questions profile. Learn more about the imprint, their starting points and where they intend to take electronic music. [Shop] Igloo Magazine :: When did From A Tree start up and what was your inspiration? From A Tree :: From A Tree began in 2008 and it’s a project from Anastasios Papalias, [...]
With less corner-cutting ruthlessness, Revelationes is low-key instrumental jazz flecked with pop that is both breezy and broody. Tape is a trio that came out of the woods to gather in Stockholm, consisting of brothers Andreas and Johan Berthing and Tomas Hallonsten. Andreas is particularly active on the minimal electronics scene and bassist Johan, a [...]
Without falling from the edges of slippery ice sheets, each percussive puncture is evenly paced amongst a myriad of leavened ambience gluing these sonic pictures together. There’s a distinctive warmth to experimental electronics, especially when emanating from Adam Raisbeck’s machinery. As subtle darkened strands hover over alien bleeps, sharp beats flicker and tear apart only [...]
The air crackles and as the end approaches, so do footsteps, crunching the surface of the snow—another ruddy-cheeked traveler coming to warm himself inside. Pascal Savy‘s Fragments are remarkably warm for all the time they’ve spent out in the cold. A relative newcomer to ambient composition, Savy sprinkles flakes of guitar and gently processes field [...]
A great release from Keysound, pretty much right on the pulse of the bass crossover scene. London and Bristol unite (again) with this deep offering from Kowton & Dusk. In the London corner, Dusk brings his understated bass drenched garage stylings in the form of the slightly sinister “Fraction”. Squaring up to him in the [...]
Skin = Deception is distinct from the music he has released online—minimal with maximum impact, insidious and scary. [Release page] Must Die Records is a one-year-old English imprint with a smirking red and yellow logo. Although insisting on marketing itself as a noise label, its small but unruly discography features some real finds of truly varied [...]
Not entirely drenched in diluted noise, each of the six pieces are meticulously threaded with dozens of textured sounds—often crumpling and overlapping each other until they burst. [Release page] Diving head first into a mass of fluctuated guitar plucks, VNDL manipulates everyday sound sources—dabbling into experiments with instruments, broken synthesizers, dizzying beatwork and stormy winds [...]
Touted as ‘more than just a gig bag,’ Fusion lives up to its name by offering high-quality DJ bag accessories including various other mobile cases for iPad, laptops, and a wide assortment of instruments. (January 2012) After having DJ’d for over 10-years and running an online magazine, I’ve never really taken further steps to properly [...]
Swan Sketch seems to straddle the worlds of experimental exploration and bass heavy bangers, not only that, but it does it comfortably without feeling contrived. Al Tourettes is a Bristol based producer who has been garnering a lot of critical acclaim recently, and this release only strengthens his growing reputation. A tough and menacing collection of [...]
Triangles is just an honest to goodness, straight-up electronic record crafted with an ear for layered melody and sparkling effects-work that conjures atmospheres so sublimely heady and uplifting the experience is borderline heavenly. [Release page] The last few years have seen a prodigious influx of new releases mining synthwave and analogue synthesizer worship, many on new labels [...]
While surely stringently composed, the music flows freely. The experience is sort of like wandering through a whitewashed gallery with bold abstracts hanging from its walls. The premiere house for darkish, interstellar, synthesized ambient since the late nineties, American label Hypnos hits an estimable peak with its first digipak release, the debut recording by a trio [...]
“As the project gained momentum an ancillary goal emerged which was to play our part in engendering an attitude change to free music, having long been considered inferior to commercially released music.” Wassim—of The Centrifuge—replies to igloomag.com’s Five questions. Igloo Magazine :: When did The Centrifuge start up and what was your inspiration? The Centrifuge [...]
A penchant for insanely bouncy melodies, tonally sweet analogue keyboard sounds, straightforward, clipped percussion and occasional vocals steer Weisensee into distinctly Kraftwerkien territory. [Purchase] In 2011, the eccentric, early eighties and science fiction obsessed, Astro Chicken imprint followed up Risk Risk’s superlative This Is 1983 with two mini-LPs, the first of which is this quaint and [...]
An annihilating delirium of sound and vision, The Royal We shatters preconceived notions of experimentation—with vocal contortions aplenty—and simply vanishes into a surreal dreamworld. We’re not sure how this one slipped under the radar. Perhaps intentionally meant to catch you off-guard, Steven McDonald (aka Twenty Knives) serves The Royal We—a virtual smorgasbord of electronics that flickers uncomfortably between [...]
The single features “Carol,” just a few, utterly weightless warm breathes in a dark, frozen night, held aloft by Lunny’s viola and violin, and a “Lullaby,” which first holds tender vigil over the cradle and then rocks it with High Church fervour. [Release page] A little midwinter picker-upper. Clodagh Simmons’ Fovea Hex—an elusive, fluctuating collective which [...]
Synth pop has a tendency to focus on the machine sounds, with the larynx being used as an accompaniment. Soma Sema turn this norm on its head. [Release page] 2011 was a great year for synth wave. Amongst the generous array of re-issues came some choice newcomers and numerous labels showcased this fledgling talent. Kernkrach [...]
Laws is an almost lawless boarder crossing, skipping across state lines into a number of blurred genres. Synth wave, minimal pop and the darker side of the synthesizer has been the focus of Mannequin. Octavius aka William Marshall is no bright-eyed newcomer, an artist who’s been releasing since before the millennium. After nearly ten years of [...]
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