Abolition To Solution is a robust apocalypse of electronics that goes well beyond the confines of any one genre and explores the deep recesses of bass and beat. Sunao Inami—electronic music sculptor, founder and label operator of Japan-based Electo-ohm and a hot chili pepper farmer (believe it or not)—strives at expanding upon the limitless potential of [...]
Category: "Reviews"
Antikatechon :: Chrisma Crucifixorum (Rage in Eden)
Just as in his previous effort, Davide del Col explores the musical equivalent of religiously cryptic images of awakening to the supreme absolute, to ultimate realities. After a debut release signed on Silentes, Davide del Col is back with a new instantly recognizable and sonically thrilling dark ambient opus for the polish label Rage in [...]
V/A :: Bass Anthropology (IDMf Beat Tapes)
Bass Anthropology presents a surplus of forward-thinking bass music that continues to propel itself into spiraling worlds of fluid abstraction. IDMf Beat Tapes sheds a half-dozen bass entities without spilling over into saturated or pretentious mainstream terrain. Keeping themselves firmly planted just beneath the soil, Bass Anthropology forages into tunnels of low-end that is centralized around [...]
Osmiroid :: Double review (Self-Released)
There is not so much a defining sound as a characteristic approach that serves as a crucible to shape and distort hearts and minds as well as sounds. Osmiroid is a shadowy league of shadowy figures purportedly laying low in London, Oxforshire, Paris and points beyond. Though only about a year old, it has released [...]
Jeanne Vomit-Terror & Ed Sunspot / Three Legged Race :: Double review (Acoustic Division)
It’s been a while since I’ve written about Acoustic Division. The US label comes from the South West, an unlikely location for electronics. Acoustic Division keeps the electronic oasis verdant with two recent releases. Jeanne Vomit-Terror and Ed Sunspot introduce The Seat of Same. This twosome come from Resonant Hole, a “a mutant collective cultivating [...]
Federico Leocata :: Zarathustra (Abstract Forms)
Amidst the northern winds and cutting hail of Zarathustra is an emotive warmth, a comforting core shielding the showers of modernity. Federico Leocata makes his full vinyl appearance for Abstract Forms with Zarathustra. The Italian artist has been active for a number of years now, focusing on digital releases but clocking up 12”s for WeMe [...]
VC-118A :: Flight Control (Tabernacle)
Washes of analogue atmospherics rinse into synthesizer spheres. Cascading from the heavens into the fathoms of the deep, VC-118A delivers four pieces of imaginative and soulful electronics. The Tabernacle train rolls on. Next stop, The Netherlands. VC-118A (aka Samuel Van Dijk) has released on imprints such as TRUST and Lunar Disko. The producer, and designer, [...]
V/A :: Circuits Imprimés Vol. 03 (Pavillon36)
Pavillon36 successfully connects a complex electrical circuit via fine-tuned forms of glitch, post-industrial, minimalism and raw electronics. Like trying to grab a cluster of stars in a universe filled with millions upon millions—Circuits Imprimés Vol. 03 is a veritable mixture of stray electronics featuring the purveyors of forward-thinking experimental audio scientists. Each musician displays their [...]
Loscil :: City Hospital (Wistrec)
Malcolm Lowry (1909—57) was an English author whose prodigious talent lay in direct inverse proportion to his heroic abuse of alcohol. His Under the Volcano is both widely-read and universally accepted as one of the best novels of the twentieth century. Before the eventful trip to Mexico that inspired that book, and in the midst [...]
Mindbuffer :: PanFM: Chapter 4 (Enig’matik)
Mindbuffer continues to prove that sound design can go on various tangents and still remain quite engaged. Mindbuffer does for Enig’matik what Autechre does for Warp—baffle the brain with sub-atomic bass crunching via epic stretches of fractured ambient versus digital distortion. For the fourth chapter in the PanFM series, chopped and decomposed electronics is still at the [...]
Rena Jones :: Echoes (Cartesian Binary)
While downtempo might be the immediate groove on display, classical constructs are peppered throughout in an eloquent ebb and flow. Rena Jones‘ own Cartesian Binary imprint releases on a relaxed schedule where electronic bits tangle with electro, ambient and heavy percussion. For Echoes, her fifth full-length album, a more lively collaborative process took shape. While downtempo [...]
Materia :: Atlas (Slime)
A genuine work of substance from a club producer who has expanded his remit and taken on something wholly more ambitious than a two track house, garage, dubstep, insert preferred genre release. Atlas is a deep and ethereal album with a huge cinematic sonic geography. Ice covered shimmering alien worlds stretch before you from the [...]
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society :: Brooklyn Babylon (New Amsterdam)
Brooklyn Babylon is an unstoppable and throbbing theatrical force, a surging shapeshifter that offers the listener a wild exciting ride. Inventive and impressive, but not pretentious. Big-band music at its most contemporary and provocative form. An intricate embroidery of 70s jazz flavors, Balkan folk, rock and a variety of modern influences. Brooklyn Babylon is the [...]
Zen Lu :: River (Etalabel)
Zen Lu demonstrates a growing interest to the sonic realms of complex sound textures, also bringing to the fore a corpus of stylistically compelling emotive melodies. Zen Lu is a young sound designer and musical alchemist from China. His work consists of tonal ambient minimalist soundscapes, subtly connected to spiritual aspects of life through the [...]
Minilogue :: Blomma (Cocoon)
Blomma defies the idea of recycling, rehearsing and planning ahead, and offers two voyages without a destination to the outside of reality, two improvised streams on which techno, space ambient, house, trance and misty jazz hues coexist engagingly, depicting special places where our imagination can blossom freely. Therefore the word blomma (Swedish for blossom and [...]
Kitchen & The Plastic Spoons / Belaboris :: Double review (Dark Entries)
This archaeological imprint has once again dived into the past only to resurface with a spread of obscure female outfits from across the world. Dark Entries have decided to celebrate Women’s History Month with a twist. This archaeological imprint has once again dived into the past only to resurface with a spread of obscure female [...]
Northcape :: Exploration and Ascent (Sun Sea Sky)
Northcape raised his sights beyond the realm of cultural plundering so there are no Tibetan/Nepalese samples or “world music” modal influences in evidence. Instead, the tracks aspire to capture timeless characteristics of the Himalayas and high, mountainous, (strangely?) isolated places more generally. Since 1999, Charleston Illinois-based Sun Sea Sky Productions has been quietly releasing independent [...]
Greg Haines :: Where We Were (Denovali)
No commercial potential. Where We Were is the antithesis of mainstream music in 2013. It’s raw and impulsive rather than polished, calculated and forced; it’s erratic rather than predictable, and it reveals its allure gradually with each listening session instead of revealing it all at once. An album that rewards the attentive listener pursuing the [...]
Svarte Greiner :: Black Tie (Miasmah)
Black Tie is a real return to form for the Miasmah label and continues the Svarte Greiner saga with two extended tracks of chilling, contemporary dark ambiance. Whether it’s Kaboom Karavan’s overwhelmingly atmospheric and creepy Barra Barra, Kreng’s full-on horror-fests L’Autopsie Phenomenal de dieu and Grimoire, or Jacaszek’s soulful and deeply moving classical Treny, Miasmah [...]
Tay0 :: Possible Futures EP (Nophi)
Tay0′s sound is one filled with erratic yet consistent elements of exp-electronics that must be examined over repeat listens for full absorption. Fans of early Toytronic and Neo Ouija take note. If There is a Shining Point Where All Lines Intersect (High Grade Media, 2011) represented sparkling electronic flutter than Possible Futures is its brisk [...]
Aksutique :: Notch Fields (diametric.)
Rather than pander to the “dub” crowd, this EP takes what has become quite a saturated genre and elevates it with ambient subtlety and a gentleness of spirit. Matthias Falkenstein (aka Matthias Springer) is one of the most prolific artists that I’ve never come across. For more than a decade, and under a spread of [...]
Strom Noir :: Standing Out Against the Sea (DataObscura)
Strom Noir’s ambient is amongst the most subtle on record, distant and place-less but richly varied and embrasive. Emil Mat’ko has been releasing music at a steady, even pace since 2007, yielding more than a dozen long- and extended-players to date, each as skillfully nuanced and uplifting as the next. In betrayal of his dark [...]
Hans Nieswandt :: Hildegard Knef – Remixed 12 Versions (Bureau B)
Knef has a dark, occasionally faltering voice, but that doesn’t prevent it from bopping along to pop as innocent as a daytime TV margarine commercial or sounding “right” sailing along with breezy strings. As a singer, Hildegard Knef was a kind of grown-up, German counterpart to the French yé-yé girls svengali’d into stardom by Serge [...]
RSS Boys :: Double review (Mik Musik)
RSS Boys might just be the most colorful step forward taken by really intelligent dance music in a long time. RSS Boys might just be the most colorful step forward taken by really intelligent dance music in a long time. Poles who claim to have met each other while traveling in Benin, they conceal their [...]
Atiq & EnK :: Fear Of The Unknown (Tympanik Audio / Mindtrick)
A swirling mix of electronic, classical, trip-hop, dubstep and breakbeat influences permeate Fear of the Unknown, creating a wonderfully cerebral and intriguing experience. Listening to Atiq & EnK’s excellent debut album, Fear of the Unknown, it’s surprising to learn that Pim Arnoldus came from a predominantly metal music background, Guido started off in the promotion [...]
Richard Chartier & Yann Novak :: Undefined (Farmacia901)
Developed as one long title, Undefined is a resonating-sinuous droning sound tapestry which demonstrates a totally absorbing exploration through infinitely subtle waving tones and micro interferences. Undefined is the new splendid and intensively evocative electronic release published by the Italian based label Farmacia901 (launched a couple of years ago by the inter-media artist and sound designer Fabio Perletta). [...]
(ghost) :: Departure (n5MD)
(ghost) channels early-era intelligent exp-electronic systems and transforms them into evocative snapshots of rhythmic simplicity suspended just above planet Earth. It has more than likely been described in other scenarios, but the airport can be quite an emotional place where hellos and goodbyes are often exchanged with the departure and arrival of friends and family. [...]