While its exterior may shed elements of sun-soaked shoegaze balanced perfectly with lively electronics, Biodance is an abundant kaleidoscope of feel-good ear candy that will surely settle on many a top list for 2012.. n5MD continue their growth into powerful forays of emotion-filled audio extraction—but what’s astounding is when you can physically hear it buried [...]
Post Tagged with: "n5MD"
Asonat :: Love In Times Of Repetition (n5MD)
A very picturesque musical journey through introverted winter-like soundscapes which deliberately bring to the fore a certain sense of mysteriousness and sentimental brilliance. [n5Mailorder] Love In Times Of Repetition is the first full-length release of a dream pop / electro ambient duo newly formed by two musicians from Island. This astonishing and deeply moving collection [...]
Stephen Hummel :: Meld (Self-Released)
With a handful of genres lapped over each other, Meld is an adventurous foray of raw electronics melded to lyrical lava flows that trickle into the subconscious with ease, simplicity and style. A well-oiled release that will surely agree with fans of Bitcrush, Tobias Lilja, Syntax and even mid-80s Depeche Mode for that matter. [Release [...]
ALAN LOCKETT :: Slings the Wooze Mix
20 exponents of blurred and blissed ambience, washed out synthwave and reverb-drenched electronica selected and strategically slung into a document of daze, a hymn to haze. Slinging the Wooze is Igloo Contributing Editor, Alan Lockett, aka albient for mix-meddle and audio-fiddle. The theme, vaguely programmatically, is of blinking re-emergence from Winter’s stunned chill, bleary peering [...]
Enabl.ed :: Paranoid Nostalgia EP (Enpeg)
Enabl.ed continues to produce a steady vehicle of rhythmic speed-bumps that packages itself uniquely in a playground of drenched glitch. It’s been an prolific few years for Jimmy Batista’s Enabl.ed moniker and a challenge to isolate the senses from recent outings in order to digest this (new) 6-pack digital release on Enpeg. Sure each track [...]
Release your ears 2.0
A list of some recent, current and forthcoming titles that are piquing our ears lately—it’s our attempt to point you to some notable releases worth investigating. Following up from earlier this month, there’s still plenty of music to digest among dangling wires and digital waveforms. Here’s another batch of titles worth investigating—each dipping into new [...]
Five questions for Enpeg
“The music label has become synonymous with technology, every year the old model becomes extinct, so continual reinvention of ourselves, as humble as our methods may be, is a necessity for our survival. To understand this lessens the possibility of failure.” Dustin Craig (of Enpeg) gives igloomag.com readers the ins & outs of running an [...]
Mark Harris :: Points of Departure: Works 2004 – 2009 (Enpeg)
Points Of Departure shifts gracefully and begins to envelop itself in a mass of low-pressure gliding through acres of open terrain. Mark Harris‘ thirty-nine minute selection of phases gathers subterranean debris, fragile ambiences and breezy cyclones on Points Of Departure: Works 2004-2009. These phases — as described via press excerpt — “of unequal length are [...]
Tobias Lilja :: Delirium Portraits (n5MD)
If Time Is On My Side represented waves of blistering darkness, Delirium Portraits, in contrast, is its long-lost relative. Filled with a glistening, almost contagious pulse, each fragment of lyrically interwoven rhythms bounces back and forth between the eardrums as it lures you into its hazy abyss. [Release page] Delirium Portraits is Tobias Lilja‘s latest [...]
TOBIAS LILJA :: Self-distance story telling
Tobias Lilja responds to a few questions regarding his background, production techniques (specifically his nebulous vocal elements) as well as the forthcoming Delirium Portraits album, set for release September 27th, 2011. [September 2011] Delirium Portraits is Tobias Lilja‘s latest musical opus for n5MD and not only does this skilled Scandinavian filter through a mesh of [...]
Aerosol & Dalot :: Double review (n5MD)
Fusing equal parts emotive instrumentation with serene layers of ambience, both Aerosol and Dalot offer n5MD their latest audio paintings. Aerosol :: All That is Solid Melts Into Air [Release page] Solemn spaces, tranquil retreats; Aerosol’s All That is Solid Melts Into Air pulls gravity filled melodies and gently brushes them with layers of nostalgic [...]
Headphone Science :: Raumdämonen (Enpeg)
Minimalistic flux and the continual push of low-traveling emissions has Headphone Science bypassing the beaten path and falling straight into a pool of submerged buzz-drones that keep clicking away at the surface. [Release page] Imaginary soundtracks to a medieval flight through time and space; various, subtle chants, sporadic strands of unintelligible electrical debris, and an [...]
Proem :: Enough Conflict (n5MD)
Experimental bass lines, synthetic distortions, soothing melodies, reflective rhythms, isolated beeps, flickers and ashes tend to hum smoothly in this brisk forty-eight minutes of electronics. [Release page] As one of the leading sound designers of the late 90′s through today, Richard Bailey (aka Proem) has always stayed in top form, not only as a musician, but [...]
Winterlight :: Hope Dies Last (n5MD)
Winterlight manages to unearth a sense of nostalgia that temporarily converts darkness into light, sharpness into haze, and grittiness into serenity. These surreal audio elements skitter along like cottony tones peppering the landscape with sweet and tranquil complexity. [Listen | Purchase] Did you enjoy Herrmann & Kleine’s warm and emotive instrumental-electronica back in the early [...]
Dreissk :: The Finding (n5MD)
With struggle, resistance and clarity, The Finding is a welcomed breeze encompassing a plethora of auditory drenching that sinks into the subconscious and continues to inspire. [Listen | Purchase] Undefinable… It’s not thickened shoegaze, hazy post-industrial, carved ambient/drone or any other media driven genre-tag. The Finding is not past, current or future, nor is it [...]
Odori :: Gathering Lines EP (Enpeg)
Each piece tells a bittersweet story that mixes mysterious drones, wobbling bass and secluded moods in one fell swoop of electricity. [Listen | Purchase] Gathering Lines collects cinematic orchestration and blends the entire process with interconnected, low-rolling emissions (leftfield-ambience, perhaps?). Frosted tones on tap, Odori quietly overlaps each modulation with segments of post-industrial spheres crossing [...]
Dryft :: Ventricle (n5MD)
All we can really know is that it’s all about feeling. This is not the time to postulate, discuss, or even dissect the sounds herein, instead, it’s more about the focused core of organic electronics that motivates the soul. (A philosophical inquiry into the structures of feeling exposed within Ventricle) [Listen | Purchase] Time always [...]
“Hello, Goodbye” :: SubtractiveLAD video essay by Director Tanner Volz
“This has taken me four months to write; time to call it done and put it out there. This is a long ramble of an essay about a music video project I helmed late last year, in advance of the release of the latest – and brilliant – album by SubtractiveLAD entitled Kindred.” The video [...]
P2P :: A potential solution to appease file-sharers and artists?
Stephen Hummel further investigates a potential solution to appease file-sharers and artists as well as his views on live and recorded music. One of the voices that has been largely missing from the discussion about P2P music file sharing is that of the independent music producer. We hear things almost everyday from blogs, mainstream media, [...]
port-royal :: A decade under the flag of low instinct
Attilio Bruzzone, keyboardist, guitarist, programmer and vocalist, talks Igloo Magazine’s Alex Gibson through some of the guiding principles behind the latest release, their views on modern digital culture and plans for another trilogy. [February 2011] Italian wide-screen electronica group port-royal recently celebrated ten years in producing their distinctive blend of ambient techno, shoegaze, post-rock and [...]
port-royal :: 2000-2010 The Golden Age Of Consumerism (n5MD)
Trying to place the half audible conversations and delayed guitar lines in context with their place in the port-royal time-line is enough to engage one half of the brains’ hemisphere, and when the characteristic and cathartic bottom end synth drones drop in, the other side is drawn into the conversation also. [Listen | Purchase] Italian [...]
V/A :: The Reconstruction of Fives (n5MD)
The reconstruction, however, is a mixture of form with shoegaze and ambience balanced against the shadow’s of sharply organized electronic noise; a virtual plateau of sculptors bending the framework of already fully realized tracks. [Listen | Purchase] Reconstruction, indeed. Disclaiming the directive of this release in the title may in fact be the best way [...]
Top releases of twenty-ten
With this article, 151 releases and 25 honorable mentions are highlighted as being titles that garnered the extra spins in 2010. These musicians (and associated labels) offered an abundance of quality productions coming from all corners of the globe with an emphasis on releasing music that doesn’t always follow a defined path. [January 2011] Twenty-ten [...]
n5MD :: 10 years later, 5 questions further (Part 1)
In this 10-year anniversary question and answer session (Part 1), Igloo Magazine poses five questions with three of n5′s current roster including SubtractiveLAD (Stephen Hummel), Dalot (Maria Papadomanolaki) and Aerosol (Rasmus Rasmussen), all of which have fresh releases that are still creating ripples across the planet. (October 2010) n5MD (No Fives, Minidiscs!) has developed a [...]
Mike Cadoo returns as Dryft (n5MD)
(August 2010) Mike Cadoo (ex-Gridlock member) has recently re-instated his electronic side-project Dryft after an 8-year silence as a way to further explore styles of music that currently doesn’t fit within the style in which Cadoo’s main project (Bitcrush) explores. A new album entitled Ventricle is set to be released by Cadoo’s own n5MD imprint [...]
Funckarma :: Vell Vagranz (n5MD)
(March 2010) It was inevitable, in a way, that Funckarma would end up absorbing elements of dubstep into their work. Their Legiac project had shown signs of this evolution back in 2008 when Mings Feaner was released on Sending Orbs. Having rather unfairly panned aspects of it in my review back then, its charms have [...]