Experimental Electronic Music
The depth and breadth of Documents of Different Reality is truly amazing. Cold Blow have done their homework and their research. This is a compilation of archaeological detail that brings to life the momentous machine music of the 1990s. In Spara’s own words, the collection connects “dots that people might have not connected before.”
Primal Forms is quite a propulsive and beautifully elaborated electronic synthedelica effort that will ravish listeners of adventurous music with dancing, then hallucinogenic qualities. The synergy between the two musicians works like magic and with a clear easiness.
For fans of CPU, Carl Finlow and electro’s wider continuum, IXRQ’s command of the language will be immediately apparent. But this isn’t simply reverence for what has been. These are familiar components arranged with enough curiosity to remind us that electro’s future has never been about inventing the machine. It’s about continuing to find new things for it to say.
Concept Record not only works as a creative tool; it demonstrates what can be created when Professor Ben’s instruction is heeded. The concept is to use this record alongside other records to make new records, while providing a legitimate D.H.S. album of its own right—one that embraces the features that help make physical records so fun and appealing.
There’s something particularly satisfying about hearing forgotten tracks recovered, revisited and finally released for others to discover. Off-Cuts (2014–2021) doesn’t feel like a scattered collection of archival material; instead, it comes across as a carefully gathered snapshot of a creative period, proving that these pieces still have plenty to say.
Most ingredients are well known, but it’s the ingenuity with which they are married into one homogenous alloy that makes Anemoia not simply a standout IDM piece in terms of production proficiency and storytelling, but an important milestone in the history of modern electronic music in general and, for me, a present and future classic.
A label that kept going, kept releasing, kept refining a shared aesthetic without compromise or concession to trends. aux4444 pt.1 carries all of that history in its drum patterns and melodic builds, and it sounds better for it. This is what underground electronic music looks like when it’s done with genuine conviction over a sustained period of time.
On Islands Alight, percussion takes on a structural role, the bass gains weight, echo intervenes in the form, and the pulse alters the relationship between the different parts. The British composer points to the history of dub within electronic music as one of the project’s sources.
Simon Heath closes the release notes with “May you rest in peace.” There’s nothing to add to that. The Yasu Ether Project is an overall haunting and pleasant experience, a final document of an artist who understood that darkness and stillness aren’t opposites of beauty but conditions under which a particular kind of beauty becomes possible. César Alexandre knew that instinctively, and this album proves it one last time.
Arca’s latest record pushes her glitch-heavy, genre-defying sound further than ever, turning chaos, vulnerability, and radical experimentation into one of her most fearless works yet.
Six tracks, no wasted motion. ARKADA005 doesn’t revive electro; it plugs it back in, turns the voltage up, and lets the machine speak for itself.
