Experimental Electronic Music
My perspective on metallic matters was recently alchemized once again with some new prima materia from Matmos, and their song “The Rust Belt” released with clanging banger of a video by Jack Colbert ahead of the June 20th release of their newest album Metallic Life Review and summer tour.
Saturation Index unfolds naturally, revealing a stream of delicate, fluttering melodies that craft an elegant balance between the comfortingly familiar and the boldly new.
Coupled with intense rhythmic hooks and jaunty infectious melancholy lyrics, these short sweet pieces make me feel joyful and full of hope, even as the lyrics are moody and depressing.
The new Imprints album, titled Blood Moon—debuting on Data Discs—is a spellbinding passage through ambient and electroacoustic soundscapes, blending reimagined motifs with original compositions inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The entire suite is a seamless vapor trail—translucent, immersive, and exquisitely understated. xochicuicatl is a terrain of micro-moments and textured silences, a meditative odyssey that rewards every minute of attention.
With Robert Galbraith’s decisive programming and the ever ethereal whispering vocals of Elizabeth Virosa they leap forward with an intense and unrelenting album.
Throughout El So de los Muertos, this sense of awe at the geological scale of something larger and more ancient is present both in sound and aesthetics, as shown by the album name itself (“The Sun of the Dead”) as well as track titles with translations like “The Earth and its subterranean powers.”
Recorded in live conditions Rebirth/Omen is an intricate and captivating abstract and darkly meditative release with some liturgical and spiritually-everlasting properties.
Here, looped beats, sharp-panned synth lines, sparkling sampled piano, and glitchy “post-rock” electronica remind me of the early n5MD releases from the likes of Lights Out Asia, Epic45, and Near The Parenthesis.
Like light refracting through timeworn glass, The Golden Age flickers between eras, drawing us in with delicate tones and elemental textures. It is a melodic tapestry of memory, a gentle parting from a cherished land, and a luminous haven sculpted in sound.
Unlike the usual live record, Under Certain Light and Atmospheric Conditions refuses to offer the listener a concert experience by proxy, to be had in the comfort of one’s own headphones. The inclusion of these field recordings, and the fact that over half of the tracks are soundcheck improvisations and unreleased compositions, distances the album from a simple celebration of his past catalog.
