Experimental Electronic Music
Such a fitting title for Billion One’s latest on Woodland Creatures’ Biome series—every release connected to one of Earth’s distinct bioregions and ecosystems. These sonic windows shift with every listen, drifting and cascading with restless energy, layered vocal manipulations, and deeply infectious grooves.
For The Portent, Snowbeasts (Robert Galbraith and Elizabeth Virosa) drive punishing beats and low-end pressure, while Virosa’s drifting vocal lines remain suspended throughout. In contrast, James Miller’s Solypsis continually splinters structure, reshaping corrupted rhythms into unpredictable forms.
Aura leans more toward the hip-hop beat era than straight IDM, experimental in spirit, with enough left-field nuance that it resists being filed simply as instrumental hip-hop. It’s a document of a producer figuring out his own DNA in real time, two decades before anyone thought to look back and call it influential.
More Sprouted Lentils is Camcussion operating at full capacity—hardware-driven, unpredictable, and completely unconcerned with playing it safe. In a genre that can sometimes mistake complexity for depth, Doig’s instinct for fun is his sharpest tool.
Mutual Motion gathers 25 artists across 24 tracks into a release animated by movement, bodily response, and stylistic multiplicity—an expansive survey of modern club mechanics operating at full physiological intensity.
Morphtables balances precise braindance programming with technoid structures, shaping a downtempo melodic pull where fractured breaks and electronic details settle into a distinctly IDM framework.
Ara is a three-track 8-minute mini-EP that spans a wide emotional and sonic range across three compositions, illustrating S. Salter’s evolving language of composition, which is detailed, emotive, and increasingly expansive in scope.
Across eleven diverse movements, SICK STREET displays rhythmic elasticity, aural sculpting assembled from found sound, cellular technology, environmental residue, postcode mosaics, and a restless multiplicity of influence.
Originally published in Melody Maker on May 11, 1996, Mark Roland’s review of Meat Beat Manifesto’s Subliminal Sandwich captured the arrival of a record that would go on to become one of electronic music’s most influential and genre-defining releases; republished here with permission, 30 years on.
I trust BoC to make something interesting and emotionally effective, but when it comes to their music’s meaning, they’re slippery and mysterious. Inferno is a collection of pieces that grapple with scary feelings, scary beliefs, and the inescapable feeling that you can only trust your senses so far.
Petites Constellations develops shifting and subtle soundscapes with a retro-ish feeling, emerging from analog keyboards and vintage electronic equipment. However, it also stands as a thoroughly modern album, filled with kinetic grooves and bold compositional ingredients.
