Experimental Electronic Music
Archive 97–99 is a snapshot of someone absorbing that ethos in real time, two decades ago, and the recordings still hold up. Not because they’re groundbreaking, but because they’re honest documents of a producer learning their craft during one of electronic music’s most fertile periods.
What began as speculation over a possible new Boards of Canada release evolved into a meditation on how their rare and mysterious presence awakens a profound collective longing for beauty, unity, and transcendence in an increasingly fragmented world.
soak vol 2 unfolds like a damaged transmission from somewhere intimate and unplaceable—32 fractured, emotional, and strangely beautiful pieces stitched together from the outer edges of contemporary electronic sound.
Cicadas does a beautiful job using an experimental musical lens to help focus our attention on an often overlooked yet fascinating creature who lives in a world completely different from ours, yet that is also exactly the same (a beautiful expression of German phenomenological biologist Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of the Umwelt or life-world that is specific to the sensory perceptions of each kind of animal).
rust/wave, his latest, takes a different approach. The Hamilton, Ontario-based artist has compiled a beautiful piece of ambient work, and rather than introducing itself as some ambient drone or sounding like that, it’s actually really melodic and beautiful. A peaceful listen.
The dubbed-out vocals, the melodic fills, the use of unusual time signatures, these aren’t just technical tricks, they’re emotional tools. The album feels exploratory without getting lost, complex without being exhausting. For fans of drumfunk and the kind of brain-melting beat science that Planet Mu championed in the late 90s and early 2000s, Tessares is essential.
The sounds here are not just the contemporary musique concrète we’ve all come to know and love from Everyday Dust, but musique métaphysique. It’s earthy, its rooted, its physical powerful when blaring through the headphones or speakers and subwoofer, but it contains the ever necessary particles of dust that transport me to the otherworld every time I listen to music from this artist.
Necessary Unfold draws together the collective consciousness of contemporary Greek electronic music in their Various Artist label launch collection Part Time Archivists / Part Time Forgers. Coalescing electro, breaks, acid sensibilities, and IDM intent, we get 12 sublime Saturday-night anthems primed for a proper underground, word-of-mouth gathering. Summer radiates through the set.
Latest Onset Audio release, BMA & Robbyt deliver Arbitrary Arbitrage / Lockbox, a taut two-tracker driven by dark breaks, dense pressure, and full-spectrum low-end hostility.
This overall limited run of the acid genre is another success on the label for those who are in love with the genre. Furthur Electronix—and a warm welcome Shakesphere, their sub-label—has been carving out a niche for itself over the past few years, releasing music that feels both nostalgic and necessary. It’s a love letter to a sound that defined an era, and for fans of classic acid and braindance, it’s essential.
Operating as Simon Pyke (aka Freeform) and various collaborative ventures, unveils Drift Works—twelve fractured post-ambient sketches unfolding in slow, seamless disintegration.
