Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children stands as a quintessential cornerstone of downtempo electronic music—a seminal release that propelled the enigmatic duo of Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin into a boundless realm of nostalgic reverie. In this edition of our “Flashback” column, Anne Jackson revisits the album’s haunting landscapes, with particular focus on “Telephasic Workshop,” a track that encapsulates a paradoxical beauty: at once claustrophobic and transcendent in its sonic intricacy.
Tag: IDM
Terrace :: Branches (De:tuned)
The 2LP draws on the past while delivering a considered statement on the present. This is deep and engrossing music, tracks that have been given time to grow and mature under the ear of a pioneer of machine music.
Hexalyne :: Isoconicase (Noided Media)
If Richard Devine and Autechre trace similar constellations in the sonic firmament, Hexalyne orbits his own peculiar void—an architect of abrasive beauty, leading a procession of rhythmic contortion through the digital underworld.
Michael Valentine West :: Liquid architecture (Evel)
These works feel like sonic residue from a scorched reality—assembled gradually, layer upon layer, into contemplative yet fractured shapes. MVW crafts immersive, multidimensional pieces where evolving sound design breathes slowly, alternately swelling and dissipating, constructing only to deconstruct.
Galaktlan :: Helemental (Touched Music)
Helemental doesn’t shout; it glides. It evokes connection not through force but through familiarity—like stumbling upon a memory long tucked away, warm and faintly glowing. This is an album that hums gently with presence, a quiet reminder that something beautiful still lingers, waiting to be heard.
8cylinder :: Snapped Bones EP (Unmapped North) — [concise]
Brief by design, Snapped Bones doesn’t linger—it strikes, drills, and exits, leaving behind scorched circuits and a lasting imprint of mechanized destruction.
keinseier :: Reduktion (Schwimmbad Musik)
Instead of adding, he subtracts. Instead of layering, he strips. Instead of giving in to gear acquisition syndrome, he frees himself by choosing one.
Keef Baker :: GFX (Self Released)
Keef Baker returns with GFX steeped in the spirit of classic IDM, a nod to both vintage audio aesthetics and the gritty charm of early graphics eras.
bvdub | Brock Van Wey :: Unbreakable
Unbreakable is a passage, a sweet wound, an epiphany that digs and mends. An act of love to be lived in silence, eyes closed, in the darkness of a room or of the soul.
V/A :: Making Things Happen: Netlabel Day 10th Anniversary Compilation (Mahorka)
Key actor and indie label in the vast panorama of modern day electronica and sound art, Mahorka started its creative adventure back in 2000-2001 with strongly aligned ideas to participate actively in advanced experimental music worldwide and from various cultural horizons.
KILN :: Lemon Borealis (A Strangely Isolated Place)
Indeed over the course of this first for ASIP KILN fire shivering shapes and febrile forms into a timbral trade-off of hi v. lo-fi; a quiet riot of rhythm’n’sound ranging from “DrnkGrlfrnd” with its ‘aquarium-on-fire radiance’ to “Maplefunk Diptych”’s ‘garden groove of field-recorded percussion’ to the ‘sizzling whiteout’ of “Deacon Rayhand.”

















