Simon Scott | Soundings Touch (CD/CS/DL) This is as if I have really begun to hear the work of Simon Scott for the very first time – even after listening to his work over a good part of the 2010’s, since Below Sea Level (12K, 2012). Soundings (out on 2/22) is a different approach to […]
Robert Lippok and Kaan Bulak | Kubus Feral Note (DL) In these six tracks, Kubus I-VI, the Berlin-based first-time collaborative duo of composer Robert Lippok and (augmented) pianist Kaan Bulak flex their newfound synergy from light to dark, and back again. We begin in a fairly ambient sweet spot, with only a half-sweetened tinkling of […]
Music For Sleep | WaterformsShimmering Moods Records (CD/DL) Music For Sleep is the ambient project of Andrea Porcu, a Sardinian artist now based in Berlin. His previous work has been mostly self-released, but he now finds the perfect home for his dreamlike compositions on the ever-reliable Shimmering Moods label. Ambient music sometimes skirts with clichés, […]
Drekka | No Tracks In The Snow Dais Records (LP/DL) No Tracks In The Snow is Drekka, or Bloomington-based musician Mkl Anderson‘s compilation of “ritual ambient industrial” early works recorded between 1996-2002. This collection will be out on black as well as a super rare marble wax in case you had a preference. Since this […]
Giuseppe Pascucci & Vito Pesce | Nikola, Was Right! Plus Timbre (DL) The duo employs only guitars and effects here, and effectively, the new album Nikola, Was Right! certainly is. Giuseppe Pascucci & Vito Pesce bring the reverb, the separation of timbre, and neutralize your general surroundings with this sparse work that floats in the […]
Arne Borgan | AsterionTipi Token Records (CD/DL) I was given this album from Arne himself, in person. He walked in the bar where I was sitting with some mutual friends and didn’t say much: “it came out today.” – he said.I was very fascinated and happy, the fact that someone hands you personally a product […]
Whettman Chelmets | Giant Eyes & Infant Steps Girly Girl (CD/CS/DL) Fatherhood is a unique experience, and translated into a psychedelic record like Giant Eyes & Infant Steps sort of makes sense. The loopy recording by Whettman Chelmets of Joplin (Missouri) opens with Interruptus, a quasi intro of animated surrealism, that moves right into the […]
Munchies On Flowers | self-titled Switch Music Recordings (LP/DL) Riccardo Gorone has established a new solo aka as Munchies On Flowers. The self-titled record (released 2/18) is, as he stipulated, “non-methodical music”. So let’s dive into experience a deeper listen to try to better discover the underlying meaning and nuances here. Some static hiss, and […]
Curt Cress | Dschung Tek Music From Memory (12″/DL) A portion of this new EP release was originally issued circa 1991/92 by German drummer Curt Cress (who worked with house fave, Nina Hagen) under the moniker of simply C.C. It also contains three deep cuts from his 1983 solo record Avanti. So since this is […]
Building Instruments | Mangelen MinHubro (LP/CD/DL) February 2019 starts with an interesting and unexpected surprise. Mangelen Min, whose loose translation would be as “my lack” – in the sense of “the thing missing in my life” – feels more like what everyone should be missing in the music environment nowadays. We often hear of albums […]
Hugh Marsh | Violinvocations Western Vinyl (LP/DL) I Laid Down In The Snow is the opener to Canadian musician Hugh Marsh‘s latest, Violinvocations. Oozing with air-brushed drone and a fly-like buzz at first, the setting is somewhat barren, the mood distinctively peculiar. There lay Marsh’s strings, in there somewhere, amid the solitude, the static and […]
Cal Lyall & Tim Olive | Lowering 845 Audio (CD/DL) Just arriving from Japan is the collab between Tim Olive and Cal Lyall. The disc consists of a singular twenty-seven minute unstructured diversion to grind your morning (or whatever time suits your wake-up call). A stirring, yet somewhat atypical industrial abstraction, that sounds as if […]
Cosey Fanni Tutti | Tutti Conspiracy International (LP/CD/DL) “My life is my art, my art is my life” In her solo follow-up to 1982’s Time to Tell is the latest from Cosey Fanni Tutti (Throbbing Gristle, COUM Transmissions, Chris & Cosey, etc.), Tutti. Eight tracks, grounded at first on the title track by a signature […]
Siavash Amini and Matt Finney | Second ShiftOpal Tapes (CD/DL) Three albums into their collaborative series, Siavash Amini and Matt Finney have developed a reputation for concocting thematically and aesthetically dark worlds that meld awkward characters with oft punishing soundscapes. Although Second Shift’s spoken narrative certainly points to this being a fair assessment of their […]
Christian Winther Christensen | Almost in Gcol legno (CD/DL) Time. Tik-tok. Plink-plonk. The concentric cycles of the day and the labour within the day and the activities within the labour and each movement within each activity. Is it, is everything predictable? Is it, everything determined? Or things we do today, the most transitory movements, can […]
Paul DeMarinis | Songs Without Throats Black Truffle (2xLP) ((( LISTEN ))) Though he’s been at it since the 70s sound/installation artist Paul DeMarinis combines the implausible variables of interactive software, synthetic speech, and other noise media to bring to light a world animated with broken phonetics. At least that’s what you get on the […]
Bardo Todol & Devid Ciampalini | El Origen Del Pensamiento MágicoIkuisuus (CS/DL) “Architectural musique concrete” Bardo Todol is an experimental music project hailing from Argentina and consisting -as I read- by either Pablo Picco with Nico Picco or Pablo Picco with Atilio Sanchez. Devid Ciampalini (Metzengerstein, Holy Hole) is an Italian musician and experimentalist, working […]
Allan Smyth | Spinning Focused Silence (CD/DL) In a single twenty-two minute track Allan Smyth makes every minute of Spinning count. It’s a kind of abstract aural sorcery. The drone billows in softly, with various textural actions tapping and nudging the edges at first as if it were a code of sorts. This all expands […]
Hast | Hast self-released (DL) Hast is a project of French artist/designers Sébastien Hayez and Thierry Arnal. This half hour single track, with a running length of a half hour opens as an icy cold drone that begins burring away at itself. With the effect of a giant wind tunnel and a meandering pitch that […]
Annabelle Playe | Geyser DAC Records (12″/DL) Geyser is from French multidisciplinary sound artist Annabelle Playe and is her third full-length effort — it’s one to keep an ear out for. It offers something solitary, about infinitesimal fragments slowly expanding toward the far corners of the horizonline. It’s a balance of soft and hard […]
Espacio Profundo | Laniakea Zona Watusa (CS/DL) A field recording of croaks and caws casts the setting for Laniakea (or “immense heaven” in Hawaiian) which is named after a supercluster in the galaxy. On their third tape since 2015 Espacio Profundo wastes no time on Calotriton Arnoldi creating an incredible depth of atmosphere, with cowbells […]
MYMK | Garlands Sounds et al (CD/DL) Brazilian native Bruno Sres, as MYMK brings on pure electronic abstraction on Garlands. As if a rainstorm has gone through a tin filter at various velocities and measurements, Mother Dear is an edgy opener that may distract some, but it also clears the air for what comes after. […]
These four new releases represent some distinctively innovative directions in electronic music at the moment. From delicate sound design to nu-dub to multi-layered and restrained techno oscillation, each with its own distinct take on the medium. Belief Defect | Remixed 01 [ Raster – 12″/DL ] Efdemin | New Atlantis [ Ostgut Ton – LP/CD/DL […]
Meglamancha | Silica Staertenbard Records (CS/DL) Netherlanders Freek Philippi and Marlon Wolterink otherwise known as Meglamancha have delivered their third full-length release in as many years with Silica. Last April we covered Megara, which was a lot more spurious and revved than this one. A year has driven a direction of ominous composure. From […]
