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Music

Richard Skelton: selonodesy (digital, Phantom Limb, March 2023)

Ach, he’s only bloody gone and done it again. I love Landings Skelton’s 2010 album of ragged string studies, which was one of my first forays into the world of what Boomkat used to call Home Listening / Modern Classical / Ambient. I love the epic drone of Limnology, and I was bowled over by […]

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Lau Nau: 5 x 4 (digital, Beacon Sound, April 2023)

Laura Naukkarinen’s HEM. Någonstans is a smashing record, combining traditional Finnish folk instruments with modern electronic production. It was one of my albums of 2015, and one that has stood the test of time, too. This is quite different, all bubbling Buchla loveliness (the Caterina Barbieri comparison is inevitable) and layered wordless vocals. It’s warm […]

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Erika: Anevite Void (digital, Interdimensional Transmissions, February 2023)

It seems like Erika Sherman and the label she co-runs have been quite a big deal in Detroit since the late nineties, without ever really seeking fame outside the midwest. Which is a shame, as this is utterly smashing. Everything from the name Interdimensional Transmissions to the high-concept sci-fi sleeve notes are very second-gen Detroit, […]

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Santaka: Santaka EP (digital, Sähkö, March 2023)

Well, this is a little gem. I guess it hovers in a kind of grey area between the jazzier end of techno and a kind of technoid jazz. Rhythmically, it combines a kind of motorik drive with a liquid fluency, which is pretty cool. (There’s both drum machines and live percussion in the mix.) And […]

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Julia Sabra & Fadi Tabbal: Snakeskin (digital, Ruptured, October 2022)

A lot of the vocals from this Lebanese duo sound like dream pop, but the music tells a different story. There’s glitchy ambient, brittle electro-pop, jarring ambient, full-spectrum organ drone, and more. It can get almost overwhelming in places. In a good way, I mean. The lyrics often perform a similar switcheroo: take In Our […]

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Kali Malone: Does Spring Hide Its Joy? (digital, Ideologic Organ, January 2023)

How much drone is too much drone? Well, if it’s this good, I’m inclined to say that three hours is not enough, ‘cos after immersing myself in this I have felt a kind of loss when it stops. This is a collaboration between Kali Malone on oscillators, Lucy Railton on cello, and Stephen O’Malley out […]

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Little Simz: NO THANK YOU (streaming, December 2022, Forever Living Originals / AWAL)

I think my first encounter with Little Simz was that one track where the intro sounds uncannily like Aphex Twin, and for some reason it gave me a cognitive dissonance that I found disturbing. That’s not a criticism — it was my weird reaction, and it’s on my. But I think I’m over that now, […]

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My albums of 2022

Oh, hi, it’s albums of the year time. It was a pretty good year for bosh, with bangers a’plenty from Roza Terenzi & D Tiffany, E-Saggila, and Nite Fleit. I enjoyed a couple of startlingly good noise collaborations from KMRU & Aho Ssan and from Merzbow & Lawrence English. And I spent many somewhat quieter […]

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O’Flynn x Frazer Ray: Shimmer (digital, Technicolour, October 2022)

This record is a bit of a landmine to try to write about for anyone who is, like me, Officially Bad At Genres. It jumps around all kinds of dancefloor-friendly sounds, with bits of the ravier end of techno, skittering breaks, shuffling two-step, shimmering melodic electronica, and so on. Impressively, it does all these things […]

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Christina Vantzou: No. 5 (digital, Kranky, November 2022)

Christina Vantzou’s No. 4 was really impressed me back in 2018, and it remains a firm favourite. So I was obviously excited to hear No. 5. It wasn’t really what I was expecting, and at first I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I found this much less accessible: to be honest, if it […]