The more-elusive half of Pan Sonic doing Jamaican dub? Yes, please! This is Ilpo Väisänen’s first solo release in a decade. Some tracks are a sort of highly-abstracted dub, sparse things formed of hollow clanking sounds which you could imagine have been reverberating around the ghost of the Black Ark for years. Some tracks add […]
Author: dogrando
I’ve seen Charlemagne Palestine live three times. Each was a mesmerising, transformative, and unique experience. I’d never bought any recordings because I’d been slightly underwhelmed by those I’d heard. After all, how could it be the same without the ritual, the teddy bears and the bunting and the brandy, and how could it hope to […]
The first of Aphex’s recent flurry of releases (proper releases, that is, I can’t begin to digest all the soundcloud stuff) which really made me go ‘meh’ in the style of a proper old-skool odds-and-sods sort-of-meh Aphex 12″. The title track, which was a bonus track on the Japanese version of last year’s Syro, is a […]
This one is right on the cusp of the modern classical / ambient thing. Strings and electronics blend seamlessly together to shimmering, atmospheric effect. The sleeve notes explain that the title refers to “an ancient Chinese tradition… of a fundamental tone that relates to society’s place in the cosmic order”: while I don’t think there […]
2014 was pretty exciting for old-timey Aphex Twin fans such as your humble blogger, with the releases of both the Caustic Window LP and Syro. The former was recorded in 1994 and only saw the light of day due to a kickstarter campaign. We don’t actually know when the material for the latter dates from, though it […]
This album sets out to explore “the theme of Descent” and the “many myths in the shape of the hero going underground to pass a period of solitude”, for which purpose Donoso channelled “the sacred esoteric rituals of the Brazilian cult of Quimbanda”. Which is nice. If this were the dark ambient record it threatens […]
This is an improvised collaboration involving, seemingly, two guys, two guitars, and an awful lot of amps and effects and pedals to distort and loop and generally diffuse into a blissed-out haze. This is dense stuff, it kind of washes over you until your attention is caught by some flash of colour several layers deep […]
This is one of those records I love a little more every time I hear it. The opening is almost unbearably quiet, there’s something tiny rustling in there that you strain to hear. Of course, this is an obvious set-up so you jump when the big scary noises happen. It’s a move straight out of […]
I’ve had a few odd experiences listening to this record on headphones. Once, for example, travelling on the tube, I felt lifted out of time and space. This metal box we were in wasn’t a carriage hurtling down the Northern line, but some kind of pocket of stasis where position and movement had no meaning. […]
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Bvdub: Tanto (CD, Quietus, January 2015)
I think this might be the record where Brock Van Wey finally jumped the shark. But the thing is, I think it might also be kind of genius. I first encountered him with 2009’s White Clouds Drift On And On, a swirly synth ambient job which sounded exactly like it you’d expect from the name: […]
dogrando writes about some records 