Melissa Agate pairs gentle, woozy drones with delicate melodies on a range of tinkling chimes, slow-mo accordians, folky guitars, and the like. The effect is a very sweet kind of psychedelia. Of course, too much sweetness gets cloying, and I do find her occasional vocals tend to tip things over the edge into tweeness. But […]
Author: dogrando
There’s a beautiful simplicity to these pieces. Each features just one or two instruments, including viola da gamba (buffoon that I am, I thought this was a cello before I read the sleeve), acoustic guitar, spinet, and crystal glasses. They are sparsely constructed but unfussily melodic, and Colleen (aka Cécile Schott) clearly has an intimate […]
It’s no exaggeration to say that my first hearing of this duo’s 2005 album Insen, and their concert at the Barbican, were transformative experiences for me. I’ve steered clear of their two subsequent releases, for fear that they would be disappointing (while developing a considerable awe of Carsten Nicolai’s other work, and Raster-Noton in general). But […]
I loved Dygas’s How Do You Do, and I listened to a lot of Perlon back in the day, so I was really looking forward to this record. If it’s not quite what I’d expected and possibly hoped for, it’s nevertheless a very satisfying listen. Where the debut album ranged over a number of styles, […]
Shuffling underwater beats, swirling strings, delicate chimes — and vocals pitch-bent up to the verge of chipmunkery. Hey, what? Strangely, this works rather beautifully. The effect isn’t the least bit comic. I’ll admit that it took me one listen through to get over my confusion, and to forget the associations with the dafter ends of […]
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Kreng: Grimoire (CD, Miasmah, June 2011)
So, yes, first of all: Pepijn Caudron has chosen to record under the name Kreng; the album is called Grimoire; the label is Miasmah; the sleeve is entirely black and grey, has a grainy headshot of what might well be a corpse on the front, and makes extensive use of a blackletter typeface… if you […]
This record resists categorization rather brilliantly. The title track is mostly (as far as I can tell) mainly composed of three heavily processed loops of human voices, along with some gentle laptop effects (the only beat is a barely present pad). Two are wordless drones or chants, one a rumbling bass and the other a […]
This is the Icelandic composer’s soundtrack to Bill Morrison’s film about the Durham mining industry, focussing particularly on the pageantry of the annual Big Meeting, a combination of a family day out, a political rally, and a concert for the pit bands. This melting pot theme is echoed by the music, which is a blend […]
This record brings together slick, dubby techno beats and big fat sub-low bass noises. It doesn’t completely grip me throughout — it begs comparison with, say, Senking’s 2010 stonker Pong, but it lacks that record’s breadth of influences — but it is nevertheless a very satisfying listen. There’s just something pleasing about the forthright oomphiness of […]
Dance remixes of classical music can be an ugly thing. Just think what William Orbit did to poor Sammy Barber, my dears. We would expect something rather more subtle from Messrs Villalobos and Loderbauer, and subtlety is what we get in spades. This is a quiet, refined minimalism, never repetitive but with a structure which […]
dogrando writes about some records 