I was dead into Maria W Horn’s 2019 album Epistasis, which was a fantastic bit of minimalism with influences ranging from black metal to Arvo Pärt. Fellow Swede Sara Parkman is a folk musician who describes herself as a mix of “Vikings and Berghain”. You can imagine I was excited to hear this collaboration. Reader, […]
Category: Music
This record, from the Iranian-born, Toronto-based producer Rita Mikhael, packs a lot of power into its 27 minutes. There are a couple of ominous, atmospheric soundscapes here; the other four tracks are primarily slabs of dark, pounding, claustrophobic techno. One track has a kinds of breaksy sci-fi d’n’b feel. Elsewhere, there’s a strong gabber feel. […]
This record from D Tiffany (Canadian DJ and producer Sophie Sweetland) and Roza Terenzi (Australian DJ and producer Katie Campbell) takes us on an entertaining journey, from a kind of IDM-ish ambient techno, through a meaty section of rave-inflected trancy tech-house (did I ever mention that I’m crap at genres?), dipping briefly into something breaksier […]
Merzbow is one of those artists who is so bafflingly prolific that I never quite know where to start. And, let’s face it, it’s not the sort of thing you want to listen to 24/7. So while I do very much admire him, I’ve only really dipped my toe into his discography — and half […]
Anna Wall is a resident a Fabric, but you wouldn’t really know it from this album. It takes in a number of styles, but we’re a long way from any kind of a beat. There are shiny synth melodies like some kind of retro-futuristic sci-fi soundtrack; there’s vaguely Eno-esque electronic ambience (Murmurations has some lovely […]
I really liked Rousay’s aptly-named A Softer Focus. She put out a slightly baffling selection of limited-edition cassettes and collaborations in the twelve months after that release, but this seems to be her first major solo work — and it’s a cracker. The basic formula is similar: classical instrumentation, electronic ambience, rather domestic-sounding field recordings, […]
Two new producers for me: KMRU is Joseph Kamaru, a Kenyan sound artist who has previously mostly ambient and drone based around field recordings, now living in Berlin; Aho Ssan is Niamké Désiré, a French electronic musician and soundtrack composer of Ivorian and Ghanaian descent. Together, they have made three long tracks of pulsing, throbbing, […]
William Basinski needs no introduction here. Janek Schaefer is new to me, but he’s in the Guinness Book Of Records for inventing “the most versatile record player. Called the tri-phonic turntable, it can play three records at once through a built in mixer, play them forwards or backwards, and possesses a vari-speed which can play […]
This opens with a delicate melody played by Jonny Nash on piano and a plucky-sounding thing which turns out to be Dani Luca on cimbalom, and is soon joined by Ana Stamp singing a Romanian folk-song in a simple, intimate tone. And that, basically, is the album. Isn’t that enough for you, you monsters? Well, […]
Well, this is something delightfully strange. I’ve encountered Dimitris Papadatos as Jay Glass Dubs, and I found his work pleasant enough but it never quite grabbed me. This new alias is, to me, a much more distinctive and interesting proposition. The first of the two long tracks opens with a crash of percussion, a tinkling […]
dogrando writes about some records 