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Music

Ian William Craig: Music For Magnesium_173 (digital, 130701, September 2022)

Ian William Craig is (sorry) one of those artists whose tracks keep getting thrown at me by recommendation engines, but never in a way that got my attention. I guess that’s the thing with algorithmic suggestions: you don’t get the context, and it’s a knight’s move away from any sense of curation, and if it […]

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Nite Fleit: Day Fleit / Nite Fleit (digital, Steel City Dance Discs, August 2022)

This is the debut album from Australian producer Alysha Fleiter. While it’s all firmly electro, it’s very much a thing of two halves, as the name suggests. In fact, she recommends that playing one side or the other individually according to your mood (something which doesn’t work quite so neatly on digital). The Day side […]

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Music

Félicia Atkinson: Image Language (digital, Shelter Press, June 2022)

Félicia Atkinson is one of those people who’s floated around on the edge of my consciousness for yonks without quite managing to register properly. Well, that’s all changed with this quietly brilliant record. It’s based around an electronic ambience or neo-classical drone. There are occasional sprinkles of melody (a reverberating jazzy trumpet, a piano, a […]

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Music

Leda Maar: Stairway 13 (digital, Mana Records, August 2022)

Back in 1996, when I was hoovering up half the output of Ninja Tune, there was an album that came out on their NTone imprint. It was called 15 Levels Of Magnification, and it was the debut album by someone called Neotropic. It was kind of a darkly atmospheric downtempo breaks record. I loved it […]

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Music

Maria W Horn & Sara Parkman: Funeral Folk (digital, XKatedral, July 2022)

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, […]

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E-Saggila: Blaze (digital, Northern Electronics, June 2022)

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. […]

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Roza Terenzi & D Tiffany: Edge Of Innocence (digital, Delicate Records, May 2022)

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 […]

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Music

Merzbow & Lawrence English: Eternal Stalker (digital, Dais, June 2022)

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 […]

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Music

Anna Wall: Missing Moments (digital, Dream Theory, March 2022)

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 […]

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Music

Claire Rousay: Everything Perfect Is Already Here (digital, Shelter Press, April 2022)

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, […]