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Music

Scheich in China: Scheich in China (LP, V I S, August 2016)

I don’t know where Golden Püdel’s Nina dug Scheich in China up from, but this is quite a find. The first side has three tracks of dark, intense, atmospheric, industrial techno: skittering beats, deliciously organic sounding pads, and primeval buzzing noises abound, with the whooping of oscillators being about the closest we get to a […]

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Claire M Singer: Solas (2xCD, Touch, June 2016)

Ooh, now this is really, really good. Claire M Singer, who is the musical director at the Union Chapel, has apparently been writing and performing for 14 years, but this is her first record. It’s really top notch classical drone stuff, with the traditional strings supplemented by some juicy work on the Union Chapel’s organ, […]

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Bethan Kellough: Aven (CD, Touch, August 2016)

This is a short (28 minutes) but perfectly formed bit of intense atmospheric ambient. It’s made mostly of Kellough’s own droning string arrangements, field recordings (from Iceland and South Africa), and a bunch of processing. From the opening seconds you’d be forgiven for thinking this was going to be at the floaty end of the […]

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Aphex Twin: Cheetah EP (12″, Warp, July 2016)

Remember 2014, when new Aphex material (and new old Caustic Window, in particular) was really exciting? Remember 2015, when new Aphex material was kinda *shrug* and “whatevs”? Well, now it’s 2016, and perhaps I’m just about ready to treat new Aphex material on its merits, rather than harking back to the ’90s. Perhaps… Anyway, on this […]

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Shackleton: Devotional Songs (2×12″, Honest Jon’s Records, July 2016)

Sam Shackleton’s prolific early singles career largely passed me by — I remember quite liking the Ricardo Villalobos remix of Blood On My Hands back in 2007, but that’s about it. In 2012, that all changed with his epic Music For The Quiet Hour, which absolutely blew me away (it still does). His main output since then […]

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Marielle V Jakobsons: Star Core (LP, Thrill Jockey, August 2016)

I was first drawn to this because I was curious about Jakobson’s Macro Cymatic Visual Music Instrument, a homemade construction which transduces the vibrations in water into sound (I won’t try to explain it any more than that, instead you should just go see it in action). Certainly there are some interesting sounds going on here, […]

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Music

Petar Dundov: At The Turn Of Equilibrium (4LP+CD, Music Man, May 2016)

Aw, now, this is kind of lovely. It’s techno at its most melodic and hypnotic. The tunes are front and centre of everything here, the beats sitting and the back and just gently propelling things along. In fact, it’s kind of pushing the line between techno and a kind of proggy trancy synth music. The […]

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Music

Jon Mueller: Tongues (LP, Rhythmplex, May 2016)

You may want to be sitting down for this one. Right from the start of the A-side (the 15-minute long How You Look When You’re Not Looking) we’re thrown into some seriously heavy ritualistic shit. According to the liner notes, Mueller “conceived” this (it’s hard to believe that it’s scored) and plays bass drums, voice, […]

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Music

Laraaji & Sun Araw: Professional Sunflow (2LP, W.25th, June 2016)

Laraaji is an ambient / new-age old-timer who’s been playing music (and collaborating with Brian Eno) since the seventies. Sun Araw (aka Cameron Stallones) is a Californian experimentalist who looks like he probably wasn’t born then. But they have produced a wonderful, effortlessly natural-sounding improvised collaboration here. Stallones does some wonderfully loose work on guitar […]

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Africans With Mainframes: KMT (2LP, Soul Jazz, May 2016)

One of the things I really like about the shonkier end of Chicago acid is the way it sounds like the producers are just barely managing to stop everything descending into chaos. It’s really evocative of one of those moments on the dancefloor where everything is going really messy, in a good way. (Perhaps that’s […]