Melissa Agate’s debut was something pretty special. She combines unconventionally played strings with unknown plucked instruments (the internet suggests the kalimba, which is a Kenyan so-called thumb piano) and various chimes and bells — and, y’know, whatever other instruments she could find, along with occasional breathlike wordless vocals. The results are delicate and beautiful. I […]
Category: Music
It took me a while to get my head around this record, until I realized that the best way to think about it — for me, anyway — is as highly abstract hip hop. It is a highly eclectic collection of tunes, taking in everything from electronic ambient, spoken word samples (in both English and […]
This is really nice, laidback Sunday-flavoured dancing music. I guess it lives somewhere on a line between the less cheesy end of deep house and the more chilled out end of Detroit techno — in particular, there are moments which feel just like The Other People Place. Somehow, I don’t find myself with a huge […]
I find this collection an enjoyable listen, but I struggle to get a good mental grip on it. Spread across three CDs, it takes in a wide variety of genres, including (but not limited to) ambient, a dubby sort of techno, electronic, middle-Eastern, and arty sixties-style instrumental pop. The common factor is that it is, […]
Now, this is great stuff. I’ve not heard techno quite like this before. The beats range from dubby to a hard warehouse-style techno. The dominant instrument is the piano: dissonant stabs and abrasive jazzy runs — uplifting Balearic this is not. Occasionally, the beat drops out leaving only dark swirling atmospherics, which I guess is […]
This is a huge amount of fun. Vikki Bennett and Jon Leidecker have done something quite rare: they have dug up countless old records, films, radio and television programmes, and who knows what else, and done a massive cut-and-paste job, and ended up with a work of great musicality and humour, and one which makes […]
A few years ago, I would have considered myself quite a Kompakt fan (though I did prefer the more austere Minus). I’ve drifted away from them, a bit, but I do really like this mix CD. It opens with an ambient/neo-classical string track by Danny Norbury, which is obviously going to get me on its […]
When I wrote about Leyland Kirby’s Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was almost a year ago, I mentioned his work as The Caretaker inspired by the haunted ballroom scene in The Shining. This is that record. It has to be said it takes its brief fairly literally. Snatches of old records, I guess […]
There’s always something striking about the crackly, distant sound of astronaut’s radio conversations. I suppose it’s the way they sound so calm, prosaic even, exchanging well-rehearsed formulae and all the time you half expect them to crack and shout “holy crap, I’m in space!”. Also, there’s the iconic status of the Apollo programme in the […]
I’m always glad to see a new album from Ellen Allien come along, and although it took me a while to get around to buying this one, I’m glad I did. It’s a more approachable record than 2008’s Sool, perhaps most obviously reminiscent of her collaboration with Apparat, Orchestra Of Bubbles, in its warm melodies […]
dogrando writes about some records 