We interrupt your normal service to bring you my Albums Of 2010. I seem to have bought 29 records released in 2010 so far, and reviewed 26 of them here, so I decided to allow myself a top 5. Here they are, in alphabetical order: ANBB: Mimikry (Raster-Noton, September 2010) Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek: […]
Hold onto your hats, this is going to be a big one. Actually, forget your hats: hold onto your heads. This is Pan Sonic’s swansong, and they’re going out in style. The first half of Ilpo Väisänen and Mika Vainio’s final (apparently) record offers brutal beats, immense buzzing and rumbling bass, and a selection of […]
As you would expect, Surgeon’s mix for Fabric is highly skilled and inventive. It may be restrained by his standards (there is nothing like the moment in his This Is For You Shits mix on Warp where he drops Whitehouse’s Dumping The Fucking Rubbish), but for Fabric it’s pretty adventurous. It’s mostly good hard techno, with […]
The audio CD consists of 35 tracks, averaging at a minute each (though some are longer, and some just a few seconds). Bretschneider has taken a very direct approach to the Raster-Noton template, centred around very simple clicks and pads, bassy hums, and sine wave tones. I wasn’t keeping score, but I noticed two tracks featuring […]
When it was released, this caused something of a stir, being a Raster-Noton record that featured tunes. I mean, it’s not exactly going to get hands in the air down at the Ministry of Sound, but there are definitely catchy moments in Olaf Bender’s bleeps and bloops. Nevertheless, it still has that Raster-Noton feel about […]
When this came out, it seemed like the king of glitch was reclaiming his crown. I forget why I didn’t buy it right away: I do remember that it became hard to find quite soon. So I came to it over two years late… I am glad to say that it appears to have aged […]
This is a good deal sillier than most of the records I talk about here. It’s tempting to describe it as a guilty pleasure, but I don’t really feel very guilty about it. Reinhardt is all about the synths, and creates wonderfully warm analogue music with layers of synths and drum machines, plus a good […]
Fantastically good. Jens Massel has pulled in elements from a range of styles: off the top of my head, I’d include bleep, dub techno, glitch, dark ambient, breakcore, and sublow — or at least, I think so… I am terrible at genres. What’s certain is that he’s made them work together to form a coherent whole, […]
This record pairs the most laid-back shuffling techno beats to some delicately pretty melodies, with an emphasis on the chiming sounds of bells, vibraphones, steel drums, and the like. At times it risks being just too sophisticated for my taste, a bit too late night cocktail bar, but for the most part it reins it […]
Earlier this year, I discovered and was charmed by Goldmund’s 2008 release The Malady Of Excellence. I am equally taken with this year’s follow-up. Like its predecessor, Famous Places is dominated by the piano, recorded with wonderful intimacy by Goldmund (aka Keith Kenniff) himself. However, this has more other instruments and electronic effects than I remember hearing […]
dogrando writes about some records