You kind of know what to expect with a Mika Vainio release: it’s going to be big and dark and heavy and there are going to be giant bassy throbs which well up out of your woofers like some sort of sonic kraken, and in between (especially in the work under his own name) there […]
I find Anne-James Chaton strangely wonderful. He has appeared here reading out the serial numbers from receipts found in Carsten Nicolai’s wallet on Alva Noto’s unitxt, and reading news reports of important events of 2009 along with other texts (like the terms and conditions on train tickets) associated with those dates on his solo Événements 09, both […]
It is well known that a good Jeff Mills set is like being on a giant space ship made out of techno. Well, a good Senking record is like being on a giant submarine made out of dubstep (and possibly filled with insects). The awesome buzzing, the gorgeously precise, skittering beats, the sonar pings… pretty […]
The dominant sound here is a dense, driving techno, with a heavy, propulsive beat and a gloopy, psychedelic synth sound which almost remind me of kosmiche. It’s really quite good fun. It could be a bit much, but this heady fare is leavened by occasional floaty ambient tracks. The penultimate track, Sun Harmonics, features the […]
There’s a synth sound in some of Brock van Wey’s dub techno which is so organic it sounds almost human. This record is dominated by what seem to be real vocals, often abstracted to the point of sounding almost synthetic. There’s some wordless chanting, and some that might be church Latin (or might not), and […]
I admire The Orb. I own a couple of seminal works. In practice, I don’t listen to them all that often. And I’m highly sceptical of their more recent efforts. I think they fell into the ambient sandtrap: the genre is inherently loosely structured, but there’s an elusive something which saves the good stuff from […]
A warning: If you find the idea of a woman singing breathily over pretty tunes played on harps and chimes likely to bring you out in a rash from the twee, this album is probably not for you. Which would be a shame, as there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in terms of […]
I’m a huge fan of Goldmund’s delicate and intimate piano compositions, but I was blown away by this, Keith Kenniff’s take on 14 songs from the American Civil War. Combining his trademark close-mic piano playing with an unfussy acoustic guitar picking, he makes these very much his own while bringing out the best of the […]
Remember when Ellen Allien was a techno producer? For quite a while now, the original Berlinette’s output has had a pretty tenuous relationship with the genre, or indeed any genre at all, and has been none the worse for that (I’d take Dust over Thrills any day, much as I love Thrills). Still, I was a little […]
The album art for Excavation consists of a painting of a noose-like rope against a blank near-black background. This gives a subtle clue what kind of a musical experience we’re in for. And, indeed, the music is pretty doomtastic: deep deep bass sounds loom out of the speakers, industrial rhythms stutter and spurt, minor chords float […]
dogrando writes about some records 