There is a strangely determined, and determinedly strange, brilliance to this. The sleeve sums it up: a man (presumably Joel Danell himself) in a flamboyant suit with a light-entertainment grin poses awkwardly behind a cheap-looking synthesizer and in front of a soft-focus backdrop — but his eyes are demoniacally glowing white stars. The music is largely Bontempi-style […]
These 12 pieces of melodic modern classical are charming, melodic, and expertly arranged. Somehow, the record as a whole is a little underwhelming, and I think there’s a clue in its title: it feels rather like Ryan Teague has been on a field trip around half a decade of music, and come back with a […]
The last time we encountered master architects Villalobos and Loderbauer in reshaping and remodelling mode, they were tackling ECM’s back catalogue, and the results were a reductio ad absurdum of abstraction (which, incidentally, I love more now than when I wrote that). This time, they’re working their magic with Conrad Schnitzler’s Zug (itself a vinyl reissue of 1973’s […]
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Grouper: A I A (2CD, Kranky, April 2012)
I’d never quite got Grouper (aka Liz Harris) before. I remember the fuss about 2008’s Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill, and at the time I didn’t quite see the attraction. After taking the plunge with this double album, though, I’m a fully paid-up fan. Let’s start with the more conventional half, Alien Observer: […]
This is seriously deconstructed dub techno, picking up (in album terms) where Tummaa left off. (The move from Leaf to Raster-Noton doesn’t appear to have had a massive effect.) Again, the dominant elements are all recognizable genre staples, but the structure is something quite different. This outing feels possibly less meandering. This is most obvious […]
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Mohn: Mohn (2CD, Kompakt, April 2012)
Wolfgang Voigt and Jörg Burger’s debut album is very much in the spirit of Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series: this is big, chewy, elastic, in-your-face ambient, full of big crashing noises and dubby swooshes, atmospheric but with as much sense of fun as darkness… it borders on the perky in places. It even has a reasonably […]
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Orbital: Wonky (2CD, ACP, April 2012)
So, here’s the thing: I have a history with Orbital. 1996’s In Sides appeared early on in my conversion to electronic music, and I was blown away by it. My favourite track was the astonishing 24-minute closing double track Out There Somewhere[1], in which simple little loops are introduced and slowly built up into an intricately […]
I loved Monolake throughout the last decade, and I was a huge fan of 2010’s Silence. Ghosts is apparently the second in a trilogy, and the continuity is clear — not least in the welcome reappearance of the spooky sleeve notes, but also in the abstracted mood, the extended beatless atmospheric interludes, the distant clanking, the […]
This had me right from the start. The atmospheric swooshes which open the album, rich timbre of that synth melody (22 seconds in), the extra colour from the subtle harmonies (26 seconds), the laid-back pad-tick-pad-tick beat (38 seconds) — it’s everything about it is so assured, it says “relax, you’re in good hands, just enjoy […]
This record has a wonderfully fresh take on the modern classical template, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it’s doing. We get sonorous chimes, tinkling pianos, and atmospheric strings. We get some jazzy touches, like the soulful reed instruments and the percussion’s tendency towards soft brushes and hand-claps. We get a subtle […]
dogrando writes about some records 