Dillon’s first solo album, Workaround, was a highlight of 2020, and was rightly hailed in all the right places as marking the arrival of a sparkling new talent. She doesn’t seem to have been super prolific since then, and I confess that some of the stuff she has released didn’t quite do it for me. […]
The first time I heard this, I was blown away by the sheer technical bravado of it. Djrum (the ‘j’ is silent), aka DJ and producer Felix Manuel, starts with improvised-sounding piano which has a lightness and fluidity that is like dancing fireflies in musical form. He layers on synths, strings (cello is by Zosia […]
This solo debut from Deniz Omeroglu (described as Istanbul-born, Amsterdam-based) is very much an album of two halves. Happily, she plays an absolute blinder in both. The first half was apparently composed spontaneously in the aftermath of a heartbreak, and consists of contemplative, woozy synth tracks. There are largely wordless vocals, of a sighing nature, […]
A rare back-catalogue purchase for me. Eliane Radigue is obviously someone I’ve listened to loads and loved, but I’ve never actually bought any of her work because of some vaguely-motivated feeling that I should prefer to shove my pennies in the direction of new releases. But I find myself coming back to this particular record […]
I don’t often buy compilation albums, and this is roughly speaking one — and, in fact, I nearly didn’t buy it. I listened to it when it came out last November, obviously, and at the time I passed it over. I think I rather sniffily opined that it didn’t cohere as an album. Coming back […]
I don’t know about you, but it’s been properly spring for a couple of weeks here. And the sun always puts me in the mood for a certain kind of bosh: something warm and melodic and gently propulsive. This record has been very much ticking that box for me this year. We have six tracks […]
This is lush stuff from Réka Csiszér, who is described as a Hungarian Transylvanian vocalist, composer and performer. For the most part, it’s all vworgey synths and a bit of wordless chanting. Though it’s entirely beatless, the tone varies from the ethereal (at their floatiest, the vocals have a touch of Ligeti to them) to […]
Yo yo yo, it’s another Basinski, this time in working with Richard Chartier, and blow me if it isn’t another flipping masterpiece. For the most part, this is a more classically minimal affair than the Basinski / Schaefer collab from a couple of years ago. The opening two minutes of this are the exception: they […]
Floating somewhere between lo-fi folk, the dreamiest of dream pop, new-age, ambient, and some kind of medieval devotional music, this is a hard one to pin down. But why try to pin it down, when it floats so beautifully in its ambiguity? Bara and Isa apparently started work on this during lockdown, way back in […]
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My albums of 2024
Annual round-up time again. Just sneaking this into the first week of January… Another banging year for dance music, retro and modern. Honourable mentions here go to Paranoid London, Korea Town Acid, and Low End Activist (even though, okay, it would be a push to call that last one banging per se). Obviously I listened […]
