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 […]
Categories
My Albums Of 2010 (an out of band post)
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, […]
dogrando writes about some records 