This is pretty splendid. It’s made entirely with vintage modular synths, but it’s no retro noodling: this, to my mind, is proper techno. Minimal, sure, but the complex polyrhythms and the little blippy melodies are really compelling. It’s kind of like Ricardo Villalobos by way of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Most importantly, though, Taeggi’s timing […]
Tag: label_type
This is an improvised collaboration involving, seemingly, two guys, two guitars, and an awful lot of amps and effects and pedals to distort and loop and generally diffuse into a blissed-out haze. This is dense stuff, it kind of washes over you until your attention is caught by some flash of colour several layers deep […]
Apologies for the modern-classical family tree stuff, but: Take the spiky cello of Erik Skodvin (aka Svarte Greiner), the delicate piano of Otto Totland (aka half of Nest), add some lo-fi drones, what sound like vocal choruses, and general production cleverness with assistance from Nils Frahm, and you get… something rather great. This album evokes […]
Melissa Agate’s debut was something pretty special. She combines unconventionally played strings with unknown plucked instruments (the internet suggests the kalimba, which is a Kenyan so-called thumb piano) and various chimes and bells — and, y’know, whatever other instruments she could find, along with occasional breathlike wordless vocals. The results are delicate and beautiful. I […]
Jóhannson is an Icelandic composer, probably best known for the concept piece IBM 1401: A User’s Manual. This (splendidly titled) album is big, swooshing, string-drenched, and shamelessly dramatic. There are moments which remind me of Philip Glass, others which remind me of György Ligeti. He has a great knack for structure, bringing back themes from […]
Awww, my headphones are hugging me. The basis here are long, droning string-like sounds, which pulse at something like the rate of a fast but not frantic heartbeat, and modulate over a much longer period whilst still being recognizably rhythmic. Around that we get touches of lap steel (which can’t help reminding me of the […]
An exciting collection of 12 works for strings. There is a great ragged, wild feeling to this record, along with an intense sense of location — many tracks were apparently recorded in ruined farmhouses and the like, and this really comes through. The pace is always measured, but there is a great variety in technique, […]
Noise goes pop! Yellow Swans are Pete Swanson on electronics, tapes, and vocals, and someone called GMS on guitar, tapes, and electronics. They have given us 44 minutes of buzzing, clicking, and squawling. It’s a huge monster of a record. But it’s not in the least bit difficult: there are tunes, and what’s more there […]
In which Keith Kenniff plays some pretty tunes on the piano, and charms this listener’s socks off. Nobody could accuse this of being over-complicated. Goldmund is a solo piano project, and the tunes are quite simple and played without a great deal of flourish. At a casual listen, they could be mistaken for grade 3 […]
dogrando writes about some records 