Within seconds of starting, Tim Hecker has turned it up to 11. You should turn it up, too: this assault of awesomely crunchy drone demands to be played loudly. (I hope the neighbours don’t mind — if they do, they might be too scared to complain.) It roars, it pulses, it stutters. I kind of […]
Tag: year_2011
I was pretty much sold on this compilation from the first three artists: Goldmund, Leyland Kirby, and Svarte Greiner are all favourites around these parts. The (previously unreleased) tracks are all as lovely as you’d expect. The downside is that lovely tracks is just what they are: call me an old rockist, but I find […]
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 […]
When I read that this record was sourced from old 78s played through antique gramaphones (HMV Model 102s, if you need to know), I imagined something swathed in old-timey crackles in the manner of Philip Jeck or Leyland Kirby. Far from it: there is a gentle background hiss in places, but the key elements of […]
It seems hard to believe that this is only Isolée’s third album. There’s more variety on here than on, say, his microhouse classic We Are Monster: there are spots of gloopy acid, and I think I detected a dub techno influence in places. But it still sounds very much like Isolée. Which is, on the […]
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 […]
It took me a while to get my head around this record, until I realized that the best way to think about it — for me, anyway — is as highly abstract hip hop. It is a highly eclectic collection of tunes, taking in everything from electronic ambient, spoken word samples (in both English and […]
This is really nice, laidback Sunday-flavoured dancing music. I guess it lives somewhere on a line between the less cheesy end of deep house and the more chilled out end of Detroit techno — in particular, there are moments which feel just like The Other People Place. Somehow, I don’t find myself with a huge […]
I find this collection an enjoyable listen, but I struggle to get a good mental grip on it. Spread across three CDs, it takes in a wide variety of genres, including (but not limited to) ambient, a dubby sort of techno, electronic, middle-Eastern, and arty sixties-style instrumental pop. The common factor is that it is, […]
A few years ago, I would have considered myself quite a Kompakt fan (though I did prefer the more austere Minus). I’ve drifted away from them, a bit, but I do really like this mix CD. It opens with an ambient/neo-classical string track by Danny Norbury, which is obviously going to get me on its […]
dogrando writes about some records 