The opening track here couples a mournful modern classical style piano and cello with a big low-key sort of dub-techno beat and rumbling atmospherics. Just near the end a jazzy trumpet line seeps into the mix. It was pretty much inevitable that I was going to fall in love with this. The second track brings […]
Tag: year_2014
This is a slightly strange record. From the very start, it plunges us deep into that bvdub world of swirling synth noises and droning strings, everything swathed in so much reverb that it feels oddly timeless, and for, yep, over two and a half hours, that’s where we’re going to stay. Somewhere deep in the […]
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Wen: Signals (CD, Keysound, March 2014)
First things first: This album has about the most fantastic, exciting production I’ve heard in ages. The beats clatter and stutter. The synths are choppy and fragmented, but melodic. The powerful bottom-end is taut and muscular, and deployed with restraint. For most of the record, vocals are sparsely used, and then in clipped, abruptly cut […]
Eric Thielemans has made a record using, it seems, almost entirely classical percussion instruments — but not in the way that you might expect. It’s light on the drums, preferring the softer sounds of xylophones, woodblocks, chimes, and I believe (though I wouldn’t swear to it) scraping noises made on the inside of a piano. […]
A friend walked in while I was playing the first track of this, and asked me whether it was Steve Reich. He has a point: the opening number is a pretty obvious tribute (although a synthy backing comes in towards the end which I don’t think he’d go for). Elsewhere on the record, we have: […]
From the first few notes, it’s obvious what this album is going to be like: delicate, intimate piano compositions, recorded with that close-miked sound which is Nils Frahm’s trademark. Handily, that’s a thing I really like, and it seems to have gone somewhat out of fashion, so this record — the debut solo album by […]
dogrando writes about some records 