electronic albums
Album Review: The Scarlet Hour – Blink EP
Formed in 2021 from members of Alternative/Post-Punk trio The Seventh Victim, The Scarlet Hour are a Synth Darkwave duo based in the North East. Delivering brooding bass hooks from Mel Butler, and dystopian lyrics from a tormented mind courtesy of Tim Synistyr, all sprinkled with Synth-Pop melodies. ‘Blink’ is the first release by the band. With …
Album Review: Dark Sky Burial – Omnis Cum In Tenebris Praesertim Vita Laboret
“Omnis Cum In Tenebris Praesertim Vita Laboret” is the 4th album from Dark Sky Burial, the new musical venture from Napalm Death’s Shane Embury. The album’s title translates as, “Life is one long struggle in the Dark.” The dark ambient soundscapes and unsettling industrial noise textures, with disorientating, electronic moments were composed by Shane Embury …
Album Review: The Witching Tale – ‘The Witching Tale’
Take multi-instrumentalist Michael J. York (Coil, The Utopia Strong) and the incredible vocal talents of Katherine Blake (Mediaeval Baebes), and the end result is something totally out of this world – folklore and mysticism, early Arabian and Mediaeval music, first millennia Eastern poetry blended together with Poe, Scott and Chesterton. The result is an ethereal …
Album Review: Anika – Change
It’s been eleven years since the release of the debut album by Berlin-based DJ, musician and former political journalist Anika Henderson, known professionally just by her first moniker. The new album is called Change, and it couldn’t be a more appropriate title; how different a world it has become in the decade and a bit …
Album Review: Sarah Davachi – ‘Antiphonals’
Sarah Davachi is a composer and performer who, like fellow keyboardists Ana Roxanne or Anna Von Hausswollf, relentlessly navigates the tidal intersections between electronic and drone music. As an artist she has serious collaborative credentials, having worked with such luminaries as Basinski, Grouper, Donald Buchla and Loren Connors, but since 2018 Davachi has focused more …
Album Review: Joon – Dream Again
For the last few years it’s been the ladies who have owned the electronic music scene. Robyn switched things up with her electronic masterpiece Honey. The late, great Sophie broke new ground with her album oil of every pearl’s un-insides. Whilst Roisin Murphy and Annie returned triumphantly with brand new albums last year. But here’s …
Album Review : Hiatus Kaiyote soar with ‘Mood Valiant’
Hiatus Kaiyote return in 2021 with their new album Mood Valiant, on Brainfeeder/Ninja Tune. The twice-Grammy-nominated band is comprised of Naomi “Nai Palm” Saalfield (guitar, vocals), Paul Bender (bass), Simon Mavin (keys), and Perrin Moss (drums), and the new album is the follow up to their 2015 album ‘Choose Your Weapon’, which Rolling Stone described …
Album Review: ISQ – ‘Requiem for the Faithful 2.0’ – The Remixes
There’s something to be said about the mere act of dancing, post-covid. Let’s just start with that. Whether you’re into club culture or not, we’ve all had a burning desire to dance, with other people. That free flow ecstatic waltz into movement, that enables us to feel human again. Enter ISQ. A powerhouse of a …
Album Review: John Grant – Boy From Michigan
Michigan boy John Grant has always moved to the beat of his own drum. If you were to ask me to fit him into a box – a genre that he could comfortably placed in, then I could only call it John Grant. From the dream-pop beginnings of his debut solo, Queen of Denmark, to …
Album Review: Yann Gourdon’s self-titled LP hypnotizes the listener with swirling, baroque instrumentation
The new offerings from French artist Yann Gourdon create a hypnotizing atmosphere that pushes and pulls the listener from its fabric. It can be argued that ambient music is defined by intention and spatial interaction: a work must intend to not demand the attention of the listener, and it interacts with auditory space in a …