electronica albums
Album review: Cluster – ‘Cluster 71’: the German electronica scene on the cusp of breaking through, lovingly reissued
AS WELL as hosting a whole stable of contemporary bands that are mainly spinning in the leftfield electronics and synthpop galaxies, Hamburg’s Bureau B has also been doing sterling work in curating the krautrock archive, keeping the torch burning with deep dives into the unreleased tapes of Conrad Schnitzler, reissuing lost gems and offering that …
Album review: Joel Vandroogenbroeck – ‘Far View’: a curated, cosmic library set from the Belgian psychedelic scion
A MUSICIAN who ventured far in both life and his chosen creative form, Joel Vandroogenbroeck is maybe not a name that trips with ease from your lips; unless of course, you’re a proper head of the deep psych persuasion. For Joel was both the driving force behind and ever-present in the hard-psych voyagers Brainticket, whose …
Album review: Tom Dissevelt – ‘Fantasy In Orbit’: seminal Dutch space-age electronica gets a deserved reissue
WELCOME. Now, before we fasten your belts – they’ll keep you safe against the enormous Gs as we break the atmosphere, gain the vast promised land of outer space – it’s as well as we run through a final checklist to ensure a safe and enjoyable journey. So. Question. When names like Broadcast, Stereolab, Vanishing …
Album review: Bruno Bavota – ‘For Apartments: Songs And Loops’: protection against those days of lockdown in warm piano vignette and glorious modular sweep
WE LOCKED the door; we waited. We waited, we combed the airwaves; we counted the days some more. The experience is nigh on universal, save those of you lucky enough to be reading in Taiwan, Christchurch, Auckland and elsewhere. Italy was caught by the pandemic earlier than many, and as it swept across the country, …
Album review: Llyr – ‘Biome’: a deeply textural exploration of ecological IDM for Mesh – and frontrunner for electronica album of the year
YOU KNOW that if no less a renaissance man than Max Cooper is taking enough of an interest in what you’re sculpting in sound to sign you up for his label, Mesh, then you must be doing something not only very right, but also very interesting; Max really these days being at the forefront of …
Album review: Kevin Richard Martin – ‘Return To Solaris’: The Bug is the ghost in the machine for this ecstatically eerie rescoring of the Soviet sci-fi classic
WORKING with huge acclaim in the shadowier textures of electronic music now for longer than we care to recall, Kevin Richard Martin – aka The Bug, King Midas Sound, Techno Animal – has composed a new score for Andrei Tarkovsky’s incredible 1972 sci-fi Solaris, which work will be released on Phantom Limb on June 25th. …
Album review: Sedibus – ‘The Heavens’: The Orb’s good Doctor administers a heady and blissful ambient potion
HE MAY have entered his sixth decade on this particular rock spinning in space – and don’t even get me started on the passage of time, I mean how can this have happened? – but the good Doctor, Alex Paterson, ambient dub techno genius behind The Orb, is ready to roll with a whole clutch …
Album review: KMRU – ‘Logue’: expansive ambient electronica with intelligence and a found-sound bliss
KMRU’s Logue is a window into the mind of a young African musician who really, truly gets this musical form, has crafted some astonishing little gems herein; if this is, to all intents and purposes almost a juvenilia, then we have so much to look forward to. At once old-skool and nu-skool ambient, with bookends of purer, generative analogue electronica admitting you to a more organic, blissful core. This is a bloody lovely record; blissful, thoughtful, deeper than it first appears; buy
Album review: Tomas Nordmark – ‘Exit Ghosts’: electronic landscapes that move from the amniotic to the apocalyptic
LIVING these days in London, but hailing originally from the small Swedish coastal town of Västervik, some 280km further down the coast from Stockholm, Tomas Nordmark is a electronica producer and soundscaper with a very complex and organic musical vision. His interest in the sonic avant-garde was brooked by the 1960s’ art scene in New …
Album review: UNKNOWN ME – ‘BISHINTAI’: a delightful, candy-coloured ambient trip
BISHINTAI is a delightful album, candy-colour bright, beamed from some offworld where fantastic cuboid furniture and hanging egg chairs are the norm; it will add a little brain-clearing wasabi to the most humdrum and dun day. If you’ve ever swooned for the Sushi 3003 and 4004 compilations; for Air at their most “Sexy Boy” cosmic and and most especially definitely, the bright retro-futurism of The Gentle People – then boy, is this album ever for you