Electronica
TRACK: Bathe in the retrotronica beauty of Lisel + Booker Stardrum’s ‘I Am Not Ready To Go’, opening for April album
ELIZA BEGG, the vocalist and composer who guises as Lisel musically, and electronica creator and percussionist Booker Stardrum, have been friends a long time, in each other’s musical orbit; and have spent recent time wisely with a six-week, remote collaboration eliciting an album, their first together: it’s to be called Mycelial Echo, and it’ll be …
Album review – Seasurfer’s Zombies is an electrifying dream pop blast in a gothic cloak
Hamburg duo Seasurfer have released an extraordinary double album called ‘Zombies’, packed full of stupendous anthemic dream pop songs that are differentiated from the pack by an electronic spine and dark-tinged gothic attack. Singer Apolonia’s voice is absolutely ethereal and angelic – creating a tension between her dulcet, soaring, velvet tones and the electronic thrumming …
ALBUM REVIEW: Dale Berning – ‘Horse Stories’: spacious, minimal and delightful art soundtrack
Dale Berning’s The Horse Stories is humble, in the very best way; it delights in the tiny and the everyday with a surreal wonder. It has eagle-eyed focus; it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s often as close as music can get to absolute quietude while still retaining a sense of melody and spatial wizardry. If you loved the Clicks + Cuts series of compilations, Ryoji Ikeda, Colleen or Jan Jelinek; The Boats, Alva.Noto, any of these artists who travel deep into the magical, miniaturised web of pure sound, then this record is so, so top of your shopping list. Bravo, Flau, for making it available again.
Premiere: Lycio release the taut electronic rock of ‘I will take over’
SELF-recorded and self-produced, I will take over is the new single from UK electronic trio Lycio, and we’re delighted to be able to premiere it right here on Backseat Mafia this morning. Genie Mendez of Lycio says:”So as you may have guessed from the hostility within the title, this song is mostly about me (and …
ALBUM REVIEW: Aaron Cupples – ‘Island Of The Hungry Ghosts’ original soundtrack: a sonic film in itself
There’s always that caveat with a soundtrack that this is music in service to another artform. But Island Of The Hungry Ghosts is a sonic film in itself. It wholly lets the soul of the island through and onto your record deck. If you’re a fan of labels like Touch, Kranky, this is so a record for you.
ALBUM REVIEW: Richard von der Schulenberg – ‘Moods And Dances’: a fun, exotique library music trip
Moods And Dances is the sort of album you cheekily slip onto the deck at a very groovy soiree at about, ooh, midnight, to bring some bizarre and spacey dimensions to proceedings and during which at least two of your friends turn to you and say with a bewildered grin: “Wow, what is this?”
Say Psych: Track Review: Blanck Mass – Starstuff
Blanck Mass, the project of musician Benjamin John Power, has this week released ‘Starstuff’, the first track from his new record In Ferneaux which will be released on Sacred Bones on 26 February. Following 2019’s album Animation Violence Mild, In Ferneaux explores pain in motion, building audio-spatial chambers of experience and memory. Using an archive of field recordings from a …
Hannah Peel announces March album: see the video for ‘Emergence In Nature’
HANNAH PEEL is a true renaissance woman and arguably the most musically multifaceted artist at work in the UK at the present time. She’s recently been curating and presenting BBC Radio 3’s Night Tracks; her catalogue, stemming from folky roots back a decade ago, has grown to take in the solo electronic and pop work of Awake But …
ALBUM REVIEW: Jon Mueller – ‘Family Secret’: an immersive drone palimpsest
Family Secret is a journey of deep interiority: it’s implicit that it be served fresh, after dark, suitably lit with no distractions. Clever, eerie and beautiful, it’s an album that will continue to reward you
SEE: Visionist preludes his March album for Mute with ‘The Fold’
LONDON’S musical scryer Visionist has announced details of a new album, A Call To Arms which, after his 2017 LP Value for Big Dada, will be his debut for Mute. The album, which will be released come March 5th, sees a departure in aesthetic methods as for the first time he brings his own voice to …