Electronica
ALBUM REVIEWS: Lucifer – ‘Black Mass’; Ataraxia – ‘The Unexplained’: spooky Moog vibes from Mort Garson, reissued
SIXTIES’ and Seventies’ electronica is a weird and eccentric world, seemingly populated by mad genii and creative mavericks with clipboards and lab coats, observing banks of machinery at sonic play. Actually that conception isn’t too far from the truth: Raymond Scott and his Manhattan Research, Inc. while using the new musical technology to place interlude …
TRACK: Camila Fuchs – ‘Come About’: spectral electronic pop out of Lisbon
CAMILA DE LABORDE, who hails from Mexico City, and Münchner Daniel Hermann-Collini have been recording together as Camila Fuchs since encountering each other in London back in 2012. The band released their debut album Singing From Fixed Rung, in 2016, which they followed by signing for ATP for 2018’s Heart Pressed Between Stones; now based in Lisbon, …
ALBUM REVIEW: SHHE – ‘Re:’: remixers take her debut for a delightful spin deeper
Re: confirms SHHE as a great Scottish talent whose musics lend to steaming and bending into pretty new shapes. There’s a couple of artists working out in the sound forges where she is; but there’s a lot of room for music this good.
ALBUM REVIEW: Daniel O’Sullivan – ‘Electric Māyā: Dream Flotsam and Astral Hinterlands’: transporting and dazzling shortform art
Electric Māyā is a collection of short stories; of microfiction. Take your time and don’t breeze through; you’ll be peering through windows into 18 other little spheres. Dazzling shortform
SEE: RON – ‘What Can The Feeling’: ambient grace from the Pacific Northwest
SAM WENC and Carl Laukkanen, while resident in that cultural hub in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, got together and, sharing an interest in the textures and spaces of slow-moving ambient electronica, got together and laid down three albums’ worth of exploration of sonics as RON. Together they developed a language of sound at the interstice …
ALBUM REVIEW: The Galaxy Electric – ‘Tomorrow Was Better Yesterday’: a real trip into raw retrotronic deep space
The Galaxy Electric’s new ‘un is a real psychedelic trip; If you need a route offworld so you can look at back at humankind from a safe distance in the corona of the galaxy’s beauty, and you’re also not afraid to ride the edge of the solar winds, Tomorrow Was Better Yesterday is likely the record for you
TRACK: Pole – ‘Nebelkrähe’: deep Berlin atmospheres tease for next month’s album
STEFAN BETKE, the legendary vinyl masterer, deep electronic dub explorer and all-round sonic wizard who records as Pole, has dropped another fine piece of spacious, textural electronica ahead of his new album, Fading, next month. “Nebelkrähe”, which you can hear below, fashions some of those Pole trademarks into new and alluring shapes: the texture, the …
LIVE REVIEW: Erland Cooper, The Barbican, London: bringing the soul of Orkney to the heart of the capital
TO THE Barbican, that beautiful, brutalist residential and cultural hub in London EC2: for a gig. A gig! Livestream or not, it’s a red letter day in 2020. Ah … gigs. Aren’t they wonderful, beauteous things. Okay, it’s a livestream event, but look at it out there; am I in a position to choose? Are …
ALBUM REVIEW: A Lily – ‘Sleep Through The Storm’: bewitching tronica to guard us from where we’re at
Sleep Through The Storm is eight tracks of beautiful, bewitching, cyclical and warm electronic minimalism, intended to guard us from 2020
Track: Blue States drop ‘Friendly Fires’ from the expanded ‘Nothing Changes …’
IT’S HARD to believe that Blue States downbeatz classic, Nothing Changes Under the Sun, has reached its twentieth anniversary – who pressed fast forward, cos it wasn’t me; but it’s great to know that in marking this milestone Memphis Industries will be releasing a 20th anniversary edition in three weeks’ time. This new expanded edition, …