Electronica
Album Review: Sydney’s Fabels weaves a shimmering and exotic cloak of many colours in their brilliant and evocative new album ‘Minds’.
Deep in the heart of ‘Minds’, the new album from Sydney duo Fabels, is an exotic mysticism and ethereal glow, emanating from the mysterious vocals and the layered sonic landscapes. The result is something that is quite splendid: an electronic classicism that is borderless and transcendent. Fabels are Hiske Weijers, Ben Aylward (plus live, guest …
Album review: Afternoon Bike Ride – ‘Afternoon Bike Ride’: a magical future pop journey to soothe and seduce a frazzled mind
A MEETING of delicate pop like minds: musician-producers David Tanton (aka Rhoda/Tender Spring), Éloi Le Blanc-Ringuette (aka Thomas White), and Lia Kurihara (aka LIA) met on the fertile Montréalais music scene in 2018, began to share and mesh ideas, and formed Afternoon Bike Ride – and listen up, friends; they’re an absolute delight of hazy, …
Premiere: Melbourne’s Skybelly unveils the chapter of an exotic space adventure in the dreamy track ‘Sapphire’, ahead of debut album.
The vivid, sparkling and unbound imagination of Sara Nelson, working under the name Skybelly, creates a whole new universe in her forthcoming album ‘A Space Tramp Odyssey’, due out on 23 September 2021. As a taste of what’s to come, we are honoured to premiere the track ‘Sapphire’ which is due out on 17 September …
EP: Dull Reality’s EP ‘Daffodil’ is a thrillingly and imaginative sonic adventure.
Ben Shields records under the name Dull Reality and, although it’s an easy observation to make, his music is anything but. Shields works almost purely in the realms of electronic sounds – shape shifting electronica that is complex and multi-layered and given impetus and wings by his extraordinary vocal range and vivid imagination. Opening track …
See: Darren Cross creates a panoply of images for the track ‘Are USS Are?’, from his album ‘DISTORDER’
Last month we reviewed the superb album ‘DISTORDER’ from Sydney’s multi-talented songwriter, producer and videographer Darren Cross, calling it a brilliant expression of our times: discordant, unsettling and at times bleak, but delivered with a swagger and a panache. Cross has assembled an engrossing video for one of the tracks – ‘Are USS Are?’ – …
Track: The Presets’ Julian Hamilton releases sublime first solo single, the icy and elegant ‘City of Love’
Julian Hamilton, half of Sydney juggernaut duo The Presets, has just released his first ever solo single ‘City of Love’, and it is brilliant. With a syncopated bubbling, liquid undercurrent, ‘City of Love’ is a deliciously hyperactive track with Hamilton’s voice having a chilling, distant, almost disassociated vibe. There is a grand meeting of Kraftwerk …
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: Maarja Nuut – ‘Hinged’: percussive and playful, free as a bird future folktronica from Estonian genius
BORN in Rakvere, a small town in the very north of Estonia, a handful of miles from the Baltic Sea, the experimental musician Maarja Nuut was first introduced to music by her mother, a choir conductor, which opened up a world which would become her métier. Aged 7 she began taking violin lessons, studying at the Tallinn …
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 …
Track: Melbourne electronic artist Dull Reality sparks ups the voltage with ‘Daffodil’, the title track to the newly announced debut EP.
With earphones on, ‘Daffodil’ from Melburnian Dull Reality – the solo work of Ben Shields – positively bubbles and snaps from one side of your head to the other – syncopated, arpeggiated popping sonics that massage, confuse and delight the ears. Over the top, Shields’s voice glides, swoops and circulates with melody: a contrapuntal force …