experimental
See: Rival Consoles drops the darkly pulsing choreography of ‘Monster’ ahead of tomorrow’s album
WITH a sooo hotly anticipated album, Overflow, out in the racks tomorrow, December 3rd, for Erased Tapes – the label originally set up specifically to bring Ryan Lee West’s musical vision to the world – Rival Consoles have released one final teaser, and that’s a ten-minute, monochrome filmed dance piece for the album track, “Monster”. …
PREMIERE: KRISTEENYOUNG goes for the jugular as she shares striking new song ‘Life Kills’
This song and its accompanying video aren’t for the faint of heart, so fair warning – it thrives on chaos and the thrill of the unexpected. If you’re new to KRISTEENYOUNG‘s world, then welcome, she’s been expecting you. Young last released The SubSet in 2019, and she’s been at work on its follow-up. For now, …
Album Review: Matt Baber & Richard Wileman – Baber Wileman
Richard Wileman’s 2020 album, ‘Arcana’ was a melodic yet unnerving gothic treat, with a Hammer Horror, Wicker Man vibe. This new offering continues in a similar vein, a collaboration with Matt Baber of Sanguine Hum. They had previously worked together in 2011, on a track (Mondo Profondo 1) for Wileman’s earlier incarnation, Karda Estra. This …
See: The intrusive flicker of memory brings disquiet to Fhunyue Gao & Sven Kacirek’s theremin and breaks drift ‘Bowie’
THE POTENT, experimental sonic meeting of minds that is Fhunyue Gao and Sven Kacirek came about quite by chance, and with a first single and video from that meeting, “Bowie”, being released today, those of us who enjoy our music nuanced and leftfield and odd can be thankful for the serendipitous. Fhunyue, who has previously …
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: Jim Wallis & Nick Goss – ‘Pool’: immersive, ocean-going, pastoral ambience
MODERN NATURE might be flying under your radar, but the Bella Union band who’ve just one full-length and one-mini album to their name – 2019’s How To Live and last year’s Annual, respectively – are someone you should be wrapping your head around, especially if the post-rock pastoral brilliance espoused by Mark Hollis and Talk …
See: The ghostly soundtrackery of The Arteries of New York City’s ‘Capable’; the album’s on its way to a full release
NO, AND you’d be forgiven for thinking it with the name they trade under, but the experimental ambient duo The Arteries of New York City isn’t some semi-psychogeographical project arising from dérives across that city from Queens or Yonkers or somewhere in the Five Boroughs; the project instead has its roots our side of the …
Track: Spanish ambient explorers Suso Sáiz and Menhir combine for the deep, pristine drift of ‘Alike’ ahead of their album for Spirituals
HE MAY Not be quite as familiar a name on these shores, but in Spain Suso Sáiz is something of an Eno figure; a pioneer of ambient and minimalist music in the country, he’s released something like 28 albums of beautiful and exploratory music since his 1984 debut, Prefiero El Naranja (‘I Prefer Orange’). He’s …
See: Matchess invites us to embrace meditative drone and transcend the flesh in the practise of ‘Almost Gone (Excerpt)’
WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums exploring really gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound for a number of years now as Matchess. Her journey in this guise began in 2015 with the downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic …
See: NONEXISTENT pull you below the surface in the ink-black ambient murk of ‘UNTITLED 3 (AUBURN VACUUM)’
NONEXISTENT is the three-waters-meet of exceptional leftfield talents Astrud Steehouder, otherwise of Opal X and Paper Dollhouse; Alex Tucker, whose work as MICROCORPS and Grumbling Fur we’ve had occasion to be beguiled by elsewhere in these pages; and Mancunian-in-London Luke J Murray, known for his work as and with Grimescapes, Iceman Junglist Kru and Stonecirclesampler. …