retrotronica
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 …
Premiere: Jack Prest – ‘Test Tone IV’ and ‘Test Tone VII’: deliciously amniotic ambient electronica from Sydney
JACK PREST, the Australian soundscaper, is perhaps best known for his work on the other side of the plexiglass as an engineer and producer at Sydney’s Studios 301, nine decades of recording absolutely according it legendary status. Best known, for now. That looks like it really could be about to change; lovers of the blissful, …
Track: Lisel + Booker Stardrum – ‘In The Dome’: fractured, space-age experimental pop
ELIZA BEGG, the vocalist and composer who guises as Lisel musically, and electronica creator and percussionist Booker Stardrum, have been friends a long time, circulating in each other’s musical orbit. What with the absolutely bloody everything of it out there, they’ve elected to spend recent time wisely with a six-week, remote collaboration eliciting an album, …
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: 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?”
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 …
ALBUM REVIEW: The Green Child – ‘Shimmering Basset’: curious and mysterious psych synth-pop second
A clever, engaging pop album, in which The Green Child’s Raven and Mikey hold up a mirror to baroque-psych and synth pop history, smash it with glee, and use the shards to scry it over their shoulders
SEE: The Green Child’s ‘Fashion Light’: woozy and intelligent psych-synth melodies
RAVEN MAHON and Mikey Young began making beautiful music together after a chance encounter at a gig in her home state of California; at the time they were both in other bands, Raven in Grass Widow, who had an LP out on the koool Kill Rock Stars; Mikey as a member of Australian post-punk synthers …
TRACK: hear Mort Garson’s ‘Ode To An African Violet’: spacey, deconstructed Moog funk for your flowers
YOU’VE never really heard Mort Garson, you say; heard the name, never quite caught up with any of his stuff; anyway, it’s rock hard to get hold of, isn’t it? Yeah, of course I’m into Stereolab, Broadcast, Plone; Belbury Poly, Add N To (X), you say. If it’s weird and Moogy and kinda space age …