“Supergroups” or even any true collaboration can be a hazardous propositions, but fortunately they often enough bear fruit. NoinoNoinoNoino’s 8 cassette for Caoutchou Records documents one exemplary success. The collaboration brings together Kiki Hitomi’s freaky avant J-pop, Dead Fader’s sinister bass music, DJ Die Soon’s skittering experiments, and DJ Hotel’s dark electro hip hop.
Published in Decoder Magazine's Second Issue
Sigha’s James Shaw is a versatile producer whose second album Metabolism further pushes his limits. Metabolism‘s twelve tracks showcase a schizophrenic range of styles that make for a pleasantly unpredictable and rewarding listen. Developing his chops with laidback dubstep tracks released on Scuba’s Hotflush imprint and moving into a more straightforward techno arena, his first LP Living With Ghosts showed the first signs of stretching from convention.
Published at Echoes and Dust
Positioning itself between post rock and ambient,Floor Overhead‘s majestic A Passive Bludgeoning Force presents deconstructed guitar work that is epic in scope yet maintains its calm; evoking the wide expanses of nature. Think Sigur Rós crossed with Russian Circles, or Ben Frost mixed with Fennesz.
Published at Echoes and Dust
Raster-Noton, one of the largest and most visible imprints representing a stunning array of literally dozens of experimental electronic artists (Vladislav Delay, Senking, Kanding Ray, Mika Vainio, Rjoyi Ikeda, Alva Noto, and many others) concludes its nine-part Unun series promoting young talent with Jesse Osborne-Lanthier’s debut for the label.
Published at Subrewind
Rootless frontman Jeremy Hurewitz continues exploring ambient guitar work with Distant Cities, his first release on Virginia-based cassette label Otherworldly Mystics. The title to the four-track release is appropriate as Hurewitz has spent over a decade abroad exploring the globe’s hubs as well as its nooks.
Published at Echoes and Dust
Murcof’s Fernando Corona negotiates the divide between electronic and contemporary classical music that is nothing short of revelatory. Propelled by blippy, haunting beats and mangled classical instrument samples, his sullen yet gentle tracks deviate from the atonal and arhythmic varieties of electroacoustic music that tend to coincide with the genre.
Published at Subrewind
Time Traveler, an alias for Michele Pinna (owner of The Triangle Records), is releasing his first LP this Friday on his new imprint Chronicles Diary. An exciting, science fiction-laced epic, I’m Made of Stars / Journal began as conversations about the universe between Pinna and his father. Though the record is largely instrumental (since in space, no one can hear you scream), Stars comes across a deeply personal account of one person struggling to find themselves within the universe, a much vaster world than Earth.
Published at Subrewind
Umwelt has enjoyed a career delivering dark techno for over two decades, anchoring his sound in heavy TR-808 use. Days of Dissent is a further honing of sounds explored on this year’s earlier Cultures of Resistance. While not a complete divergence, there is nothing as experimental as Resistance‘s short “Realm of Chaos” or the apocalyptic, minimal “Realm of Chaos” on Dissent.
Published at Subrewind
Franck Vigroux is no stranger to noise. Across a wide career, he has engaged with noise as sound through various textures, recently including the short Centaure release and LP Nous Autres (We). Vigroux’s 2015 collaboration with Mika Vainio on Peau Froide, Léger Soleil (Cold Skin, Light Sun), can be used as a basis of comparison for the new Rapport Sur Le Désordre (Report Disorder) on DAC Records.
Published at Subrewind
Declaring a music genre dead is useless in its finality, for listeners know that genres and their conventions metamorphose. Dubstep originated as a chill, downtempo fusion of dub and two-step heard in any Skream, Benga, Rusko, Ital Tek, 2562, or Deadbeat release.
Published at Subrewind
Autechre has been pushing the boundaries with crafting bizarre sounds to engage us in new ways for over two decades. They’re essentially the godfathers of Intelligent Dance Music (IDM), an unfortunate moniker for their unique blend of abstract, provocative electronics. Their most successful experiments include the wonkiness of early-career “Squeller” (EP7, 1999), the spinning cans of “VI Scose Poise” (Confield, 2001), and the more recent dark banger “Treale” on Oversteps (2010).
Published at Subrewind
The universe began 13.8 billion years ago, in a trillion-trillionth of a second, with a horrendous explosion that created space and time itself, as well as everything we identify as our universe. It’s fitting that duo These Hidden Hands should evoke the creation of the universe with the start of their brilliantly epic second LP Vicarious Memories, since there is nothing more epic than the Big Bang.
Published at Subrewind
Ital Tek’s latest, Hollowed, is a stripped down, brooding ambient work, a gorgeous album that knows when to skitter, shimmer and simmer. The minimal percussion on most of the tracks is suppressed almost to the point of it being a creative restraint. Hollowed‘s use of strings is a thread throughout, giving the tracks a gravity that is at once cinematic and dystopian.
Published at Rock On Philly
Andy Stott‘s latest, Too Many Voices, could be the sonic story of a slow, solitary drive through quiet urban neighborhoods in the twilight hours. Voices‘ deep bass frequencies rattle the vehicle, the snares cracking from the speakers like bones breaking. These experimental dub techno tracks evoke an approaching apocalypse, but a human one, an emotional mushroom cloud masquerading as lounge music.
Published at Rock On Philly
Drumcorps‘ Falling Forward is the music of road rage on the Los Angeles freeway, disaffected teenagers grounded on Saturday night, backroom brawls among friends, and the album you blast when you’ve got a case of the Mondays. This music is extreme. On first listen, its chaotic noise makes no sense. Listen deeper though, and you’ll hear a controlled method to the madness keeping the beats tight, allowing you to at least nod your head in time while your brain turns to mush.
Published at Rock On Philly
The most common incarnation of punk, that of angry mohawked adolescents swinging guitars, isn’t the only one. In Aeternam Vale‘s Laurent Prot is one of the biggest “synth punks,” and now he’s dropped Pink Flamingos out on DEMENT3D, consisting of two hours of unreleased music from a vault of hundreds of tracks spanning three decades of prolific work.
Published at Subrewind
Senking is the master of the nasty bass groove. The Raster-Noton artist’s most intricate work involves creating tension between several layers of aggressive low frequencies woven together. Astonishingly, with that much low end, the sound never becomes muddied. His entire body of work explores this tension, but it’s best illustrated throughout Capsize Recovery.
Published at Subrewind
Okay: let’s start with the incomprehensible name. Set aside the fact that the vowelless mash of letters reaches the limits of unreadability, but try and read it anyway. What do you get? Maybe nothing. Now think back to your childhood, when neighborhood boys would sound off imitations of bombs blowing up, guns firing, missiles shooting across the sky.
Published at Subrewind