Soaring, celestial ambient modulations from the always interesting Oneohtrix Point Never, taken from his new Ambients collection on Warp.
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Oneohtrix Point Never – CC
Tag: album
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Maria W Horn – Omnia Citra Mortem
Maria W Horn’s new album Panoptikon is a suite of choral and electronic music originally produced for an installation in the disbanded Vita Duvan panopticon prison in Luleå, Sweden. According to the press materials, the circular prison structure of Vita Duvan, which enabled central monitoring, was meant to create a sense of omniscient surveillance. The panopticon made the inmates aware that they could be monitored at any time without having any way of checking if this was actually the case.
Panopitkon was originally presented as a multichannel sound and light installation where the imagined individual voices of the inmates were represented by loudspeakers placed in the various cells of the prison. Opening track Omnia citra mortem (everything until death) is a legal term that means prisoners who did not confess their crime could not be sentenced to death, but only to torture until a confession was forthcoming.
If this all sounds overwhelmingly bleak, then yes, there is undoubtedly a darkness and meaning tone to much of the music here. But it is also in parts quite overwhelmingly beautiful, and has already had a profound effect on me. Without doubt one of the most striking and accomplished albums of the year so far.
I’ve been revisiting the discography of the hugely underrated and now sadly defunct band Paper Dollhouse recently, and there are parallels to be drawn between their work and the Save The Cat’s debut LP; stripped-back guitars, mournful vocals and a lot of reverb that occasionally descends into blinding static. The whole album is incredibly sad and depressing and I really love it.
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Laryssa Kim – L’Attente – Auspicio
Laryssa Kim’s new album Contezza is described in the press materials as “a crossroad where Brian Eno, Enya, and Erykah Badu all meet”, and somewhat surprisingly that’s not all bullshit hyperbole. Singing in French, English and Italian over lush electronic backdrops, Kim creates a deeply engaging atmosphere that moves from romantic to alienating and back again, often in the space of a single track.
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Mk.gee – I Want
Ever wondered what a cross between Joji, Omar Apollo and Paul Simon would sound like? If yes; you, my friend, are in luck!
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36 – Imagine The Truth
My dude 36 is back with yet another album, hopefully the first of many this year. Reality Engine is the third and final LP in 36’s synth trilogy, concluding the melodic, melancholy machine sound started with Wave Variations and continuing with Symmetry Systems. See how it glimmers! Feel better!
In August 2022, Ariel Kalma, a renowned fourth-world (nope, me neither – but apparently it’s a thing) music artist, joined BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction for a special collaborative project, pairing with artists Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer. This partnership, led to the creation of twenty minutes of music through a back-and-forth exchange of ideas and contributions. After fulfilling their initial commitment, the trio felt compelled to continue their collaboration, expanding upon their initial creations, which ultimately culminated in an album The Closest Thing to Silence. The album’s title, inspired by a Kalma quote and echoing an ECM Records motto, emphasizes music’s profound connection to silence – so expect plenty of ambient, experimental meanderings, and quite a lot of space.
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/the-closest-thing-to-silence
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Discovery Zone – Mall Of Love
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Naliah Hunter – Bleed
There have already been some banging albums out this year, Naliah Hunter’s Lovegaze not least among them. Depending on which publications you trust this has been labelled as ambient, experimental, folk or a combination of all these and more. If you trust this blog, I’d just say go and listen to it and make your own mind up (but it’s definitely not ambient).
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The Smile – Teleharmonic
Unsurprisingly, two of the guys from one of the world’s most acclaimed band of all time, plus another guy, make some pretty astonishingly good music that sounds enough like their other band to be comforting, but different enough to make middle aged men very, very excited and feel as if they’re at the cutting-edge of the scene once again, you know, the same way it felt when their first band made all that amazing stuff in the 90s.
The Predatory Wasp 