Tag: electronic

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Joshua Idehen – This Is The Place

Apparently at Joshua Idehen’s live shows he strongly encourages you to turn to your neighbour and give them a hug / some show of love, which means I’ll probably never see him perform. This song is great though! And his entire album is pretty fun and positive – I just want to listen to it in solitude, without having to interact with other people, thanks very much. I also just found out that he was in Benin City who did some interesting stuff a while back, which has made me like him ever more.

https://joshuaidehen.bandcamp.com/track/this-is-the-place

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OHYUNG – Nevada

Bruce Springsteen had his Nebraska, a bare-bones, notably bleaker record. OHYUNG now has her IOWA; stripped-down and self-produced. Ghostly echoes, mouth sounds, simulated tape hiss, late night gloom. Though beautiful, there’s an illness-of-ease to the music, a fog of threat, numerous points of rupture in otherwise serene tracks, massive subwoofer activations that could be heaven’s kick drum or the slam of a bomb. Sampled choirs in rapture, a fine line between terror and reverence. Happy Friday!

https://ohyung.bandcamp.com/album/iowa

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Caterina Barbieri & Bendik Giske – Impatience, Magma

Caterina Barbieri and Bendik Giske’s collaborative project started during an artistic residency in Milan’s ICA in 2021, by invitation of Swiss artist and curator Jan Vorisek. This meeting, and the preceding closure of sites for cultural exchange, made their work together “feel like springtime” according to Barbieri. Throughout the tour, they continued to develop material live, and their album, At Source, feels true to that ever-evolving process of creation. Impatience, Magma feels like the centrepiece of this extraordinary EP, glowing and languorous, with Giske’s saxophone at its most affecting.

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Maria BC – May this rain

Written and recorded throughout the US West Coast, Maria BC’s new album Marathon is both expansive and intimate, ranging from aerial acoustic songs, to glitchy distorted tracks channeling chaos and disillusionment, all while maintaining a strong lyrical through line. “For this record I decided to spend less time on production and recording and more time on songwriting” she says. “The result, I think, is more thematically consistent, lyrically speaking, and more concise”. On first couple of listens, I agree.

https://mariabc.bandcamp.com/album/marathon

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Niko Demus, Merely, MFM – Oscillate

Dreaaaaaaaamyyyy….

https://nikodemus1.bandcamp.com/album/wade-1

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Music

Placid Angles – Sainte Anne

With over 20 LPs under his belt, John Beltran returns to his much loved ambient / IDM / electronica alias Placid Angles with one of his strongest albums to date. Canada has properly blown me away and I’ve listened to it twice this morning already. Inspired by “everything from the scenery to the people … I decided to dedicate this record to them and that beautiful country”, Sainte Anne is a beautiful opening track and definitely gives you a sense of the musical world he inhabits, but I urge you in the very strongest terms to go listen in its entirety, ideally right now.

https://oathcreations.bandcamp.com/album/canada

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Reinartz – A Point for Everything to Spread

Appendix.files rolls out its second LP with Irradiated, an eight-part excursion from Berlin-based sound artist and producer Kurt ‘Reinartz’ Salgado. If you’re a fan of Barker’s beatless techno deconstructions, you’ll likely find plenty to like here.

https://reinartz.bandcamp.com/album/appx-lp02-irradiated

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Julianna Barwick, Mary Lattimore – The Four Sleeping Princesses

It’s very encouraging to have an album this good released so early in the year. Tragic Magic pairs Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore in a collaboration recorded at the Philharmonie de Paris, made with rare access to instruments from the Musée de la Musique collection through InFiné. Co-produced with Trevor Spencer, the album was created in nine days, building from improvisation and the emotional carry-on of the moment.

Lattimore chose a run of historic harps that map the instrument’s evolution from the early 18th to late 19th century. Barwick worked with classic synthesisers including a Roland Jupiter and a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, bringing soft-edged harmonic colour and air around the notes. The Four Sleeping Princesses may be a highlight, but its far from the only reason to immerse yourself in this forest of lushness.

https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/track/the-four-sleeping-princesses

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Mikel Rev – LM 8182

More good stuff I missed from last year here courtesy of Mikel Rev. Rev is a mysterious figure from the depths of the Oslo underground, who primarily operates as part of the Ute Collective – a group of producers and DJs pushing a unique electronic and trance-forward sound, through various sublabels and live events often set amongst the lush forests of Norway. Following his debut album The Art Of Levitation on A Strangely Isolated Place back in 2023, last year’s Journey Beyond presents a selection of tracks demonstrating his obsession with the porous boundaries between ambient and trance.

https://mikkelrevute.bandcamp.com/album/journey-beyond

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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Thoughts On The Future

Kaitlyn’s Aurelia Smith’s last album GUSH was one of the best albums of the year, and didn’t get nearly enough love in the end of year list, except mine of course. There’s a risk new EP Thoughts On The Future will also get a bit lost as it came out just before Christmas when no-one’s really paying attention, but it shouldn’t. Entirely instrumental, and echoing artists like Kelly Moran in its use of slowly evolving rhythmic repetition, Smith described it as “a contemplative body of work that examines what grief does to the body and the mind – the necessary disembodiment & cocooning — how it suspends us, how it empties us, and how it quietly begins to rebuild us in its own time.”

https://kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com/album/thoughts-on-the-future