Forest Drive West’s new album Mantis 1920 sits somewhere between Donato Dozzy and Andy Stott, so you know I’m loving it! Right lads? Lads!??
Tag: electronic
Flabaire – Summer Sun
This is taken from efflorescence iii, a VA compilation from Dutch label Project Indigo who have been flying the flag for dreamy, emotional house and techno for the last decade or so. Home to TPW favourites like Lb Honne and Hame, Flabaire was a new name to me, but it someone I’ll be keeping a close eye on in the future, as Summer Sun is totally lush.
Boards of Canada – Age Of Capricorn
According to the Guardian the new Boards of Canada album Inferno sounds like Coldplay and is a “big disappointment”. I strongly disagree.
Lord of the Isles – Venus Flux
Venus Flux is a new four-track EP by Scottish producer Lord Of The Isles, which opens with a beatless ambient piece built from slow-moving analog tones ahead of two live-improvised dub techno tracks which form the core of the EP. But it’s the closing track, Venus Flux, that’s got me; a reflective, broken-beat number right out of the Conforce tradition of plaintive, meandering electro.
Olof Dreijer – Cassia
There’s something about the way that Olof Dreijer bends his synth patterns that makes his music entirely original. Across his various aliases – mostly famously, The Knife, and closest to my own heart, Oni Ayhun – the squirmy, alien sounds he wrings from various bits of hard and software could only have been created by him. Taken from his debut solo album Loud Bloom (ambitious, varied, long-awaited, arguably overly-long), Cassia is Dreijer in peak form; perhaps one of the greatest tracks he’s ever produced. And yes, I know it came out two years ago, but I’d not heard it until last week, so maybe you haven’t either.
STS – Places
The entire Be The Mountain EP from STS is absolutely brilliant, especially the title track which strongly evokes the beatless techno excursions of Barker, and this closing track, which is one of the most beautiful electronic pieces I’ve heard this year. The Detroit-based producer wrote the EP “during a period of sustained physical and mental strain” and while that sounds deeply unpleasant, the results are extraordinary.
The Field – In Our Dreams
It’s been 8 long years since The Field last released solo music, and it is wonderful to have him back. The master of long-form, melodic, looping electronic music seems to exist in a soft-focus parallel universe where time stretches and contorts in unnatural, but always soothing, ways. His new album Now You Exist for Studio Barnhus comprises five new compositions; all luxurious, dreamy, flawless.
1-800 GIRLS – grow
I think this blog definitely leans a bit moody and self-serious at times. 1-800 GIRLS’s debut album LOVE is neither of those things. It is good though, at least, 50% of it is. I really don’t like the first half… but the second half is great! Riddle me that.
Loraine James, Miho Hatori – Flatline
Created during a period of internal struggle and shifting self-perception, Loraine James’ new album Detached From The Rest Of You explores a more direct and vocal-led approach. The experience of producing 2025’s Clandestine EP with singer Anysia Kym opened up a more pop-focused framework, helping her shape her ideas into tighter song structures without losing the fragility and experimentation that defines her work, while also opening her up to collaboration more than ever before, with guests on the LP including Sydney Spann, Low’s Alan Sparrowhawk and Miho Hatori on the standout Flatline.
https://lorainejames.bandcamp.com/album/detached-from-the-rest-of-you
Ana Roxanne – Untitled II
