Tag: electronic

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Music

36 – Touch The Sky

Dennis Huddleston aka 36’s new album Cold Ecstasy is a pitch-perfect homage to 90s rave, focussing on “the happier side of the hardcore spectrum, which I feel was unfairly maligned at the time.”As a teenager obsessed with happy hardcore and later trance, I’ve always had a massive soft spot for the unashamed positivity of those genres. A companion piece to 2021’s Weaponised Serenity which was equally brilliant, this new LP is further proof that Huddlestone is one of the most consistently excellent electronic producers out there.

https://3six.net/album/cold-ecstasy

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Music

Trevino – Moodswing

Back in May 2016, Trevino a.k.a. Marcus Intalex released his debut album Front on his own Birdie label. Following the producer’s death in 2017, the follow-up album Back was released posthumously in May. Recorded between Berlin and Manchester, Back is at its strongest when it embraces the more melancholy aspects of electronica – as in the all-conquering Backtracking, still one of the best techno singles of all time – with Moodswing a clear highlight.

https://birdierecordings.bandcamp.com/album/back

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Music

Katatonic Silentio – To

Increasingly, I like electronic music to make me feel one of two ways: extremely, nostalgically blissed-out or overwhelmingly anxious to the point of not being able to sit still. Katatonic Silentio’s output falls very much into the latter of these two categories, although To – from her recent Mantis 11 EP – is one of her more accessible pieces, with a clear, if apocalyptic, rhythm and only the suggestion of creeping, mechanical oblivion patiently lurking in the background.

https://katatonicsilentio.bandcamp.com/album/mantis-11

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Music

Not Marshall – Fragments of Varnished Visions

Finding albums like Not Marshall’s Fragments of Varnished Visions makes me a bit happy and a bit sad: happy, as I feel like I’ve stumbled on something brilliant that hasn’t already had its praises highly sung; sad as this is flying so hard under the radar that it’s difficult to imagine any more than a small handful of people will ever get the chance to enjoy its magnificence. I literally can’t find anything about it online except its listing on AOTY, not even a Bandcamp page. It’s not often ambient is explicitly joyful, but that’s certainly the case with About The Desert, and the rest of this deeply buried gem is equally lovely.

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Music

Rrose – Spore

Rrose’s compositional process centres on “seed” sounds being fed through elaborate webs of interrelated audio processing: essentially a chain of sequences where changes in any one element have resulting implications further down the line. If that all sounds a bit technical its because its largely copied from the press notes, but I thought it was quite interesting. The new album from which Spore is taken splits its time between radical techno iterations and pieces which pare back the percussion, letting the synth textures uncurl in their own time and space. Spore lands firmly in the former category, and is among the most straightforwardly enjoyable tracks on Please Touch.

https://eaux.ro/album/please-touch

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Music

Not Waving – Fool

I’m back! Sorry for the extended silence, but Glastonbury etc. Slowly getting back into the new music swing though and just came across this glorious new album from Not Waving, The Place I’ve Been Missing, on which the Italian artist explores “grief, gratitude, and new beginnings” across a mix of ambient, electronica and jazz. Lead single Fool includes elements of all the above, and is really very lovely indeed.

https://notwavingmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-place-ive-been-missing

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Music

Greg Float & Gigi Masin – Lee

I’m off to Glastonbury tomorrow (wallop!) and time is tight, but here’s a lovely, meandering slice of cosmic ambience for you, and the opening track from UK jazz keyboardist Greg Foat and Venetian downtempo electronic maestro Gigi Masin’s collaborative new album Dolphin. See you on the flipside!

https://gregfoat.bandcamp.com/album/dolphin

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Music

Romance – Never Will

Released as a Bandcamp exclusive in April and now available everywhere, Romance’s Fade Into You is descrived as their “first album proper” in the press notes, which is a little confusing, as there are at least a couple of what I’d consider full length releases out there already, as well as their collaborative albums with Dean Hurley. So who knows. But anyway… Fade Into You is a beautiful, delicately textured ambient album loosely inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 film The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant – “an unforgiving dissection of the toxic relationship between a haughty fashion designer and a beautiful but icy ingenue” – and continues the mysterious producer’s penchant for warping well known records almost beyond recognition, creating at times eerie but more often than not deeply emotional soundscapes from the resulting wreckage. Presumably there’s some Mazzy Star buried deep in here somewhere; some of the other building blocks are more explicitly labelled.

https://youmustrememberthis.bandcamp.com/album/fade-into-you

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Music

Anthony Naples – Ackee

Released last week, Anthony Naples fifth full length album orbs is described as “a moody portal of shoegazed and slo-mo songs suspended in thin air”, which is about right, although key missing words include “ambient”, “dub” and “lush”. It’s similarly paced to DJ Python’s peerless Mas Amable from 2020, but while that was often sinister and claustrophobic, orbs is all brightness and warmth. Ackee itself is delicate, atmospheric and soothing; ideal Monday listening, basically.

https://anthonynaples.bandcamp.com/album/orbs

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Interviews Music

One Track Mind: Spencer Doran

Spencer Doran takes us back in time with his appreciation of an “outsider’ Renaissance composer

The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!

Described by Bandcamp Daily as “Video Game Music’s Most Valuable Outsider”, Spencer Doran is a composer, producer and contemporary sound designer who makes up one half of the Portland duo and Italian minimalism enthusiasts Visible Cloaks.

Composed and produced over the course of nearly three years, his latest solo album is the original soundtrack for SEASON: A letter to the future, which underpins the highly-anticipated meditative exploration game in which the main character must save memories of a civilization on the verge of collapse. A lush collection of transmissions from this warmly fading world, we hear a culture and ecology through the sentimental ear of their last witness.

For his One Track Mind selection, Spencer has picked an entire album from Tobias Hume, focussing on a particular performance from Jordi Savall.

Continue reading “One Track Mind: Spencer Doran”