Tag: electronic

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Nathalie Stern – Ember Child

Nathalie Stern is a Swedish artist now based in Newcastle who served her apprenticeship in guitar-based bands such as Candysuck and Lake Me, before looking to traditional Swedish folk roots and more experimental sounds for her debut solo album Firetales in 2010. Nearly a decade later she released the incredible Nerves & Skin, from which Ember Child is taken: a stripped-down, haunting, electronic-folk ballad consisting of little more than single, lengthy notes and a handful of chords on an especially morose synth and her wonderful vocal. It’s about as minimalist a composition as you’re likely to hear, and one of the most impactful.

https://cruelnaturerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/nerves-and-skin

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Henry Blaeser & CoastalDives – Ghost II

Columbus-based electronic artists CoastalDives and Henry Blaeser team up on Ghost II, a haunting, at times unsettling, but ultimately extremely warm slice of electronica landing on Chile’s renowned No Problema Tapes imprint. Dense, dark and intricate, it merges Blaeser’s cold, skeletal rhythmic & textural architecture with CoastalDives’ all-encompassing, haunting synth-scapes to tremendous effect.

https://soundcloud.com/noproblematapes/ghost-ii

https://noproblemasingles.bandcamp.com/album/snp-013-ghost-ii

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Me Lost Me – Nevergreen

Me Lost Me is the music project of Newcastle based musician Jayne Dent, and Nevergreen came out a few months ago as one of the singles from her latest album, The Good Noise, which was released last week. The entire album is brilliant, and ranges from meandering, folky ballads to soaring, ethereal pop, many of which are pinned together with crisp and precise drum programming. Nevergreen itself is a beguiling mix of all of these elements and more: something you could easily imagine soundtracking a hallucinatory scene in whatever mind-bending film Ari Aster currently has in the works.

https://www.melostme.com/

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Christian Löffler – Pastoral

I’ve been a big fan of Christian Löffler’s particular strain of electronic music for some time now, especially his 2012 debut A Forest and 2016’s excellent Mare, both of which are considered, completely absorbing bodies of work, mostly consisting of melodic and atmospheric house music that sounds like it’s been teased up from the earth rather than constructed on anything as rigidly mechanical as a synthesiser. For his latest single, Pastoral, he’s done away with the 4/4 structure – and in fact any kind of beats – entirely, instead focussing on the lush interplay of slowly rising strings and muffled piano.

EDIT: On digging a little deeper into this, I just discovered that it’s a reworking of Beethoven, which makes it the second Beethoven cover I’ve covered in a week, but as part of a completely different project. Has Beethoven just come out of copyright? Seems unlikely. Anywhere, here are a few words from the man himself (Christian, not Ludwig):

“Deutsche Grammophon invited me to listen to a number of historic recordings of Beethoven, shellac discs from the 20s. I have reworked four of the composer’s tracks for an upcoming EP called Parallels (Beethoven) and you can listen to the first single ‘Pastoral’ now.”

https://www.christian-loeffler.net/

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Sal Dulu – Alien Boy 96

Alien Boy 96 is the first single to be released from Irish producer Sal Dulu’s forthcoming LP, which will be landing early next year. If you want a pretty lazy comparison, it’s a little reminiscent of The Avalanches, both in its cut-and-paste approach to the production and in the yearning, melancholic atmosphere conjured by the tapestry of samples and beats. In the press release for the single, Dulu says it’s “probably not the most representative in terms of what the album is about”, which from where I’m sitting would be a bit of a shame, as it’s really, really good.

https://soundcloud.com/user-727004974

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Kelly Moran – Helix III

Kelly Moran and Prurient recently announced a split LP Chain Reaction At Dusk, with Helix III one of three tracks than Moran has contributed to the project. As with a lot of her previous work it sits somewhere between traditional classical composition and electronic experimentation, with whirling polyrhythms and glassy chimes creating a gently disorienting atmosphere. Be sure to check out the full release when it lands on Prurient’s Hospital Productions 04 December.

https://kellymoran.bandcamp.com

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Oneohtrix Point Never – No Nightmares

Considering the kind of completely unclassifiable music Oneohtrix Point Never usually crafts, a schmaltzy, vocoder-infused ballad – with The Weeknd no less – isn’t necessarily something you’d expect to find on his latest album. But then hasn’t this just been a year of the unexpected? No Nightmares is warm and wonderfully reassuring, and crackles with just enough weirdness to ensure you don’t think you’ve stumbled into the final moments of 80s school disco. And if you’re really not into it, you only need take a step in either direction on the album to be confused and slightly unsettled again.

https://www.pointnever.com/

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Ela Minus – dominique

There’s a lot to enjoy on Ela Minus’s debut album acts of rebellion, which moves from the expansive experimental electronica of its opener through moody synth-pop and glassy ambient, all within its first few tracks. And then you get to dominique, which is a towering presence at around the album’s midpoint; one of those ‘woah’ moments that makes you double check what you’re listening to, knowing before it’s even finished that’s it’s going to be on hard repeat for quite some time to come.

https://elaminus.com

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Call Super – Pleasure For Pleasure

This is taken from Call Super’s excellent new album Every Mouth Teeth Missing. I’ve always found Call Super’s music vaguely intimidating, for reasons I’m not entirely clear about, but whatever the reasons might be this is the first album I’ve got properly stuck into and I’m very glad I did. Pleasure For Pleasure is like two different tracks hammered together: the glitchy, video game-evoking bounce of the main rhythm section and the glassy pads that are occasionally permitted to break through more and more frequently until it all gels together into a satisfying mess of phased drums and white noise.

https://callsuper.bandcamp.com

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Faten Kanaan – The Archer

This is taken from the new two-track EP from Brooklyn composer and producer Faten Kanaan, and follows the release of the equally brilliant The North Wind last month. Fatan has previously said that much of her work is inspired by cinematic forms, whether that’s sweeping vistas or intimate character studies; both of which are apparent in The Archer, with its dramatic swathes of synths conjuring both ragged forests and Blade Runner-esque cityscapes while simultaneously evoking a deep personal narrative.

https://fatenkanaan.com