Todd Barton has been composing for films, theatre, radio, quartets, orchestras and more besides over many decades. Nowadays, Todd teaches Buchla, Serge, Hordijk and eurorack online. and is a consulting artist for Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments. To accompany Todd’s session for Philippe Petit‘s Modulisme platform, Freq interviewed him about a life […]
Yearly archives: 2019
261 posts
British modern shoegaze band The Microdance have a new album entitled Our Love Noire coming out in 2020 on Somewherecold Records, and are releasing a single as a free download via Soundcloud – get the track here. All this and their entire discography is now available at a special price […]
Blue Tapes Originally formed to provide a live original soundtrack for a screening of E Elias Merhige’s silent horror film Begotten, this underground supergroup comprising members and associates of the Rude Mechanicals, Gnod and Téléplasmiste has evolved into its own continuing thing. The Begotten‘s debut release is a subtly shifting […]
Dronarivm Russian label Dronarivm has released the latest offering from Swedish sound sculptor Ingmar Wennerberg on a beautifully packaged cassette limited to forty-five copies. The images on Snufmumriko‘s Sekunder, Eoner‘s cover depict etchings of ancient flying machines and the drifting drone of opener “Kasta Loss”, emanating from the speakers like […]
Zoharum Appearing in a CD edition via the good offices of Zoharum, The Stargazer’s Assistant‘s Mirrors & Tides, Shivers & Voids was originally released on double 10” vinyl in 2013 on Utech Records. The trio here consists of David J Smith, David J Knight and Michael J York, all of […]
Modularfield Modularfield is continuing its exploration of contemporary German electronic music with a couple of vinyl releases, both in beautifully executed sleeves by label boss Markus Scholz and on lovely white vinyl. First up is Panic Girl‘s Cake On Jupiter, a perfect title for the solitary joy contained within.
Zoharum Blending field recordings from places as far afield as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Brooklyn and Indonesia, Robert L Pepper and Robin Storey (also known as Pas Musique and Rapoon respectively) brought Composited Reality to the world on cassette and USB stick in 2018. Now Zoharum have issued a CD edition, and it shimmers with […]
Riot Season Finding a welcoming home at Riot Season, Stockholmers Kungens Män‘s umpteenth LP, and their second album for the label, Hårt Som Ben (Hard As Bone) positively oozes out of the speakers, dripping with lysergic guitar sking and a stoner (post-)rocker’s earch for the had-nodding rhythmic chug. Channelling their […]
empreintes DIGITALes Commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur in 2017 and broadcast first in July 2018, Oscillations Planétaires evokes the larger geological cycles of planet Earth, from the eruptions of geysers and volcanoes to the motion of the tides and onwards to the formation of mountain ranges and the tectonic movements of […]
London 12 December 2019 Stepping onto the stage at The Lexington for the final date of their European tour, Holly Golightly and her band look tired but ready to go. Holly welcomes the audience and notes that, as there is an election party scheduled to follow their gig – which […]
Warp For his original soundtrack to Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems, Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) has pulled out all the faux chorale tricks, conjuring an electronic soundtrack that positively bulges with analogue synths that lay the groundwork for a maze of synthesized and sampled voices which are not […]
Mute Sometimes they come back. Throbbing Gristle were never really away. The albums that came out of the charnel house at Industrial Records threw multiple spanners in the works as the ’70s drew to a close. The world TG inhabited then was as grey as their followers and they made […]
Robin Rimbaud, best-known as Scanner, has been pushing the boundaries of soundscaping since he first brought intercepted unencrypted mobile phone conversations to the world of the avant-garde on his self-titled debut album in 1993. More than a couple of decades and tens of releases on, he provided Philippe Petit‘s Modulisme […]
Taken from his forthcoming Refuge LP on Subcontinental Records, contemporary pianist Aman Mahajan‘s “More Than You Know” video premiered below showcases the album’s range of solo piano pieces.
Modularfield A squeal of metal and a wave of drone introduces Piksel‘s Places and throws you headlong into a dramatic situation with no time to prepare. Like the slow movement of enormous creatures, wings beating in subterranean isolation, things grind and shriek, and the oppressive drone pushes everything before it.
Upset The Rhythm Waiting there patiently for over thirty years, Normil Hawaiians‘ third album Return Of The Ranters finally got the airing it deserved in late 2015, thanks to Upset The Rhythm. An act that kick started a re-issue campaign to get all their recordings back into print, finally re-addressing […]
The video for “The Empty Boat” was made with pinhole photographs accompanying a cover of Caetano Veloso‘s 1969 song, with Kate Stables of This Is The Kit joining Anglo-French ensemble The Fantasy Orchestra.
Upset The Rhythm Upset The Rhythm really seems to be cornering the market in literate if slightly eccentric indie pop these days. It takes me back to the halcyon days of C86 in the way that each new band that releases something on the label is bringing their own skewed […]
Cherry Red / MVD Audio / New Ralph Too When we last left our heroes in the early 1980s, they had just staggered bloodied but unbowed from the triumphant disaster that was The Mole Show, an interlinked series of albums and associated live tours that detailed the epic and deranged saga of the conflict […]
Blue Tapes Stuart Chalmers has created a lot of interesting soundscapes with minimal means. Live he’s a walkman wizard, dealing out an aesthetically beautiful seance of strange and slippery shapes, tangling up dialogue with wah-scarred short-wave.