The Helen Scarsdale Agency So Long is an often subtle work of suggestively imaginative electronics which offers to transport the listener to places where they are equally welcome to apply their own meaning as to take those proposed by both the music and its naming. Drifting along without a seeming care in the world, Stilluppsteypa‘s Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson seems unconcerned how long his journey will take, if a […]
Linus Tossio
208 posts
three:four Helena Espvall (of Espers) and David Maranha of Osso Exótico‘s first joint album finds the duo pushing and prodding at the boundaries of what their amplification of cello, violin and electric organ can achieve in the field of drone music. It hardly needs to be emphasised that as much volume as the reproducing equipment can offer clearly — and the listener(s) can stand — will give the […]
Substantia Innominata Lovingly presented as two clear 10” vinyl records wrapped up in Mars Wellink‘s artwork which graces the gatefold sleeve in suitably transcendantly minimal style, Amid Zero Echo swells up and into four sides of the most immensely practised drones imaginable. On this occasion, Thomas Dimuzio uses ultimately unrecognisable guitar-derived sounds as the base source material through which to seemingly condense the entirety of the cosmos into […]
Zoharum Originally appearing in 2006 as a limited CDR, Vintermusik finds Machinefabriek‘s alter ego Rutger Zuydervelt collaborating at a distance with Dag Rosenqvist (sometimes AKA Jasper TX) over seven tracks (plus bonus “Feberdröm / Koortsdroom”, which appeared on a 3” CDR in the same era). As the title indicates, this is music with a cold exterior, but which still allows for a warmth to reside at its heart(h), […]
Öm It may seem ambitious to propose a histoy of techno in only four parts on one 12” single, but if there’s anyone who can do so, it’ll be the two drummers, bassist and one-man soul sonic force of K-X-P — Timo Kaukolampi (of Op:l Bastards), Tomi Lepannen (also of Circle and Pharaoh Overlord, among many others), Tuomo Puranen, also of of Op:l Bastards, and Anssi Nykänen. K-X-P are […]
Bureau B One of the interesting things which springs first to attention with the opening notes of Adrift is the loping acoustic bass which Tarwater use to underpin their sound. Its liquid tones give a smoothed, if not entirely smooth, basis to the duo’s twelfth album of literate not-exaxtly-jazz, not-entirely-electronica and certainly not-really-post-rock. This absence of conformity to genre is one of Tarwater’s great strengths, and they manage […]
Zoharum Drenched in reverb and flecked with voices from the Eastern aether, Fall of Drums is Robin Storey‘s third or so new Rapoon album in the space of a year, but the first on Zoharum since To West and Blue in 2013 and various re-issues which the label has put out recently. Over four lengthy, stretched-out tracks, the album sets about creating a hallucinogenic landscape of languorous percussion […]
Editions Mego Recorded across two continents and one island not exactly in between, as well as in various environments on tour in Europe, BJ Nilsen (AKA Hazard), Stilluppsteypa and Anla Courtis (from Reynols) each bring their own particularities to the jump-cuts and drone-fades of Golden Circle Afternoon. Of course, it’s often difficult to determine who might be responsible for what – some pass notes are offered up, but […]
Fourth Dimension “Christ, It’s Lonely” is the title of part three of the most recent release from Gary Mundy (of Ramleh) under the name Kleistwahr, and it’s about as good an indicator of the bleakness to be found mired on This World Is Not My Home as might be required to gauge its intent. Though the dense textures crushed and mushed into the album’s seven pieces (though the […]
Zoharum It’s all about space: between things, around planets, the place of which Sun Ra spoke and the concept which he often evoked. But this is not a jazz album; Dawid Adrjanczyk and Krzysiek Joczyn are more electro-acoustic in their means and perhaps calmer in their demeanour here. The title Tajnie i Głębie – Mysteries and Depths – gives a hint of what the album brings as it […]
Zoharum Dating back to a tape release in 1998 and a later CDr edition from 2005, Dreaming Muzak has now been given the deluxe re-release treatment by Zoharum and arrives in a lovingly-produced three-panel gatefold CD sleeve, remastered, like the recent Maeror Tri (which includes Troum‘s Martin Gitschel and Stefan Knappe as two of the trio) editions, by Łukasz Miernik. Sometimes oppressive in the extreme, if Part 1 […]
More Than Human This latest transmission from Moebius finds him pushing further at the boundaries of an idiosyncratic take on electronic rhythm-based music which have often characterised his solo recordings and rummaging deeper into the swirling vortices of synthesized experimentalism that he helped pioneer in the ’70s as part of Cluster. “Inmedin” is the piece most resembling the former output, all twinkling electronic bells and chimes over a […]
Baskaru Inspired by the tuning up of an orchestra prior to a performance, Rutger Zuydervelt (AKA Machinefabriek) assembled Stay Tuned first as an installation in Canada and then the Netherlands in 2013. Using 153 musicians from the worldwide avant-garde to each provide a drone in A (or a vocal warm-up), each speaker arranged in the installation played the loops endlessly while visitors wandered among them from sound to […]
Beta-lactam Ring It’s hard not to reference Popul Vuh while attempting to describe the effect of the opening moments of Kosmodynamos, but that’s no bad thing at all. The chime of bells, an evolving ripple of flute, Michel Leroy and Alberto Parra‘s cycling clean guitar strings which coalesce in a slow percussive parade — all hold the same pregnant promise of Florian Fricke‘s singular, almost holy, vision. However, […]
Hubro If there’s a defining quality to modern life – and hence to contemporary music – it’s perhaps hybridism. Everything which has come before has never been as accessible as it is now, and like those innumerable monkeys who’ve been toiling away at recreating the works of Shakespeare, humanity seems to be intent on taking the sum of its knowledge and slotting it together again and again in […]
Huta Artzine/Noisen/Zoharum Introduced by the shorter drones and electronic shimmers of “Alpha, “Beta” which rise up in a revenant scrawl of threat and ominous sounds (including some fine rabble-rousing samples which set the mood of the album as one slightly apart from the merely abstract and instrumental) the centrepiece of Ninkyo Dantai rests on the form of the twenty-minutes and more of “Alpha+”. But first comes “Gamma,” whose […]
Front & Follow In which Kemper Norton applies his spectral resonances to The Doomed Bird of Providence‘s “Mahina,” a standout track from their most recent album Blind Mouths Eat. The Doomed Bird of Providence explore the very darkest recesses of Australian history through their bleak sound constructions
The Bishopsgate Institute, London 21 March 2014 Greeted at the entrance to the venue by a very City commissionaire resplendent in full uniform complete with ceremonial sash and medals, it’s clear that this is going to be no ordinary gig. The Bishopsgate Institute is at once an adult education centre and a concert hall, and it’s certainly a splendid setting in which to revisit the live music of […]