Phoenix G As a house and techno producer, Mr G has been jamming the dancefloor for the best part of twenty years with releases on an array of labels as well as those on his own Phoenix G label. He seems to have spent most of 2019 cruising around the world on a strange and love-filled trip, the culmination of which is this set of six tracks that […]
Mr Olivetti
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Out Continuing in the necessary Ut re-issue programme, their second LP and the first studio album to appear on Blast First, is given the deserved re-release treatment. In Gut’s House saw them taking a few steps beyond Conviction. Although still self-produced, this time they took assistance from that doyen of the ’80s underground, Paul Kendall, who produced Loop, Thee Hypnotics and Wire,among many others. The production feels clear […]
Adaadat Yan Hart-Lemonnier‘s second release for Adaadat pretty much lives up to its title. Le Partage Des Griefs translates as ‘the sharing of grievances’ and there is something of a relentless kind of grief-stricken melancholy that infects the synthetic sounds unleashed here.
Mottomotto Kyoto’s super-pop prog virtuosi Viva Sherry are back with a delightful 10″ vinyl release on the ever-reliable Mottomotto and considering it six tracks come in at about twenty-five minutes, it is extraordinary how much ground they manage to cover in that short period of time. 2017’s Obento Music was a similar formula, and I can only imagine that they don’t think that the general public is able to […]
577 Records The latest release from drummer Tony Irving and sax player Massimo Magee is a forty-eight-minute blast-off of improv craziness that holds the listener by the neck and very rarely lets go. Although the sax starts warm and smoky on opener “Vitriol”, as you can imagine by the title, that subtlety doesn’t last very long and begins to scrape and scree out of the speakers, leaving a […]
Courier The latest beautiful offering from Courier with its own hand-cut sleeve is a collaboration between old pals Nick Dawson and Stuart Bowditch, who were responsible for the genesis of the Silhouette Cameo 3 compilation that was released last year. In keeping with that album’s vibe of familiar sounds taken out of context and sent flailing into orbit, this latest improv collaboration has been stewing (no pun intended) […]
KrysaliSound Italian sound sculptor and musician Andrea Laudante has been looking into the way that we perceive concrete and instrumental music, and how the two can interact in a natural way. As one part of Degoya, he has already been involved in an album release this year, but this series of ten tracks on Banat Banat Ban Jai acts as a personal journey of sorts that we can […]
Modularfield Hot on the heels of the recent Panic Girl Cake On Jupiter LP, Wrocław-based An On Bast arrives with Modularfield‘s next instalment in their excursion into modern electronica. However, where the Panic Girl record hinted at home comforts on a distant shore, Anna Suda‘s Coherent Excitations is a meditative, yet dance-inflected body with a sense of mystery and travel at its core.
Hubro Stein Urheim has been recording for the best part of ten years now and this is his sixth album for Hubro, but you can’t even try and pigeonhole it just by the label. Clearly, Stein has an ear for anything good over the history of music and distils all this down to his own special recipes.
Thrill Jockey It has been for over twenty years that Markus Popp has been releasing material through Thrill Jockey and still his desire to keep advancing electronic-based music keeps him ahead of the pack. He has been recording and releasing music now for nearly thirty years as Oval and also as part of Microstoria, but each new instalment finds him upping his game.
Øra Fonogram Sax player Signe Emmeluth has had a busy time of it over the last eighteen months with the release of the first Emmeluth’s Amoeba album, playing as part of Skarbø Skulekorps and guesting on the last Broen album. On top of all that, the second Amoeba album Chimaera is here and a real blast of intuitive and innovative improvisation it is.
Blue Tapes Blue Tapes‘ head honcho has thumbed his nose at what others may deem suitable for release and has chosen two highlights of his own personal canon to delight the listeners, and lure them remorselessly into the happy family of the label. A lovely and striking package on C45, the cassette is divided between two quite different sets, whose common ground is the sleepy warmth of a […]
Krysalisound The latest release from Krysalisound is the debut from Paolo Iannantuoni, trading as Nāda Mushin. A doyen of the Italian ambient scene, Paolo uses these meditative soundscapes as a means of exploring the dichotomy between movement and stasis; his guitar, electronics and field recordings conjuring up dreamlike states and the metaphysical act of travelling without moving.
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 an elongated sigh
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.
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 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 vision of what passes for post-punk or indie guitar (for want of a better term). Carnage Hall from […]
Slowcraft / KrysaliSound James Murray set up Slowcraft Records back in 2011 to enable him to release his drifting passages of ambience, as well as highlighting other artists with a similar approach. His latest, Embrace Storms, numbered and limited to 150 copies and released in association with KrysaliSound, is a further variation on the theme of distance and dissolution.