Avant-garde
See: Hyunhye Seo of Xiu Xiu announces her debut solo album, ‘Strands’; watch the video for the amniotic dronespace of the title track
HYUNHYE SEO is an artist you may know better in a slightly different nomenclatural iteration as Angela Seo, one half of hypnogogic techno experimentalists Xiu Xiu. But she’s branched out with her first, forthcoming solo release for Lawrence English’s excellent Room40 imprint, in which she keeps the wash and blur of her parent band’s dreamscape …
See: The surreally beautiful Arctic visuals for Matt Evans’ ‘Arcto 2’: an exploration of loss and grief in drone and piano evocation
THE LOSS of a life partner, an intimate; for many of us an unimaginable experience, and one that words would fail to convey, either in the expression of or the condolences to the mourning. Multi-instrumentalist and composer Matt Evans was left devastated by the death of his partner, Devra Freelander; and as the composer of the …
Album review: Tomas Nordmark – ‘Exit Ghosts’: electronic landscapes that move from the amniotic to the apocalyptic
LIVING these days in London, but hailing originally from the small Swedish coastal town of Västervik, some 280km further down the coast from Stockholm, Tomas Nordmark is a electronica producer and soundscaper with a very complex and organic musical vision. His interest in the sonic avant-garde was brooked by the 1960s’ art scene in New …
Track: Masayoshi Fujita – ‘Morocco’: audiophile, jazzy, ambient brilliance on Erased Tapes
A MUSICIAN who deals with a nuanced ambient beauty that audiophiles should surely treasure, and to my mind lining up alongside fellow countrymen Ryuichi Sakamato and Chihei Hatekeyama in making music not only of a bewitching delicacy, but with a really empathetic understanding of sound in space, Masayoshi Fujita is set to release a new …
News: Yann Tiersen announces an album for August, ‘Kerber’; see the video for a first track, ‘Ker Al Loch’
BRETON composer Yann Tiersen, the man behind the soundtrack for Amélie and Good Bye Lenin! and modern classical genius has announced he is to release a new album, Kerber, for Mute on August 27th, for which there’ll be a few lovely limited vinyl options (see below); and it comes with a first taster today, with …
Track: Dau – ‘Zed Zed’: the warm purity of string-driven ambient drone, new on Spirituals
A MEMBER of rather fine instrumental quartet yndi halda alongside James Vella, whose album Sleep Through The Storm under his A Lily persona we received rapturously last October, Phil Self has emerged with a forthcoming mini-album of corresponding beauty and bliss under the moniker Dau, due out next month. Whereas A Lily played with contemplative …
News: Liars return with an August album for Mute; come bathe in the subterranea of ‘Sekwar’
LIARS have always been a pretty unique presence in our musical landscape, gnawing and needling away at the bones of rock as the whole edifice collapses, from right back when they presented that noise-rock concept album about witchcraft, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, jeez, 17 years back now. Never mind always finding them in …
Track: Mind Maintenance – ‘The Ladder’: Chicago legends Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor bring percussive African contemplation
IF YOU’RE at all a follower of the Chicago music scene that erupted in so many directions back at the turn of the century, then the rhythmic adepts Chad Taylor and Joshua Abrams will probably need no introduction; given how, they were so deeply woven into intelligent, seminal albums by the Chicago Underground Trio and all its various …
Album review: UNKNOWN ME – ‘BISHINTAI’: a delightful, candy-coloured ambient trip
BISHINTAI is a delightful album, candy-colour bright, beamed from some offworld where fantastic cuboid furniture and hanging egg chairs are the norm; it will add a little brain-clearing wasabi to the most humdrum and dun day. If you’ve ever swooned for the Sushi 3003 and 4004 compilations; for Air at their most “Sexy Boy” cosmic and and most especially definitely, the bright retro-futurism of The Gentle People – then boy, is this album ever for you
JJJJJerome Ellis signs to NNA Tapes and shares the infinite music of ‘Fountain #3’
Composer, translator, poet, and performer, JJJJJerome Ellis has signed for Brooklyn’s curating imprint of the beautifully leftfield, NNA Tapes (a label which is also home to other artists we’ve delighted in in recent months, such as the absolutely gorgeous piano-meets-sounds of the world as it is aesthetic of Ben Seretan, and the brittle guitar experimenta …