drone
News/Track/Video: Felipe Vaz – ‘The Well Frozen Piano’: inspirational connections with the La Monte Young masterpiece.
For Difficult Art And Music’ s latest intriguing release, Brazilian sound artist Felipe Vaz presents ‘The Well Frozen Piano’. A reconnection with American experimentalist La Monte Young’s seminal sixties centrepiece ‘The Well -Tuned Piano’, Vaz here explores both the intention and the internal workings of the original, seeking the spirit of ‘endless music’. Rarely ‘performed’ …
Track: Death Grips delivers ‘Life is an experiment’ from ‘Remix The Universe’, new perspectives on Scratch’s last offering.
It’s inevitable that the mercurial genius of Lee Scratch Perry will live on both in spirit and in some physical form. Dial back to November 2021 when the legendary Upsetter performed as inspirational touchstone on New Age Doom’s ‘Guide To The Universe’, the album that unexpectedly became his parting shot. Perry’s wisdom, fearless flair and …
Track/Video: DAAM announce ‘bivouac of the avant-garde’, a stunning three part excursion through experimental soundscapes.
What makes for the best small labels? A clear identity, enthusiastic curation, independence and endurance are good for starters. Well Difficult Art And Music (DAAM) gives you all of these plus heaps of creative ambition. Focusing steadfastly on the experimental and specialising as they say in ‘short-run, research-orientated, art-objects’ DAAM releases come as music tapes, …
Album Review: Jessica Moss – Galaxy Heart: art-rock atmospheres with an enduring soul.
What will we think of lock down records when we listen back to them in years to come? Introspective music from a time of looking inwards because the outside world just stood still? Or maybe there was more space to dream, to take more risks, to break free from constraints because everything ahead was unknown. …
Album Review: Steve Bates – All The Things That Happen: Elemental sounds for a wild world.
Some ‘ambient music’ can often come across as ambivalent, leaving the listener floating but uncommitted, relaxed but possibly underwhelmed. ‘All The Things That Happen’, the debut solo album from Canadian musician and sound artist Steve Bates (available from Constellation 23rd September), could superficially pick up the broad ambient tag except this fine record gouges out …
Track/Video: Electronic explorer Steve Bates previews his avalanche of sound with ‘Destroy the palace’ from soon-come album ‘All The Things That Happen’
Steve Bates, Canadian musician and sound/video artist, has the biography of someone restlessly in pursuit of possibilities. His background as a key figure in the Winnipeg anarcho-punk community through the 80s to explorer of more avant/experimental territories over the past decade has been expressed through an evolving catalogue of music, curation and art works. Probably …
Meet: Inspirational electro-acoustic saxophonist Jason Sharp ahead of his upcoming UK/Eu solo tour.
You might have missed saxophonist Jason Sharp’s elemental and elevating album ‘The Turning Centre Of The Still World’ released as it was at the backend of the pandemic in August last year. His third release for Montreal’s mighty Constellation label marked an emboldened exploration of his craft, melding his sax playing with electronics using his …
Album review: Matchess’s ‘Sonescent’: an irresistible flow of experimental, meditative drone recollection and conscious absence
WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums that explore gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound as Matchess for a number of years now. She began in 2015 with the downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic stakes. Since that blissful …
Album review: Die Wilde Jagd – ‘Atem’: a dark, occluding drone masterwork
DIE WILDE JAGD – it translates as “The Wild Hunt”, Anglophones, which will surely be the only possible connection to Swedish troubadour The Tallest Man on Earth we shall ever explore – is the sonic project of producer and songwriter Sebastian Lee Philipp. Across three albums from 2015’s self-titled debut, through 2018’s Uhrwald Orange and …
See: Matchess invites us to embrace meditative drone and transcend the flesh in the practise of ‘Almost Gone (Excerpt)’
WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums exploring really gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound for a number of years now as Matchess. Her journey in this guise began in 2015 with the downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic …