electronic albums
Album Review: Sailor & I – The Invention of Loneliness
It’s been a few years since Sailor & I unleashed his amazing debut track ‘Tough Love’, a song so unlike anything else around at the time, or now. It was bold, moody, and original. He’s had a few tracks out since then, but the debut album has been a long time coming; too long coming. …
Album Review: Ulrich Schnauss & Jonas Munk – Passage
The newest collaboration between Ulrich Schnauss and Jonas Munk, titled simply Passage, is a heady mix of intellectual ambient and euphoric electronic. You get Schnauss’ synths layered with Munk’s liquid guitar lines, sometimes with drum programming and sometimes on their own. The result is a complex and engaging record that offers the best both musicians …
Album Review: Tycho – Epoch
Tycho, essentially the project of Berkley, CA producer Scott Hansen, have just released their new album,’Epoch’. There’s always question marks about music of this kind as to when it stops being music you concentrate on, and becomes background noise – music to cook to, or have dinner parties to, or soundtrack some creative or building …
Album Review: Ventenner- Invidia
In a whirlwind of genre bending paired with an undeniably forceful core sound, Ventenner are ready to release their third album Invidia. With this extremely bold outing, Ventenner have developed their own take on the execution of a heavier, more aggressive piece that overshadows anything they have released prior to this. Invidia- released January 20th– …
Album Review: Wojciech Golczewski – End Of Transmission
Just when you think you’ve got the year in music all wrapped up with a nice, decorative bow an album pops out from the great ether and grabs you by the lapels and says “You’re not done yet, pal!” That album for me is Wojciech Golczewski’s End Of Transmission. Golczewski is a film composer that …
Album Review: Battery Operated Orchestra – Radiation
Initially out in September, we hang our heads in shame that it took us until now to discover and write about Battery Operated Orchestras second album, Radiation. Much as you’d be right to be wary of well-turned-out folk touting synths these days (by now Half Man Half Biscuit’s Adam Boyle will have further ditched the …
Album Review: analogue creatures living on an island – Immersion
The ambient project of Wire’s Colin Newman (along with his partner Malka Spigel from Minimal Compact) has been in existence since 1994, and after a hiatus of seventeen years, Immersion is back. Pre-album release track ‘Fireflys’ is a beautiful, hypnotic vortex of arpeggios and repetitive synth loops, rising and falling and washing over the listener. …
Album Review: Brad Laner – Micro-Awakenings
Brad Laner is one of the most creative musical minds you’ve probably never heard of. He’s a California guy that’s been deep in the experimental music scene since the mid-80s. From cassette excursions with Debt of Nature and Steaming Coils, to the monumental noise pop provocateurs Medicine in the late 80s and early 90s, to …
Album Review: Cellophane Garden – Illuminations
When you think of a musician holed up in the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas creating music amongst those storied wooded hills, the sound that comes to mind is a particular one. That sound probably isn’t of the atmospheric and spatial variety, but more of the old time-y, bluegrass variety. In fact spatial, atmospheric, dreamy, and …
Album Review: Ashley Bellouin – Ballads
After the needle drops on Ashley Bellouin’s debut album titled Ballads you know right away this isn’t going to be a sappy collection of odes to lovers and significant others. The pastoral drone of harmonium, glass armonica, and other assorted spectral toys hit your ears and seem to open a portal that leads into some …