experimental
Track: Gabriella Smith and Gabriel Cabezas’ ‘Lost Coast III’ brings the wonder, the awe and the anger at Californian climate change for cello and solo vocals
BOTH a composer whose place in the great American musical annals seems pretty much assured and a passionate environmentalist, Gabriella Smith is set to release an album at the end of this month in tandem with the renowned cellist Gabriel Cabezas, which seeks to capture in fine music the fire-borne destruction which has become a …
News: Tangents continue to explore beyond jazz and go double or quits with new album ‘Timeslips & Chimeras’; hear the propulsive electronica fusion of ‘Lilliputian’
WITH their last album release, last year’s Timeslips, finding itself somewhat hobbled by – c’mon, you know, it made us all stay in for months on end – the enigmatic Australian quartet Tangents have decided to go double or quits and are set to rerelease that most recent set in tandem with a new set …
See: The spectacular, cellular-level abstractions accompanying the slow beauty of amiina’s ‘Beacon’
WITH music this beautiful, it’s so very good to see them back: the Icelandic quartet amiina, who’ve been away for half a decade, have returned to the fray with the musically beautiful and visually spectacular new single, “Beacon”, which you can watch herein. The song is taken from the forthcoming Pharology EP, which the band …
See: c / a’s ‘THE PRIMER’: South London duo lead us further astray into generative audiovisual AI
LONDON audiovisual merry pranksters c / a aren’t quite like anyone you’ve encountered before. Nor me, for that matter. They’re operating in a highly conceptual sphere where AI, generative algorithms and light-touch flesh intervention are making music; there’s others creating out at this mind-bending edge, loosening the reins of human control – witness the video …
Track: Kevin Richard Martin shares the title track from his deeply eerie, forthcoming rescoring of the sci-fi classic, ‘Solaris’
KNOWN in the hallowed halls of dark electronica for his work as The Bug, King Midas Sound and others, when Kevin Richard Martin was offered a commission to write, record and perform a new score for a film of his choice by the Vooruit Arts Centre in Ghent, it’s perhaps not altogether a surprise that …
Track: Mind Maintenance – ‘Valence’: further cognitive hygiene for mbira and guimbri calls you to the hearth
WHEN Chicago rhythm section masters Chad Taylor and Joshua Abrams get together to play, you know the results will be intelligent, off-kilter, crisp; intuitive. The pair have worked together in the engine room on so, so many great and cred records down the past coupla decades, including for the Chicago Underground Trio and all its …
Premiere: Typical Sisters – ‘Recurring Memory’: a fraternal, jazzy post-rock groove teases for their third album
DESPITE being scattered across the globe, when the trio of musicians who comprise Typical Sisters get together, whether fraternally to catch up and spitball ideas, in the studio, or collaborating across the wires, they get a really intriguing jazzy post-rock thing going; crisply percussive, vamping with guitar, seeking and melodic, and still that important touch …
See: Bruno Bavota – ‘Apartment Loop #6’: a personal experience of lockdown captured in modular electronics
WE LOCKED the door; we waited. We waited, we combed the airwaves; we counted the days some more. The experience is nigh on universal, save those of you lucky enough to be reading in Taiwan, Christchurch, Auckland and elsewhere. Italy was caught by the pandemic earlier than many, and as it swept across the country, …
See: Mattia Cupelli – ‘EGERIA’: propulsive ambient darkwave goes down to the water
MATTIA CUPELLI, the Italian darkwave ambient composer, the cyclical, shadowy prayer call of whose “MONOLITH” we covered in these pages just over a week ago, has dropped another track, this time showcasing a more propulsive dark aesthetic. It’s called “EGERIA” and you can watch the video for it below. Built on the hard rock of …
Track: Pan Daijing – ‘Let 七月’: Guizhou performance artist reveals a more intimate but no less potently eerie side
PAN DAIJING is an uncompromising, sonically exploratory artist who hails from Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, in south central China. Her approach to her art is unbridled, bold, and straddles sound, installation, storytelling, choreography. Her raw approach as composer and performer takes many forms: sound, choreography, installation, and storytelling. Her 2017 album for Pan, …