experimental
Album Review: Sarah Davachi – ‘Antiphonals’
Sarah Davachi is a composer and performer who, like fellow keyboardists Ana Roxanne or Anna Von Hausswollf, relentlessly navigates the tidal intersections between electronic and drone music. As an artist she has serious collaborative credentials, having worked with such luminaries as Basinski, Grouper, Donald Buchla and Loren Connors, but since 2018 Davachi has focused more …
Album review: Cahill/Costello – ‘Offworld’: contemplative dubspace, ambient and post-rock shimmer that steps gloriously out of time
KEVIN DANIEL CAHILL and Graham Costello, guitarist and drummer respectively, first set off on the path that would lead to them wedding as a musical act with an oblique and rapturous aesthetic when they met at Glasgow’s prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, at which Kevin was pursuing a classical music education and Graham, jazz; they …
Album review: Bruno Bavota – ‘For Apartments: Songs And Loops’: protection against those days of lockdown in warm piano vignette and glorious modular sweep
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, …
New Music: Imaginary Number – YUKUWHT001 EP
Before we kick off with the first vinyl only release from Yuku, here is a little info on one of my new favorite labels that’s hitting it out the park with their Bass, IDM, Experimental, Down Tempo, Drum and Bass. YUKU is a record store, label, gallery, and exploratory space located in Žižkov, Prague. Brimming …
Album review: Maarja Nuut – ‘Hinged’: percussive and playful, free as a bird future folktronica from Estonian genius
BORN in Rakvere, a small town in the very north of Estonia, a handful of miles from the Baltic Sea, the experimental musician Maarja Nuut was first introduced to music by her mother, a choir conductor, which opened up a world which would become her métier. Aged 7 she began taking violin lessons, studying at the Tallinn …
See: Rachika Nayar explores the brittle, fleeting beauty of looped guitars on ‘clarity’ ahead of her EP for RVNG Intl
HERE at Backseat Mafia, we’ve loved the brittle, pretty guitar experimenta of New York’s Rachika Nayar for a good while; check our write-ups for a brace of single drops from her album for NNA Tapes at the beginning of the year, the otherworldly fire of “Losing Too Is Still Ours” and the potency of “The …
Album Review: Murena Murena- Take Care of Me
Some records take a few spins to sink in. Like a good book or a good film, the true personality of the work exists in layers: sometimes they are layers of interpretation, other times they are simply layers of sound or images. Given that Daniel Murena is a soundtrack composer, it’s no surprise that his …
Track: Slip inside the gorgeous, dubby blur of ‘The Visitant’ as Scottish ambient duo Cahill/Costello announce an enthralling debut album
KEVIN DANIEL CAHILL and Graham Costello, guitarist and drummer respectively, first set off on the path that would lead to them wedding as a musical act with an oblique and rapturous aesthetic when they met at Glasgow’s prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, at which Kevin was pursuing a classical music education and Graham, jazz; they …
See: Sølyst brings a playful, fractured machine-dub-pop with ‘Hold’ ahead of his August album
THOMAS KLEIN, otherwise drummer for the fine post- and krautrock rhythmic venturers Kriedler, also has a natty occasional sideline as Sølyst, wearing which hat he strides out with an album every year or three; August’s Spring will be his fourth album in eleven years, and collates together recordings he’s made over the past three. Not …
Track: Swiss post-rock trio HOLM bring the shimmer and the dapple to ‘Flickering Leaves’: a second, impressionistic step towards their 2022 album
WITH a months-long concept of dropping one single track every month on the pilgrimage towards their 2022 album, Swiss post-rock trio HOLM have followed up the cinematic and metronomic wash of May’s “Our Days And Years” with a second station of the cross for you to sonically supplicate before, “Flickering Leaves”, which we’ve got right …