I have just set up this blog and wanted to do a brief recap so these reviews pretty much amount to a 2013 mid year roundup of cds that have jumped out for one reason or another…….
DJ Koze – Amygdala (Pampa Records)
DJ Koze is a man with a mission. He has just started his own label – Pampa Records – which has grown very quickly as a home to some of the most adventurous and fun loving German electronic artists. This, his first full length album since 2005, offers a supremely confident journey into the imagination of a quirky, humorous, wonderfully creative and dam funky electronic producer who obviously likes to see people dancing with a smile on their face.
The Besnard Lakes – Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO (Jagjaguwar)
Formed in 2003 by the husband and wife team of Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, indie rock band, The Besnard Lakes are from Quebec, Canada. Three of their four albums have been nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, and this, their fourth album explores the “story of the introspection of the human spirit during prophetic times featuring a spy or two, maybe more”, via the beguiling concoction of shoegaze, drifting atmospheres and harmony laden doo-wop they have become famous for. More subdued than their previous records this is an engrossing album that rewards repeated listening. A video for the album’s rockiest track, ‘People of The Sticks’ is well worth a look.
Lusine – The Waiting Room (Ghostly International)
American electronic producer Lusine explores an area that spans electronic pop and experimental electronica that results in music that has both a brain and a heart. The production is impeccable as each individual sound shimmers and sparkles throughout a cohesive album that includes widescreen atmospherics, guest vocalists (on exactly half of the ten tracks), warm and friendly beats and the excellent Detroit influenced slow burner ‘February’.
Darkstar – News From Nowhere (Warp Records)
It used to be brain fried rock bands that retreated to the countryside to ‘get their heads together’, so it was enticing to discover what a former hardcore dubstep duo would come up with after doing the same thing while listening to records like Robert Wyatt’s ‘Rock Bottom’ and The Beatle’s ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. The result is a surprisingly understated and captivating Warp release featuring poignant songs delivered via treated vocals underpinned by electronic textures, slow mo beats and sequencers. Warm, chilled and unashamedly lovely, this is an intriguing record that occupies a space somewhere between chillwave and ambient music.
Lapalux – Nostalchic (Ninja Tune)
The diversity of sub-genres that electronic music has produced is fascinating. Artists on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label tend to produce music built on fragments and microsamples from nu-soul and r‘n’b refracted through a contemporary experimental urban lens – which means that this labels’ releases can sometimes be a demanding listen. However, 25-year-old London producer, Stuart Howard, offers a respite with his loosely disordered version of chillwave, featuring guest vocalists to create a refined and subtle self-enclosed sound world that is often abstract, yet remains oddly comforting and extremely listenable.
Blue Hawaii – Untogether (Arbatus Records)
Blue Hawaii are a Canadian duo who create a take on post-modern pop strongly shaped by electronic music production techniques. These are wispy fragile breakup songs, produced using sounds usually found in genres such as minimal house, which inhabit a sensual, bewitching sound world, sparse and somber. Not especially joyous (the main theme is the end of a relationship), nevertheless this is precise, elegant and engrossing music that weaves a spell with it’s looped and layered vocals, electronic textures and restrained rhythms.
Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood – Black Pudding (Ipecac)
Mark Lanegan has been described as “the Tom Waits for the millennial generation” and this record goes a long way to substantiate that notion. His gravel voice has never been more gravelly on this release, for which he teams up with British multi-instrumentalist Duke Garwood to deliver a record of haunting and brooding alt-country. The alchemy is perfect as Garwood favors sparse, unobtrusive arrangements that give the songs plenty of room to breathe. The guitar playing is excellent and the songs are what one hopes for from the grizzled indie balladeer whose more upbeat songs have titles such as “Death Rides a White Horse”!
Sinner DC – Future That Never Happend (Mental Groove)
Sinner DC have been tucked away in Switzerland working on their unique version of post rock / electronica for the past 15 years. This is their fourth record and finds them fully realizing their “dance music for shoegazers”. They make moody music, predominantly instrumental; with most tracks being propelled by a metronomic 4/4 beat employing washed out guitar lines, hazy electronic atmospheres and the occasional half whispered vocals layered over the top. Atmospheric and textural, this is a sublime and compelling post-millennium, electronic based guitar driven sound without a solo to be heard.
Badd Energy – Underwater Pyramids (Flying Nun)
This new Flying Nun release from local international underground star Coco Solid’s side project is being hailed as NZ album of the year (so far) by some reviewers. This is quite a claim for a record that is little more than an EP – being just over 20min. long (the vinyl version is a 45rpm 12”). However this is such an original sound with so many ideas crammed into the nine short tracks that the claim is arguably justified. It is difficult to find any comparison for this 90’s roots hip hop meets psychedelic 60’s meets 80’s indie sound that sounds like neo pop transmitted from a parallel dimension.
Boards of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest (Warp Records)
The cult status that has grown around Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada has probably, in the long term, done them more harm than good. The unrealistically high expectations that attend such status, impossible to meet, often find artists beheaded on the critics chopping block. So it is great to witness these guys maintaining a low profile and, after an eight year gap since their last release, releasing their fourth record that is as impressive and quietly confident as anything they have ever done. Fans won’t be disappointed to find a characteristically slow moving sound world to explore – less sunny than before but, if anything, even more intriguing.
Stephan Mathieu & David Sylvian – Wandermude (Samadhisound)
A standout example of ambient music featuring German sound artist Stephan Mathieu reworking source material from David Sylvian’s 2004 release, ‘Blemish’. Created as an ambient accompaniment for an iPhone app designed to display Sylvian’s digital photographs, this beautifully produced work, created by passing the original guitar sounds through a processor with no editing or multi tracking, works equally well as a stand alone composition. This technique gives the pieces a warm and improvisational quality, welcome in the often cold edged, highly tweaked electronic music genre. Guitarist and electronics artist Christian Fennesz also contributes guitar to ‘Deceleration,’ the final song on the album.
Public Service Broadcasting – Inform-Educate-Entertain (Rough Trade)
The use of spoken word samples in music is not a fresh idea. Sampladelica, as the technique came to be known, is probably most famous from The Orb’s early 90’s hit ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’. However, London duo Public Service Broadcasting, breathe new life into the technique on their debut album which includes a variety of quaint, ironic and often humorous plummy British sound bites, culled largely from pre and post WW2 government propaganda films. Using beats, krautrock influenced guitar riffs and even, on one track, a banjo, PSB offer more than just a novelty record with their entertaining, clever and often danceable historical perspective.
William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops (2062)
Originally released in 2002, William Basinski’s strange and haunting sonic experiment has attained legendary status as a metaphor for the dissolution of the American dream. Listening to an hour long recording of a single looped sample gradually disintegrating into a barely audible static hiss may not sound like everyone’s idea of a good night out but this CD offers an audio experience quite unlike any other – recommended.
Bibio – Silver Wilkinson (Warp Records)
British producer Stephen Wilkinson grew up with a keen interest in both electronic and folk music and successfully spans these genres with his gently skewed ‘electro folk’ releases as Bibio. His sixth album ‘Silver Wilkinson’, released on Warp Records, finds him fine tuning his sound which sits nicely alongside other recent Warp releases such as Darkstar’s ‘News From Nowhere’. Successfully balancing the pastoral and the digital, this is warm optimistic music, sweet without being cloying, which still offers an element of surprise.
Beck – Song Reader : Twenty New Songs by Beck (Youthless)
Beck’s latest release, ‘Song Reader’ is a beautiful artifact with possibly the most elaborate packaging you have ever seen – with one crucial difference – there is no cd included – no vinyl either – and nope, not even a cassette. Yep, that’s right; Beck has released an album without having actually recorded any of the songs! In what is a highly creative approach to the challenges currently facing the music industry, Beck has decided to take popular music right back to the roots and created ‘Song Reader’ as a beautifully packaged collection of sheet music featuring 20 new songs, each illustrated by a different artist paying loving tribute to the hey day of sheet music (sales of which created the first top 40). So to actually hear the songs you have to play them yourself. Alternatively you can go to www.songreader.net where you can hear hundreds of versions of each song uploaded by keen fans from all around the world. Genius.
a sound notion 