electronica
Electro Anthro Visceral Intensity, The Amersham ArmsThursday, 05 September 2013
It's always nice when musical events of an overtly academic bent are taken away from the academy: when high-falutin' or exploratory music is made to stand on its own. All right, this show demonstrating new technical innovations by musicians... Read more... |
CD: múm – SmilewoundWednesday, 28 August 2013
The last album released by Iceland’s múm was Early Birds, an archive trawl from 2012 which unearthed previously unheard material recorded between 1998 and 2000. Before that was 2009’s Sing Along to Songs You Don't Know. Smilewound is a comeback, and... Read more... |
CD: Julia Holter - Loud City SongSaturday, 24 August 2013
This is an incredibly hard album to work out. One major clue comes, though, with its second track, “Maxim's 1”, the backing for which is a dead ringer for a lost track from Cocteau Twins's 1990 Heaven or Las Vegas album. Not that any of the rest of... Read more... |
CD: Soft Metals - LensesMonday, 29 July 2013
A disembodied, wispy female voice declares “this is not true”, the only emotion left a resignation so acute she may as well be contemplating her imminent demise. On Soft Metals’ “Tell me”, her deliberation is accompanied by electronic music drawing... Read more... |
theartsdesk preview: Tauron Nowa Muzyka Festival, Katowice, PolandWednesday, 24 July 2013
The city of Katowice in Upper Silesia, Poland, was once an epic industrial hub on the western edge of the Soviet bloc. It was a gigantic centre for coal and steel that was awesome in scale. Those days are long gone yet it seems fitting that one of... Read more... |
CD: E.m.m.a. - Blue GardensMonday, 22 July 2013
“Formulaic” is all too frequently used pejoratively in reviews – but from minuets to minimalism, Bo Diddley to drum'n'bass, finding a formula that works and sticking to it has produced some of the finest music in human history. Liverpool-born... Read more... |
CD: Fuck Buttons - Slow FocusWednesday, 17 July 2013
Drawing connections between the far margins and the relative mainstream always leaves you in a difficult position, as it invites judgement from different groups with very different criteria. And the duo of Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power put... Read more... |
CD: Snow Ghosts - A Small MurmurationSunday, 14 July 2013
Somewhere round about 10 years ago the concept of “folktronica” settled down to become a relatively stable area of music. Fringe its appeal may have generally been, but it incubated some major talents who are still making great music, and for better... Read more... |
Thundercat, XOYOThursday, 11 July 2013
When The Golden Age of Apocalypse, the first LP by Stephen Bruner, the American musician better known as Thundercat, was released in 2011, it was a revelation. Co-produced by Flying Lotus and taking its cues from electronica, prog, pop and funk... Read more... |
Tunng, The LexingtonWednesday, 10 July 2013
When Tunng started out in 2005, they were a peculiar proposition. Treading a fine line between Heath Robinson ramshackle and meticulous high-tech, ancient and hyper-modern, bone percussion and glitchy electronic sparkles, they certainly deserved the... Read more... |
CD: Maya Jane Coles - ComfortMonday, 01 July 2013
The part-Japanese Brit Maya Jane Coles displays elaborate asymmetric hair, interesting piercings and enormous tattoos in her moody photoshoots, makes sounds that are uniformly smooth and high-gloss, and has a sonic palette that takes in populist... Read more... |
CD: Tunng - TurbinesWednesday, 12 June 2013
News that Tunng were releasing a fifth album came as a bit of a surprise, given band founder and frontman Mike Lindsay’s recent relocation to Iceland (and subsequent reinvention as Cheek Mountain Thief). Of course nobody ever said that the band was... Read more... |
