Almost 20 years ago, Late Of The Pier were an exciting post-nu-rave band who injected synthesizer sparkiness into indie. They even had a Top 30 album. They were a breath of fresh air. One of their members, Sam Eastgate, went on to produce solo material as LA Priest. While electronically constructed, his output has often wandered into Moderat/James Blake territory. Which is to say, sensitive, falsetto-leaning singer-songwriter fare. But for album number four he’s amped up the bang factor.To assist him in this, his producer is Alex Ridha, AKA German EDM kingpin Boys Noize, a man who’s worked Read more ...

“My Lost One”, Materia’s second track, is remarkable. Exemplifying the Julia Holter ethos to the max, it begins wispily with interweaving rippling electric piano figures, a whispered, echoey vocal and slippery acoustic bass. Gradually, grandeur is assumed: a sonic architecture soaring into and beyond the clouds, and outwards into the wider cosmos.Despite the next track “Fantasy” having a similar, though much more brief exposition, nothing else on Materia is so strikingly consummated. The rest of the album is more muted, foggy, out of focus, restrained. Etiolated, even.Overall, Materia is line Read more ...

The key track gives the album its title. “Where the Fades Meet” opens with swelling strings, which are swiftly underpinned by groovy, shuffling, percussion. The lyrics are carried by a chorale singing of a “fading signal”, “stillness” and “shadows.” It seems to about what lies in the gaps between the perceivable. The melody has a vaguely eastern Mediterranean lilt. Overall, it leans into evoking an exotica-inclined Rotary Connection – the late-Sixties/early Seventies outfit that was a core influence on acid jazz.“Where the Fades Meet” is the sixth track on the seventh album – there has also Read more ...

The title “Tone Phase 1 for 2 Guitars & 4 Oscillators” is a giveaway, clearly indicating what’s going to be heard once the LP has landed on the record player. And, indeed, the first track on the second side of Eleh’s newly reissued Floating Frequencies / Intuitive Synthesis 1 seamlessly fuses single tones generated by electric guitars and analogue oscillators. However, what’s less apparent from taking in the title is the magnetic power exerted by the track during its translucent progress over ten minutes. Hypnotic.The same applies to what follows: the also-ten-minute “Tone Phase 2 for Read more ...

VINYL OF THE MONTHEd O’Brien Blue Morpho (Transgressive) Image The last thing theartsdesk on Vinyl thought it needed was a solo album from Radiohead’s guitarist but Blue Morpho, Ed O’Brien’s second album, spikes expectations. The opening “Incantations” is fab, a low-rolling, bongo-tastic thing hazed in mysticism, like a particularly stoned offcut from Plant & Page’s No Quarter project. The album was, apparently, a healing exercise for O’Brien, who was having brain doldrums. It feels that way, lightness touched with sadness, like that Read more ...

Shadows opens with “The Lone West,” a short, desolate instrumental featuring a simple keyboard refrain with a flute-like quality and what may be an early Seventies drum machine. There’s a bit of Young Marble Giants in there. The Brian Eno of Another Green World, too. The Ghost Box label’s characteristic nebulousness is also apparent.The next track features a vocal. Sailing over a similar musical bedding, Cate Kennan’s voice on “Shadows” is distant, etiolated, devoid of colour. A twangy guitar plays single notes. There is some Santo and Johnny-esque lap steel and sparingly used castanets. The Read more ...

Beginning with “The Ground Above” and closing with “Otherside”, there’s an ambient, otherwordly, disembodied feel to Beth Orton’s new album on Partisan Records, a follow-up to  2022’s self-produced Weather Alive, which had its own spectral, dreamlike airs. “The Ground Above” is voiced by one of those unsettled spirits that rise out of one the hoary old Murder Ballads, but here, Orton is disembodied “among the choirs of the gods”, “ecstatic as a mother’s love” and lusty too: “And you kissed me and I knew what I was for, And it wiped me out like chalk off of a board.”Her voice is worn and Read more ...

Admittedly, my journey into the strange world of IDM, electronica and ambient music has not been a complex one. Whilst finding Aphex Twin, Burial, Squarepusher and the other entry level artists that pioneered these genres, I more than once tried to venture further out, and stumbled across the now classic Music Has the Right to Children by Scottish duo Boards of Canada. Deep fulfilling synths, trudging rhythms and precise vocal chops and samples, the album defines what they do best, and now, 13 years since Tomorrow’s Harvest, Boards of Canada are back with the dark and twisted Read more ...

VINYL OF THE MONTH 1Simo Cell & Abdullah Diawy Dying is the Internet EP (Dekmantel) + Simo Cell FL Louis (TEMƎT) Image Where house music has drifted to conservatism, becoming predictable and dull, some electronic producers are still creating dancefloor-adjacent music that rips. One of the very best is French machine-freak Simo Cell. His wonked-out bangers defy definition. He’s been Vinyl of the Month before, with his Yes. DJ EP, back in 2021. These two new releases are also essential. The first, via Amsterdam’s Dekmantel organization, is Read more ...

“A rich and occasionally irritatingly gimmicky album…less perfectly realised than Autobahn, though there are some quite pretty tunes. People often charge electronic music with being ‘mechanical,’ confusing machines like clocks and other wind-up toys with devices which operate in ways more analogous to the human brain, which create quite different musical problems from, say, musical-boxes. What is wrong with Kraftwerk, however, is that their music is in fact mechanical, creating a contradiction between form and content which eventually destroys its artistic credibility and any hint of a soul Read more ...

Record Store Day 2025 is this Saturday! At theartsdesk on Vinyl we’ve been playing through exclusive RSD goodies. Check the reviews. Then check head to your local record shop! See you amongst it. I apologise for the lack of current pop, particularly female pop singers, both established and rising. I spent time chasing such material but none arrived. Our RSD Special, then, lacks this tasty sliver of seasoning, but is still extremely tasty. That aside, DIVE IN!THEARTSDESK ON VINYL’S CHOICEST CUT OF RECORD STORE DAY APRIL 2026Robert Plant with Suzi Dian Saving Grace: All That Glitters Read more ...

The pairing of Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands and Norwegian pop star Aurora sounds interesting but not, on paper, like the formula for something extraordinary. Tomora’s debut album kicks such presumptions to the kerbside. It feels like a project they both urgently need, a vital escape from their “day jobs” which they dive into with effervescent giddiness, whether embracing the android-ethereal or the thunderously bangin’.The Chemical Brothers’ last two albums have showcased a unit who, three decades into their ravey career, are still alive to the possibilities of electronic music, to pushing Read more ...