electronica
Thomas H. Green
Canadian DJ-producer Philippe Aubin-Dionne – AKA Jacques Greene – has had a successful career in global clubland. One release in particular, his spacey 2011 deconstruction of the song “Deuces” by R&B star Ciara, which he entitled “Another Girl”, created waves in the world of house music. His 2017 album Feel Infinite demonstrated he had vision enough to hold listeners on a longer electronic journey. Dawn Chorus steps forward likeably from that set.It is an album that’s all about mood, rather than songs, although there are vocals here and there. The lead single, the lazily acidic “Night Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Prior to the UK dance music explosion of summer 1988, house and techno were American micro-scenes, geographically restricted to Chicago, Detroit and New York. Small coteries showed interest in the UK, but few thought of making the stuff. Mancunian producers 808 State, however, were early adopters, recording an album that year and later charting with iconic 1989 hit “Pacific State”, a futuristic, Balearic instrumental. 30 years on, their seventh album is both forward-looking and a tribute to old analogue technologies.808 State, once a four-piece, is now the duo of long-term members Graham Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s reckoned that this time next year vinyl sales will have overtaken CDs. It’s still a small market and anyone who thinks vinyl will one day replace streaming is living on Planet Lah-lah. There’s so much coming out even theartsdesk on Vinyl cannot review it all, but what we can do is devote 7500 words to what grabs our attention. We are not limited by genre or by new vs reissue. We eat it all up and want more. So check below for the juice on what’s out there. Dive on.VINYL OF THE MONTHMambo Noir Trio Mambo Noir Trio (Oona)If you see the name Matti Bye on anything, check it out. His 2017 Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Since the mid-2000s, Anders Trentemøller has been a major part of the European live circuit. A long time indie rock musician in his native Copenhagen, he had actually come to prominence as a fairly commercial electro-house remixer, but it was his 2006 album The Last Resort that cemented his position. Blending a subtler version of his dance production tricks with British shoegaze guitars and a bleak and eerie widescreen sweep, it was the perfect encapsulation of a particular kind of Nordic noir aesthetic: hints of dark doings in bleak forests and the cold sublime of unpopulated Read more ...
Owen Richards
The Shock of the Future is for anyone who's watched a music biopic and thought "that's not how it works!" Directed and co-written by Marc Collin of Nouvelle Vague fame, it's perhaps the most realisitic film about recording music ever made. But as anyone who's ever been in the studio will tell you, the legends are much more exciting than the reality.Alma Jodorwsky plays Ana, an aspiring synth wave sensation. She spends her day (which takes up the entire length of the film) in a friend's flat that she's sitting, along with his huge collection of synthesisers, keyboards and recording equipment. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On a first pass, The Practice of Love seems to be an electropop album in thrall to trance music’s tropes: the synth wash, repeated musical phrases, a whooshy programmed percussive pulse, an otherworldly atmosphere. But the lyrics invite further inspection. On the first track “Lions”, a narrator invites the listener to look at grass and trees, ants on the ground, flowers, mushrooms. “Study this, and ask yourself where is God? This place doesn’t know, this place doesn’t care...[it’s]…whispering a pagan song.”As The Practice of Love moves beyond its opener, trance remains the musical template Read more ...
Owen Richards
According to Metronomy maestro Joseph Mount, his first attempt of album number six was a much snappier affair. But it wasn’t until he broke from his self-imposed immediacy that it started connecting with him. In its final form, Metronomy Forever clocks in at 17 tracks of singles, instrumentals and soundscapes, and though it skirts close to double-album indulgence, you’re never more than one song away from a winner.The title Metronomy Forever refers to the never-ending nature of radio, and this airwave-skipping mindset has given Mount a toy box of genres and forms to play with. The preceding Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the latest edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl, the monthly online musical resource that knows no genre boundaries as it treks through every release on plastic that it can find. This time round we’ve everything from death metal to obscure jazz to electropop, sounds for almost every musical taste. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHDona Onete Rebujo (Maid Um)Known as the “Grande Dame of Amazonian song” Dona Onete, now 80, only recorded her first album at 73. She’s now a sensation in her home country of Brazil. She’s seen as representing the country’s minority peoples and is as much a folk Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The thing about Wilderness is that it’s just so jolly decent. Acres of decadence, sprawled safely over the yawning magnificence of Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, combine to create a scintillating country fair reverie – a heady mix of good music, high end food, luxury outdoorsyness and companionable folk.Yes, their fashion choices might be bold, but there is no one here who isn’t game for a laugh, or on hand to help out a neighbour. Plus you’re far more likely to be worried about their judgement of how fine your wine is than whether or not they’ve nicked your camping cooker.Revellers have Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As this month’s edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl appears the sun is blazing outside, a heatwave hits, and our record collections must hide in the shadows or warp. Yet still we want more to join them in their sheltered rows and where better to seek the greatest new releases than the longest, most complete monthly round-up of new vinyl releases. As ever, we run the gamut. This time there’s everything from grunge to soul to trap to Qawwali and a whole lot more most of us never imagined could exist. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHQasim Naqvi Teenages (Erased Tapes)Teenages, latest album from New York Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Club music has its own micro-universe, with its own rules, jargon, and fans. It also has globe-trotting stars most people have never heard of. Much of the music is functional, to be danced to at 3.00 AM on MDMA, no more, no less, unconcerned with the usual structures and frameworks of rock and pop. In this world, Hot Since 82 is a kingpin.Yorkshire DJ-producer Daley Padley adopted the Hot Since 82 moniker seven years ago and has made a name for himself since, DJing all over the world. He released an album in 2013 and has fired out many tunes and remixes since, garnering multi-millions of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Thom Yorke is frontman of Radiohead, a festival-headlining rock band who sell out stadiums all over the globe. His artistic aspirations, however, right back to Radiohead’s Kid A album 19 years ago, often seem to lie elsewhere, in the world of glitching, otherworldly electronica. He’s had mixed success in this area but with last year’s soundtrack to Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Suspiria he finally nailed it. Anima proves that album was no fluke.This is Yorke’s third solo album (excluding the soundtrack), and where its predecessors attempted, sometimes awkwardly, to staple classic song Read more ...