electronica
Chris Harvey
For the past decade, Victoria Park in east London has been host to the Field Day and Lovebox festivals, both homegrown and both still growing in size and influence. Last year’s headliners included rare appearances from Aphex Twin (Field Day) and Frank Ocean (Lovebox), bringing huge crowds to this vast and beautiful Victorian lung. This year, however, both were outbid and unceremoniously booted out to search for pastures new when the American organisers of Coachella decided to set up a new London festival.All Points East, a 10-day event, spread over two successive long weekends, boasts Read more ...
joe.muggs
Ryuichi Sakamoto has conquered underground and mainstream with seeming ease over four decades, never dropping off in the quality of his releases. Indeed his most recent projects, following his return to public life after treatment for throat cancer in 2014-15, are among his best. The async album was rightly listed by many, including theartsdesk, as one of 2017's best; the async remodels remixes showed him absolutely keyed in to the electronica zeitgeist, and Glass, his live collaboration album with Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto is a worthy addition to the duo's extensive Read more ...
joe.muggs
Everything on this record changes shape. One moment in “RayCats” Far Eastern instrumentation is being glitched beyond recognition, then suddenly it sounds like something from a relaxation tape. “Same” shimmers and twists between 20th century avant-classical, Depeche Mode at their stadium peak and pure electronic sound. “The Station” sounds like Drake or Future crooning over the bassline from a 90s grunge track, but periodically dissolves into Autechre type abstraction.But that's Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, all over. Since he emerged from the US electronic noise scene, he's Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The welcome to Glasgow audio-visual artist Robbie Thomson’s performance engenders a hefty sense of anticipation. It’s almost nervousness-inducing as we’re handed ear-plugs and warned about how very loud it’s going to be. Then, walking into the main hall from the bar, all is gloom. From 1849, for a century-and-a-half, this venue was a church and attached school, its claim to fame a dismissive mention in Jane Eyre. But this evening the stained glass windows are blacked out, blocking the evening sun. In the centre of the old building is a Faraday cage beside which, on a raised podium, Thomson is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There have been reports that as many as 50% of vinyl-buyers don’t actually listen to it. They keep records as a token of affection for the artist in question. This seems curious but, then again, most young people don’t own turntables and the idea is anathema to the way they consume music. However, while there’s a healthy market in reissues and older artists, the most cutting edge music imaginable is appearing on plastic. Check out our Vinyl of the Month! All musical life is reviewed below. You won’t find a more thorough and expansive set of monthly record reviews: theartsdesk on Vinyl is a Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Throughout their career, James Ford and Jas Shaw have proved themselves to be nothing if not versatile. From the subtly swirling psychedelia of Simian, to the various dancefloor shapes they’ve thrown as Simian Mobile Disco.On their last album, 2016’s Welcome to Sideways, the pair presented a collection of tracks that showed talented producers being talented at production. It was an engaging enough listen, but felt, at times, punishingly functional. Of course, in many ways, that’s dance music’s raison d'être – the clue’s in the name and the feet are on the floor. It’s the rhythm, the pulse, Read more ...
mark.kidel
Jon Hopkins navigates the territory between avant-garde electronic and beat-driven dance music with brilliance. There’s plenty here to make you want to get up and move, but as much to persuade you lie down and let the symphony of textures and timbres open you ears and take you on an inner adventure.Hopkins claims that his 2013 album “Immunity” was an MDMA trip, while this new one evokes the rollercoaster of an out-and-out psychedelic experience. Hardly surprising then that this isn’t a party album, and even less background music. While there are moments of irresistible sweetness and stillness Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s a regular problem with techno albums. The DJ-producers who make them are usually so deeply embedded in club techno that when it comes to making a long-form collection, leaving the dancefloor and showcasing variety, they’re incapable. What, to them, sounds like a sonic adventure, to the rest of us sounds like a series of four-to-the-floor bangers that, after a couple, grows quickly monotonous, however good they’d have sounded at 3am in strobe-strafed Belgian warehouse darkness.Holland-living Brit Oliver Way, however, has some success evading this particular curse. Way, after all, has Read more ...
Barney Harsent
This Saturday marks Record Shop Day, when Midas-touch music execs turn car-boot staples into gold simply by re-releasing them and charging 30 quid for the pleasure. Normally, the pressing-plant backlog that these needless, gaudy trinkets cause means that new music, typically that put out by innovative artists on small independent labels, gets moved to the back of the queue so that the big fat kids can get their dinner first.Thankfully, Sonic Cathedral has managed to sneak in early and are releasing this expanded version of Mark Peters' mini-cassette album the day before, on Friday, April 20. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Can you find a more extensive and comprehensive rundown of monthly vinyl releases than theartsdesk on Vinyl? We can’t. But then we would say that. Don’t believe us, though; below we surf punk, techno, film soundtracks, folk, major label boxset retrospectives, avant-garde electronica, pop, R&B and tons more. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHBelako Render Me Numb, Trivial Violence (Belako)Basque four-piece Belako create the most exciting new version of indie rock that theartsdesk on Vinyl has heard in a long while. In fact, it’s belittling to term it "indie" for this is a galloping hybrid that Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The last we heard of US duo Daphne & Celeste was 18 years ago, when they made their name with three hits, notably the nursery-rhyme playground chant bitch-offs “U.G.L.Y.” and “Ohh Stick You”. They famously performed under a hail of bottles at Reading Festival in 2000, then disappeared, going on to peripheral film-acting careers. Max Tundra, an alt-tronic artist who is released on vanguard labels such as Warp and Domino, now engineers a comeback for this millennial, tween-pop pairing. On paper, this is a great, original idea. Upon listening, it’s partly successful.Mostly gone is Daphne Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There was a hint of what was to come in Gwenno Saunders’ debut, Y Dydd Olaf. It was, for the most part, a Welsh-language affair, save for the closing track “Amser”, a song sung in Cornish and the album’s dizzying slow dazzle. For her follow-up, Le Kov, Gwenno has chosen to record an entire album in this Brythonic language that has, in recent times, gamely rallied itself from UNESCO-declared death.Le Kov, then, exists as a document of a living language, albeit one that the majority of listeners will have no working knowledge of. In order to make real sense of the songs, we have to do the Read more ...