electronica
Kieron Tyler
The immediate reaction to Close to the Noise Floor is “Why hasn’t anyone done this before?” This new four-disc set’s subtitle captures its objective in a nutshell: to collect Formative UK Electronica 1975–1984 – excursions in proto-synth pop, DIY techno and ambient exploration. While the stars include Blancmange, John Foxx, Throbbing Gristle and the big cult names Bourbonese Qualk, Legendary Pink Dots and Instant Automatons feature, the less well-knowns Sea of Wires, We be Echo and Muslimgauze are also collected.Close to the Noise Floor sets the moody electropop of Spöön Fazer’s previously Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Without wishing to repeat myself, small venues almost always work best. The intimacy they offer heightens emotion and increases impact while breaking down the barrier between artist and audience. There's a mathematical consideration, too – fewer people means fewer antisocial arseholes no matter which way you divide it. And so I find myself back in East Kent’s best venue, among some of Ramsgate's most upstanding, to see the swirling, melodic storm of Berlin/London duo The KVB. First though, there’s the surprisingly engaging prospect of support band M!R!M.Also a duo, M!R!M create a haunting Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Before the resurgence in vinyl, and the resultant pursuit of audiophile perfection on pointlessly expensive sound systems, was the musician’s fetish for vintage equipment and analogue synths. Live, this makes sense: sounds go direct into the audience's ear, air its only conduit. After the painstaking pathway that most recorded music has to take – downloaded onto a phone and compressed to flux through headphones made entirely out of snidely weighted plastic reputations – you wonder why they’d bother. Generator, the second album from Berlin-based producer Rodion, shows exactly why, boasting a Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's an area in American music that is oddly under-reported given its scale. Somewhere between the garish mania of mainstream dance music, “EDM”, and the cool cachet of more underground sounds is a kind of “festival electronica”: very musical, often subtle and sophisticated, acts detached from nightclubs and often far more visible on the live circuit, where lasers and LED displays create epic backdrops for their sound. Acts like Tycho, Pretty Lights, Ratatat and British export Bonobo have, mostly through hard touring, built highly lucrative careers, and increasingly form a layer within the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Once upon a time, techno was the future, and Orlando Voorn was right at the heart of building that future. The Dutchman was in early on the late-1980s wave of Detroit electronic production – in which small groups of black Americans surrounded by decaying industry drew the natural link between Kraftwerk and funk, filled themselves with equal quantities of utopian and dystopian visions, and set a blueprint that would irrevocably alter the sound of music worldwide. Indeed, he worked with and for many of Detroit's finest, and his tracks were very often some of the most stunningly beautiful of the Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After the release of 2006’s Barking, it was difficult to know what to make of Underworld. A couple of decent songs aside, collaboration seemed to have stripped away identity, leaving us with sketches on which a host of different producers had scribbled with their own, vivid, Crayola colours. For a band whose strength had been found in the album format, this was an unwelcome volte-face. Six years on, Rick Smith and Karl Hyde are back, but is Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future a return we should welcome with open arms?Early indications are certainly promising. “I Exhale” slaps us Read more ...
joe.muggs
The career of the Gran Canaria-born musician Pablo Díaz-Reixa seems to work in an accelerated time-frame, speeding through decades and eras as he develops his sound. Though he has always worked with digital technology, his early work sounded archaic, its massed carnival percussion and traditional melodies roaming around the Afro-Latin diaspora.Then, on 2008's Pop Negro, he embraced modernism, albeit still with a retro twist, rigorously examining and adopting the high-gloss production and songwriting techniques of the biggest mainstream American and Latino pop acts of the mid-1970s to mid-'90s Read more ...
mark.kidel
Tricky navigates a kind of penumbra, a fertile and ever-renewing source of inspiration in which his mixed-race, gender-fluid self can re-invent itself periodically, while staying true to his roots and his unique self-taught take on the world of electronics and beats.His latest album maintains the high standards he has established over the last few years. The restlessness that’s taken him to New York to Paris, back to London and now to Berlin, is reflected in the sombre edginess of the music, and in his willingness to experiment with collaborations, inspired by the creative presence of others Read more ...
joe.muggs
Ryuichi Sakamoto must be the most low-key megastar around. He came to prominence with the witty electro of Yellow Magic Orchestra in the late 1970s, then with some era-defining soundtracks like Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and The Last Emperor in the 1980s. Latterly, though, his work has been quite extraordinarily subdued and experimental – collaborations with far-leftfield glitch, electronica and ambient luminaries like Christian Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto, Sachiko M and Taylor Deupree – yet interest in him remains so great that when I published a short interview with him and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Originally available on cassette only, Odd Nosdam's Trish has now become the producer and former member of hip-hop pioneers cLOUDDEAD's first release for the Sonic Cathedral label. With six tracks coming in at just under half an hour, it falls into the hinterland between EP and album – a kind of musical novella. This means that there are certain constraints at play here, yet the shortened format is, in reality, a strength. It allows for a particular continuity of style and a cohesive tone, which lends the songs a tangible story arc – something that feels entirely fitting for a work in Read more ...
Barney Harsent
2015 was a phenomenal year for new music. As such, choosing just one album seems an arduous if not impossible task. But Christmas is, as we know, a time where arduous tasks are very much the order of the day, as we inconvenience ourselves routinely and with at least the appearance of good grace.It’s been a year where some of the most moving and emotional music has been made using machines. Enigmatic house producer Man Power revealed himself to the world as Brit Geoff Kirkwood with a breathtaking, self-titled debut, while Ukranian producer Vakula (Mikhaylo Vityuk) wowed those who paid Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Is language a barrier to international recognition? Is English necessary to make waves worldwide? Musicians from the African continent and South America regularly perform in their native tongue beyond the borders of their home countries. But often they are – rightly or wrongly – marketed or pigeon-holed as world music, a branding which allows for eschewing the Anglophone. The always problematic label of world music can be and is debated endlessly, but one thing is certain: for Scandinavia, most internationally successful music is delivered in English.Of course, after setting quirky micro- Read more ...