electronica
Kieron Tyler
Choosing an album of the year is an exacting process. For an album to be arresting, it either has to come as a bolt from the blue or build on what’s come before in a way which represents an identifiable artistic development which takes things to new level while saying something fresh. Holding patterns and restatements of default settings will never have an impact, especially if they speak of or to comfort zones.Alina Orlova’s third album, 88, is arresting, a bolt from the blue and represents identifiable artistic development. Boxes ticked then. More importantly, it is also the album which has Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The 100 Club is dark. Really dark. People are shrouded in the ink-light. I think it’s to save their embarrassment as they order a drink and realise they’ll have to either apply for a loan or sell a child in order to get drunk. In any case, the indoor gloaming provides the perfect setting for the opening act of the evening, Demian Castellanos. The creative helm of psych-rock act The Oscillation, he's on his own tonight with a wordless solo set showcasing new material.Starting off with tones and drones, Castellanos doesn’t so much create a mood as conjure up musical weather. There’s a gadget Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The attack is relentless. Its power pummels like a gale. The 2015 model Mercury Rev begin their set at Iceland Airwaves as they meant to finish. Never has this band been so forceful, so kinetic. Yet their trademark balance of filmic drama and delicate melody was not sacrificed during this convincing revitalisation. On stage at Reykjavík’s Harpa concert hall on the festival's second day, Mercury Rev set a bar so high it sowed seeds suggesting nothing could top this. If they are playing, see them.Mercury Rev were performing in the wake of the release of The Light in You, their first album for Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Ellie Goulding's new album is one to be experienced rather than merely heard. With a bit of drum and bass, a touch of techno, a little bit of house and a flirtation with dubstep rhythms, it’s a full-on roster of proper pop tunes.It’s not the kind of album to enjoy on vinyl with a nice glass of red; Delirium is to be lived, like a soundtrack to your Saturday night. "Army" is like queuing up for a nightclub, a solid, powerful number, amassing strength of feeling and clubbing compadres before strolling to the bar, taking in the lyrics, basking in the song’s bassy beat. "Outside" is like a warm- Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's a current running through the underground club / electronic music of the 2010s that cares not a jot for progress – but neither is it retro as such. It's been called “outsider house”, which is a pretty lame name for stuff that is often extremely accessible and welcoming, and is certainly not just house music. Rather it's a kind of neo-psychedelia, a sound that plays tricks with memory and expectation, collapsing oppositions between sophistication and naiveté, between kitsch and sincerity, and between low and high fidelity in the pursuit of beautiful discombobulation. And as the none- Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's a new kind of forum for electronic musicians. Certainly not a rave, and not just a recital to earnest nerds, built on a kind of patronage, but a long way removed from a standard corporate gig where you're just providing the interchangeable soundtrack to X or Y product launch. The realm of the technology party, often seen at conference-festivals like Amsterdam Dance Event and Sónar, but increasingly as a standalone thing throughout global cities, is something very 21st century, very odd, and still to be negotiated.But this is a necessary negotiation: technology is creating new Read more ...
Barney Harsent
As well as releasing electronic music on Ron Morelli’s feted L.I.E.S. label, and the sporadically brilliant Ghost Box, as well a particularly impressive outing on Static Caravan (as Primitive Neural Pathways), Steve Moore is the bass- and synth-playing half of Zombi. On Shape Shift, a heavier, darker and more rock-sounding record than fans of 2009’s Escape Velocity might be expecting, he is doing his utmost to show the acceptable face of horror-suited post-rock. Meanwhile, his accomplice, AE Paterra, provides the path from which they must not stray by beating several shades of something out Read more ...
Barney Harsent
If there was any doubt as to the musical preferences of BBC4's commissioning arm, consider this: the whole history of funk got an hour. Meanwhile, indie music – a niche, artistic movement that somehow ended up drinking champagne while wallowing in its own mess by the mid-Nineties – gets a three-part series. Just thought I’d mention it.With time on its side, as we began part two, Music for Misfits was up to the Eighties. Following last week’s implication that punk was some kind of year zero for privately pressed records (it wasn’t), this episode started with the claim that, in the Read more ...
Barney Harsent
John Grant is nothing if not a confessional songwriter. On his last album, Pale Green Ghosts, there were moments of dark despair, caustic barbs and some surprisingly slinky grooves soundtracking a man who was offering himself up with a breathtaking honesty. On Grey Tickles, Black Pressure – a title that places us somewhere between mid-life crisis and full-on nightmare – he is similarly laid bare, but the literate humour has now become full-on funny and could well mark him out as the best lyricist of his generation.Although Grant says he wanted to get “moodier and angrier” on this record, he Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Don’t be fooled by the header picture. Despite the relaxed poses, Iceland’s Pink Street Boys are amongst the angriest, loudest, most unhinged bands on the planet right now. Hits #1, their debut vinyl album – which follows distorted-sounding, lower-than-lo-fi cassette and digital-only releases – is so impolite and wild that once the rest of the world gets the message the story of what constitutes the current-day music of their home country will have to be rewritten.They are not an anomaly. Iceland is currently witnessing a groundswell of loosely punk–inspired bands drawing from the edgy spirit Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Company could have been recorded any time in the past 25 years. Although Slime’s debut feels fresh, affinities with the familiar tag Company as a retro-nodding debut which will have a broad appeal. Chin-stroking collectors will love its references. Hipsters dwelling in the edgy zones of cities will love the comedown, late-night, reflective atmosphere. The Newcastle-born, Hackney resident electronicist Will Archer – who assumes the name Slime – has created an album with the potential to cross boundaries.The chief attribute of Company is the ease with which it brings together the disparate as a Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Producer Ruf Dug has released a slew of singles and remixes, both on his own label, Ruf Kutz, and other independent imprints, including Porn Wax and Banoffee Pies, that have made the UK such an exciting prospect for new music for the past few years. For this, his debut LP, he decamped to Guadeloupe, a location that has clearly influenced the very bones of the work. After a vinyl release earlier this year, it’s now getting the full treatment later this month, and deservedly so.This is an album that will undoubtedly be hailed as a Balearic classic. No surprise there, the genre is so wide, it’s Read more ...