electronica
Thomas H. Green
Matthew Herbert (b 1972) is a leading experimental musician. His work is sometimes as much sonic exploration as music and mostly inhabits territory where the two realms meet. Recently made Creative Director of the newly resuscitated BBC Radiophonic Workshop (who have an open day at the South Bank’s Ether Festival on 7th October), he first came to public attention through Nineties electronic dance releases as Radio Boy, Wishmountain and Doctor Rockit, melding club beats to his own “found sound” field recordings. By the turn of the century he was a successful DJ/producer, remixing the likes of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter who you are. You might be a charismatic performer, or the most energetic band in the world. But some settings can’t be outperformed. Holding Berlin Festival at the city’s astonishing out-of-commission Tempelhof airport sets a challenge that’s almost impossible to rise to. Although it began working in the late 1920s, the surviving buildings were completed in 1941 and form a single block over a kilometre long, wrapped around an open quadrangle. The gleaming, pale buildings dwarf anything.The entrance hall is a cathedral to Albert Speer’s vision of a modern, world- Read more ...
theartsdesk
Lee Hazlewood: A House Safe for TigersGraham RicksonLee Hazlewood’s voice can still invoke awe. It's gravelly, sonorous, rasping, but incredibly affecting – even when he’s scraping around in the depths it always sounds musical. A reissue of a hard-to-find 1975 LP, A House Safe for Tigers was originally the soundtrack to a Swedish TV movie directed by Hazlewood’s friend Torbjörn Axelman. Hazlewood had moved to Sweden in 1970, partly to ensure that his son wouldn’t be drafted to Vietnam. He continued to record and release new material, most of which slipped under the radar.A House Safe Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
America comes with an artist statement where Deacon says “I never felt American until I left the United States”. His third album digs into his “frustration, fear and anger towards the county and world I live in and am a part of”.The album ends with the 21-minute suite “USA”, where, over four sections titled “Is a Monster”, “The Great American Desert”, “Rail” and “Manifest”, Deacon explores the nature of his country.Baltimore’s Deacon is classically trained and has a Masters degree in electro-acoustic composition. His first album, 2007’s Spiderman Of The Rings, cast him as an electronic Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Stumbling across the perfect pop hit must be its own kind of curse. It’s been two and a half years since Owl City’s “Fireflies” shot its way into the charts, seemingly from nowhere. With its lush, quirky melodies and wistful, lovelorn lyrics, Adam Young’s quirky electronic project seemed almost to have been custom-built by a crack team of pop scientists to appeal to dreamy girls like me. “Fireflies” used to play on a loop at the store where I was working at the time; Young’s vocals and programming a dead ringer for Ben Gibbard’s work with The Postal Service - a band whose one album I loved to Read more ...
joe.muggs
Although the Eighties revival has now been going on for longer than the actual Eighties, it shows no sign of abating – to the point where maybe it would be more sensible to refer to it as a tradition or a palette of techniques rather than than considering it as retro at all. However you see it, Jessie Ware and her production team do it with style.Ware was initially best known for her collaborations with UK electronic artists like Joker and SBTRKT, and producers Dave Okumu of The Invisible and Julio Bashmore normally deal in post-Radiohead experimentalism and classic house music respectively, Read more ...
joe.muggs
Sometimes a record tells you whether you're going to like it before you've even hit play. With electronica this goes double: track titles like "Scanlon's Leaping Gore Pull", "Pneuquonsis on Return" and "Fewton Tension Chords" are either going to intrigue a potential listener, or make you think "stop playing silly buggers". If the former, then this collection is for you; if the latter, then there's not one nanosecond in the collection of grinding, bending, warping electronic sounds that is going to make you think otherwise.Though there is some repetition to these grooves, there is nothing that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“This is such fun”. Martin Horntveth, Jaga Jazzist’s drummer, can’t contain his excitement. Standing up behind his kit, he radiates joy. Considering that he and his band are Norwegian, typically not given to overstatement, what he describes as fun would be off the pleasure scale by non-Nordic standards. The meeting of Jaga Jazzist and The Britten Sinfonia was an unqualified success, one of those rare one-off concerts where band and their temporary collaborators seamlessly connect.The Norwegian instrumentalists and the British ensemble came together at The Barbican last night as part of the on Read more ...
joe.muggs
Coming from a thriving East London improvisation scene, "aquatic Krautrock experimentalists" Snorkel have made a logical step forward and released a single that was entirely recorded in one, improvised take. We are very happy to present here in its full ten-and-a-half minute glory the video of the recording, as well as a free download of a remix by Crewdson of another track from the session.Snorkel now feature in their lineup trombonist/producer Ralph Cumbers aka Bass Clef, who is no stranger to improvisation as his previous collaboration with the London Improvisers Orchestra demonstrated. Read more ...
joe.muggs
Though he first came to public attention via the Los Angeles-based Brainfeeder psychedelic electronic hip hop collective led by Flying Lotus, 25-year-old producer Lorn comes from “the middle of nowhere in Illinois”, and it's easy to see in his music a less sunny disposition than many of his comrades. Most of the Brainfeeder crew have a loose-limbed funkiness to their sound and an accumulation of sonic detail that speaks of heat and humdity. But while Lorn shares their aesthetic of complex rhythms that slip off the grid, there's something chilly and chilling about his industrial-sounding Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There is a shouty lady outside the Theatre Royal in Brighton who takes strong objection to us attending tonight’s Brighton Festival performance of Matthew Herbert’s One Pig. The show is based around the life and death of a pig, from birth to plate, and includes pork being cooked. We are, she tells us as we enter, “hypocritical vegetarians with the blood of farm animals” on our hands. Matthew Herbert is not a vegetarian but she has hit on a crux contradiction about the evening (albeit in the unfortunate manner of Crazy Cat Lady off The Simpsons). Yet Herbert’s work is surely about Read more ...