electronica
Kieron Tyler
It opens quietly, with swelling strings that evoke Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave. After they give way to a jazzy percussion and wordless vocal interplay, Carlyle declares, “I used to sleep/ Too many secrets to keep”. Floreat itself was almost a secret, almost not released. Thankfully, this dream of an album is now coming out. Seamlessly roaming across jazz, Cajun music, English classicism, show-tune styles and electronica, Floreat is one of this year’s benchmark releases.Floreat was originally meant to be issued in 2008 by EMI under the title Nuzzle. It was shelved and it's taken until now for Read more ...
howard.male
I first heard Bahia-born Lucas Santtana on the best compilation of contemporary Brazilian music of the past couple of years, Oi! A nova musica Brasileira. His track “Hold Me In”, an acoustic slice of bossa nova, was a quiet interlude amonst all the dance, electronica and rock tracks. But it didn’t really give much indication of what an adventurous musical talent he might be.One curiously satisfying thing about this album is that one hardly notices which songs are sung in Portuguese and which in English (the divide is about 50/50), as focus is constantly being drawn to the sonically Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
There’s a strand of electro-assisted, dance-leaning French pop that’s captured the international consciousness. Phoenix and Justice are Grammy winners, while Air exemplify the cooler, more reflective end of it. The bands come from chi-chi burbs like Versailles or towns south of Paris, south of the Seine. And so it is for Housse de Racket, an outfit from Chaville, between Versailles and Paris. On the evidence of their second album, they’re potential border breakers.There’s a strand of electro-assisted, dance-leaning French pop that’s captured the international consciousness. Phoenix and Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Seventies “Kosmische” music of Germany – the more spaced-out and synthesister-led counterpart to Krautrock that had its commercial apogee in Tangerine Dream – seems to be a gift that keeps on giving. Perhaps because the releases were for so many years mainly obscure and had to be hunted down by passionate and/or deranged followers, it has built a global network of followers who extend its principles into new music. From Gorillaz' Damon Albarn to techno legends like Carl Craig, its rippling synth patterns and sidereal twinkles can be heard woven into the fabric of popular culture. And Read more ...
david.cheal
This is pretty weird stuff. Or at least, that’s the way it seems at first. If all you know, as I did to begin with, is that DJ Diamond is a 24-year-old DJ from the West Side of Chicago whose real name is Karlis Griffin, and that Flight Muzik is his debut album, then this will seem like music from another planet – one where notions such as melody, structure and listenability have little meaning; it’s music, but not as most of us know it.The rhythms are complex and multilayered – often there’s more than one going on at the same time: a hummingbird-fast heartbeat as the backdrop, with Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Anticon label is a deepy peculiar animal. Around the turn of the millennium, its core members – going by names like Boom Bip, Doseone, cLOUDdEAD, Jel and So-Called Artists – took a nerdy yet intensely psychedelic approach to hip hop, and ended up creating a woozy and out-there sound that prefigured a huge amount of currently hip music. Now that the appallingly named new shifts in stoner music - “glo-fi” and “chillwave” - are opening up the territory between indie and hip hop/dance again, Anticon seems hugely prescient, but with new artists like Son Lux, it seems the label is once again Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Why is it that a certain strand of faceless electronic music, currently best represented by outfits such as Caribou and Gold Panda, often achieves such a strong media profile? These acts and their kin have their moments - the odd real cracker, in fact - but the impression is given that their classy, considered bedroom noodling is more valid than something equally faceless that's sweatier and more percussive.It's that old "intelligent electronica" crap that's been lurking around for nigh on two decades like a bad smell wearing designer glasses. In fact, I'm surprised Gold Panda didn't Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The nominations for the 2011 Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize were announced earlier today. Beyond PJ Harvey and Elbow having won before, nothing wildly surprising cropped up.Here they are:
Adele: 21Anna Calvi: Anna CalviJames Blake: James BlakeElbow: Build a Rocket Boys!Everything Everything: Man AliveGhostpoet: Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy JamPJ Harvey: Let England ShakeKaty B: On a MissionKing Creosote & Jon Hopkins: Diamond MineMetronomy: The English RivieraGwilym Simcock: Good Days at Schloss ElmauTinie Tempah: Disc-Overy
The prize will be announced on 6 September
joe.muggs
“It's like an advert for American Apparel,” said my companion a song into the set – and she had a point. The elegantly poised electropop of Little Dragon is so sharp, so cool, so impeccably internationalist in its outlook and presentation that, taken in small doses, it would be perfect for any brand targeted at affluent hipsters. But while their antics on stage, and especially those of singer Yukimi Nagano were admittedly a brand manager's dream at any given moment, over time they proved to be something much more interesting.'Pleasingly for a crowd so dressed up, they appeared extremely Read more ...
howard.male
Several of my favourite tracks of 2010 were on Tradi-Mods vs Rockers. This was a musically audacious project in which a bunch of Western pop and rock musicians dared to unpick the intricate fabric of some Congolese bands who were already making some definitively funky music of their own. The question that arose while I was reacquainting myself with this double CD yesterday, was how were these mostly cut'n'paste studio confections - made in the absence of the musicians that inspired them - going to be recreated live with the involvement of those very same musicians?I expected it would be a Read more ...
howard.male
How refreshing it is to learn of an album the recording of which was fuelled by black tea rather than, say, marijuana. Although having said that – given the heady, languorous music that Brooklyn’s Roberto Carlos Lange (aka Helado Negro) has come up with - I’d like to think that at least a smidgen of the world’s most popular illicit substance was also involved. But perhaps it was just the natural high brought on by a decampment to rural Connecticut - where he apparently sat in the forest “centring himself” – which contributed to the otherworldly ambience.The press release describes the music Read more ...
joe.muggs
Abstract music will always be at a disadvantage compared to abstract art because of one thing: duration. It requires commitment and immersion, you can't sum it up at a glance, and when it stops it's gone until you go back to the start. Yet a record like this Finnish collaboration can have all the fascination, all the exploration of chaos and control and deep archetypal patterns of a Kandinsky painting or Hepworth bronze.
Jan Anderzén aka Tomutonttu is part of the hypermodern pyschedelic band Kemialliset Ystävät, while Sami Sänpäkkilä aka Es is the boss of Fonal Records and a respected film- Read more ...