Nathan Moody | ShadesNoisejockey (CS/DL) Californian sound designer and musician Nathan Moody adds to an already impressive catalogue of dark, expansive electronic music with this new album. It finds the artist creating an immersive, and often oppressive, suite of tracks where glints of light only occasionally push through the cracks. This is an album whose […]
Darren Harper | PathsShimmering Moods (CD/CS/DL) An album of discovery, Paths finds Darren Harper flexing his patch cables and following his intuition in modular synthesis. In the artist’s own words, it’s the result of “missteps and error, a process of understanding; an unfolding”. And unfold it does, slowly and sweetly, as Harper teases out the […]
Line Spectrum | BrumaGlacial Movements (CD/DL) Line Spectrum is the moniker of Ukrainian artist Oleg Puzan, someone who is new to me, but I’m excited to have made the discovery with this new release on the Glacial Movements label. Constructed from meticulously manipulated field recordings, the five tracks making up Bruma are impressive soundscapes from […]
Toshimaru Nakamura, Dafydd Roberts, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies & Andrew Leslie HookerExemption From Meaning | Listen to the Voice of Fire (CD/DL) Dafydd Roberts has been the instigator of live performances in Aberystwyth in Wales under the symposium name of Listen To the Voice Of Fire. The desk recording issued on this particular CD involved […]
Yann Novak | Stillness901 Editions (CD/DL) As the sonic component of an audio visual exhibition, Stillness finds the LA-based artist expanding on his long running investigation into widescreen ambience that is the aural equivalent of a Hiroshi Sugimoto seascape. The album is divided into coastal-related themes: Subtropical and Oceanic, each representing the two climates that […]
Melaine Dalibert | CheminantElsewhere (CD/DL) The Elsewhere label continues in its pursuit of issuing minimal and experimental music, covering composition and improvisation. The three most recent releases reviewed here all share a specific aesthetic, namely the piano. Returning to Elsewhere for a second release, the French composer Melaine Dalibert delivers five exquisitely sparse pieces, four […]
Andrew Sherwell | ApproachingRusted Tone Recordings (CS/DL) Lengthy loops of reverb-soaked choral soundscapes are the order of the day with this new offering by the London-based artist. Approaching consists of seven tracks assuming the same title, each one reveling in deep blankets of breathy tones. This is fairly dense stuff at times, but never suffocating, […]
Tomotsugu Nakamura | MonologueAudiobulb (LP/DL) I first encountered the music of Tomotsugu Nakamura back in 2013 when he released his debut album Slow Weather. This first record shared a similar aesthetic sensibility as other Japanese artists working in the ambient field at the time, but with each subsequent release, Nakamura has refined his style into […]
Alessandro Adriani | Morphic Dreams Stroboscopic Artefacts (LP/CD/DL) Returning to the Stroboscopic Artefacts label with his sophomore LP, Alessandro Adriani offers a thoroughly enjoyable mix of mid-paced techno, EBM and beat-less excursions into ambient territory. It’s an album that is full of analogue warmth and catchy arpeggios, borrowing from dance music’s history but served up […]
Kevin Richard Martin | SirensRoom40 (LP/DL) This is the first album to be released by Kevin Martin under his given name, after years of monikers and groups, most notably The Bug and King Midas Sound. Where these previous musical incarnations have been sonic assaults of bass-heavy dub and dancehall, Sirens finds the prolific producer delve […]
Distant Animals | WeavesHallow Ground (LP/DL) Distant Animals returns to the Hallow Ground label for his second album of modular synth explorations. On this LP, the project of Daniel Alexander Hignell investigates a spacial and often quasi-rhythmic approach to sound making. Where his debut album for the label, “Lines” traded in low frequency drones (case […]
Francisco López & Miguel A. García | Ekkert NafnCronica (CD/DL) These two artists spent time collecting a pool of sounds together before individually exploring their own direction with them. The album title, Ekkert Nafn, is a mash-up of two Icelandic words that effectively translate as “no name”, and this abstract, mysterious title is certainly fitting […]
Kate Carr | City of Bridges (DL)Lieven Martens | Deo Gratias Triginta Sex (DL) Longform Editions is a label dedicated to the slow-burning and the slow paced. The label was realized in response to so much of today’s bite-sized listening habits, where streaming has encouraged listeners to dip in and out of albums like a pick […]
To kick off my first reviews of June, here is a triple set of compilations that have come across the radar at Toneshift. First is on a new label, Subject To Restrictions Discs. The “Kampf Der Welten EP” is a sampler of sorts, a mission statement to showcase this fresh imprint that deals with synth-led […]
Kate Carr is a sound artist whose work investigates our relationship with the natural world, and explores place and non-place, being and imagining. Her music is often composed using field recordings and sounds sourced from location. Besides her recorded output and live performances, she has contributed to artist residencies that have taken her all over […]
©Tim Saccenti Kelly Moran is a Brooklyn-based composer and multi-instrumentalist, whose prepared piano works have found a wider audience since her signing to Warp Records. Her background includes playing in punk and rock bands, but it has been her nuanced piano recordings that have been making waves in the experimental music world since her early […]
For the past twenty years, Janek Schaefer has manipulated vinyl and found sounds into mesmerising soundscapes in his pursuit of creating beauty. I spoke with him about his early influences, the helping hand of serendipity and how his approach has developed over the years. His latest album, What Light There Is Tells Us Nothing, distills […]
French field recordist Bruno Duplant presents an album of quiet, lowercase soundscapes for the Verz label. Consisting of three tracks, there is a subtle repetition at work that lulls the listener into some very weird spaces. Opening track “première” purrs and whirs for its duration, with strangely hypnotic loops that occasionally wobble out of sync. […]
Tiger Village returns to the Hausu Mountain label for a third time with this new album of percussive freak-outs and synth zaniness. Tim Thornton, the Cleveland-based artist behind the Tiger Village moniker, mixes a playful stew of bright IDM melodies and wildly-processed breakbeats, each track full to bursting with bristling, restless energy. It’s a kind […]
Los Angeles-based violinist Zachary Paul is a modern addition to the line of minimalist composers such as Tony Conrad and Pauline Oliveros, whose work encapsulates the transcendent nature of sustained tones. His new album on the Touch label contains two live recordings and one original film score. The pair of live pieces here capture the […]
The Brussels-based duo present their new LP on the KrysaliSound label, and it’s a perfect home for their fusion of guitar drones, field recordings and hushed vocals. Since 2011 Tropic of Coldness have pursued a blissed-out take on harmonic ambience that folds ethereal elements into their compositions. There are rarely any sharp edges on their […]
Asuna & Jan Jelinek | Signals BulletinFaitiche (LP/DL) When I first heard about this collaborative project between these two artists, I was slightly surprised. Japanese musician Asuna is known mainly for his organ drones that he manages by taping down keys and creating layers of chords, producing thick waves of warm sound. He has also been […]
This new release on the Dutch label Shimmering Moods is a satisfying melding of post-rock, ambient-pop and dubbed-out kosmiche. Bad News from Cosmos are a duo whose work encompasses rhythm and fluid textures, put through plenty of analogue processing. The tracks here all have a strong sense of motion, filled with a motorized pulse that […]
Patrick Shiroishi | 烏の涙American Damage (CS/DL) Issued on Chicago’s American Damage tape label, this new release by Patrick Shiroishi blends folky blues with wild improvisation to a stunningly contrasting effect. Shiroishi’s guitar playing is incendiary and it sounds like he has an extra pair of hands on the fret board as he lets loose. His […]
LaBrecque/Ghazi Barakat | Terminal DesertKarl Records (LP/DL) Paul LaBrecque and Ghazi Barakat team up together to release an album of mutated sound that blends krautrock, kosmiche and free jazz. This is a free-form music drawing on Barakat’s notion of “meta-music for meta-people in a meta-world”. There’s a distinctive fourth world ambient vibe pulsing through the […]
The Future Eve feat. Robert Wyatt | KiTsuNe/Brian The FoxFLAU (2xLP/2xCD/DL) Japanese composer The Future Eve arrives on the Flau label with an exquisite album featuring vocals and keyboards by the legendary Robert Wyatt. Wyatt had a musical idea named “Brian The Fox”, an idea untethered to tempo, and this looseness permeates through the twelve […]
Fabio Orsi | Il Vento Disperderà la SchiumaBoring Machines (LP/DL) There’s a delicate, lightness of touch to the drones that shape this new release from Fabio Orsi. The Italian composer, who moved to Berlin many years ago, has decided to return to his native Puglia, and this new record reflects that relocation. Perhaps the move […]
Yves De Mey | SuedaLine (DL) It’s nice to see Yves De Mey returning to the LINE imprint. His previous work with the label, Lichtung, was a single long form piece that was the original score for a dance solo. This new album finds the Belgian artist exploring the robust sound world of FM and […]
Gil Sansón/Lance Austin Olsen | Works On PaperElsewhere (CD/DL) The Elsewhere label marks its first year in business with a new release that is expansive and resolutely experimental. “Works on Paper” is a long distance collaboration between Venezuela-based Sansón and Canada-based Olsen. This method of electronic file transfer is common these days with high speed […]
Syntax | CurrentKasuga Records (SD/DL) The Berlin electronica label Kasuga shares a similar aesthetic, both musically and visually, with the likes of Raster-Noton. Austere, minimal electronic sounds are packaged in equally stark graphic design. Their in-house sound is one of reduction and glitched-out grooves, and Syntax’s new release is no exception. “Current” is the new […]
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