Pye Corner Audio | Hollow EarthGhost Box (LP/CD/DL) Analogue synth enthusiast Martin Jenkins returns to Ghost Box for a new album under his popular Pye Corner Audio alias. Following 2016’s “Stasis” album, our attention is pointed downward, deep into the empty chasms of the Earth. Where “Stasis” investigated themes of vast interstellar travel, this new […]
Corey Fuller | Break12K (LP/CD/DL) Corey Fuller has been a mainstay on the 12k label for a number of years, as one half of Illuha. Those albums explored a loose, free-flowing ambience and the duo’s live performances that I’ve seen owed a lot to improvisation. On this solo album, Fuller has created a meticulously crafted […]
Music For Sleep | WaterformsShimmering Moods Records (CD/DL) Music For Sleep is the ambient project of Andrea Porcu, a Sardinian artist now based in Berlin. His previous work has been mostly self-released, but he now finds the perfect home for his dreamlike compositions on the ever-reliable Shimmering Moods label. Ambient music sometimes skirts with clichés, […]
Richard Youngs/Frans de Waard/Peter Johan NÿlandOnder/Stroom | Moving Furniture Records (LP/DL) The title of this collaborative album means “sans electricity”, and refers to a series of performances that were staged without any electronic instruments. When this spate of events ended, the three artists on this record decided to go the opposite direction and use everything […]
New Tendencies | Batch0008SM-LL (12″/DL) The London based SM-LL label returns with a new 12” by New Tendencies, the electronic music project of Matt Nish-Lapidus. The in-house sound of the label favours repetition and reductionism, and this EP delivers exactly that, but adds plenty of twists along the way. The six tracks here all […]
Fabio Perletta | HesitantDinzu Artefacts (CS/DL) Italian sound artist Fabio Perletta takes his fascination with minimalism to Zen-like levels on this new release. His love of Japanese aesthetics has been displayed on previous works, most notably his album Ichinen 一念, on the LINE label from 2017. That release took much of its source sounds from field recordings made […]
The Green Kingdom | Expanses RemixesDronarivm (2xCD/DL)Michael Cottone has been steadily releasing albums of ambient electronic music under the guise of The Green Kingdom for many years. Five years ago he issued Expanses on the Dronarivm label, his nod to classic ambient techno, with a personal twist of soft beats and gentle guitar strums. This […]
Clouds | Heavy The EclipseElectric Deluxe (3xLP/DL) The Electric Deluxe label, run by Speedy J, has been on fire lately. It released one of my favourite techno records of 2018, the slow-burning assault by JK Flesh. This grinding, idiosyncratic take on dance floor music is evident on this new album by Scottish duo Clouds, who […]
Alvin Lucier | Ricochet LadyBlack Truffle (CD) Alvin Lucier’s I am Sitting in a Room is one of his most associated works, the concept of which uses the room itself to process and reform sounds. The notion of different spaces impacting on the quality of the sounds inside has been explored often in the world […]
Merzbow | MONOAkuma Room40 (CD/DL) MONOAkuma documents a live performance from 2012. It’s a recording of Merzbow’s ferocious attack on the ears of the audience attending the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane of that year, and celebrates the full-on immersion of his live shows. Masami Akita has had an unbelievably prolific career as the […]
France Jobin | Intrication No. (CD/DL) A stalwart of the microsound scene, France Jobin releases her 9th album on the No. label. Despite her previous association with the most lowercase of sounds, this album sees the Montreal-based artist expand her sound palette considerably. These tracks are noticeably fuller in scale and scope, allowing Jobin to […]
Olan Mill | Sounds of a New Father Shimmering Moods Records (CS/DL) Orphax | Dream Sequence #5 Non-Harmonic Multitones (3″ CD-R/DL) Two recent releases of drifting ambient here. Orphax presents the fifth installment of his “Dream Sequence” series, and it’s a meditative piece that ripples and washes by. The composition was inspired by taking a […]
Luigi Turra | Fukinsei mAtter (LP/DL) Two years after his “Alea” release on the LINE imprint, Luigi Turra returns with a collection of new explorations in microsound on the Tokyo-based mAtter label. Fukinsei finds the Italian sound artist continuing his investigations into abstract structures of lowercase sound, silence and the delicate balance between the two. This […]
Tomasz Bednarczyk | Illustrations For Those Who Room40 (CD/DL) His third album on the Room40 label, Tomasz Bednarczyk’s new release is absolutely essential listening for fans of deep, moving ambience. It’s been a decade since he last issued something under his own name, the 2000s seeing him release a handful of acclaimed albums on the […]
Endless Melancholy | Fragments of Scattered Whispers Dronarivm (LP/CD/DL) Ukranian sound artist Oleksiy Sakevych’s Endless Melancholy project is a long running exploration of piano and, more recently, tape manipulation. His new album on the Dronarivm label is full of plaintive piano musings nestled in the warm hiss of tape loops and minimal synth melodies. Just […]
Amp | Entangled Time Ampbase /Sound in Silence (10″/DL/CDR) Besides a couple of live recordings, this is the first full album by Amp in about seven years, and it’s a relief to know that they are still active. Amp hail from a very British tradition of post-rock, one that distills shoe gaze with electronics, psychedelic […]
Mumdance | Shared Meanings Shared Meanings (12″/CS/DL) Curated and compiled by Jack Adams under his Mumdance alias, Shared Meanings is an expansive project taking in a mixed and non-mixed version, a 12” of selected tracks and even a limited edition cassette for the tape collectors out there. The 32 track mix covers a lot of […]
I-LP-ON | ÄÄNET Editions Mego (LP/DL) Rhythmic, minimal and austere, this I-LP-ON is a fitting tribute to the memory of the late Mika Vainio by his Pan Sonic partner Ilpo Väisänen. On this new release for Editions Mego, Väisänen takes inspiration from his experiences with the legendary outfit he and Vainio worked in for over […]
Monty Adkins Empire (Line, DL) Still Juniper Snow (Huddersfield Contemporary Records, CD/DL) This month sees two releases featuring British sound artist Monty Adkins, both finding their origins and inspiration in the visual arts. Empire, released on Richard Chartier’s LINE imprint, attempts to create a soundtrack to Andy Warhol’s famous black and white silent film of […]
Julien Bayle | Violent Grains of Silence Elli Records (MC/CD/DL) John Cage’s famous observation on the impossibility of silence has been explored by numerous artists. “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a […]
Pascal Savy | Colour Fields Audio.Visuals.Atmosphere. (CS/DL) French artist Pascal Savy drops us into a dense cloud of foggy drones on his new album Colour Fields. This is his second album this year, following Dislocations on the Experimedia label, which plotted a similar route through amorphous drifting sounds. This new collection is released by the […]
Mind Over MIDI | Falling Shimmering Moods Records (CD/DL) Voices, analogue warmth and endless echoes are the order of the day on this new 10 track album by Mind Over MIDI. Released by the Shimmering Moods label, it’s an ambient album that works essentially as a whole. Each track is around the 5-minute mark, but […]
David Vélez | The things that objects can tell us about ourselves Flaming Pines (CD/DL) Found sounds and field recordings are the specialty of Colombian artist David Vélez. I’ve been following his trajectory since his early output on various online labels back in the mid-2000s, and his career has been one full of exciting developments. […]
Geneva Skeen | A Parallel Array of Horses Room40 (DL) I first encountered LA-based Geneva Skeen’s music in 2016 when she released Dark Speech on Dragon’s Eye Recordings. It was a departure from that label’s output, one that usually focuses on lowercase sounds, as Skeen’s was heavier, more industrial at times and utilized dramatic gestures. […]
Jürg Frey | 120 Pieces of Sound Clara de Asís | Without Stefan Thut | about Elsewhere Music (CD/DL) The first thing I noticed about Elsewhere, the new label curated by Yuko Zama, was the similarity between its logo and that of Erstwhile Records. It’s no surprise then to discover the connection between the […]
Grand Mal X | Retrospektiv 2010–2016 Ant-Zen (DL) Swedish duo Grand Mal x flirt between old school electro patterns and more modern DSP shapes, combining the two into an irresistibly propulsive funk on some tracks and a much more abstract terrain on others. Retrospektiv 2010 – 2016 is a collection of previously released material, originally […]
Tonus Cagean Morphology Intermediate Obscurities I + IV Texture Point | A New Wave of Jazz (CD/DL) Belgium label A New Wave of Jazz has released a steady discography of albums, all sharing an in-house visual design that favors minimal aesthetics. This visual identity, incidentally, is the work of Rutger Zuydervelt, the experimental sound artist who […]
Arve Henriksen | The Height Of The Reeds Rune Grammofon (LP/CD) The northern English coastal town Hull was, in 2017, selected as UK City of Culture, resulting in a range of artistic events being bestowed upon the city. One was a commission involving Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen creating the audio for a soundwalk across the […]
Distant Fires Burning | For The Love Of… Audiobulb Records (CS/DL) Review by Darren McClure The fourth album from this ambient project by Gert De Meester finds the artist stretching his processing skills into interesting territories. His background as the bassist in bands assists in the direction of Distant Fires Burning, focused as it is […]
Low | Double Negative Sub Pop Records (LP/CD/CS/DL) Review by Darren McClure 25 years into their career, Low release their twelfth album and do so by taking a major departure in sound design and aesthetics. The sparse, spacious rock compositions are still intact, but this time they’ve embraced new levels of distortion and noise to […]
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