This week, as the Winter takes hold a chill show. We officially expand our weekly podcast from one half hour show into two full hour-long shows, Monday + Thursday. On February 22 we celebrate our 10th Anniversary online! If you like the expanded format let us know – follow, share, like, etc. ((( TRACKLIST ))) […]
We move into uniquely wavy dimensions as our weekly show splits in two (starting next week). Here you may recognize some of the names, and others you may think you know, but at double-take you may want to think again, and again. These artists come from the world over, and each brings something a little […]
SIMPLY THE BEST: It’s always an extremely challenging process to recollect your favorite spins of any given year. Sure you can use analytics and other methods, but we always prefer a more personally curated choice at Toneshift. Last year we presented a Top Three of 2018, this year we say goodbye to a decade with […]
Still und Dunkel | AbandonedHallow Ground (LP/CD/DL) From the opening seconds of searing harsh noise rasp like a contact mic applied to a sheet of metal unto cat-claw-on-a-chalkboard effect, through electronic swells and resting in a spell of quick-clicking, Abandoned (English, ‘quiet and dark’) by Still und Dunkel rips through dynamic (d)evolutionary spaces. I should […]
Roland Bucher | ViajeHallow Ground (LP/DL) From Swiss composer Roland Bucher comes his latest entitled Viaje (translates into travel). This record was developed for noise table, developed by Bucher, where he manipulates objects via granular synthesis sampler. The results are somewhere between strange, pulsating drone work and abstract music concrete. Since most of the sounds […]
Ambient as an incredibly elusive genre, and can be a near infinite category, as it can encompass anything from electronics, through drone, to modern classical and even new age. In a way this wide range of musical possibilities is reflected through four October releases reviewed here. Very often, ambient is the realm of solo artists […]
9T Antiope & Siavash Amini | HarmasticeHallow Ground (LP/DL) Harmitice is the second vocal-based album Siavash Amini has been involved in just six months, and it is testament to his ability as a composer, and collaborator, that it is so remarkably different than its predecessor. Whilst the aforementioned Second Shift used spoken word fragments to sign-post a […]
Photo Credit: Ashkan Noroozkhani In an little over 7 years, Siavash Amini has managed to cement himself as one of the most articulate experimental composers of his generation. Releasing music on revered labels such as Hallow Ground, Opal Tapes, and Room40, his particular take on granular synthesis and post-classical composition has resulted in what […]
Marja Ahti | Vegetal NegativesHallow Ground (CD/DL) There is something wonderfully structured about Marja Ahti’s emotive ‘Vegetal Negatives’. A warm and organic tableaux that courts both the familiar and the strange, each of its elements appears rendered with a loving and meticulous hand, an approach that feels on the surface as if it should be […]
THE TONESHIFT TOP THREE: Though we managed to crank out more than four-hundred reviews in 2018, there were certain releases that broke the highest of expectations, or came in from left field here at Toneshift headquarters. Instead of another boring Top 10 list we decided to be extremely shrewd in our curation and pare down […]
PLYXY | GloryLandHallow Ground (12″/DL) There is something fairly old-hat about describing an aesthetic creation as ‘beautiful’, and to do so feels somewhat at odds with my distinctly post-modern roots. Contemporary works of art are surely beyond the consideration of beauty, a category that feels as though it should be consigned forever to the dustbin […]
Reinier van Houdt | Igitur Carbon CopiesHallow Ground (LP/DL) Reinier van Houdt’s Igitur Carbon Copies is not so much one album as two – what is ostensibly a somewhat heavy-handed exercise in gothic aesthetics, hides beneath its surface a nuanced exploration of compositional structure that, like many complex works, only reveals its true beauty with […]
Just released this month is the 180 gram LP (+ Digital) Lines by Distant Animals (Daniel Alexander Hignell) on Swiss label Hallow Ground, this one is mastered by sound artist Lawrence English. One lengthy track per side, starting with A Pure Drone. That’s exactly what it is. It’s dense and makes my entire office quiver […]
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