Category: Music

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Recondite – Silk

After I recently rediscovered techno as club music last fall, I have a much more sensitive radar for music to move the body by. And Recondite is my latest love in this segment, walking along the lines of techno and house. It appeared a few times in some playlist for me but I always just noted that this is great. Then a few weeks ago I methodically started listening through his whole catalog. There are not many filler releases there, lot of beautiful dance music. This latest EP is awesome, too. Slowly building large arches of thumping deep house, surrounded with ambient dreamscapes.

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Modeselektor – Who Else

Just recently I got to going through all last year’s Modeselektor output and the single from the new record sounded the most promising. So no surprises there that the album is great. Many different flavors from the dancefloor to the chill room, but all the tracks have the unmistakeable touch of Modeselektor. I instantly started looking at the upcoming live dates to catch them some time.

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The Black Dog – Black Daisy Wheel

Ambient dreamscapes with occasional thumping rhythms. Atmospheric soundtrack to slowly panning images of motion frozen in still frames.

“The mindset is beyond paranoid, the discourse so far post-fact that only opinion and assumed identity matter. […] The impact on mental health is corrosive: fear, uncertainty and doubt multiply and replicate until the most ridiculous theories are invented to explain the most basic things: tarmac, banana skins, duvets. […] The distinction between the real world and the world of an auto-hoaxer is so blurred that reality melts away; you’re only ever one personal detail away from being doxxed, at which point reality bites back, hard.”

Interesting to see that almost all moody ambient music lately are released with sleeve notes about a dystopian present, social degeneration, meaninglessness of communication, an evaporating trust in anything or anyone, and so on. One thing to note here is that these are not about dystopian futures anymore, but a dystopian current state. The other thing is that there are no megacorporations, alien intruders, getting lost in seventeenth dimensions, or black magic, all the various tropes of dark ambient are gone today, and everything is just a large blur of resignation, pointlessness and disappointment of people, our lives, the world.

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Silk Road Assassins – State Of Ruin

The first EP I called ambient electronic, this one expands that with dubstep and moody melodies. Interestingly the track Taste of Metal was probably aimed to be a heavy hitting grime spitter, but listening to the vocal version I guess it’s lucky that the album features the instrumental one. No words are needed on this record, really. It’s much better as a music-only backdrop soundtrack for a dark room with dim light.

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FJAAK – Havel

Lot of stuff from the past few decades mashed together and it is a blast. In a way it’s like watching Stranger Things: it draws pretty direct inspiration from certain sources but still creates something for the now that I can interpret as the product of today. This music is many things from leftfield through techno to breakbeat, but it couldn’t have been written in those past eras because we needed to take that journey and get to the now with all these stuff in our heads to have this mash-up today. I am probably over-explaining this for the RA review that I’ve just read which lacks originality. Anyway, I don’t. I think FJAAK is unique in the blend it creates. It sounds like the soundtrack of me growing up. And I would absolutely love to listen to their selection in a party setting.

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Belief Defect – Decadent Yet Depraved

Wow, this is intense, surprising, deep, a journey. Apocalyptic bass heavy rhythmic noise with an industrial feel to it. Bites with sharp teeth and consumes with acid. And this is a debut album, taking off at Raster – not bad, not bad. Reminds me of when Diamond Version was new.

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Quick make-notes of the letdowns.

The new Front Line Assembly album is boring. Actually there’s nothing else to say about it. Well, maybe that Jimmy Urine’s Rock Me Amadeus is just, whaaat the fuck. It’s a joke that I don’t dig.

And the new Ladytron record, I don’t even get that, it’s like a bad production. The tracks are half totally boring, half okayish. Strange choice of tracklisting so that it becomes more interesting in the second half. But the sound quality of the whole thing is just a mess, it sounds like some vintage vinyl listened through an earplug. I also have a feeling that probably I got tired of them in the absence since we last met and would not listen to it anymore if I came across it as new today. That’s a strange thought.