Hypnotic ambient, great for focused work.
Richard Norris – Elements
Girlschool – Hit and Run
This has been at the top of my Play Later list for three months now. This happens to a few albums that I keep relistening and I know after removing from there I’ll get back more rarely to them, so I want to give them more time to sink in my brain. I feel now that this record has sank its rock and roll girl power fangs well enough, the name Girlschool will stay with me all right.
They are usually referenced as contemporaries with Motörhead, but I can even say that they are good to be called the women version of Motörhead. This is powerful hard rock and heavy metal at its best. I would love to see a full movie using only this album for a soundtrack.
The Ocean – Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic
It has a post-rock atmosphere with prog-rock elements but a metal sound. Apparently this is post-metal or prog-metal, which I’m not too familiar with as a genre, probably should be. But then again I guess Tool could fall in this category, too, I’ve just never thought of them this way. And thinking about it this way I ralize the difference between post-metal and prog-metal. Tool is more on the prock-metal side essentially coming from a prog-rock/art-rock angle just adding more metal weight to instrumentation. While The Ocean is more heavy on the post-rock vibe with epic instrumental spaces where massive and rhythm-heavy riffs bridge calm and sorrow melodic sections.
In any case, this is a fantastic record, takes me on a journey, and I definitely want to follow it up with its successor Phanerozoic II right away.
Township Rebellion - Vobia
Tripping techno continued today on a long player record format and with some occassional house beats. It’s interesting to hear how the tracks and the whole structure of music is changing when it is intended for an album release. It doesn’t feel like an assembly of single tracks but rather one coherent atmosphere and flow of music. Also, motivational brain juice work music for the day.
Wata Igarashi & Voiski Present WAV – 9719 EP
Definitely one of the best dreamy techno records that I’ve heard this year. It is tripping but still fits a dance floor just fine. Makes me ache for that neon-pierced pitch black box of techno club that we love so much. I miss it badly.
Ten Walls – Lights For The Dreams
At the beginning it totally starts like some Brandt Brauer Frick record, having all those acoustic instruments, drums, guitars, strings, brass instruments, making all those little noises mixed up with the electronics. Then from the third track it goes fully electronic and creates this wonderful, cinematic journey with pulsing techno, ambient soundscapes, and broken beats. It all creates this great flow even though stylistically it’s not the most coherent album. I’m not afraid to say that it could well deserve a spot on my year-end toplist, even if it doesn’t make the Top 10 it could easily sit within the twenty.
Sumgii feat. Nah Eeto – Wanawake
This is a single release but made enough plays that it’s worth making a note of. Post-dubstep bass music, reminds me of the collaborations of The Bug and Warrior Queen. And another record building the bridge between Europe and Africa, this one stretching between the UK and Kenya.
Riton + Kah-Lo – Foreign Ororo
I recently got a batch of suggestions spread along the interesting-weird axis, and this one stuck with me. British dance beats (mostly house) with Nigerian hiphop female vocals. I have this strong feeling that I’m totally late to this party and hits like Fake ID and Ginger must have spinned their fair share in certain parties and radio shows that I totally missed apparently.
Oliver Schories – Paradigm
Mostly straight up uptempo house with a few tracks having tech-house flavors, the latter ones are definitely more for me. The closing track (Kato) is probably the biggest smasher. Most tracks are totally dancefloor material, but it’s also a great pushing-pumping motivator record for work.
6th Circle – The Third Estate
Actually there’s nothing too special about this album, good old sounding EBM and aggrotech. Still somehow it managed to gain quite a few plays recently. It just has everything ideally put together that I want from a hellectro record, and well, nowadays I don’t really remember to dig up old Hocico albums. (Maybe I should.)