Random light-hearted electronic pop hit, probably my most listened to while easing into the summer this year. Another one of those being one by Dua Lipa, but that’s for another post.
RedScope – Am I on Your Mind
Die Wilde Jagd – Uhrwald Orange
It’s like the love child of Dead Can Dance and industrial music. It’s a krautrock thing and a psychedelic rock thing. And it is amazing. I’ve been listening to this record almost continuously for a while now and it just enchants me. It’s hypnotic and atmospheric and opens up a magical world of its own.
Public Service Broadcasting – The Race For Space
From the postive side of post-rock, mixing in psychedelic rock vibe, and layering it with radio recordings from the era of the space race. Quite a unique concept album. What I like most is the overall upbeat and dreamy atmosphere of it all. It feels pleasantly naive.
Long Arm – Silent Opera
This is a quintessential trip hop record. Hip hop beats with blue moods and jazzy instruments. Lamentation on life withouth words.
Michael Mayer – Mantasy
Easy listening mid-tempo house and lazy chillout music, which doesn’t strive to be in the foreground. Good for work, a run while you want to think about stuff and not focus on the music, and Saturday afternoon garden parties with sunshine.
Nicolas Jaar – Cenizas
I still have a hard time to slap a label on Nicolas Jaar. But this record is pure gold, again. Overall I can call it modern classical, although that’s not because of its use of traditional instruments and orchestration, but because it sounds like my idea of a perfect, meticulously crafted classical music today. Genrewise it’s some kind of ambient with a very wide range of intruments and sounds (drums, chimes, keys, strings, experimental textures, and voice), using inspiration from all over the world, and melting it into a introvert mind trip. As advertised on the cover. And an amazing cover art it is, too.
Update: the totally ethereal sounds of Hello, Chain gives me the goose bumps. I’m in awe.
Kontravoid – Too Deep
Absolutely classic EBM. Some tracks are more on the rhythmic noise side with raw and metallic synths, while some are more about vocals and melodic futurepop. But all in all it has most that I love about electornic body music. Fantastic cover photo, too.
Holy Fuck – Deleter
Either punk electronics or electronics-infused indie rock. I usually read about them as the previous but for me it’s more like the latter. Anyhow, it’s with a live band sound but packed with electronic elements, part dreamy and part jump around, part blue and part joyful, still consistent, and always smart and elaborate.
Only Child Tyrant – Time to Run
Funny story, I haven’t known this is an Amon Tobin alias up until the point I got to writing this post and looked up info about this album. And already having listened to the full thing a couple of times. And I was already amazed. And now I’m double amazed. If I listen to the track Long Down now, I have this “what were you thinking” moment, like, of course it’s him.
It’s a super massive, amazing record. All the best of Tobin’s smart mid-tempo electronics spiced up with this rock and roll attitude, dragging heavy beats, all coming together for some heist movie chase scene atmosphere. And full-on surf rock in King of Kong – whaaat? I love this so much. It’s a silly ride and all over the place but sounds fresh for him and feels like a free spirit. Very well done.
Footnote: another artist who chose to be someone else for a bit to be able to work freely, like what I mentioned before.
Dog Fashion Disco – Adultery
First thing first: Dog Fashion Disco is one of my top 5 favorite bands ever across all genres. Thier avant-garde metal is quirky, bizarre, fun, strange, and overall absolutely astonishing. It’s like a dead jazz musician reanimated as a metal-head zombie and marching around in a dark circus in a clown outfit with all instruments hanging on it and played at the same time. And love songs. And satan. And life wisdom.
And finally their full catalogue is available on Spotify. As far as I know there was some legal shit going on why they couldn’t have done that so far and now all the albums are there. So I can listen to this masterpiece called Adultery every other day like every normal person should. (I’ll still keep my safety copy in Dropbox, just in case.)
Random note: now when looking for an album cover image and searching for the band and album title did I stumble upon that this concept record has been made into an actual novel. How cool is that! I’ve quickly put it on my reading list, I really hope it’s just as trash as I want it to be.
Ah man, I love this music so fucking much. It’s like air to breath and blood to drink.