Such cool girl power rock from the indie-garage axis, but mostly just hot rock and roll.
Deap Vally – Marriage
DB Armitage – Lovelow
I have such a hard time waiting for Dalma Berger to produce new music, I’m hungry for every new things she makes. She definitely takes her time to release new material with the latest DB Armitage alias but this record is also showing that it’s worth the wait. Beautiful (and sorrowful) electronic pop music from the non-mainstream kind.
It has been interesting to see her journey from the Realistic Crew and Singas Project through Volkova Sisters to where she is now. And whatever she produced or contributed to always orbited around the musical aesthetics that I completely adore. Probably it’s an easy statement that she’s also my favorite Hungarian female vocalist of all time.
CT Kidobó – Impulse & Inhibition, Pt. II
Amazing electro, not simple but pure. Hacker music—not the EBM kind but from the Anthony Rother school.
Pye Corner Audio – Entangled Routes
Atmospheric electronic music, like a soundtrack to a movie that never was. Genres go mainly on the ambient to synthwave axis.
Being exposed to lots of sci-fi and futuristic noir things, it’s easy to see this as a perfect backdrop for a cyberpunk book or RPG play session.
Emeka Ogboh – Beyond The Yellow Haze
Electronic ambient music with lots of busy city life field recordings. It’s not like a beatless soundscape populated by urban noises, it’s often pretty upbeat. And that, mixed with the sounds of busy streets create this quite lively atmosphere, which feels like a rushing metropolis of ants.
Bicep – Isles
Slow tempo melodic techno sound with straight beats and some breaks. But other than that it’s an epic classic of an electronic music record, that’s what it is. Every single day I have to realize that such evergreen music is still being released, continuously. I can see how this builds on everything from Four Tet to Rival Consoles and everything in between, but it stands so well in its own right. Beautiful music.
Manni Dee – A Low Level Love
If I ever need a rave anthem here’s a note for self to go for London In My System. The record overall is pretty hard style techno, which I would generally call acid-infused rave.
Moin – Moot!
It’s some alternative post-rock, sometimes I feel it’s shoegazer style but then often it’s much more upbeat and lively than that. The percussion grooves are killers. It’s rare that I hear a drummer and start looking up other projects by them just based on the beats played—this is one of those cases. But all other aspects are amazing too, like bits and pieces of melodies, and some well-placed spoken word segments or samples. It’s a record that I have a hard time putting into words: I feel like I don’t have the right dictionary to describe what I hear, but I love it so much. It’s really surprising and absolutely amazing.
Chris Liebing – Another Day
It’s really hard to pin down the genre for this album. The atmosphere is moody electronic music on mid tempo, city music, walk in the rain music. On Basecamp it self-defines as techno and downtempo by tags. But I’d argue that the reality of it is mostly progressive breaks. In any case, Circles is my track of the month: this is most definitely prog breaks, with a fantastic melody, beautiful vocals, and such a well crafted arch for the whole song.
Humanoid – 7 Songs
Acid house by one half of Future Sound of London. Ranging from the old school big beaty Crystal Method vibes through silly-easy to some more techy sounds, but straight-up acid house all along.