Memory keeper. Mostly music and movies, plus some series and video games. Obscure darkness meets pop culture glow.
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.
What I like about Burzum is that it’s soothing like My Dying Bride but doesn’t have the doom edge to it. I love listening to The Angel and the Dark River, the only caveat is that it sets my mood and mindset to a specific place. Burzum leaves me where I am, it just provides calmness and space for me to float in. Well, maybe not all Burzum records, but this one and Hliðskjálf certainly are like that.
Something like an ageless bridge across nu jazz, ambient electronica, soft grooves and laidback head music. Soothing, relaxed, nice feelings, a light and gentle touch on the soul.
Melancholic, part wondering, part sharp and penetrating, electronic with a shoegaze attitude. And a powerful concept: “addresses the planet’s current fragility using actual field recordings of ice collapsing from glaciers.”
IDM and ambient. A journey: looking at the star-studded night sky in a wide valley, then taking a trip inside a factory colony on a distant planet, and later back into the open space and nature again.
I don’t really know how to label these albums anymore. When Loren appeared on Brainfeeder it was easy and obvious to call it dubstep not just because of the music but because it was those times. Then in the Ninja Tune years it was still related to that scene. But then the dubstep bunch dissolved and some started creating techno, others house, and then some continued this sort of evolution of dubstep into something like bass-dominated darkish ambient, which I wouldn’t call ambient per se, but I just don’t know what to call it.
Discogs labels this latest Lorn album simply as experimental, but I don’t think it’s experimental at all in a sense how I see a Pansonic record or something by Sakamoto being experimental electronics. Remnant has a lot of melodies, easy-to-listen textures, some beatless pieces but many with mid-tempo rhythm. This is not experimental at all, this is completely approachable and easy to digest even if it is for a specific taste – but that’s true for all sorts of music.
Nowadays I tend to consider these simply electronic music. Maybe add “atmospheric” as most of them could fit as a soundtrack for any movie, game or live performance. Bit dark but then not, bit ambient but then not, bit experimenting but then not, bit triphopish but then not. I am thinking of labelling these as IDM again, which feels weird because I have very specific moods attached to that genre because of Planet Mu, Plaid and such from the late ’90s and early ’00s, but the philosophy of that music and those releases are closest to what I feel now. So, all that said, we could call Lorn’s Remnant a modern, bass-oriented, moody IDM record.
Or this is dubstep still. It’s just that this is what dubstep sounds like 10-15 years in. (And probably I had come to this realization a few times in the past decade.)
From ambient to rhythmic noise to breakbeat.
Some kind of melancholic electronic music with dark moods and a steady pulse. Like the dark days of Apparat or the electronic version of a post-rock record. Extremely atmospheric, swallows me, chews me, spits me back into the void, a pitch black to love.
Downtempo, ambient, on the brink of modern composition but still the electronic music kind and not the classical music version. It is a nice ride as a concept album and also great vibe for work. With a last record of house beats this one as a first after Vynehall’s moving to Ninja Tune is an exciting twist, we’ll see what comes around next if he sticks to the ninjas.
Classic Ólafur Arnalds. Beautiful and sad, like life.