Downtempo bass music for relaxation and early morning or late night walks.
Calibre – Planet Hearth
Throwing Snow – Mosaic
After last year’s Loma I am traveling backwards in the Throwing Snow discography, and it’s a great trip. At this album I’m stuck for a while now, I keep re-listening it and it just doesn’t clear from my Listen Next playlist. It gives me the goosebumps at certain points, has magical moods, it’s like electronic music with a soul. It’s like Apparat with a more firm grip on the beats, little more weight on sounds, doesn’t take so much care to take all steps with a soft feet. I imagine a creature sliding on ice; it runs to gain impetus, starts off with a quick and light slide, then jumps to feet ending in metal hoofs and slams it on the ice, carving a streak but still moving forward like it was unstoppable.
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.
Throwing Snow – Loma
First got hooked on this one when I was looking for something with broken beats and jungle rhythms, and I was happy to find this record. But then there are quite some flavors of electronics piled up here, all pretty much good flavors.
Laksa – The Amala Trick
All output in 2018 by Laksa is well worth the visit. Mid tempo electronic music, which not special because it’s outstanding, it’s just nice to listen to.
Lorn – Remnant
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.)
Gila – Pick Six EP
Slow, bass, bit weird, bit oldschool.
Josip Klobučar – Bad Taste
Weird-hop, psychedelic glitch, murky bass. This little 4-track EP is wtf brilliant, like Amon Tobin level
amazing IDM, and still completely unique.
Nery – 33
Soulful, hiphop tempo, some bass, some singing. Sounds like hailing from those best days when glitchy hiphop and dubstep started rediscovering its triphop roots. I really like this record, have been listening to it for some time now.
Brood Ma – DAZE
Long time no see, kūlt.
Hitting off this year with this experimental flow of deep sounds glued together on an album by Brood Ma. Follows tracks of noize, glitch, bass music, breaks, from slow no-beats to mid-tempo bangers. Not for the dancefloor but for dark clubs. Does not shade your sunshines but lights up your nights.