Tag: electronic

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Clark – Steep Stims

I really need to figure out a name for this kind of music. It’s like Apparat and Weval: electronic music that has a four on the floor base rhythm but sometimes sprinkled with broken beats, feels like IDM but not noisy, feels soothing but not ambient, feels to have a good drag but not uptempo, has some odd and live-sounding instrumentation but not necessarily actually live instruments, feels sophisticated but not classical.

I was thinking, how about “ballroom techno”, because it’s a techno base but more sophisticated and not dance floor-oriented. Then I found that this is already used for something else, of course. So this was the point where, being 2026, I turned to AI to see what it would suggest for a genre specification here. The result: leftfield indietronica and melodic IDM. That’s actually not bad to express what I mean, it’s just pretty long for a single genre.

Well, for this album specifically I’ll make piece with IDM overall, considering the record as a whole, and then let’s see how I feel about these above genre specifications the next time I come across music like this.

Oh, and btw, this album is awesome. I’ve been coming back to it for a few months now. It’s versatile and playful, groovy but not obtrusive when it’s a backdrop, has easy hooks and some depth, too.

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Nightbus – Passenger

Goth electronics and new wave, with some random triphop beats. Interestingly, it’s like many things I’m fond of dropped in a blender.

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Entrañas – Los Cueros Al Sol

I’m not familiar with the latin electronics world that this record lives in, so I found this album especially refreshing, new, interesting, and exciting. The melting of latin percussions and rhythms with the kind of dubstep and bass music that I’m familiar with creates this bridge that I know how to walk but shows lots of new tricks along the path.

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Weval – Chorophobia

Since I saw them in Paradiso in 2023 these guys have been on my continuous watchlist, both for new releases and live performances. Hard to catch them though, their shows are sold out in a minute. People in Amsterdam seem to be very well aware that Weval is a premium export article of this country and don’t hesitate to rush to see them whenever there’s the chance.

This is another great album, being super consistent with their sound but providing enough new material to listen to. Masterfully done, maybe even a bit too calculated. But hey, the end result is still good music, so far so good. It’s mid-tempo electronic music blending genres and just pleasing to listen to. I feel a kinship with Jamie XX, which also works for putting them on that non-genre-specific electronic music line of artists, which are kinda leftfield for pop but more mainstream than underground.

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Soulwax – All Systems Are Lying

Another record that went from zero to a hundred on my listening charts in something like a week. I had listened to it once or twice previously but it hadn’t stuck with me, and then last week it just did, a lot. At this point it has a guaranteed Top 3 spot in my year-end list.

The whole album is sprawling with musical references from so many things that I love. And it’s not just a few specific things but entire aspects of music that I’ve been getting hooked on and have been loving in practically my whole life. From the post-nu jazz of the ’00s with its artistic and electronic reinterpretations, through the big beat sounds of the likes of The Chemical Brothers or The Crystal Method, and electro-infused electronic music that I have often a hard time to put in a box other than “electronic music”, all the way to leftfield pop that is just meant to be blasting from the radio.

I rarely pinpoint single tracks because I usually like the coherent experience of a full album best. And this is an a-ma-zing album as a whole, no question about that. Still, Gimme A Reason is just a hymn, I am floored by this song. To me, this is the ultimate pop hit of this year. I don’t even remember when I put a single track on repeat for such a long time as this one. And after a hundred replays I still get goosebumps at the exact same timestamps. I can’t talk highly enough about this one, it’s an essential track.

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TOKiMONSTA – Eternal Reverie

Soulful hiphop, lounging r&b, quality chill-out electronics. It’s such an understated and elegant album, so good to listen to. Perfect soundtrack to a day when I’m just going about my things and want something to keep me smoothly sailing along.

This has quickly become one of the soundtracks of this year, and by yet another fantastic female artist; this is a women’s year, no question about that.