Memory keeper. Mostly music and movies, plus some series and video games. Obscure darkness meets pop culture glow.
Subsea trip with thumping, soft dub techno and ethereal ambient. Good for chilling, brilliant for work.
On a sidenote: when will this album cover trend stop, I wonder… Photos of parts of stuff so that it looks disturbing. It may have started around Dumb Flesh, but I wouldn’t mind if it stopped.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Two very distinct tracks on this record. The liner notes are pretty accurate for Turbo Olé: “fucking rocket fuel” with “giddy jibber-jaw trance lead”, “electro breaks” and “a ‘90s cyber-trance riff”. Correct, it’s a rave scene in a sci-fi movie. The B side starts off as an IDM rhythmic noise piece but also ends up in with some broken beat trance vibe. Wow. My current favorite music for reading the setting book for the new Cyberpunk Red RPG.
It’s electronic music with tribal and psychedelic sounds. I could call it quirky downtempo, so I guess that’s what we have leftfield for. Interestingly it reminds me of the time when I discovered the Afro-Caribbean scene even if the stylistic expression is different.
Another collection of beautifully sophisticated downtempo electronics from Four Tet. At certain points I tend to think this record loses some of the uniqueness that I attribute to Four Tet, but at the end of the day these songs are still so full that love and soul that I feel pouring out of the headphones while listening to them. And in that sense I distinctly feel that I’m still listening to a Four Tet album.
Love Salad plays all the notes that I’m looking for here, this is what sounds like Four Tet in 2020 for me: long minimal beat prologue, heartfilling melody, shows the past, represents the present. There can be Bibios and Apparats out there playing along similar strings but this guy still takes it home best for me. Also and maybe most importantly the upbeat airiness that I feel so well in this track is what defines his sound right now, and it’s quite a long journey from when As Serious As Your Life was my favorite track in 2003. The triphop heavy thoughts and blue moods are overshadowed (or overlit rather) by a breeze of fresh air and the ease of motion that enables a carefree dance. Even in a track called Something in the Sadness it’s just rolling and moving and jingling and it’s dropping the burden and not carrying it around. I love this Four Tet now.
Electronic ambient with some oriental instrumentation and spoken words, but the most powerful bit and its most unique voice is at the end in the last two tracks, which are totally detached fromt he arc of the album by the way. Actually I’d rather have those two separately as an EP and be happy with it.
Self Doubting Trip is a cinematic-atmospheric soundscape with a tight beat and tense tune, like when the big reveal of an exciting movie is just being unfolded. Then in Dekotur this continues with some chiming sounds and a whole lot of layers building up very slowly. This latter bit actually feels a lot like the beginning of Johnny Jewel’s Vapor, the two could nicely play after one another. (It’s like the end of Terminator and the beginning of the Matrix.)