Kutmah – Closure

Amazing atmospheres, moody stuff, probably not for the joyful of souls. Kept me stick for the full length and worth some replays.

Fun fact: after the last track here Rdio continued the auto-play with Four Tet – And They All Look Broken Hearted. Spot on. 

The Black Dog – Neither/Neither

The new Black Dog album provides an equal amount of moody-darkish electronics, some ambient peace and pleasant techno. For the first run I listened to it five times in a row. And still rolling once a day. Something I didn’t see coming and offers a great deal of pleasant surprise.

Urceus Exit – Contra [Bonus Tracks and Remixes]

This is something unexpected that popped up in the dark electro-industrial station on Rdio with a track and listening through the whole album was well worth doing so. I will be interested to check out the full discography of Urceus Exit now. Has something like the same stumble upon experience when I came across VAST back at the time.

Electronic, melodic, something underground something, but could not be more specific than that. It just feels deeply personal and intimate.

Professor Kliq – The Scientific Method, Vol. III

Electronic music but sounds much live, although the Bandcamp page clearly says what tools were used. Hiphop tempo mostly, soft edges, cool atmosphere, some lounge, some dancefloor, definitely music for the summer.

I have developed some hook on this album, been listening to it for the past few days and it is really pleasant for work, home entertainment and chilling out, too. Don’t get me wrong this is not just background music, there’s a lot detail if you pay attention. Great compositions all over, good choice of instruments, pleasant on the level of !K7 quality, resembles some Kruder & Dorfmeister, Tosca stuff et al.

I just noticed one thing, worth noting: “All original works have been released under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.” Wow.

A few final notes on Sónar Barcelona 2015.

I listened to my first live set of Chemical Brothers at the by Night sessions. And it was boring, thus disappointing. The whole show and visuals were bad-ass, some single tracks were great, but the whole experience as a complete set was dull and without much imagination. With this back catalog of sounds and also the great new tracks (like GO, which I am totally hooked on for a while now) this output was just way weak.

On the other hand FKA Twigs was cute as hell and professional, too. She has an amazing voice and was so adorably honest with her whole attitude on stage. She stood on that huge podium on her own but did not run around much to fill the space but mostly stood in the middle, moved with minimal but exciting choreography and poured her soul into the music. The whole thing was sincere.

Lastly there was one Flying Lotus who also put on a great set, looking back I am so sorry that I ditched this one soon to see the ChemBros. He had an interesting stage with one canvas pulled up and projected on at the front, and he wore glasses of yellow lights that glowed behind. It was creepy and trippy but looked super cool. And of course the music was just what I could have expected.

Finally I had the chance to listen to Mika Vainio in a live set and it was quite a rewarding experience. Deep, true experimental electronics, well played and engineered, and luckily pushed out on a brilliant sound system. It reorganized some guts in my body and listening equipment in my head at certain points but it was well worth it. Actually I was surprised by how harsh and beatless it was after his work in Pan Sonic and as Ø but then again there were some power noise pieces too with heavy rhythms.