Sunda Arc – Tides

From ambient to mid-tempo, from moody electronics to modern classical. A debut record that sounds like a debut record: full of references and inspiration but I have yet to hear the dintinct voice of Sunda Arc. I can hear the blue electronics of Moderat, the piano play of Nils Frahm, also the clarinet comes with a Floex reference to me. Nice sounds overall, just needs more originality next time.

DARKSIDE – Spiral

First half of the record is amazing downtempo glitchy electronics with beautiful melodies and ethereal vocals. It shows both band members at their best, Dave Harrington and Nicolas Jarr sound like mixing up Apparat and Bonobo, especially on the more hook-heavy primary single track, The Limit. Then the second half of the record gradually goes into more indie influences, ambient jammings, and audibly auto-tuned vocals that I don’t appreciate. It’s a bummer but overall the album delivers some strong singles still.

VC-118A – Spiritual Machines

A blend of ambient and IDM with down-to-mid-tempo beats. First I registered this as some strange combination of psy chill atmosphere and glitchy sounds, then I figured there’s quite a bit of cyberpunk mood to it. I could imagine this to be a soundtrack of a neo-noir RPG game. Then I looked at the album title again… Riiiiight.

Flanger – Lollopy Dripper

I had a hard time decoding this record with its extremes ranging from experimental IDM to cool blue jazz. Just thinking about the aspect of this being some weirdly unique and altered jazz sound, gave me associations of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble or even Brandt Brauer Frick. But this was something different still. And then I read this was a duo of Bernd Friedmann and Uwe Schmidt (Atom™) and it all clicked into place. It’s amazing how two artists can blend into one music in a way that you can see who brought what to the table so clearly.

In full honesty though, my favorite track here is Sweet Silence, which has no electrnics to it, but the film noir atmosphere is just irresistible.