Tomaga – Intimate Immensity

It’s like if you played IDM ambient but with live instruments (which reminds me of the time I attended a Plaid concert played by an orchestra in a concert hall), other times industrial jazz and a touch of experimental music. But it’s rather smooth and pleasant, not harsh.

lynyn – lexicon

Glitchy IDM with nice melodies. Sounds very old school for a record in 2022, but also brings me back to a great era of rhythmic experimental music. It could have been a major Warp release.

Machinedrum – Psyconia

Broken beat, drum and bass, hiphop, IDM, the common denominator is smoothness and a light heart. Like if it’s drum and bass then it’s liquid, if it’s hiphop then it’s soulful. These 26 minutes contain a whole summer’s many flavors in six tracks. It’s not a consistent record at all, more like a promo sampler for a festival, but there’s fun in all those tracks.

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.