It’s a little gem on the IDM-techno axis with an ambient mood. Beautifully crafted music.
Bot1500 – Surreal
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.
Priori/RED – Nigh
It seems like 2022 was the come-back year for the classic IDM sound.
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.
Plant43 – Unknown Structure
Electronic music with some IDM and melodic edge. He’s citing Kraftwerk as influence, and the German electronics is definitely there.
Walton – Maisie by the Sea
This is some fine IDM, mostly on the ambient side, sometimes broken beats. Working Title is a track that invokes some great masters of IDM with modern mastering—when the melody kicks in at 2:25, that’s goosebumps.
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.
Space Afrika – Honest Labour
So cinematic, so nostalgic. It’s like listening to the moody, calming score of something on a VHS tape. Ambient with some IDM noises and occasional voices. I make some loose spiritual connection between this one and Sound of the City vol. 3 – Berlin.
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.