Review: A couple of years ago, Max Stocklosa debuted the Trii Group project - albeit under the alternative TRjj moniker - via a couple of decent releases on STROOM. This limited 45 marks the first Trii Group outing of 2021 and was made in cahoots with Hipolito, a fellow Cologne-based artist who has previously contributed to Stocklosa's cassette-heavy TRii Musik label. A-side 'Circuit' is odd but rather good, offering a glorious mixture of tipsy, inebriated new age electronics, distant vocals and chiming melodies. 'Timer' retains the same reverb-laden vocal sound, this time placing Hipolito's vocals atop undulating, lo-fi machine drums and the kind of bubbly, alien-sounding modular melodies that were once a feature of compositions by the Radiophonic Workshop.
Review: UK noise maverick Russell Haswell has had an impressive, star-studded career, and we're pleased to see that he's sticking close to the underground thanks to his recent friendship with Powell's Diagonal imprint. After a series of appearances for the lo-fi imprint, Haswell comes through with an album, a whopping seventeen tracks of brutal power electronics and quasi techno. This is the sort of shit you can stand back and be thrown backwards by, or exactly the sort of gear you can layer over DJ sets for added damage. There are pieces such as "Wholly Unaware" and "Gas Attack", which do verge onto the 4/4 sphere. In any case, this is some serious stuff and it comes hotly recommended
Review: Planet Mu, despite its advancing years, remains right at the cutting edge of electronic music. Its releases are never less that boundary nudging and constantly moving with the times. Back with a new album after Hyper Flux in 2017 did so well, Herva experiments with homemade hardware on this record. For it, he managed to build a "point-to-point mixer from scratch" and as such moves away from sample based music here. It is a thrilling conception that draws form IDM, electronics and its very own rule book when it comes to rhythms, timbre and texture. Mind being stuff for sure.
Review: Ezekiel Honig is a New York City-based artist who founded two vital labels, Anticipate Recordings and Microcosm, and now he is back with a new album on 12K. Unmapping The Distance Keeps Getting Closer is a tender and honest work of art that wears its heart on its sleeve with piano, horns and broken rhythms all characterising the palette. Field recordings are also worked into the arrangements to add a real narrative and to really evoke a sense of place. Add in plenty of textural and tactile motives and you have a journeying album full of melancholy but also a sense of hope.
Review: 30 years after ditching the Humanoid alias in order to form Future Sound Of London with Garry Cobain, Brian Dougans has decided to resurrect his rave-era solo project. The result is "Built By Humanoid", a delightfully skittish, off-kilter album of raw, ragged and mind-altering cuts whose wayward, out-there electronics were partially created using two custom-built synthesizers that Dougans co-designed. The resultant album is breathlessly brilliant and magnificently mind-mangling, with the veteran producer conjuring up cuts that giddily join the dots between Aphex Twin's most intense moments, the acid-fired "Braindance" of Ceephax Acid Crew, the doom-laden ambient and IDM oddness of Future Sound Of London and the sweaty breakbeat rush of early UK hardcore.
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