Review: In late 2023, Tokyo-based musician Daigo Sakuragi moved to London where he revisited recordings made with fellow Japanese artists. Inspired by the city's energy and atmosphere, he crafted Togenkyo, a 28-minute fusion of early 2000s folktronica and contemporary ambient music that now comes as two long continuous pieces on one slab of vinyl. Layering immersive synth textures with spatial production, he grounds the piece in organic drum and bass grooves while a saxophone elegantly weaves through the soundscape. Togenkyo reflects an inner utopia that is attainable yet imperfect and is a comforting, meditative work.
Review: The NOID imprint out of Belgium returns with its second vinyl drop, and this time takes you into some serene realms of breakbeat-driven pleasure court yes of Dave NA. His Altura EP opens with 'Escape', a wide open and airy mix of wispy synths and dusty, floating breaks. 'Elevation' has a more churning rhythm and dubby undercurrent and 'Pulse' (feat Freq444) has a hypnagogic feel, smeared vocal cries and more raw percussive patterns. 'Novox' (feat Freq444) shuts down with the most heavy and moody breakfast of the lot, a certain jungle swagger and plenty of heavy bass.
Review: Techno doesn't often come on 7" but do not let that put you off this superb new drop from Bump'n'Grind. It features dub techno legend Deadbeat in fine form across two devastating cuts. A-side 'Ark Welders Dub' is a menacing and prowling track with a picked bassline and smeared chords to add real depth and weight. It's one to foster a heads down mood on the dancefloor, while emotional release comes in the form of the flip side. 'This Bitter Dub' is a more sparse sounds with hissing hi-hats skating over the drums while bittersweet synths and an aching blues vocal ring out up top.
Review: Few producers do the dub techno sound better than Rod Modell and on this second Atmospherica instalment, he shows why he is so revered. "Exploring The North" is dense and subdued, the hisses and crackles ebbing and flowing fluidly over a powerful sub-bass. "Pinewood Lodge" is more atmospheric and floaty, its chords flitting about like fireflies over a camp fire on the first night of autumn. Rounding out the release is "Shot Point". Immersive, hypnotic and ghostly, it washes through the speakers like waves crashing on a deserted beach at midnight. This is electronic music that is designed to get lost in.
Review: DJ F16 Falcon's music has always been tricky to pigeonhole, with the fast-rising French producer frequently fusing dub-wise rhythms and off-kilter beats with unusual samples, Tolouse Low Tracks style experimental electronics and melodic elements that doff a cap to tropical, new age and world music. Ici Commence La Nuit, his latest excursion, treads a similar sonic path, delivering unusual but wonderfully inventive and entertaining excursions. The most accessible and warming of the lot is colourful, melodious and bass-heavy opener 'Ici Commence La Nuit', though the sludgy, modular-rich pulse of 'Trip a La Mode de Quand' and thoroughly odd 'Clope Sucree' are equally as potent.
Review: Senking and DYL reunite after their notable collaboration back on 2020's EP Uniformity Of Nature, this time going long on their first full-length, Diving Saucer Attack. This new work spans a total of six tracks, two of which have been produced individually and so highlight their shared passion for dub-heavy and adventurous electronic music while also bringing out the subtle differences in their styles. The album opens with 'Six Doors Down', a track featuring throbbing bass and haunting synths while subsequent cuts like 'A7r380R' explore intricate soundscapes before culminating in the sombre closing piece, 'Not Just Numbers.'
Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen - "Tonight In Belfast" (feat Mike Garry) (11:58)
Orbital - "Belfast" (David Holmes remix) (12:03)
Review: Poet, librarian, Mancunian, father, husband, uncle, brother. Mike Garry is many things to many people, but tonight, Matthew, his voices guides our eyes upwards, inviting us to stargaze to one of Orbital's most emotionally resonant and timeless pieces of rave noise. Belfast Revisited would be one way to describe it, taking some of the classic and unmistakable elements of that anthem and turning it into something new. First and foremost freshness comes with the spoken word addition - a thoroughly positive, passionate and amorous declaration of unending love that could feel jarring depending on whether you always felt 'Belfast' was reflective and slightly melancholy, or not. Gone too are the breaks, replaced now by stadium-sized four-to-the-floor turning what was once the end of the night walking home at dawn into something that sounds way more 11PM at the concert.
Review: Scott Monteith is the Berlin-based but Canadian-born artist best known as Deadbeat, stepping out with new alias Ark Welders Guild. It is an audio-visual performance and recording project with Italian singer and curator Letizia Trussi, whom he met in winter 2021 and has since formed a strong creative bond. They work in Trussi's Rooms of Kairos studio and have already cooked up two album length pieces that come on Monteith's BLKRTZ imprint. Mons Clepsydra is the first and is an epic drone in four parts with string recordings permeating the moody, grainy, heavy atmospheres.
Review: Fresh from curating a fine compilation marking 25 years of his admirable DiN label, Ian Boddy unleashes the latest in a long-line of collaborative works. He's previously released joint studio works alongside Chris Carter, Erik Wollo and Mark Shreeve, amongst others and here is in cahoots with Parallel Worlds member (and DiN semi-regular) Dave Bessell. In true ambient fashion, Polarity boasts a two-part, near 52-minute title track: an evocative, creepy and slowly shifting fusion of modular electronic bleeps, vintage analogue synthesiser melodies, immersive chords and - for shortish blasts amongst the aural weightlessness - bubbling beats. To round off the album, the pair drifts further into deep space ambient mode via the Pete Namlook-esque 'Confluence'.
Review: Take it from us - you want to get to know Denovali Germany on an intimate level. The label has been putting out tearjerking contemporary classical and far-reaching electronic compositions since 2005, lays claim to its own festival of forward thinking music and generally doesn't put a foot wrong. Home to the likes of Electro Guzzi and Les Fragments De La Nuit, it's an imprint and then some, to put it mildly.
Dalhous' The Composite Moods Collection is another one for the ages - the kind of album that you're bound to come back to for years because each play through seems to reveal new layers and elements that may not have presented themselves immediately. While for the most part this is all ambient, there are elements here that take us into much more muscular and ferocious ends, from 'Everything Is Bleeding' to the cinematic tension of 'Open As A Glade Unfolding'.
Review: With an artist name like Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm, and an EP title of Murmer of The Bath Spirits, the fact at least part of this record features a narrative about spiritual awakenings in bath houses, set to an eerie, atmospheric ambient soundscape, will surprise very few people. A 15-minute trip into the ether, noises and tones are as wet as they are warm, and the experience like heading out to uncover a faery land mystery.
Things get a little less specific on the appropriately christened 'Track 2', which moves us on from the dreamy quiet into a place that's more forceful, purposeful, harsh, perhaps even darker. Hypnotic loops set above staccato beats, grabbing hi hats and other elements as the track grows in ear worm qualities with each second.
Review: The long-gestating follow up to 1992's initial instalment, Black Aria II would finally arrive in 2006 after years of discussion from Misfits/Samhain horror-punk visionary Glenn Danzig, and further his exploration into the cavernous realms of modern classical dark ambience. Conceptually based around Lillith, the first wife of Adam, the material here is far more minimalist and starker than its gothic predecessor, while utilising a more varied array of instruments on top of the pre-established organ and strings, with more Eastern sonic influences to conjure a mercurial vision independent of the preceding volume. Complete with eerie chimes, chants and esoteric lamentations, the project marks one of Danzig's most intriguing works when compared to, say, his Elvis covers compilations, and offers a transportive, biblical, haunting narrative delivered almost exclusively via instrumental atmospherics and insidious gloom.
We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information that you've provided to them or that they've collected from your use of their services.