Norwegian label Beat Service have re-released the first three albums by Biosphere, Microgravity, originally released on Origo Sound in 1991, Patashnik (Apollo), from 1994, and the long out of print soundtrack Insomnia, published on Origo Sound in 1997. The albums do not feature any additional material, but have been repackaged. It is also the first time that Insomnia benefits of a full international release.

Biosphere | Beat Service

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BUILD BUILDINGS + MARLO BRIGHT
Isomers EP
SKM028
StandardKlik Music 2007
07 Tracks. 21secs44mins
Format: MP3

There Is A Problem With My Tape Recorder announced Ben Tweel back in 2004 as a summary to his debut album, which collected twelve lovingly put together melodic pieces, built primarily from processed guitar, piano and other instruments, and arranged into short atmospheric vignettes. For his most recent effort, New York City-based Tweel has teamed up with Marlo Bright, a musician originally born in Minsk, Belarus who now lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and who made his debut MP3 album, Polymers & Monomers, available for free on his own website last year.

The Isomers EP is not a collaborative effort as such, as booth contribute remixes of each other’s compositions. However, the pair tend to work from similar sound sources and, although they adopt a different process here, the result is surprisingly consistent. Continue Reading »

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TIGRICS
Synki
HPLL023
Highpoint Lowlife 2007
09 Tracks. 73mins13secs

After a few months of non activity due to a deep rethinking of intentions and aspirations, the ever-excellent London-based Highpoint Lowlife are back in business, having decided to focus largely on extremely limited numbered CDR releases, with digital albums made available from the label’s website. This process, which mirrors the label’s Analog For Architecture DVD-R of a few months back, aims at recapturing the original Highpoint Lowlife ethic and provide music enthusiasts with unique artifacts rather than mass produced items.

Inauguring this new phase for the label is Hungarian musician and illustrator Tigrics, born Róbert Bereznyei, who hails from Budapest. Continue Reading »

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NOMADIC
Trek 19
TB030CD
Touchin’ Bass 2007
10 Tracks. 57mins01secs

DJ/producer Andrea Parker’s label usually specialises in a kind of very psychedelic and very high-tech sounding underground electro, so at first listen this extremely rough’n'ready album seems like something of a diversion for them. However, although the crunch and buzz of the individual sounds on Trek 19 are superficially punkier and more violent than Touchin’ Bass’s usual fare (indeed frequently it recalls some of The Aphex Twin’s earliest, rawest Rephlex 12″ excursion into piledriving noise under Caustic Window and other such names), a couple of listens through and it becomes very clear that the heart and soul of this album is electro - funky, body-popping, head-spinning, robo-funk electro indebted to Kraftwerk and the Soul Sonic Force - just as much as any previous releases on the label are. Continue Reading »

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SYLVAIN CHAUVEAU
S
TYPE030
Type Recordings 2007
o5 Tracks. 21mins.40secs

With his past few releases, be it under his own name or the On moniker, Sylvain Chauveau has been moving away from his gorgeously sparse and poetic piano works, towards brooding electroacoustic compositions. His first recording on the Type label attempts a fusion of these two realms, resulting in something that is heterogeneous stylistically, yet clearly reserved in its musical forms. Each track enjoys a short but seething lifespan, consisting of discrete audio chunks that are fragile, tentative, and irresolute. Continue Reading »

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STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Our Moon Is Full
CCI 005
Central Control 2007
08 Tracks. 49mins25secs

Rock flirtations with experimental music can be some very risky territory. On the plus side, you can end up with sublime fusions of the traditional and the avant garde; on the other hand, there’s the wankery that eventually drowned seventies prog. Several groups in this decade have given the concept another go, and Our Moon Is Full, the new album from psychedelic collective Strings Of Consciousness, is a thoroughly engaging look at the potential of this merger.

First, a word of caution: this is a record steeped in post rock, featuring, on the majority of the tracks, spoken word rather than singing. It’s a pretentious proposition, but one that works out the majority of the time. Continue Reading »

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DISRUPT
Foundation Bit
WERKCD04
Werk Discs 2007
10 Tracks. 41mins05secs

Although it may show some affinities with dubstep and dancehall, two musical genres usually, although not exclusively, associated with London, Foundation Bit comes all the way from Leipzig, once one of the most important cities in the German Democratic Republic. Disrupt, not to be mistaken with the American punk band of the same name, is the brainchild of Jan Gleichmar, who spent years experimenting with various forms of electronic art forms before developing a healthy interest in dub and trying his hand at it with an old laptop and pretty much nothing else. Continue Reading »

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RICARDO VILLALOBOS
Fabric 36
FABRIC 71
Fabric 2007
15 Tracks. 74mins13secs

It’s funny to see Ricardo Villalobos as a superstar DJ. Listening to one of Villalobos’s live sets (such as the half-hour live at Fabric mix that was released to radios in advance of this release), there are no bangers, no sudden beat drops, no satisfying moments where it all comes together. Villalobos’s music fits on the dance floor, but it can also soundtrack life’s more contemplative moments, and tends to reward the listener who can pay special attention to its subtle changes.

And, subtle change is the name of the game on Fabric 36. Instead of releasing a mix primarily of others people’s tracks, as every other DJ has done for the Fabric series, Villalobos mixed a set composed entirely of new, original material. Continue Reading »

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OREN AMBARCHI
In The Pendulum’s Embrace
TO38
Touch 2007
03 Tracks. 40mins49secs

In recent times, Australian guitarist Oren Ambarchi has been busy with the more experimental side of his work and has published a considerable amount of music on various labels, including Southern Lord, Room40 and For 4 Ears. He has also become a regular fixture as part of Sunn O)))), and has been spotted playing alongside the likes of Fennesz, John Zorn, Keith Rowe, Günter Müller, Evan Parker or Toshimaru Nakamura to name but a few, leaving the line of work leading up to his 2004 album Grapes From The Estate to lay somewhat dormant. In The Pendulum’s Embrace therefore marks his long awaited return to Touch and to more melodic forms. Continue Reading »

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SEABEAR
The Ghost That Carried Us Away
MORR 076CD
Morr Music 2007
12 Tracks. 44mins22secs

The debut full-length from Icelandic group Seabear consists of understated vignettes that center upon simple three-or-four-note acoustic guitar lines, which unfold and circle in the shifting light of successive sound washes. The harmonica and violin of Gudbjorg Hlin Gudmndsdottir provides the buoyant melodies with a firmer foundation with which to wrestle and coalesce; so too does the idyllic atmosphere of lightly brushed drums, flugelhorn, and slide-guitar, all of which, at some point or other, manage to consolidate a certain degree of independence in their category, tumbling to the fore, and thus ensuring a more elastic and varied development. Continue Reading »

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