THE ORB
The Dream
BFLCD84
Liquid Sounds 2008
15 Tracks. 72mins55secs

The Dream sees the reunion of long-term friends and collaborators Alex Paterson and Martin ‘Youth’ Glover, working together under the Orb umbrella for the first time in fifteen years. The pair met at school in the seventies, then, while Youth gained famed as part of post punk outfit Killing Joke, Paterson followed as a roadie for the band. The pair went on to set up W.A.U.! Records and work together, alongside Jimmy Cauty, and later on Kris ‘Thrash’ Weston, on the two first Orb albums. While they remained friends over the year, it wasn’t until Youth set up a brand new studio at the end of his garden a couple of years ago that the pair began working on a new project. Continue Reading »

HARMONIC 313
EP1
WAP231
Warp Records 2008
06 Tracks. 22mins43secs
Format: 12″/Digital

Mark Pritchard certainly needs no introduction. From his time as one half of Global Communication, responsible for one of the finest ambient albums ever released, to various other projects, solo, with Tom Middleton or others (Jedi Knights, Reload, Link or Troubleman to name but a few), he has made an undeniable mark on electronic music. His latest project sees him remodel Harmonic 33 by adding a one between the threes and move away from the down tempo, library music-infused sound he has developed with Dave Brinkworth on the pair’s two albums to turn his attention to classic Detroit techno and eighties electro pop. Continue Reading »

CHRIS WATSON
Oceanus Pacificus
TS02
Touch 2008
02 Tracks. 05mins35secs
Format: 7″

Chris Watson returns to Touch with this limited run, the second in the label’s new Touch Sevens series. One of the best known and most highly regarded wild life recording artists, Watson delivers two recordings made in the Galapagos Islands in April 2006. Documenting the Humboldt current, and recorded at depths of 3 and 10 metres, the two short tracks capture underwater movements as rarely heard by the human ear. As the current pushes ahead continuously, it appears to affect the water in a slightly different way as the pressure increases. While the sound palette is clear and open at 3 metres, it becomes slightly more muffled and sombre deeper. The recordings on Oceanus Pacificus have been left totally untouched. Each represents a snippet of life, extracted from its original setting and brought to the surface. Continue Reading »

London-based Erased Tapes will be hosting a special Valentine’s gig on Thursday 14 February at the Monto Water Rats Theatre in King’s Cross, London.

Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds will be headlining the evening with a live performance, coming on the back of a recent tour and the release of his debut album, Eulogy For Evolution, with support from ambient pop outfit Kyte and post-rock quintet Codes In The Clouds.

Ólafur Arnalds (MySpace) | Erased Tapes

VETIVER
Remixes
12FAT061
Fat-Cat Records 2008
02 Tracks. 14mins00secs
Format: 12″

Two years ago, Andy Cabic, heading Vetiver, dropped the superbly crafted To Find Me Gone, the band’s second album. Although the record followed in the folk footsteps of its predecessor, Cabic & Co. seriously widened the scope of the project by injecting elements of psychedelic pop, but Cabic and producer Thom Monahan envisaged going even further by experimenting with electronic textures. Teaming up as Neighbors, it is exactly what they have done with You May Be Blue and Been So Long, two of the album’s undeniable highlights. Remixes collects these two radically different versions. Continue Reading »

ÓLAFUR ARNALDS
Eulogy For Evolution
ERATP4CD
Erased Tapes 2007
08 Tracks. 39mins36secs

Ólafur Arnalds is a young musician composer hailing from a small suburban town just outside of Reykjavik, who, besides drumming in two separate hardcore bands, focuses on modern classical music, although his work can also occasionally include elements of indie rock. Eulogy For Evolution is Arnalds’s debut album. Released on rising London-based imprint Erased Tapes, it was recorded over four months in early 2006 and features eight tracks, identified only by numbers, most of them led by melancholic piano lines and beautiful strings brushes, evoking the work of fellow countryman Jóhann Jóhannsson or composers Max Richter and Nico Muhly. Continue Reading »

CLARK
Turning Dragon
WARPCD162
Warp Records 2008
11 Tracks. 46mins35secs

Since he first appeared on the scene, in 2001, with his debut album, Clark has systematically upped the stakes with each new release, first by refocusing his sound essentially around electronics and gritty textures with Ceramics Is The Bomb and Empty The Bones Of You, then by refining his template and pushing into darker and dirtier territories with Body Riddle and its companion EPs, Throttle Furniture and Ted. With Turning Dragon, Clark steps up the pace, pushes up the experimentation levels and gets down and dirty on the dance floor.

Recorded in his apartment in Berlin, where Clark has recently moved, Turning Dragon is a much more immediate and incendiary collection, which builds on the momentum of the recent Throttle Promoter EP, yet those expecting a whole album of blasting Dirty Pixie or Kin Griff may be in for a shock. Continue Reading »

The legendary Black Dog are back with a new album, Radio Scarecrow, released on Soma Recordings on 7 April. Two years in the making, Radio Scarecrow is the follow up to the mighty fine Silenced album, which was Ken Downie’s first full length with Martin and Richard Dust.

Talking about the album, the band said ‘the beats are faster and the bass is much’ and is also said to contain embedded coded messages and curses. More information about the album is due to be made available via a dedicated website imminently. Track listing as follow:

1. Transmission Start
2. Train By The Autobahn (Part 1)
3. Train By The Autobahn (Part 2)
4. Riphead v9
5. UV Sine
6. …Short Wave Lies
7. Siiiipher
8. Digital Poacher
9. Coda
10. Set To Receive
11. EVP Echoes
12. Floods v3.9
13. Beep
14. Witches Ov
15. Dials & Dialers 1
16. Ghost Vexations
17. Dials & Dialers 2

The album follows a string of re-releases of early Black Dog material released during their collaboration with General Production Recording and reissue by Soma.

The Black Dog | Radio Scarecrow | Soma Quality Recordings

Mark Pritchard, one of the two founding members of the legendary Global Communication and Jedi Knights, returns to Warp at the end of February with a new EP released as Harmonic 313. Moving away from the library music tones of Harmonic 33 by adding a 1 to the name, Pritchard turns his attention to Detroit and hip-hop infused dance music and adds some very contemporary flavours to the mix.

EP1, which is due out on 12” and digital download, also includes a playful aspect with all track titles shown only as colour codes to be solved. The 12” will feature five tracks, with an extra track available to download once the code has been cracked.

The EP is out on Warp Records on 28 January, with an album announced for the summer.

Mark Pritchard (MySpace) | Warp Records

CYAN341
Numbers
KREISAULF035
Kreisaulf 2008
04 Tracks. 28mins30secs

Cyan341 is the latest project from Rednetic label boss Mark Streatfield, who is better known for his long running electronica project Zainetica. As Cyan341, Streatfield investigates a much more dance floor friendly series of soundscapes fueled with Detroit electronic textures and Berlin techno minimalism.

The Numbers EP, available to download from Kreisault, features four tracks, soberly entitled 05, 06, 07 and 08, echoing the rarefied tones and linear beat structures employed throughout. Yet, despite avoiding any unnecessary flourishes, Streatfield still manages to create warm polished soundscapes to wrap his compositions in. All four tracks appear to form from a same restricted sound pool and could, on first listen, seem to be variations on a unique theme, but on closer listen, the individuality of each piece becomes more apparent. Continue Reading »