Swedish duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums are set to return to the UK for a few festival performances this summer and later this September for a string of live dates. The pair will appear at the Wireless festival in London on Sunday 6 July on the Bella Union stage, then at the sixth edition of the Green Man Festival on Sunday 17 August.

Wildbirds & Peacedrums will then embark on a series of live dates across the UK and Ireland. Here is the list of confirmed dates:

8/09: Manchester
9/09: Belfast
10/09: Dublin
11/09: Leeds
12/09: Nottingham
13/09: Bristol
14/09: Larmer Tree Gardens, Dorset – End of the Road Festival
15/09: London
16/09: Brighton

Wildbirds & Peacedrums | The Leaf Label

VENETIAN SNARES
Detrimentalist
ZIQ211CD
Planet Mu 2008
10 Tracks. 51mins27secs

One thing that Aaron Funk, the prolific Canadian musician behind Venetian Snares, cannot be accused of is boring the listener. Since first taking on the sometimes staid world of electronica in the late nineties with a battering ram, he has gleefully been launching assault after assault with his reconstructed drum ‘n’ bass sounds. Detrimentalist, like the many albums to have come before it, barely takes time out to breathe, such is the manic wellspring of energy at the core of the record. And whilst the dizzying aural barrage will deter the tender, there is a delightfully over the top vivacity at work in his music that at the very least ensures attention. Continue Reading »

Scottish classical composer and pianist Max Richter will release his fourth album, his third for Fat-Cat’s 130701 imprint, on 21 July. The album, entitled 24 Postcards In Full Colour, features twenty four short compositions. Richter’s most concise project to date, at under thirty five minutes, the twenty four tracks making the album have been conceived as ringtones, set to be performed in a variety of gallery spaces where pre-registered members of the audience will receive SMS message alert playing back one or more of the tracks. There will also be a micro-site featuring twenty-four photographs, one for each track. 24 Postcards In Full Colour will only be available on vinyl and digital download.

Richter will perform tracks of the album for the first time at the Union Chapel in London this Sunday, 29 June.

Richter’s first album, Memoryhouse, originally released on the BBC’s Late Junction, will be rereleased in August 2008 and will be available on vinyl for the first time.

Max Richter | Fat-Cat Records

TWINE
Violets
GI59
Ghostly International 2008
10 Tracks. 58mins42secs

Greg Malcolm and Chas Mossholder met in high school in the late eighties and began collaborating as Twine toward the end of the nineties, after having spent part of their formative years in various bands. Their first album, Reference, was released on AdAstra in 1999 and was quickly followed by Resource, a split album with Horchata. Since, the pair’s complex and emotional mix of glitch, dense atmospherics, reminiscent of 4AD at its haunting peak, and intricate electronic structures adorned with found sounds, has been constantly refined, redefined, and applied on three magnificent albums, released over a three year period, from Circulation (Komplott, 2001), to Recorder (Bip-Hop, 2002) and Twine (Ghostly, 2003). Since, despite being announced for over three years, Violets had remained mysteriously out of Ghostly’s release schedule, until now. Continue Reading »

RONE
Bora
IF2009
InFiné 2008
05 Tracks. 33mins01secs
12″/Digital

FRACTION
Superposition
IF2011
InFiné 2008
05 Tracks. 23mins59secs
12″/Digital

French imprint Infiné has been around for just over a year, but is already starting to get noticed thanks to a series of EPs by artists as diverse as Luxembourg-born classical musician Francesco Tristano Schlimé, German techno artist Apparat or French afro electronic ensemble Donso.

The label’s recent outputs continue to showcase the ambitious scope of the label with two somewhat different electronic releases. Continue Reading »

SPIRITUALIZED
Songs In A&E
0251766542/1768732
Sanctuary Records 2008
18 Tracks. 51mins41secs

What happens when a young rocker who made a name chronicling a fast and dangerous lifestyle lives to face middle age? Consider this when looking at Jason Pierce, AKA J Spaceman, the creative center of Spiritualized. As part of Spacemen 3 in the late eighties, Pierce and fellow songwriter Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember wrote minimalist drone-rock chargers which chronicled drug use – heroin, most specifically – with a shocking openness and honesty. As Sonic and Spacemen reached irreconcilable disagreement, Pierce formed Spiritualized, a project which kept the minimalist, repetitive drive of Spacemen 3, while incorporating large, dizzy orchestrations. Continue Reading »

KESTON & WESTDAL
One Day To Save All Life
UEM0333
Unearthed Music 2008
12 Tracks. 61mins37secs

John Keston and Nils Westdal have been working together since the tail-end of the nineties, although their debut album, Super Structure Baby, was only released four years ago on short-lived New York imprint Coup De Grâce. With this record, Keston & Westdal presented a series of chilled electronic compositions infused with chunky jazz overtones, fusing Keston’s background as a jazz pianist and Westdal’s warm and enveloping bass. The album was followed by a second opus, Truth Is Stranger, released in 2007.

One Day To Save All Life takes quite a different path. Partly leaving behind the soft lounge forms they had become accustomed to, Keston & Westdal investigate here much more complex grounds and occasionally find themselves in the vicinity of Boards Of Canada or Isan Continue Reading »

Twenty one year old Icelandic musician Ólafur Arnalds first appeared last year with his debut album, Eulogy For Evolution, released in the UK on the excellent Erased Tapes imprint, and instantly gathered some impressive critical praises for his widescreen contemporary classical music tinted with discreet electronics and hints of indie. Earlier this year, Arnalds returned with a more minimal EP, Variations Of Static, on which he let electronics texture his work more prominently. With an opening slot for Sigur Rós during the summer and a major tour already in full swing, Ólafur took a few moments to talk about his musical background, the elitism in modern classical music and the challenges of taking the genre to a young audience, and being the next big thing to come out of Iceland.

Continue Reading »

FLYING LOTUS
Los Angeles
WARPCD165
Warp Records 2008
17 Tracks. 43mins17secs

Flying Lotus’s family credentials could hardly be more legendary. Grand son of Marilyn Mcleod, who penned songs for Diana Ross, The Four Tops and countless other Motown legends, and great nephew of jazz legend Alice Coltrane and cousin of Ravi Coltrane, Steven Ellison has quite a lot to live up to. With his first offering, 1983, released two years ago on Californian imprint Plug Research, Ellison set the foundation for his classic blend of hip-hop infused electronica and established Flying Lotus alongside the likes of Dntel, Madlib or Daedelus. Having consequently moved to London’s Warp Records, Flying Lotus delivered the rather impressive Reset EP last year, and is now bringing out his second album.

Dedicated to the city in which he grew up, Los Angeles is a largely instrumental collection, with only a handful of tracks featuring vocal contributors. Continue Reading »

DARK CAPTAIN LIGHT CAPTAIN
Circles
LOAF17
LOAF 2008
04 Tracks. 16mins35secs
Format: CD/Digital

London’s ever expanding (it seems) and mysteriously named Dark Captain Light Captain came together in early 2006 around the nucleus of guitarists and vocalists Neil Kleiner and Dan Carney, and have since grown into a full six-member outfit, but their music has lost nothing of the fragility it had in the early days. Circles is the band’s second release and follows last year’s debut single Jealous Enemies/Mid-Session Interval. It is also the prelude to the band’s first album, scheduled for later in the year.

Building their songs around gentle vocal layers and harmonies, brushed with acoustic guitars, soft rhythmic patterns and discreet electronics, DCLC have undoubtedly refined their sound since Jealous Enemies and developed the music lexicon which informs their work to great effect. Continue Reading »