Nils Frahm’s new album, Felt, will be released on Erased Tapes on 10 October. This is the follow-up to his 2009 solo debut, The Bells.

To celebrate, the label has made available Snippet, taken from the album. You can pre-order Felt from Erased Tapes.

Norwegian trio Splashgirl may have started as a fairly conventional jazz formation, but as time went on, they have evolved into a much more fluid formation, incorporating elements of other genres in their increasingly improvised music. As they are releasing their third album, Pressure, following a refined performance in London in June, Jo Myhre and Andreas Løwe talk about their predominantly acoustic approach, pushing further into improvisation, experimenting with sound and how their various other projects all inform what they do as a trio. Continue Reading »

MACHINEFABRIEK
Sol Sketches
Machinefabriek 2011
21 Tracks. 53mins34secs

Boomkat: CD | Norman Records CD

Two years ago, Machinefabriek’s Rutger Zuydervelt was contacted by filmmaker Chris Teerink to score a documentary he was planning on American artist Sol LeWitt, requesting that the music be an integrant part of the film concept, on a par with the images. While the documentary is still a work in progress, Zuydervelt began researching LeWitt’s work and found his output so inspiring that, within a matter of days, he had come up with hours of recordings before any image had even been shot. After editing this wealth of material into forty or so compositions, he selected twenty-one to be released as a stand-alone project. These are only sketches for the soundtrack, hence the title, and are not expected to appear in Teerink’s documentary in these forms, yet they are significant enough in the Machinefabriek canon to be granted a release. Continue Reading »

PEDRO SOLER & GASPAR CLAUS
Barlande
IF1015
InFiné 2011
08 Tracks. 45mins40secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD

Barlande is an extraordinary record on many levels, but one of its most fascinating aspects is that it is the meeting of a father, one of the most revered flamenco guitarists alive today, and his son, a cellist who has for most of his career favoured experimenting with other musicians rather than following a formal classical path. The project came out of the first InFiné Summer Workshop, a week-long residency curated by the label in a disused quarry near Poitiers, France, during which a host of artists, from the label as well as guests, are invited to create music on site and perform live each evening, and is released just on time to coincide with this year’s edition. Continue Reading »

SPLASHGIRL
Pressure
HUBROCD2509
Hubro Music 2011
07 Tracks. 49mins25secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP US: CD | LP

Formed in 2003 by three Oslo-based musicians, Andreas Stensland Løwe (piano, synths, electronics), Jo Berger Myhre (double bass) and Andreas Lømo Knudstrød (drums, percussions), Splashgirl released their first album, Doors. Keys. on AIM Records five years later. Two years ago, their second opus, Arbor, Norwegian imprint Hubro’s very first release, saw them moving away from the clearly defined jazz forms and purely acoustic instrumentation of their debut to accommodate for a wider range of genres to feed into their music. Continue Reading »

BVDUB & IAN HAWGOOD
The Truth Hurts
NKR001
Nomadic Kids Republic 2011
04 Tracks. 73mins20secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

The inaugural release on Ian Hawgood’s new Nomadic Kids Republic imprint, The Truth Hurts is the first collaborative effort between Hawgood and Brock Van Wey, but it is not quite their first encounter. The pair were introduced by Mike Oliver, the man behind the former London-based shop-come-label Smallfish, and Van Wey soon released an album on Hawgood’s Home Normal under his  Bvdub moniker.

The Truth Hurts is a rather impressive collection of ethereal atmospheric electronic music, counting just four lengthy contemplative compositions. Built from recordings Hawgood had gathered over the course of twelve years, which served as starting point for Van Wey to arrange them around his own music to create this forever shifting ambient collection. Continue Reading »

ARANDEL
In D Remixed
IF3007
InFiné 2011
09 Tracks. 66mins12secs

Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

Amongst the many excellent records published on Franco-German imprint InFiné last year, one stood out as a particularly original record. The work of enigmatic French DJ and producer Arandel, In D was an electronic record for which the man (this is about as much as we know of who Arandel actually is) had renounced MIDI equipment and samplers, and had instead made extensive use of a vast array of acoustic instruments which he had painstakingly recorded and processed into nine very impressive pieces.

In the next few months, the tracks from In D were handed over to a number of artists for them to offer their vision of Arandel’s music. The results were collected into two digital EPs, which have now been compiled, with additional remixes, into this companion to the original album. Continue Reading »

JASPER TX
The Black Sun Transmissions
FB016
Fang Bomb 2011
05 Tracks. 53mins11secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

If Sweden’s Dag Rosenqvist has often found himself on murky grounds, his horizon has gone considerably darker since his last Jasper TX release two years ago. The title of this new album, his second for Fang Bomb, is as bleak and sobering as the cover it so faintly adorns, and, crucially, as the music it carries. Divided in five sections, this album sees Rosenqvist experiment with increasingly complex and layered compositions. His soundscapes are particularly refined and intricate here, although their overall structure varies considerably, from extremely detailed and quiet moments to beautiful pastoral sequences and heavily processed noise drones, often over the course of a single track. Continue Reading »

BEE MASK
Elegy For Beach Friday
SP005
Spectrum Spools 2011
11 Tracks. 48mins45secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP US: CD | LP Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Following a string of CDR and cassette releases published over the best part of the last decade, Bee Mask landed on Editions Mego’s sister label Spectrum Spools, curated by Emeralds’ John Elliott, with a stunning LP, Canzoni Dal Laboratorio Del Silenzio Cosmico earlier this year. While the album had originally appeared on cassette a few months earlier on Seattle-based Gift Tapes, the Spectrum Spools release gave Bee Mask a much wider exposure. Barely a few months later, Spectrum Spools deliver an album of material recorded between 2003 and 2010 and originally published on very limited cassette or CDR series.

Bee Mask is the project of Chris Madak, a musician hailing from Cleveland, OH, currently based in Philadelphia, PA, who has, since his first releases back in 2006, operated on a somewhat artisanal scale, with some of his early work made available in editions of six. Continue Reading »

INFINITE SCALE
Ekko Location
ECO01
Ecoshock Recordings 2011
10 Tracks. 50mins46secs

A self-professed purveyor of ‘beautiful electronic cinematic melodies’, Infinite Scale is the solo project of musician, producer and DJ Harmi Palda. Originally set up in 1997, Infinite Scale has since had a string of releases on Toytronic, Boltfish and Rednetic, yet Ekko Location is only his second full length record, and the follow up to Ad Infinitum, published two years ago on Rednetic.

Very much like its predecessor, Ekko Location is a fine example of edgy melodic electronica, but here, Palda moves closer to the classic sound of Detroit, especially in the first half of the album, where tracks such as Out Of The Blue, Captured or Mobile Lives denote a move toward much more upbeat and linear territories than previously heard from Infinite Scale. Continue Reading »