NICO MUHLY
Drones & Piano
SELUR2
Bedroom Community 2012
05 Tracks. 13mins36secs

NICO MUHLY
Drones & Viola
SELUR3
Bedroom Community 2012
04 Tracks 13mins24secs

NICO MUHLY
Drones & Violin
SELUR4
Bedroom Community 2012
04 Tracks. 11mins02secs

Drones & Piano
Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD
Drones & Viola
Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD
Drones & Violin
Boomkat: DLD

Born in Vermont, Muhly grew up in Providence, Rhodes Island, just north of New York where he now resides., Muhly graduated from Columbia University before receiving a Masters in Music from the world-famous Juilliard School in New York eight years ago. An incredibly talented musician and composer with an insatiable thirst for creation, Muhly has since worked alongside Philip Glass, a composer he admires, and has composed a number of pieces, some of which have been released on Icelandic imprint Bedroom Community (Speaks Volume (2006), Mothertongue (2008), I Drink The Air Before Me (2010)), and more recently, Decca (A Good Understanding (2010), in partnership with Bedroom Community,  Seeing Is Believing (2011)). But what makes his career truly remarkable is that Muhly doesn’t compartment his work, and he can as easily be found arranging orchestral parts for artists as diverse as Antony & The Johnsons, Björk, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Grizzly Bear or fellow Bedroom Community friends Valgeir Sigurðsson, Ben Frost or Sam Amidon.

Nico’s latest venture is a three-part digital release based around the concept of drones around which he develops harmonic structures. Continue Reading »

PHILIPPE PETIT & FRIENDS
Cordophony
HOMEN035
Home Normal 2012
13 Tracks. 45mins32secs

PHILIPPE PETIT
Eugenie
ALRN029
Alrealon Musique 2012
04 Tracks. 24mins08secs

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

The dust has barely had the time to settle on the second proper Strings Of Consciousness installment that the unstoppable monsieur Petit is back with a handful of releases for Aagoo, Home Normal, Alealon and Utech to be released over the coming weeks.

Marseille-based Philippe Petit is as much a curator as he is a composer, sound artist and musician, and his records have become extraordinary meeting points for artists of all horizons. Equally, the music he produces ranges from abstract post rock to intense soundscaping to post-classical and beyond. This is precisely where Cordophony stands. Continue Reading »

 

PHILIPPE PETIT
Extraordinary Tales Of A Lemon Girl Chapter 1: Oneiric Rings On Grey
Velvet
AGO039
Aagoo Records 2012
08 Tracks. 44mins34secs

CINDYTALK/PHILIPPE PETIT
A Question Of Re-Entry
LUMB017
Lumberton Trading Co. 2011
02 Tracks. 23mins06secs

A Question Of Re-Entry
Amazon UK: LP Boomkat: LP

Philippe Petit’s work is expanding in forever increasingly circles as he widens his scope with each new project, feeding from his regular collaborations to embark on often ambitious pieces of work which have taken him from the angular noise experimentations of the Strings Of Consciousness collective or the oblique avant pop of his collaboration with Lydia Lunch to the dark cinematic ambiences of albums such as A Scent Of Garmambrosia or Friends With Faces and the orchestral rethinking of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. For his most recent venture, the first chapter in a new trilogy of releases entitled Extraordinary Tales Of A Lemon Girl, it is a Petit without his Friends who depicts the forever shifting sands of slumberland and orchestrates the journey of the mysterious Lemon Girl, a character inspired by Italian Gialli and the work of Lewis Carroll and James Joyce.

Split into eight movements, Oneiric Rings On Grey Velvet is a pretty dense and murky soundtrack which incorporates elements of classical music, turntablism and electronic experimentations without ever settling on a particular theme. Continue Reading »

SIMON SCOTT
Depart, Repeat
SEVENPIECESPIECEONE
Sonic Pieces 2011
02 Tracks. 10mins48secs
Format: 7”

Boomkat: 7″

In recent years, Simon Scott has produced some particularly haunting instrumental pieces, but for the inaugural release on Sonic Piece’s new seven-part series of lusciously packaged seven inch singles due to be released in the next few months, he has opted for a different approach. Recorded in his own studio in Cambridge and at Nils Frahm’s Durton studio in Berlin, and the result of a series of health scares which eventually proved false alarms, the two songs that make this release are delicate folk songs miles apart from the haunting textured soundscapes of his previous works.

Scott plays guitar, xylophone and electronics and vocals here, while Frahm provides additional piano, synths and glockenspiel. Continue Reading »

DADAVISTIC ORCHESTRA
Dokument.01
DUSTV024
Dust Science Recordings 2011
02 Tracks. 22mins12secs
Format: 12″

Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: 12″ | DLD iTunes: DLD

From the Dust Science labs comes this slice of breathtaking ambient, concocted by members of two of the most intriguing and refined techno acts of the last twenty years. Formed of Ken Downie and brothers Martin and Richard Dust, known collectively as The Black Dog, and former members of seminal Dutch outfit Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia Tim Freeman, Arbe and Robbert Heijnen, Dadavistic Orchestra became an entity over the last year, but The Black Dog and PWOG have long shared a similar vision by blending together elements of techno and ambient.

For their first output, the six-headed Dadaist ensemble has collected two stunning ambient pieces, each clocking at around eleven minutes. Continue Reading »

SEEFEEL
Faults
WAP299
Warp Records 2010
04 Tracks. 18mins59secs
Format: 10″/Digital

Amazon UK: 10″ | DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD

While Seefeel never officially split up, the project has been lying dormant for well over a decade. The band, was originally formed of Mark Clifford (guitar and programming), Sarah Peacock (guitar and vocals), Mark Van Hoen (bass) and Justin Fletcher (drums), until Van Hoen was replaced with Daren Seymour in 1992. Seefeel evolved on the fringe of shoegaze and were for a while closely associated with the Cocteau Twins, with whom they toured, yet their approach relied increasingly on heavily processed guitars and abstract ambient soundscapes which earned them considerable respect in electronica circles. In the space of three albums and a handful of EPs, released on Too Pure, Warp and Rephlex, they established a sound which remains to this day highly influential and totally unique. Following the release of their third album, (Ch-Vox) on Rephlex in 1996, Clifford concentrated on solo projects Disjecta and Wodenspoon, and collaborative efforts with Simon Kelaoha, better known as Calika, vocalist Sophie Hinkley as part of Sneakster, and more recently with Mira Calix, while Peacock, Seymour and Fletcher went on to form Scala. Clifford and Peacock were reunited three years ago as Too Pure issued an expanded version of the band’s 1993 debut album, Quique, and the idea of working together again slowly began to emerge. Continue Reading »

KHALIJA
Khalija EP
FINT000
Force Intel 2010
06 Tracks. 52mins36secs
Format: Digital

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

Kicking a record label back to life, especially one with such a rich pedigree as Mille Plateaux, is by no means a small feat, and only the future will tell if the new team in charge can live up to expectations. The label, founded in 1993 as an experimental outlet for German imprint Force Inc Music Works, was brought down to its knees, like many others, by the collapse of the EFA distribution group in 2003. The label was recently brought back to life with the release of the fifth instalment in the Clicks & Cuts series and now comes under the umbrella of the Vertical Label group, which also harbours a handful of new imprints. One such label is Force Intel, which kicks off its catalogue entry with this rather impressive digital-only self-titled EP by Khalija. While this release comes with virtually no information from the label, a quick Google search reveals that this is the solo project of Wyatt Keusch, a musician and sound artist based in Los Angeles who, beside Khalija, regularly collaborates with various musicians on a number of other projects. Continue Reading »

ROOF LIGHT
Kirkwood Gap
HPLL052
Highpoint Lowlife 2010
09 Tracks. 40mins05secs

ROOF LIGHT
What Makes You So Special
HPLL053
Highpoint Lowlife 2010
04 Tracks. 19mins45secs

Kirkwood Gap: Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD
What Makes You So Special: Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD

One of the most consistent and excellent labels to have emerged from the last ten years, Highpoint Lowlife has very much been the labour of love of one man, Thorsten Sideb0ard, who, in the space of ten years, collected some of the most interesting music, electronic primarily, but not exclusively, around. The label has been a welcoming haven for the likes of Fisk Industries, Si-cut.db, Marshall Watson, Like a Stuntman, The Marcia Blaine School For Girls, The Village Orchestra, Bovaflux, Erstlaub, 10-20 and many more. Ten years is a long time, and Thorsten is now turning his attention to writing and drawing a graphic novel, effectively spelling out the end of Highpoint Lowlife. With quite an exiting release schedule coming up, the label is gearing up for a spectacular

Already spotted on Styrax and L2S Recordings in the last year, Roof Light drops his debut album, Kirkwood Gap, on Highpoint Lowlife. The project of South London-based musician Gareth Munday, Roof Light draws influences from a variety of genres, from classic house and ambient to dubstep and garage, building them into particularly effective compositions. Continue Reading »

AUTECHRE
Move Of Ten
WAP505
Warp Records 2010
10 Tracks. 47mins48mins
Format: CD/2×12″/Digital

Amazon UK: CD | LP1 | LP2 | DLD US: CD | LP1 | LP2 | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

It’s been barely a matter of a few months since Autechre released Oversteps, an album on which Sean Booth and Rob Brown greatly expended on the melodic aspect of their work, a move that was started with Quaristice two years earlier. Move Of Ten is a different beast altogether. Darker, grittier, nastier, more angular, this EP drags Oversteps down into the gutter and purposely tarnishes its sheen. Although an EP, at least in Warp’s catalogue referencing, Move Of Ten clocks in at close to forty eight minutes, and ten tracks. Not quite as extensive as EP7, but a pretty densely packed release all the same

After a few years when releases were increasingly few and far between, it seems as if Autechre have entered a more prolific era in recent years. First, there was Quaristice, in all its versions, then a fairly extensive tour, and two year on, came Oversteps, quickly followed by this sister EP. Continue Reading »

OVAL
Oh
THRILL1244
Thrill Jockey 2010
15 Tracks. 25mins03secs
Format: 12”

Amazon UK: 12″ US: 12″ Boomkat: 12″

It has been ten years since Markus Popp propped up as Oval, a project with which he had been fiercely busy since the early nineties, releasing six albums and countless EPs. The project was started in 1991 in Darmstadt, Germany by Popp, Sebastian Oschatz and Frank Metzger. Five years later, Popp found himself sole in charge following the departure of both Oschatz and Metzger, and continued to experiment with glitches and clicks until his last release to date, in 2001.

Fast-forward to 2010, and Oval is back with a new EP, prelude to a full length double album due out later on this summer. Continue Reading »

GAGARIN
Adaptogen Remixes 1
GEO015
Geo Records 2010
03 Tracks. 13mins46secs
Format: Digital

GAGARIN
Agaptogen Remixes 2
GEO016
Geo Records 2010
03 Tracks. 21mins22secs
Format: Digital

Remixes 1: Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD
Remixes 2: iTunes: DLD

Gagarin’s Graham Dowdall is a man who has turned ‘having fingers in many pies’ into an art form. From early stints as member of Manchester’s Ludus in the early eighties and collaborator with legendary sixties muse Nico to more recent involvements with Pere Ubu and his most recent incarnation, as one third of electro-pop combo Raf & O, he has been part of many movements and instrumental to many artists and acts. With Gagarin, it is electronica in rugged atmospheric forms that Dowball has been investigating over the course of four albums and numerous EPs released on his own Geo imprint since 1996.

Following the release of Adaptogen last year come these two EPs of remixes, with contributions from Youth, Robert Logan, Mark ‘Rothko’ Beazley, Moyza, Hybernation and Gagarin himself. Continue Reading »

CALIKA
Crooked
AB024
Audiobulb Records 2009
05 Tracks. 22mins04secs
Format: Digital

CALIKA
Slack Jaw
HPLL043
Highpoint Lowlife 2009
05 Tracks 20mins32secs
Format: Digital

Crooked
Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: DLD Boomkat: DLD

Slack Jaw
Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: DLD. Boomkat: DLD

Clearly willing to spread his music to the cream of British electronic imprints, Brighton-based Calika has, in recent weeks, returned to both Sheffield’s Audiobulb and London’s Highpoint Lowlife, offering each label five tracks of fine electronic music compiled on two EPs. Simon Kealoha, the brain behind Calika, has, in the past, released two albums on Audiobulb, worked with Benbecula and contributed one track to Highpoint Lowlife’s excellent Analog For Architecture compilation, published in 2006. Beside his solo activities, he has also worked with Seefeel’s Mark Clifford, with whom he has recorded two albums worth of material, the first, Running Tapper, released through Clifford’s Polyfusia imprint, the second yet to materialise. Continue Reading »