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 »

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 »

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 »

RIVAL CONSOLES
The Decadent EP
ERATP5
Erased Tapes 2007
06 Tracks. 20mins23secs
Format: 10″ / Digital

Rival Consoles is the project of twenty-one year old Leicester-based Ryan Lee West. Although this is his first outing as Rival Consoles, West has previously released an EP, already on Erased Tapes, in early 2007 under his Aparatec moniker. Claiming influences stretching from Debussy to Autechre, it is no surprise to find the Decadent EP combining orchestral and electronic textures into tight and angular pieces.

With The Decadent EP, West takes the listener on a journey ranging from the twisted electro of Seventeen and the elegant orchestral swathes of Juncture to the incendiary rush of Kitsch, the warm synthetic waves of The Decadent and the soothing tones of Vari. Continue Reading »

FREDO VIOLA
The Sad Song
BEC5772159/BEC577216
Because Music 2008
04 Tracks. 16mins23secs / 02 Tracks. 15mins36secs
Format: Digital, 10″ / 12″

Fredo Viola was born in London where he spent the first few years of his life before his parents moved to Rome and then New York and Los Angeles where he spent most of his formative years. He studied to become a film director, but music took him on a different path. Strong from a recent collaboration with Massive Attack, Viola follows a couple of MP3 releases with his debut EP, The Sad Song EP, on French imprint Because Music.

The Sad Song EP features three of Viola’s delicately crafted songs, showcasing quite a wide range of styles, starting with the elegant vocal layering and melody of the title track, with only discreet electronic textures added in the background. Continue Reading »

CANON BLUE
Halcyon EP
Rumraket 2007
04 Tracks. 17mins10secs
Format: Digital

Following the release of his debut album as Canon Blue, New Orleans-based Daniel James dropped a perfectly formed four-track EP in Rumraket’s stocking just before Christmas. The EP, which is available to download for free from the Canon Blue Myspace and Rumraket sites (see below), features four brand new tracks, recorded in November 2007 in his bedroom, with a handful of friends lending a hand. Halcyon is, according to James, a celebration of winter, a period during which he feels particularly creative.

Set in a similar style to James’s excellent Colonies album, the songs collected here denote however a gentle evolution in the way James assembles his pop songs and gives them a definite edge. The melodies appear more confident and refined, the soundscapes are increasingly cinematic and the vocal performances have gained in definition, yet the songs still have a subtle air of naivety about them.

As the opening title track rises from initial processed guitar stutter and progressively swells into an intricately layered orchestral noise cloud before dying all too suddenly on a single note, James clearly reassess the space within his music by bringing forward real instrumentation and taming down his more technological side so it works in perfect symbiosis. Ennui, (French for boredom), shows a similar approach as a piano cascades down on a catchy melody which appears in turn uplifting or melancholic, while the firmly paced beat which seats in the background works as a tempered counterpoint to James’s vocals. Avatar Furr is a much more upbeat and pressing affair, but the melody ebbs and flows as the beat retires for a moment, leaving for a moment the orchestral drapes and swirling piano lines to lead. The highlight of this EP comes with the cinematic closing piece, Kingfisher Sweet, as James the singer steps back to leave James the musician sole at the helm of this ambitious miniature pop epic.

With this excellent new EP, Daniel James refines his sound and steps up the pace from his debut album, revealing a much wider and evocative sound while retaining the very essence of Colonies. Not to be missed!

4.3/5

Canon Blue (MySpace) | Rumraket

CLARK
Throttle Promoter
WAP238
Warp Records 2007
04 Tracks. 14mins39secs
Format: Digital / 12″

The press for Throttle Promoter, Clark’s newest release, has described the EP as a “surprise”, intended to pique interest for another surprise – his upcoming full-length, Turning Dragon, due January 2008. So much for months of pre-release hype, then, but it would seem that Clark has had enough of that. 2003’s Empty The Bones Of You was promoted as a more mature, darker, and more industrial Clark (still using his full name Chris Clark at the time), a promise upon which it delivered. 2006’s Body Riddle saw another reinvention of the persona, with the now-truncated Clark focusing on intricately layered, obsessively DSP’d beats, and more delicate and emotional atmospheres. Continue Reading »

GRIZZLY BEAR
Friend EP
WARPCD163
Warp Records 2007
10 Tracks. 43mins18mins
Format: CDS, 12″ and Digital

Originally the solo project of Daniel Rosen, whose lo-fi debut album, Horn Of Plenty, was recorded in his bedroom and released on Rumraket in 2005, Grizzly Bear are now a fully fledged formation counting four permanent members. Following its release, Horn Of Plenty got the remix treatment from a wide range of artists, including Efterklang, Dntel, Solex, Ariel Pink and Alpha to name but a few. Friend EP comes over a year after Grizzly Bear’s stellar second album, Yellow House (Warp Records), and collects alternative versions, demos, new songs and covers by Band Of Horses, Alias Sound and CSS.

The first impression filtering out of this record is the somewhat rawer and heavier nature of the music. While Horn Of Plenty appeared fragile and almost amateurish, and Yellow House was carried by beautifully light and airy melodies and arrangements, Friend at times reveals a moodier Bear, more prone to dig its sharp claws in. Continue Reading »

HYBERNATION
Snow Cover
RN015
Rednetic Recordings 2007
06 Tracks. 32mins55secs

The last addition to the Rednetic catalogue for 2007 is Hybernation’s Snow Cover EP. Once a drummer in punk and metal bands, Stuart Bowditch as he is known to the tax office, switched to a laptop in 1999, and he has, since been expanding his sound bank by collecting field recordings from various places and deployed them in his music. He regularly plays live at various events around London and Essex. Snow Cover is his debut EP.

Collecting six slices of moody and slow moving electronica, this EP showcases a series of intricate pieces loosely formed around a wintry theme which, considering the time of the year, is somewhat quite apt. Continue Reading »

SHREBER HARBER MOLE FLYING WHEEL
Bloom
RN014
Rednetic Recordings 2007
06 Tracks. 29mins28secs
Format: CDS

Shreber Harber Mole Flying Wheel was formed in 1999 in Tokyo by Saitoh Tomohiro, Yamamoto Shinichiro and Kohno Nagahiro, but, after they released their debut album, Air Comfort, on U-Cover, the trio disbanded, leaving Tomohiro sole in charge since 2005.

Creating wonderfully lush and rich soundscapes, and wrapping them around gentle melodies, Tomohiro presents here a rather sumptuous collection of blissful cinematic electronic music. Right from the onset, he articulates a series of atmospheric sounds, representations of birds and flowing water, before laying a delicate melody over a dense sonic mist. Although it never seems to emerge fully, only revealing sections of its complex formation, the melody is kept to the forefront and, as the piece evolves, is left leading the way. Continue Reading »