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 »

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 »

OUR BROKEN GARDEN
Lost Sailor
BELLACD164
Bella Union 2008
06 Tracks. 19mins34secs
Format: CDS/Digital

In the light of her recent live performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, on London’s South Bank, when she opened for Efterklang, it is quite fitting that Anna Brønsted’s Our Broken Garden has been signed to Simon Raymond’s and Robin Guthrie’s Bella Union. Indeed, thanks in part to dense guitar textures, some of her set was very reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins circa Victorialand and the collaboration they did with Harold Budd on The Moon And The Melody. Continue Reading »

ÓLAFUR ARNALDS
Variations Of Static
ERATP8
Erased Tapes 2008
05 Tracks. 21mins39secs
Format: CD/10″/Digital

Hailing from the small Icelandic town of Mosfellbær, situated just outside of Reykjavik, young classical musician Ólafur Arnalds released his debut album, Eulogy For Evolution, at the end of 2007. His approach shares with that of compatriot Jóhann Jóhannsson a taste for combining often melancholic piano or string compositions with found sounds and electronics and, more surprisingly, occasional elements of indie rock.

Variations Of Static, Arnalds’s second offering, was originally made available as a limited tour edition. Recorded at home, with Arnalds on the piano and a string quartet providing the accompaniment, these compositions feature more prominent electronics, while a recurring computerised voice appears at regular interval, evoking a similar use on Jóhann Jóhannsson’s 2002 album Englabörn. Continue Reading »

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Water Curses
RUG287CD/RUG287T
Domino Recording Co 2008
04 Tracks. 18mins05secs
Format: CDS/12″/Digital

The journey on which Animal Collective embarked some years ago has taken them from the thoroughly experimental to the surprisingly straightforward without ever going about it the easy way. In recent years, their records have become more melodic and song-based. Their last couple of inputs for Fat-Cat swapped the burning exuberance of early records for much more structured and elegant records. Last year’s Strawberry Jam album, the collective’s first full length release on Domino, showed that, although the band have polished their act, they remained as inventive with their music and have developed a truly unique sound.

Following the all-out pop effervescence of Strawberry Jam, Water Curses catches the band in a much reflective mood, their colourful songs stripped down, leaving vocals and melodies exposed. Continue Reading »

CYLOB
Late In The Day
CSR005M
Cylob Industries 2008
06 Tracks. 21mins57secs
Format: Digital

It’s a common criticism labeled at electronic music, that sounds produced by machines sound too clean and inhuman. Often enough, of course, that’s part of the point, but beyond that, one could counter, no machine is perfect. Picking up and exploiting the weaknesses of electronic instruments is a full-fledged phenomenon, be it in circuit bending toy instruments, removing the batteries from a sequencer and using a memory crash to create new sequences, or coding your entire setup from scratch like Chris Jeffs (known on stage and record as Cylob) does. Representing this labor of intense, creative love, Cylob’s music, whether more toward the electro or ambient end of the spectrum, has always retained a unique and imperfect aura.

Late In The Day, the latest EP release from Cylob, is the sound of passively violent degradation. Almost every synthesized sound here is detuned to some extent, while the percussion loops sound perpetually ready to disintegrate into bits. Continue Reading »

MOVE D
Quit Quittin’
UZURI002
Uzuri Recordings 2008
04 Tracks. 27mins12 secs
Format 12″

‘The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.’ So begins Samuel Beckett’s grim and funny book Murphy. And the nothing new is often what the modern listener comes across when they pick their way through the morass of new music pumped into our radios and on to our TV screens on a daily basis. At the same time, it sometimes feels like electronic music, while still a relatively new endeavour, has been playing out on repeat ever since the Detroit legends dropped their first twelve inches in the early eighties. And the same thought comes to mind when listening to this, the second release on the fledgling Uzuri label. Continue Reading »

RAF & O
Has The Air Gone Walking?
GEO010
Geo Records 2008
04 Tracks. 17mins38secs
Format: 10″

From the collision of sounds that comes together on the opening seconds of this debut EP, there is little doubt that Raf and O are something new. The shrill, off-kilter vocals of Italian singer Raf Mantelli married to the cool electronics of glitch producer Gagarin fuse together a sound that is often enthralling and occasionally perplexing, but always full of interest.

The collaboration – which also features a low-key Richard Smith on bass – is the first step in the relaunch of Geo Records, whose output has so far largely been of Gagarin’s – a.k.a. Graham Dowdall’s – solo efforts. It continues a long tradition of working with other musicians that has kept Dowdall busy since the early 1980s. His polished CV reveals long stints with the likes of John Cale and Nico as well as more recent work with Pere Ubu. 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 »

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 »