Archive for July, 2010

ORIOL: Night And Day (Planet Mu)

themilkman on Jul 5th 2010 01:18 am

Oriol: Night And Day

ORIOL
Night And Day
ZIQ275
Planet Mu 2010
11 Tracks. 43mins15secs

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

Born in Barcelona and now sharing his time between Cambridge and London, Oriol Singhji is not one to conceive electronic music as a cold and sterile medium. His debut album, Night And Day, on Planet Mu, is a sizzling melting pot of funky grooves, jazz fusion, electro disco and classic techno with discreet touches of dubstep sprinkled over to give his music just enough of a contemporary edge. It is doubtful that Oriol was even born when the 1980s, and even more so the seventies, were in full swing, but he captures the spirit of it all and cleverly avoids making it all sound cheesy or dated. His tracks are chunky cuts of euphoric electronic music, rooted somewhere between Detroit and Chicago, and drenched in Floridian sunshine, and the whole thing has a shamelessly feel-good factor heard all too rarely on electronic records. Continue Reading »

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STIAN WESTERHUS: Pitch Black Star Spangled (Rune Grammofon)

Colin Buttimer on Jul 1st 2010 10:01 pm

Stian Westerhus: Pitch Black Star Spangled

STIAN WESTERHUS
Pitch Black Star Spangled
RCD2099
Rune Grammofon 2010
09 Tracks. 46mins56secs

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

Pitch Black Star Spangled is a darker, lonelier experience than its bastard sibling, Puma’s Half Nelson Courtship and it’s all the more impressive for it. Where Half Nelson Courtship‘s group context locates the music in a slightly more familiar dynamic, Westerhus solo tiptoes out on a long, narrow outcrop and leans over the edge, peering intently into the abyss.

The album begins with Don’t Tell Me This Is Home, a hushed prologue whose titular alienation hints at what’s to come. Thy Gospel ups the ante. It’s clearly addressed to Lucifer rather than the bearded, cloud-girt one. (Westerhus does, after all, hark from Norway, the home of Black Metal). Continue Reading »

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MAX RICHTER: Infra (130701/Fat-Cat Records)

themilkman on Jul 1st 2010 01:36 am

Max Richter: Infra

MAX RICHTER
Infra
CD13-11
130701/Fat-Cat Records 2010
13 Tracks. 40mins39secs

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

Max Richter has become very much in demand these days, with a number of increasingly high-profile projects under his belt, from soundtrack work, his score for Ari Forman’s animated memoire Waltz With Bashir earned him a European Film Award for best composer in 2008, to art installations. One such commission came from English modern dance choreographer Wayne McGregor, who enlisted Richter to provide the score for Infra, a ballet inspired by T.S. Elliot’s poem The Waste Land, and a collaboration between McGregor, Richter and Welsh visual artist Julian Opie, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London at the end of 2008. The performance, and work around it, was also the subject of a documentary broadcast on BBC 2 that same year.

Presented here in expanded form, with the original eight compositions created for Infra intertwined with an additional five pieces inspired, as their titles suggest, by the notion of journey, this record is typical of Richter’s work Continue Reading »

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