electronica
Thomas H. Green
Hip-hop soul, chart rave and Balearic beach-pop with a 1990s flavour, synthesiser-led space-rock, a localised Goth-electronic revolution, Kenyan Kamba beats, an eccentric attempt at bringing opera into pop, and vibrations from dubstep's deep roots. As ever, theartsdesk's singles round-up takes you round the houses, up some dead-end alleys, down the docks and along sweeping avenues you never knew existed, hopefully dropping you home exhausted but happy with a selection of strange and evocative new music in your pockets. We aim to please.Aloe Blacc, I Need a Dollar (Epic)
The potential Read more ...
Joe Muggs
While rumours of the album's demise may well have been premature, the digital age certainly does present increasing challenges when it comes to getting punters to keep and treasure music. Of course, really it all went wrong with the CD: those irritating plastic cases with hinges and catches guaranteed to snap off and get hoovered up, the booklets you have to squint to read, the discs that slide under car seats or behind radiators. Even “deluxe collectors' editions” were never going to be all that glorious compared to a big slab of vinyl or two and a lavish gatefold record sleeve. MP3s might Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There's something about this album that feels as if it's already existed for a long time. Full of post-apocalyptic images of smoke, dust, decay and weakness, and themes of struggling individuals and implacable political forces, it thematically fits with the works of a long line of acts who positioned themselves against the fear of nuclear armageddon and the seemingly immovable Conservative government in the 1980s. Its mix of Caribbean-influenced soundsystem culture and dub poetry with an edgy alternative experimentalism, too, harks back to the post-punk genre collision of Dennis Bovell, On-U Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The music of Hype Williams is the definition of an acquired taste. It sounds ramshackle, thrown together, deliberately awkward – either deeply contrarian or the work of very, very messed-up people just playing around with archaic home recording equipment. But immersion in it reveals all kinds of layers of strangeness, and particularly a rich and emotionally resonant sense of melody that weaves through all the clashing rhythms and crackly recordings. Even the arrangements, it becomes apparent, are not random, but show real complexity – although what is deliberate and what not is hard to pick Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Record Store Day this Saturday, 16 April, will give vinyl a small boost. Many artists are creating special limited editions. Bands love all that. It reminds them of when people cared about music as more than "content". The Fall was originally available as a Gorllaz fan-club download last December and will be available on CD imminently but king Gorilla, Damon Albarn, wanted it first and foremost as celebratory Record Store Day vinyl - which is how I'm listening to it.While the format is retro, paradoxically The Fall was recorded primarily on iPad during Gorillaz' 2010 US tour and the inner Read more ...
Russ Coffey
For weeks there have been rumours that the new Metronomy release would be electronica that would appeal to people who don’t really listen to it. The last bit, at least, is true. I don’t listen to much of that genre and yet every time I get to the end of The English Riviera I can’t resist hitting repeat. But here’s the thing - it’s not really that electronic. It’s what Metronomy man main, Joseph Mount, describes as “electronic music played using as many real instruments as possible”. And what that adds up to is a glorious mix of lo-fi, indie, pop and dance, with a fair few synths thrown in. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This month, what's on offer in theartsdesk's Singles and Downloads veers towards the fresh and new rather than the tried and tested. We'll always chew over whatever's out there and right now these nine tunes speak loudest. Starting with carefree New York electronic punk frollicking, we also take on violent grime, Sixties-style guitar pop, Brit-pop hip hop, uncategorisable grunge cabaret and multifarious flavours of dubstep. Dive in.The Death Set, We Are Going Anywhere Man (Counter)
How could anyone not love the motherfuckin' Death Set, as they gratuitously refer to themselves in song on a Read more ...
Joe Muggs
At its best, and most preposterous, John Cage's work can be a mind-cleanser. The overwhelmingly silly randomised conjunctions and ontological punning of the great Zen master of the 20th-century avant-garde can coax and trick you into letting go of categories and judgments, scale and expectation, and just letting yourself get swept along with the gloriously complex and profoundly nonsensical multidimensional parlour games. Where some artworks might make you feel like you're on drugs, or like you want to be on drugs, very occasionally, Cage can make you feel the startling clarity of the Read more ...
Joe Muggs
This is the most gorgeous Finnish Krautrock album I've heard in ages. Yeah, I know, how wacky, how alternative, how off-piste – but bear with me. If you associate Krautrock with over-serious record collectors it might sound like damning with faint praise, but yes, this mostly instrumental record is made by a trio of demented Finns; yes, it is rooted in the psychedelic repetitions of mid-1970s German hairies; and yes, it is really, really gorgeous.Or, OK, parts of it are gorgeous: there are rather darker tracks too, like “New World” which sounds pretty much like a lost Joy Division Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The name King Creosote conjures up an image of an old jazz player, lips cracked from cigarettes smoked and horns played. In actual fact it’s the stage name of Kenny Anderson, a prolific Scottish folk and indie singer with more than a passing resemblance to Bill Oddie. On recent form there’s every chance that he may be about to become best known for his work with indie supergroup The Burns Unit. But he’s also made more than 40 albums over 20 years, and Diamond Mine is a project where he’s looked back over and re-imagined some of the less obvious moments of his back catalogue.It’s the Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The Sónar festival occupies a very special place in the New Music calendar – and is this year expanding outwards temporally and geographically, with new franchises in Tokyo and A Coruña, Galicia. Now into its 17th year, the parent festival in Barcelona serves as a vital meeting point for those of all stripes who refuse to acknowledge the polarisation of avant-garde and populism, or of club culture and the mainstream music industry. With 10 or more main stages and untold off-piste club events around the city, it would be impossible to condense even a single day and night of Sónar Barcelona Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Listening to The Human League’s Credo is a bit like listening to one of Ray Davies’s more recent outings – you know they’ve both said all they have to say years ago, but there is still something very pleasing about just hearing them do their thing. I use the word "say", advisedly, as part of Credo’s charm is its prosaic half-spoken words, strong on storylines yet purposely piling banality on top of cliché, where “stranger” rhymes with “danger” and we learn things like “There is a place the night people go/ There is a place that only night people know”.Musically Read more ...