electronica
mark.kidel
Sufjan Stevens is an artist of remarkable ambition. His 80-minute long new album, with 15 beautiful and poetic songs, belongs to a long line of pop experimentation that runs through from The Beatles and George Martin’s Stg Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to Björk’s own highly literate and endlessly inventive mix of dance music and daredevil sonic exploration. He's as much at home baring his soul as he is evoking the turmoil of our times.The Ascension takes us on a rollercoaster of a journey, fuelled by the richness of analog keyboards – in this case a range of Prophet synthesisers whose Read more ...
Barney Harsent
If Doves have a “thing”, it’s that they do “big” with impeccable intimacy. Over ten years and four albums, they consistently displayed exactly the sort of connection that bands like Coldplay and Keane pretend to have. Huge, sweeping scores and broad emotional swells that feel like an old friend putting their arm around you and telling you you're not on your own.More than a decade since Kingdom of Rust, their farewell (of sorts), Doves are back, and not a moment too soon. Given the year so far, we could all do with a cuddle, sonic or otherwise.The seeds of The Universal Want were sown in a no- Read more ...
joe.muggs
A new and very strange kind of pop music has bubbled up over the past half-decade plus. It’s internationalist, rooted in both underground electronics and the most populist styles, bound up with playful but sometimes terrifying ultra high definition psychedelic aesthetics, and dominated by female and non-binary musicians. It’s given a platform to some of the most vivid and fascinating characters in music today, from Beijing’s 33EMYBW to Margate’s BABii, Washington DC’s Swan Meat to Montevideo’s Lila Tirando a Violeta, and most prominently Glaswegian SOPHIE and Caracas-via-Barcelona Arca. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The usual summer vinyl release slump doesn’t seem to apply this year. During the COVID-19 crisis, the demand for vinyl has risen rather than fallen and theartsdesk on Vinyl reflects that again this month with another monster round-up of reviews, covering everything from extreme metal to country’n’western to contemporary jazz.VINYL OF THE MONTHVarious Come Stay With Me (Come Play With Me)August 2020’s Vinyl of the Month is an Arts Council-backed compilation on bright red vinyl from Leeds label Come Play With Me. It’s designed to help support the contributing artists from the area as they deal Read more ...
joe.muggs
Music awards shows are a strange beast: part window display, part industry conference and part party. Especially if you don’t have Brit Awards or Mercury Prize budget to create a whizz-bang spectacle, the ceremonies can be an interminable pileup of attempts to earnestly celebrate both musicians and behind-the-scenes figures, in front of a room full of increasingly drunk and impatient people.The pandemic, though, requires something different. With the announcements and performances on a live video stream, and extra interviews and video clips on an app, the Association of Independent Music had Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After 2016’s A Shot in the Light, DJ, producer and Disco Halal labelrunner Chen Moscovici has leaned full-tilt into synth-pop and, with Time Slips Away, has created a collection that’s both carefully placed and cleverly paced. Alternating between solo tracks and collaborative songs, the album is stuffed full of vocal hooks and earworm moments that have long been hinted at in the producer’s past work but never been this fully realised.That’s not to say that fans of Moscoman’s more four-to-the-floor outings need to look elsewhere for their fix, there’s plenty here that fits the bill. Read more ...
joe.muggs
When does the avant-garde become folk? Both of the participants in this album have certainly been on the very cutting edge of sound-making, on multiple occasions. Conrad Schnitzler was a student of radical artist Joseph Beuys and leading light in the utopian thinking and radical soundmaking of 1970s West Germany as a member of Tangerine Dream and Kluster. Frank Bretschneider was, bravely, an underground musician in East Germany in the 1980s, in partnership with Olaf Bender – and, again with Bender and later with Carsten Nicolai, in unified Germany in the 1990s and on was responsible for some Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s been a hell of a four years for Glass Animals since their last album How to Be a Human Being, from a well-deserved Mercury nomination to drummer Joe Seaward requiring neurosurgery after a near-fatal bicycle accident. But while Human Being was leap forward in writing and production, new release Dreamland is a more subtle development. This is music designed to float on a sunlit pool to, though given lockdown restrictions, you may need to get creative with an air bed and your home lighting.It’s an album that takes its title to heart, building hazy soundscapes punctuated with drum machines Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A couple of years ago a vinyl white label appeared of a track called “Crumbling Down”. It was a breath of fresh air. Warmly crafted Afro-centric percussion, pared back but persuasive, it dragged the ears in, emanating a heads-down beachside vibe. Once the listener/dancer was fully ensconced, a gentle plinking tune led into the melancholic lyric loop, “As it all starts crumbling down”, before echoing bleeps sent things into space. Like much of the best dance music, it was beautifully simple but effective. By an artist called Zapatilla, it now appears at the end of his debut album, the rest of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Everyone keeps upping their game with what and how they’re presenting music in these unwelcome times, and this week sees a red hot selection on offer. Below is a cross section of the best that’s out there to see, hear and get involved withTomorrowland Around the WorldAs the weeks pass, new standards are being set for the presentation of music online. Nowhere more so than with epic European EDM festival Tomorrowland. Working with experts in 3D design, video production, gaming and special effects, they will be presenting eight stages, each one with a landscape equivalent to around 10 square Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lockdown’s easing and the record shops are opening here and there. So, to help vinyl junkies on their way, here’s 7000 words of reviews, capturing the best of the last couple of months’ releases on plastic. As ever, the sounds go everywhere, from hip hop to post-punk to Moroccan trance music. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Four Owls Nocturnal Instinct (High Focus) + TrueMendous Huh? (High Focus) + Telemachus Boring & Weird Historical Music (High Focus)Three albums from Brighton’s High Focus Records which showcase many kinds of verve and ambition. The label is best known for nurturing the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A decade ago, Polly Scattergood was Mute Records’ newest, most-likely-to signing and, while she never crossed over like similar unconventional female artists of the period (Bat For Lashes, St Vincent, Anna Calvi, etc), she has a developed a cult following. Where her previous two solo albums combined vaguely Björk-ish gossamer vocals with a delicately smudged take on electro-pop, In This Moment, no longer on Mute, untethers itself into artier territory. Enjoyment depends on how far the listener is willing to follow her.One notable difference from what came before is a tendency towards spoken Read more ...