sun 08/06/2025

electronica

CD: Marilyn Manson - Heaven Upside Down

Marilyn Manson, the man and the band, have maintained impressive global success for over two decades. Their albums – this is the band’s 10th - continue to shift by the bucket-load, and they can still sell out a worldwide stadium tour. Partly, their...

Read more...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 32: OMD, Twin Peaks, Bicep, Sisters of Mercy and more

September and October see a deluge of new releases. Everybody and their aunt puts out an album as autumn hits, so theartsdesk on Vinyl appears this month (and next) in a slightly expanded edition. As ever, the fare on offer is as diverse as possible...

Read more...

CD: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Luciferian Towers

Luciferian Towers, the third album since Canadian oddballs Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s 2011 reunion, is an instrumental psychedelic masterpiece that reflects our times without resorting to political bluster. Indeed, with two of its four tracks...

Read more...

CD: Gary Numan - Savage (Songs From a Broken World)

Gary Numan famously has a devoted fanbase. For this album he had a live video feed that allowed them, for a small fee, to watch him in the studio, working on it from conception to completion. Unlike any of his peers from the post-punk years, he...

Read more...

CD: Red Axes - The Beach Goths

It’s telling that, on their 2014 debut LP, Ballad of the Ice, Dori Sadovnik and Niv Arzi covered Bauhaus’ epic proto-gothic ode “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”. The 1979 single, with its incessant shuffle, dubbed-out tape delay and post-punk guitars, straddled...

Read more...

CD: Hannah Peel - Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia

The brass band/electronica interface is not a seam which musicians have previously mined regularly. Or, for that matter, at all. Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia is probably – nothing else springs to mind – the only album teaming pulsing analogue...

Read more...

CD: Liars - TFCF

Across their 17-year career, Liars have become renowned for both their genre-jumping and for making good music wherever their stylistic tent is pitched. With founding member Aaron Hemphill leaving the Los Angeles band on amicable terms earlier this...

Read more...

Reissue CDs Weekly: Blancmange

The Some Bizzare Album was released in January 1981. Compiled by DJ Stevo, it featured twelve unsigned acts he felt represented a fresh way of approaching pop – one enabled by the availability of synthesisers and rhythm machines. Stevo was playing...

Read more...

CD: Man Duo - Orbit

True to their name, Finland’s Man Duo are male and there are two of them. The better-known half is former Helsinki tram driver Jaakko Eino Kalevi. Born Jaakko Savolainen – the Kalevi nods to his home country’s epic tale, The Kalevala – his long solo...

Read more...

Reissue CDs Weekly: Noise Reduction System

Last year, the arrival of Close to the Noise Floor compelled theartsdesk’s Reissue CDs Weekly to conclude that it was “hugely important and utterly delightful”. A four-CD set, it was a thrilling, first-time overview of the UK’s early indie-synth...

Read more...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 31: Psychic TV, Kendrick Lamar, Brian Eno, Stan Getz and more

August is often a quiet month on the release front but theartsdesk on Vinyl came across a host of music deserving of attention. Now that even Sony, one of the biggest record companies in the world, are starting to press their own vinyl again, it’s...

Read more...

CD: ZGTO - A Piece of the Geto

The term “hip hop” has become a catch-all that now includes a multitude of autotuned chart-pop rubbish which bears no relation to the genre’s origins, central tenets or recognised sonic imprint. Is Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” hip hop? Many would...

Read more...
Subscribe to electronica