electronica
Thomas H. Green
The KLF are endlessly fascinating. There’s never been a “pop group” like them. From the late Eighties into the early Nineties, they treated music, especially electronic dance music, as a laboratory for lunatic experiment. Unlike most avant-garde thinkers in pop, though, they made a glorious and highly unlikely commercial success of it, via a series of globally successful singles (and, to some degree, the album, The White Room).From their beginnings to demise, filmmaker Bill Butt was an accomplice, creating films and videos as asked. The BFI's 23 Seconds to Eternity gathers these together Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Bony Biyake, whose vocals grace this delicious soup of ancient and modern sounds, from Europe and the Congo, once sang in a soukous band, and then made his name in collaborations with the French musical magician, the late Hector Zazou. Their most famous collaboration was a 1983 album, Noir et Blanc, which still sounds ahead of its time today.Biyake and his collaborators Guillaume Lozillon and Guillaume Gilles, masters of digital keyboards and programming, and percussionist Gaëlle Salomon weave a rich texture of sounds that speak to each other in musical tongues. This is a kind of sorcery, in Read more ...
Mark Kidel
There is a great deal of sense in transposing electronic music to a symphony orchestra. However beautifully crafted, imaginatively constructed, and creatively programmed, the sounds that come out of synthesisers and other digital tools lack the knife-edge fallibility of music that is produced with the hand or the human breath. Brian Eno’s concert with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic provides compelling evidence that his compositions reveal more of their essence when taken on a trip into the world of strings, brass and other wind instruments, and the chance-prone reality of human moods and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For Finnish composer Osmo Lindeman, the decision to pursue electronic music was made in 1968 during a visit to Poland. He had recently started using graphical notation for the scores of his compositions and was having problems getting conductors and orchestras to follow what he wanted.In Poland, he met composer Andrzej Dobrowolski and visited the Warsaw School of Music’s electronic music studio. He found that Dobrowolski also used graphical notation. With electronic music, Lindeman saw that there no barriers to using any type of score. He had the way forward. He would embrace electronic music Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The music of Daniel Lopatin – AKA Oneohtrix Point Never – exists at the sonic/electronic vanguard. Were the likes of avant-gardists such as Iannis Xenakis, George Antheil and Edgard Varese around today, maybe even Stockhausen, they might dig what he’s up to.Unlike them, though, Lopatin places post-modernism at the centre of things. His latest album is, for want of a more technical phrase, completely out there. If you want to hear music unlike anything else, it’s a one-stop shop.Lopatin has said of the new album that it’s a “speculative autobiography” which “imagines what might have been Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Had Devendra Banhart been born between 1940 and 1950, he’d likely be a household name. His output – very loosely – sits between Cat Stevens, Syd Barrett and Richie Havens, studded with a greatness not widely acknowledged. He had a spell around 15-20 years ago when he seemed about to commercially explode. That didn't happen but he’s settled to a solid career and done much gorgeous work since.2013’s Mala album, a career highlight, was followed by two that appeared to dip into the alternative possibilities of 1960s Latin American songwriting (do check the luscious Helado Negro remix of "Love Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“In the Light of Time” was the second track on Side One of April 1995’s Further, the third album by Bristol’s Flying Saucer Attack. At the time, Further felt like a hyper-vaporous take on shoegazing infused with touches of British folk. Attitudinally and temporally, Slowdive’s February 1995 third album Pygmalion wasn’t too far.Now, Flying Saucer Attack are co-opted to name In the Light of Time - UK Post-Rock and Leftfield Pop 1992-1998, a ground-breaking 17-track compilation with a self-explanatory subtitle. There may have been previous collections along these lines, but this is the first Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Chemical Brothers are unstoppable. Their live shows are a guaranteed monster good time, redolent of proper old-school rave-ups, but with visual tech from some freaky eye-boggling future. Their last album, 2019’s No Geography, was a total belter. Their latest, their tenth, is also a total belter. They do what they do. But they do it so bloody well.For That Beautiful Feeling sees them finding new detail, new depth, new ways to make what they do fresh again. It’s riveting, full of verve. Dismissed by those that don’t know as a retro turn, the truth is that The Chemical Brothers, despite Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHAfrican Head Charge A Trip to Bolgatanga (On-U Sound)The latest album from percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and On-U Sound producer-par-excellence Adrian Sherwood is stunning. 40-something years into their collaborative career, it proves the pair are still more than capable of offering sonic surprises. A Trip to Bolgatanga is more in-yer-face than a fair chunk of African Head Charge material, less stoned and dubbed out… well, it’s dubbed out alright but comes clattering forward in the mix, energized and foot-moving rather than bonging on the sofa. It even boasts unlikely Read more ...
Joe Muggs
We Out Here Festival, now in its fifth year (and fourth edition, as 2020 was of course cancelled for Covid), has become an institution. Curated by jazz-centric veteran DJ Gilles Peterson and actualised by Noah Ball – best known for his role in creating Outlook Festival in Croatia which has served as UK bass music’s metting point in the sun since 2008 – it joins the dots culturally through generations of music both strange and hedonistic and attracts a faithful crowd that reflects that.The diversity of the crowd is the first thing you’ll notice about the festival. Though it has grown a lot Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Düsseldorf’s most famous band is Kraftwerk. Neu!, La Düsseldorf, and, a little later, D.A.F also helped mark-out the west German city as the home of musical boundary pushers – folks doing their own thing. Fellow Düsseldorf residents Die Toten Hosen took a different musical tack, but were as individualistic as those lumped in with Krautrock or kosmiche music. And where there’s the known, there’s also the unknown.In this spirit, Klar!80 - Ein Kassettenlabel aus Düsseldorf 1980-1982 digs so deeply into Düsseldorf’s post-punk musical underbelly that the names assembled are mostly unfamiliar: Read more ...
Tim Cumming
I first saw Erol Josue on stage in Essaouria, Morocco, during the Gnawa Festival of 2011, when he fronted Jazz-Racine Haiti. The Haitian-born voudou priest turned R&B singer struck me as one of the most flamboyant frontmen ever to hit a stage.He cut a striking figure – half-cat, half Little Richard, all ordained prelate of the Voudou religion, into which he embarked on a long initiation into its priesthood before emigrating to Paris, and later to America, where he refashioned himself as an R&B singer in Florida before relocating to Brooklyn, New York, where he released his debut Read more ...