Review: La Monte Young is one of the most important figures in the development of American minimal composition and performance, having explored the science of sound at an atomic level through his use of just intonation and rational number-based tuning systems. His wife Marian Zeeler was also one of his closest collaborators, and in 1974 they released their second album Dream House 78'17" as a demonstration of the ideas they had been proposing in their work. Side A was recorded at a private concert which also features Jon Hassell and Garrett List, while Side B is an extended tonal study via a bowed gong, which was monitored precisely through oscilloscopes for an exacting immersion in harmonic interplay and its physical and psychoacoustic properties.
Review: American minimalism pioneers La Monte Young and Marian Zeeler released their second album in 1974, when they were already well-established in the US avant-garde. This serves as a document of their work and ideas at the time, with two very different sides on offer. The first side was recorded at a private concert, in which Young and Zeeler's voices interact with sustained drones and some occasional trumpet from Jon Hassell and trombone from Garrett List. The second side focuses on a bowed gong study, ruminating on the particulars of frequency and harmonics and their potential effects on the listener and the space in which they're heard.
Review: Club culture can be curiously misled at times. While the focus is so often on breakdowns, in reality it's the hypnosis of looped drums and hi hats that often captures our imagination. And while belters frequently steal the limelight, in doing so we're at risk of forgetting the unifying, open-armed foundations that are found in everything from techno to hardcore to jungle and beyond. Brutal Flowers certainly makes a strong case for rethinking priorities. "A no-airs and graces piece of cool future-proof ambience" the label puts it. We'd agree. YS's stunning record seems to speak to our inner dreams of what rave has been and could still be, it hits nail-on-head in turning the emotions of surreal walks home post-club with friends into beautiful, understated yet grand synth overtures. It never forgets that heads down and ethereality are not opposites, but instead two halves of the same passion, and thoughtfulness is really the only secret ingredient in the dance music spectrum.
Review: Art-rock auteur Yves Tumor occupies a headspace like no other, putting experimental noise, r&b and glam rock together in a bold, ever-escalating fusion, showing off a flair for simply making powerful Frankensteins out of their favourite styles. Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) adds yet once more this pot: it's a glistening, richly detailed, arguably ultimate expression of their vision, mixing such far-flung influences as My Bloody Valentine, Prince and The Smashing Pumpkins into a deep affector for the Gen Z-eitgeist.
Review: Earlier in the year, Yves Tumor announced the release of this album by releasing 'Gospel For a New Country', a low-slung chunk of post-punk pop brilliance that mixed weighty grooves and emotive vocals with flash-fried guitar riffs amd sampled big band horns. Fittingly, it's this fine track that kicks off 'Heaven To A Tortured Mind', a notably fuzzy, live-sounding set that continues his evolution from quirky electronica maker to alt-rock artist. While there are some electronic sounds dotted across the set, for the most part it's funk-rock riffs, ESG style basslines, organic drums and his own heartfelt vocals that dominate. It could win him many new fans; certainly, it's a very good album.
Review: Earlier in the year, Yves Tumor announced the release of this album by releasing 'Gospel For a New Country', a low-slung chunk of post-punk pop brilliance that mixed weighty grooves and emotive vocals with flash-fried guitar riffs amd sampled big band horns. Fittingly, it's this fine track that kicks off 'Heaven To A Tortured Mind', a notably fuzzy, live-sounding set that continues his evolution from quirky electronica maker to alt-rock artist. While there are some electronic sounds dotted across the set, for the most part it's funk-rock riffs, ESG style basslines, organic drums and his own heartfelt vocals that dominate. It could win him many new fans; certainly, it's a very good album.
Tero Sex (Danza Para Piedra Volcanica Y Tero) (4:20)
Cama Rota (5:16)
Desde Los Oidos De Un Sapo (9:15)
Review: Remarkably surreal club reconstructions from Uruguayan ur-producer Lechuga Zafiro. 'Desde los oidos de un sapo' ('From The Ears Of A Toad') is a truly elastic entanglement of designed sound refit for the floor, though we'd not be surprised if a private laboratory set aside for the safe containment and study of sonic bio-anomalies would hope to acquire this one too. Zafiro flexes his hylid hamstrings on this wriggling wet lurch through post-Baile sonics and field recorded club jamborees, emphasising the naturalistically percussive and fretfully textured. Basing his musical identity on field recordings of hard materials - metal, wood, rock, glass - as well as, somehow, animal tissue - from toads, birds, sea lions and pigs (let's hope they were at least taxidermied first) - these seven cochlear leapfrogs make for a highly exploratory sonic escape; Zafiro dares to define the next applicative generation of sound design for the dance.
Review: Udacha family band Zdehvedo Gob is a collective of musicians who all hail from various cities around the world. It consists of Udacha label head Alexey Kalik as well as drummer Roman Shestaev and Gamayun associates Anton Dvoenko and Stas Mitrofanov and they all got together in the studio in Moscow in summer 2023 and the results are now presented on this new album. Employing an organic music approach to instrumentation combined with subtle electronics, the group go wild for various combinations of off-kilter percussion, organ, chant and birdsong in full ceremonial swing, they trace a path through the various branches of 20th century minimalism, pan-global folk-ism's and the harmonious collective consciousness that My Life In A Bush Of Ghosts encapsulated. It's a gorgeous mix of world, jazz, spiritual percussive, experimental music that rides on nice loose and vibrant rhythms with a great mix of synthetic and organic sounds all offering plenty for the mind as well as the body to get excited about.
Review: There's an undeniably far-out feel to the Zenker Brothers' second album, Cosmic Transmission, which adds further layers of trippy textures, hallucinatory sounds and smoky intensity to the aural blueprint first explored on their 2015 debut full-length Immersion. There's much to admire throughout, from the mind-bending ambient weirdness of opener 'When Nothing is Safe', and the slipped dub haze of 'Whose In Control', to the drug-addled IDM of 'Natural Connection', and the polyrhythmic techno trip of 'Divided Society'. Most striking of all is the trio of tracks that close the album, all of which are powered forwards not by heavy techno beats (or even their usual crunchy, off-kilter breakbeats) but rather a series of ear-catching, fuzz-soaked synthesizer arpeggio lines.
Review: The generous run of Zero 7 reissues continues with the welcome return of their 2006 LP "The Garden". While it received something of a frosty reception on release, this album has refined with age to become a fan favourite and an all-round wonderfully accomplished work that highlights all the best qualities of Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker. From lush, starry-eyed and '60s tinged psychedelia to bittersweet pop and plenty of lounge-ready moods, it's incredibly easy to sink into like all the Zero 7 material, but shot through with depth to keep you listening attentively. Sia also makes some standout appearances, not least "Throw It All Away" and "Waiting To Die", while Jose Gonzalez is on stunning form too. Fans have been waiting a long time for this, and no doubt there will be plenty more converts to the Zero 7 sound too.
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