Review: Berlin Atonal returned two years ago from a long hiatus, 23 years to be exact. After three tremendous festivals this decade, they now present us with their first recordings since 1984. These particular ones from the 2014 edition. Cabaret Voltaire (in this incarnation featuring only Richard H Kirk) was a true highlight and contributes "Microscopic Flesh Fragment" and "Universal Energy". One half of Demdike Stare Miles Whitaker went solo, presenting his truly unique take on techno, and the slow burning attitude of "Vagabond No. 7" is evidence of this. New Zealand's Fis also appears; rather uncategorisable as always on "Dist CL (Atonal Version)." On the third disc we have Northern Electronics main man and modern auteur Abdulla Rashim presenting two commissions from his captivating atmospheric set that year. Limited to 700 copies.
Review: Olof Dreijer and Mt. Sims combine their singular sonic minds for Souvenir, an intense and experimental five-track album via Rabid Records. It is centered around the lush harmonic sounds of the steel drum and comes years after the pair first worked together with Planningtorock on the Tomorrow, In A Year album. This project was commissioned by the SFOTE organisation from Trinidad/New York who asked them to make use of a drum made by Trinidad-based legend Ellie Mannette. Over ten years they have developed their own musical language from the drum, always remaining conscious of its colonial history and how it has been so often stereotyped in the West. It is fair to say what they do with it is truly original.
Review: Edvard Graham Lewis and Mark Spybey's collaboration fuses electronic rhythms, layered field recordings and ambient soundscapes into an album with striking depth and cohesion. Both artists bring decades of experienceiLewis from Wire, Dome, He Said and Spybey from Zoviet France and Dead Voices on Air. This project, however, ventures into fresh territory, blending experimental sounds with surprising grooves and sly hooks. Crafted remotely, each track unfolds a textured sonic landscape, offering listeners a unique glimpse into the creative synergy between two pioneers of boundary-pushing music.
Review: There's clearly something in the water in Colorado: a hotbed for alternative electronic tones. The obvious answer would be all the weed the place is now famous for, but we prefer to think it's the stunning and seemingly-never ending natural landscape that hits you the moment you look up. No stranger to music making, local one M. Sage presents his latest interpretation of those surrounds, with Paradise Crick a deep dive into sounds at once manmade and natural. A gentile trip through floating noises and hypnotic fragments of time, it's blissful, instantly captivating stuff, quickly locating the part of the brain that makes you feel immersed and making itself at home. Meandering through the lot feels like time well spent, outside, listening to babbling brooks and gazing out on lakes reflecting beams of sunlight back into the world.
Review: Machine Girl's debut album celebrates its tenth anniversary with a long-awaited reissue, which marks the first time it arrives on CD as well as vinyl. Originally released in 2014, WLFGRL fused footwork, jungle, digital hardcore and rave into a chaotic, euphoric sound that helped launch a global underground movement. The album's packed with raw intensity and plenty of breakcore influence so it introduced a new generation to extreme electronic music and to celebrate its return, a one-off livestreamed show at Brooklyn's Trans-Pecos accompanied the release. As we are reminded listening back now, WLFGRL is a real high-water mark in outsider music culture.
Anita Barrows Recites Selections From Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book Of Hours' (17:40)
Joanna Macy Recites Selections From Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book Of Hours' (20:49)
Review: If you're looking for rousing music to get you going in the morning let's make it clear right now - Be Earth Now ain't it. If you've been looking for a recording of Joanna Macy and Anita Barrow's translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's 1899 poem, 'The Book of Hours', then you, friend, are very much in the right place. The prose itself is as deep as they come, touching on mysticism, the depth of emotions humans are capable of, our loss of connection to the planet (well ahead of its time, then), and ideas around achieving some degree of spiritual satisfaction. Made at a time when industrialisation had already transformed Europe and increasingly large swathes of the US, in many ways the sentiments expressed are just as relevant now, at a point in time when the journey to modernism is pretty much complete across the world, and the repercussions of that are only just starting to be acknowledged.
Review: Italian-born but longtime Brooklyn-based Madteo stands at the crossroads of gritty, industrial grooves and experimental sound exploration, continuously challenging the boundaries of electronic music with his genre-defying work. Known for his love of cheap vinyl and uniquely odd records, Madteo's production style mirrors this raw, unfiltered approach i like sketching sound on a dirty napkin. Just as he seeks out imperfect, worn-out records, his music embraces the rough edges and unpredictable textures, creating a sound that's as spontaneous and unrefined as a hurried, chaotic doodle.Tracks like 'Cans People' tap into an archaic rave energy, while 'To Know Those Who' delves deep into fragmented dub techno, its non-linear structure a testament to his ability to twist familiar forms into something completely new. As the album progresses, 'Nocturnal Palates' expands the filter house universe with deep, evolving textures, and 'Rave Nite Itz Alright' surprises with its subtle yet intense chaos. The closing tracks, including 'Luglio Ottantotto' and the 15-minute odyssey 'Emo G (Sticky Wicket)', showcase Madteo's knack for manipulating time, space, and sound, offering a disorienting yet mesmerising journey into the unknown. As an artist and conversationalist, Madteo's work remains bold, unpredictable, and captivating, further cementing his place as one of the most inventive voices in modern electronic music.
Review: Maelstrom returns to Central Processing Unit for his fourth outing, and this time he's dropping his longest release yet. French electro mainstay Joan-Mael Peneau, known to many as Maelstrom, has been a fixture on the scene since the early 2000s, and he brings every ounce of that experience to his new LP, The FM Tapes. Spanning 11 tracks, this album is a masterclass in precision, confidence, and control. From the opening moments of 'Ondes Courtes', Maelstrom makes it clear that he's not here to mess around. The track offers a dark, brooding take on electro, with tight, shuffling beats and expertly layered synth work that sets the tone for what's to come. Tracks like 'Alt50ser' follow, pushing forward with mechanical rhythms and a frenetic energy that could only come from an artist with such a seasoned hand. 'La Vie Sociale Des Sons' showcases his knack for combining complex soundscapes with raw, dancefloor-ready energy, blending heavy basslines with shimmering top-end details. The album's centrepiece, 'Res 06 (feat. Fasme)', serves as a standout, bringing in an almost cinematic quality. The beats remain hard and driving, but there's a subtle elegance in the way Maelstrom weaves textures around them, creating something that feels both intense and intricate. Yet, despite all the technical wizardry, The FM Tapes never feels cold or clinical. There's a warmth to tracks like 'My Digitone', where the rhythms are precise but still leave room for playfulness and experimentation. It's this balance of meticulous craftsmanship and spontaneous energy that defines the LP and makes it feel so vital.
Review: Lisbon's Rui Maia has turned his hand to many different styles over a long and winding career, shoring up on Bear Funk, Optimus Discos and Belong over the years and also recording as Mirror People, Noise Reduction and X-Wife. After a few years silence, he re-emerged on the Groovement Organic Series label last year, and makes a swift return with another illustrious set of plaintive electronics for mellow reflection and headphone reveries. From the sombre refrains of 'Metade' to the strafing arps and sprightly chimes of 'Okino', there's vintage warmth rubbed into every inch of this release, but it doesn't feel disposably retro. Rather, Maia creates a space out of time for you to recline in, surrounded by dulcet synth shapes and the occasional tickle of a drum machine. Is there any better place to be?
Review: We're just gonna put it out there - everyone is jealous of Quentin Thirionet. He once worked as a rope access worker (AKA an industrial climber), which sounds interesting and exhilarating. Now he grows organic veg. Which sounds delightful. He's also refused to stylistically confine himself at any sound, hence you might know him from Dhavali Giri or Pairi Daeza, gypsy jazz, Auvergne folk song, experimental electronics or something else entirely. Despite that experience, Sumer Is Icumen is Thirionet's debut LP, and takes us further into those strange, otherworldly noises that are only possible when human and machine work together perfectly. Much of this feels as organic as the artist's farm, but really it's about the natural and mechanical, manmade and synthesised, painting evocative audio pictures that invoke images of evolution, growth, hidden systems at play and equilibrium.
Radiohead - "Reckoner" (Maribou State remix) (7:13)
Maribou State - "Strange Habits" (feat Youssef Dayes) (4:45)
Shire Tea - "Gentlemen's Whistle Club" (5:27)
Hailu Mergia - "Yefkir Engurguro" (6:15)
Review: Their famous mix series might be gone but fabric continue to offer fantastic physical products in the form of their own Presents serve. It is Maribou State who take care of this one and are a fine fit having plated the club many times in their early years. They use it as a chance to serve up a sweaty, peak time mix that draws on sounds you might not necessarily hear in the club itself. It features some of their own new music in the form of "Mother", "Strange Habits" and a rework of Radiohead's "Reckoner".
Review: Marie Guerin, or maybe you know her as Marie de la Nuit, is a sound artist who has explored field recordings, radio archives and "hertzian ghosts" for almost a quarter of a century since her debut in 2001. Her work blends voices, textures and ambient sounds that examine sound heritage and its preservation. Transportees is an electroacoustic composition that connects archaic and electronic trance and in doing so weaves a musical thread from Brittany to Tunisia. It follows a trance-like journey through recordings and oral traditions, all rooted in Guerin's passion for archives. The album reflects her fascination with capturing and preserving songs and transforming them into a soundscape that bridges past and present.
Review: The Electro Maloya Experiments of Jako Maron is a first ever collection of Maron's updated take on the traditional folk music of the tiny island of Reunion, which is off the coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Its roots can be chased back to African slaves and Indian workers and it is stripped down to compelling rhythms made from the drums and bows. The vocals are in a call and response style which lends it a ritualistic feel and also sometimes it took on the powers that be as protest music. Jako recorded these in 2018 with drum machines and modular synths.
Review: Non-Stop Healing Frequency is music designed to soothe you. It is the second album from Ruth Mascelli, aka one quarter of Special Interest, and is a progression from their debut album in that it is a "carefully constructed sequence of electronic mood pieces, tender ballads, kosmische disco tracks and industrial symphonies" Using synth, drum machine and piano, as well as Mascelli's own voice, these 11 pieces explore themes like new age and self-help scams, gnostic mysticism and different ways of working through grief. It's an exploration of how we all get through life, basically, and by listening to you will, in fact, get through life a little easier.
Review: A titanic one-off clash LP between Japan's head brain David Sylvian and electroacoustic extraordinaire Stephan Mathieu, Wandermude is a slow and sublime classic for real ambient heads. Reissued for the first time since its release in 2012, the album charts a wealth of mutual interest between both artists; the pair both collaborated first as part of a dual live performance at Noway's Punkt festival, during which Mathieu performed a live remix of Sylvian's song 'Plight And Premonition'. This LP is the result of the same creative thread - whooshing, mysterious and full of raw instrumental material translated into audacious oddities.
Review: American experimental duo Matmos brings us their latest project Return To Archive. Matmos has been exploring various genres since they first came out some 30 years ago now and this album explores using sound in different and unique ways to create, almost like taking your favorite colours, throwing and seeing what sticks. There are echoes of DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, at least in its sample-based nature, if in a more experimental rather than urban flavours. Either way, the album it's brilliant in its own way.
Review: Trinities is the latest LP from electroacoustic percussionist Jake Meginsky, and marks something of a life milestone in the life of the artist. Both the birth of Meginsky's daughter and the death of his friend and mentor (and the subject of his celebrated 2018 documentary, Full Mantis), Milford Graves, coincided with the making of the album. Whether or not personal events were intended to shape it at its inception, it certainly ended up being imbued with their traces later on in the process. Trinities is a diggers' curio's dream, with just four pieces segueing through seemingly endless gamelan-esque variations that verge through synthetic reverb and a subtly tense bed of analog hiss. It certainly lives up to the label's description of being made up of a series of "elusive ballets of resonance and negative space", with all its quizzical knockings and hard-panned delights resounding like sudden, surprise by-surprise-twists in the dance of life.
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