Leaving US Vinyl & CDs

Review: Experimental saxophonist Sam Gendel has been gifting us with reams of golden material in the past few years, from collaborative wonders to solo reflections, but this Fresh Bread will keep us chewing for days. Clearly Gendel can't help but make incredible music, and this collection is pulled from his personal archives of skits, sketches, unreleased pieces and more in between. It sounds shockingly complete for what is meant to be a gathering of offcuts, but the diaristic quality does feel like getting closer to the inner workings of the artist. If you appreciate beats, loops and experimental vignettes with an organic quality, you'll find a lot to enjoy in here.

Review: Ground Groove is the third album from LA-based, Iranian-American producer and DJ, Maral. It begins with the sprawling, achingly heavy 'Feedback Jam', dense enough to distort reality crushed beneath the track's lumbering heartbeat and waves of distortion. As each wave recedes, samples trickle forward in the mix, voices and instruments rising and falling in uncanny reverse. 'Feedback Jam' serves both as an initiation ritual, and a thesis statement for the record that follows.
Composed largely on Ableton, Ground Groove features frequent 'live recordings from Maral on guitar, bass, and vocals - but to say it's a huge step up in mixing and audio quality is an understatement. The attention to detail is immense. 'Ground Groove's eleven tracks are 'grooves' in the obvious sense, each being driven by a persistent, propulsive rhythm, but the album's title may just as well suggest the glacial passage of time that standout voices like these emerge as landmarks.

Review: 'Cutetronica' (for want of a better pun, perhaps) has been making recent waves in experimental electronic music circles, with artists like Boy Lucid, Toiret Status, Dialect or any other number of net-bound trailblazers building convincing, glitzy-shiny soundworlds. Mari Maurice, aka. More Eaze, is another expert in the field. Her latest eight-track LP nods to something between acoustic folk and slippery-plastic fantasy; from the off of 'Gentle Pets', it's as if a small child had gone wandering in a field and dropped their Nintendogs cartridge with such force that it caused the game's virtual universe to spill over into our world, with veritably soul-quelling results. The album errs off into darker and more emotive moments, as on 'Suped' or 'Goodnight', but this is for the most part a light-hearted yet emotionally complex LP, neither for the faint or the heavy of heart - it strikes just the right balance.