This ‘rhythmic noise’ album can be summed up in four words: Warm tones, punishing beats. At times the crushing percussion takes a back seat to the melancholy ambience, and reminds me of the feeling you get when lying in bed listening to a raging storm outside.
Category: Reviews
Sonarophon – De Frie Elementer
“De Frie Elementer” is a live recording of guitarist Alf Terje Hana and vocalist Line Horneland performing as Sonarophon. Composed around a core of experimental and ambient electronics, their set features the six string skills of Hana combined with the vocal yet wordless voice techniques of Horneland. “De Frie Elementer” is comprised of a single 24-minute track split into a number of linked elements.
Andrea Marutti and Fausto Balbo – Detrimental Dialogue
Through the use of effects, the sounds that are used this album – and then mainly those noisy escapades – are put into a really nice perspective. The stereo image as well as the depth have an exceptional extra dimension, which makes the album as a whole interesting for modular sound nerds and people who want to hear proof that there is more than your mind can handle.
Chris Connelly – How This Ends
Two tracks with a total playing time from over 50 minutes. Two intriguing soundscapes simply titled “How This Ends”, part one and two. Two great artists to whom this album is dedicated: David Tibet and Gordon Sharp.
nonnon – The Entitlement Generation
“The Entitlement Generation” is labelled as experimental hip-hop influenced IDM, and even though they are right about the different ingredients, the IDM shouldn’t be mentioned as main ingredient. It’s more dubby, hip-hoppy experiments with beats, where you can clearly hear IDM influences at certain moments, but it’s kept within the experimental stage.
Flutwacht – …mit nichts…
Sometimes you have to be very patient when listening to experimental music. Sometimes it takes quite a long time for anything of interest to happen. But often, when you’re patient and stop demanding instant gratification, you will hear something really powerful.
Kraken – Strop
I believe one clear indication of the quality of a piece of dark ambient is how detailed and bizarre the scenes the music can paint in your mind… I can only conclude that “Strops” really is one of those albums.
Phaenon – His Master’s Voice
Sadly, “His Master’s Voice” doesn’t quite bring anything new to the table in terms of genre advancement. It’s just more of the same ambient that 50 other producers are generating. So there’s no denying that it’s clever stuff, but that’s about its greatest drawcard.
Mikroben Krieg – Final Cut
Mikroben Krieg fills the gap between the drum’n’bass-styled IDM of the likes of Squarepusher and that of the more dance-oriented IDM of Haujobb, even going so far as to border on EBM.
Danielle de Picciotto & Alexander Hacke – Hitman’s Heel
A significant break from both Neubauten and their Lovecraftian ambient soundscape work, “Hitman’s Heel” is an excursion into unhealthy Americana, troubling blues and haunted fairytales, drawing on Tom Waits and Nick Cave as obvious points of reference but creeping off from there deep into the woods.