While not completely departing from its hardcore techno roots, “Doème” nevertheless spins an elaborate web of broken IDM beats, splintered jazz and classical influences. It is a convoluted and challenging release that will keep its audience guessing.
Category: Featured Reviews
incite/ – Dare to Dance
The album definitely has a particular character, sounding different from contemporary acts, and repeated listening increases appreciation. There are certainly plenty of things happening, showing definite programming skills, but the stop-start and constant changing can be infuriating.
The PCP Principle – Rhythmus Ex Heretica
There are two main elements to this recording – crunchy noise beats and symphonic melodies – and no matter how you slice it, they simply don’t fit together that easily. Each aspect is done well on its on, but the jarring juxtaposition is too radical to be particularly likable. If you’ve always wanted to hear Final Fantasy sped up and set to fast-paced rhythmic noise, your opportunity has come at last.
Caithness – Apostasy and the Sorrowful Child
“Apostasy and the Sorrowful Child” is a melodic, modern classical-influenced slab of dark ambient. I find that the melodic elements are both this album’s strength and weakness. They work to build up a strong atmosphere and give this a specialized flavor, yet at the same time they have a tendency to fall into the tacky and/or bombastic category.
Wolfskin / Last Industrial Estate – Stonegates of Silence
While these tracks are composed predominately of heavy, flowing drones and dense, crushing atmospheres, this is certainly not your run-of-the-mill one-drone-for-ten-minutes type of album.
Mathias Delplanque – Passeports
Mathias Delplanque, an artist synonymous with sound installations and immersive compositions, delves on “Passeports” into the phenomenon of the ‘non-place’ – ubiquitous urban spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure). Instead of the identifiable field recordings we expect, Delplanque presents a series of polished ambient/experimental compositions.
Libido Formandi – Insignificancy Rising
Libido Formandi is a curious name, bringing to mind suggestions of an awakening sexuality and growing lust. There are surely many sexy and cool moments in this album, but overall the sounds contained within are far too dark and harsh for seducing an unsuspecting victim!
Home Construction – Surveillance
“Surveillance” may contain many of the same basic ingredients as earlier material – meaty slabs of no-nonsense percussion, sampled vocal elements and grating textures laid over accessible melody lines – but the recipe being used here is far different… “Surveillance” is, musically speaking, the most exciting and accomplished thing 100blumen has ever put together.
Twenty Knives – The Royal We
“The Royal We” can’t be analysed in terms of song structure or melody or harmony. It can’t be identified as sharing common percussive characteristics with other branches of electronic music. It’s not even worth describing their sound as ‘experimental’, because an experiment generally has an identifiable, valid outcome, and leftfield craziness that distorts perceptions isn’t what I would call a valid outcome. But if you can survive that, you’re in for a treat.
Andrew Oudot – Crystallization
The fragile, pure tones generated on this record convey crystal clarity with every passing measure. Mathematical precision in the programming meets an almost organic growth algorithm in the sequencing creating something that is beautiful, brittle and cuts directly to the bone – not unlike clusters of crystalline formations.