Music helps me accomplish a variety of things in my life: everything from falling asleep, to studying, to getting away from it all. This blog is dedicated to electronic oriented music (ambient, IDM, dubstep, etc; for more information on what I’ll be posting, see About), lightly peppered by records that aren’t.
Having said that, this blog would be pretty pointless without links to downloads. However, please support the artist if you enjoy the music, be it in attending a show of theirs, purchasing a shirt, or merch, or in another form. Much of the music I will be posting can be found for under $15 USD (~10.7 Euros) at Amazon. Furthermore, if you buy directly from the label/artist, you can be happy to know that they would be obtaining more money than if you purchased from another store. Always buy directly from the label wherever possible.
No RIAA (an organization that represents the major labels; EMI, Universal, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group) affiliated artists will make it onto this blog.
Labels/artists: if you want me to “unshare” something, let me know.
If you have any requests or suggestions, please do not hesitate to add your two cents in the form of a comment below. You can also email myprinterisonfire [at] gmail [dot] com.
In 2009, Stendeck released “Sonnambula.” “Sonnambula” creates a unique environment in which the music transports the listener to different points in this environment. Glossy, celestial, interweaving chords are laced with glitches and distorted beats and makes for a listen with surprises at every new phrase, and new aural territory explored and exploited. Stendeck takes the almost polar opposites of electronic music and fuses them into a form that pushes boundaries of IDM, industrial, and ambient. The music emits a very personal, touching message through heartfelt, melancholic synths as heard in “Hunters of the Last Summer Breeze.” It draws the listener out this world, and into space for a view of the tiny specks of light millions of lightyears away.
With sounds that seem to tear at ones emotions, “Safari in the Blue Tails Cockatoo’s Garden” is an extremely powerful piece. From the second that screaming, piercing, guitar-like instrument bursts into the music it’s as though being catapulted through cascades of falling stars all around you, and the light from these stars pierces deep into your heart, and cleansing the mind, and simply filled with an entire spectrum of sounds at one time.
Over the course of the album, abstract thoughts and ideas contort and twist, evolve and grow to carry the listener to worlds unknown, and places undiscovered. With every listen this album becomes more and more enjoyable as, continually, different sounds emerge, and new interpretations can be made.
For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights is a reissue of Type Records-signed Xela’s debut album, originally released on the now-defunct Neo Ouija label. This release comes with two bonus tracks (track 12 “A Glance” and track 13, “Danse Macabre”).
The first two or three tracks is the most upbeat this album gets. “Under the Glow of Streetlights”, seen in the video below, is the second track out of the album containing some great glitch effects set to a nice beat. However, as you progress throughout the record, it starts to get a bit more cold.
Track 04’s In Between Two Rooms exemplifies this: glitchy effects, but more calculated and distant. Cackles fizz in and out of existence while other IDM-esque effects pepper the background. Towards the end of the track, you can almost hear samples of rain drops being applied here but warped in such a way where it barely makes an impression. Subtle, but very worthwhile.
“Impulsive Behaviour” could be seen as a sort of a sequel to the previous “In Between Two Rooms”. While the beat work plays more of a role, the textures are characterized by yet more fizzles and then elaborated upon by winded software-based instrumentation, creating somewhat of a deep distance between the two. There are of course some ambient-esque sounds, however IDM is one of predominant structural foundations of which most of this record is based upon.
The middle of the album sees An Abandoned Robot, a bit of a departure from the previous mainly downtempo tracks in that it employs primarily bass as a driving force to move to song onward (as opposed to strictly glitch and other IDM effects seen in the first few tracks). A relatively high-pitched sound gradually emerges and fades as the bass continues to provide the backdrop to the track. Soon, it is content to let the high pitch (I use that term lightly) sound slide out of existence, ultimately driving the song to its conclusion.
“The Long Walk Home at Midnight” sees the return of glitch as the primary motivation to move itself onward and upward. This represents a change in the album in the sense that all of the beat work, effects, and structure all come together to do something a bit different. This song is very streamlined. Bass plays more of a role (uncharacteristically) compared to all songs before it. New effects emerge, but the distant, vocalless, downtempo-esque, and yet the certain melancholic feeling still remains rather comfortably.
Ultimately, this album has incredibly high replayability value. The two bonus tracks are very fitting to the rest of the record, making for a very well rounded and seasoned soundscape. Track 12’s “Danse Macabre” almost becomes a bit melodic toward its ending – inserting a large bit of fresh air to everything. The bottom line is that the album’s title is very appropriate for the kind of sounds that you’ll find (and enjoy) in here. Highly recommended.
Bitcrush is the ambient/downtempo/post-rock project of former Gridlock member Mike Cadoo. Stepping away from his earlier work of darker, more experimental IDM, and industrial, Cadoo brings together solemn melodies, ambient backgrounds, and hollow sounding drums, “In Distance” is a beautiful, calm and reserved piece of music. Melodies tend to be light, and airy coupled with with reverbed, slightly distorted acoustic drums. Lovely piano parts also drift in and out, adding colorful textures over slightly busier drum arrangements that glitch and stutter.
“Colder” shares with us a simple, yet prominent melody that starts slowly, and calmly, until bursting into an almost dissaray of chaotic, whiney guitars and deep, piercing snares. The song has a very barren and empty feeling to it exactly as the album cover depicts; a forest in the dead of winter. Frost lines the ground and snow is dusted upon leafless tree branches. The skies are grey for miles with hardly a hint of sunlight, and all is still and peaceful.
The bleak ambience of the music compliments the more solid rhythms quite well. Great attention was paid to detail in terms of the arrangements of the waves of ambient synths that glide effortlessly to create a serene atmosphere that really touches the deepest emotions. This album is full of surprises and creative innovations that blur the lines of IDM and post-rock and results in a sound that is rich in emotions.
Reid Dunn, otherwise known as Wisp, is known for epic song structures and Kettel-like playful beats and interesting vocal samples. The man is signed to Richard D. James’ (Aphex Twin) Rephlex label, responsible for an enormous amount of high quality electronic music.
We Miss You could be seen as a continuation of Wisp’s 2009 record The Shimmering Hour: full of energetic rhythms set on a well laid out foundation of awesomeness. It’s crazy how similar this record is to its predecessor. That’s not, of course, to say that it’s a dull and uninspired effort, au contraire, this album represents the cream of the crop in recent IDM releases, complete with Wisp’s signature style of creating obscenely orgasmic beat work.
Seen in the above clip from Youtube, Morning Myth is the first track of fourteen. It starts out slowly with a somewhat warped vocal sample, and then moves to collect more sounds to add to its arsenal of Awesome™. We Miss You is actually pretty healthy in duration, clocking in at just over an hour and fifteen minutes. Other highlights include To Draw Something Beautiful, We Are Like You, Bottoms up, Charlie Longfeet, Lords & Ladies, and Moss on Stone.
The whole album is very, very well done and very competent in its approach, making for yet another fine release from Rephlex. To be frank, I wasn’t expecting another record from him so soon from his last! And of course, if you like it, please buy it. It’s only £6.25 / ~$10 USD from the newly added online Rephlex webshop.
“Trust” is the latest album from Kaito released last year. If you’ve heard any of the other artist’s on Kompakt Records before, (i.e. The Field) then you’re sure to love this album. The album features beautiful, evolving chords over the course of all of it’s tracks and intricately crafted melodies that ebb and flow. The music invokes a sort of majestic, heavenly feel with its soft pads and warm synths.
“The Breath of Spring” basically sums up what the album is all about; refreshing, luscious, smooth, and extremely organic in sound. Opening with a crisp pad and slowly bringing in a backing synth that, to me, is quite reminiscent of Chicane’s sound in the late 90’s and 2000.”The Breath of Spring” certainly lives up its name in that it full of pure energy, and liveliness, while at the same time it is gentle and rich in juicy, delicate sound.
This album sounds incredible; even when listening on dark, cold, wintery days like now it manages to fill my mind with nothing but thoughts of sunny, late spring days with gentle breezes. Closing my eyes and picturing an open grassland that stretches for miles stimulates all of my senses while listening to this album.
Nuage is an album by French composer Sylvain Chauveau, which represents scores for two films from Sébastien Betbeder. It was released shortly after the album “S” in late 2007 on Type Records. Type is known for releasing works by such artists like Deaf Center, Xela, Grouper, Helios, and City Center. All excellent.
This record is a classic, with every track but one having some involvement with either a violin, electric guitar, viola, or a piano. The piano is the predominant instrument throughout the album, often in combination with a violin weaving monumentally haunting sounds together with an anxious sense of melancholy. The end result is as moving as it is memorable.
Others have noted that the only song not to incorporate a classical instrument is “Fly Like a Horse”, and as a result, it doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the record. However, this alone is nowhere near enough to leave a bad taste in one’s mouth.
By themselves, songs like Marianne, L’Oreée du Bois, Le Tunnel, Clara et Simon, and An Old Friend alone would make a great piece of work. But coupled with the rest of the album’s beautiful and somewhat romantic tracks, we instead have an outstanding collection of modern classical vocal-less narratives that carry onward quite consistently until their nearly too-short of an ending.
This is Downlink’s latest release in the form of an EP entitled Ignition. Downlink is a Canadian dubstep producer who has recently come under a lot of peoples’ radar with Against the Machines EP with Datsik (another dubstep producer) earlier in 2009.
Six tracks densely packed with thick slabs of bass.
Rottun Recordings has some of the thickest dubstep around, including a new release by Excision and Liquid Stranger called Get to the Point / Onethat you should check out if you like this.
Here’s some other similar tunes worthy of attention:
Unknown Coordinates is the very recent 2009 album by Dom Mino’, and released on Schole (SCH-011), a label based in Japan. The man has one other record out entitled Time Lapse released a year earlier, though I have not listened to it yet.
Combining a few elements of electronic music with folk, Unknown Coordinates has somewhat of a unique position within various styles of music. The first track (appropriately titled “Liquid Architecture”) of the album is probably the most “electronic” of them all, mixing a host of IDM-like sounds with a winded backdrop that reminds me of some of Oil 10’s music.
The album really starts to shine as it progresses. The second track is incredibly fluid. It begins with … children laughing. And then just when you think you know where the track is headed, it shifts into a direction that is uncharacteristic of electronic oriented music; ultimately, a bass guitar provides the song’s backing while jazz-styled drums provide some of its rhythm and direction. Almost like Supermodified-era Amon Tobin, really! Actually, the very beginning seconds of this song are eerily familiar with the some of the sounds of the self-titled album by Discuss (and like Dom Mino’, really are deserving of more attention in their respective musical circle).
It’s amazing how satisfying an experience this record is. As a whole, it has rather delicate underpinnings. Lightly peppered by high-note, fragile piano pieces and in some cases, weaved within samples that sound like they came from the classic ‘81 film The Fox and the Hound. It’s quite complimentary and works well to forward the album to its rather contagiously gleeful ending. If this album doesn’t end up in your Heavy Rotation playlist, I am not sure what will.
Starting this Monday(!), the orbiting Clothes HQ will return to its regular schedule (I’ll try my best, anyway). The response since the announcement has been staggering, and it’s really pleasant to know that even after a 2.5 month, I still manage to have a considerable and loyal following!
There are a few things that I should state right off the bat. Namely, I’ll be going into active duty military soon, and this requires a certain amount of time away from the computer, obviously. Basic training is 8.5 weeks. Suffice it to say that this blog will be unavailable when I leave. Who knows? Maybe when I have free time, you’ll see me resurrect this blog once more. But – as long as I am here, I will be writing about a few releases now and then that I sincerely hope this blog’s audience will enjoy (and ultimately purchase when available!). Feel free to contact me with any suggestions, comments, and whatever else is on your mind.
I have a few albums in store that I’m sure most of you will enjoy and get a lot of heavy rotation out of, so stay tuned :).
