Despite its somewhat generic name, jazz trio The Setting have created something striking and quietly astounding on their self-titled debut album. The band, consisting of bassist and composer Eivind Opsvik, keyboard player Elias Stemeseder, and guitarist Will Graefe, have brought to fruition Opsvik‘s love of 1970s and 1980s synthesizer music, ECM solo guitar albums, and experimental art pop. But as the saying goes, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
While there are certainly touchstones of previous subgenres and legendary artists – ranging from Brian Eno to Joe Zawinul to Ryuichi Sakamoto – all over this beguiling record, the result is a sound that is unlike anything else most ears have heard. The overall experience is decidedly…
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A tribute to a tribute? During the final mix sessions for Peggy Suicide, Cope invited some musicians to Ramport Studio to celebrate the album’s completion. He called this late-night-party recording session 
Arcade Fire’s 
To truly listen is not a passive gesture but a radical, embodied act of attention. 
On her latest album, 
Browse the live listings in Tokyo long enough and you’ll inevitably stumble across a party themed around modular synthesizers. Whether it’s an annual event at a multi-level nightclub (Festival Of Modular) or an intimate set at a cozy neighborhood venue (Modular Wednesday at Shibuya Otto), the itinerary remains the same-artists plugging away in the moment, tinkering ad hoc for a live audience.
There are so many ways that musicians can currently cooperate, without necessarily having to be physically together in the same studio, room, basement or whatever, and we got a clear example here with Developments, the album that is, well, developed by 
While it sounds like it might be the work of some mysterious intergalactic orchestra, Unbalance is the work of two musicians performing with little to no advance direction. Brazilian experimental guitarist and composer 
Fans of the darker side of modern musical forms, particularly Swans, have Jarboe somewhere in their minds and surely in their music collections. As a solo artist, Jarboe has made a series of career-defining recordings, 15 in all, before Sightings, her latest. Yet, it took her some eight years between 
Gamelan has long been a fascination for the headier end of the electronic world, whether it’s Plaid asking a 26-person Balinese ensemble to open for them at Le Poisson Rouge, Aphex Twin emulating the genre in his more acoustic experiments, or Björk using it as a template to create her own customized instruments. The two forms make a surprisingly logical pair: Both dance music and the ancient Indonesian style are based around repetition, exploring the gradually evolving frictions in rhythm and melody that can suck the listener into a state of hypnosis. It’s not that it’s a brand new concept for the Russian producer 
Ambient techno comes in two forms. The first features steady, propulsive kick drums and mechanical disco hi-hats that are slathered in surface noise and field recordings. The second leans into the ambient, sounding more like one of those Environments CDs you’d listen to at a kiosk if you’re old enough to remember when malls existed; the sound of crashing waves or hissing cicadas occasionally interrupted by the steady thumpthumpthump heartbeat of a subtle beat. The Setting Sun, initially released in 2009 as the first record from Stephen Hitchell’s 
Music has long served as a space where emotions can be expressed and explored without the pressure of resolution.
In the heart of Tunisia lies a giant salt lake called Chott El Djerid, or “Lagoon of the Land of Palms”. Measuring 160 miles across, the lake has been the subject of numerous works of art, most famously Star Wars, where it was used as a filming location in A New Hope.
This rather beautiful, unhurried recording is the work of guitarist and composer Chaz Prymek (aka 
Since she started making music with a Buchla synthesizer in 1968 — an obsession that landed her a job actually manufacturing the machines, soldering iron in hand, until she saved up enough money to buy her own —