Remember when dubstep was good? Paris-born producer and DJ Beatrice M. certainly does: Their music calls back to the genre’s mid-2000s South London days, when dub implied reggae, Skream was a youthful prodigy, and Sonny Moore was the singer in a hardcore band.
It was probably inevitable that this sound would come round again, with music’s proverbial 20-year fashion cycle once again raising its head. But Sinking, Beatrice M.’s debut album, released on the none-more-cerebral dubstep label Tectonic, has more to it than simple revival. On the one hand, the record is full of the recognizable traits of classic dubstep — the reggae-inspired half-step beat; basslines that are warm and corporeal rather than dumb and abrasive; and…
Category: electronic
As the years went by, Káryyn’s chilling masterclass of a debut album started to feel like a singularity. 2019’s The Quanta Series seemed like it might not only stand the test of time but be capable of bending it, blurring the past into futuristic art-pop. It took half a decade for the Armenian American singer and composer to follow it up with another record, the James Ford-produced EP Calm Kaoss!, which was preceded by a standalone single co-produced with Hudson Mohawke.
Along with Björk collaborator Marta Salogni on mixing duties, those names turn up throughout the credits of Káryyn’s long-awaited new album, like the UK alternative’s equivalent to the Weeknd enlisting Max Martin and Oneohtrix Point Never on Dawn FM.
The innovations of Berlin’s Basic Channel in the mid-’90s led to a whole new way of thinking about dance music, introducing countless producers to the possibilities of reverb and delay. Producers have been working off the template they set for dub techno ever since. Less often imitated is the duo’s work as Rhythm & Sound, where they slowed their music to reggae tempos and hewed closer to the Jamaican innovations that informed their trippy production tricks. This sound is having a small moment right now. Stuttgart’s Ghost Dubs has made a career of it, both solo and with a fired-up Kevin Richard Martin; Brussels’ Carrier shaped it into cavernous forms on last year’s awesome Rhythm Immortal; all the while, co-originator and close Rhythm & Sound collaborator…
KOGG is Cerys Hogg and Selena Kay, who both teach music. With backgrounds in jazz improvisation and classical composition, respectively, they found a common interest in exploring randomness and new ways to make sounds, including building their own instruments. They describe collecting whistles from Christmas crackers and creating a device to blow them with air bulbs. Programming devised sounds into synthesisers, they have crafted their own music, and it is quite something.
As they point out, experimental music has a reputation for being a male business, and a serious one. Hogg and Kay set out to make music their own way, and the results are joyous. The opening track, ‘Reel’, is conceptually satisfying,…
When considering the title, one might imagine the answer as “sound,” as the post-rock collective Hanry, as the album, or all three. Defined as a “meditation on emergence,” What Came From Silence is a celebration of music and a coming-out party for the French band, who has released a series of EPs and singles leading up to this full-length debut.
The core trio becomes a quintet for this release, the typical post-rock setup enhanced by piano, cello and electronics. In deference to the title, the set starts with “Noise Drowns Out,” which rises from silence rather than attacking; this smooth entry allows the theme of emergence to take hold. The background sheen is like a drone upon which the percussion – both organic and…
Unexpected encounters often yield unexpected results. It is easy to get lost in Radwan Ghazi Moumneh’s extensive discography. Especially if your eye (and ear!) is drawn to the albums recorded under the name Jerusalem in My Heart, which take Arabic music as their starting point, falling somewhere in the vicinity of bands such as Land of Kush, Praed or Sanam. These unexpected collaborations sometimes result in overlooked releases, such as the exceptional The Sentimental Moves – a project that brings together musicians from different worlds, recorded with Canadian guitarist Eric Chenaux – essentially, before Moumneh fully established his distinctive style straddling those worlds.
In Montreal, Moumneh runs a recording studio,…
Kosmiche krautrock mainstay Harald Grosskopf operates at full wingspan on a new raft of astral-planing arps and motorik pulses laced with wistful extended melodies and atmospheric sleaze, together with a titular nod to Miles Davis’hinting at the album’s underlying theme: the productive friction between man and machine.
“For the uninitiated, Grosskopf’s career spans six decades of German music history. From early beat groups in Hildesheim, through Krautrock propulsion with Wallenstein, cosmic explorations alongside Ashra, and defining work with Klaus Schulze, he has consistently pushed rhythm into evolving technological contexts. His 1980 solo debut Synthesist, previously reissued on Bureau B, helped establish a sequencer-driven…
Lithic‘s cover photo portrays Laura Misch from behind standing in the mouth of a cave, facing the light, she holds stones in her hands. It’s thematically perfect for the music offered here. This release follows a loose line by the London-based saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer/songwriter that began with 2023’s album Sample the Sky with music that seemingly streamed from the clouds, while its acoustic follow-up, 2024’s Sample of Earth, focused on myriad ways in which geology and earth science influence her work. Lithic is deeper still. It’s informed by the elements, rock formations, and deep time: the concept of geological and evolutionary spans that reach back billions of years to Earth’s formation, offering a temporal framework…
A lot of people are making music influenced by trip-hop right now, and a lot of it is very good. But it typically skews towards the sultry meeting point of sexual danger and stoned paranoia with the razor-sharp aesthetic edges of the ’90s and ’00s internet. Bristol’s Tara Clerkin Trio are steeped in their hometown’s trip-hop tradition, but their approach is more folk-rock than the voluptuous blues associated with Tricky or Massive Attack. They make music for autumnal scenes with scarves and coffee rather than a time loop where you’re always ashing the same spliff. Car-stereo stuff like Dido and Beth Orton sometimes comes to mind. It’s almost twee.
Somehow, this approach makes their second album, Somewhere Good, sound slipperier and…
DJ Seinfeld began working on his second album for Ninja Tune right as Mirrors was coming out in 2021, and the album slowly took shape and evolved as his busy touring schedule took him around the world. If This Is It reflects on themes such as letting go, embracing the present, and accepting things as they are. The songs feature many of the hallmarks of Seinfeld’s sound, from effervescent chords to teary-eyed vocal snippets — opener “U Can’t Come Home” even incorporates a voice mail message, though it’s not as dramatic as the one from the previous album’s “These Things Will Come to Be.” Seinfeld’s music has incorporated more guest vocals than samples over the years, so If This Is It feels a bit more collaborative than his past releases, yet it’s still highly personal.
A unique and brilliant collaboration between the legendary dub/reggae pioneer and German electronic production duo Mouse on Mars (aka Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma). Lee “Scratch” Perry’s last ever official album project before his passing in 2019. Recorded in 3 days at Mouse on Mars’ Paraverse Studio in Berlin in 2019.
Lee, Jan and Andi conducted a revolving cast of musicians and collaborators throughout the complex’s different rooms and spaces.
Spatial, No Problem. finds the artists breaking new ground – the one thing Lee was sure of was that this shouldn’t be just another reggae album. It covers everything from krautrock, ambient, dub, jazz, New Orleans brass and much more.
“We hardly spoke about what we were doing.
With more than 43 million songs uploaded to streaming services every year, how does one avert overload fatigue from the sheer mass of new music? It’s a modern reality that the Dutch music producer Jochem Paap has been wrestling with, with Walkman his first solo release in twenty years. The name of this record harks back to the Sony Walkman, of course, the mobile cassette player that revolutionised personal listening in the ’80s and set us on our way towards the iPod and streaming platforms listened to via smartphones.
If that gives an impression that Walkman might be a retreat into a halcyon past where analogue technology ruled supreme, then, thankfully, you’d be mistaken. Speedy J’s long-awaited new album is made up of one hour and thirty…
Anenoa is Chilean-German artist Matias Aguayo‘s first album since relocating to Mexico City, and one of his most collaborative efforts to date. Sung mainly in Spanish, the record embraces a wide variety of Latin American dance styles, and returns to the playful absurdity of his earlier albums, rather than the stark, skeletal rhythms of 2019’s Support Alien Invasion. One thing that remains from that album, however, is Aguayo’s embrace of different cultures, and here he works with producers, musicians, and vocalists from multiple continents while changing styles with seemingly every track. “Sentimientos Encontraos” is a perky, cumbia-inspired shuffle that Aguayo wrote with the intention of it becoming a future wedding staple. “Asuca, Rock, Roll” starts out as…
The Chemical Brothers have released a new compilation called Go: Apex and Beyond. The career-spanning collection arrives just as their 2015 track ‘Go’ explodes again on streaming, thanks to its inclusion in the Netflix film ‘Apex’.
“Beyond ‘Go’… Welcome to The Chemical Brothers’ universe,” the duo wrote on Instagram. “Listen to the new collection.”
Crucially, ‘Go’ has seen a 429% jump in Spotify streams since the ‘Apex’ release. As a result, the track has soared past 150 million plays. Furthermore, it now leads the new compilation.
Notably, the tracklist pulls from across their career. The picks include ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’, ‘Galvanize’, ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’, ‘Let Forever Be’, ‘Star Guitar’, ‘Setting Sun’, ‘Out Of Control’…
There’s a peculiar tension running through Obsidiana, the third studio album under Rocket Recordings for Mexican artist J. Zunz. Lorena Quintanilla has always worked within spaces where dream-pop haze curdles into industrial unease, whether through Lorelle Meets the Obsolete or her solo work, but here the balance feels newly severe. The album moves like a process of extraction, each track scraping away another psychic layer until only pulse and residue remain.
The record’s title proves instructive. Obsidian, being volcanic glass historically used for weapons and scrying mirrors, becomes both thematic anchor and sonic blueprint. Quintanilla builds these tracks from hard edges and reflective surfaces, bass frequencies grind against flickering…
As we pick our way through the scurf and scree of the modern world, outraged and numbed at every turn, we can maybe agree that Russell Haswell’s new record, Let It Go, is a useful corrective and something of an unlikely balm. Here, with Haswell at the controls, we are just living in a world of shit, some of us are in the gutter but looking at the kerb, we’ve just roasted an Alsatian’s leg in our thirtieth-floor apartment, and so on.
Let It Go is a total heap of noise and openly addresses the listener as such. That’s the record’s narrative, and its liberation; our irritating anthropological longings to join the dots or see patterns can do one. Opening track, ‘Exit Downwards’ is a recording of an old, forgotten overheating generator doing its own…
In a rather alarming development, electronic duo Digitalism – Hamburg-based Jens Moelle and İsmail Tüfekçi – are into their third decade as a musical concern. How did that happen?!
For clues, look no further than Optimism, their first album of the 2020s. In news that will come as no surprise, it delivers exactly what the title promises. On one hand it harks back to the mid-2000s, when we were saturated with the filtered electro / rock hybrid that labels like Kitsuné threw at us like an invigorating drink. Standout Digitalism tracks of the time were ‘Pogo’, ‘Zdarlight’ and ‘2 Hearts’ – and now they can be joined by the likes of ‘Starburst’, which still offer these highs as Digitalism bring the party to yours. The assertion is that although our world and quality of life might not…
Producer and composer Hannah Peel first worked with percussionist Beibei Wang on Manchester Collective’s 2023 album Neon, which included compositions by Peel as well as Lyra Pramuk and Steve Reich. The two artists then performed a fully improvised concert together as part of Peel’s artist residency in London. Afterwards, they spent five days improvising and recording at Real World Studios. The result is The Endless Dance, a playful, exploratory record inspired by the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism. The music takes several forms, from atmospheric soundscapes to galloping techno workouts. Wang’s spirited percussion and guest musician Hyelim Kim’s colorful playing of the daegeum (a large bamboo flute from Korea) bridge Asian traditions and contemporary…
Gigi Masin‘s form of ambient music has often incorporated rippling textures and forward motion, so it’s not hard to see how his records have become favorites of DJs and sample-flipping producers. Soon after the Talk to the Sea compilation on Music from Memory introduced Masin’s music to new listeners, he made two albums with Tempelhof which delved into downtempo and Balearic house, and later recorded some mellow jazz sessions with Greg Foat.
For his 2026 solo album Movement, he intentionally created ambient music that connects with the body as well as the mind. While some of the album’s tracks, like opener “Bed on Mars,” sound like drifting clouds or a fog rolling in, others are far more rhythmic, utilizing deep house…
“You can change the chapter, you can change the book, but the story remains the same if you’d take a look”. So runs the chorus line from ‘Nobody’s Diary’ by Yazoo, an unexpectedly prophetic lyric looking forward to the formation of Doublespeak. For here is a supergroup founded in the 2020s but rooted almost entirely in the early development of electronic music.
As supergroups go, this one is entirely logical – and in fact, the only surprise about the Orwellian Doublespeak is that it took this long for them to form. Electronic music royalty Vince Clarke (not just Yazoo, but Depeche Mode and Erasure) and Neil Arthur (Blancmange) have been good friends since the early 1980s, when making your own pop music was fast becoming a pleasure…