Make your first listen to Seismo a naive one. Don’t think about its makers, and the many excellent projects they have worked on. Don’t think about how exciting it is to hear a bold percussionist like Valentina Magaletti collaborate with a producer who can match her inventiveness and unrestricted approach to form and genre. Try not to think about PAN, the storied label backing it. If you can, forget Moin, Midori Takada, Steve Reich, Nicolas Jaar, Miles Davis, Shackleton, or any other past collaborator or influence you might hear flashes of within its eight songs. Don’t think of its backstory: how it formed out of a commission by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, and what that setting might say about the music.
Just listen. It’s a record full of life, texture and…
Category: indie
Adam Kyriakou’s Department is a one-man band in the style of Neil Hannon’s Divine Comedy and Matt Johnson’s The The; others may pass in and out, but Kyriakou steers the ship.
Audacity Files proves to be the maiden voyage for what should be an interesting and impressive career in sonic development. “Shadow Play” embodies the freneticism of the Lennon-McCartney opus “A Day in the Life”: brass, loops, and percussion lunging at the unsuspecting listener. Incidentally, “Shadow Play” is the longest tune on the record: despite pushing the boundaries of pop, Department wisely keeps the runtime to a palatable two-minute average.
Purportedly inspired by a voyage to his ancestral Macedonia, Department incorporates…
There’s just something timeless about Montreal. It carries a deep European history into a future rife with possibility, clear-eyed concern, and ever-expanding cultural diversity. These elements are among the building blocks used by the many recondite and stylistically adventurous artists the city produces — much like Atsuko Chiba, who present a sure-footed path through the perpetually shifting terrain they choose to walk through Montreal’s geography.
On their eponymous fourth full-length, the band immediately introduce their complications with “Retention,” a song that dares you to define genre, swapping new style elements in and out of its slow, twilight creep. Vocalist Karim Lakhdar’s rap-accented lyrics trace the boundaries…
To truly listen is not a passive gesture but a radical, embodied act of attention. Christina Vantzou’s The Reintegration of the Ear offers a slower presence: one rooted in care, intimacy, and reflection. Composed by the Greek-American composer between 2023 and 2025 after being commissioned by INA GRM as a multi-channel acousmatic work, The Reintegration of the Ear unfolds as a durational electroacoustic suite, meticulously arranged by Vantzou and performed with Irene Kurka (voice), John Also Bennett (flutes, synthesizers), Roman Hiele (double bass), and Oliver Coates (cello).
…Their play is fluid and instinctive, requiring each performer to listen to each other for small cues and inspired turns. Glissandos rise as waves crash against shores; the tides reflect…
Annea Lockwood was sitting on the shore of Flathead Lake in Montana with her partner, the composer Ruth Anderson. It was the summer of 1975, and it’d been a couple years since the two fell in love.
Lockwood was, among other things, enamored with the way Anderson’s music could make her feel “so at peace and so part of everything.” A similar phenomenon was happening here — she was soaking in the sounds around her, like the jet skis and motorboats in the distance. She was fascinated by the difference in speed between human activity and, say, a stone striking water, rippling outwards. “What if we could hear all those rhythms,” she wondered, “as one huge rhythm?”
At the heart of her sentiment is a certain…
nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風 – (quiet wind): a collection of forward-thinking electronic experiments sourced from central Japan – co-curated by Nagoya artist abentis for Facta & K-LONE’s Wisdom Teeth imprint. The project profiles a close-knit community of music makers operating in and around the Japanese city of Nagoya: one of the country’s most populous and industrial cities, but one all too often overlooked in terms of its cultural significance.
Curated in close collaboration with local scene organiser Yuya Abe – aka abentis – the record seeks to capture the creative energy of a community of artists making hard-to-define, future-facing electronic music away from the clamour of the bigger cities.
1. Caroline Polachek – Look at Me Now
2. Mike Polizze – Cheewawa
3. Royal Trux – Waterpark
4. King Kong – Scooba Dooba Diver
5. Steve Gunn – The Handshake
6. Red Red Meat – Gorshin
7. Oneohtrix Point Never – Krumville
8. The Halo Benders – Virginia Reel Around the Fountain
9. Jessica Pratt – World On a String
10. Kim Gordon – Dirty Tech
11. Viktor Vaughn – Vaudeville Villain
12. Stress Eater – Giving Back to the Universe
13. Sun Ra – Trying to Put the Blame On Me (Live)
14. Sunburned Hand of the Man – Nimbus
15. Kurt Vile – Constant Repeat
“When I was faced with the challenge of writing and recording a new album, I had the choice to stay where I was comfortable, under the sage guidance of a producer or to step out into the dark and produce it myself. It became clear that if I was going to grow in the craft, I needed to become my own lighthouse. So I made the commitment to take on the Producer role. There were a lot of sleepless nights.
Writing Long Wave Home, though no less daunting, became a refuge for me—a place to explore interpersonal connections and the rise and fall of emotions that come with relationships. Writing an album can be very agitating, but it’s a discomfort I am comfortable with. What a gift it is to spend my time examining my inner world…
-1 outside / 24 inside documents collaborations between Zhao Cong and Kevin Corcoran when the two were in Beijing to perform at a series run by Aloe Records. After the show, the two spent an evening recording outside in an underpass below a major bridge on the northeastern stretch of Beijing’s 3rd Ring Road. Then later, they spent an afternoon recording in a studio often used to present shows. Both of these musicians focus on the materiality of sound and the processes of sound creation, delving in to the tiniest detailed textures and timbres of objects they utilize. Zhao is credited with “rotating mobile phone stand, karaoke light, tape recorder, etc.” and Corcoran with “snare drum, objects, and feedback.” But both Zhao and Corcoran are also keenly interested in…
On her latest album, Delphine Dora is concerned with temporality, its pace and pressures it produces. L’ineluctable pulsation du temps finds the French pianist, composer and improviser summoning a gentle collection of piano cycles with drone undertows. The record took shape during a time of intense touring, while Dora was simultaneously busy engaging with writings on acceleration and alienation by Hartmut Rosa, a “sociologist of speed”.
According to Rosa, capitalist societies are programmed for constant economic growth, which forces us into a rat race, approaching the world instrumentally and as a competition. It may sound too esoteric for a German sociologist, but Rosa proposes a different mode of…
The release of Mitski’s concert film The Land and its accompanying live album last autumn consolidated her status as a kind of art-school Taylor Swift: glancingly elusive but still capable of grand emotional spectacle.
Recorded with her live band, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me showcases Mitski’s gift for cutting vintage musical theatre stylings and half-lit Americana with acerbic art-pop, the jaunty list-song ‘Rules’ or the chaotic evil ‘Where’s My Phone?’ almost sharing a theatrical moment with current-day David Byrne.
‘That White Cat’ simmers with jarring anger at parasitic forces who seek to commodify and consume while ‘Dead Women’s disturbing Lana Del Cohen transmission features the lyric…
A project established by two veterans of the Stockholm indie scene to delve into (circa) 1980s inspirations like post-punk, new wave, jangle pop, and indie pop, Salt Lake Alley combined these styles while favoring post-punk on their 2020 full-length debut. While they leaned more heavily into jangle and indie pop with the follow-up, their third album, Always Out of Time, finds them expanding their lineup to four and committing almost fully to a giddy, bittersweet indie pop veiled in shimmer and echo. Members Gustav Tranback, Mikael Carlsson, and later personnel Fredrik Jalker and Thomas Aherne hail from like-minded and not-quite-as-like-minded Swedish acts such as the Honeydrips, the Garlands, and Paper Hearts, among several others.
Until recently, Riya Mahesh’s biography nailed nearly every beat of all-American academic achievement, following a familiar arc from early piano lessons to being crowned prom queen, like Olivia Rodrigo’s well-adjusted Wario. But after hitting a snag and failing to get into Juilliard (happens…), the musician regrouped during the pandemic with a SoundCloud account, a trial run of Logic, and nothing to lose.
As Quiet Light, the Texas-born, Boston-based producer has gone on to release multiple albums of increasingly accomplished art pop, along the way nabbing opening spots for Nilüfer Yanya, Chanel Beads, Ana Roxanne, and Hovvdy. Naturally, she’s managed all this while also powering through medical school.
Having honed his live chops over many years not only as a solo artist, but also with the celebrated groups The Frames and The Swell Season, Glen Hansard is rightly regarded as a masterful live performer. Recorded over two nights last year in Berlin’s Funkhaus – an historic former radio facility – Don’t Settle (Vol 1, Transmissions East) draws from all stages of the singer’s storied career, making for a powerful and spellbinding listen.
The record kicks off with the title track, which builds from atmospheric ballad to stirring rocker, with a notably streak of defiance: “When they pin you to the corner / Pay no need to their dronin’ on”.
Filled with apocalyptic imagery, ‘Down On Our Knees’ is a driving, intense number with echoes of Joy Division, while the haunting…
With their breakthrough hit ‘Into The Valley’ in 1979, Dunfermline, Scotland’s premier export Skids quickly rose to become one of the most respected and popular bands to emerge from the UK punk and new wave era. Founding members Richard Jobson (vocals) and Stuart Adamson (guitars) were a dynamic combination up front (Adamson went on to even greater commercial success when he later founded Big Country) while the band’s tight, taut sound was grounded by William Simpson on bass and first Tom Kellichan and later Mike Baillie on drums.
Always considered up there with the greatest among their peers – The Jam, Siouxsie And The Banshees, and The Stranglers, for example – both singles and albums showcased…
Is there more than mere semantics to the difference between remodeled and remixed? A remix takes the components of an original track, breaks them down and puts them back in a different order. A remodel may also include new components. AGATE is a set of “material refined through repeated performance.” The more Meitei performed pieces from his Kofū trilogy, the more he refined their sound, a process akin to the formation of agate. Three pieces survive the transition from Kofū; one crosses over from Kofū II; and two are remodeled from Kofū III, only six out of thirty-four tracks, plus a new piece that launches the set. The final product extends the discussion on whether there is ever a definitive version of a track; for Meitei, the music evolves with the performer.
Joseph Branciforte & Jozef Dumoulin are kindred spirits, with their musical inclinations leaning towards improvisation, experimentation, and the testing of the limits of musical forms.
Branciforte, based in New York, constructs and produces process-based music – often implementing electronic keyboards – through his prolific label greyfade. Dumoulin, from Belgium, is recognized for his role in redefining the Fender Rhodes electric piano as a 21st-century instrument through extensive electronic manipulation. A chance meeting more than a decade ago led to the two of them recording what would become ITERAE, a record that brings together their passion for imbuing the Rhodes with electronics and processing.
…Alongside an acoustic rendition of album standout “Surviving You,” ‘Nested in Tangles (Deluxe)’ features an extended dance mix of “A Body, A Map,” Mary Lattimore on the newly expanded “Beholden to the Birds Murmuring Above,” as well as a voice and trombone rework of its title track.
Following her critically acclaimed 2024 album Keeper of the Shepherd, composer, vocalist, guitarist, and poet Hannah Frances returns with Nested in Tangles.
…In her winding constructions and gleefully lush arrangements, once again assembled with close collaborator Kevin Copeland, the Vermont-based singer-songwriter evokes many generations of proggy, jazzy indie rock far too sophisticated…