Xylitol‘s first release for Planet Mu, Anemones, drew from atmospheric jungle as well as Krautrock and minimal wave, creating a wondrous form of breakbeat-driven electronic music that levitates as it crushes. Blumenfantasie is the follow-up album, and it’s no less impressive, strengthening the elements that made its predecessor stand out. Opener “Chromophoria” has just the right amount of atmosphere to momentarily make you feel like you’re falling through time, paired with bugged-out breaks that snap everything into focus. The title track slips Cluster-like puttering drum machines beneath shuffling drums and a flood of bass. “Melancholia” takes its time to let a sorrowful atmosphere unfold, then erupts with perfectly timed hard breaks.
Tag Archive: Planet Mu
Three years after Planet Mu released Flood City Trax, an illuminating LP by Pennsylvania-based producer Nondi_, the label simultaneously issued two more efforts by the artist, the proper album Nondi… and the limited Bonus Nondi… As with Flood City Trax, Nondi… is a mix of tracks that first surfaced through the producer’s netlabel, HRR, as well as previously unissued works. She describes Nondi… as containing some of her prettiest material, as well an expression of the sense of freedom she experienced when she got into her musical influences. Her tracks embrace the abstract sides of club culture — the weirder elements of footwork, outsider house, IDM, glitch, and dance music that isn’t really all that danceable — and filter them all through the lens…
Every day is Halloween for Ship Sket. InitiatriX, the debut LP from the Dorset-born, Manchester-based producer (real name Josh Griffiths), weds freaky sampled dialogue to the kind of strings that almost always point towards impending doom. In other words, InitiatriX will leave you scrambling around for the light switch.
At times, the album’s tendencies toward horror feel explicit. Eerie, detuned piano segues into an ice storm of sub-zero grime on “Audition for the Part of the Killer,” making good on the theatrical shock value promised by the title. Things get even scarier on “Supermodel Mansion,” summoning a Southern Gothic scene that’s all shrieking crows and fire-and-brimstone ranting. On the bitcrushed “Desire 4 Stealth,” a demonic cackle…
Rian Treanor’s style of electronic music is daunting. The sounds are microscopic and synthetic, either glowing like LEDs or gleaming like cold steel, but they leave sizzling craters on impact. Melody and rhythm merge into a rapid-fire spray that makes a mockery of musical modes and scales even while he works within them, thanks to Max/MSP devices that the English artist designs himself. It can feel solitary, almost maddening — the work of an artist obsessively trying to one-up himself. Which makes it surprising that his collaborations are actually some of his best work, whether he’s playing with a Ugandan fiddle player or his father, experimental electronic luminary Mark Fell. It’s hard to imagine another artist entering his impenetrable world, but those pairings push…
Slikback is tired of waiting around. There have been occasions where the Kenyan musician has been booked to play festivals, but missed out due to visa issues. So when it comes to his recorded music Slikback — aka Freddy Mwaura Njau — has come up with a solution: Don’t wait. Njau self-releases most of his music via Bandcamp, and last year compiled highlights from his recent handful of singles into one eponymous 22-track collection.
But exceptions are made for exceptional circumstances, like a debut full-length album for esteemed label Planet Mu. With Attrition, Njau stuck to Mu’s deadline, composing all of its tracks while waiting for yet another visa to come through in his new home of Poland. Experiments that Njau might have otherwise spread over…
Drew Lustman may be electronic music’s most restless experimentalist. Since he first burst onto the scene with 2009’s Love Is a Liability in the first flush of the post-dubstep implosion, he’s worked in everything from big room house anthems to steely glam post-punk over the last 16 years. His restless, relentless innovation means there’s simply no telling what a FaltyDL record will sound like, other than that it’ll be impeccably stylish and carefully produced. While this may have prevented FaltyDL from developing a cult following, as each release can sound dramatically different from the next, it has established Lustman as a reliable weathervane to let you know which way the winds are blowing in electronic music.
This time around, Lustman finds himself…
Planet Mu 30 continues the label’s tradition of marking its five-year anniversaries with compilations that mainly center around its roster at the time rather than reflect on its history. (The mammoth three-disc special edition of µ20 was a considerable exception.) The set’s 25 tracks come from longtime mainstays as well as more recent signees making their label debut, and it leans heavily on footwork, jungle, experimental techno, and various permutations of all of the above. Most of the material is exclusive at the time of the compilation’s release, with only a handful of tracks previously surfacing digitally.
Jlin’s “B12” begins the release, weaving curious samples of classical instruments throughout a rhythm that starts out sounding close to…
James Krivchenia is a multifaceted artist who, whether you realize it or not, has made his way onto your playlist at some point.
From his session work with pop sensations like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, to drumming and producing for Grammy-nominated folk titans Big Thief, Krivchenia has his hands in many pots, none of which can prepare you for his phenomenally complex solo material.
On Performing Belief, his daring, abstract solo LP that shimmers and pulses with electronic blips, atmospheric field recordings, and raw percussion prowess.
The spiritually fulfilling and oddly danceable eight song LP is a labor of love dedicated to the artist’s tirelessly free approach to dance music.