RIP. A weekly roundup of releases on Bandcamp and Soundcloud selected and delivered by Aidan
And just like that! The year is over. Okay so there are actually two full weeks left but this is a Friday thing and next Friday is Christmas Eve and the Friday after that is New Year’s Eve. Nobody will be reading my silly mails on those days.
Thanks for sticking with me throughout 2021, I hope at some point you found something you enjoyed. I was rereading the mails this week and reminded myself of some great stuff. You can do the same if you’d like. More to come in 2022.
Fallgatter - (K) Solos de Batterie
Another excellent piece of work on the Tone Burst label, I gather this uses popular drum solos as its source material. There are moments of strained, shuffling strangeness, ambient sequences, synth meanderings, field recordings. A delight.
VA - Rajsn-elektronik: Jewish-Belarusian electronic music (Radio Plato)
Big thanks to Richie Sombrero for sending this my way. It’s “a rethinking of the Belarusian-Jewish musical heritage by modern electronic producers”. Familiar violin and clarinet sounds dance over acid squelches, and waltzes sweep over electronic atmospheres. It’s quite varied and perhaps some of modern styles aren’t for everyone but it’s a very interesting project.
Yaffle - Memories Of Feeling Good
I listened to this lovely release twice in a row because I was sad it ended so quickly. It’s cute and gentle, delicate and wistful. Short instrumental pieces combining guitar and synth, it seems like music for lovely train journeys without the panic of tardiness.
Hendekagon - Psalms For the Unreligious
Seriously dank foggy ambient noise music on a label called Inner Demons Records.
Telephones - Point Breaks / Beach Breaks 2 EP
This came out of nowhere. Or maybe it didn’t and I just missed the signs. Balearic sounds from Norway by way of Berlin (of course), it’s a really lovely set of tracks from an artist who’s no stranger to refined and polished disco/house sounds.
Last year I covered Yeong Die’s release on clipp.art, a piece of work that moved between clubby sounds and unknowable globs. This release for Psychic Liberation is perhaps more focused but even less straightforward. Yearning ambient that’s undone by terrifying melodies, radio signal over lurching tempos, cavernous submerged sounds that creep to the surface in hope and terror. Just weird and fun I guess.
VA - Vanishing Standards II (Amek Collective)
A brilliant and broad collection of music, largely made up of artists from Bulgaria but some from or based in Poland, the UK, Italy, Denmark, Romania, Serbia and Turkmenistan. On the whole it’s in a particular vein of electronic sound, that mournful ambient I love so well. Perhaps not one to play if you’re feeling down? But undoubtedly rich in talent and ideas.
Zhe Pecorin featured on the above Amek Collective release and has also just put out this tape on Miami’s Noir Age. If you’re looking for cheery, seasonal music, this ain’t it. Not dissimilar to the Hendekagon release above, it’s something like the sound of wind after a nuclear apocalypse. Screeching sounds above the surface, the strange and horrifying light of undying winter.
SPEAKING OF CHEERY, SEASONAL MUSIC… ‘Last Christmas’ is a beautiful song, a wonderful bop but also a distillation of heartbreak and betrayal. Naturally it works wonderfully in a metal shoegaze style. Unexpected yet superb.
VA - SUCHI SELECTS (boxout.fm Recordings)
Another compilation, this one from New Delhi’s boxout.fm. It’s made up of “handpicked” tracks by local artists . There’s a wonderful track from Prismer that’s somewhere between prog house, electro and breaks. There’s straight-up electro from Zequenx. There’s weird ambient bedroom pop from Sijya (the track is called ‘Have To Make My Bed’).
Squelch squelch squelch. There are moments of lovely beauty here alongside moments that sound like some sort of intangible digital melange colliding and combining.
EIWKY Mix Series Vol. 2: wngdu
Oh yeah, SoundCloud. This mix series has a title that’s both amusing and startling. The latest entry comes from wngdu and it covers a lot of scary ground in 93 minutes. There’s a distinctly 80s electro-goth vibe to it all.
Techno legend Speedy J has just released a load of music on Bandcamp, with more than 30 releases available at the time of writing. Why not start with this release, which features classics like ‘Rise’ and ‘De-Orbit’.
Magna Moralia translates as Great Ethics, and is potentially named for a work of the same name that may or may not have been written by Aristotle. It’s quite seasonal, in that there are some delightful bells, but there are also shades of Japanese new-age and melancholy piano.
VA - SURE SHOT VOLUME III (Slowly Losing It)
Scott Grooves shared the Coflo track from this release in a message to his Bandcamp followers and I’ve been listening to it, and the whole release, ever since. The only name I recognise is Seven Davis Jr, who contributes a characteristically funky number, while the Coflo track is trippy and exciting. The Stripped Mix of Oye Manny’s ‘No Frills’ features vogue stabs alongside chopped up whoops, and Kako’s ‘Samson’ is similarly sparse. Closer ‘Makara’ from Noey Lopez is darkly atmospheric and features a strange bleeping melody over muted chords. A stellar collection. Thanks Scott!
Jean-Louis Huhta - Wormhole Of Time
Organic Analogue never go wrong do they? This is a compendium of work from Jean-Louis Huhta, a Trinidadian-Swedish “techno maverick” as they call him, taking a baker’s dozen tracks of his from the 90s and presenting them for a new century. It’s varied yet consistent, with searing electro and chunky techno, broken beats in unfamiliar sonic patterns and frenzied synth melodies over what could be record scratches used as a bed of sound. There’s a digital bonus track that’s like a combination of all those styles yet in a supremely jazzy mode. It’s a wonderful selection and I can’t wait to dig into it properly.