RIP. A weekly roundup of releases on Bandcamp and Soundcloud selected and delivered by Aidan
Bandcloud 270
I could have included the new Joy O release this week (it's fantastic) but I think that kind of thing doesn't need me to do well. I couldn't even describe it anyway. Check out Gabriel Szatan's interview with the man here. INSTEAD I want to talk about Dublin Digital Radio. The station is moving to a new venue called The Complex, and needs funding to pay for such things as materials and labour, equipment, furniture and electrics, etc. They've set up a Fund it campaign and has already reached 76% of its goal. As my old Latin teacher used to say, however, you don't slow down when you approach the finish line. So please help in any way you can, if you can! Much love.
Daniel 58 - 619 - 0108
This is tagged as "emotional dub". It's both subtle and urgent, gently weird stabs sitting over intriguing percussion. Daniel is part of the Parallel Minds crew from Toronto and very occasionally he drops random gems like this one on his SoundCloud.
VALESUCHI - TRAGICOMIC
I don't know what I expected when I clicked this but even being a fan of Valesuchi I didn't think we'd get such a broad and varied release. It's part noisy, futuristic robo-techno, part fizzling electro, part sample-heavy drum machine business and part soaring prog house-type sounds. There's so much going on that when we get to the EBM-meets-space opera sounds of 'Suffering' it all just makes sense. Then it closes with a gorgeous number that sounds like 70s electronic experiments in sound. Utterly brilliant.
Borrowed cs - Osiris
I've no idea who this is. Please don't Milkshake Duck yourself! It's some freaky experimental acid-laden techno. Nothing too complex or conceptual, but it bangs.
Only Now - Captivity
I had a big blurb written about this and then accidentally deleted it. This extended release from SF artist Kush Arora, working as Only Now, is big, brash and noisy, moving between styles within a single track with what seems like wild abandon and laser-eyed restraint at the same time. It features huge washes of sound, emotive guitar and then giant rattling beats, covering huge expanses within the borders between the gaps on a slab of vinyl.
Shock World Service - 089: Back2Bray (EMA)
Irish DJ EMA was based in Berlin for a while, and now she's in Dublin. She put together this emotional mix for the wonderful Shock World Service around a theme of "coming home". It opens up with some darkness, there's lots of blissful and mournful ambient (including Ondo Fudd's evergreen 'Blue Dot') and then moves from skittery jungle-inflected lounge sounds into jazzier modes, before closing with a time-stretched play of a Shanti Celeste remix I completely missed last year. Delectable.
Force Placement - Vibe Repair
Shouts to Aloiso for putting me on to this one. It's from LA producer Force Placement, and it's out on 100% Silk, a label that should really be check on sight, but life, time etc. This one is aiming for a late-night, post-club/rave vibe, and it nails it. Still dancey, but hazy and mournful, elegiac to the night that was but tinged with regret. 'Juicy Detail' is a simply gorgeous opener. 'Nougat', the second-last track on the album, is of a similar mood, a rogue defiance permeating its gorgeous sounds.
KMS - Blolou
A nice and rumbly acid workout, this threw me. First off, it's nothing to do with Kevin Saunderson. Second, it's from a release by K-Line (not Bristol's K-LONE) and Sonic Weapon, and on this track they collaborate with a friend named Hiroshi. According to Test Pressing, they're all from Tokai "home of the Toyota car — which some locals jokingly and proudly call “the Detroit of Japan”". So the Kevin Saunderson thing and that acid all comes together rather nicely, no? Okay, I'll go...
Flaty - Generic TARGZ
One thing I'll say about this release is that I HATE the grey text on white background they have on the Bandcamp page. The music is good though. I had it in my wishlist for a while and then Objekt tweeted about it during a lengthy tweet roundup of his Bandcamp scouring. I think he's coming for me. Anyway. This week seems to be very "fizzly" and that is who I'd describe this. Lots of fizzing sounds, drums that sound like breaks but aren't samples, electronic hisses, squelching pulses. You're telling me a computer made this music? There's one track that sounds like this particular old Paul van Dyk remix, as if it's been refigured for the modern age.
DJ Richard - Critical Damage
DJ Richard has been going down ever-darker territories since 2015's Grind. Eraser, a new release on Flexxseal (the label's first that's not from Christopher Joseph or Draag), is gnaaarly as hell. This particular track features buzzing, distorted drums and incredibly eerie synths, all coalescing to form a kind of industrial lurching sound that's part nightmare, part hells yeah. I duno. It's wild. The whole release is super intense.
Adriaan de Roover - Leaves
Adriaan de Roover is a Belgian producer whose sonics are just as varied as those of Kush Arora above. This album jumps between pained ambient movements and beatsy numbers riven with sadness. There are short, quirky vignettes and then there's a track that robs a fairly well known drum pattern (but which I cannot identify right now!!). For all the moving between styles, it never feels disjointed, always shifting with elegance.
Zvrra - Halted
I had actually included a different track by this artist but they deleted it before I could send. They put up this one this morning though, swings and roundabouts, etc. It's a dark slab of ambient terror, perfect for these lengthening evenings and scary sights.
Loula Yorke - LDOLS
Loula Yorke is a Suffolk-based music maker who is a "mother of Innalogs" — from what I can tell these are modulars encased in wood. Which is amazing. This release is a selection from a recording made in a sweaty garage on a hot day. It's wonderful, ranging from strange, evocative electronics to absolute pumpers, tracks that sound like train stations and unnerving comments on materialism. LDOLS stands for last day of little school, and the release is dedicated to Loula's eldest daughter. Ain't that lovely.
Space Afrika - Canu
Well it wouldn't be right to finish October without anything from Ghostly... Space Afrika regularly provide us with thick, lumpy tracks, but this one is more wispy, floating through the air like the bells and other such sounds we hear here. It's as ephemeral as your breath on a cold winter morning.